Latest Read: The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa

A fast paced story that follows a Kohistani boy into manhood as he gains and loses a family, witnesses the Partition and adopts a little girl. I particularly liked the way Sidhwa has described the change in the mindsets of the newly formed country.
I had been excited to read this but when I did, I realised that I was too late. This came out in the 1980s and I am certain that at that time it was much talked about. Since then, however, this genre of Desi English books has evolved quite a bit.  Some books are timeless and will always be great. This is not one of them. I feel a little sad writing about it this way because it IS a very good story, compellingly written and the problems and issues it brings up are the same now as they were when Sidhwa wrote about them. I am not not recommending it, but that is about all I can honestly say.

Latest Read: The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

I should call this the latest reread. I read this wonderful book many many years ago. It is a story about a girl who comes to live with her uncle in the country and discovers her family's unfortunate history. It is full of hope and there is magic and the power of goodness and patience. It is set in nineteenth century England, a time for which I have a soft spot because Agatha Christie, C. S. Lewis and Jane Austen are old friends of mine.  I had originally bought it to read to my daughter but I will wait till she is a little older. If you have a little girl in your life, who is in her tweens, this book will make a wonderful present.

What children do

Someone I know posted this on Facebook:

Thought about this for a while:
1. My husband and I started very high but were soon down to very low on the x-axis. The first year was tough. Many reasons for that; for me, the main reason was that we come from somewhat different back grounds but even with my 'exposure and open minded upbringing', I had assumed that all families are alike in what is appreciated and admired. Many things were a shock to me. So that was funny! Not funny then !!
2. We then had many years of very high on the scale before the kids came (the first one came in year seven). I think as far as 'fun' is concerned, we have certainly not gone back to that amount of fun. Also as far as satisfaction with personal achievement is concerned, I have not gone back to the high before the kids.
3. I think that if we did not have kids, I would not have been happy right now - as a 36 year old. We may have been having as much fun as before and I would most likely have achieved more at work, but I think that not being a mother would have made me sad. It seems like a cop out answer, but I think it is a trick question anyway. Having the kids has put a definite stress on the marriage and my career has taken a back seat BUT not having them, would have been sadder and might have put a worse strain on the marriage and maybe my career too.
4. Having children and raising them seems more meaningful than having fun (the effects are longer? that is how I am supposed to think?) - I do not feel a huge responsibility towards the world but I do think that two normal adults would be a fantastic addition to it.
5. Finally, to me, marriage is not a steady state condition - it is an evolving growing organism. If it remains the same, it stagnates and dies - I think children, relatives, friends, jobs etc., all provide necessary stimulation, so that it does not die. I certainly miss having the time to spend on myself that I used to and that does change my self-esteem and self-worth. I think in general, I feel that I used to be ‘cooler’ before the kids and more interesting (and more interested too, now I am so sleepy most of the time!). I think, since the younger one is two, we are just coming out of the new baby phase - so feeling tired and stretched to the limits and having no time all comes with the territory. We recently had two awesome weekends - what I used to call normal - we went skiing one day and then went rock climbing (just to a gym) the next day - and that felt great to me - and at that point I was having more fun and was more happy than I would have been if we had been doing the same things but without the kids. So that sums it up I think. I enjoy the baby stuff and the mommy stuff for sure, but now when I am doing something that I used to do before the kids, I have more fun doing it.

Latest Read: The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

 I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it. It may offend some people from my part of the world but I think it is written truthfully. It shows how complicated people are.
This is what I think about women’s rights in my part of the world: Generally women (or anyone for that matter, but I am talking about women for now) are not treated well. If someone can be trodden upon, they are. That is not true for everyone of course. I used to get very defensive when I first came to the US and people were surprised that I was a very well educated girl from Pakistan. However, I have changed my opinion about this. I feel that how a girl is treated in my part of the world is totally dependent on her family. If her family happens to be open-minded then she is treated well and her personal ambitions are taken into account. If they are not, well, too bad. She does not have any real legal recourse. If her husband is a good man, all is well. If he is not, even in good families she is told to bear it. The system is not with her in any meaningful way. And that I think is what people mean when they say that women are not treated well. They are not. I agree.

Latest Read: The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmed.

I want to gauge my eyes out and punch the walls till I break my knuckles. I want to scream so that everyone can hear me. And then I want to curl up on a hard floor and weep. Bravo Mr. Ahmed, for writing so beautifully and honestly!

 It’s not that I didn’t know. Everyone knows. But where are the prideful traditions that I was told marked the strong people of FATA? I cannot take pride in any of this. Resilience maybe, but other than that, it is all about oppression and stubbornness and cruelty. There is no beauty here. Who bloody cares if this is what they have been doing for centuries – that argument became moot fourteen hundred years ago in Arabia.

A must read people. This one is a must read. It’s a beautiful beautiful book about things that are old and ugly.

A world in another in another

If someone could tell an ovum that one day it would stop being an egg and be joined with another and become something else, what would it think about it? And then it does happen and the egg thinks it is dying but it passes through that death like stage and is greater than just an egg.
Then, if someone told that baby in the womb that his placenta and his cord are not him, and one day he will leave his world and go into another, what would the baby make of it? He becomes bigger and as he does, he finds his world not as comfortable as it used to be. He cannot swim freely or do somersaults anymore. And then comes death and he discovers he can eat and breathe and there is a wondrous world around him. And it is because he passed through that death like stage that he is there.
And someone tells the now grown man that one day he will leave this world and go into another and that his body is not him. What would he think of that?
The old man is not comfortable in this world anymore. His body aches; he cannot run and jump as he used to be able to do. And he dies and leaves his body in this world.
Do you only die and go into the other world if you listen to the obscure fantastic voices telling you that this body is not you? Or do you die and go into the other world when you have developed all you could in this one? Does believing in the next world help in adjusting in that world? The egg becomes the baby becomes the baby in his mother’s arms becomes the grown man. Did the egg become the grown man because it believed it would? Did the eggs and babies that don’t make it did not because they didn’t believe?
This grown one is thinking about this. Still thinking.

Latest read: The Good Muslim by Tahmina Anam.

Tahmina writes about a woman and her family learning to live in post Pakistan Bangladesh. Good book. Made me think about why someone intelligent would move towards 'fundamentalist' Islam.  (I am using the popular meaning of the word and use it to refer to the beard bearing, strict segregation wanting, miswak wielding fellow we all have often met). The woman is angry at her brother for turning towards fundamentalism and feels betrayed. She is unhappy that the Bangladeshi people do not realize how hard fought their freedom was. She tries to rescue her nephew but that ends in tragedy. And of course, the atrocities done by the Pakistan army are a back drop to the novel. The book ends with hope though and I liked that and more importantly, it ends with the acceptance of what happened.