Book review: Zarina Bhatty,From Purdah to Piccadilly: A Muslim Woman’s Struggle for Identity

This is an extraordinary memoir. It is an amazing blend of memories beginning with childhood and moving into an account of the growing consciousness of a young Muslim woman as she steps from girlhood to womanhood and as she struggles to keep her sense of self in an unequal world. It is a story that could be shared by any other middle-class woman who was growing up in the years immediately after 1947: The sheltered but deeply unequal world that spirited young women were confronted with as they struggled to become who they wanted to be. It captures the heartbreak and the ‘innocence’ of young women who lived under multiple taboos in which one knew nothing of marriage, sexuality and reproduction even as all around one there were stories of romances both in literature and in family accounts. The heartbreak this could lead to is the most stunning part of this memoir; unique in feminist memoir-writing in South Asia. It is an incisive and heart-rending account of a failed marriage and the violence within it that led to the failure. This is a memoir that could only have been written by a woman after she became a feminist, but also only by a feminist who now looks back on her experiences with the honesty and sensitivity of one who tells her story with courage even though it could hurt people around her.

The richness of From Purdah to Piccadilly: A Muslim Woman’s Struggle for Identity is perhaps a consequence of the multiple strands that have gone into the making of Zarina. She began as a sociologist/anthropologist before becoming a gender specialist working with the USAID. And her memoir has all the characteristics of an ethnographer who writes accordingly. It is the kind of eye that a foreign anthropologist might use to study her field: the family, social norms, social relations, small town life and cultural practices of a Muslim household in a small qasbah all detailed with warmth, humour and affection (for the most part but sometimes with flashes of anger). Although she is the first-born child, she is welcomed lovingly because her widowed grandmother never had a daughter. But, as she grows into a spirited young woman, the women of the family are concerned about her refusal to conform to gender and social norms that families live in. The women bemoan that her ‘dola’ (the palanquin that takes the bride away from her natal home to the husband’s home after the wedding) will return as her in-laws are bound to throw her out. On her part, Zarina is able to link up this anxiety of the women to the gloss she puts on it: Her ‘dola did return’ in a sense because she was divorced after 12 years. The critical issue throughout the early and growing years is that girls cannot behave like boys (p. 2). They were expected to eat less, as they did less physical activity and the norm was two chapattis for girls, and, if you asked for a third, it would make you feel guilty. This little statement reminds one of Prem Chowdhry’s works where the daughter-in-law who cooked the food for the whole house would sometimes ‘steal’ food eating it surreptitiously at the chulha because she was entitled only to bare survival (Chowdhry, 1994, pp. 224–225). The rules for married girls in terms of dress and comportment were very different, and this distinction was maintained at all times: A girl’s sexuality was dangerous and must be hidden; a married woman’s sexuality was legitimate; girls played in zenana parks (parks meant for women only) where sometimes plays would be performed. An unmarried girl was not expected to even act the role of a married woman and one had to get special permission for acting in such a role. Since virginity was the most prized possession of a girl and her family, any crossing of boundaries, knowingly or unknowingly, would lead to shame and panic, which could be used by young men better informed on such matters. It is no wonder then that the crisis in the author’s life is precipitated by the basic lack of understanding on sexuality and reproduction at a time when men have experience and the power to frighten a girl into accepting a patently unfair proposal of marriage. Terrified of becoming the bearer of stigma, the author goes down a path that has terrible consequences for her.

The only consequence of the unequal marriage is that it led to her ending up in England where Zarina was able to pursue her education, going on to collect her degree from the Queen as Chancellor of the University she studied in. Ultimately, however, Zarina faces a real challenge and must break with the marriage and start life all over again, stand on her own feet, become economically independent and bring up a child too in an uncertain and still biased world where divorce is a stigma.

The honesty of this memoir should not however overwhelm the reader or mar the wonderful nuggets in it. I particularly enjoyed Zarina’s description of her relatives including a nationalist uncle who spent long spells underground. On one occasion, the family received an unsigned post card saying Ansar chacha was going to pass Lucknow station on a certain day and time (he was being transferred from one jail to another). The entire family, including Zarina, went to the station to meet him. But alas, as her dadi tried to put her hands through the compartment bars to touch her son’s hands, she was rudely shaken off by the guards. This shocked Zarina with its mindless cruelty. Other mothers were so desperately worried about their nationalist children that one of them locked up her son so that he would not be able to join a demonstration that was demanding that the British should quit India. Zarina writes in her memoir that she can still hear the uncle banging away at the door pleading to be let out of the locked room.

There are other little nuggets in the memoir such as an account of the poet Majaz who had a one-sided romance that ended badly, and, as might be expected with poets, he took to drink. Ismat Chughtai then poetically describes his life as a gardener who tends a beautiful garden for a princess, but alas his beautiful roses are dismissed because the princess has golden ones. And, although he took to drink, he never lost his sense of humour and so Zarina has a special fondness for him and is quite sad when he dies at a fairly young age.

There are many other anecdotes and serious issues that Zarina recounts in her memoir which I enjoyed reading. I would have also wanted some photographs of the people and places Zarina shared her life with, although this lack is somewhat compensated by a cover which does include a lovely picture of Zarina as a child. More such images would have made my day. I hope many people will read this book, and the fact that it is now four years old doesn’t matter; it is a memoir that talks about the past and therefore like history, not be dated.