Light from a dark place

'We are in a perpetual quest to find our voice and the courage to express what we really feel.'

Astute yet sensitive, written with elegant style and delicious verve,  the collection of stories by Wajida Tabassum are seductively glorious. Expressing herself within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated society; and staying independent within a tight-knitted family, the stories alone carried her out of a murky hole to a meadow. Breaking free from impoverished and forbidden life, she weaved prose that allowed hushed sadness and repressed emotions to navigate the world without fear. Credit to her ingenuity that didn’t allow social intimidation to get the better of her creative instincts. 

Translated into English for the first time by Pakistani journalist Reema Abbasi, the stellar collection of nineteen short stories set in the old-world aristocratic society capture the entire range of the realities of middle-class compulsions and depravities indulged in by the social elite. Arranged under four sections – Lust, Pride, Greed and Envy – all that is a sin to others ends up as triumph for the protagonist. Holding on to the force of its original rendition, Abbasi has translated the stories with flair and finesse to connect with the dilemmas that continue to confront women in modern times. ‘We are in a perpetual quest to find our voice and the courage to express what we really feel’. Wajida sets her women free to chase their freedom with a stubborn passion. 

Asserting that Sin, like people, has many shades and facets, Wajida had hoped that the stories will be read and remembered as works of literature. Erotic with symbolic details, the women in her stories refuse to be puppets. Bearing subtle resemblance to Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaaf, the Begum revolts against her husbands’s drunken sexual escapades in Hor Uper (Up, Further Up) by appointing a young boy to massage her. Replacing her gharara, a garment stitched between the thighs, with a long skirt called lehenga acts as a symbol of revolt. In Lungi Kurta, another tale wrapped around garments, a new bride exchanges clothes to take revenge on her husband’s betrayal. The stories make a smart, powerful, and very contemporary read that touches on the struggles shaping the very world women live in today.

In her lush and vivid prose, Wajida lets her women shed any threat of censure by the society to take full ownership of their bodies. In doing so, she lets the reader confront the entrenched assumption that women lack courage to radically liberate themselves. Through her own story Meri Kahani, Wajida surprises reader with her rebellious fearlessness while being part of a conservative, demanding household. The consummate erudition is matched only by her creativity, and startling capacity for unfolding emotional layers. She wins deepest admiration for it, while her vulnerability remains heart-breaking at the same time. 

Reema Abbasi

Each of the stories in this anthology capture the power of the subliminal with nuanced precision.  Power play, betrayal, impotence and abandonment run through most of the stories, providing backdrop for the downfall of the nobility. Zaakat (The Alms of Death) and Joothan (Leftovers)  reflect nobility of middle-aged Nawab Jung in poor light, getting a lesson on charity from the poor adolescent girls in the first and an eye-opening message on who survives on whose leftovers in the second story. Considered a jewel of Urdu literature, Wajida demands to be read. 

Told in sharp and evocative style, stories in Sin examine the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be a person. An entrancing page-turner, the stories have just enough to trigger the ultimate implosion. With notable exceptions, Wajida was a woman who did not so much express opinions or emotions, but interrogated both. Reading her for the first time, I can safely say that she was a woman who mattered, very much. Such is the power of her prose that you can’t get her out of your head. 

One of the foremost women writers of her time, Wajida was known for her formidable power of storytelling. First published in the middle of the last century, her bold writing was seen as immoral and scandalous and faced many a public protect. In the league of Chugtai and Manto, Wajida is wonderful at understated sadness presented without a twinge of self-pity. Her stories reflect a tender and enduring portrayal of the difficulties of forging one’s own path after being born and raised in a conservative society. ‘My stories will journey out of their walls when the time is right for me to navigate without fear,’ she would say.

Wajida was not just another writer, prone to the petty delusions but genuinely interested in drilling down into the hardpan of human existence. She didn’t look for approval, and refused to be bullied by what everyone was saying or what everyone believed. She abhorred the kind of thought that forecloses thought. Less said, one may commit sin by not reading Sin.

Sin by Wajida Tabassum, 
translated by Reema Abbasi
Hachette, New Delhi 
Extent: 220, Price: Rs. 499.   

First published in Deccan Herald on April 17, 2022. 

To sin is human, afterall!

To sin is essentially a mind game, and only mindful action can dissuade humans from committing a sin.

The quest for grabbing anything forbidden has been a crucial aspect of human existence; else the apple in the Garden of Eden would have left hanging. The act to sin has stayed on with us ever since. Be it the Christianity’s seven sins or the Hinduism’s five, all efforts to stay away from sins have only brought us closer to committing a sin. Despite a consistent religious and moral battle to stay away from them, there are some unseen forces that tempt us to take a call on them. In a closed society where everybody is guilty of some sin, the only crime seems to be getting caught. Come to think of it, in a world of thieves ‘stupidity’ of getting caught may indeed be on top of all sins! 

It goes to the credit of Saint Gregory who, in the 6th century, enlisted seven deadly sins as pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, envy and wrath, which seem an expanded version of the five Vedic sins – Kama (desire) , Krodh (anger), Moh (lust) , Lobh (greed) and Anhkaar (pride). Irrespective of its religious connotations, these traits have been acknowledged detriments to mental peace, individual prestige and social reputation. Yet, as experience shows, the impulse to indulge in sinful behaviour is so strong that people easily succumb to the forbidden temptations - the mythical apple continues to hang low.    

For aeon ‘why we do the things we know we shouldn’t’ has been a subject of intense religious and philosophical inquiry, however, without any end to the battle between temptation and restraint. Labeling certain human traits as bad behaviour has hardly been a deterrent. Is it because people do not ascribe the same negative value that has been historically assigned to the sin under reference? If that be so, is it the reason for sinful traits to persist or is there more to understanding nature and proliferation of sins than what has been understood till now? 

Jack Lewis, a neuroscientist and a television presenter, gets deeper into examining the origin and societal relevance of sins as viewed through different religious lenses. In last 10 years since attaining a doctorate in neuroscience from University College London, Lewis has focused his attention on making the latest neuroscience research the widest possible audience through print, radio and television. His radio show Secrets of the Brain is currently being aired in 20 countries, and his co-authored book Sort Your Brain Out has gained popularity. In all of his works, Lewis comes out clear that in varying degrees sins are considered major obstacles to peace and enlightenment. Curiously, however, the world has done pretty little to limit the temptations that surround us. Instead, social media, live streaming, and online shopping has spurred greed, gluttony, lust and envy, while reinventing narcissism as the leading new normal behaviour. 

When the term narcissism was coined by Sigmund Freud some 100 years ago, it was with reference to loving or caressing one’s own body to appease one’s romantic partner. Today, it means an obsession with the self that is as much a cause for social pain of rejection as a physical pain of isolation, resulting from an over-inflated sense of self-importance. 

The Science of Sins peeps into the world of seven deadly sins in their many dimensions, both historical and contemporary; to understand the neural battles between temptation and restraint that takes place within our brains. Using the enormous amount of scientific data on the human brain that has accumulated over the years, the book explains how the neural circuitry of the brain is involved not only in tempting us to be sinful, but also how tweaking parts of our brain could help dissuade us from committing a sin. Although medical terminology thrown across makes it a heavy reading narrative, anecdotal reference to real-life stories sustain readers’ interest.

While Lewis uses intriguing scientific facts to explain why committing sin is impulsive, he leaves the reader in the lurch when it comes to getting over it. Acknowledging that there are no magical cures, he nonetheless advocates ways to train brain to resist temptations. Magnetic stimulation and medical interventions can curb pathological behaviour in extreme cases, mindfulness meditation has been found to be an effective way of remodeling various parts of the brain as a steady process. In the world where each of the seven deadly sins has been systematically taken advantage of by the nefarious forces of global commerce, the quest for remaining healthy, happy and productive warrants a serious application of mind.

The essential take away from this well-researched book is that sin is a mind game, and only mindful action can dissuade humans from committing a sin. Assessing each of the seven sins - pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, envy, and wrath - from philosophical and neuroscience perspectives, Lewis lets the reader get a clear sense that only by eliminating inner turmoil and personal suffering can an external sinful stimulus be checked. The Science of Sin falls short of a self-help book as it leaves much for the reader to decide upon. It is nonetheless a book that offers deeper insights on various shades of sins, and how people grapple to reduce their individual vulnerabilities to cope with it. The book concludes that it is not hard to do things we know we shouldn’t, provided we remind ourselves on it frequently.  

The Science of Sin 
by Jack Lewis
Bloomsbury, New Delhi
Extent: 304, Price: Rs 499.

This review was commissioned by the Hindu BusinessLine.