49 pages • 1 hour read
Balli Kaur JaswalErotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cigarettes and Smoking
Smoking, or the desire to smoke, is a motif that punctuates Nikki’s life and moods, emerging especially when she is stressed. Nikki has a cigarette before boarding the train to Southall and “itches” for one when the temple comes into sight from the bus. While struggling to decide where to place her sister’s matrimonial ad, she longs for a cigarette, opting to chew on her thumbnail instead. Dinner with her family prompts her to slip “into the back garden to sneak an after-dinner cigarette” (43). Before every class at the temple, she either does or desires to smoke, “having discovered a spot where she could hide and have a cigarette” (79). She also used smoking to soothe herself after being insulted by the American tourist who remarks that Nikki’s ethnicity makes her a “foreigner.”
Smoking represents in part Nikki’s struggle with her hybrid identity. It suggests how, even in adulthood, she is hiding or burying some part of herself. Nikki has smoked in secret since she was a teenager, first taping and later using Velcro adhesive tape to hide her contraband from her parents under her bed (347). She even had a “quick odour-neutralizing routine she had practised to perfection as a teenager” (88) that involved pulling back her hair and taking off her jacket before smoking and using strong mint perfume after smoking. While Nikki is in her mid-twenties when the novel starts, she retains this habit—however, it becomes increasingly clear that it does not serve her well. Kulwinder, who is the Community Development Director and also Nikki’s boss, runs into Nikki on the stairs, nearly catching her in the act. When Kulwinder remarks that Nikki smells of cigarettes, Nikki attempts to lie about it. Kulwinder’s retort makes it clear she is wise to Nikki’s immature behavior: “Maybe these excuses work on your mother, but I know better” (79).
Simultaneously, smoking also represents important aspects of Nikki’s personality, hinting at her rebelliousness and passion for women’s rights. Notably, the other smoker in the novel is Jason, and smoking—their shared breaking of rules—is what originally draws them together. Though Jason first claims that he is hiding behind the car park to make a phone call, he shortly admits that he too is there to sneak a cigarette before entering the temple. He even asks Nikki if “they taste even better in hiding” (89), joining her in a shared secret. However, Jason also uses talk of quitting together as a way to get her phone number, foreshadowing how Nikki’s relationship with him helps lead to healthier outlets for channeling her nature.
Finally, smoking also represents not only perceived sin and disobedience generally but also the Inter-Generational Tension Among Immigrants. The reactions of various characters suggests that smoking is a greater sin for women then for men. While the Sikh religion stresses the equality of men and women in its texts, in reality, the community in Southall gives men greater prestige and power. India, from which the Sikhs have emigrated, is a patriarchal country; however, as younger generations, especially young women, in the community decline to respect these restrictions, tension rises. Smoking is a mechanism for demonstrating that tension. For example, Nikki is confronted by a young man one evening just after she finishes a cigarette. His “lips curled back in disgust” (126-27) as he approaches her in an intimidating manner, instructing her to cover her hair. Nikki is keenly aware that, had this man caught her smoking, he would’ve shown even greater hostility.
The Sikh Temple, or Gurdwara
The Sikh temple, or gurdwara, physically and spiritually dominates the immigrant neighborhood of Southall. It is the largest gurdwara in London and, according to Mindi, in all of Europe. It’s for this reason that Mindi wants her sister to post her matrimonial ad here. “Gurdwara” is a Punjabi word that means “residence of the Guru” or “door that leads to the Guru.” The word Guru, in turn, can refer to either a spiritual leader or to God. Thus the gurdwara, in a sense, is the House of God. In addition to being a gathering site for religious worship, a Sikh temple is a place of spiritual and religious learning for adults and children. It offers free communal food (or Langar) on a daily basis to the general public, not just members of the Sikh community. Nikki, while not an observant Sikh, still partakes of the communal meals when she is in the temple. The temple is also a community center, as the novel demonstrates. There are two large bulletin boards in the langar hall with the following labels: “MARRIAGE and COMMUNITY NOTICE” (15). On the first, Nikki posts her sister’s marriage ad, and on the second, she finds the job ad for the writing instructor position (18). Toward the end of the novel, the temple begins offering more services to women in the community such as domestic violence legal aid and all-female gyms.
The temple in the novel is part of how Nikki faces and overcomes The Challenges of a Hybrid Identity. When Nikki first approaches Southall by bus, she feels like she is entering another world. Although Southall is in west London, out the window of the train she “watched as London fell away” (12) into a foreignness marked by bilingual signs “that gave Nikki a headache and the sensation of being split in two parts” (13). When her connecting bus finally arrives, she and most other passengers alight at the stop near the temple, which greets them as follows:
Its golden dome glinted against the stone-grey clouds, and brilliant sapphire and orange curlicues filled the stained-glass windows on the second floor. The Victorian terraces that surrounded the temple looked like toys in comparison to this majestic white building (14).
It is beautiful and otherworldly and overpowers the nearby housing. Readers can interpret this description through a political lens, with the temple representing India, which had been formerly colonized by the British and was known as “the jewel in the crown.” Here is an Indian temple in the heart of the metropole, yet it possesses the sapphire jewel in its domed crown, which dwarfs and renders insignificant the neighboring British Victorian buildings.
The temple is the center of Sikh community in Southall. Characters like Kulwinder and Sheena can both see the dome from their windows, and when Nikki smokes on the temple grounds, she makes sure that “the temple was completely cut off from her view” (79). At other times, she refrains from lighting a cigarette near the temple because “there were too many eyes” nearby (14). For Nikki, these eyes refer mainly to the nosy community members and, later, the menacing Brothers; however, the eyes could also mean the omnipresence of the Sikh divinity. Like cathedrals, temples represent the omnipotence and awesomeness of God. Even though Nikki is not religious, the building still has an effect on her. As she passes under the arched entrance, she realizes that “[t]he ceilings in this vast building had seemed infinite when she was a child and they were still dizzyingly high” (14).
The temple is also a place of light and warmth, with light “streaming” (19) or “glowing” (75) through its windows. It’s a place of purity and truth, so it is a sin to lie or smoke anywhere on the temple grounds. According to the Brothers, people should also cover their heads anywhere on the grounds, though Nikki does not agree with this oppressive understanding of the space. While she finds temple food delicious, she cannot understand the appeal of life within the temple community, especially with its unspoken rules and its “invisible divide that segregated the sexes” (63). She wonders to herself, “What did Mindi see in this world that she didn’t? All of the women seemed to end up the same – weary and shuffling their feet” (63). In addition to oppressing women, though, the temple also offers them a space to awaken their erotic beings, as is seen in Nikki’s classes. At times, the temple can be vulnerable, and its sacred space can be violated, as shown when Kulwinder’s office is vandalized. The temple thus represents the community as a whole, at times with an emphasis on its more vulnerable female members.
The Fem Fighter Magnets
A refrigerator (or fridge) magnet is a kind of public pronouncement of what is relevant in a person’s life and is often used to hold up important papers and pictures. Magnets often present visual symbols or icons of the organization they represent. The narrative does not describe the magnets in detail except as having the words “Fem Fighter” on them. Yet these magnets are a symbol of the dreams of Nikki and Maya. They also connect the modern, younger women to one another and to the more conservative older women like Kulwinder and Tarampal.
Both Maya and Nikki have these magnets in their homes. When Nikki visits Tarampal, she notices the magnet on the fridge. Rolling it in the palm of her hand, she remembers the day in Hyde Park when she handed out hundreds of them. She wonders if “somewhere in that pulsing summer crowd, Maya might have been present, and Nikki even wonders if she had handed one to Maya” (207). After Nikki quit law school, she began working full time at a pub. However, this job is not her “calling.” What she really desires is “a job where she could make a difference, stimulate her mind, be challenged” (6). Yet what could “a twenty-two-year-old with half a law degree” (6) hope to find? She is drawn to jobs involving gender and social justice, but due to the recession, she is unable to land any of the positions, even volunteer ones, at any of the three women’s non-profits to which she applies.
Maya was also a modern girl, interested in women’s issues and not satisfied to follow the conservative path of a woman laid out before her by her parents and community. Like Nikki, she wanted to be a “Fem Fighter.” However, also like Nikki, she lost her way. Nikki realizes how much the two have in common even though they never met: “if Maya were alive, maybe she’d be teaching the women’s classes and finding some way to sneak erotic stories under Kulwinder’s nose” (207). When Nikki sees the magnet on the fridge at Tarampal’s house, where Maya lived after being pressured into marriage, Nikki understands why the older woman assumes that Nikki had been Maya’s friend: “[T]hey clearly had a few things in common” (200). When Kulwinder and her husband came to retrieve Maya’s belongings after she died, they left the magnet behind. This apparently minor oversight hints at why, in part, Kulwinder is so hostile to Nikki initially—only to later risk her own life to save Nikki’s. Namely, for Kulwinder, Nikki comes to represent her daughter, whom she was not able to save.
