Katha Upanishad by Swami Muni Narayana Prasad. D.K. Print World, New Delhi. Pages 151. Rs 130.

Religions do divide, sadly
Reviewed by Kuldip Dhiman
Converts Do Not Make a Nation by M.G. Chitkara. A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages. 719. Rs. 1000

Relations:break one,
make one
Reviewed by Deepika Gurdev

Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi. Faber and Faber, London. Pages 115. £ 5.99.

Woman in war and peace
Reviewed by Randeep Wadehra

Women and War by Chandrani Biswas. Books Plus, New Delhi. Pages viii+133. Rs 250.

Women, Social Justice and Human Rights by V.V. Devasia and Leelamma Devasia. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages xviii+397. Rs 700.

Life is like that & Reminiscences by Vera Sharma. The Writers Workshop, Calcutta. Pages 155. Rs 150.

A man’s world as woman sees it
Punjabi literature
by Jaspal Singh

The vedic book on life and death
Reviewed by P.D. Shastri

Katha Upanishad by Swami Muni Narayana Prasad. D.K. Print World, New Delhi. Pages 151. Rs 130.

THE Upanishads are the highest and deepest philosophy of mankind. They propound the Vedanta — the end or acme of the Vedas; they teach wisdom beyond which there is nothing to be known. The world is struck by the power and daring of the Upanishad thoughts.

What is the meaning or purpose of life? What is death? What happens after death and what is Supreme Reality? The Upanishads tackle such questions. This knowledge is called “brahm vidya” or “jnan” (knowledge) of the infinite. Man has always wondered if there is a hereafter.

Every Upanishad is linked to one of the four Vedas. The Katha Upanishad belongs to Yajur Veda which is the gospal of “yajnas” (sacrifices). The “yajnaman” (sacrificer) offers oblations in the fire to the accompaniment of Vedic mantras, and the gods fulfil his desire,”jnan” on the highest pedastal.

The supreme objective of life is “moksha” liberation from the circle of life and death. This Upanishad start with a parable. Vajasravasa is about to perform a great sacrifice or “daan” (charity); his name stands for “vaj” (food) and “sravasa” (fame for giving big charities). He was going to give 100 cows to the Brahmans. His son, the famous Nachiketa, objects: These 100 cows are too old and decrepit. They are milkless, they can’t even eat food or drink water. Such gifts will be a great burden on the recipients. Offer something worthwhile; I am your dearest possession,” he says. “Offer me.”

The father gets very angry and says, “All right, to death I offer you.” The boy bent his head and started for the abode of death. Yama (god of death) was absent from his place and so the Brahmin boy Nachiketa has to wait there, hungry and thirsty for three days and three nights. To make amends for that, Yama offers him three boons.

The boy’s first boon is this: “When I return home, let my father be free from anger and anxiety and receive me with all love.” It is granted.

The second boon: “Let me be aware of the secret of fire sacrifice (“yajna”) which leads to heaven.” Yama not only explains the details of the sacrifice but also adds that henceforth sacrificial fire will be known as Nachiketa’s fire (after the boy’s name).

The third request. “Please tell me the secret of life and death and the state after death.” these questions have been tormenting man since life began. Who could reveal the secret of death better than the god of the death himself! Yama hesitates. “Don’t ask this. Even the gods can’t comprehend it. How can men! Ask for any other boon.” (Yama offers him a gem-studded necklace he was wearing.)

Nachiketa cannot be dissuaded. He is relentless. So Yama starts to answer these primaeval questions, and the rest of the Upanishad is concerned with explaining these metaphysical subtelties.

Advaita Vedanta means non-duality; there is only one reality, not two. All men, animals, vegetation, etc. are the manifestation of one god. Men have different names and countless shapes and career; they are all one. The diversity is a delusion.

The body may die, but the soul is immortal. You see the ocean’s waves, tides, foam, bubbles, currents, storms, etc. They all are one ocean. If all are the image of the same god, there can be no friend or enemy, no jealousies, discords, wars and violence. “Vasudhaiva kutumbakam” — the entire human race is one family. This is the highest water-mark of civilisation and culture.

The body is not me; my self is the immortal soul. It is never born, never dies. This would destroy all fear of death. This philosophy is the ultimate limit of fearlessness; courage, said Vivekananda, is the theme of the Upanishads. Just as rivers fall into ocean and become one with it losing their identity, after salvation (“mukti” or liberation) the individual soul merges with the universal soul and becomes one with it.

Our world is unreal; it is like a dream; it is the creation of the mind. Dream seems very real while it lasts, but when one wakes up it is unreal. So the worldly events look quite real to the common man but when he wakes up in “jnan” (true knowledge) they become unreal, to which we attach no importance. This is “maya” (delusion), a life-long dream, says the Upanishad.

It is on this point of the dream-like quality of the world that Vedanta comes in conflict with the commonsense of practical-minded persons. If life is a dream, all achievements and struggles, all efforts to raise oneself and to change society for the better become exercises in futility. Since all men are only one god, there can be no distinction between friend and foe, gain and loss, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow.

Such an ideology would promote asceticism. Vedanta teaches total withdrawal from this false world.

Sceptics attribute India’s centuries of slavery to this Vedantic mentality; the invader too was the image of the one god, an extension of our self.

Some of the other thoughts highlighted in the Upanishad are as follows. It will be noticed that some “mantras” (verses) are common to more than one Upanishad; also, we hear the echoes of many of its verses in the “shlokas” of the Gita.

In this chariot of life, the self (soul) is the charioteer, our body is the chariot, the desires are the horses and the intellect is the reins to lead it to the house of Vishnu. Neither the sun illuminates it, nor the moon nor the flashes of lightning. It is ever refulgent with eternity’s own light, like the combined sheen of thousands of suns.

Beyond the observable objects is the mind, beyond the mind is the intellect and beyond the intellect is eternal self. Beyond Him, there is none.

God cannot be realised by the weak, nor by reading books and scholarship. A god-realised person enjoys permanent bliss, here and hereafter. The cosmic self is godless, though he is present in all bodies, nay, in every atom.

The book under review prints Katha Upanishad’s text in Sanskrit, along with a Roman transliteration followed by English translation and copious comments. People respect the Vedas and the Upanishads, but to most they are a closed book. Swami Muni Narayana Prasad’s version presents this classic in an interesting and readable style and he deserves all credit for his venture.

The Gita is said to be the epitome of all Upanishads, giving their substance in a popular form. It expounds “Brahm Vidya” (science of the divine) in practical terms.

Religions do divide, sadly

Reviewed by Kuldip Dhiman

Converts Do Not Make a Nation by M.G. Chitkara. A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages. 719. Rs. 1000

PAKISTAN was created for Muslims, but the irony of it is that the two men who were largely responsible for partition, Iqbal and Jinnah, were both formerly Hindus. Iqbal was a Kashmiri Brahmin and Jinnah a Khoja Hindu. In fact Jinnah once remarked, “Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslim was converted to Islam in India.”

Whatever may have been the reasons for partition, one cannot forget the untold misery it brought to millions of innocent people on both sides of the border. After partition was announced, the greatest migration of the century took place, accompanied by a bloodbath in which millions of men, women, and children lost their lives. At Malir, near Karachi, Claud Moir, a British commander, made a note in his diary: “The great day has dawned and four hundred million Indians have got freedom to kill each other...”

M.G. Chitkara recounts the sordid story of partition and creation of Pakistan in his book “Converts Do Not Make a Nation”. The author — a retired Vice-Chairman of Himachal Pradesh Administrative Tribunal, former Advocate General of Himachal Pradesh and a practising advocate — has burned the midnight oil to write this exhaustive volume replete with quotations, speeches, letters and other historical and statistical material. At the end of the day we have a book of history, albeit history coloured by the author’s own political vision.

The author believes that until Independence, both Hindus and Muslims lived together peacefully. He tells us that history “is replete with examples of saintly Hindus and saintly Muslims treating each other as brethren...” They had no differences whatsoever until the British came on the scene with their divide-and-rule policy which finally culminated in the division of India. Now, 50 years later, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are besotted with a number of problems — poverty, rising prices, communal clashes, terrorism, and wars. The author proposes just one solution for all our woes — reunification.

This is in no way a new theory. The RSS and other like-minded parties have been talking about Akhand Bharat for the past five decades. Another point he makes is that most Muslims in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are actually Hindu converts. A person’s nationality does not change if he changes his religion, just as “an Englishman will not become an Iranian if he embraces Islam. Religion has no corelationship with nationality. It is preposterous to carve out a country on the basis of religion. Religion unites and which divides is not true religion”. The word Hindu does not refer to any religion, but to the peoples inhabiting the great Indian peninsula, hence they are all, according to Chitkara, essentially Hindus.

The author has no doubt gone through the dusty files of history with a toothcomb, but like a clever lawyer, he uses only those facets of history that strengthen his theory, and conveniently overlooks or distorts those facts that might weaken his case. It is possible to pack a book with facts and figures to sound objective and yet give a very subjective account of history — remember P.N. Oak?

Chitkara also frequently changes sides, sounding at times like a scholar, at times like a rhetorician, sometimes like a firebrand Hindu nationalist, and at other like a Gandhian — at the end of it leaving the reader totally baffled.

For instance, he says that only certain sections of Muslims from UP and Bihar were responsible for the creation of Pakistan, and later adds:

“The majority of Muslims were for (a) division of the country on the basis of (the) two-nation theory that they were separate from Hindus...” Regarding Hindu-Muslim relations he writes: “The people presently residing under the dispensation of three independent States, Bharat, Bangladesh and Pakistan, had been living together in amity and with normal relations till 1946 in the then Hindustan. They shared common long history with well-adjusted shared living within the nature’s carved single geographical unit of land, Hindustan. They had had common bonds of interaction within the same country. They had fought together an alien colonial power in 1857, the first war of Indian Independence.”

We have been given this official view all these years, but the facts say something else. Let us see what the renowned historian R.C. Majumdar, whose books the author has used for reference, has to say about it in his book “History of the Freedom Movement in India Vol I”: “Early in the nineteenth century there were communal riots in Delhi (1807) and the Punjab. There was also a violent outbreak at Varanasi (Banaras) in October 1809, when the Hindu mob of the city stormed the great mosque of Aurangzeb.... In 1857 the Muslims of Broach attacked the quarters of the Parsis and killed some of them.... Hindu-Muslim riots with heavy casualties occurred at Bareilly and other localities in U.P. during 1871-72.”

The historian further records that a series of riots rocked the principality of the Nawab of Janjira. The frequency of the riots increased between 1885 and 1893. “Serious communal riots broke out at Lahore and Karnal (1885), Delhi (1886), where the military had to be requisitioned, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Ambala, Dera Ghazi Khan (1889) and Palakod in Salem District, Madras (1891). The year 1893 was one of the worst and there were grave outbreaks over a large area in Azamgarh, Dt. (UP), Bombay town (lasted six days) and interior, and Isa Khel.... The Muharram and Dusserah, processions and cowkilling at Baqrid were the causes, and murders, demolition of mosques and temples, and looting of shops were the chief characteristics of these riots”. So much for Hindu-Muslim amity.

Like most sanitised theories propounded by politicians, Chitkara also believes that the British were responsible for the rift between Hindus and Muslims. Even a cursory glance at the pages of history will show us that this is an entirely erroneous view. Before the advent of the British, Hindus, Sikhs and others were second class citizens under Mughal rule. They had to pay the jazya and pilgrimage tax. They were converted by various means, including death threat. Barring Akbar, all other rulers tried to convert the local populace by some means or the other.

The most ruthless persecution was witnessed under the rule of Aurangzeb. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and other communities had no say in the government, their land was taken away, and they lived in abject poverty.

The author himself admits: “Muslims ruled India for about ten centuries and Hindus lived with them as the ruled and survived. During most of the times they were treated as third rate citizens and often less than human beings”.

In such circumstances how could the two communities have lived peacefully? Is the author not aware of the ruthless persecution of the Sikh Gurus and their followers? History must not be sensationalised, at the same time one must not try to hide stubborn facts.

There is no point in blaming the British for all our misfortunes. To quote R.C. Majumdar again: “This British policy (divide and rule) was undoubtedly productive of great evil, but it would be a mistake to suppose that the Hindu-Muslim cleavage was a creation of the British or even of the Aligarh Movement. The cleavage was there from the very beginning... the British policy merely exploited it for the safety of British rule, and the Aligarh Movement widened it in order to serve the Muslim interests. Even before the operation of any of these, Hindu-Muslim tensions sometimes developed into serious clashes between the two communities.”

Be it the Indo-Pak conflict, Kashmir dispute, Mohajir problem, insurgency problem, poverty problem the author proposes one simple solution: the reunion of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh (he also indirectly hints at Afghanistan and Nepal). Once this object is achieved, the author says, all the above problems will get solved automatically: “Any arrangement of common cooperation between the States of Bharatiya peninsula will pay great dividends. The three neighbours can have common concern — planning in the fields of commerce, communication, culture, also defence and security matters, social, political and economic interaction can further develops (sic) into a loose sort of confederation.”

After the dream of Akhand Bharat is realised, not only will the subcontinent solve all its endemic problems but it will also emerge as the strongest nation in the world. All this sounds wonderful but the author does not tell us how we are going to go about the business of reunification. Does he expect the political leaders and the military generals of the above mentioned nations to voluntarily accede?

While highlighting the brighter side of reunification he completely ignores the flip side of it. Throughout the book the author expresses his fears about the alarming increase of Muslim population after independence:

“Now, even after about five decades since the partition of the country and emergence of the Pakistan before the world as a fait accompli, a psychology among the majority community — Hindus — appears to have been generated that wherever in India, the Muslims is (sic) in majority, he — the Hindu — is treated as alien and is being constantly squeezed and is a refugee in his own country. The Hindus constitute 82 per cent of the total population of India in terms of actual numbers would count more than six hundred million, yet he is begin (sic) pushed around by anyone anywhere and thus the net increase in Muslim population in India.”

Chitkara cites the example of Lebanon which in 1947 “was a Muslim minority and Christian majority country. But today, in just 50 years the Muslims are in majority...”

If we agree with the author for a while, the question arises how is reunification going to solve the problem? If the two predominantly Muslim countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, become part of Greater India, won’t the percentage of Muslims vis-a-vis other communities steeply increase, or does the author expect the peoples of these nations to convert to Hinduism before reuniting?

At times the author reasons in circles and proposes two opposite views in a single breath leaving the reader bewildered: “The nature and boundaries can change. Its rulers may change, it may be partitioned and two or more states can be united into one but two nations can never be amalgamated into one Nation; nor a nation be divided.”

Suddenly he remembers his cause celebre: “Once this allergy to Hindutva is over, what is dubbed today as ‘Hindu nation’ will be seen as pure and simple nationalism.” Well said, but how does one go about convincing the minorities? Doesn’t Nawaz Sharif also assure the minorities in Pakistan that their freedom will not be endangered by the imposition of the Shariat law?

Often Chitkara stretches his specious arguments to the point of absurdity. “Hinduism has absolutely no quarrel with other faiths. On his way to the temple, a Hindu will have no objection to bowing before the tomb of a Muslim saint. He will touch a tazia with reverence. He will not kill an enemy. On the contrary he will be hospitable enough to offer milk to a serpent that happens to make its appearance in his house. Hindu religion is admittedly a peace-loving religion. Islam is rigid only on enforcing certain articles of faith but for those outside its pale, it has no other message but that of goodwill and tolerance.”

Having said all this, he hastens to add: “Islamic rule never tolerated religious dissent or social digression from the co-religionists. Then where is the question of tolerating the alien faith holding minorities?”

There is too much repetition, and at times he goes on about the 5000-year-old culture of this great nation, development of Hindu religion and philosophy, the Buddha, Mahavira, Dyaneshwar, Tukaram, Basava, Guru Nanak, Dayananda Saraswati, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda. He quotes hundreds of authors, long passages from books, reports, magazines and other sources. All this is wonderful, but the author should have had stronger points to present his case.

Converts do not make a nation — the major premise of this argument itself is weak. If converts do not make a nation, then what does one say about Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, China, Japan, the United States, and the highly successful European countries like Germany, Britain, France and the rest? Surely the peoples of these countries got converted at some point in time.

Woman in war and peace

Reviewed By Randeep Wadehra

Women and War by Chandrani Biswas. Books Plus, New Delhi. Pages viii+133. Rs 250.

Women, Social Justice and Human Rights by V.V. Devasia and Leelamma Devasia. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages xviii+397. Rs 700.

Life is like that & Reminiscences by Vera Sharma. The Writers Workshop, Calcutta. Pages 155. Rs 150.

I am a black woman/tall as a cypress/strong/beyond all definition still/ defying place/and time/ and circumstance/assailed/impervious/indestructible/Look/on me and be renewed. — Mari Evans.

BATTLE of sexes is universal and centuries old. Be it the Occident, the Orient or the Dark Continent, woman had to wage war to take her place in a predominantly partiarchal order. Chandrani Biswas has a close took at the African woman as depicted in African literature.

In India, this is something new as not much is known about African writers, barring the likes of Wole Soyinka who succeeded in catching the West’s attention. However, as Biswas points out, there is a legion of African writers — male and female — who have not merely enriched the pan-African literature, but also have tried to understand the paradox that the African woman has become.

The Biafra war, which tore asunder the Nigerian society in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had left an indelible mark on the female psyche. The conventional values were subverted and gender equations were drastically changed. In fact, the war brought about several conflicting changes in the African woman’s status.

After seeing herself diminished by the combined might of colonialism and capitalism, the Biafra war gave her an opportunity to come into her own. She emerged as a “strong survivor”. She joined the militia and commanded combat units, held vital positions in the intelligence and propaganda set-ups. She exploited the economic opportunities that the war brought to her, and improved her socio-economic lot.

On the down side she was sexually and emotionally ravished. The other day the BBC telecast an appeal for help to the Amnesty International from a 13-year-old Ugandan girl who was being exploited by the rebel militia.

Left to her own devices in a hostile environment, war has become a metaphor for the African female’s struggle against pro-male disposition of African society, and for getting her due as an equal in all walks of life. To quote from Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G.Bay’s “Women in Africa”, “In Africa, the economic independence of women is less a mark of privilege than a matter of necessity....”

This is the author’s seminal work on African literature, with the African woman in focus. Biswas is doing further research on women’s fiction in the Afro-American and African literary traditions, with reference to two significant black women writers — Toni Morrison and Buchi Emecheta

* * * *

Women, Social Justice and Human Rights by V.V. Devasia and Leelamma Devasia. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. Pages xviii+397. Rs 700.

“Alba teri yehi kahani/aanchal mein hae doodh/aankhon mein paani”. (O frail woman/your life story bears/milk and tears)

These immortal lines by Hindi poet Jaishankar Prasad have epitomised the Indian woman’s plight down the ages. Since time immemorial, woman in India has either been exalted as a goddess, condemned as a witch and harlot, or treated with disdain as mere chattel and property.

Even in today’s “liberal” times one often hears remarks like, “Woman are like traffic rules, destined to be violated.” It is a telling commentary on the attitude of our patriarchal society towards the fair sex.

Social justice and human rights go hand in hand. The authors point out that despite the protective laws, including the Family Court Act, 1984, women are vulnerable to domestic violence, discrimination and mental torture. The rural, tribal and slum women — “Soldiers” of Mahatma Gandhi’s army during the freedom struggle — have been the victims of exploitation, public apathy, political corruption and bureaucratic insensitivity. A woman wronged is a society slurred. It is time that she was treated as a normal human being given due respect to her individuality and aspirations.

This well-documented volume consists of chapters on adivasi and dalit women, women’s action in slum development, judicial response to social justice and equality in India etc.

Dear reader, you can’t afford to miss this book. Buy it!

* * * *

Life is like that & Reminiscences by Vera Sharma. The Writers Workshop, Calcutta. Pages 155. Rs 150.

The two plays in this book portray the Indian woman’s struggle for survival in a peace-time male-dominated society. However, war as a metaphor for her battle for equity endures. Sharma’s two plays are spread over three acts each. Both plays have Mumbai as the backdrop. The main characters are women who, having lived cloistered lives for long, suddenly find themselves in a swim-or-sink state in the big bad world.

“Life is...” has Lata as the protagonist. Her husband dies in an accident, falling off a local train. A crisis ensues. Lata has not studied beyond high school. She has to support her old mother-in-law and two sons. She gets an enumerator’s job with a market research organisation, while her mother-in-law runs the household. When the latter dies Lata takes up the domestic chores too.

The younger son is unable to get a medical college seat and commits suicide. The elder son holds her responsible for the tragedy and deserts her. In old age Lata once again becomes a door-to-door salesperson.

The second play, “Reminiscences”, depicts the fruitless lives lived by old women in Mumbai. Their children are employed. The old ladies gather in the local temple and exchange notes on events, past and present. Suddenly they learn that their childless friend Parvatibai’s husband has died. They go to console her, but discover the dark secret that Parvati’s husband had a concubine by whom he had three children.

Parvati commits suicide after gifting the family property to her husband’s illegitimate progeny. Thus she brings the scandal out in the open and avenges the lifelong torment inflicted upon her by her man. Reminds one of Byron’s words, “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,/’Tis woman’s whole existence.”

The women in both plays are not compulsive rebels against the vagaries of destiny. But after a limit, they quietly begin the fightback — a unique feminine trait. The plots develop gradually sans frills and melodrama.

A man’s world as woman sees it

Punjabi Literature
by Jaspal Singh

PAL KAUR, a poet from Ambala, is emerging as a sensitive feminist voice in Punjabi literature. Four collections of her poems have appeared so far. The latest is “Inj na milin” (Aarsi Publishers, Delhi).

Punjabi has a good sprinkling of women writers, some of them like Amrita Pritam, Ajit Caur and Dalip Kaur Tiwana have an all-India reputation as popular writers. In the younger lot there are many women Punjabi poets, some of whom like Kuldeep Kalpana, Manjit Tiwana, Manjit Indra and Pal Kaur, to name only a few, have been most talked about in recent times.

All women writers are conscious of being women and willy-nilly their treatment of literary themes has a feminist angle though none of them is a feminist activist. More particularly, the women writers in Punjabi have been mainly concerned with existential problems of womanhood as a category in the multi-dimensional configuration of male-female relationship within the semi-feudal psychic structure of Punjabi society.

Most of the poems in “Inj na milin” are about the tragedy of woman as she grows old in a particular socio-cultural milieu with preconceived ideas and norms of womanhood. She says, “Hoi han jiun jiun vaderi nere di nigah ho rahi e kamjor/khalo zara ku dur/ ke saaf vekh sakan tainu. (As I grow old, I become short-sighted. Stand at a distance so that I can see you clearly.)

She does not want her lover to be like the fragrance of a flower that the wind usually carries away. She wants him to become a dream of deep sleep that stays in the eyes as a vague reflection. “Aawangi tere kol murh murh/shabdan di ungal farhke/par shabad te sach vich howega kujh faasla/rakhin us faasle utte pair/te milin mainu. (I will meet you again and again ushered in by words. But there would be a gap between the words and the truth. Leap across the gap to meet me.)

The limitations of the poet as a woman nag her. She asks, “where can girls go? They can go to the river only in darkness, escaping from their own eyes. The girls must play safe games among themselves at a safe distance from the river.”

The eternal cycle of life from the female principle is brought into focus in the poem, “Rangleela.” “Mit jandi han dhandhukare ‘ch/garak jandi, tufani ret de dher heth/jam jandi han manfi-tapman ‘ch/par fir ugg paindi han/ teri hond chon (I am lost in abysmal chaos; buried under swirling sand dunes, frozen in sub-zero temperature. But I rise again from your being.) Here the intense longing for eternal life sustains the poet.

The journey on the way to realisation is, however, not easy. There are difficult sums to be solved. The poet has to practise for a long time in order to learn the solutions. No page is left blank in the note-book of life. It was too late when she learnt the deft use of formulae to solve the sums of life. She longed for a plunge into a pure mountain spring but as the spring joined the river, it got polluted. Then the people on the banks made it dirtier. So the poet had to walk along the banks and she never dared to jump into the water. Many people go through life without ever taking a plunge into it.

The poet is concerned with the immutable nature of love in the poem “Na kar tikana kite”. She says, “Love may assume any shade but it raises the same questions which have the same answers. The earth slid from under the feet in the same way; cracks appeared on walls as usual; the roof leaked as usual and without a shade scorched in summer and shivered in winter.

The poem “Duhagan” (the deserted woman) brings out the tragedy of a woman who has been discarded by her husband in order to take another, and just for a change. Symbols like “neglected house”, “alms-bowl” and “cactus plant” have been used in an evocative manner.

The poem “Sutte paran walian chirian” (The sparrows with paralysed wings) is a tragedy of a girl who is rejected by every would-be groom. The poet says, “Jinah da rang/sanwale ton hor gia kala/pakk gaye hauli hauli reshmi vaal/jinah da kadd lag gia zamin naal/de de ke imtihan! (The brown skin has turned black with time. The smooth silky hair has ripened and coarsened. Her short stature has become still shorter while appearing for the same tests year after year.) The parents of such a girl lose their sleep with burning eyes.

She becomes a dry, sandy stream and an unbearable burden. But she rises again, takes up a career which may not be grand yet she earns a decent living. The parents and other relatives change their attitude and accept the daughter as a respectable member of the family.

The young maidens become old maidens before becoming spinsters. They keep on serving their ageing parents, younger brothers and sisters, helping their sisters-in-law during childbirth. They become house mistresses without any right. The poet brings out the entire tragedy in a very sensitive manner.

In the very next poem, “Bina dor udd dian patangan” (stringless kites), the scene is reversed from wingless sparrows to stringless kites that fly freely in the blue skies. The aged maiden wades through her life in water, mud and slush or in sand. She moves into the world of action, carves her own destiny and tries to realise her dreams. She overcomes doubts and uncertainties, settles down in life on her own terms, flies in the wind with the force of her own wings. The sparrow with paralysed wings now has grown strong wings with a lot of confidence to fly around in the unfathomable skies.

Similar feelings are expressed in the poem “Udaan”. Here the woman longs to go across the “Lakshman rekha” which is a symbol of traditional barriers created by society around woman. She wants to be her own protector, fully liberated from the fetters of rotten customs. Guided by her own wisdom, she longs to tread the unbeaten path.

The poem “Panchhi” (the bird) again is a flight in liberty. The poet says, “Ate udi firangi main vi/khulle ambran ‘ch beparwah”. (I shall also fly in abandon in the fathomless skies.) But one can never stay for long in the absolute freedom of forests, skies, wind and rain. One has to come back to the protective umbrella of the four walls that ultimately imprison the being.

After a time man again longs for a fresh breeze and a ray of light. He craves for a flight along with the birds but the worldly cares and norms raise impregnable walls about him. One is lucky if one gets a whiff of fresh air in one’s dingy castle. This is human nature that man creates his own barriers around him.

In the poem “Dosti” (friendship) the poet says that friendship is not a fixed deposit that yields compound interest year after year. It is like a tender plant that has to be tended day after day.

Pal Kaur paints a sensitive poetic picture of human feelings, desires and aspirations. She mainly concentrates on the destiny of woman in the modern world. Her woman craves for freedom from want and fear.

The solution that Pal Kaur suggests is that woman should be economically independent with her own house. Whether this solution is viable is a debatable question. Freedom of an individual, whether man or woman, depends on many internal and external factors which usually are beyond human control. Economic independence alone may not bring real freedom to man who needs more than the bare needs of survival.

Relations:break one, make one

Reviewed by Deepika Gurdev

Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi. Faber and Faber, London. Pages 115. £ 5.99.

THIS slim novel will give you some real fun hours of reading. Don’t let the red cover belie your expectations of Hanif Kureishi’s latest book. Those who have already read “The Buddha of Suburbia”, “Love in a Blue Time”, “My Son the Fanatic” or the Oscar-nominated screen play “My Beautiful Laundrette” will find this book as compelling as his earlier works. For the uninitiated Kureishi readers this book could well be the right start for a writer to keep an eye on.

“Intimacy”, his lean novel, once again proves that this writer is more than just hype. Three different characters are examined in a structured narrative which builds to a satisfying climax for some and fairly unsatisfying for others. Kureishi is a natural story teller, a writer who combines style with substance. In all his works, he has demonstrated his signature style by not letting the reader taking things for granted, a task that becomes harder to achieve when one delves into the realms of literary fiction as opposed to pulp fiction and racy novels of the John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer genre.

“It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back.” Don’t look for Tom Clancy thrills here for Kureishi takes his time to enable Jay make his decision. Jay has decided that he is going to leave his partner Susan and their two lovely sons. He is crazed enough to walk out on his family. An unthinkable act for most people. That is what the novel is all about. Relationships, intimate ones at that.

As the painful and long night of inevitable separation unfolds. Jay remembers the ups and downs of his relationship with Susan. The good and the bad times, more bad times than good ones. He also analyses his friend’s relationships and wonders whether it is entirely his fault that they just can’t seem to talk any more. Given that Susan lays out dinner, chills the wine and takes care of the kids, he wonders what went wrong in their relationship and where?

It is the search for an answer to this question that leads Jay into a pitiless and unforgettable reflection of the agonies and joys of trying to make life with another person work out. Each time he thinks of walking out, he is reminded of his sons. “It is always them I think of before I fall asleep. And I am leaving. Yet the children are more agitated than usual when Susan and I are together with them, as if our furies are infectious and they are weeping on our behalf.”

So walking out on this misery is something Jay has to face. He feels sorry about leaving the boys behind, the fact that he can walk out and they can’t pains him, but he just has to make this hard choice. Then there is his friend Victor who will help him rationalise the ethics of his dilemma. Five years older than him, Victor was liberated having walked out of his own unhappy relationship. Victor will give Jay a roof over his head, provide a helping hand and a shoulder and most importantly, intimacy.

As one reaches the end of this book, one cannot help but wonder about the pleasure two people can give each other and let us not forget the pain two people can cause each other if they are thrown into an unwilling relationship.

“Intimacy” will remind you of all that and more.