Going to school

BOOKS are read in so many different ways. Some books make you want to read certain portions again and again; some travel with you wherever you go and some you put next to your pillow when you sleep. But the experience of reading some books remains incomplete till you meet the writer. I had read Sara Aboobacker's Chandragiri Theeradalli in its Tamil translation and the novel remained in my mind for many months and I tried to find out where the writer lived without much success. So when I met her at the National Colloquium organised by Asmita sometime back, it was a pleasant surprise.

Sara Aboobacker is a very unassuming person who does not speak in terms of profundities. She speaks in a simple and direct manner very close to her style of writing Chandragiri Theeradalli. Her novel talking about the life of Nadira, who gets caught in the orthodox interpretation of the Koran and who finally has to drown herself and her sorrows in the Chandragiri river, is a direct narration with no complications in terms of language or structure. The novel deals with the system of triple talaaq and how it ruins the life of a young Muslim girl. It was serialised in Lankesh Patrika in 1982 and later published as a book in 1984. But this simple novel seems to have stirred a hornet's nest in the Muslim community. Initially it was told that the author was a man masquerading as a woman. When it was proved that the author was indeed a woman the tone of the accusation changed. They said she did not know what she was writing about and then came the accusation that she was not an authentic Muslim followed by the comment that she lacked integrity and that she wrote for money. They even stooped to the level of pelting her house with stones and eggs. Sara Aboobacker began to write only at the age of 46 and the response to her writing from her own community must have upset her and at the same time made her take up writing as a challenge. In the colloquium she did speak about wanting to write what women have not been able to speak about for so many years.

The English translation of her book has a note by her at the end entitled "A Muslim Girl Goes to School". This note, so truthfully written with all the pain and sorrows of growing up under a lot of discipline and reconciling to unrealised dreams is a note which deserves to be translated into as many Indian languages as possible. It is a touching note written with no rancour and with a sense of humour but there is a sadness in it which every girl whose life has been controlled and moulded by others will understand and respond to. Beginning with a description of her town Kasaragodu and her family, she talks about her birth in these words:

Into this illustrious family which had grown tired of praying for a girl, I was born at sunrise on the twelfth day of Rabbiyul Avval, the day in the Muslim calendar on which the Prophet Mahammad was born. Only, I was no prophet... My grandfather had six sons. My father was the eldest. My father too had three sons in a row. It was only after my grandfather took a vow that the next child, if it was a girl, would be named Sara, after the name of Hazrat Ibrahim's dear wife, that I was born. When I was a small girl, I often wished my grandfather hadn't taken this vow, for I too could have been born a boy and as carefree as one...

In the paragraphs which follow she explains why she feels this way. She says those days no mother would agree to have her children inoculated. People worried that something may go wrong with the inoculation. When officials of the health department came children were hidden. And yet it was customary in those days to pierce five or six holes in the ear lobes of a Muslim girl. The wounds took two months to heal. And Sara says that those two months were living hell. Those who did not want a child inoculated said nothing about this, for how could a girl wear her gold aliquath at her wedding if she did not have these several holes in her ear lobes? Sara says that for the sake of an unknown bridegroom who would demand gold a girl had to undergo so much of pain even before her wedding. She says that when so many holes were pierced in the ear without even an antiseptic lotion the girls' screams would reach the sky.

Sara's father came to her rescue and saw to it that her ear lobes were not pierced in this fashion. Not only that he dared to send her to a Girls' school nearby and after seven years in that school sent her to a boys' school where her brothers studied. She was the only Muslim girl there but she had no problems. But the people of her community could not accept a girl going to school without purdah or even a scarf on her head. Many snide remarks were passed in her hearing including comments that Islam will not thrive if girls went about like this. But her father and elder brother stood firmly behind her and saw to it that she completed her school studies. But even her father had to deny her certain things. Sara was the best player in the throwball team in her school and yet she could not go out of the town to play with the team in various matches. Once when she pleaded with her father to be allowed to go out of town to play a match he told her firmly,"You are the first Muslim girl in our community to set foot in a school. When just the act of your attending school has raised so many eyebrows, what will people say if you went out of town to play? You must take care not to err in any way. If you do, then no other Muslim girl in this town will ever even glimpse a school...." He also told her that if she became too adamant he may have to stop her schooling. Frustrated with all this discipline Sara decided to give up her studies. But it was her elder brother who persuaded her to continue and not give in to frustration. Her family waited for her to finish her school studies and to write her final exams she had to wage another battle. And finally when she got through with a first class her elder brother who knew that she would not be allowed to study any further asked her with tears in his eyes, "Why did you score so well?"

Sara is not doing any lamenting here. But in a clear language she explains how her life's course was determined by others and how two men with some vision, her father and her brother, could at least help her to do some things other Muslim girls could not. She wishes her dreams to become a doctor could have been fulfilled. And in any case, her father's argument that if she did not "err" in any way, other Muslim girls will be sent to school, did not quite work out according to her. She says that 28 years after her schooling years things have not changed much in this town. Girls who pursue their studies do it outside Kasaragodu. Girls still tend to marry at the age of 14 or 15. A couple of years ago a Muslim girl not only passed her high school exams but got the first rank. But even before the results were out she was with her husband in Dubai.

Set in the context of her life and times, Chandragiri Theeradalli assumes even more importance which is probably why there has been so much of opposition. Male writers like Thopil Mohamadu Meeran who has written some excellent novels centering around the Muslim community in Tamilnadu and who also deals with the problems of women, has not faced any opposition from his own community. In fact, there is much appreciation. Actually, it was with some trepidation that I read the recent news that a Tamil director was going to make a feature film based on Chandragiri Theeradalli. He has said that it would be different from the normal Tamil films. How different one has to wait and see, for this novel could be made into a classic like "Chemmeen" or it could become one of those films which show a glamorous heroine suffer with A.R. Rehman's music in the background. One wishes Sara Aboobacker would have some reservations about film-makers.

C.S. LAKSHMI

C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder- trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Researches on Women).

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