KOCHI: Dobi Girl, with its gripping narrative and simple presentation, will easily take you through an emotional, yet, empowering journey of Anuja, the protagonist. In its very first pages, Dobi girl manages to appeal to our memories of childhood, which for a lot of us may be different from the lives we grow up to live but has a deep-rooted impact on the people we become.
Anuja was born in a village of cloth washers. Her loving father, who died when she was a kid, to her drunk step-father who sets fire to their one-room hut, she was a child who had her happiness and sorrows shared by the entire neighbourhood. Despite her unflinching focus on the protagonist, her close friend and aide Ratna, and his wife Devi, Radha brings so many meaningful anecdotes to the table.
Like Mary, who shared her lunchbox with Anuja every day, and offered her delicious meat fry that Anuja’s mother couldn’t afford, in exchange for free tuitions. Suma, a woman in the Dhobi colony who ended up a prostitute to raise her two daughters, who also grew up with Anuja and Ratna. Suma was never disrespected by her community. Radha draws the picture of strong honour that exists in Anuja’s community, one that made her a good and honest doctor, despite her struggles.
In the very first chapter, Radha gets us hooked to their future too - when she brings in bleeding, torn Anuja on the surgery table, assisted by her professor whom she loves, while Ratna, her colleague and life-long aide exclaims that he cannot believe her son raped her. You will immediately wonder ‘but why’, and it is this kind of plot twists that make Dhobi Girl a special read.
Radha manages to make every reader feel personally for her characters. You smile at their wins, you are disheartened by their losses and thrilled to see how they emerge from all that limits them. Beaming through it all is the golden realisation she offers us on a platter - everything changes, and all is fine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Radha Venuprasad was Born in Thiruvananthapuram and did her schooling at the Holy Angels Convent. Fond of visual arts, she was into art restauration at the Madras Museum and was trained at the National Museum in New Delhi on restoring oil on canvas. Dhobi Girl is her second work of fiction and first novel. Her first book was a collection of novellas - Shifting sands.