On the fourth Sunday of January 2025, exhausted by Delhi’s freezing cold, I visited one of my favorite places—the Darya Ganj book market (Mahila Hat). While wandering through the book stalls, my eyes landed on a beautiful red cover with a handmade painting. There was something about this book that instantly caught my attention. I picked it up and felt like it had been resting in some kabadkhana (scrapyard) for years. Cover was barely holding together, almost splitting from the book. Out of curiosity, I flipped to a random page and read a few lines and the words struck deep.
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Without much expectation, I asked the stall owner how much it cost. "Fifty rupees, madam," he replied. After reaching my room, I revisited the book and, to my surprise, found the author’s signature inside. My curiosity deepened, leading me to search for the book online. There was no digital footprint of either the author or his works. Only place where his books are preserved is NITI Aayog library, in physical format. So i decided to give it a instant read.
While reading, book took me to a remote village in the dense forests of Uttarakhand, where the Kefalta Massacre took place in the 1980s (a horrific incident where fourteen Dalit men were brutally killed because the groom refused to get off his buggy during a wedding procession). In this deeply casteist and patriarchal landscape, the story follows Bholka, a brahmin village sarpanch, walking alone towards his village, full of shame and dilemma because he has to make a decision. which can led entire village to outcast him depending on the decision.
Bholka is the type of man who never remarried after the death of his wife, Devaki, early in life, fearing that a stepmother might be unjust to his children. He has an elder daughter, Janki, and two sons. Janki is not very educated—she has passed 10th—but she is very smart. She farms by herself. She even fulfilled Bholka’s dream of having a buffalo in their home, something he couldn’t even imagine after Devaki’s death. But Janaki, being strong, does all these things. She is an example of an ideal daughter. Bholka is very proud of her. But now, one decision will change Janki’s life forever.
Janki’s father-in-law has come to the village, demanding that the marriage between his son and Janki be annulled. reason? , after a month of marriage, she have a six month child in her womb. In their village, no girl has ever conceived before marriage—it is considered an unforgivable sin. Women like Janki are not just disowned by their families but also banished from the village, their very existence erased from society.
However, Janki’s pregnancy is not a consequence of her choices alone—it is the cruel repayment of a loan. Bholka’s unpaid debt has been extracted in the form of his daughter’s body. Now, he must decide: should he protect his daughter, or should he sacrifice her to maintain his family’s honor?
The title, Janki se Janaki Tak, symbolizes the shame of Janki being Janki (Mother) and the painful transformation of a woman’s identity. It forces us to reflect: Do women ever truly own their bodies, or are they merely possessions passed from one man to another? It also sheds light on the absence of solidarity among women and the harsh realities of a society where a woman’s body is nothing more than a transaction in a patriarchal deal.
The novel brutally exposes how women are traded, sold, and disowned in the name of respect and love. It questions the rigid moral standards imposed on women, who are expected to uphold family honor at the cost of their lives.
Jagdish Chandra Pandey’s Janki se Janaki Tak is a raw and deeply unsettling novel that lays bare the hypocrisies of tradition, caste, and gender roles. It compels readers to question the brutal social structures that continue to govern rural India, where women like Janki have nowhere to go, no place to call home—thrown in the river and abandoned by their loved ones.
