Alternative Realities: Love in the Lives of Muslim Women

Dr.Y.K.Sharma

Deptt.of English

Paper Code-12037612- Travel Writing,

B.A.(Hons.)-IV Sem.

Critical Analysis: Alternative Realities: Love in the Lives of Muslim Women

By NIGHAT M GANDHI

BORN in Bangladesh, brought up in Pakistan and now living in India, Nighat M Gandhi, a Muslim by birth and upbringing seems uniquely placed to unveil the secrecy shrouding the central theme of  Alternative Realities. That she, a practising Buddhist, is married to an Indian Hindu also explains to some extent the ease with which she brings the twin benefits of distance and involvement to her subject ~ "Muslim women and sexuality" in the context of "restrictions placed on their freedoms within the framework of their culture". It is, however, how she has woven her own story into the interconnected strands of her several narratives and revealed how the travels she undertook and the people she met in quest of her material has expanded the spaces in her heart, that transform this work into a rare fusion of feminist critique, memoir, introspection and travelogue.

Several of the anecdotes about her "unplanned, impossible journeys" provide, in fact, its more interesting moments, for they involved forays into dangerous, often forbidden terrain, including a village "close to the Taliban belt" and a transgenders' colony in Sind, Pakistan. As a woman alone, she had to exercise caution, although that didn't save her from being mugged in Karachi. As an individual from what she has described earlier as a "culturally cross-pollinated background", she was also compelled to resort to deception. In Ahmedabad, for example, which serves as the backdrop for her closing chapter, "Ocean of Possibilities", Gandhi was constrained by the fear that haunts Gujarati Muslims since the communal riots of 2002 to use the Hindu name her in-laws had given her.

Despite these issues, the author appears to have responded to much of what she encountered with an open mind, a receptive heart and the courage of her convictions. These qualities illuminate the book through its different moods and moments which she deftly balances, using to advantage her keen insight into people and situations, her fine sense of irony and a prose style that can lend itself to terror or humour, hope or despair with ease. Consider, for example, the chain-snatching incident in Karachi ("Love Is a Spiritual Experience"), a hilarious, if scary episode, straight from the theatre of the absurd, pitting Gandhi, the target, against the most unlikely of thugs: a bike-borne Maulvi and his burqa-clad accomplice. Then contrast it with the poignancy of "152, Sirajudaula Road", the chapter where the author&'s nostalgia-driven search for her childhood home in Chittagong ends in tears at the discovery that it has metamorphosed into paint and welding shop.

While the book is replete with such moments, some dwell, among other things, on Gandhi&'s love of Urdu poetry, her description of her visits to Sufi shrines or her views on the hijab, the Muslim woman&'s headscarf.  Here, as in the final chapter, where there is a noticeable slackening of momentum, we find ourselves silently urging her to move on.

What the author truly excels at are her portraits of Muslim women ~ the book's raison d'être ~ from different cross-sections of society in the three countries that serve as her beat. While presenting their perspectives on life and love with the empathy they deserve as members of the same marginalized sisterhood to which she claims allegiance, she is careful not to romanticise her subjects. Among the more unusual of the individuals featured is Nisho, a transgender living in Mirpur Khas village ("Rakhi Sawant of Sind"), whose eternal regret is her inability to bear children by the married man she loves, a lack that will forever deny her the stability of wedded bliss. "There comes a time even in the life of a  hijra," she says wistfully, " when she wants to settle down…" Then there is the educated, Karachi-based lesbian couple, Nusrat and QT  ("Siraat-e-Mustaqeem ~ The Straight Path"). Their belief that "for oddities like us", one "can create room in this culture", where women&'s voices are so effectively stifled that even love between women is written about by male poets, casts a new light on women&'s freedoms in a conservative Islamic country.

 Gandhi does not confine her interactions to the niche elements of Muslim society. Consider, for instance, her inclusion of the affluent, educated Mahmuda, Bangladesh's first woman ambassador ("Love, War and Widows"). Still grieving for her beloved first husband who was picked up by Pakistani soldiers during the country's war of liberation and never seen again, this "war widow" dismisses her current marriage to an allegedly promiscuous man as "ll lies and lies". Yet, as the author had revealed in Ghalib at Dusk, her critically acclaimed anthology of short stories, the feminist in her is never unfair to the men who feature in her narratives, allowing them a voice as well. Consequently, the perspective Gandhi offers on Mahmuda's much-denigrated second husband projects him as less of a villain than his wife had made him out to be. Some of the cameos of the men who appear in her book are sketched with respect, even affection.

The author's sense of fair play and honesty do not falter either when she turns the spotlight on herself. In "The Works", she recounts how her ostensibly liberal Muslim father turned against her when she shared with him her dreams of marrying the Indian Hindu she had met in the US. Tricked into returning to Karachi, Gandhi found herself a virtual prisoner in her own home. She describes the months before she escapes to London with the help of a friend as the "most devastating" in her life. "Precious wealth bled out of me: self-confidence, faith, trust, belief, love for the family," she writes, but concludes, "I'm still proud of what I did." Considering all she endured, the irony of her situation today is that 24 years after that flight from her parental home and marriage to the man of her choice, of whom she writes with tenderness, she must confess, "I'm no longer as enamoured by the institution of marriage," because it does not "benefit both partners equally".

That the author can acknowledge these mixed feelings, yet revel in those moments from the past when she chose to steer her course in life, reveals the strange dualities we are often forced to come to terms with. And the unflinching candour and quiet dignity with which she relates her story, excavating memories suffused with hurt, anger and feelings of betrayal, contribute to its dramatic impact and make it stand out as the most compelling of her narratives of desire and pain and loss. By choosing to open the book with her own experience of love as a Muslim woman, Gandhi leads by example, convincing us that there are few more eligible than her to help her silenced sisters find their voice.