Traveling on an airline is a good time to read memoirs. For me, reading memoirs is now a way of life and my handbag is usually bursting with books. This time, a powerful voice in Punjabi literature - Ajeet Cour's autobiography 'Weaving Water' translated from the Punjabi by Masooma Ali and Meenu Minocha, kept me glued to every page. [BOOK REVIEW: A Song of Hyderabad]
[Image: Speaking Tiger publisher]
Ajeet Cour's autobiography took me through a gripping yet somewhat disturbing narrative of what it feels like to grow up in pre-Partition Lahore and struggle to find a decent footing in Delhi.
That she pioneered a literary movement through her short stories and books in Punjabi literature is a well-known and much-respected fact. The experience of reading her autobiography was something far beyond any stretch of imagination.
Braving the social inequalities she had grown up with, she navigated into the world of letters at a time when it was considered scandalous for girls from 'respectable' families to pursue their love for writing or literature.
Like many Indian women writers one hears about, she too wrote secretly, not wanting to get into trouble with the elders in her family. Yet when she has daughters, she encourages them to pursue their passion and their life with absolute freedom.
An abusive relationship that leads to her failed marriage does not break her.
She puts herself through struggle after struggle to raise her daughters with a roof over their head and a good education. Somewhere along the way, she forgets about her own comforts, living every step of her life to make sure that her daughters don't go hungry. A writer's life is never easy and when you are a woman, the challenges in a complex society like India are multi-layered.
The writer questions 'women's liberation' as we understand it today.
"If a woman works and earns her own living, if she's not dependent on anyone for her needs, then she's capable of throwing off the age-old chains of slavery that she's bound with. This is a generally accepted concept.
But is economic independence, self-dependency, the first criteria for liberation? Nonsense!
I had been earning my own bread for years, and yet all the time I was consumed by an unknown terror. A husband's beatings, hatred, disgust, again and again being thrown out of the house....I had borne everything, despite earning and sustaining myself and my daughters."
She continues, "Economic independence alone doesn't allow a woman to experience liberation. Nor is it gained by breaking free of the proverbial constraints..."
The worlds within her words made me sit still as I thought about her life, so different from mine, much more courageous and bold, in every sense of the word.
Recently, a young woman had asked me, "If you were married to a man like mine who is prone to beating his wife for no reason, would you choose to leave him?"
"I cannot give you a truthful answer because I cannot connect to such a person or a situation like that and therefore I would not be able to tell you how I would choose to deal with a situation like that," I told her candidly.
Later, after the conversation, I had asked myself whether I should have said that of course I would divorce such a man or walk out of such a relationship.
But the truth is that I wouldn't know right now what it is that I would do if I were to undergo the trauma that she has undergone.
In this author's autobiography, it is not the breakdown of her marriage that makes her strong. It is something far deeper. So, in a sense, we cannot be sure of what triggers the emotional resilience within us by putting ourselves in hypothetical situations that we cannot emotionally identify with in the first place.
Ajeet Cour's autobiography unfolds with the tragedy of losing a daughter, which makes her strong enough to rise like a phoenix to protect and nourish her other daughter, Arpana, who is today a renowned painter and artist.
Her pain is raw. A mother's wound. [READ: The Amazing Tale of Peddabottu]
"They say Jesus Christ was able to sleep even on the cross. Despite the nails in His hands and feet, His body drenched in His own blood. Was He really able to sleep....
Because this skin can never grow back.
Because no one can remove the nails driven through my hands, feet and forehead.
Often it seems that nothing is left in my life after the death of my child.....
Life! Bits and pieces of old, useless, discarded scraps of cloth, shabbily sewn together to form a rag. To form a multi-coloured, multi-patched quilt to wrap oneself in. A dirty, faded quilt with a thousand slashes and a thousand pieces, the colour of mud. Like a beggar's robe in which dull, sleepy colours seem to be complaining and apologizing at the same time....After Candy's death, I had a strong impulse to cast away the rag that life is. To fling it away, to burn it. But I couldn't." [READ: Nan Umrigar's book - The Sounds of Silence]
As these words burnt into my skin, I found my eyes filled with tears. It was as though Candy was my daughter as I found myself lost in a fragment of time.
Looking out of the window seat, I saw that amidst the vast darkness beneath, there were hundreds of flickering lights that conquered the darkness, shimmering persistently, as tiny orbs of light.
That tiny light lit hope within me.
Darkness is meant to be conquered and only light can conquer it.
For a writer, only words can bring the light out of a wound.
That night when I slept, I sent a prayer of loving energy to Candy.
Because I am a mother and a writer. Words are all the prayer that I can offer.
Published by Speaking Tiger, Ajeet Cour's autobiography is a must-read for every one.
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