Press Release
DOM FAFE Literary Association proudly announces the launch of its title The Veiled Woman and Other Stories From India by Indian writer, philosopher and psychologist Dr. Surinder K. Datta.
The Veiled Woman is a collection of short stories from India dating back to the post-Partition period. The author has constructed a time capsule where we come across ethnic people, traditional beliefs and professions, social behaviours and practices, in the backdrop of exotic places like the Jama Masjid, in the walled-city of Shahjehanabad in Old Delhi. The reader is immediately transported to a different era where simplicity, joy and innocent pleasures are still part of one’s life. It’s a period of time that has disappeared or rather dissipated with the passage of years but its impact continues to affect people long after the actual event.
The stories told here corroborate the author’s idealistic commitment to peace among conscious beings including peace and harmony in nature. The quality of relationship between humans is the highlight of the collection. The Veiled Woman communicates a moving experience to bring about a cathartic change in the reader. With vignettes of a bygone era, the book is valuable both historically and anthropologically. The author has given us an authentic portrayal of people dyed in deep psychological realism with an element of the mysterious and the surreal. The use of the English language deserves special mention. It is an intricate well-knit pithy prose style making use of modern techniques adapted to express deeply felt emotions. Subjective time frame lends the stories a permanence of sorts. There is a string of continuity as the tales are crafted artistically and symbolically.
The Veiled Woman collection of stories is also about the aspirations of women in various situations and circumstances. They seek liberation in varying degrees in their own way depending on the opportunity and their level of awareness. Full emancipation is the ultimate goal. Feminine consciousness is highlighted even if splintered at times. Slivers of this femininity are reflected in almost every story. We come across a liberated, secular, educated and emancipated woman or a consciousness contextualised in all its beauty in the rural. Woman as a possibility in full potential dreamt of in the future, or making her appearance from abroad seeking spirituality in India or going abroad to suffer and even become revengeful when compelled by circumstances. She could be a mother figure or femme fatale.