ALTERNATIVE REALITIES:LOVE IN THE LIVES OF MUSLIM WOMEN PDF
Preview ALTERNATIVE REALITIES:LOVE IN THE LIVES OF MUSLIM WOMEN
TRANQUEBAR ALTERNATIVE REALITIES Alternative Realities is a travelogue, a memoir, a satire and a feminist critique of Muslim women's lives, interwoven with the author's own ongoing struggles as a Muslim woman. Each chapter presents personal stories of women living in cities, small towns and villages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—the three lands to which Nighat Gandhi belongs. In writing their stories, she attempts to break the silence enshrouding Muslim women's sexuality, and the ways in which they negotiate the restrictions placed on their freedoms within the framework of their culture. Women like Ghazala, who prefers the life of a second wife, 'living like a married single woman', to being bound within the ties of a conventional marriage; Nusrat and QT who believe theirs is a normal marriage, except that they are both women; Nisho, who refuses to accept that her transsexuality should deny her the right to love, and Firdaus, writer and feminist, who can walk out of a loveless marriage but not give up on love, with or without marriage. Nighat also explores her own story as a woman who dared to make choices that pitted her against her family and cultures. Alternative Realities is her jihad or struggle to deconstruct the demeaning stereotypes that prevail about all Muslim women. It is a reflection of the myriad ways in which, despite these misogynistic forces, they continue to weave webs of love and peace in their own lives and in the lives of those they live with. Nighat Gandhi is a writer, mother, Sufi wanderer, and mental health counsellor. She spent her formative years in Dhaka and Karachi, and has subsequently spent many years in India and the United States. She consciously identifies as a citizen of South Asia to transcend limitations imposed by narrow nationalisms. She is the author of Ghalib at Dusk and Other Stories (Tranquebar, 2009) and What I am Today, I Won't Remain Tomorrow: Conversations With Survivors of Abuse (Yoda Press, 2010). ALTERNATIVE REALITIES Love in the Lives of Muslim Women Nighat M. Gandhi TRANQUEBAR PRESS An imprint of westland ltd 61, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600 095 No. 38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026 93, 1st Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002 First published in India by Tranquebar, an imprint of westland ltd, 2013 First e-book edition: 2013 Copyright © Nighat M. Gandhi 2013 The chapter 'Siraat-e-Mustaqeem—The Straight Path' (p. 139) first appeared in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Lesbian Sexuality. All rights reserved ISBN: 978-93-83260-32-4 Typeset in Aldine401 BT by SÜRYA, New Delhi This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers. Afreen texted me on a day I was feeling particularly despondent about completing this book: 'Say what you feel emphatically, or you may stagnate the growth of something beautiful and regret it later.' This book is dedicated to all who love and live emphatically. Contents Acknowledgements Preface 1. The Works 2. Brides of the Shrine 3. Dilli se Lahore 4. Eid in Oghi 5. Siraat-e-Mustaqeem—The Straight Path 6. Love Is a Spiritual Experience 7. Rakhi Sawant of Sind 8. Love Means Selfishness 9. Love Me or Kill Me 10. 152, Sirajudaula Road 11. Love, War and Widows 12. Ocean of Possibilities Acknowledgements I owe my deepest gratitude to all who shared their life stories with me. Some did not become a part of this book, but continue to enrich my heart, and perhaps belong to another book. Thanks to relatives and friends, and friends' relatives who threw open their homes for me. Without their open-hearted hospitality it wouldn't be possible to find safe and comfortable places to stay as a woman travelling alone, especially in places with no hotels or hostels. Without the unwavering support and encouragement of my daughters, I wouldn't have been able to leave them as often as I did to go off on my journeys. And without the chequered life lived in my three homelands, this book would be inconceivable. So, shukriya India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Preface What is this book about? A travelogue, a memoir, biography? A book about Muslim women? Why women? Why only Muslim? Let me tell you how I came to write this book. In telling you of the hows, the whys and whats might emerge. Some of the hows: How I chafed at the tiresome image propagated by the media of the Muslim woman as oppressed, veiled, victimized, with no voice of her own. How I wanted to weave my loves into my writing. How those loves transformed me and eventually turned into the writing of this book. When I started thinking about—travelling, writing, meeting people—I realized how any unearthing of me was also about the revelations carried in things, places and people. Disclosures about me were about me to the extent that they were about my impressions and interactions with things, places and people. I wandered for three years in my three homelands collecting these impressions. In towns and villages of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, meeting women in these villages and towns, and in their kitchens, courtyards and workplaces, we spoke of their loves and mine. Al-Ghazali, the eleventh-century Sufi psychologist and philosopher, valued travel as an indispensable tool for spiritual growth. True travel, or safar, according to Ghazali was not just the physical movement of a traveller from one place to another. Safar was about the inner journey of the heart and mind that revealed the truth of one to oneself, and took one closer to that state known variously as enlightenment, self-realization, self-knowledge, satori, fana—the sort of intimacy with ourselves of which we are all seekers in some measure. My safar to places of my past led me to intimacy with myself. Revealed who I am to me. Every so often during my journeys I met people, or arrived at places that seemed so perfect in their tininess and caring that the heart ached to settle down, not move on. I tore myself away though the desire to tarry was great, the invitations many! Rent a cottage in the mountains, shack up at the edge of some village, or reside in a Buddhist nunnery? The eighteenth-century Sufi poet of Sind, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai wandered the forests in the company of yogis before building his abode in the wilderness outside his hometown, where he lived in exile and composed exquisite poetry about seekers and lovers who journeyed for union with Truth. Bhitai had warned about the human tendency to confuse campgrounds with permanence, and only the determined could hope to 1 steer clear: jis se guzre hain beniyazana Raah aisi bhi ek nikali hai that which can be traversed unattached; such a singular path the seeker carves Another how: How do I justify writing this book in an over-booked world, with far more books than readers? Is artistic creation always an act of self-cherishing? And my answer is yes, the ego is definitely involved in the production of art. Who in the world cares about me writing this book more than I do? But then what artist can make art without passionate desire? Egotistical striving is only a partial explanation because the inspiration for making art seems to come from somewhere deep inside or beyond the self. Whenever I want to give up, something urges me on. And whenever I write under the influence of that something, unburdened by questions of value or worth, whatever I write in those hours is devoid of the scathing criticism, inertia, judgment and insecurities of my ego. How do I overcome the ego's admonitions? Another mysterious how. The rain had been coming down for the third day in a row. Incessant, soft rain, which increased its pace at times, then slowed down to a whimper. Like a lover constantly murmuring of the caprices of an unfaithful beloved, it never stopped completely. I went out into the garden of the Buddhist mountain nunnery, and walked over the wet gravelly path with a strange, quiet pleasure. There was a lovely little snail, sprawled out on the wire fence. There was just a single branch of a rose bush with a profusion of loud, red roses. And beyond the fence lay the field. And in the field, a massive boulder. And on the boulder, a solitary singing bird. The water was making its way down the terraced fields to the river, and in its gurgle, in the lonely melody of the bird, and in the stillness of the snail on the fence, was the answer to all the depression and self-questioning about the value of my writing. Doubts and fears were nothing but mental projections. For where were they this morning? Just as it is said in Buddhism, they were fleeting mental states. If they were real, where had they vanished to? As I gazed up at the mountains beyond the fields, I saw the silver-grey mist covering them. The creative self is like the mountains hidden behind the mist of doubts and fears. Now I want to tell you how I actually wrote this book. Where did I sit down to write? Writer's retreats in our part of the world are rare. I dreamed of such lonely corners in which I could be left alone to write without worries about personal security, food and laundry. I wrote some chapters during a one-month retreat at the nunnery in Himachal Pradesh. Some were composed sitting on the balcony of Dollar Villa in Dhaka, some in the verandah of a bamboo cottage in Sylhet, some in a cottage overlooking the Ganges in Varanasi. One chapter I wrote during a four-day solitary retreat at my in-laws' flat, another in a friend's apartment who left me her keys when she went to work. Hardly any were written in the family home. Most women who have tried writing seriously while living interruption-filled lives would understand why. Whether or not this book becomes a success, whatever success means, may the writing of it in bits and pieces spur me on to establish a writer's retreat. Failed fantasies fuel revolutions —to give women a room of their own gift-wrapped in solitude, uninterrupted by worries about laundry, meals and ceaseless availability. And may I find the means to offer such a room to writers free of cost, especially to those unsupported by plump wallets or lavish publisher's advances. _______________________ 1 Shah jo Risalo: Collection of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai's verse, translated into Urdu from Sindhi by Shaikh Ayaz.
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