Lalita Iyer’s latest offering The Whole Shebang: The Sticky Bits About Being a Woman will lift the load off your mind if think you don’t have it all figured out just yet, be it your career, or finding ‘the one’ or even the perfect underwear. “I wondered when is the right time to put down all the unfinished conversations we often have with ourselves but that which we don’t process . I feared if I waited that long then I wouldn’t feel like writing the book,” says Lalita who was in conversation with author Andaleeb Wajid at Atta Galatta recently.
Lalita’s lucid writing and wry humour makes you wonder at how she brings out the essence of being a woman. The Mumbai-based columnist and author of I’m Pregnant, not terminally ill, you idiot ascribes this to her being unafraid of looking bad. “If I worked hard on anything in this book it was being totally honest and vulnerable. But I didn’t want to sound like somebody who had cracked it. There are people who write really good prose but they don’t want to look bad. For me I was not really in that space. I can only write what happened to me in the hope that somebody else can find some resonance. It’s amazing how many women have responded. I never expected that these things are happening to everybody but nobody is talking about it.”
While Lalita doesn’t sugar coat, she also does not pontificate on what women should do or be. “I wanted to write a book that is inclusive. At every stage there is a whole struggle to be your own person. To not just go with the flow and do things because they are expected of you, and to constantly keep track of who you are. And then there’s no such thing as ticking all the boxes, and even if you tick all the boxes, there is so much unfinished business that you don’t want to process it.” Depending on the stage you are at, whether being married or being a mother, being excluded is something women have to deal with, believes Lalita. “I got married when I was 39, again there I was boxed out because everyone is married by their 20s. Every time you go through a life stage you are either included or excluded. There’s this clear ‘us’ and ‘them’’ syndrome that happens mostly among women. It doesn’t happen with men because I feel that no matter how much we look at them as the ‘other’, there is always a greater deal of tolerance and inclusivity because they have simple problems and they are not in a hurry to solve them.”
Her earlier book I’m Pregnant...is an honest insight into being a mother. “Motherhood is a secretly invisible box for life. I also realised that women who have a distinct identity before the baby is born try to either reclaim that identity or reinvent themselves in a new way. It really bothered me that most women go through this and suddenly their world becomes very non-inclusive. I’m Pregnant... was an attempt to open up that box and tell people that you’re still you. Yes, you’ve created this new life and your life has changed, but a large part of you is still you, and you can reclaim it. It is a work in progress. How your relationship change, how you change as a sexual being, how your political power in the workspace changes, how you subtly get sidelined. No body is talking about these things. They just pretend it’s an aesthetic transformation, from which you move on.” The Whole Shebang can be read in one sitting, but it is also one that you would go back to: “It’s like that very forgiving dress,” Lalita agrees and says, “which you know that no matter what happens I can still wear that.” The book also defies categorisation, even though in large part it’s a memoir. “People can decide what it is for them. For some it could be therapeutic, for some it will be an echo of their inner voice, for others it could be just wisdom. It is for women to find the purest version of themselves and to find ownership of that.” If there is one ideal relationship Lalita has it is with writing: “My relationship with writing is getting purer after the birth of my child.” The Whole Shebang is a Bloomsbury India publication.