SHELF INDULGENCE

Indian writing8217;s queen of histrionics brings us Rani of Jhansi; and Iranian women fictionalise themselves

Rani
By Jaishree Misra, Penguin India, Rs 350
After William Dalrymple and Aamir Khan negotiated their way through the Great Revolt of 1857, with different results, now Jaishree Misra, a trifle late in the scene, fictionalises Rani Lakshmibai. The portrait is interesting: a 13-year-old Manikarnika playing with Nana and Tantia in the Peshwa8217;s court-in-exile in Varanasi; travelling through 8220;the dun-coloured8221; north Indian plains to become the bride of the old raja of Jhansi; turning into Rani Lakshmibai in Panch Mahal with its 8220;curlicued windows8221; and 8220;damask drapes8221;; falling in love with Major Robert

Ellis, a political agent of the English East India Company, whom she secretly meets in the forests outside the fort after the raja dies and, eventually, fighting the British, but not dying a martyr.

If songs about the 8220;mardani8221; divested Lakshmibai of feminine qualities, Misra finds it necessary to insert a romance 8212; though undeclared and unconsummated 8212; in the heart of the narrative. So when the rani hears Meerut is burning, she stops to think of her Brit lover in a wonderful maudlin moment and, in yet another, when she is wounded in the battle, she whispers in a cracked voice, 8220;He awaits me.8221; The novel is visually evocative and Misra gets the embellishments right, down to the 8220;cinnabar on the cheeks8221; and the peacock-shaped earrings but somewhere 8212; as it happened in Khan8217;s The Rising and even Shekhar Kapur8217;s Elizabeth: The Golden Age, two examples of Bollywoodisation of history 8212; the character is lost in the costume.

And although the story is of a queen who was more in the court than in the zenana, the novel has a claustrophobic feel to it since it is largely confined to seven or eight characters apart from a couple of handmaidens and a caricature of two memsahibs. What stays with you, though, are the striking images of an effeminate raja and the bloody scenes of the revolt. Sadly, Misra could not rescue the rani.

Afsaneh: Stories by Iranian Women
Edited by Kaveh Basmenji, Stanza, Rs 250
The 20 short stories in the book 8212; real and surreal, melancholic and matter-of-fact 8212; are by and of Iranian women from before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to till recently. The old Kowkab Soltan, who is scared of 8220;the snow and disease and loneliness and the sulking of the son-in-law8221; in Simin Daneshwar8217;s To Whom Shall I Say Hello?, becomes Everywoman in pre-Revolution Iran. And like most women in the stories, Soltan is trying to find a voice to scream out against men, who are often cruel or distant. Stanza has also brought out similar anthologies of stories by Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi women.

Prison and Chocolate Cake
Nayantara Sahgal, HarperPerennial, Rs 295
NAYANTARA Sahgal8217;s first book, written in the early 1950s, has now been reprinted, along with her later novel, Mistaken Identity. Sahgal, as the daughter of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, saw the last years of India8217;s independence movement from very close. But as much as the book is an attempt at documentation, it also carries a whiff of a new, modern sensibility. As she recalls, 8220;The nationalist effort meant that India had to be discovered outside the colonial system, including our language and cultural heritage.8221;

Lived Heritage, Shared Space: the Courtyard House of Goa By Angelo Costa Silveira, Yoda Press, Rs 495
If, by any chance, you have wandered away from the Goan beaches to be floored by its colourful houses built around a courtyard, then this one is for you. But since the book is based on a research project by Angelo Costa Silveira, a conservation architect of Goan origin based in Lisbon, it has details even of the size of laterite blocks used for construction, which will hardly be of interest to a lay reader.