Unity in Diversity Beyond the Nation-State in Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop

Abstract

Rupa Bajwa’s debut novel, The Sari Shop (2004), is set in Amritsar and tracks the emotional and intellectual career of Ramchand, a salesperson in a sari shop, who lacks both family and close friends and seems to be plagued by a vague feeling of existential discomfort, which, I will argue, takes on a distinctively nationalist dimension. His life is initially composed of work, and simple pleasures such as watching popular Hindi films, eating with colleagues at a local food stall, and fantasizing about his landlord’s wife. This seemingly straightforward existence is disrupted by an unexpected job assignment that requires him to visit the home of a wealthy client, Rina Kapoor. This entry into the bourgeois private sphere brings to his attention a whole range of elitist national cultural practices—from speaking English, to engaging in creative writing—which have hitherto occupied positions of relatively minor importance in his own life. The experience reminds him of his earlier, marginalized aspirations to enter this very sphere himself. Perhaps, more significantly, however, the Kapoor home is also where Ramchand comes to realize that his status as an Indian—a national subject—is also open to question.