It’s been 22 years since I heard the story of Lallan bhaiya from my nani in Bareilly, but I still remember every word of it.
Lallan bhaiya was a distant cousin of mine – tall, moustachioed, and good for nothing, until he joined the army as a jawan. He was visiting Bareilly during his annual leave when his parents got him married to a “beautiful” girl that they themselves had seen only once. On his marital bed, Lallan bhaiya – quite to his horror – discovered that the girl was bald.
In the by-lanes of Gangapur (where Lallan bhaiya now lives with his second wife), you might still hear whispers of how he was once married to a “Shakaal” (that being a reference to the bald villain of eponymous name in the eighties movie, Shaan).
Incredulous, right? But many such stories abound in Uttar Pradesh, a land where “anything is possible” – and that is what prompted renowned director and screenwriter, Tanuja Chandra, to come up with her collection of 14 short stories, titled Bijnis Woman – Stories of Uttar Pradesh told by my mausis, buas, chachas.
Just like me, she had grown up hearing these “odd tales” from members of her family and felt that it was important to record them before they were lost forever.
Then, whether it be the burly young man nicknamed ‘lambi haanku’ for weaving yarns about his military exploits; or the boy who stole a Bhrigu Samhita from a Pandit to fulfil his own lofty ambitions; let it be the bartanwaali with an uncanny sense of business; or someone as mean and pernickety as this – and I quote her here:
In the introduction of the book, Chandra writes about how Uttar Pradesh is filled with such stories of great ambition and greater failure, stories bursting at the seams with urgent longings and intense desires, alongside an abject inability to fulfil them – and having heard similar stories myself, I couldn’t agree more with her.
However, while I was reading the book, I did pause to wonder if writing this book was any easier than writing for films – and pat came the reply: “It frightened me.”
Chandra follows a linear narrative style for her stories throughout the book but, according to her, it wasn’t easy to get it right.
As for her language, I found it deeply rooted in the soil of Hathras, Lucknow, Allahabad, Badaun, Sapnawat, Pilibhit, and other such places she describes – and I quote from one of my favourite stories in the book about a court clerk who loved nothing better than to eat chaat and romance:
And whilst she continues to work on her films – her latest one being based on a story by her mother, Kamna, who herself is a screenwriter – Chandra is already on to her second novel now.
“Films, TV, the internet, are all conveyors of stories,” she told me, emphasising on the relevance of each medium in recording the history of human emotions. However –
For one who has delved successfully into many mediums of storytelling, I wondered what she would want her audience to take away from this book?
“If these stories make the reader laugh every now and then, and touch them, if the reader is taken to places he or she’s never been to, and comes away feeling affection for the extremely daunting uphill climb that life is, I would feel blessed!” she said and with that I ended my interview.
(Vani has worked as a business journalist and is the author of ‘The Recession Groom’. She can be reached @Vani_Author)
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