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More reviews by Jaya Banerji
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Brick Lane by Monica Ali
From the moment of her birth in a village hut surrounded by paddyfields in then East Pakistan, Nazneen is left to her fate. Born blue, assumed dead, Nazneen surprises her mother, her aunt, and the old midwife by letting loose a loud howl of life. And still her mother, Rupban, refuses to do anything to aid her recovery. Let fate take its course. If fate decides this child of hers should live, then she would live. If it decides she would die then running with her to a distant hospital and paying for expensive treatment would be in vain. "My child must not waste any energy fighting against fate. That way she will be stronger."
The story of her birth becomes the leitmotif of Nazneen's life. She clings to it and lives by her mother's belief that in all events she must accept the Grace of God for what cannot be changed must be borne. Her younger sister, Hasina, beautiful and wilful, does not bear the burden of this belief. Where Nazneen is fatalistic and stoic, Hasina fights tooth and nail against the adversity that so firmly has her in its grasp. While Nazneen's destiny takes her to Tower Hamlets in London, Hasina's transports her to Dhaka where she struggles to eke out a living.
BRICK LANE is a tenderly wrought story of these two sisters whose destinies take them down different roads in different lands. With compassion and gentle humour, MONICA ALI writes perceptively about the Bengali diaspora in Britain. Whether Muslim or Hindu, Bengalis share a culture that she describes to perfection. She opens a window onto the world of the deracinated and, as a counterpoint, onto the life of those left behind in an impoverished, Islamic homeland. Neither life is easy. In fact sometimes it is downright unbearable. And yet it must be lived. Nazneen treats life "with the same indifference with which it … treats her", until one wonders if she will ever shrug off her passivity. Hasina, on the other hand, warms her life with rays of optimism until one wonders where she finds such infinite strength.
The story of immigrants encompasses almost all of human history. Like migrant Canadian geese flying south for the winter, mankind has been seeking new pastures and safe havens for millennia. The difference is that Canadian geese fly back north to their homelands while immigrants rarely return. Success lies in assimilation: making new homes, settling into new territories, and adapting to new cultures. Failure lies in ghetto-isation and segregation. But sticking with people of your own kind in an unfamiliar environment is a survival technique and makes perfect sense.
At the age of 18, Nazneen finds herself a ghetto, with Chanu, her 40-year old Bangladeshi husband, distanced from British society by her identity as a Muslim woman. Those she left behind consider her lucky. Doesn't she have a proper concrete home with beds and cupboards and armchairs and mirrors and other things that bring happiness and prosperity? Isn't her husband kind and understanding and generous and educated? For all intents and purposes, Nazneen's fate is serving her well. Yet in occasional moments of discontent, she allows herself the indulgence of bitter asides about her cloistered life, her husband's eccentricities, and the strange wisdom of religion. She goes with destiny's flow until the birth of her son, when she decides to take some control, but circumstances sling her back into indifference. Destiny obviously has other plans.
Meanwhile, Hasina continues to be buffeted on the ocean of her destiny, going from one bad patch to another, being rescued and rescuing others. Her life is fraught with disappointments and she writes to her sister about them. Nazneen sends her money whenever she can and dreams of bringing Hasina to London, away from the horrors of her life in Dhaka. She also dreams of skating like Torville and Dean, slicing through ice in a skin-hugging outfit, in the arms of a tall, graceful partner; the sublimation of a growing desire to moult her identity like an old skin and don a new one.
The birth of their girls Shahana and Bibi brings out the Canadian goose in Chanu. He flaps around longing for home, vowing to ultimately return to his golden Bengal, the land of Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. Unaware of Hasina's life long struggle to survive, he sees Bangladesh as a safer, more dignified place for his growing, nubile daughters than the country he has made his home for decades; a country that hasn't recognised his true worth, nor rewarded his years of constant service, and thus doesn't deserve his allegiance.
The story doesn't lose momentum at this point, but somehow gathers it. Chanu makes all the right moves to go back, lock, stock and daughters, but he hasn't taken into account the obdurate Shahana, and ignores at his peril the rumbles of discontent he senses in his wife. In a brilliant dénouement, Nazneen takes control with a quiet pronouncement that has the same effect as the yowl she let out when she was left for dead at birth -- the right to life. The book ends on a high note as the main protagonist is born again.
It is no wonder that MONICA ALI has been nominated one of Granta's Young British Novelists for 2003. She has spun magic with the elan of an empathetic writer, creating the sounds, smells and sights of life as a Bengali. As part Bengali myself, I recognized familiar traits in the cameo characters that pepper the book -- from eccentricity, ego and hypocrisy, to tenderness, self-sacrifice and sensuality. Ali has caught the nuances of subliminal, sub-continental, marital strife, Chanu's arrogance and hubris, and Nazneen's timidity, fatalism, and increasing forays into self-determination. And she paints a memorable portrait of the growing rebellion among second generation Bangladeshi Brits struggling with their identity, as do immigrants the world over.
BRICK LANE is a confection, a delicious, mille feuilles of a book, layers upon layers to be read, savoured, and digested at leisure, then shared with friends.
Jaya Banerji
26/09/2003
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Jaya Banerji is a writer, loves to read, and currently works with an international humanitarian organization in Switzerland. |
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