I have a deep interest in India’s social dynamics being a sociology student. The books unveiling the failure of governance and social fabric are my top preference while choosing a book. I came across “The Sickle” by Anita Agnihotri recently while browsing a book store. Drought, poverty, patriarchy with a tinge of feminism made me buy this book instantly. The cover page says that the condition of Marathwada in Maharashtra has been woven in the form of fiction. The idea created a sense of urgency in me to read it before any other book.
I had very high expectations from the book, especially after reading “The Last Queen” by Chitra Banerjee. Chitra has done a tremendously well job in writing the story of Rani Jindan Kaur, the last queen of Punjab. It was part history, part fiction but intertwined very beautifully. The Sickle was kind of the same for me. But that didn’t quite turn out to be true for me.
Read more: The last queen by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
About the author
Anita Agnihotri is a writer and poet who retired as Secretary, Social Justice Department, Government of India, She has written over 35 books and been translated into major Indian and international languages. Her books have woven themes of the struggles, exploitation, and deprivation of the marginalized with a range of human emotions. Her recent books include the novels ‘Mahanadi’ and ‘Kaste’ and translated short stories – ‘A Day in the Life of Mangal Taram’.
The premise of the book
The story starts with Terna, a woman working on sugarcane fields with her husband, Datu and her kids. Terna and Datu are counted as “one sickle” on the sugarcane field. Life is tough with very little time to rest, high indebtedness, frequent sexual assault and unhealthy working conditions. Terna is named after a river but the place she comes from faces drought almost every year.
The next chapter moves on to Daya and her meeting with Yashwant, a Dhaba owner. Yashwant is here to convince Daya to take the cause of female feticide and generate awareness. Daya agrees and frequently visits the village to mobilize women and champion the cause of good governance.
The sequence of events follows which almost bring things to a complete up-down.
The Minireads The Sickle by Anita Agnihotri Review
If you were to read this book as a piece of non-fiction, it might look appealing. But as a work on fiction, as the book promises to be, I did not quite like it honestly. The characters are sketchy, their stories developed with a lot of hurry and just for the sake of creating social distress. The story doesn’t flow like works of fiction do. It seems like they have been created to relate to one or another social evil and bring them to the front.
In chapter 2 where Daya is introduced, it was so tough to follow as I couldn’t really understand who was who, who is Deepak, what happened when? How old is Daya or her daughter? Since it was translated work, I felt like it would have been lost in translation but Arunava Sinha is a seasoned translator so my opinion changed.
There are so many themes cutting across each other that it is just a mental overload to follow them. I agree that drought-prone areas are full of social evils but the story is just about that, nothing else. The author goes at length to discuss the different phenomenon, specific to the setting of the novel that makes your mind stop and reflect while losing the track of the storyline.
Anita Agnihotri comes from an administrative background and it is justified that she gets to the core of social issues but as a work of fiction, she is supposed to carve out characters, their lives intertwined with the evils and not the other way around.
Final verdict
It is not a smooth read. If you want to read this book as a work of non-fiction, feel free to do that but I will not recommend it as a work of fiction.
If you have read the book, we would love to know your thoughts on “The Sickle” by Anita Agnihotri.