Why you must read the two books which won Laadli award this year

We live in an era of divergent multiple realities – of independent minded women achievers and those under threat of violence and restraint from society and family.

Women leaders in business or the arts make news, while school admissions officers turn their noses at working mothers, who obviously cannot - in their opinion - raise worthy progeny for lack of time.

More young women than ever are aspiring high, while an equally large number is driven simply by fashion and appearance. Some women are setting the rules for their lives, while many others have to follow the diktat of community groups.

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Even inside the pages of books, we accost stereotypes. The happy-go-lucky modern heroine, typically a young urban female, can blithely go through life fighting smaller battles of discrimination with humour and some tears while largely seeking friendship and love and professional success.

Older protagonists, when not depicted in support roles, are shown to be struggling against patriarchal norms and in a moment of denouemental awakening find the courage to break the societal bonds that stifle them. 

As a jury member for the books category of the recently held Laadli National Awards for Gender Sensitivity in Media and Advertising, it was heartening to find books which feature real-life female protagonists who break popular gender stereotypes.

Journalist Rohini Mohan’s book The Seasons of Trouble, winner of the books category at the Laadli Media Awards, celebrates ordinary women who challenged their circumstances through extraordinary determination. Women are often the casualties of war.

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In startling contrast, against the backdrop of the atrocities of the armed civil conflict that wracked and ravaged the beautiful teardrop island of Sri Lanka for over 26 years, author Rohini Mohan has etched gritty female protagonists who fight and endure.

Based on real characters the author met over years of scouting news, The Seasons of Trouble is a reportage that has been crafted as a closely observed and intensely felt narrative from the perspective of two women who refuse to be beaten by their circumstances.

Former Tamil fighter Mugil once believed in the Tiger dream. But as the Sri Lankan army ring fences, insurgents and civilians alike, and the movement resorts to desperate measures - recruiting untrained children and the infirm, her faith crumbles. Meanwhile, Indra, a middle-aged mother carries on a determined struggle against the state bureaucracy to trace her son who is being held captive under suspicion of being a militant.

As the stories move forward, Rohini paints a desperate picture of a country and its people torn apart from the hopeless and ceaseless violence around them. Her language and visual imagery immerses us in the desperation of war.

A large book full of vivid micro moments, The Seasons of Trouble transports us into our own forgotten neighbourhood and weaves a heartbreaking story of women who refuse to surrender even as the tumult of events erodes them of belief.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Sagari Chhabra’s book In Search of Freedom received a special mention at the Laadli Media Awards for etching the forgotten women of our Independence struggle.

We live in an age where perception of threat to civil liberties becomes reason for incendiary action. When we recall the Independence movement and those who fought to gain us the freedom to worry over words and public actions, we remember and venerate the larger than life male leaders who had dominated the cataclysmic pre-independence political landscape.

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The few known women of the era like Annie Besant and Sarojini Naidu have also become shadowy figures – we know of them, but the details of their lives remain hazy and largely forgotten in popular memory.

At such a moment, In Search of Freedom takes us back in time to the early decades of the previous century and unpeels stories of women freedom fighters from India to Southeast Asia.

Ranging from the krantivadi recruits of the Rani of Jhansi regiment of Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, which formed outside Bengal and trained in the upper regions of Mandalay, to the Gandhivadi activists who travelled the hinterland of the nation following the path of Satyagraha to those in between, these courageous young women heeded the call of a unique moment in history.

Captured like an oral history project, In Search of Freedom brings alive the voices of thousands of women, who recount the stories of how they joined the struggle, either with the blessings of their of families or without it.

Some were doctors or highly educated women from affluent families who left security and comfort for training camps in the jungles of Burma, participating as female sepoys and medical professionals in World War II and dreaming of crossing the border into Bengal.

Some came from poor families and found the dream to elevate themselves by striving for a larger goal and becoming a part of a larger movement. One gutsy young woman transported firearms for the more radical freedom fighters of North India while dressed like a Gandhian, even wearing a necklace of ammunition underneath her khadi sari.

Each woman leads the author to another survivor, jumping from memory to history to the present. This web of connected stories weaves a narrative of valour, determination and the will to submit to a larger ideal and a bigger goal.  It is a reminder in our era of hyper marketing and hyper consumerism that women - and indeed men - can aspire to a life of belief and duty.

The women depicted in both these books may be tough role models for young women of today. But they show us how even in struggle – in recent times or a century back – women can find their own voices and carve their own destinies, and choose to link their personal destiny with the future of a nation on the march.