A new book examines the role of the Indian man at home, and his dependence on his family and wife

Another word on “beginnings” – moments that are always indistinct and uncertain. A decade or so ago, I re-read Shivrani Devi’s memoir of her life with her husband, Premchand, perhaps the biggest name among the founders of modern Urdu/Hindi literature and hailed as “the storyteller of India’s Independence movement.” That renewed encounter with Shivrani Devi’s Premchand Ghar Mein (Premchand in the home) convinced me more than ever of the need for a study of Hindustani Aadmi Ghar Mein (Indian men in the home) – a theme I had been mulling over for some time.

Premchand’s second wife’s reconstruction of the thirty years she spent with him differs startlingly from the single summary comment Premchand left on their life together. Hers is an uplifting account of two sensitive and committed human beings discovering each other – warts, foibles, exceptional qualities, strengths, weaknesses, all: drawing close together, sharing interests and activities, doing everything they could for one another and for others in their domestic circle. His is a brief and unexpectedly dry statement in a letter written in English in 1935, the year before he died. Following the death of his first wife, he says, “I married a ‘Bal Vidhwa’ [child widow] and am fairly happy...

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