Feminist to the core...

"Ladies Coupe'" was not the kind of name that would attract me to a book but the fact that the protagonist, Akhilandeshwari is a Tamil Brahman made me read the book. The first thought that went through me when I saw someone like Anita Nair writing a book with a Tamil Brahman as her protagonist was how these modern, upmarket feminist authors present Tamil Brahman ladies as oppressed, bound by traditions and exploited. And boy, wasnt I right?

Ladies Coupe is the story of Akhila who is frusturated with life for she has sacrificed her youth in taking care of her family consisting of her mother, younger sister and 2 younger brothers after her father's untimely death. She has secured the life of everyone around her but is still single, unmarried, exploited and frusturated. She books a ticket to Kanyakumari and finds herself in the Ladies Coupe with 5 other ladies- Janaki, Prabha Devi, Sheela, Margaret and Marikozhunthu. The lives of the 5 other ladies and the impact that they make on Akhila is what the rest of the story is all about.

The problem with Ladies Coupe is that it is very pretensious. No effort has been made to go deep into the lives of any women and you feel the author is trying to just skim the surface of things and the writing ends up being extremely superficial. The men in all the stories are the same- spineless, lustful, selfish, insensitive- a trait that is extremely true of all the modern feminist writers. And most of the stories give you a feeling of deja vu- Akhila is straight out of the lead character in K B's "Aval oru Thudarkkathai". Anita Nair is a smartie for she herself understands this and gives a reference of the path breaking movie in the book itself. There is nothing extraordinary about the story of Janaki. Sheela is a character that fails to connect with the reader and Marikozhunthu sounds so straight out of a Bharathiraaja rural movie. The only time the uniqueness of Anita as a writer comes to the fore is when she is writing about Prabha Devi and Margaret Shanthi. How Prabha's life metamorphosies at the sight of the swimming pool and how Margaret plays vengeance on her husband by fattening him provide for some interesting reading.

The weakest point in Ladies Coupe is how Akhila finds ultimate satisfaction by sleeping with a strange young man in Kanyakumari. While the whole idea of Akhila losing her long preserved virginity (not forgetting her sexcapades with Hari in the early part) in the land of the virgin goddess might sound fantastic on paper, it is utterly idiotic to even think that a woman would experience peace, tranquility and a sense of victory when she sleeps with a stranger! Akhila and Anita might feel happy at the turn of things in the end, but it is not fair on their part to expect the same out of the hapless reader. Give us something different next time, Ms. Nair!