10 Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society Into the Vortex: Indian Women in Anita Nair’s novel Ladies Coupe Sushama Kasbekar ABSTRACT Indian society is even today cloistered, traditional and demands a special code of conduct from women. Gender bias continues to reign supreme, with the woman playing a largely subservient role in a male-dominated society. Indian society is class conscious and largely caste conscious. Caste differences reduce women in stature and confines them to a servile role. Yet there is a small but distinct change in this suffocating atmosphere. The woman is emerging from her essentially restricted role to the front stage both on the domestic front as well as the world at large. Anita Nair’s novel Ladies Coupe poses the question whether a woman can be alone and yet happy. The novel seeks to understand Indian women undergoing a metamorphosis and even a catharsis in the modernised ambience of cities. This paper will analyse the question of women as an entity grappling with her identity as a human being, not necessarily as a “mother,” “sister,” or “wife.” *** Indian women have gone through a quiet revolution. Contrary to popular belief, a large number of Indian women work. Though the society has a decisive patriarchal outlook, women are more assertive now and definitely play a positive role in the country’s march towards economic progress. Indian women were (and still are) subject to a secondary position in the family set-up. The man has the upper hand since he is, more often than not, the principal bread-winner of the family. In the past, Indian women had to contend with a secondary role compounded with illiteracy, malnutrition, maternity deaths, sati (the practice of being burnt alive at her husband’s pyre) and dowry. Malnutrition, female infanticide, subjugation in the family set-up due to the practice of dowry continue even today. Yet, women are now pushing for their fair share on the sub-continent. Rising literacy, better laws to protect women, a media-friendly image and the women’s will to fight the odds against them have made all this possible. Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe is therefore relevant since it is the story of a woman’s search for strength and independence. It is a part of the political instability which affected Indian society at large, along with myriad other influences which have affected culture, language and social patterns. Women’s Into the Vortex: Indian Women in Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe 11 literature in India has evolved to show common experiences, a sense of sisterhood and a range of female experiences that question the recurring face of patriarchy. This paper aims to point out the evolution of the Indian women through the characters portrayed in Ladies Coupe. It also points out the liberty attained by women in spite of their coercive situation in the Indian diaspora. These are women belonging to diverse social strata. Anita Nair is one of India’s living woman authors who has carved a distinctive niche for herself. Based in Bangalore, the IT capital of India, Nair has strived to write novels with a distinctive South Asian flavour in content and style. She tells her story with a distinct, incisive and pithy directness which makes her unique. Her characters are drawn from different walks of life and are realistic. Nair has emphasized that her characters interact and cause tensions allowing the narrative to unravel at a brisk pace. Her ideas are very identifiable, relating to common sensibilities. Though her story is not meant to be universal, yet, its theme is universal. Anita Nair was working as the creative director of an advertising agency in Bangalore when she wrote her first book. A collection of short stories called Satyr of the Subway was sold to Har-Anand Press. The book won her a fellowship from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her second book was published by Penguin India and was the first book by an Indian author to be published by Picador, USA. Ladies Coupe was published in 2001. Looking back, towards the mid-nineteenth century more and more women began to write in English. Some of them, such as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, created a world of feminist ideologies. In Sultana’s Dream she talks about a world dominated by women; a world which has imprisoned men in a male equivalent of zenanas (women’s quarters). She creates a world that is much better than the one men managed. In her woman’s world, there are no wars and there is constant scientific progress and love for the environment. Women’s writing in the 20th century moved towards a medium of modernism in which womanist and feminist statements were combined with political messages. The writings of women such as Hamsa Wadkar conveyed an honest impression of a world of professional women whose careers in television and stage segregated them as a class apart, yet subjected them to the same brutality and force of patriarchy. In her autobiography, Hamsa Wadkar talks about her life as an actor from the age of eleven, her marriage to a suspicious and abusive husband, the birth of a daughter, her life after eloping with another man, the imprisonment she faced at his home along with two of his other wives, and her rape by a justice of peace. 12 Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society Women writers such as Mahashwetadevi combined women’s causes with political movements. In Draupadi Mahashwetadevi creates a world of tribal rebels who fight against a political system of enforced capitalism which has driven them to become Naxalites (supporters of a Chinese- style Communism). Others such as Sashi Deshpande build a platform of universal female experiences. In Binding Vines she examines the experiences of women coming from different echelons of society. (Koshy online) Over the years and throughout the political instability which affected Indian society at large, along with a myriad of other influences which have affected culture, language and social patterns, women’s literature in India has evolved to show common experiences, a sense of sisterhood and a range of female experiences that question the recurring face of patriarchy. Writers like Ruth Prawar Jhabvala who was awarded the Booker prize for her Heat and Dust, Nayantara Sehgal who explored the theme of women’s identity, or more recently Arundhati Roy who also received the Booker prize for The God of Small Things all made valuable contributions. Ladies Coupe is the story of a woman’s search for strength and independence. The central character is Akhilandeshwari, Akhila for short: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider. Until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari, gloriously alone for the first time in her life and determined to break free of all that her conservative Tamil Brahmin life has bound her to. When Anita Nair was asked about her heroine; “How do you typify Akhila, the main character in the book?” she replied: She is typical of that generation. Not many have the courage to break away. You get sucked into the vortex. To me, Akhila in some sense enjoyed being a martyr. She’s not an exceptionally strong woman. She is just somebody who has coped. All she wanted was to be a good wife and mother. It’s a typical South Indian dream, specially for women of that generation. Akhila is 45 years old. (Nair, SAWNET online) Nair goes on to elaborate how she got the idea of the book initially. Until 1998, in Bangalore station there was always a separate line for ladies, senior citizens and the handicapped. I often used to wonder why they are being clubbed together, why women are being treated like this. The book is about why women insist on using this line. When 15 years ago I was traveling in a ladies’ coupe the women around me began talking – I was on Into the Vortex: Indian Women in Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe 13 the top berth – there is an atmosphere of intimacy that comes in. People talk more openly to strangers – there is no judgment. (Nair, SAWNET online) In the intimate atmosphere of the ladies coupé which she shares with five other women, Akhila gets to know her fellow travellers: Janaki, pampered wife and confused mother; Margaret Shanti, a chemistry teacher married to the poetry of elements and an insensitive tyrant too self-absorbed to recognize her needs; Prabha Devi, the perfect daughter and wife, transformed for life by a glimpse of a swimming pool; fourteen-year-old Sheela, with her ability to perceive what others cannot; and Marikolanthu, whose innocence was destroyed by one night of lust. As she listens to the women’s stories, Akhila is drawn into the most private moments of their lives, seeking in them a solution to the question that has been with her all her life: Can a woman stay single and be happy, or does a woman need a man to feel complete? The novel does not answer this question. On the contrary, we are left to make our own decisions. However, the novel does set us on the path of thinking whether Indian women can be single and happy since tradition has for countless centuries bound them to the marital hearth. Being a woman means marriage and children and her only salvation lies in being consecrated to flames by her own son. To quote the well known Indian sage Manu, “Her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons protect her in old age, a woman is never fit for independence” (“Laws of Manu” online).