‘Ma is Scared’: Anjali Kajal’s short stories step into the lives of ordinary women in northern India

In her works, the Hindi writer Anjali Kajal has consistently explored how women both resist as well as reaffirm patriarchy and casteism. Originally from Ludhiana, she is now based in Delhi. Ma is Scared is her first book to be translated into English. The stories, selected and translated by Kavita Bhanot, reflect a writing career spanning two and a half decades. While her prose is largely unadorned, it paints evocative, true-to-life portraits of womanhood and motherhood at the intersections of various identities in a modern India that is still holding on to outdated notions and ideas in the name of tradition.

The legacies of misogyny

Stories such as “Deluge” and “Ma is Scared” drive the everydayness of misogyny and sexism home in a chilling manner. Both are so ingrained in society that any female excursion into the public space is met with resounding waves of male entitlement, misbehaviour and, in the worst cases, outright abuse. In “Deluge”, Pammi is traumatised by men whom she sees as wolves “waiting to pounce”. Her father’s was “the only bearable touch Pammi remembered receiving from a man in her life”. In a bid to escape the trap of inevitable marriage, she runs away from home at the age of nineteen only...

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