Borrowed Threads

These are exciting times for women writers. There are so many issues that need to belaid bare in all their myriad complexities, and women have found so many different ways toarticulate them in order to tease out facets hitherto unheeded. Shakti Niranjchana's TheWeb of Silk and Gold announces itself as one such work. And sure enough, itdeals with all the major Women's Issues—the evils of widowhood in India,wife-beating, marital rape, desire for sons, subjugation of wives by husbands—andthese are then combined with other Indian Issues such as corruption, nepotism and partypolitics.

The problem is that all these issues, which have been dealt with by many people before,are presented here as a bad pastiche of Hindi masala movies. Think of Rishi Kapoor as therich but neglected child in Bobby, Padmini Kolhapuri's transformation fromhappy bride to wretched widow in Prem Rog, Manisha Koirala as battered wife in AgniSakshi, and then limit them to only the cliches that these roles represent and youhave The Web of Silk and Gold. Worse, instead of having our hunky Bollywood herosave the day, Niranjchana, who now resides in Canada, has a white Canadian hero come in toshow that there are other cultures where women can live a life of equality with men.Penguin should really show better discretion in what it chooses to publish.