18 April,2009 07:28 PM IST | | Saaz Aggarwal
Kamila Shamsie's new book is about lost homelands
Burnt Shadows
Kamila Shamsie
Bloomsbury Publishing
Rs 425
Rating: JJJJ
This book will be read because
If at all there is irony or implausibility in a Japanese woman living in Karachi in a house bought using the diamonds her now-deceased German fiancu00e9's half-sister had received as a wedding present from her English husband, it would only occur to you after you had finished enjoying the book, and then only as ironical or implausible as much of life itself.
The main characters are from two families. One is English-German, and the other is Indian-Japanese but becomes Pakistani-Japanese after Partition. America and Afghanistan also have significant roles.
Even though words like "ambitious" and "epic" are being used to describe this book (in a transparent bid to impress potential buyers and make us feel virtuously intellectual) more functional and down-to-earth ones such as "approachable" and "engrossing" would serve as well. The transitions, across time as well as culture, are smooth and unpretentious. And the language is so simple and subtle that you hardly notice it as it paints vivid and lifelike pictures for you.
It shows us that life in Pakistan can be quite similar to life in India.
You have fathers who expect their sons to study seven hours a day when exams approach. Rickshaw drivers navigate with "a mixture of intuition and Providence". Middle class families celebrate by going out to Chinese meals. Neighbours share their lives, and social demands create pressures that warp and distort each others' existences.
But then you also have the reality of terrorist camps, and an encroaching border the Afghan refugees rely on.
Kamila Shamsie is yet another Pakistani writer who studied in the US and now lives in London. Her mother, grandmother and aunt (Attia Hosain) are also well-known writers. Her four previous novels have received awards and critical acclaim.
It gives us a small understanding of the realities of nuclear war. Hiroko survived Nagasaki. Years later, after she has lived in Pakistan for more than two-thirds of her life, that country develops nuclear power. Nuclear war with India becomes a possibility. She moves to settle in the US.
The horrors described are unimaginable. The thought of that destruction and desolation will surely keep a nasty smirk off our faces at the statement, "India is so big. How can we ever destroy their missile launchers, the nuclear installations in the south, in the east? Our planes would be shot down before they got that far, our missiles can't travel that distance. India, on the other hand, can take out our launchers, no problem. And then we're left with nuclear weapons and no way to deliver them."
It makes us think about what happens when cultures mingle.
For Hiroko, fastidiousness was synonymous with good manners. For Sajjad, a steaming-hot cup of tea brought to a man first thing in the morning by a woman of the family was a basic component of the intricate system of courtesies that made up the life of a household.
Many who have studied this subject have concluded that in cross-cultural relationships, the barriers are so intense that even with great skill, patience and time, people will invariably run against obstacles which they find insurmountable.
In a world clutching tight to protect individual cultures from attacks by terrorists from alien cultures, the situation is even more fraught.
This book shows us how the most innocent perceptions can be misinterpreted, with tragic results. But it also shows the potential joys of the intermingling. We experience the exotic delight of vicariously observing those who speak many languages and swap cultures seamlessly. The book is rich with the poetry of Urdu. There is a home called "Bungle Oh!" and a cat called Billy. Delhi and Dilli are separate entities. We are told that Nagasaki was once a Westernized city contrary to the understanding that all of pre-war Japan was isolated and even culturally parochial. And an Afghan's pattusi is all that Douglas Adams expected from his towel in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and more: "your blanket to sleep under, your shawl to keep you warm, your camouflage in the mountains and desert, your stretcher when you're wounded, your blindfold to tie over the eyes of the untrustworthy, your tourniquet, your prayer mat."
Above all, this book is about lost homelands and the impossibility of return.u00a0
More and more of us face this situation, and there's much here that we can relate to. But the book also comforts us with human situations common across cultures the impractical passions of youth, the precarious duties of a parent, the mad and incredibly dangerous escapades of adolescence that some of us miraculously survive, and more.
This book brings to mind the suggestion of cultural theorist Stuart Hall (who arrived in Europe from Jamaica in 1951) that we must now look for "routes" rather than roots.
