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French writer Claudine Le Tourneur D'Ison's Hira Mandi is less a novel than an account of women and their quest for survival in Lahore's notorious red light district.
French writer Claudine Le Tourneur D’Ison’s Hira Mandi is less a novel than an account of women and their quest for survival in Lahore’s red light district.
It is believed that fiction (in the form of a novel) can sometimes delve into the human condition better than fact (in the form of essays, news reports or research). Perhaps that is what drove French writer Claudine Le Tourneur D’Ison to write her Hira Mandi, an account of the red light district in Lahore, Pakistan, as a novel with its central character, Shanwaz Nadeem, standing in for the ups and downs of the neighbourhood and for the rise and fall of Pakistan itself.
Incidentally, this fiction is based on fact; while in Pakistan, D’Ison met painter Iqbal Hussain who hails from Hira Mandi and while the novel is not entirely based on his life, D’Ison was able to get access to life in the district through her friendship with him.
The life of Shanwaz, the son of a young courtesan, Naseem, runs parallel to the momentous events in the life of the young nation. This makes it possible for D’Ison to use Shanwaz and Hira Mandi as a mirror onto which the cataclysmic changes in Pakistan can be projected and their effects examined; the trauma of Partition, the optimism of the early years, the deaths of Bhutto and Zia, the growing Islamisation of a once multi-cultural society, the renewed hope of Benazir – all of these mould the fate of Hira Mandi and the trajectory of Shanwaz’s life.
While it works as an account of the neighbourhood and its fall from being a destination for the well-heeled to a seedy, decaying, no-good part of the city, it never really works as a novel. Shanwaz fails to emerge as a fully fleshed character and the twists and turns of his life, although incredible, seem to contrived to illuminate the life of the republic rather than as a result of his own nature or circumstances. It is ironic that for a novel set in Hira Mandi where the real players are the women, D’Ison chose a man as her pivot. Shanwaz’s mother Naseem is the strongest character in the novel and comes alive as the bearer of a proud legacy and a woman with fierce quantities of determination and self-preservation. Given that D’Ison’s sympathies lie so evidently with the women of the quarter, the novel would have perhaps worked quite differently with a female protagonist.
Hira Mandi also makes for some uncomfortable reading with its mention of girls as young as 11 or 12 being initiated into the world of singing, dancing and sex work. While D’Ison is no doubt only presenting something that happens, the portrayal of young children as temptresses aware of their power to seduce and detailed descriptions of the sexual act felt unnecessary.
Where D’Ison does succeed is in drawing a vivid picture of the Hira Mandi sex workers as a collective – women who earn their monies from offering pleasure to men but whose strongest bonds are with other women, who obsess over their own beauty but who know well the desperate end they can come to, easily enough. Just as in Memoirs Of A Geisha, the courtesans set themselves apart from the common prostitutes, but ever present is the danger of falling through the cracks, once the youth and beauty has run its course. On the feral quest for money and survival that lies underneath the girlish laughter and high spirits of Hira Mandi is where the novel shines best its spotlight.
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Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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