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Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
She is Mrs Sharma, shy, reticent, a homemaker. Steeped in tradition, she prioritises everyone’s needs over her own, the quintessential kitchen queen who is mostly taken for granted. Forever mapping the complex architecture of human relationships, she seldom speaks. But on her 70th birthday, she dips freely into the super sanctuary of her memories, allowing us access to the borewells of secrets she carries within. Her story is no anodyne account of the drudgery of her daily life, it has much heft to it. It is the story of a young girl who marries with dreams in her eyes, all those fragrant queenly vibes, imagining robes of lustrous silks and a lover by her side. After a honeyed honeymoon and that brief drunk-on-love glorious state, her world changes. Torpor settles in quickly, in fact, a deep sense of ennui. Once a vivacious, chirpy girl, she begins to understand that behind the beautiful brocades of the bride, there lies the dirty petticoat of politics. As life settles in, she sees the chasm between her dreams and reality widening and yet suffers her many humiliations with dignity, finding joy in raising her four children. Usually quiet as the evening sky, she speaks for once, her soul, long suppressed, finally finding utterance. So here is Mrs Sharma - part wife, part lover, part mother, part daughter and so much more. Discover her many layers, know her veneer beneath veneer.
Sangeeta Kampani
Sangeeta Kampani’s first book ‘My Daughter’s Wedding’, is a collection of poems in which the eponymous poem delves into the heart of a mother who, in the midst of celebrations, worries for her daughter as she readies to tie the knot. Her second book, ‘She is Shabnam’, is about the struggle that awaits a young woman as she strains every sinew to find a balance between raising children and proving her potential at work. The latest collection seems to complete the trilogy by mapping the life of a homemaker, the tricky terrain that she forever traverses, her failures, her triumphs and everything in between.
Kampani taught at the Punjab University, Chandigarh before joining the Indian Revenue Service in 1984. Post retirement, she got back to her love for words and is happy that her foray into writing that began in 1980 with contributions to The Tribune, has come full circle. Many of her poems have been published by the LiveWire section of The Wire. Her stories revolve around women characters mostly but she finds the tag of a ‘feminist writer’ rather shrill, for gender aside, men and women are one, swaying together in the eternal dance of life.
Besides weaving words, she enjoys spending leisurely evenings with her classmate husband, Arun, randomly reflecting on life. That she is surrounded by her two young, energetic children is her biggest joy, the clumsy rooms they leave behind every morning, a beautiful reminder that some things should never change.
