I read a very interesting debut
novel by Samina Ali titled Madras on rainy days. Ali’s pen very intimately
explores a Moslem girl’s journey from possession to self-possession, while
revealing the hidden world behind the veil. She creates a compelling story filled
with psychological insight of the conflicts that plague Layla who inhabits two
worlds- India and the U.S.A.
Layla has been brought up in the U.S.A
and India and is to be married to a man she hardly knows. She is defiant about
the union. She realizes that she has no choice but to forget the freedom to be
her own self, to choose her own life and submit to marriage. If she doesn’t she
will be banished from her family and estranged from her roots.
The novel opens with an anguish
built up to breaking point by ‘the about to be married’, 18 year old Layla. She
feels paralyzed and out of time as she lies flat on a bed, locked inside the
guest room in her aunt's house in Hyderabad. The joyous occasions of love, sex,
marriage, and pregnancy for a girl with dreams in her eyes turn out to be
tragic elements. Layla listens as her mother throws herself at the other side
of the door, begging her, cursing her. Time moves on as she remains perfectly
still. “The narrow strip of sunlight falls across my lips, and as I feel them
growing warmer, I think this is what red lipstick should feel like. Wedding
red, soon, though, I am uncomfortable, my neck and back sweaty, moistening the
cotton sheet beneath me so that I am leaving an imprint.” The imprint on the
sheet shows us Layla's uncomfortable stagnation. Layla's voice continues: “But
I don't move. In fact, I don't move for the rest of the day. As the sun crosses
the closed-off sky, the band of light descends my body. It leaves my lips to
slip across my throat, and then slices my breasts, my stomach, my pelvis and
thighs, and, finally too weak, it retreats, crawling to the turquoise wall.
With no other means, this is how I have clocked the passage of time. In the
end, the dust particles in the air are no longer visible. Nor are the outlines
of my own skin. Everything becomes blurry and enmeshed so that the curve of my
arm might really be the folds of my shirt, and where I once clearly saw my big
toe sticking straight up might now actually be the doorknob from across the
room.”
The sun slices her part by part,
and dusk leaves her invisible as if under scoring her lack of identity. After
the forces of culture slice her apart, how will she put herself back together?
How much is she an American and how much an Indian? Ali presents America like a
clear blue sky seen through a window, inviting the character to soar high and Indian
culture as claustrophobic. It was Sameer who pointed out how split Layla’s
identity was, “you, the American, you, the Indian. Same face, two people. So
where is your home?” “I was supposed to inhabit America without being inhabited
by it that was what my parents wanted.” Layla's soul struggles for survival and
identity. She is torn between two conflicting identities; a dutiful Muslim
daughter and a free, independent American woman.
Mother pounds on the door and in
desperation bangs her head on the wall. Outside, uncle and aunt pace the floor
restlessly. Only when mother falls down in a faint with a bloodied head does
Layla acquiesce to marriage. She accompanies her mother to an alim for the
demons to be exorcised from her body. The demons are in her mind. Layla has
bestowed her virginity on Nate an American and is pregnant with his child. She
carries this demon within herself and tries to chase it away with alim’s
mystical powers and the magic of Ragabe, the soothsayer’s jadu. Layla is
aborting her week’s old fetus on her wedding day and no one is the wiser as she
hasn’t revealed it to anyone except her sister Heena and her ayah Nafiza.
Ali portrays ritual-filled Indian
culture in such personal detail that it takes on a personality of its own. The
wedding date is set, and for days the ritualistic celebrations mark the
count-down to the moment of truth. In one event a bevy of women surround Layla,
one by one crouching before her, rubbing her skin with oil and perfumes,
feeding her sweet delights, and rolling flower bracelets over her hands. She
will be given sex advice on the wedding night. The bride will be placed on the
wedding bed by the women, who lovingly take their leave of her, setting her up
to be alone with the groom for the first time. She will undergo the “the white
sheet test”; which will be checked for blood by her mother-in-law the next
morning. This is the final proof that the marriage is consummated. If not, she
will be ‘returned’ back to her father who would kill her to guard the family
honour.
It is poetic justice indeed that
the drops of blood on the strategically placed white sheet underneath the bride
to proclaim to the world the union of the bride and groom leading to the Walima
dinner, helps her to start a new life. Zeba, her mother in-law celebrates the
Walima dinner believing that everything between the bride and groom is as
normal as between any bride and groom enjoying a conjugal relationship. Layla’s
ayah Nafiza suspects everything is not alright and urges Layla to leave him and
return to her mother in America.
Layla is the product of a broken
home. Her mother is the wife of layla’s father in the eyes of the world but
behind the scenes she is divorced from him. Yet she stays with him for the sake
of society and Layla. Layla knows everything even though the parents are not
aware of it. Her mother had shut herself inside her room for a month when her
husband had divorced her and married Sabana.
Layla craves for a home, craves to
be needed and recognized as a human being in her own right. Layla’s husband is
a handsome, ambitious engineer, willing to provide her with exactly what she
had yearned for, a home. She gets fulfillment of that wish in her new home and
her new husband. She tells her husband about Nate on her wedding night and
Sameer is repelled. Still he makes an effort to make the marriage work. When
Nafisa brings Amme in an effort to make Layla leave Sameer, Layla gets enraged
and kicks out Nafisa.That is the last time she sees her ayah, who had been
heading towards kidney failure without anyone’s knowledge and subsequently dies
in a hospital.
Meanwhile sameer and Layla go to
madras on their honeymoon and discover a terrible buried truth about each
other. Totally cast out of her moorings, Layla rushes back to Hyderabad and her
mother’s house, leaving behind her husband. Yet, Layla is dragged back home and
kept under watch by one or the other member of Sameer’s family in a bid to save
the respectable façade of her family honor. For Sameer, Layla symbolizes
freedom and escape from the conventional society and restricting religion. He
reiterates to Layla that they will go to America and make a new life for
themselves.
Muharrum and Ganesh festivals are
being celebrated and a group of drunken youths brutally assault a young man and
rape and kill his 8 month pregnant wife and their unborn child. Later Layla
learns that the young woman was her 18 year old cousin Heena. Sameer had been
returning home at that particular time. Seeing the horror unfolding before him,
he had stayed hidden until the police arrived. That is the turning point for
Sameer. He owns up to his true character of cowardice and frees Layla from her
vows as a wife. He urges her to leave India and go to America to lead a free
life. He says that it is the one thing that he can grant her as a husband.
Layla leaves as the Muharram and Ganesh processions are being carried to their
logical end. She is free and her body belongs only to her. She is finally,
solely Layla the American woman. She belongs to herself!
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