Walking towards Ourselves is a collection of non-fiction narratives by Indian women writing either about themselves, or about a woman they were influenced by. The narratives explore what it means to be a woman in India amid an evolving conversation on gender, feminism, and identity. One narrator speaks of her experience with the casting couch in Bollywood, another of an abusive marriage. One writer examines how the careers of women have evolved over the past few decades, and another recounts her experience of being a misfit as a single woman in her 40s. The book collects 19 such narratives. The title of the book comes from the choreographer Chitralekha, who, when speaking of the connection between art and life, said that it is akin to "walking towards ourselves."
The following excerpt, an essay by the Punjabi writer Nirupama Dutt, titled 'Two Sisters, Two Lives,' is a memoir of her sister, Devi, who is 28 years older than her, and whose life is "tragic and wasted."
Devi and I were sired twenty-eight years apart by a grand, but tragic, patriarch. The decades separating her birth from mine were eventful ones: India was freed from British rule, and the country was partitioned. Devi learned many a bitter lesson of life—lessons that I, so vastly her junior, was spared.
Despite the great love we had for one another, somewhere in Devi was the regret that she never got the chances in life that I did.
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There she stands by a table spread outside the Lahore house; perhaps the photographer wanted some natural light. On the table is her baby brother, wearing a hand-knitted coat and booties. She is posing by the table looking into the camera with innocence, too shy even to smile. She is wearing a dark georgette sari and a pale blouse with puff sleeves, like cine-heroines of the thirties. Her thick hair is pulled back into a bun. She is petite, pretty and only thirteen. The year is 1940.
The child Devi is posing with is her stepmother’s first born; in other words, my brother. It would be fifteen years until I would come along, the last child in a family of eight children. Devi and I were the only girls.
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Devi was born when our father returned from a seven-year stay across the seas, studying history and philosophy at Cambridge and law in Dublin. He returned to India after his father’s death to support his mother and siblings, in addition to his own wife and first child. He was not a happy man: there was no time to start a legal practice, and he had not made it in the coveted Indian Civil Services. The next best choice was the Provincial Service; he appeared for the examination and the results came after the birth of Devi in 1927. He was selected to an influential administrative post and he held his baby daughter in his arms saying, “Devi is my lucky one. She has brought her father a good job. God bless her!”
But Devi’s tall, fair and beautiful mother, Ramrakhi, died young. Ramrakhi was just a year over thirty, pregnant again and miserably sick. She died one night of severe infection. Devi was left a motherless child, and slightly cranky at that. She was only six, and a burden on the aunts.
Our father decided that she be sent to her maternal grandmother in another town for better care. The grandmother had many grievances against our father for leaving Ramrakhi for seven long years to pursue his studies abroad. Pained by the death of her own daughter, she had little patience with her granddaughter. So when this grandmother tired, Devi was packed off to her paternal grandmother, who lived a frugal, unhappy life of a widow in the village. That’s how Devi spent four years, with interrupted education, being tossed from one grandmother to another, imbibing the values of the two, and at ten she revolted and returned to her father’s home in Lahore.
When Devi was twelve, our father took the decision to remarry.
This infuriated Devi’s oldest brother, who could not bear the idea of someone replacing his dead mother, but Devi was quiet, for she had learned not to display her emotions even to herself. She was curious nevertheless about the new entrant, and awaited her with eager anticipation even as her aunts warned, “Just you wait, you stubborn one! Your stepmother will soon be here to fix you well and proper.” When the car arrived, the bride, all veiled in gold-embroidered red silk, saw a little girl with a long plait standing still at the end of the driveway. When the bride got out of the car, Devi stepped forward, solemn and serious, folding her hands and saying in the chaste Hindi that she had learned at school: “Greetings to you, Mummy-ji.” Just twenty-three, although considered over-age in her clan for marriage, the bride—who was to become my mother—was wedded to a man seventeen years her senior with three children, and she felt a little awkward being addressed as Mummy-ji. But she embraced the girl and whispered, “Call me Biji.” “Biji” was the commonly used word for “mother” in Punjab. Devi nodded in acceptance, and the bride took on the role of Biji from then on. Biji was to recall this later and say,
“My heart went out to the little girl. I had lost my mother when but a child, and I knew the pain of being motherless.”
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In spite of all his years abroad, our father felt that girls had to be kept away from Western education and should grow up bearing the heavy burden of tradition and religion. So Devi was Daddy’s dutiful and good little Hindu girl, one who would make her Mohyal Brahmin clan proud by later being an equally good daughter-in-law and wife.
If Devi had been considered the lucky one, I was the perhaps the “unlucky one.” I was born to Biji when she was forty and my father had already retired from service; he considered me to be the harbinger of sinking fortune and hard times.
I was told that my father was very anxious that his eighth living child should not be a girl. Biji told me later, “He would fold his hands and say that I should not spoil his old age by bringing him a daughter at this stage.” He would ward off his worries during the pregnancy, saying, “An astrologer has told me that I will have seven sons.” Perhaps he did not want to suffer the pain that had come his way because of his daughter Devi; Devi’s life had already turned out to be a sad one by that point. But Biji, on the other hand, had always wanted a girl child who would achieve all that she had not been able to achieve. In fact when Biji gave birth to her third son, she was so disappointed that she kept him dressed like a girl until he was three.
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My first memory of Devi dates back to the time when I was three or four years old. I remember her as a slim girl in a plain salwaar kameez with a thick, long plait hanging down the nape of her neck. She would cycle every day to college, trying to fill the gap of a disrupted education. Our brothers, barring the oldest, called her “Behan -ji,” a respectful way of addressing an older sister, but I decided to call her “Mummy.” Our mother was Biji to all anyway, and Devi seemed to fill the bill of a mummy. She was not firm and authoritative like Biji, but soft and indulgent. Biji insisted that I was now big enough to walk on my own, but “Mummy” would still carry me if I complained that I was too tired to walk. She would give her share of sweets to me. I often played the make-up expert with her. I would open her plait and comb her lovely hair and then tie it into a ponytail with one of my bright red ribbons. At times I would even get bolder and powder her cheeks. She would bear it all with utmost patience. I asked her if she would be my “Mummy” and I could be her daughter, and she said a smiling yes.
One day, however, Devi betrayed me. She took me to her college on her bicycle to show me a crafts exhibition; one of her college mates asked her who I was, and she replied, “My younger sister.” I came home and created quite a row. Biji asked me how Devi could have told her friend that I was her daughter, when they had not even mentioned in the college that Devi was married. That’s when I learned for the first time that my dear “Mummy” was married, and that her marriage was related to the picture in the cupboard.
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There was a framed picture that I would see in Devi’s cupboard, placed prominently but shut away from others’ eyes. In it she was dressed like a bride wearing a huge nose-ring, with a vermilion mark on her forehead, and by her side was a handsome boy with a shock of wavy hair. The picture was tinted in pastel colours by a Shimla photo studio and dated back to the year 1949. As I was to learn, the boy was the notorious Satinder, and he had wrecked Devi’s life.
Our brilliant but eccentric father had met Satinder on a train journey when Devi was just thirteen. Taken with the looks and manner of the boy, who belonged to a well-respected family of our clan, my father decided that he was just the right match for his dear daughter. Satinder had only just started his career as a clerk, but my father felt that he would be able to use his influence and get him a better job. The two families conferred and Satinder and Devi were engaged, although the marriage was to take place only after she turned eighteen.
Much happened in those six years between Devi’s engagement and her wedding. The country gained independence from British colonial rule, it was partitioned, and our family was among the millions displaced. The family moved from Lahore to Shimla, where the Punjab government for India was shifted, after losing much by way of movable and immovable property. No one from the extended family died, no woman was raped or displaced, as had happened in the bitter communal frenzy of those times on both sides of the new border, and our father’s job was intact, but the family members were refugees nevertheless.
The Garden Town house in Lahore was looted and burned down a few days after our father came to this side of the border to join the family at Shimla, in the blood-drenched August of 1947.
Life began again and preparations started for Devi’s wedding. It was a grand marriage and she went with a huge trousseau. However, she never got to use that trousseau. She saw maybe two months of happiness before wedded life became a saga of torment.
Devi was maltreated and emotionally tortured, because her husband was romantically entangled with his older brother’s wife. While Satinder was working in Delhi, Devi was made to live in Kanpur with her sister-in-law, who was furious when she came to know that Devi had conceived in the second month of marriage. When Satinder came to Kanpur, the sister-in-law would rarely allow the two to be alone.
Once or twice she barged into the room when Devi and her husband were sharing an intimate moment. Satinder was under the spell of his voluptuous sister-in-law, who was known to have a way with men.
Next, the sister-in-law started a tirade, spreading rumours that Devi was of licentious nature: who knew who was the father of her baby girl? Devi bore all this silently, although broken in spirit, because the traditional advice to a Hindu girl at the time of her marriage was that she was being sent away from her father’s home and only her corpse should return.
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When Devi’s daughter was eleven days old, Devi’s sister-in-law made one desperate and final attempt to finish the bond between Devi and her husband. She took the baby and held her under a cold-water tap—this, during a biting cold November in North India. She then dropped the baby into Devi’s lap with the words, “Warm her up, now.”
Within three days, the baby was dead. She died of pneumonia. Devi was to lament all her life, “How could I have warmed her up?”
The child’s death and her husband’s growing indifference made Devi smuggle a letter to her parents, saying that if they did not come to fetch her she would have no choice but to commit suicide. Devi’s parents rushed to Kanpur, and she returned home alive in what she was wearing. The rich trousseau of gold, silver, Persian carpets, cut glass, Royal Doulton crockery, teak furniture, clothes and much else was left behind.
Devi had only been married for a year, and she returned home deeply injured in her heart and soul. Unable to get over the trauma, she refused to give herself a second chance. This became a point of dispute between the parents. There were marriage offers from other boys, but our father said that Satinder would come round. He declared, with patriarchal orthodoxy, “I will not take my daughter’s personal life to the court.”
Devi supported this, for she felt that she would win Satinder over with her love and sincerity. Later, she accounted for why she did not move on, even though she was only nineteen at the time, with the fatalistic words: “If things were going to work out, they would have worked out. I went there pure and unblemished, but returned with a blemish.’
I was six, I think, when Devi left the Chandigarh home. I still remember her sad and quiet in her inexpensive khadi shirt, walking out with our father, with only a small bag and a few other belongings.
I wept and went running towards her, crying, “Stop her, Biji! Devi is going away!” Biji did nothing of the sort; she told me in a flat voice, “Let her go. She is going to her husband. Maybe she will find peace there.”
Devi went away to give her husband a second chance, but by then he had found another paramour.
All Devi got was violence.
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By the time Devi left for the second time, things were not good at home: the fortunes had fallen. The huge unplanned family, our father’s retirement, the grand house he had built and the unsettled younger children had all led to a kind of unhappiness. There was no money; there were fights all the time.
But Biji was a woman of rare courage and resilience. Although she had been born into a wealthy home, and then married well, she took the hard times that came her way in her stride.
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If Devi had been her father’s daughter, I was my mama’s darling all the way: she invested all her unfulfilled dreams in me, even if this meant becoming overprotective, because I was born an underweight baby with a chronic bronchial problem. If there was no money to buy me a new dress for my birthday, she would tear up a sari and stitch me a party frock. It was Biji who took me to be admitted to my first school in Chandigarh when I was five, and she saw to it that I went to the best convent in town: Carmel Convent.
I remember in Class 8, my fees were invariably delayed as the remittance that came every month from my older brothers was often late. The names of the defaulters were read out loud in class and I would feel humbled in front of all my classmates. One day, returning home from school, I made a decision and prepared myself to tell Biji to pull me out of this school and send me to the government girls’ school where my cousins went. But Biji ruled it out, saying: “You will study where you are studying. Times may be hard but we will manage.”
And we did manage.
Biji encouraged me in almost every activity, from singing to dancing, from cooking to swimming, but I didn’t seem to have any great talent. It was only in the last three years of school when we were away in the hill town of Shillong in North-East India that my flair for drawing and languages surfaced. This blossomed further in college, at Chandigarh, and I topped English language and literature.
My excellent final results at school saw me earning merit in the university: I could do my Master’s in English literature on a scholarship. The expected path for me was to do my Master’s and then teach in a college. All my cousins were in academia, but I wanted to study journalism. I pleaded with Biji to let me do a one-year journalism course and if it led nowhere, I assured her I would return to the Master’s. No decision could be taken without my big brother Raj’s approval, but Biji let me go my way. Raj was furious when he heard it: “So, she thinks she will be a writer? All we have seen are her letters full of spelling mistakes.”
Devi said, ‘The gift of writing comes to you from our father.’ I felt it came from my mother, who was well schooled in Indian literature and enjoyed reading poetry; but perhaps our father had saved this gift for his seventh son and it had come my way.
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Comparing the two of us, Biji would say, “When I found Devi a bit slow at completing tasks or making decisions, I would wish for a daughter who was a fast mover, but little did I know that she would be too fast!” I dared to do all that Devi had not done by way of taking risks, making quick decisions, speaking my mind, and generally rejecting a victim identity dictated by my gender. Unlike Devi, who put her faith in patriarchy and took great pride in saying that she always did what her father and brothers expected of her, I took pleasure in challenging my brothers and doing what I wanted.
I became a professional writer and this brought me a clear sense of identity. But I suffered in my personal life: I fell in love not once but twice and was terribly hurt, and after these two failed romances, I made the decision to be single. I disdained the idea of an arranged marriage, common enough even then in my country. Also, I had started enjoying the independence that my single status gave me. It really did not bother me what others thought. However, by deciding not to marry, I missed out on having a child. To remedy this, after some time, I decided I wanted to adopt a child. When I first started talking about this, my friends and family just thought of it as another whim. But I persisted, and then Biji started supporting the idea.
By this time, a cousin and her husband had helped Devi find a job at a children’s home. This had made her active once again, and she nurtured the children with great love, but was upset when those she had reared were adopted. When I spoke to her of my desire to adopt, Devi confessed: “Mine was a disrupted education, but had I been financially independent, I would never have married. I would have adopted a child and lived with her.”
Devi wanted me to adopt a baby boy, but I was adamant that it had to be a baby girl. I had received so much love from two mothers, Biji and Devi, and I wanted to pass it on to another uncertain girl child. My little girl came to me from the children’s home where my sister worked.
I did not choose the baby, because the idea of doing so was unpleasant. I just asked for the youngest girl child, and was given the second-youngest because the youngest was frail and ill. Devi had already given my daughter the name of Upasna. She was ten months old when I got her. I always took Upasna to be a gift to me from Devi.
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Devi’s greatest loss came when our father died, less than two years after she had moved away. “God knows how many other heart attacks he suffered, bearing the burden of so large a family,” Devi wailed. “We just made demands on him, but never thought of his anguish.”
I think often of Devi’s own anguish, to this day. Devi’s was one of the most painful and unhappy lives of the girls in our extended family. The other girls learned a lesson from Devi’s misfortune: there was no way they were going into marriage without being educated and economically independent. Partition and displacement played a role too: there came a growing awareness of education and employment opportunities for women. Women were studying, working and achieving, they were marrying, yes, and some stayed on in the institution of marriage holding on to their own identities, while others walked out of it with few regrets.
I include myself here, along with the other women in my extended family. Because of the life Devi lived and what I learned from her, I achieved economic independence, and I made my own choices—even that of staying single and adopting a girl child.
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One day, when Devi caught me alone in the living room she walked up to me and said, “She would have been fifty-four now.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My daughter,” she said.
I was silent, for I knew my sister must be feeling very alone. She rarely mentioned her lost child. “You know she died of pneumonia, the third day after she was placed under the running tap in the cold of November,’ said Devi, though of course I knew this story well. “Had she lived, she would have been fifty-four.”
In her last exchange with me, during the illness that would lead to her passing, Devi said, “Remember, you have to write my story.” Devi, dear sister of mine, your story is so poignantly alive in my heart as I put it to paper, but tell me: where does your story end, and where does mine begin?