Table Of ContentTRANQUEBAR
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.
