Arts
This is a story of five besotted lovers, of different ages — and the young woman they’re after.
We have for you an exciting audio adaptation of Hindi satirist-writer Harishankar Parsai's Ek Ladki Paanch Deewane. Parsai writes about a group of men, catching glimpses of a young woman on her balcony, working up antics to catch her attention. As the story often goes, she could have been charmed, waiting to be conquered by the most spirited man among the five, but instead she keeps surveying them from a distance, eventually choosing an option that we, even as readers, did not grant her. In doing so, she lets us know who she really is — a shrewd woman, who gets cleverer through her suitors' antics.
This story was originally written by satirist Harishankar Parsai and first published in 1973 in anthology of short stories titled Ek Ladki Paanch Deewane (Rajkamal Prakashan).
You can read it in English in "One Girl, Five Lovers" on The Bilingual Window, where it has been translated from Hindi by Sonakshi Srivastava.
Produced by Juhi Jotwani
Voiced by Seema Dahiya
Featured artwork by Shiraz Hussain
Check out The Third Eye's Pleasure and Danger edition for more narratives of sexuality from the feminist lens.