Jul 08, 2011 02:57 PM
By Miranda Kennedy Random House ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2 Hardcover. 352 Pages
Reviewed by Mahadev Desai
Twenty-something NPR Editor and Reporter Miranda Kennedy left her job in New York City and traveled to India where she spent over five years in Delhi,”a city pulsing with possibility and hope” and “experienced friendships, love affairs and losses that open a window onto the opaque world of Indian politics and culture-and alter her own attitudes about everything from food and clothes to marriage and family.”
“Sideways on a scooter is a beautifully written memoir that weaves Kennedy’s own love affair with India into the lives of several Indian women she befriends, and into the bigger narrative of modern India’s transformation. Her understanding of the country, her stories of the tensions between tradition and modernity and her flowing, limpid prose make this a must-read for anyone wanting to understand modern India” Rob Gifford,NPR Correspondent.
And Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury lauds,” This high-spirited story joins an adventurous journalist’s view of modern India with a young woman’s passionate desire to experience life and love in another culture.Miranda Kennedy’s sense of humor and intimate voice brings the jangly world of New Delhi to life.”
In 1930s, Miranda’s British great-aunt Edith had spent over 30 years in India as a Christian missionary, so “going to India was like a rite of passage, entwined with my very idea of myself…On some level, I knew that it was where I would go to define myself as a journalist, an adventurer, a woman”. After arriving in ancient but colorful city of Delhi, Miranda soon learnt that it is next to impossible to rent an apartment as a single woman and that too for a feringhee(Hindi slang for whites) hippie-girl. So she began wearing salwar kameez and pretended that she was married but her husband who was abroad, would soon be joining her. She managed to rent a small apartment and following the advice of building’s caretaker, hired his relative Radha, an illiterate Brahmin widow from Bihar. Radha worked part time and being Brahmin refused to take out garbage, clean the bathroom do the outside sweeping or deal with Miranda’s adopted cats. So she hired Maneesh ,an uneducated untouchable with two sons and a husband who was a drunk. After their husbands pass away, both widows Radha and Maneesh had to fend for their families and live very simple and constricted lives. Miranda hints at the plight of widows and uncared for senior citizens due to lack of social security or welfare schemes.
Kennedy also learnt proper way for women to ride scooters in India-perched sideways rather than straddling the seat. After two years, she moved into a bigger apartment with an inverter, which “can sustain a couple of fans-and during the almost-daily power cuts of a Delhi summer, a fan’s breeze was air from the flapping wings of a blessed angel”. She hired three more part-time staff. Overseeing them was a challenge for her but her relationship with them was often affectionate. She even visited their homes and met with their family members.
Kennedy’s new neighbor,Geeta Shourie, was from a middle class family in Patiala, Punjab, but moved to Delhi, where she lived with Nanima,a grandmother of a family friend, because Geeta’s family would not let Geeta live by herself. A thirty-something Geeta, a “self-described 'Modern’ girl “wears miniskirts, drives a car and goes to clubs, but in matters like marriage, she is traditional, and chooses love-cum-arranged marriage. After graduating, she found an office job. The biggest issue facing women in India is marriage. Geeta’s family also pressured her to get married. Non-resident Indians(NRI) come to India on a “marriage pilgrimage”. There are different kinds of arranged marriages. Majority of the eligible boys and girls use the popular Shaadi.com to find marriage prospects. “It’s virtuous virtual dating”. After a long wait, Geeta got a response from a South Indian NRI Brahmin, with his home in Bangalore. The Punjabi Geeta tied the knot with South Indian Ramesh at a lavish Punjabi-style wedding, where Miranda was invited to be the maid of honor!
Miranda later met with journalist Vijay who introduced her to his friend and reporter Parvati at the Delhi Press Club. Parvati , a Brahmin “seemed unusually self-assured about her decision to defy Indian stigmas against women drinking and smoking.” Vijay is her boyfriend, but Vijay is already married but doesn’t want to divorce his wife as he could be socially ostracized.
Miranda liked watching Bollywood movies which she describes as “medieval morality plays made entertaining through melodrama, song and spectacle…watching Bollywood helped me come to terms with Indian culture. It also helped me understand Geeta,…” and “Bollywood tells us that love is spontaneous and all consuming, but that it is worth nothing without community.” After marriage, the wife has to live with husband’s family and often experience harassment from her mother-in-law, due to miscommunication and disagreement. Some mother-in-laws don’t let their daughters-in-law to finish their studies or to seek an outside-home job. They are also pressured into conceiving children immediately after marriage and that too grandsons. Because of the embedded preference for male child, and forced female feticide has caused an imbalance in the gender ratio-in some India States there are more boys than girls. The theme of saas-bahu tension forms the plots of many popular soap-operas, like the eight- year- running show kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi(KSBKBT).
Kennedy notes that with increased education and upward mobility, the young generation is opting for fewer children and as a consequence,multi-generation families are on the decline. Geeta could not adapt herself in her in-laws’ extended family due to problems with South Indian food,language,cusoms,etc.and the suffocation she felt there so she and her husband moved out.
When Usha,the Yoga instructor at the ‘Women only’ gym. from a low-caste Hindu family got married her brother had to borrow about $5,000 for the dowry and wedding expenses. Dowry though illegal is still essential as ever before and in fact is increasing.Azmat, a young Muslim girl also worked at the gym.so she could save some money for her dowry. Chatty Azmat was the Gym’s “self-appointed social secretary”. Azmat’s marriage expectations were modest. She wanted the boy to be from a good family and without bad habits and one who would allow her to work from home or outside.
Caste system is still rigid in rural areas and small towns. “Globalization and urbanization just paper over caste-they haven’t eradicated it. “Happily though,” Affirmative action policies and better education policies have broken the upper-caste stranglehold and has helped create a small but substantial Dalit middle class.”.
“The incisive, witty and written with a keen eye for the lush vibrancy of the country that Kennedy comes to love, ‘Sideways on a Scooter’ is both a remarkable memoir and a cultural revelation.” She deftly describes the daily rigors of quotidian life in Delhi but is still happy to be part of the city’s rhythm. In her riveting and enlightening memoir, Kennedy through the six women of different backgrounds and social status that she befriends brilliantly captures the essence of the country.
For five years, Miranda Kennedy reported from across South Asia for National Public Radio and American Public Media’s Marketplace. From her base in New Delhi, she covered the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as other major stories across Asia. Before she moved to India, Kennedy was a magazine editor and a public radio reporter in New York, where she covered the September 11 attacks. She recently moved to Washington,D.C.,to work as an editor at National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
