Women’s desires and men’s needs form the core of Madhuri Banerjee’s writing
Madhuri has been researching the modern Indian woman for the last 20 years of her life. (Photo: DC)
Hyderabad: As a little girl, Madhuri Banerjee moved from school to school, carrying to every new place the books she loved reading. One summer, her grandfather told her to keep a diary and pen her thoughts. She was then a nine-year old child, just beginning to observe life around her, and coming back home everyday to write all that she saw and heard. In a spiral notebook, she wrote her stories and in a diary, her poems. The stories became scripts and screenplays, one of them making it to Bollywood, the film Hate Story 2.
And one day, a novel was complete. Losing My Virginity And Other Dumb Ideas, she called it, breaking a taboo and putting in the title a word that people hesitated to use in ordinary conversations. Madhuri never had trouble putting her ideas of women’s desires and men’s needs into books, one after another, all on relationships. Her latest book is the first of a series called Scandalous Housewives. This one is titled Scandalous Housewives Mumbai. “It is the story of four ordinary housewives in a high rise building in Mumbai who live secretive lives.
Women who sin in pleasure, but portray an artificial exterior. A society email threatens to ruin their relationships and their reputation as their private lives become the dirty linen they wash in public,” Madhuri says.
“The three books of the Scandalous Housewives series covers an entire gamut of emotions as captured in a microcosm of the society buildings of Mumbai, the colonies of Delhi and the streets of Kolkata. It reveals what lies covered under artificial chatter among superfluous friends, posh parties of air kissing, and sweetest smiles at puja pandals.”
Madhuri has been researching the modern Indian woman for the last 20 years of her life. She’s directed an award-winning documentary on women called Between Dualities and is a sex and relationship advisor for a lifestyle and fashion magazine and a relationship expert too. “So I’m constantly plugged in to the modern Indian woman and man on their relationship issues. I’ve heard of instances and urban legends about housewives. I live in a high rise building in Mumbai. I used that with a mixture of my imagination and gossip I heard around me to conjure up this book.”
When it is a woman writing on romance, there is always the risk of being labelled a chick-lit author. This, Madhuri feels, limits them completely. “My books cannot be just labelled chick-lit. They are edgy, serious and insightful. No other contemporary author has written about bedroom scenes that are raw, sensuous and real. I don’t make them erotic but they have a passionate touch to them. In a society where everything is behind closed doors, I am trying to write about what is natural and beautiful. Scandalous Housewives cannot be called a chick-lit. It’s not about a woman trying to find love. It’s about four women trying to make sense of their marriages and life. What would you label that as?”
Her housewives are no ordinary housewives. They step beyond boundaries and give in to their desires unlike regular housewives who can only fantasise about things. “The word ‘scandalous’ is how society views such women. So it’s a self-deprecating title. Meaning the women themselves will not call themselves scandalous. But that’s what they are labelled.”
Scandalous Housewives, she says, is an exploration of the psyche of middle class Indian housewives — of women and their daily domestic routines. The boredom, lack of excitement, the mundane. Lives led with no passion, no tingling arousal. And real stories of women, never told before, that make you wonder if you really know your friend as well as you think you do.
( Source : dc )
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