The little piece of life

Aisha Sarwari debut is a patterned, protean narrative that is tragic, painful and yet inspiring. It astonishes and overwhelms.

Heart Tantrums, an exceptional memoir, is both a story of lived reality and a meditation on grief, isolation, and consolation, evoking the profundities of human endurance amidst adversities. The degree of difficulty in writing a book of this sort – with its characters still fluttering in the open – must have been hugely challenging and disruptive. But a life that continuously oscillates between being a good girl and a bad woman, disruption has been at the core of the life lived. Deliriously inventive and viscerally moving, Aisha Sarwari debut is a patterned, protean narrative that is tragic, painful and yet inspiring. It is a beautiful, worded memoir that astonishes and overwhelms.

This is the memoir of an immigrant girl who considers her teen years to be the worst in the universe, as she didn’t get the desired emotional protection of her ami (mother) when she deserved it the most. The twists and travails of her momentous journey transformed a socially and physically battered young woman into a formidable feminist voice in Pakistan. The protagonist endured systematic family oppression all through, her husband’s contribution being a broken tooth, broken jaw, and broken hip. Confused and anguished at her condition, she instead steers away to stay sane, stay employed, and stay a mom to two beautiful girls. Forgiveness remains her stellar character. 

Heart Tantrums is a moving, immersive and nuanced portrait of a tight-knit social world whose ill-perceived values promote oppressive behavior from its dominant constituents. Such behaviors are gendered from an early age, young girls are made to clench their urethral sphincter so that their pee doesn’t generate loud noise; taught to walk noiselessly without dragging their feet, told to avoid loud gulp when drinking water; and farts were wholly taboo. Forced to settle into strict a gender role, women are made to play performance monkeys. The book rejects the idea that gendered role and domestic servitude can save the day. 

In this multilayered memoir, Aisha reconstructs her world piece by piece to showcase its glaring cracks and deep crevices. ‘I was deeply unsafe in my own home, away from my family and very coercively controlled in my day-to-day life’. Much of what she experienced in life not only settled in her milk teeth but revealed in her permanent teeth as well.  Pain ought to be fought through with more teeth, she declares, else victimhood becomes a dwelling. All she wanted was to be wanted without being needed, being happy in her own terms and because of herself as an individual. One might wonder if a perceptive and aspiring person is seeking more than her genuine share of identity from the society? 

Aisha comes out as a writer who uses power of words to narrate vicissitudes of her life – on losing her father at an early age in Uganda; compromising freedom under an extended household in Kenya; and. trying to fit into a completely different culture in Pakistan. On top, the trauma of losing a man she loved to a personality-altering brain tumor was overwhelming. It is an honest, but haunting memoir for the immediate family members. But all that the writer is asking of them is to try again because life isn’t as perfect as a movie. 

Heart Tantrums is a beautifully crafted memoir, worth reading for the manner in which it is narrated with honesty, clarity, and purpose. Such is the power of the narrative that somewhere in her world of hits and misses, there remains a small opening for everyone to reflect upon. At the end of the day, there are more questions in real life than shinily packaged answers. Struggle is supposed to build character.

Heart Tantrums
by Aisha Sarwari
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 479, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in Deccan Herald on Oct 29, 2023.

The new metaphor of life

Farming is no bed of roses; comprehending weather vagaries, understanding crop rotations, learning cow milking, and dealing with rural eccentricity makes it more challenging than punching keyboards in air-conditioned cubicles.

Midway through this racy narrative, one pauses to wonder what the fuss is all about being a farmer’s wife. In these troubling times when farmers are in the news for all the wrong reasons, no woman in her wildest dream would imagine being a farmer’s wife. Neither did she, a working mother of three hyper-active kids, whose life twirls between the extremes of managing a dreary boss fixated on selling chunking-looking tabs to the kids to a surefire husband in pursuit of creating a steady supply of organic milk from his own farm. Between these extremes lies a life which is as ordinary as it could be, and as exclusive as she has made it look like. 

Part memoir and part fiction, How I became a Farmer’s Wife reflects an unending quest for change from the urbane life laced with repetitive conditioning. Outwardly everything may look calm; it is the turmoil deep down that disturbs life’s rhythms. Metaphorically, it is akin to the tea cup which seems normal on the surface, but for the soggy biscuit bits which lump disgustingly at the bottom to destroy the tea-drinking experience. The comfortable steel-and-chrome high-rises of Gurugram are like the tea cup, with its soggy posse of challenges.  

Within the familiar off-beat tales of techies quitting their high-paying jobs, this story is about the coming to life of Vijay who only a few months ago was slump-shouldered and resigned to his daily routine. That he found a new meaning of life in cows and crops is only part of the breezy narrative, his better half finds comfort in yoga as she unwillingly pursues a corporate career to help him with his dream is the second part. Only one sacrifice in the real world will suffice. 

Running on two parallel tracks, the tongue-in-cheek narrative is about de-stressing life as the leitmotif of urban existence. ‘Why don’t you take up yoga again, you seemed to feel a little better at that time’ is a subtle advice to the lady of the house to keep cool while the budding farmer gains roots in the startling unfamiliar territory. With an incredible knack of story-telling, Yash captures the microcosm of change sweeping the household amidst its daily ordeal. Capturing delicate moments, cheeky encounters, and weird incidents, she lets the writer in her take control of expressing what it takes to be a farmer’s wife. 

With the choice thrust on her, there is little that Yash could do but float in Vijay’s dream world of fresh milk and organic gobhi. The list of items coming out of the leased farm did grow in the dream sequence, but it was only milk which started flowing with some packs of organic veggie tossed in. Getting into farming was an on-the job-exposure that the entire family was forced into. Away from tabs, the weekly visits to the farm were engaging experiences for kids. Choosing nature over technology, the kids learnt to be empathetic towards puppies, cows and the crows. 

Amidst the unending efforts of getting the city out of her, the lingua franca of farming weighed heavy on her and the kids. While jatropha sounded like Jethro Tull to her, the kids took a fancy at savoring some dung cakes. Nonetheless, prodigious vocabulary and distinctive techniques turned farming into an engaging and entertaining vocation for everybody. Despite her initial reservation, Yash soon discovered similarities in tending cows and mending kids. Her sympathy for Vijay translated into an unconditional support to let him be a farmer, and she a farmer’s wife. 

Written with wit, humor, flair and purpose, How I became a Farmer’s Wife chronicles the mid-career crises that most discerning techies often go through. After all, there is a limit to which urbanscape comforts can comfort these upward mobile couples. But farming is no bed of roses either; comprehending weather vagaries, understanding crop rotations, learning cow milking, and dealing with rural eccentricity makes it more challenging than punching keyboards in air-conditioned cubicles. Not only challenging, the transition could fall short of expectations too. 

Towards the latter half of the story, Yash realizes that success is more than just winning the race. Even if the transition didn’t go the full circle, it did create a farmer in Vijay and converted Yash to accept herself as a farmer’s wife. The passion he exuded and the freedom he acquired had lifted the morale of the entire family. As the couple rode out of the farm for the last time, Yash felt an incredible sense of freedom and a distinct sense of connection with the man whose waist she hung on to for dear life. Finally, the parallel tracks had begun to merge. Freedom comes at a price, only if one is willing to pay for. 

How I became a farmer’s wife
by Yashodhara Lal
Harper Collins, New Delhi
Extent: 318, Price: Rs. 250

First published in the Hindustan Times on June 8, 2018