Climbing the Stairs

Climbing the Stairs is a 2008 work of historical fiction for young adults by Padma Venkatraman. It concerns a fifteen-year-old girl named Vidya, presenting her coming of age within the larger context of political instability in India, as the country strives for independence while fending off World War II. Vidya’s life is complicated when her father sustains a brain injury during a rally for India’s independence. As a result, she is required to move from Bombay to her grandfather’s home in the traditional city of Madras. In Madras, Vidya resists systemic gender inequality, taking solace in a library restricted for men’s use. She uses its wealth of literature to prepare for college. The book is praised for enriching the representation of Indian history in the young adult fiction genre.

The novel begins in 1941, at the onset of World War II. Fifteen-year-old Vidya is fortunate to have born high up in India’s caste system, in the Brahman caste. Even luckier, her parents are extremely liberal compared to the rest of their caste. Because they value education highly, Vidya is enrolled at an elite private school for girls, and she hopes to one day attend college. The life path she anticipates is different than those of most Indian girls her age, who are not privileged enough to receive a higher education and are instead pressured to marry in their teenage years. Vidya is elated to learn that her father, a medical doctor, has gone to work for Gandhi’s Freedom Fighters, a group of nonviolent protesters who engage in demonstrations to oppose British colonial oppression and fight for India’s independence.

One day, Vidya comes to terms with her own vulnerability as an Indian citizen. While on a car trip with her father, they run into a Freedom Fighter protest. Vidya eagerly leaves the car to join the crowd. She quickly is carried along, lost in the current of bodies. Her father joins in her wake, but stops to tend to a woman who has been brutalized by a British police officer. The officer strikes him down and beats him close to death. Vidya’s father is raced to the hospital, where he manages to survive, but with long-term brain damage and reduced cognitive functions.



After her father’s injury, Vidya’s family moves to Madras to live with the support of her father’s family. Vidya quickly finds that her extended family follows a more traditional way of life, and they’re cold to Vidya and her father. Vidya’s aunt and cousin treat her poorly, often telling her that because her father is brain damaged, both he and Vidya are inferior in the eyes of society, and Vidya’s marriage prospects will be scarce. To avoid her family’s hatred, Vidya escapes to her grandfather’s library, finding reprieve in the narrative worlds of books. In the library, she meets a man named Raman, who is also treated like a household pariah.

World War II progresses, and Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. Around this time, the war begins to seep into Vidya’s family life. The extended family builds a bomb shelter. They are constantly tormented by sirens and air raid drills that remind them that they are unsafe, and the government starts rationing their resources. One day Kitya, Vidya’s brother, tells the family that he is leaving to join the British India Army, repudiating his father’s pacifist philosophy. Kitya explains that he cannot sit idly while the war front approaches India and threatens his homeland. Vidya, who never told Kitya the details of her father’s brain injury, namely that the perpetrators were British, now feels even more responsible for the dissolution of her once-happy family. As Kitya goes off to war, Vidya believes that the banalities and mistakes of tradition are subsuming her hopes and dreams.

Meanwhile, Vidya continues reading in the library, hoping to acquire enough self-taught learning to someday qualify for college despite her father’s inability to continue endorsing her dream. She also develops a romantic attraction for Raman, who lives with her aunt when school is in session. One summer, the war moves into India, and Vidya’s family is forced to relocate again. Vidya realizes she loves Raman, and he asks for her hand in marriage. Shortly thereafter, he goes off to college in the United States. Understanding her intellectual ambition and desire to break away from tradition, Vidya’s grandfather helps send her to university in Madras.



Though Vidya suffers a holistic shift in class consciousness and her conception of her social and political agency, she is ultimately able to reconcile her desire for education and self-determination with the constraints set by her contingent and unstable world. Vidya’s story represents a potential path for post-World War II India, which recognizes its unstable identity and oppressive traditions but looks forward to a happier and more equitable future.