B for- Books, Borders and Bad bargains

Is it not fascinating, that we lament night and day about everything from potholes on the road to the latest government policy in terms of how it affects us on a one-on-one basis, but always take a bird’s eye view of any major event in history? Even when it might be affecting us directly?

Case in point- The partition of India and Pakistan. We were taught  (and perhaps, selectively kept ignorant) by our textbooks, about the chain of events that led to the partition of the two countries. As a student who did not have ancestors who would have experienced this directly, what my little mind understood was that the two countries were like the shells of pistachio- 

Wham!

 Someone hit them hard and the shells just split open- Two countries, similar in essence, and polar in views. For the schooled ignorant, it was as if the Radcliffe line was a natural faultline, meant to split the two countries. And overnight, these two like poles of a magnet began repelling each other.

Alas! The plethora of literature out of textbooks (and syllabus) on the partition only drives home the gory, revolting image of refugees scurrying for cover, and being swatted to death on either side of the divide. But once in a while, comes a fine piece of literature, that jolts you out of your stupor and dunks you in the icy waters of history as lived firsthand. Natasha Sharma’s book, Beneath Divided Skies does just that, and with such beauty, that you cannot help but reflect on and marvel at the triumph of the human spirit in the face of odds of the worst kind.

Beneath Divided Skies by Natasha Sharma is a story set against the partition, in 1947. However, it is nothing like the typical Hindu-Muslim/ Indian-Pakistani love story. If anything, it defies all stereotypes set forward by historical fiction on this topic. For one, the protagonist, Satya works for an outfit that rescues women taken hostage during partition. I was blissfully unaware of this subset of the population- Women from one country, who were somehow lost in their own homeland, while their family migrated/ died while migrating to the neighbouring country. Santosh, a feisty slip of a girl, whose family was killed, and she taken hostage by a man in Pakistan, repeatedly abused, raped, and mortified. And several hundred of her Indian sisters, rotting in different homes in Pakistan, often bearing children, sometimes married to their captors. Satya and her formidable team cross the border, rescue these women, and lead them back to India. 

To her aid is the handsome policeman, Iqbal, who saves Satya’s life, and steals her heart. Prerna, a gutsy and able leader, guides Satya in these operations, emerging like a phoenix from her own tale of absolute doom. And Ikankar, Iqbal’s Indian counterpart, who helps Muslim women unite with their families in Pakistan. There are action-packed scenes, suspense, an undercurrent of terror, the melancholy of lost love and the tenderness of a steady friendship blossoming into love.

All this, in a heady mix, makes putting this book down absolutely impossible. But that is not the reason I say this book is a must-read. It is because of the stories it weaves within its intrinsic design- just like the Phulkaari embroidery that figures poignantly throughout the book- the story of a mother who drowned her children in a well to escape being lynched by the rioteers but survived by a cruel twist of fate, the story of the mother who is crossing a border on foot and must select one from her twin daughters because she cannot run fast enough carrying two infants with an aggressive crowd at her heels, or the woman who loses her husband and son,  finds herself being taken captive in Pakistan, and is married off, only to discover her husband is a kind man, and the love of her children from that husband would never let her return to her motherland. A tale written masterfully, so that you pray and heave a sigh of relief, that all of them survive, however merciless be their fate.

I took a little while to get the pulse of the story, and erroneously thought it was a slow-paced one. But two chapters down, I was hooked!

Through the tenacity of the protagonist, you realise that no one was a winner- neither India nor Pakistan. But in a lot of tiny homes, and tinier lives housed in them, on both sides- humanity won. Perhaps not as often as it lost, but still.

It gnawed at my heart that the powers that be, and their fanatic supporters thought women were at par with real estate- to be divided fair and square between brothers; and to be surrendered to plunderers. The fact that women are considered a symbol of one’s prestige did the worst harm- women were used as weapons to inflict injury upon men who ‘owned’ them- their masters! It reiterates a pattern often seen across major events in history- women always got the worst bargain. And they made the best of the cards dealt to them.

Read it for all the reasons I mentioned. Or perhaps, to discover your own.

I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z

https://www.theblogchatter.com