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Behind the glitz and glitter, the substance

Food, fun and fashion, with a dash of carefully-cultivated chutzpah, and the recipe for a ladies’ club is ready.

Behind the glitz and glitter, the substance

Ludhiana’s Lakshmi Ladies’ Club organises several cultural programmes



Minna Zutshi

Food, fun and fashion, with a dash of carefully-cultivated chutzpah, and the recipe for a ladies’ club is ready. Well, not so in the case of the Ludhiana-based Lakshmi Ladies’ Club that has been in existence for more than 80 years. The club has seen the time when our country was still under the foreign yoke. It has seen the Partition of the country. It has also seen Ludhiana grow from a small town to a cosmopolitan city – a transformation that has been spectacular both in terms of its magnitude and sweep. It has seen the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, with the club members actively helping the soldiers and their families with their small, yet significantly heart-warming gestures. Rajni Bector, one of the senior-most members of the club, says the club members collected money and arranged food items for the soldiers.

Bector joined the club in 1957 when Ludhiana was still a town tethered to its traditions. The new wave of modernity was struggling to find a foothold in the town. Women were supposed to restrict themselves to hearth and home, with accent on cooking, cleaning and caring. Their invisibility in the public sphere was expected, approved and rewarded, and most women willingly fell into the trap of validation. “Ludhiana was a small town in the 1950s. The people here did not like women to work outside home. I was one of the first women to start my own business venture,” says Bector, a director of Mrs Bector Food Specialties. It did not go down well with many but she did not let it affect her. “The Lakshmi Ladies’ Club had very few members in the 1950s. I was the 40th when I joined in 1957. For recreation, we had sports activities. Women would play badminton and tennis and also do their bit for social causes,” she adds. However, the work for social causes at that time was not saddled with the pressure to maintain a perfect social media presence. Neither did the ‘selfie-esteem’ have any role! The club has a history of rising to the occasion, as and when demanded by circumstances. In 1947, the club started a sewing school for refugees from Pakistan. The displaced refugees could learn skills like embroidery and stitching here.

Then & now

From a modest one-room structure to its present building, the club has, over the years, seen additions to the physical structure. “We pooled money and a hall was constructed. Later, a bigger hall was built,” says Bector.

The club now organises cultural activities and celebrates festivals. According to the club president Sherrie Nayyar, the Lakshmi Ladies’ Club regularly organises motivational talks and discussions. Experts are invited to deliver lectures on health, wellness and medical issues. “Song and dance programmes and fashion shows are organised. Our endeavour, while presenting such programmes, is entertainment with a purpose. Plays on social evils like female foeticide are staged. Our club has been giving space to differently-abled children to showcase their talent. We have been taking up issues like environmental pollution and ecology,” says Nayyar.

In last more than eight decades, the city has changed perceptibly. In the club culture too, changes have been sneaking in. According to Bector, much has changed on the club front. Attitudes have changed. Perspectives have changed. The value system has seen a shift. Of late, the city has seen ladies’ clubs of various shades vying for space on conventional as well as social media. But the Lakshmi Ladies’ Club, as old-timers like Rajni Bector would have us believe, remains committed to its concern for social causes. “We want to do something good for the society!”

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