Book review: The Sari shop

This first attempt book by Rupa Bhajwa revolves around a lowly shop assistant Ramchand at Sevak Sari House in Amritsar through whom the author tries to depict the harsh realities of the society that we live in using the protagonist first as a silent observer in the first part and then the shows him crumbling down under the multitude of emotions that engulf him bringing him to a state of complete disarray.At the same time captures the very essence of Amritsar with all its gossip, its alleys, its busy bazaars, its dhabas, mannerisms and its petty rivalries among the rich and bored women.

From her opening description of the raucous awakening of a small neighborhood, she presents the reader with the kinds of homely details which make identification with her characters possible.Her descriptions of the Sari House employees and their business, of the saris themselves and how they are shown to customers, of the social lives of the women who come to the shop, and of the long hours of work for the assistants, such as Ramchand, all give vitality to the novel.
Through flashbacks, the reader learns that Ramchand's life until he was six was filled with the love of his parents and the excitement of being in their small shop, but when they were both killed in a bus accident, he was sent to live with his grandmother and then his uncle, who appropriated his mother's jewelry for his wife, the assets of his father's shop, and later his grandmother's property. When Ramchand was fifteen, his uncle decided he'd had enough education, and sent him away to the city to earn his way and live alone in an unfurnished room where he is condemned to a life of ennui and drudgery and far from the education he craves so much.. The lives of some of the other assistants have followed similar patterns, leaving them just as vulnerable as Ramchand is to the whims of their bosses and customers.
But all this changes suddenly when he is dispatched to the rich, English-speaking Kapoor household to deliver saris and fabrics for the daughter’s trousseau. Seeing them converse in English, Ramchand’s passion gets re-kindled and he buys himself a second-hand grammar book, an Oxford Dictionary, a fresh pair of socks and a bar of Lifebuoy soap. These four things, he is convinced, will give him the kind of life he has wanted since childhood.
Focusing on individual characters, Bajwa draws the reader into their lives and makes the reader empathize with them. She keeps the scope small and intimate, the story a microcosm of life. When through Kamala , a young woman married to Chander, who, like Ramchand, is another assistant at the sari house, she is able to project the lives of women who are most victimized when their husbands lose their jobs or offend their bosses through Rina kapoor, the daughter of the wealthiest man in Amritsar, who is planning her wedding, a love marriage, and buying saris from Sevak Sari House she portrays the modern,independent and vibrant woman. When the lives of Rina, Ramchand, Kamala, and Chander intersect in a shocking climax, lives are forever changed.
Though Kamla is an especially pathetic example of the victimization of women, we also see that Rina Kapoor is also, in some ways, a victim of her economic situation, as are the women for whom shopping for saris is the primary activity of their day. Only a few women here are seeking independent lives or have any outlet for their intellectual energy, one of them an English professor at a local college and the other a woman who becomes an author, but these lives are possible only because of their economic privilege—women like Kamla have no such options unless they marry men who own shops, as Ramchand's parents did.
Although the stunning ending is melodramatic and Ramchand's change of character may not be completely realistic, Bajwa creates a story which moves effectively from its quiet beginning, as she establishes the characters and their backgrounds, into a compelling story of characters whose lives overlap, whether they want them to or not. Often darkly humorous, the story has considerable charm, despite the final, traumatic ending, since Ramchand himself inspires empathy. Intimate and thoughtful in its depiction of the various social strata which make up the community, the novel is more understated—less sensational and less political--than some of the more panoramic epics which have come from India in the past decade. More in the style of R. K. Narayan or Anita Desai