"My Brother's Wedding" by Andaleeb Wajid. A review

Weddings are always fun to read about, especially Indian weddings. Romance, intrigue, larger than life family members and all the shopping make for a riveting read and that is exactly what Andaleeb Wajid’s third (published) book “My Brother’s Wedding” is all about.

“My Brother’s Wedding” starts with Saba’s blog. A 19 year old, Saba starts an anonymous blog that helps her deal with the circus that her brother’s wedding is. Soon enough, though, the actual wedding takes a back seat and all the events that change Saba’s life gently, yet permanently, play out on the blog. From the whiff of first love to how a family sticks together in times of trouble, Wajid takes you through a gamut of emotions, without leaving you drained of them. You just can’t help wanting to know what happens to the characters next.

Wajid is a consummate story teller, and fortunately enough, she has the language skills to tell a tight, funny, poignant story that hits the ground running from word go; right in the beginning, what you read is Saba, not the idea of Saba, not a slow movement by the author towards bulding Saba, but a lively, intelligent Saba, who lives in Bangalore and is different from the rest of her family. Saba’s family is educated and yet deeply traditional, in so much that she wears a full burqa and the women in her family still avert their faces when they come across strange men. Arranged marriages are still the norm and marrying out of the community (even though to another kind of Muslim community) still vexes families.

In the midst of all this is Saba,clear conscience and burqa intact and audacious underneath it. She has strong opinions on her siblings Zohaib and Rabia, her best friend is a world-weary Riya and finds herself taking the first step to pursuing a goodlooking boy who she has an instant crush on.  Not quite the girl most people think Muslim girls are.

Wajid has a strong narrative style and her characters, at least those who occupy most space in her book, are well-rounded and journey to a different place by the time she ends her book. But she is also a cruel author, rarely ever giving readers what they think they want; she snatches and obliterates, she erases and takes away, and presents you with a twist here and a turn there that will have you groaning in frustration. She has no qualms in doling out the worst fate to her characters, and in the end, that very cruelty is Wajid’s biggest advantage. There’s never predicting what the people in her books will do.

Women in Wajid’s writing, apart from obviously being women, are portrayed in the complexity that is associated with them in pop culture. They have many inner conflicts that are rarely shared with others, they are hesitant about love, and not afraid of lust. They are bright, not very stereotypical and question things around them regularly. I have found, Wajid is true to the Muslim women in her community who will accept their lot, but continue to struggle with their questions and complexes. The men, however, are a girl’s dream come true. They are always good looking, charming, cultured and respectful. Unafraid of their love for their girl, they are expressive and don’t hesitate to kiss the love of their lives, although the sex can come once they are married.

“My Brother’s Wedding” is a fast read because Wajid spins a story on a tight plot and delivers a satisfying end. I started in the morning and, with many interruptions, was done by late night. Of course, I do have a lot of time on my hands, but that’s a different thing. The paperback is published by Rupa and pitched as a young adult novel, although at 33, it kept me quite engrossed. I loved the cover,  a bright yellow background with ornate designs that served as a border to a girl sitting at a laptop.  Structurally, the novel shifts between Saba’s posts on her blog and an omniscient perspective that describes the goings on in Saba’s household.

Priced at Rs 295, I totally recommend this between two heavy reads.  

And if you’re in Bangalore tomorrow, June 15, 2013, do brave the traffic to attend the launch of this book at the Oxford Book Store,  1 MG Road Mall, next to Vivanta by Taj at 6.30 pm. 

(Disclosure: Andaleeb Wajid is a friend.)

Questions for jealousy

Irrational jealousy,
When did you become me?
Long ago when I had a man
On the left palm of my hand
I told him to go play.

When he came back, because he knew he could
I couldn't smell any kisses, neither numbers, nor wood.
And it was okay then. And we could talk
A lot like friends, more like lovers,
Once we'd both gotten over the shock

Of finding things this normal, no questions asked.
And I liked to hear the odd story, of sex that wasn't as great as ours.
I asked him about love, and whether they had better breasts,
All he said was a faithful no. Truth or kind lies, he left me to guess.
I never knew, then, nor did I care

To investigate the run of adult play
I knew love was to be shared, not locked up and hidden away.
So now that you have me, jealousy, you bitch, all I ask of you
As you viciously smoke me like a cigarette,
If not shared love, what must I feel instead.

Seek

With the summer, you come. As irregular as my period, as sure as an unexpected pregnancy. Always you. Just when I think you've forgotten all about me; when I think I've forgotten all about you. How long will you stay this time? A week? A year? A promised lifetime that will surely be struck down by the cancer that we are?

But first, sit down, let's have a drink. You must be tired from looking for me. I am not easy to find, they say, being one of a kind and all. And yet you find me, every single time. Whether I am wed to one man or loving another; whether I move to the city by the sea or hide up in the mountains where the mist becomes my breath: my entire being hoping the fog, the hated cold and the river sounds hide me completely. Through all of these wondrous escapes, you find me.

Do I leave a trail like Hansel? One that's not just bread crumbs. What are my telltale signs? My famed belief in ESP or the fact that I send you a postcard from wherever I go, but without a return address and from at least two towns away? Is that how you find me?

You like my postcards, you said once. You liked my uneven, irregular, pretending-to-be old fashioned handwriting. It is old fashioned, you finally said, because I write in cursive. And you find that strange, that something so intrinsic about me is old fashioned. Did you miss, genius, that I send postcards? When was the last time you received one from someone other than me? I am old fashioned; I believe in loving forever, no matter how many times it takes to reach that forever, I love each of those people for the rest of my life, and theirs. Sometimes, even after because they're so much more dearer when they are dead. I believe in thank-you notes and paying a visit to ill friends and relatives. I believe in carrying flowers to someone's home if I am going there the first time. I believe in apologising if I've rudely interrupted someone. As I should now. I am sorry, you came all this way to tell me something, as always. What was it?

How do I know you've come all this way? Your shoes are clean, your fingernails freshly clipped and the first thing you reached for when I offered you a drink is beer. If you had just come past two neighborhoods your shoes would wear the film of dust of a short walk and you wouldn't have bothered with your finger nails because they wouldn't have been dirty in the first place. Ah, you still smile at my basic Holmesian deductions, I see. You know, I could make these silly assumptions all my life, sitting across the table, making a complete, but, you'll agree, pretty ass of myself just to see you smile the way you do. I can barely ever tell what that smile is like. All I know is it is the smile I expect to see every few years when I know I've forgotten about you and you have forgotten about me.

But I digress. And hijack your time. Why are you here?

"To hear you talk," you say? Well, your timing couldn't have been more perfect. I've been married three years now and I've had a lot of time to gather enough that I could talk to you about. Where do I begin, though? Shall I tell you the mundane, the everyday and inevitable? Like this little life growing in my body, swelling my body in ways I don't recognise. Let me tell you about that. Have you been around a pregnant woman since you left the last time, or ever, for that matter? They're far from anything remotely maternal, I tell you. Or maybe the way they are is what maternal is about? Growling, restless, demanding and ready hide at the smallest hint of danger. Or being called fat. We are happy most of the time, but boy, you've got to be inside our heads to know how much it takes to enjoy this without consistently reminding yourself that there's no going back. The baby's got to pop.

Oh you didn't notice? Here, let me show you. Place your palm right there and see if the little one will be friends with you. It needs to be -- I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, so "it" it shall be. I'd like it to be friends with you, after all you're probably going to appear at its fourth birthday and I am not going to be able to explain who you are. "Friend" would mean she'd leave you alone, and if I said my heart, she'd want to know why it was walking outside of my chest. That's an idea, huh? Why are you walking around outside my chest and disappearing for years together? Aren't you supposed to be right here, pumping blood into my life, helping me choose the crib and losing yourself to the darling blanket? Well, never mind the sentimentality. Feel the baby, feel how I want to hide you when I want to protect you from the world, tight and secure in my womb, not breathing yet living, safe and warm and liquid. That's what I want for you when I want to save you.

So, hear me talk. You're leaner this time, but you've always been thin. No, sinewy and yet trim, whipcord slim, not thing. No obvious muscles and yet unbounded strength when dragging me across the road to cross it or lifting boxes into the truck the time I left town because you said you needed space. And the telltale signs of your smoking have disappeared. I guess I should be happy for you that you've given up, except I am not. I liked stepping out with you for a cigarette. To watch the distance at which your feet were placed, to wave the smoke away from me as if it offended me, even as I blew my tobacco clouds at you. I hope you knew it's just that I didn't like my hair and clothes to smell of smoke. I am a lady, you know, and old fashioned at that. All this cooking for yourself is making you look taller than your tall. I have to really reach up, and look at the sun if I have to find the rich bark of your eyes. They're still the same, those eyes. Always promising, always lying, always full of love for me. And that is why I open my door for you every time you come. Your promises are like a drink of good whisky. I take my time over it, the flavours, the smoke, the colour, the gentle swirl of words that is water. And I get sufficiently drunk, the first of it going to between my legs, to my core, warming me up from there to the very tips of my toes and fingers. When I wake up in the morning, though, I am hungover, and your whisky promises are replaced by wooly-headed lies that you speak. A gentle, groggy untrue reminder of last night's grand plan-making.

But when you leave, and you always leave, in a day or two; or even a week, you always leave me with love in  your eyes. And that takes me through the next few years, I pack that in my baggage when I pack to hide, to run, taking out tiny bits of it like precious, expensive chocolate that I am greedy for, an avarice of the soul but only eat bit by excruciating bit so it lasts me till... I don't know when. Because I never know when you'll turn up at my door, freshly clipped nails, clean shoes and a heart full of dross that you collected looking for me, just as we have almost forgotten about each other.


*****

Every kind of extreme.

(This is a work of fiction) 

What’s a good love story made of, he asked her. Every kind of extreme, she said. But that’s bound to end, he countered. Would you rather it went on for ever, she asked. “I like love stories to have an ending, preferably not the ever after kind,” she finished and continued to stare into the sea. Afternoon waves ate up the silence that the finality of her preference brought.

What a cliché we are, he thought. A good head taller than her, his broad shoulders and her sharp, petite ones. His fair to her dark. His earthiness to her pointed edges. Sitting by the sea in typical couple fashion. Except, it was a hot afternoon and the Marina was practically empty but for a few couples dotting the simmering sand, dupattas shared over two heads that were too close, yet not close enough. Couples with more money were parked in the parking lot, facing away from the road looking at the blinding expanse of hot dirty sand and the languid sea. Except, they were not love-struck. Except, at the first sign of trouble, they’d blame each other violently, burst into spontaneous flames and singe everything around them. Till, realizing the lackluster life that ash led, one of them would gather up the will to beat one’s wings and resurrect the other. Soon, they’d be back at the Marina, switching the engine on and off for the air conditioner, sometimes hot for each other, sometimes hot from the beach.

Today, she had called. Let’s go, she had said and he had never been able to say no. Just as she never could. The drive invariably made them want to give up on this thing they called love; for they couldn’t decide whether they should use the time to listen to music together, an act of foreplay like none other; or to talk to each other – a stimulation entirely different. But this time around, she turned up the sound and listened without moving a muscle, like if she sat still enough she’d become the screaming, ragged voice of the lead singer. You’re looking for a fight, he said. She looked at him and in that moment she was an ordinary girl, just like scores of women who look at the men they choose to be with and roll their eyes. In that instant, he wanted to pull over and kiss her. But roads in Madras in the middle of the day don’t allow for that sort of romanticism. He’d just have to wait till she was done fighting. Maybe more fun then, too, he grinned secretly.

Turning into the beach road, he always felt he had entered another city altogether suddenly. Wide, calm, clean roads, sweeping expanse of beach and a sea that was mostly murky. No romance here either. Oh well, he sighed, and parked, switching off the engine. She swept up her hair off her neck and tied it up, folding one leg under her, continuing to gaze out the window. So sad, no, these couples, they’ve got to sit on the hot sand to get some privacy, she said. And we have to waste petrol to do the same, he said. She smirked. You should thank your stars I find you funny, she said. The waves growled again, coming forward to claim their morsel of silence. He almost let it pass when a bird that swooped into the sea stole a heartbeat. That white flash of hunter slicing into the water rooted him, even as it undid him. If they hadn’t been sitting in the car, he’d be at her feet, dissolved and undone, worshipping her just as the waves did the dirty, giving shore. I do, he said. Do what? She had already forgotten. I do thank my stars you find me funny; and everything else that you find me. Just that you found me, he said and took her hand. She continued looking resolutely out of the window, but her hands were telling him things her eyes and her mouth weren’t. You know I don’t believe in happily ever after, right? He told her he knew that and it was one of the things that kept him on his toes. So you won’t pine away when I move on? Who says you’re going to, he countered. Hypothetically speaking. These things happen you know, she said, turning the full impact of her gaze, burnt from staring too long in the sun. If his skin wasn’t already burnt, he’d be in agony. Whoa, this is a big one, he thought waiting for her weaponry to come out and bruise him, nervous but mostly defenceless.

Three years I waited for you to see sense and come back to me, she said. Ah, so that’s what this is about, he said. “Look, I am sorry, I honestly thought you’d moved along because when I called…” Shhh, she said, that’s not what this is about. Three years when I knew a freedom that I haven’t known before or hence, three years when my confidence soared and I felt appreciated, three years of not thinking about how to handle you, she paused for breath. And he was fast losing his; his measures hadn’t worked after all. It was like the dread that he lived with every day, an almost person, was becoming real. She was leaving him, like he had left her. “I am sorry.” I said shhhh, it’s not an apology I am looking for. Three years I went everywhere on my own and found no one was better company than me, three whole years of growing up. Then you came back. Did you even notice me hesitate before I took you back in my life, she asked and continued without waiting for an answer. I spent three years in hell, you know. Heaven is not having the freedom to do what you want, it’s the freedom to be free of you. There’s only two things I couldn’t get rid of about you. Your ghost in my breath and that lock, she said. And touched his left shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. In an instant, his heart broke. She wanted to get rid of the lock and key. He reached over, sliding the neck of her blouse till her biscuit shoulder was bare. There it was – a dancing lock, securely couched in notes of a melody, because what good would their love be without the music. She gently reclaimed her shoulder, reaching out to reveal his. The key. I wish we’d waited to get these done, she said almost to herself, staring intently at it. Just for this, we should stay together, no, she giggled, otherwise we’ll have to go searching for new locks and keys. But I am not going anywhere, he said, puzzled, I thought you were. I am, she said, turning away. She then untangled herself from the knots she had gotten herself into, stretched her hands and got out of the car. She walked a distance, hot sand slipping through shoes, under her soles. She dialed a number; the hot breeze slid black strands across her moving lips. She said into the phone, facing a loud, lazy sea, “What’s a good love story made of? Every kind of extreme. Marry me.” In the car, he grinned into the phone and said yes.  

Note: This story is inspired (only inspired) by tattoos that @nelsonnium and @phulkadots sport, which they have graciously given me the privilege of knowing about. 

Also, disclaimer: this is NOT their story.

Lies

Thank me for all that I've done for you,

Only if you will forgive me for all that

I've done to you.

You asked me if you will do.

And in what I believed was honesty,

I said you would. It could have just been our kisses.

Maybe I meant your smile was nice 

To wake up in the mornings to,

Or maybe I meant you'd look great with me 

When we go out.

Perhaps I meant I'd earn for both of us

If you were a stay-at-home husband

Or maybe I just said it because 

Dreams only last as long as you’re asleep.

January 2011

A readymade family

It rarely happens in my life that two people who I love are married to each other, unless it is someone in my family. So I consider myself extremely lucky to have as friends a wonderful couple who have been married to each other for 10 years. I will not mention their names here for many reasons although I am sure they wouldn't mind for the most bit.

Being a mother to two children, I am beginning to understand why a lot of people don't want kids. I also get why many do. And I also understand that some people are totally okay with not having kids even though they want them.

My friends just had their adoption go through and brought home a gorgeous little boy. Something in my stomach is dying to break free and put his name down here to tell him how special he is but I can't. Privacy is sacred.

Adoption is a hugely sensitive issue in more ways than one. No one wants to think that they can't have kids. No one (I know) wants other people to think that they are being 'charitable' by adopting a child. No one wants to surprise themselves and find that they can't actually love their adopted child when she acts out or displays traits that neither of the parents think they have.

I have always wanted to adopt a child. I went as far as deciding I'd be a single mum putting the adoption process in motion before I married. I could never tell why it is that I wanted to adopt but I knew I did. Is that okay? I realised it is not. One needs to know exactly why they want to adopt. And unless the answer is clear, it would be the wrong thing to do.

I know people believe that one shouldn't adopt as charity. I agree, but only if the prospective adoptive parent is going to treat the child like it should be grateful. But if a person is capable of love then I don't see anything wrong with a person adopting because they want to give an unfortunate child a life of love and security. Adopting a child is a fantastic way of rehabilitating it, providing it with food, shelter, education, opportunities but most of all, love.

At last count, there we 12 million abandoned children in India and if reports are to be believed a horrific 90 per cent of this number was girls. And take a wild guess at how many adoptions happened last year. Go on. Less than 4000. Can anyone explain those two trends?

I am a relatively new mother, both  my kids are under two years of age. And I've spoken to many, many mothers recently and almost all have said they were hoping to have a girl when they were pregnant. I have a few friends who have opted to adopt and have all ticked as their gender preference, girls. Maybe I am living in a pretty little well that's urban India, maybe all these girls that are being abandoned are coming from rural areas. But can someone explain why this dichotomy exists? Why am I meeting women who actively want daughters and at the same time 90 per cent of all those kids abandoned are girls?

Have any of you been to an orphanage? I went before I was a mother. I don't think I want to go back as one. I don't think I can look at all those mad monkeys there and wonder how they're smiling like diamonds even though they have no families to call their own. I don't want to see little babies rocking themselves to sleep. I don't want to see a baby cry and cry and cry and it be attended only when the poor overworked attendant can.

I am still considering adoption but I don't know when. I need enough money first and then I need to know that my existing family and I will accept the new child as our own.