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January 18, 2004
Review: Blame it on me
IT has taken Kishwar Naheed ten years to complete the journey between Buri Aurat Ki Katha (a bad woman’s tale) and Buri Aurat Ke Khatoot: Nazayeda Beti Ke Naam (a bad woman’s letters to her unborn daughter). What lies in between is an aging, not necessarily a maturer, feminist writer. If the former book was an autobiographical account of how badly Kishwar Naheed, the daughter, sister, wife, mother, writer and government officer, had been treated by everyone, the latter is a thanksgiving for an unborn daughter who deserved better than what her mother got from life.
The spark and the cutting edge in Naheed’s language refuse to mellow down or get blunted. The spontaneous outpouring of anger at society and its norms that outrage her lie a bit heavily on the spirit. But that is not to say that the writer does not raise valid issues in her singular quest in life: emancipation of women. The anger, because it is very real and comes from the heart, and not with a heart, it disregards the finer notions of style and diction altogether. The result is what an artist friend had to say about Buri Aurat Ki Katha: that it reads more like an “aurat ki buri katha”(a woman’s bad tale).
And what a life Kishwar Naheed has led in spite of all the odds stacked against her all along; that is, if one indeed wants to believe her account of life. The book under review takes the process of autobiographical writing further by just another name. Comprising uncompromising and pinching monologues in the form of letters to the unborn daughter, the writer has little more to say in this book than what she had already said in the earlier one. It comes as a sequel to Buri Aurat Ki Katha, addressed this time to the new generation of teenage girls who perhaps should know that it is not wrong to think in a ‘rebellious’ manner at a time when violence against women has surpassed all previous records.
In a country where laws exist on the statute books that make a merit of discriminating against women and that condone honour killings and all kinds of social injustices against half the humanity, one does perhaps need loud, even rude, wake-up calls by writers like Naheed. Her in-your-face comments and unreserved venting of anger at the norms preached by a male-dominated society that largely believes in the ownership of women by men, as if women were personal items of daily use and abuse, deserves to be seen in the context of our times.
These are also the times when girls generally are required to be more compliant by an increasing number of religious-minded parents who flaunt their sense of religiosity, often interpreting religion to justify their oppression of the daughter’s legitimate wish to make her choices in life. Kishwar Naheed’s otherwise somewhat lopsided views on social issues can give a lot of oppressed girls and women hope that being assertive for self-empowerment is neither a sin nor a crime. After all, she has done that all along and has lived to tell others what to do when faced with such circumstances.
For the regular reader of literature, the book offers little value other than giving another insight into the writer’s heart and mind. While reading the book, one is reminded all the time that here is the same lone crusader who will continue to raise the same issues over and over again until she sees that things are changing for the better. And Naheed’s readers know that she can be menacing with words, perhaps for good reason, when it comes to the accusatory tense.
On an altogether different note, there seems to exist a sense of schizophrenia on the part of the writer at places as one reads through the book. She thanks her stars for not having a daughter in a social milieu like ours and at the same time begins to accuse the unborn daughter, suspecting that she would have likely sided with the rest of the world against her if she indeed had been born. Consider the following passage in the letter titled “Umr ki seerrhian” (the ladder of age):
“Like the rest of the adolescent girls, you also would not have liked to read my poetry. They only like romantic poetry... Once girls at a college told me I could not be their ideal... they don’t want their rights; they’d rather have their comforts. If you were born, you would have said the same thing after observing my life.”
There are also underlying confessions of self-pity at places, as in the following letter titled “Qataar mein kharri yadein” (In the queue of memories):
“...my children never understood how much I loved them. They were only told of my keeping a busy schedule. To this day, they only remember how busy their mother was in her work. If you were born, you would have accused me similarly; like them, you would have only kept a distant relationship with me.” Thus the blame game continues in the form of monologues from a well-informed and a well-read mother of an unborn daughter, who keeps taking up personal/family and social issues with her near and dear ones as well as the world at large. Kishwar Naheed has once again laid her soul bare in this very frank and honest book, which is more about content — both personal and political — rather than anything else. Language, for her, appears to be only a means of communication and nothing — grammar, style, aesthetics, etc. — beyond that. She quotes heavily from international writers which gets a bit onerous at times. The publisher should have got the final copy proof-read and possibly vetted by an editor, because such omissions — and there are many — are doubly jarring.
Buri Aurat Ke Khatoot: Nazayeda Beti Ke Naam
By Kishwar Naheed
Sang-e-Meel Publications, 25 Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Lahore
Tel: 042-7220100
Email: smp@sang-e-meel.com Website:
www.sang-e-meel.com
ISBN 969-35-1532-3
200pp. Rs180
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