We are familiar with one half of the stories of such women who fill our mundane afternoons with drama and gossip: A past full of beautiful memories, a present plagued with pain and a future holding little promise. But Anand’s aunties are not brooding, oldies resigned to fate and gods. Their chatter spiced with popular Punjabi slang and gaalis, these women struggle to beat old age, and sometimes they win.
Anand cuts into a card game and traces the shadows of pain on their lives. Like most old women, they too regret not having led a life of their choice, so, it’s catharsis time when they meet. The result is obscene jokes, ingenious swear words and nasty rounds of bitching. From struggling to get a hang of email, to screaming out “bitch”, they try hard to stay relevant in the changing times. Often realising that they can’t.
Anand switches montages quickly. We find ourselves in the middle of a brawl as Kunti screams “F**k! F**k! F**k!” in her son’s face. She then faints while attempting to call him up to say sorry. Tosh is called in to stay the night. When alone with Tosh, Kunti confesses, “You can’t imagine the gandi, gandi gallis I gave my son”. Tosh admits her own burden, “I did wish, they, my own family, would just go away”. Relieved of their guilt, the two women have a whale of a time eating chips, watching Jungle Book and singing aloud. Sheila and Satya watch with envy the change in the other two and wish for a similar getaway.
The next jolt comes when Sheila’s husband passes away. Satya steps in to help, also hoping that she will find some relief from her own loneliness. The hard life of a single woman has left Satya scarred and she finds herself unprepared for the delicate situation that unfolds at the house of her bereaved, widowed friend. With her successful attempt to make Sheila smile, the ice in Satya’s heart begins to melt. As they lie down for the night, Sheila talks of her dead husband while Satya reveals her secret: Why she never married.
As days pass, Satya finds years of bitterness lifted from her voice while Sheila is freed from the death of husband. Satya breaks the mourning period declaring, “Bhad mein jaye this dakhiya noosi thinking”, and revives the card party.
Soon, Sheila asks Satya to come and live with her and the deal is sealed with a hug. The four eventually plan a weekend at Sheila’s house. They christen themselves the “Bitchy Biddies Bunch” — BBBs, and swear to have no rules. The weekend also being Satya’s 70th birthday, she is promised a surprise. The weekend is a riot. Drinks are “seduced”, porn DVDs stolen and Playboy copies distributed.
But the book is no fairytale, and the joy seems to be on a short fuse as Sheila’s house is put up for sale, Satya survey’s old age homes and the others return to the lives they were living. As the story runs its full course, Satya gets her birthday surprise and crowns it with her first real kiss. The old women are brought together again to complete the Pure Sequence, the perfect life.
Kunti, Satya, Sheila and Tosh may seem empowered, even liberated, but a feminist reading of these characters is less appealing. These are upper middle-class women, their sense of freedom fuelled by the money left by their husbands. Even the “poorest” of them, Satya, has a flat of her own. Also, they use a lot Punjabi words, even complete sentences, which puts the book out of bounds for readers not from Delhi.
Yet, Pure Sequence is an interesting read for the position it takes on old age. Old characters usually end up pitiable or dead. Hemmingway’s Old Man, for example. You would never want to be in Santiago’s shoes. But here, you want to be a part of Paro Anand’s old biddies. They are profane and naughty, and determined and spirited, and you want to grow old like them.
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