Book Review - Padmavati the Harlot by Kamala Das

Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories by Kamala Suraiyya Das
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mainly about women on the “fringes of society”, suffering iniquities at the hands of a paternalistic and misogynistic community. The longest story, A Doll for the Child Prostitute is a heart-rending account about children forced into prostitution

But they hardly knew the significance of the sexual act. For them, it came as occasional punishment meted out for some obscure reason. Perhaps the mistake they committed was that they were born as girls in a society that regarded the female as a burden, a liability. The two girls resented the frequent interruptions during their game of squares and even while the coarse men, old enough to be their grandfathers, took pleasure off their young bodies, the children’s minds were away, hopping in the large squares of the chalked diagram on the floor on the porch.

Many are poignant vignettes of the daily drudge

He would sit among them steeped in loneliness. He was like a Ravi Varma model propped against Picasso’s Guernica. There was disharmony

Distressing but immensely readable stories.

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