Quite some time ago I read somewhere that people who say they have only one life to live, do not read books 😊. It is true. Good books take us to different worlds inhabited by all types of people. While reading a book we are in that world, with people living their lives there. I liked these lines written in a book by D E Stevenson, ‘The story-teller has always been a valuable member of society. Even in prehistoric times when men hunted wild beasts and lived in caves they sat round the camp-fire at night and listened to stories.’
I am reading Women Writing of India, 600BC to early 20th century edited by Susie Tharu and K Lalita. I read about so many writers and their times. I enjoy reading more about them and Google helps 😊. Most of the writers wrote about their everyday life. They had to struggle to follow their dreams. In those long ago days girls hardly studied beyond primary school. They were married off even before they reached their teens. Tragically some girls became widows even before they went to live with their husband. My Doddamma’s elder sister was married off at the age of seven ! Doddamma completed high school because her mother insisted that she should go to school. She married after completing high school, maybe she was 16 or 17. That was considered old in those days! (Doddamma in my language, Kannada, literally means elder mother. Her name was Parameshwari, she was my father’s elder brother’s wife.)
Going back to the book, Geeta Sane was a relatively unknown feminist writer who worked in the 1930s and 1940s. She writes about the contradictions that women faced in the first decades of the 20th century. She says the much-vaunted liberal ideals of the time like ideals of individualism and personal fulfilment stopped strangely short of women’s lives and their desires. The plight of widows was tragic. It was a man’s world!
Fortunately, life has changed a lot now. Girls are studying and becoming financially independent. But I am not very sure if life has changed all that much for women everywhere. We still read a lot about domestic violence. It became very bad during the pandemic. There is so much suffering in the world, we cannot even imagine some of it. Only human beings among all animals are evil for the fun of it. That is the tragedy of life.
But when I read about the suffering of women, I always wonder why we do not get to read the same about men. It is not as if women cannot be cruel and make life a hell for their families. It is tragic that men cannot or are not able to express their feelings easily. I remember a small boy telling me he did not like Roger Federer because he cried!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjangud_Tirumalamba
Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth … https://books.google.co.in/books?id=OjZYf9Xf9bcC
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)