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Alternative Realities: Love in the Lives of Muslim Women
Alternative Realities is a travelogue, a memoir, a satire and a feminist critique of Muslim women's lives, interwoven with the author's own ongoing struggles as a Muslim woman. Each chapter presents personal stories of women living in cities, small towns and villages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the three lands to which Nighat Gandhi belongs. In writing their stories, she attempts to break the silence enshrouding Muslim women's sexuality and the ways in which they negotiate the restrictions placed on their freedoms within the framework of their culture. Women like Ghazala, who prefers the life of a second wife, 'living like a married single woman', to being bound within the ties of a conventional marriage, Nusrat and QT who believe theirs is a normal marriage, except that they are both women. Nisho, who refuses to accept that her trans-sexuality should deny her the right to love and Firdaus, writer and feminist, who can walk out of a loveless marriage but not give up on love, with or without marriage. Nighat also explores her own story as a woman who dared to make choices that pitted her against her family and cultures. Alternative Realities is her jihad or struggle to deconstruct the demeaning stereotypes that prevail about all Muslim women. It is a reflection of the myriad ways in which, despite these misogynistic forces, they continue to weave webs of love and peace in their own lives and in the lives of those they live with.
424 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 31, 2015
The author is from a family from West Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which fled the country post the 1971 liberation war and settled in Karachi, Pakistan only to marry an Indian guy in the US later. Hence, she literally means it when she says she belongs to all the 3 countries of the Indian Subcontinent which were one once upon a time!
In a travalogue, the author generally describes the places as the central theme. On the other hand, in this book the author travels to all these countries (with the sole aim of writing a book) and describes women, Muslim women to be specific.
The author's chosen ones belong to every strata of the society, which makes sure that there is not a dull moment in any page. The book begins with the author's own experiences of being a liberal in a fundamentalist Muslim family of Pakistan, to the extent of marrying a Hindu guy from India!
As I have put up earlier, the author's other protagonists are a lesbian, transgender and a village girl trying to find her place in the city from Pakistan, an upper class war widow from Bangladesh, and a young dynamic Muslim journalist from Gujarat, India who explains what it is to be a Muslim in Gujarat post 2002 riots.
The conversations about love, longing, freedom and recognition along with the author's own whimsical thoughts are portrayed very wistfully and also show her inclination and love for the Sufi and Faqir culture. A good 400 pages, but an extremely engaging one.
In a travalogue, the author generally describes the places as the central theme. On the other hand, in this book the author travels to all these countries (with the sole aim of writing a book) and describes women, Muslim women to be specific.
The author's chosen ones belong to every strata of the society, which makes sure that there is not a dull moment in any page. The book begins with the author's own experiences of being a liberal in a fundamentalist Muslim family of Pakistan, to the extent of marrying a Hindu guy from India!
As I have put up earlier, the author's other protagonists are a lesbian, transgender and a village girl trying to find her place in the city from Pakistan, an upper class war widow from Bangladesh, and a young dynamic Muslim journalist from Gujarat, India who explains what it is to be a Muslim in Gujarat post 2002 riots.
The conversations about love, longing, freedom and recognition along with the author's own whimsical thoughts are portrayed very wistfully and also show her inclination and love for the Sufi and Faqir culture. A good 400 pages, but an extremely engaging one.
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January 12, 2025A brief anecdote first: I'd wandered into a tiny bookstore in Lokhandwala where I frequently drop in, just to browse. I had no intention of buying anything that day. I was picking up books at random and reading the first couple of pages before putting them back on the shelves.
And then I found a book that I didn't want to put back. I was fifteen pages in. The staff was starting to give off cold vibes. So, I did put the book back in its place and moved off to another section. Half an hour later, I returned to the book and opened it somewhere in the middle of another chapter. I still wanted to go on reading. So I bought the book. Only to realize that I already had a review copy of the same book waiting to be read at home.
I ought, therefore, ought to state upfront that Alternate Realities: Love in the lives of Muslim Women is a good read. The publisher's description of the book – 'a travelogue, a memoir, a satire and a feminist critique of Muslim women's lives, interwoven with the author's own ongoing struggles as a Muslim woman' – proves to be correct. It is indeed all of that, but it is not weighed down by the sort of presumptuous rhetoric one might expect.
Critiques of Muslim women's lives, however honest, can get tiresome. What helps this book is the fact that the author is poised to speak from a position of complexity and nuance. She begins by laying bare this complexity – the overwhelming love of a happy childhood, the power of the memory of such love, modern education, changing ideologies, political upheaval, power games over pizza. Oppression is never a simple process, and freedom is never an obvious choice.
Allowing the reader to look at this intimate portrait of her own life and the force that led her to break with convention, Gandhi turns to her subject – love. She sets out to examine the ways in which Muslim women seek love, demonstrate love, or resign themselves to living without love. She populates the book with a cast of characters from Bangladesh and Pakistan, both nations she used to live in, and India where she now lives.
These stories are 'alternate' in the sense that Gandhi has chosen to write about Muslim women who do not quite fit into the stereotype. Ghazala is an educated, independent Christian woman in Pakistan who has converted to marry an already married man. Laila is training to be the first Lady Health Visitor in her village in the NorthWest Frontier Province. Firdaus is a writer and Reiki healer, in her seventies. Nahid is a teenaged telemarketer in Allahabad. Tara is single at thirty, hoping for a better job in Dhaka. Ayesha is a journalist-activist-poet, still single in her late thirties, and living by herself in Ahmedabad.
Almost none of the women interviewed seem to be wholly, passionately in love with their current partners (except Nusrat and QT, who are a lesbian couple). Gandhi approaches romantic love from the fringes of society. Marriage and motherhood are not at the heart of these women's lives. This allows a wider range of ideas about love. One of the most straightforward lines comes from Nisho, a transgender dancer in Hyderabad (Pakistan). She says, “Love is like cream in milk. Love always rises to the top.”
The author constantly reflects upon politics, sufism, language. She describes a mugging in Karachi (her chain was robbed by two men on a bike, one wearing a burqa. There was apparently a ban on two men riding bikes after a bomb attack). She describes railway stations, dargahs, her own impatience with certain people. These diversions from the core theme are not uninteresting, but they do leave lesser room for a wider, more inclusive cast of characters.
The title suggests that the book speaks of Muslim women in general, althought it is limited to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Muslim women are culturally as different from each other as women from other religions, so one cannot help but wonder how their lives and loves are different from that of a Chinese or Indonesian or French Muslim woman. A greater emphasis on geographical or cultural representation might have been useful. Alternately, the title could have mentioned that the book is limited to the Indian Subcontinent.
The main triumph of the book, however, is that it allows a range of Muslim women to speak of emotional hunger, of disappointment, of politics and money. Religious identity is neither irrelevant nor all-important. Gandhi has done well to neither ignore it nor be intimidated by it.
[This review has appeared in Time Out, Bengaluru in 2013]
And then I found a book that I didn't want to put back. I was fifteen pages in. The staff was starting to give off cold vibes. So, I did put the book back in its place and moved off to another section. Half an hour later, I returned to the book and opened it somewhere in the middle of another chapter. I still wanted to go on reading. So I bought the book. Only to realize that I already had a review copy of the same book waiting to be read at home.
I ought, therefore, ought to state upfront that Alternate Realities: Love in the lives of Muslim Women is a good read. The publisher's description of the book – 'a travelogue, a memoir, a satire and a feminist critique of Muslim women's lives, interwoven with the author's own ongoing struggles as a Muslim woman' – proves to be correct. It is indeed all of that, but it is not weighed down by the sort of presumptuous rhetoric one might expect.
Critiques of Muslim women's lives, however honest, can get tiresome. What helps this book is the fact that the author is poised to speak from a position of complexity and nuance. She begins by laying bare this complexity – the overwhelming love of a happy childhood, the power of the memory of such love, modern education, changing ideologies, political upheaval, power games over pizza. Oppression is never a simple process, and freedom is never an obvious choice.
Allowing the reader to look at this intimate portrait of her own life and the force that led her to break with convention, Gandhi turns to her subject – love. She sets out to examine the ways in which Muslim women seek love, demonstrate love, or resign themselves to living without love. She populates the book with a cast of characters from Bangladesh and Pakistan, both nations she used to live in, and India where she now lives.
These stories are 'alternate' in the sense that Gandhi has chosen to write about Muslim women who do not quite fit into the stereotype. Ghazala is an educated, independent Christian woman in Pakistan who has converted to marry an already married man. Laila is training to be the first Lady Health Visitor in her village in the NorthWest Frontier Province. Firdaus is a writer and Reiki healer, in her seventies. Nahid is a teenaged telemarketer in Allahabad. Tara is single at thirty, hoping for a better job in Dhaka. Ayesha is a journalist-activist-poet, still single in her late thirties, and living by herself in Ahmedabad.
Almost none of the women interviewed seem to be wholly, passionately in love with their current partners (except Nusrat and QT, who are a lesbian couple). Gandhi approaches romantic love from the fringes of society. Marriage and motherhood are not at the heart of these women's lives. This allows a wider range of ideas about love. One of the most straightforward lines comes from Nisho, a transgender dancer in Hyderabad (Pakistan). She says, “Love is like cream in milk. Love always rises to the top.”
The author constantly reflects upon politics, sufism, language. She describes a mugging in Karachi (her chain was robbed by two men on a bike, one wearing a burqa. There was apparently a ban on two men riding bikes after a bomb attack). She describes railway stations, dargahs, her own impatience with certain people. These diversions from the core theme are not uninteresting, but they do leave lesser room for a wider, more inclusive cast of characters.
The title suggests that the book speaks of Muslim women in general, althought it is limited to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Muslim women are culturally as different from each other as women from other religions, so one cannot help but wonder how their lives and loves are different from that of a Chinese or Indonesian or French Muslim woman. A greater emphasis on geographical or cultural representation might have been useful. Alternately, the title could have mentioned that the book is limited to the Indian Subcontinent.
The main triumph of the book, however, is that it allows a range of Muslim women to speak of emotional hunger, of disappointment, of politics and money. Religious identity is neither irrelevant nor all-important. Gandhi has done well to neither ignore it nor be intimidated by it.
[This review has appeared in Time Out, Bengaluru in 2013]
February 18, 2017
very moving. makes you question so many preconceptions you have about religion, family life, feminism. so many different perspectives, so many outlooks on life. the purple prose didn't work for me /all/ of the time, but there were parts of the book where the pictures the author painted seemed so wonderfully vivid, it was easy to imagine being there - the colours, the smells, the noises of everyday life. in the end, i think it fit the tone of the book quite well.
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June 21, 2020Whether or not we like to admit it, there exist quite a few prejudices about Muslim women in general and Pakistani Muslim women in specific. In my quest to understand different cultures, religions and places, picking this book up was a no-brainer. The author has an interesting life, spanning different countries in the Asian subcontinent which makes this book intriguing. With interesting stories of Muslim women spread across varied cultures, geographies, and socio-economic statuses, this book was a delight. Although the pace did drop quite a bit after the initial 70 or 80 pages, it was worth pushing through the slump. This book is sure to break a lot of prejudices and stereotypes for most people.
September 23, 2022
MUST READ.
March 5, 2017
Feminism and its various aspects have always been a matter of unpleasant debates in society. Women’s freedom, sexuality, equality or education is still not considered worth discussing in our largely patriarchal arrangements. But does that contain the free spirit of womanhood? Hardly. When Nighat Gandhi took on a journey to find out what love means to different women, she barely had any inkling of the discovery she was about to make. Alternate Realities is a strong and profound tale of women finding love in most unimaginable places and their celebration of love and life.
Nighat M. Gandhi was born in erstwhile Bangladesh, raised in Pakistan and married a Hindu from India. In spite of the geographical boundaries and political unpleasantness, Gandhi finds striking similarity across cultures and finds herself at a loss of words when asked about her country because she considers all three of them as her own yet belongs to none of them. The realization that sky has the same blue colour on either of India-Pakistan border is obvious yet palpable. And the life of women in all three countries seems to have striking similarities. Somewhere the timelines seem to have frozen to provide a strange concrete unity to women across borders.
Since her own marriage to a Hindu was strongly opposed by her father, Nighat Gandhi set out to find out how love impacts lives of other Muslim women. Through different characters in this autobiographical account, author discovers that below the superficial social strata of oppressive men-centric notions, there lies a colourful world where women celebrate love and life in their own way. Nisho, the self-proclaimed Rakhi Sawant of Sind or Nahid, the nineteen year old fearless lass from Allahbad who has seen more life than is allowed at this tender age, don’t really have complaints about the life they live. But they want to look towards the brighter side and celebrate the small things that come their way. Effusive and lively Mahmuda, who proudly calls her a war-widow, chose to live with a philanderer husband of second marriage just to keep the unwanted men and questions away. Her claim that real love can last a lifetime seems true when one sees Nusrat and Q happy in their lesbian relationship.
Alternate Realities is thoughtful and honest. Even in the narration of saddest parts of characters’ lives, there is an underlying promise of a better tomorrow. Various aspects of womanhood come alive in Nighat Gandhi’s words depicting the strength and depth of the gender. Love, of course, remains on the horizon. So near yet so far!
Nighat M. Gandhi was born in erstwhile Bangladesh, raised in Pakistan and married a Hindu from India. In spite of the geographical boundaries and political unpleasantness, Gandhi finds striking similarity across cultures and finds herself at a loss of words when asked about her country because she considers all three of them as her own yet belongs to none of them. The realization that sky has the same blue colour on either of India-Pakistan border is obvious yet palpable. And the life of women in all three countries seems to have striking similarities. Somewhere the timelines seem to have frozen to provide a strange concrete unity to women across borders.
Since her own marriage to a Hindu was strongly opposed by her father, Nighat Gandhi set out to find out how love impacts lives of other Muslim women. Through different characters in this autobiographical account, author discovers that below the superficial social strata of oppressive men-centric notions, there lies a colourful world where women celebrate love and life in their own way. Nisho, the self-proclaimed Rakhi Sawant of Sind or Nahid, the nineteen year old fearless lass from Allahbad who has seen more life than is allowed at this tender age, don’t really have complaints about the life they live. But they want to look towards the brighter side and celebrate the small things that come their way. Effusive and lively Mahmuda, who proudly calls her a war-widow, chose to live with a philanderer husband of second marriage just to keep the unwanted men and questions away. Her claim that real love can last a lifetime seems true when one sees Nusrat and Q happy in their lesbian relationship.
Alternate Realities is thoughtful and honest. Even in the narration of saddest parts of characters’ lives, there is an underlying promise of a better tomorrow. Various aspects of womanhood come alive in Nighat Gandhi’s words depicting the strength and depth of the gender. Love, of course, remains on the horizon. So near yet so far!
February 13, 2018
a wonderful story of various Muslim women who are somehow not in the league of so called "normal society." They have their own priorities, struggles, psychology, learnings, objectives, and more than that they dare to stand by and live by those life phylosphies they have chosen for themselves. A very poor friend, a lesbian, a spiritual writer, an eunuch, a career oriented gal, or the writer herself who ran away from her house to US to marry an Indian boy all are have their own stories to share. But the wonderful part is that everyone is happy whatever they are or whatever they are doing. They are not ashamed on their identity, their being.
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire book.
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire book.
October 22, 2015
Narrating stories of women across Indian subcontinent, writer presents first persons account vividly describing her travels and the feelings that each individuals made her feel. Emotional Poignant and at times self reflecting stories are further embellished by incorporating bits of poetry. One of the best books I have read in a long while.
December 20, 2015
A beautiful travelogue woven with stories of Muslim women across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. :)
January 28, 2016
The book is good and gives a good picture of how love is perceived by Muslim women. However, the book gets lengthy. It would have been better if it would have been crisp.
March 28, 2020
Non-fiction is not a genre I usually prefer. But this book intrigued me the moment I came across it. And reading it was every bit the treat I anticipated it would be.
Here the author recounts her experience as she travels across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to meet a variety of people. Each chapter in the book tells the story of a different woman the author meets on her journey. The threads of all these different stories are connected by the author's own struggles to discover herself and find her true identity.
What makes the book truly recommendable is its inclusion of Muslim women from all classes of society and sexuality. All these women are strong in their individual ways. The book discusses their unconventional take on religion, love, politics and life in general.
Here the author recounts her experience as she travels across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to meet a variety of people. Each chapter in the book tells the story of a different woman the author meets on her journey. The threads of all these different stories are connected by the author's own struggles to discover herself and find her true identity.
What makes the book truly recommendable is its inclusion of Muslim women from all classes of society and sexuality. All these women are strong in their individual ways. The book discusses their unconventional take on religion, love, politics and life in general.
May 26, 2021
This book made my spirit travel around some towns, cities and, countries that might share the same religion but different cultures. Through the chapters, she shows us a different perspective of what love is and, she shares with us deep and thoughtful stories of Muslim women in different societies, places and, cultures.
You get to experience many emotions, and question yourself about what you used to think was real.
I think everyone should read this book because I feel it truly helps to empathize and understand the realities of women that face these struggles every day.
You get to experience many emotions, and question yourself about what you used to think was real.
I think everyone should read this book because I feel it truly helps to empathize and understand the realities of women that face these struggles every day.
January 21, 2020
This is such, such a beautiful, moving book. I haven't had a book talk to me like this one did and move me through countries, landscapes, people, religions. To anyone interested in a wonderful book on love, relationships, religion, feminism, or just in reading a moving, heartening book, please please read this.
January 29, 2020
Nighat Gandhi is an unique author. She literally belongs to all three countries of the Indian subcontinent & hence wrote about the stories of Muslim women from these countries. She also wrote about her whole journey surviving an orthodox environment to marrying a Hindu man from India. The different stories written with such sincerity & sensitivity makes it a must read.
May 9, 2020
i read this book back in 2017. its the most prized book i own. worth every second you spent on those 415 pages. everytime i read it hurts to see how underappreciated this is. the book is one thing and its many. the topics it touches covers all spectrum. its very much complete in its own.
best read.
best read.
May 6, 2020
Unlike anything I have ever read before and still extremely familiar in the tones and themes, this travelogue by Nighat M Gandhi feels extremely personal and relatable to me even though I lead a very different life from the women mentioned - a more sheltered, more privileged life. You don’t have to be a Muslim woman to relate with them, all of us can find some part of ourselves embedded in the lives of the brave and beautiful women Nighat meets.
July 26, 2020
A wonderful and well written portrait of women at different stages in their lives. told through the wise and curious lenses of author's own experience. Certain parts of the books are very nostalgic. Description if places and settings is inspiring and immersive.
A must read.
A must read.
May 3, 2021
Nice travelogue that I had started in 2019 and finished during the lockdown time. Just the last chapter had the content for an entire book, author's musings with Aayesha sends so many sparks high, you cannot overlook it.
July 14, 2020
This was an eye opener. Speechless
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March 10, 2017Lovely book. Loved the use of words. Loved phrases. Loved metaphors. Loved ideas.
May 12, 2015
It was almost like reading somebody's diary. A few aspects one can relate to and so I didn't find the title very appropriate. Maybe Alternative Realities was enough. 'Love in the lives of Muslim women' makes it sound very specific. And I did not find it that specific. The stories could have belonged to women regardless of their religion. Which in a way shows that religion doesn't really affect emotions at a human level. Ultimately emotions are human.
July 16, 2019
A wonderful journey of so many Muslim girls through the journey of the Author from West Pakistan. You will go through lots of emotions, questions, doubts, and culture which are faced/facing by the Muslim women. The author openly expressed her view and perspective on Muslim culture and values through her writing. If you love to read about different cultures and feminism, then this is a good read for you.
July 8, 2017
Review of the novel ..Alternative realities by Nighat M.Gandhi
"Some journeys are best accomplished alone" writes writer Nighat M.Gandhi as she transcends borders from India to Pakistan to Bangladesh documenting lives of a motley assortment of muslim women. It is a part travelogue, part memoir documenting real life stories of ordinary women who are dragged down by oppressive religious diktats, battle confused identities, dream of a secure future, are optimistic and there to make a difference in their lives and those around them.
The narrative is beautiful and the lives are documented in a tell a tale way that enthrals and captures your imagination and you identify with the pain and pragmatism that the protagonists show in handling their lives with such finesse.
The book starts with Nighat s own life. Her family moves from East Pakistan to the west after the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh. She is sent abroad to study where she falls in love with a Hindu guy, elopes, gets married against her families wishes and is forsaken by her father for dishonouring the family. Later on she is disillusioned by her own marriage and she undertakes this voyage to write more about women of her own ilk.
There is Lailla in Oghi, SWAT region of Pakistan who fights the family hierarchy to choose a bridegroom of her own wanting and still wants to delay the alliance cause she knows she will be called to do more than her own share in a family clustered with people. She appears much wiser than her age when she says," Life is like a glass of soapy water. And love is the foam on top. When the foam fizzles out, what is left behind is marriage."
Nusurat and Quaratulain, a lesbian couple in east Karachi who live on their own terms and are not bothered by the constraints of the society but are only bounded by their seamless love for each other.
Firdaus haider, a writer of Urdu fiction in Karachi who is uninhibited in her prose and questions the writer, " If you knew what you are looking for , why would you go looking for it?"
Nisho,the transgender in Mirpur Khas lost in her own lust and longing for something unattainable.
Nahid, in Allahabad whose life is all about the necessity of moving on for there is no time to grieve for a spurned lover who immolates himself.
There is Tina in Dhaka, Bangladesh and her ambitious friends who come from small towns to make big bucks in a ruthless city that has no takers for mediocrity and if they have to succeed they need to be fluent in a foreign language. The writer reflects at the futility of achieving freedom on the basis of cultural identity and language movement which is long forgotten and does not hold any value for the new Bangla creed.
In Chittagong, she writes about Mahmuda, a war widow and a Bangle diplomat who is married to a husband she can talk to but can't talk with.
And in the last leg of her journey she writes about Ayesha, in Ahmedabad who breaks a decade long relationship with a Hindu boy after the 2002 communal riots cause she is not an escapist. She choses to stay and fight the system rather than having the easy way out.
Each and every story is written marvellously with the realities laid bare,
interspersed with her own keen observations it makes a very good read.
I liked when she writes about her dilemma , her doubts her justification for writing this book, " Who in the world cares about me writing this book more than i do". And indeed books are not written for fame and fabulous appraisals but they are journals of self discovery and self fulfillment. And thats a reason worth writing for.
"Some journeys are best accomplished alone" writes writer Nighat M.Gandhi as she transcends borders from India to Pakistan to Bangladesh documenting lives of a motley assortment of muslim women. It is a part travelogue, part memoir documenting real life stories of ordinary women who are dragged down by oppressive religious diktats, battle confused identities, dream of a secure future, are optimistic and there to make a difference in their lives and those around them.
The narrative is beautiful and the lives are documented in a tell a tale way that enthrals and captures your imagination and you identify with the pain and pragmatism that the protagonists show in handling their lives with such finesse.
The book starts with Nighat s own life. Her family moves from East Pakistan to the west after the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh. She is sent abroad to study where she falls in love with a Hindu guy, elopes, gets married against her families wishes and is forsaken by her father for dishonouring the family. Later on she is disillusioned by her own marriage and she undertakes this voyage to write more about women of her own ilk.
There is Lailla in Oghi, SWAT region of Pakistan who fights the family hierarchy to choose a bridegroom of her own wanting and still wants to delay the alliance cause she knows she will be called to do more than her own share in a family clustered with people. She appears much wiser than her age when she says," Life is like a glass of soapy water. And love is the foam on top. When the foam fizzles out, what is left behind is marriage."
Nusurat and Quaratulain, a lesbian couple in east Karachi who live on their own terms and are not bothered by the constraints of the society but are only bounded by their seamless love for each other.
Firdaus haider, a writer of Urdu fiction in Karachi who is uninhibited in her prose and questions the writer, " If you knew what you are looking for , why would you go looking for it?"
Nisho,the transgender in Mirpur Khas lost in her own lust and longing for something unattainable.
Nahid, in Allahabad whose life is all about the necessity of moving on for there is no time to grieve for a spurned lover who immolates himself.
There is Tina in Dhaka, Bangladesh and her ambitious friends who come from small towns to make big bucks in a ruthless city that has no takers for mediocrity and if they have to succeed they need to be fluent in a foreign language. The writer reflects at the futility of achieving freedom on the basis of cultural identity and language movement which is long forgotten and does not hold any value for the new Bangla creed.
In Chittagong, she writes about Mahmuda, a war widow and a Bangle diplomat who is married to a husband she can talk to but can't talk with.
And in the last leg of her journey she writes about Ayesha, in Ahmedabad who breaks a decade long relationship with a Hindu boy after the 2002 communal riots cause she is not an escapist. She choses to stay and fight the system rather than having the easy way out.
Each and every story is written marvellously with the realities laid bare,
interspersed with her own keen observations it makes a very good read.
I liked when she writes about her dilemma , her doubts her justification for writing this book, " Who in the world cares about me writing this book more than i do". And indeed books are not written for fame and fabulous appraisals but they are journals of self discovery and self fulfillment. And thats a reason worth writing for.
May 12, 2018
Interesting and engrossing!
More power to such women----who wrote and spoke their heart out therein those pages (Y)
More power to such women----who wrote and spoke their heart out therein those pages (Y)
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews