What is a feminist love story? Surely it’s one with a proactive female protagonist. But what if she makes choices that we don’t expect?
The Third Eye presents Harishankar Parsai’s Ek Ladki Paanch Deewane (one girl, five lovers) as part of our feminist fiction anthology — because we don’t need women to call themselves feminists in order to be interested in their lives. The story may seem to belong to a gaggle of several moony-eyed suitors, all competing for the attention of one young woman. We meet this woman through their gaze as she stands in the balconyand the chit-chat they manage to score with her family. But she’s not waiting to be swept off her feet. Instead, she claims a path that we, even as readers, did not grant her. What if the lovers’ arresting gaze has empowered her to make a choice all of them will despise?
We may be content to only see her through their eyes. When Parsai asks us what made us so comfortable doing so in the first place, we finally see the world through hers — finally at the centre of the story.
Harishankar Parsai is a satirist and humorist of modern Hindi literature. This story was published in 1973 in an anthology of short stories also titled Ek Ladki Paanch Deewane, put out by Rajkamal Prakashan.
You can read its English translation on The Bilingual Window, where it has been translated from Hindi by Sonakshi Srivastava.
Produced by Juhi Jotwani
Voiced by Seema Dahiya
Featured artwork by Shiraz Hussain
Check out The Third Eye’s Pleasure and Danger edition for more narratives of sexuality from the feminist lens.
