Reviving 'her'story

Women authors are increasingly fleshing out inspirational stories of women who are often only footnotes 

- MANDIRA NAYAR

It is noon. The sky outside the window is a dusty, December barely-blue. Lieuten ant Bharati ‘Asha’ Sahay Choudhry emerges from the warmth of her thick quilt—post her morning nap in her Patna home—in a white patterned kimono. Her hair, the colour of the moon, is held back neatly with four clips. Her hands, which once held a rifle as part of her training with the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, now holds a walker.

At 95, she is one of the oldest published writers in India. The War Diary of Asha-san chronicles the life of a girl growing up in war-torn Japan, fighting her own battle for the freedom of her country. “Ma would not let me sleep if I had not written in my diary,” she says. “We could not only write the good. You had to write the good and the bad.” Written in Japanese, on scraps of paper, and translated into English by Tanvi Srivastava (her great granddaughter-in-law), it has been published by Harper Collins India. Ask her what was the bad that the diary chronicled and she smiles: “We used to lie to ma. When enemy aircraft swarmed, ma would tell us to go into the trench. We would not listen and [instead] watched the dog fight. When American [aircraft] fell, we would celebrate. They were our enemies then. How to kill the British was the motto.”

On June 15, 1943, a red-letter Tuesday in her diary, she met Subhas Chandra Bose and her life changed. “Netaji was in Japan,” she says. “I wanted to meet him. It was forbidden to go out at night, but we went at midnight. We reached the Imperial Hotel. He was standing there. I bent down to touch his feet. He told me that I should never bend. ‘You stand up and say Jai Hind. We have always bent under the British. Now, no more bowing. You have to fight for independence.’’’