In a complicated relationship with a book

In my college years mdash the 1980s mdash a folk art object was very popular amongt all us young girls It was the Dokra Reading Lady Named after a metal mining tribe in Eastern India Dokra is a wax casting technique which produces ridged metal objects you must often have seen mdash elephants and lions with curly ears turtles moles and fish with long woebegone faces lamps necklaces temples The Reading Lady a contemporary feeling figure could be found in different poses lying on her side head resting on hand flopped on her stomach with feet in the air breastfeeding a baby or combing her hair with one hand and in the other holding a bookWhy does a woman lost in a book make people nervous For the petty power and preposterous rules of the world are suddenly rendered insignificant when she can fantasise a world of her own REPRESENTATIONAL PICTURETrying to find the origin of the figurine I spoke to publisher Urvashi Butalia of the feminist press Zubaan whose logo is this reading woman She had been told by a craftsman that they came in the wake of the early nation wide rural literacy movements for women carried out by activist organisations such as BGVS Bharatiya Gyan Vigyan Samiti As they joined the literacy groups and caught the book fever the sight of women lying around reading became common and entered the repire of traditional craftsmen Others say it was the other way round and the figure was created in order to popularise literacyWhatever its origin the figurine emanates what in Hindi is called talleenta mdash being rapt wrapped in a book The woman is in a private reverie her daily chores forgotten her outward reality melting away before a deep inner reality She is in some sense in a room of her own except like Harry Potterrsquos Room of Requirement it is a secret room that comes when she needs it and becomes what she needsAs young women this object of desire I remember saving up the R40 it cost over a couple of months was one of the few things around us that reflected this deep experience we too shared with that tribal woman of discovering not only the world through reading but ourselves Whether we read Shakespeare or Mills and Boons Srilal Shukla or Upamanyu Chatterjee Agatha Christie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez we left the world around us for a long solitary journey into our own minds Engaging in a private relationship with books we learned to know more strongly our own hesitant feelings and opinions trying out many personae we became ourselves mdash a service art offers When we emerged from this hypnotic trance reluctantly pulled out by cries of ldquolunch is getting coldrdquo we came out a little changed in ways no one could monitor judge or preventThis sight of women lost in reading seems to make people nervous My friend Arsquos husband always seems to demand her attention when shersquos lost in her book the way babies shit only when their mothers relax with a meal My friendrsquos mother would always annoy her motherinlaw because lying down with a story she would forget everything and burn the rice Sleeping with the book mdash itrsquos a sneaky infidelity no The Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University fears that women in the library will cause men to flock there mdash but is that what really bothers him I wonderSpeaking of her inner life the writer Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary ldquoNobody shall come here on their terms or haul me off to them on theirsrdquo Perhaps thatrsquos why a woman lost in a book makes people nervous For the petty power and preposterous rules of the world are suddenly rendered insignificant when she can fantasise a world of her own Paromita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper