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. |
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