Learn how to become better allies to people with disabilities, download the Randstad exclusive ED&I 2022 report.
Kanchana Ugbabe's Soulmates delivers the "insider-outsider" perspective it promises, through the stories of different women in Nigeria.
Soulmates by Kanchana Ugbabe
Kanchana Ugbabe’s Soulmates delivers the “insider-outsider” perspective it promises, through the stories of different women in Nigeria.
I approached Kanchana Ugbabe’s Soulmates, a collection of short stories set in Nigeria and written by an author with Indian roots, with expectations derived from the blurb on the back cover. It mentioned “cross-cultural” stories, “derived from the experiences of both an insider and an outsider” and I immediately pictured an African version of The Interpreter Of Maladies and other such ‘diaspora writing.’
Soulmates both conformed to and defied my expectations. It defies the now familiar diaspora writing of loveless arranged marriages, longing for mangoes and rejection by children growing up in an alien culture. The protagonists in most of the stories are not Indian women marooned in foreign lands. If anything, the women in all the stories, whether Indian, European, Nigerian or from other African countries suffer the same trials – philandering or uninterested husbands, competing “co-wives” and a search for some meaning or novelty to their tired lives. At the end of the collection, if there is a feeling of monotony in having the same experience repeated in different lives, there is also a sense of how similiar our lives really are, behind the façade of culture and skin colour.
At the same time, Soulmates conformed to its promise of “outsider” stories, with the women in many of the stories hovering on the fringe, never quite fitting in to relationships, families and cultures. In fact, many of the narrators are so acutely conscious of this outsider status and so self-aware that they are not entirely credible. The unnamed narrator of Testimonies, for instance, is completely above the sham of the biblical society meetings she attends – and yet, we are never shown what compels her to join these dutifully. One gets the feeling that an omniscient narrator would have been a better choice to tell some of the stories than the first person favoured by Ugbabe. It is almost as if these women have become outsiders to their own lives – curiously divorced from their own circumstances and without any real feeling for the predicaments they find themselves in.
Nevertheless, Soulmates makes for reasonably interesting reading with the occasional memorable phrase. In Jaded Appetites, a wife describes her indifferent husband with, “Love for him was a benign presence like allowing the dog to lie in the kitchen and not kicking it.” An opportunistic lover is a “hyena in club-gear”.
Ugbabe is often at her best in detailing the meanness of human nature, especially when it is unthinking.
Publisher: Penguin
If you’re planning to purchase Soulmates, by Kanchana Ugbabe, do consider buying it through this Women’s Web affiliate link at Flipkart. We get a small share of the proceeds – every little bit will help us continue bringing you the content you like!
Readers outside India can purchase Soulmates through our affiliate link at Amazon.
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
Rajshri Deshpande, who played the fiery protagonist in Trial by Fire along with Abhay Deol speaks of her journey and her social work.
Rajshri Deshpande as the protagonist in ‘Trial by Fire’, the recent Netflix show has received raving reviews along with the show itself for its sensitive portrayal of the Uphaar Cinema Hall fire tragedy, 1997 and its aftermath.
The limited series is based on the book by the same name written by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, who lost both their children in the tragedy. We got an opportunity to interview Rajshri Deshpande who played Neelam Krishnamoorthy, the woman who has been relentlessly crusading in the court for holding the owners responsible for the sheer negligence.
Rajshri Deshpande is more than an actor. She is also a social warrior, the rare celebrity from the film industry who has also gone back to her roots to give to poverty struck farming villages in her native Marathwada, with her NGO Nabhangan Foundation. Of course a chance to speak with her one on one was a must!
“What is a woman’s job, Ramesh? Taking care of parents-in-law, husband, children, home and things at work—all at the same time? She isn’t God or a superhuman."
The arrays of workstations were occupied by people peering into their computer screens. The clicks of keyboard keys were punctuated by the occasional footsteps moving around to brainstorm or collaborate with colleagues in their cubicles. Most employees went about their tasks without looking at the person seated on either side of their workstation. Meenakshi was one of them.
The thirty-one-year-old marketing manager in a leading eCommerce company in India sat straight in her seat, her eyes on the screen, her fingers punching furiously into the keys. She was in a flow and wanted to finish the report while the thoughts and words were coming effortlessly into her mind.
Natu-Natu. The mellifluous ringtone interrupted her thoughts. She frowned at her mobile phone with half a mind to keep it ringing until she noticed the caller’s name on the screen, making her pick up the phone immediately.
Please enter your email address