There is a game that I've known young girls across countries to play. It goes by several names; mummy-daddy, family or house. In some cultures, this game is met with apprehension, an apprehension rooted in the belief that children are not sexual beings. If one were to consider the converse, it isn't merely a matter of freudian infantile sexuality but what one means by the term children. The idea of a child inherently assumes a discontinuous mental and emotional growth. Ismat Chughtai looks at gr

There is a game that I've known young girls across countries to play. It goes by several names; mummy-daddy, family or house. In some cultures, this game is met with apprehension, an apprehension rooted in the belief that children are not sexual beings. If one were to consider the converse, it isn't merely a matter of freudian infantile sexuality but what one means by the term children. The idea of a child inherently assumes a discontinuous mental and emotional growth. Ismat Chughtai looks at growth as a gradual process and how it is smothered by the refusal to acknowledge the minute but visible changes in a 'child', with Gainda.



She also looks at the dark side. The sexual exploitation of a child in the title story, The Quilt. The subject is treated in the form it is most important to acknowledge, the misuse of power that adults hold over children. The invasion of a child's privacy by pinch of her thighs or forcing him to sit on one's lap when he doesn't want to. The invader being family. The unknown pedophiles is what parents fear, but it is these transgressions that go unnoticed, buried by children due to a fear that takes its hold when we refuse to let our children's true thoughts be heard.



The sense of protection that we envelope children with, contrary to expectation, doesn't flare up with the vulnerable of the society. The rights of the illegitimate, orphans, outcasts and disabled are deemed unworthy to be discussed by most, so Ismat Chughtai discusses it for us. With The Mole and The Homemaker, she explores the neglected side of the orphaned young women who have use whatever leeway their social status provides, to notch up the quality existence.



My favourite story in this collection was all alone. A story about a woman born into a forward, privileged background, ambitious by nature but muzzled emotionally by both her circumstances and her own fears. This, along with a few others, speak about the loss created by the partition. The kind of loss that comes not from brushing against death but from the awareness that one is constantly vulnerable to it.



The stories that didn't impress me were due to a strong emotional reaction, more than a reading of the story. They featured characters with a mad temper. The venom spewing, bile rising, hysterical kind of anger that swallows any possibility of sense in a conversation or even in thought. Yet, it was accurate to the extent that I wanted to throw the book away sometimes. When a book moves me, it feels like catharsis but with Chughtai's stories it felt like a build up.



Chughtai's writing felt uneven across her stories. Some were flat, a chronology of events, others were impassioned and poetic. The chapter in history she wrote about gave her a purpose different from polishing her art. She assumed the role of a writer who says not what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. In that context, she still remains valid as ever.



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May 9, 2015