Why is a daughter
less favoured than a son? The answer perhaps lies in India’s patriarchal
society. Violence is the bane of most women, in any strata of society – be it
emotional, suppression, denial of same choices as son or ultimately the right
to property. This violence more often than not is perpetuated by women against
women.
This issue formed
the fulcrum of Ratna Vira’s hugely successful debut novel, ‘Daughter by Court
Order’. “The issues it brings up are experienced by women across society. It
happens in every household in varying intensities. The fact remains that India
is a patriarchal society where the rules are different for sons and daughters.
Parents do not realise the echo they set off when they favour one child and the
hurts and complexes that are then carried by the child to adulthood,” observes
Ratna. “I wanted to explore this aspect of violence within families and also,
what women do to women. The boundaries are always set by them. With the family
you are born into, your mother tells you what to do; you get married, your
mother-in-law tells you what to do. And then it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
This is a cycle that needs to be broken,” emphasises Ratna. Breaking the
perceived image of the all-sacrificing Indian mother, she has chosen to portray
the mother as a complex being, with her own share of wants and needs.
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Undeterred by
those who believed that this subject would find no readership, Ratna went ahead
with what she believed was something special and powerful. It was a story that
needed to be told even as she chucked her full-time corporate job to complete
it. That the book has surpassed her own expectations being voted as one of
India’s top ten books for fiction since it was launched in July is a
vindication in her belief.
It is this book
that prompted the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, to send her a special
message of commendation in which he expressed the hope that the book would be
able to drive the change that she aspires. To Ratna, the message is a “great
honour and inspiration”. Commendations have come from overseas as well from
women like Cherie Blair and Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Barry who recommended
the book as a must read for “the truth cannot be muzzled”. Recently, film
producer Bhuvan Lall has expressed his desire to script the story for a film.
Closer to home,
Ratna has received a tremendous response from people as young as 15 to those in
their 80s. “It is a story of courage, hope, optimism and believing in oneself.
It can be the story of many women. It does not have to be Aranya’s alone. In
India, today you can take an idea or an opportunity and make something of it,”
she avers, encouraging women to stand up for their rights. She believes that if
the book has served to inspire and change attitudes, then it has served its
purpose.
