Anjali Kajal’s collection of short stories, Ma Is Scared, tackles gender, caste, and disability and its intertwining with history and politics in a nuanced fashion. The collection displays Kajal’s imaginative range as a fiction writer with a sociopolitical awareness.
Kajal, who is based in New Delhi, was born in Ludhiana, Punjab in 1978. Her first short story, ‘Itihāsa’ (History) appeared in Hans, an influential Hindi literary magazine, in 1999. Since then Kajal’s stories have found a home in several other Hindi literary magazines, including Vanmali Katha and Rachna Samaya. Her stories have also been adapted for the stage. She primarily writes in Hindi and the stories in this collection have been translated by Kavita Bhanot.
Ma Is Scared consists of 10 short stories that are tied together with the common theme of gender. One of the stories is also about the global health emergency of COVID-19 from the standpoint of caste and rural-urban divide in northern India. The skein of stories talks about the sociocultural, historical, and political circumstances of the women protagonists and how their sorrows, fears, and traumas define the choices they make. This collection is about women and is an example of a solid contribution to women’s writing from South Asia as it is written and translated by women.
In the opening story ‘Deluge’, the protagonist Pammi is a victim of sexual and mental abuse and struggles throughout the story to make decisions for herself. Naina, her friend and only confidant, is abandoned by her husband who refuses to pay for the childcare of their two daughters. Both Pammi and Naina, despite having different temperaments and expectations from life, become victims of fearfulness arising out of choices that they didn’t even make for themselves:
‘Naina and Pammi remembered the day they ran away from college and sat in the park. Their lives had been filled with so much fear. Even their laughter had been full of fear. Where had all that fear come from?’
While the story presents the struggles of being a woman in North India, it ends on an encouraging note — sending a word that the struggles are over and hope (whatever that means for each character) is attainable:
‘A voice came from deep within Pammi: “If only my mother had shown some strength. If only she had taught me to fight, rather than teaching me only to close my eyes, like her mother did with her.” Naina looked at her daughters as they played. “We won’t do that to our daughters,” she said. “We’ll make them strong.”‘
Besides gender, this collection of stories is also about caste. Five out of 10 stories present a commentary on caste-based violence experienced by Dalits in urban spaces, which are otherwise perceived as modern and emancipatory. In the short stories ‘History’, ‘Pathways’, ‘To be Recognized’, ‘Sanitizer’, and ‘Ma Is Scared’, the author attempts to capture the struggles, insecurities, and burdens of Dalit immigrants in the city. These stories also grapple with the issue of the caste-based reservation system in India and the entire debate about whether ‘merit’ is a fair way to calculate an individual’s worth. Kajal’s prose reflects that she is aware of the debates in the Dalit Studies circles and the way she incorporates these issues in her writing is worth celebrating.
One of the stories from this collection, ‘History’, also the first short story Kajal wrote when she was 21, follows the story of a college-going girl whose sole identity is that she is a ‘Scheduled Caste’. This girl has no name, and neither are we told anything about her last name. All we know is that she’s a ‘Scheduled Caste’ — which is time and again reiterated by her classmates. This omission is a deliberate attempt made by the author to signal the upper caste bias towards the so-called ‘lower castes’ whose only marker of identification is the reservation category they belong to. This literary technique of introducing an unnamed protagonist, whose namelessness in fact presents a solid political and social commentary, makes the story impactful and showcases Kajal’s literary strength.
‘Pathways’, another short story, brings up the privilege of social capital enjoyed by the generationally educated upper-caste population. This story follows the trajectory of two boys, Vipul and Sanjay, and their journey to get an engineering degree. Vipul is a son of upper-caste, upper-class, educated parents whereas Sanjay is the son of a vegetable seller in the same neighborhood. Vipul’s parents could afford expensive private tuition fees for engineering entrances whereas Sanjay managed his studies while helping his father full-time in selling vegetables. Sanjay succeeded in securing a seat but had to defer his admission by two years due to his family’s inability to support his studies. Finally, in his third attempt, he again secures a seat, and that too in a prestigious government college. And all Vipul’s parents could say was, “He’s crazy. Wasted two years for nothing.” This story reminds us about the differences — social, economic, and cultural that the generation of Dalits must overcome. More importantly, how these difficulties are easily invisibilized by the populace with privilege.
The characters weaved by Kajal are real, convincing, and flawless throughout the collection. The author has used each character as an instrument of social commentary. For instance, Ma (mother) from the title story ‘Ma Is Scared’ is emblematic of the worries of a Dalit mother of a young daughter navigating this casteist world. Taru from ‘Taru, Zeenat, and a World Full of Crap’ sheds a spotlight on disability, trauma, and motherhood. And Kiran in ‘To Be Recognized’ reveals to the readers what it’s like to be employed at a workplace that is filled with a nauseating casteist attitude and what’s at stake to bring about even a minuscule of change. And there are so many more. Interlacing characters is undoubtedly one of Kajal’s strengths.
This collection succeeds in sharing compelling and important tales but the last story, ‘Sanitizer’ falls into the trap of bucolic romanticization. Siddharth, a 12-year-old school-going Dalit boy moves back to his village (with his family) during the COVID-19 lockdown. His father, who is an autorickshaw driver fails to support the family as cities shut down to combat the virus. The story follows his journey as he transitions to village life and the technological difficulties he faces in attending the online school. The issues of caste and reservations surface in this story as well and it’s written with nuance. But towards the end of the story, the author presents a view that erases the difficulties Indian villages faced during the pandemic. Siddharth’s classmate from the city, the daughter of a bureaucrat, Simmi, and her family fall victim to the virus and lives are lost in her family. Immediately after this precarious moment, the author presents a romanticized view of the village, as if untouched by the virus. In reality, villages had their own set of challenges during and after the lockdown.
Ma Is Scared presents the honest and arresting horrors of being a Dalit in modern-day North India. It has been perceptively translated by Kavita Bhanot retaining the nuance and affect of the original language. This is a great addition to Dalit Literature and Women’s Literature at large.
Anjali Yadav is a doctoral student in the department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington. She is interested in the study of devotional literature written by women during the 18th century in North India. She is also invested in analysing how caste, gender, and histories intersect in the context of devotional literary milieu.