Paperback: 192 pages Zubaan Books (2013) Language: English

US: Amazon

UK: Amazon.co.uk,

PK: Liberty Books, Readings

IN: Zubaan Books, infibeam

Lifelines is a collection of short stories, all by Bangladeshi women, all contemporary and relatively young. Although the stories deal with struggles of identity—the changing roles of women in a modernizing society, alienation and abuse—they are also all grounded, as one of the stories puts it, in “finding love and losing love”. They range from “Yellow Cab” by Srabonti Narmeen Ali, a story about a New York cab driver forced out of his corporate job due to his Muslim identity to “Getting There” by Farah Ghuznavi, where a daughter—a talented architecture student—moves to another city just to escape from the family, and “Pepsi” by Sharbari Ahmed, in which a little girl whose parents aren’t Bangladeshi struggles to make friends as a result. Most, but by no means all, are written from a female perspective.

The collection’s first story, “Teacher Shortage” by Shabnam Nadiya, sets the tone of endless struggle that pervades the book and becomes even more evident as the the chapters progresses. The story paints a picture of a crisis of female identity defined and constrained by cultural constructs prevalent in Bengali society.

The other stories continue this search for identity, and in particular focus on the changing roles of women in different stages of their lives, often contrasted within the same story. From burning of an art sketch book, to tears and bruises on a mother’s face and the disappearance of a close friend, the stories in Lifelines illuminate the duties and roles that the society expects of a woman throughout her life—and the conflicts that inherently arise in a constant search for love and an inevitable loss of love.

“Getting There”, by the collection’s editor Farah Ghuznavi, for example illustrates in a single story a daughter’s rage towards her authoritative dad, sympathy for the miserable life of the obedient sister and helplessness in the face of an abused mom. The successful aunt who returns home to look after her sister’s children for a weekend reminisces after having to deal with the teenage niece that the teen years were “a period that manifested itself in ways similar to a disease rather than a stage of growth.”

But it is not only the search of identity itself that anchors the stories but also the unrelenting yet intriguing journeys taken while resisting society’s uncompromising and authoritative gender-bias, journeys in which women try to break the norms and structures imposed upon them, even to the extent of these becoming actual journeys. Ghuznavi writes in her introduction:

Most of the characters in these pages are making journeys of their own – physical and/or psychological—to reach resolutions that are often unexpected, if not always unwelcome, and transforming themselves in ways which they never anticipated.

And in her story, the daughter reflects:

[moving to Dhaka] was the only way of escaping from the endless questions—the orders, the rebukes, and demands that had defined her childhood and adolescence. Her father had ruled their lives with impunity, her mother reduced to a pale reflection of the man she had married.

The struggle extends even to those who are successful and well-educated. Western settings and references, furthermore, provide non-Bangladeshi readers some familiarity and points of connection. In “Something Fishy” by Sabrina Fatma Ahmad, a talented young law intern expresses her escape from traditional drudgery:

Microwaved dinners may not have had the flavor of home cooking, but at least she was spared an unhappy marriage to the stove, as she saw it.

This feeling of helplessness is particularly poignant in the story “Teacher Shortage”, told through the eyes of a child scrutinizing family abuse and using the child’s perspective of friendship, righteousness and honesty. Only the child speaks up, perhaps because she is too young to have learnt what society expects of her. In addition to providing what will for many be a first taste of contemporary Bangladeshi writing, Lifelines can also serve as an introduction to the social taboos of cultural identity and gender differences in the country and among its people. But the struggles are not unique to Bangladesh. And the open-ended nature of each of these stories leaves room for imagination and allows the reader hope for progress and improvement.

Bianca ChuiThe, 30 July 2013, Asian Review of Books Bianca Chui is a consultant in Hong Kong and has a degree in international relations and gender studies

Reviews

Voices Worth Listening To, The Daily Star

English-Language Literature Finds Its Place in Bangladesh, The Huffington Post