When silence is not golden

If you hear someone say something bigoted, speak up!

Sitting down to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with another couple (social acquaintances rather than old friends) a month or so ago, I was looking forward to the Peking duck with all the trimmings. But even as the mains were served the conversation took an unexpected turn.

My female dinner companion and I were discussing our favourite walks in Delhi. After we had finished rhapsodizing about Lodi Gardens, I happened to mention how beautiful the sunsets on Marine Drive were. The lady, who had just returned from a visit to Mumbai, interrupted me to say, “Oh, I didn’t like that area at all. Too many ‘M’s, with their burqas and all. I don’t know where they’ve come from, so many of them!”

I was, quite literally, struck dumb, my feelings a weird jumble of acute embarrassment (for her as much as for me), shock that anyone could say such bigoted stuff without any shame whatsoever, consternation that she thought that I would be receptive to such communal poison, sadness that we had come to such a pass that nobody thought twice of saying such things in public, and anger that I had failed to see this woman for what she was in all the years I had known her.

Swimming in the maelstrom of emotions that her throwaway remark had aroused, I failed to find the words to indicate my horror and disgust at her casual communalism. By the time I had recovered my ability to speak, the conversation had moved on. But for the rest of the dinner, I sat in silence, mulling over the many ways I could – and should – have responded to her. But to my eternal shame, instead of harking back to the topic (the ‘M’s of her story), I stayed mute until it was time to say goodbye.

On the ride back home, my husband asked if I was feeling well. It was not like me to stay so quiet through the evening. I explained to him what had happened to make me so dumbstruck. And how much I now hated myself for not saying anything when confronted with such open bigotry.

Of course, we both decided that we would never see that particular couple again. But the incident got me thinking. What is the best way of dealing with people who have no compunction about openly expressing their bigotry in polite conversation?

Well, first off, silence is not an option. No matter how embarrassing it may be for you and others in the group, blatant bigotry should not go unchallenged.

At my dinner, for instance, I should have pushed back. What do you mean by ‘M’s? Do you mean ‘Muslims’? What’s wrong with saying ‘Muslim’ in that case? What is the problem if the women are in burqas? Why does that make you feel so threatened? As for where they have come from, they have been living in Mumbai for generations, unlike you, who’s just visiting!

Would it have made for an uncomfortable evening? Of course. Would it have resulted in the end of a beautiful (I’m kidding) relationship? Without a doubt. But I wouldn’t be friends with such people for all the money in the world anyway, so that was a moot point.

I know that this is easier said than done. Most of us have been brought up to be polite when in company, to make diplomatic noises when someone says something unpleasant, to try and smooth over tricky bits of conversation rather than speak home truths. Our instinct, then, is to gloss over bigoted comments, dismissing them out of hand or pretending that we never heard them in the first place. We make peace with our craven failure to engage by telling ourselves that we would never change these people’s minds in any case. So, why bother arguing with them; much better not to talk to them at all.

I can see the attraction of that approach. Not only does it make for an easier life, you can also virtue-signal to the rest of the world that you have no time for bigots and communalists.

But when we retire to the comfort zone of our own echo chambers, leaving our bigoted brethren to spew what communal poison they wish in their own sphere of influence, we contribute to making the world a much worse place with our silence. We may not be directly responsible for the bigotry that is taking over our civil society, but we are certainly complicit in its spread because of our decision to disengage.

So, I for one, have made a pledge. If I hear anyone say anything bigoted and communal – whether in real life or in the online space – I am going to step forward and say something. I am going to push back. I am going to make it clear that such views are unacceptable in a civilized society, and that those who hold them are beyond the pale. I am going to try my best to shame these people.

Silence is no longer an option. Not for me, at least. And, I do hope, it won’t be your choice either.

  

The Ex Files

How to stay friends – or at the very least, civil – after you break up

As I sit down to write this column, social media – and Pakistani TV – is awash with coverage of Reham Khan’s tell-all book about her life and short-lived marriage to Imran Khan. The book is yet to be published but even before its release, cricketer Waseem Akram (among others) has filed suit against it. And Imran Khan’s first wife, Jemima Goldsmith, has threatened that if the book is published in the UK she will sue for defamation on behalf of her son.

I don’t know how the story will have developed by the time you read this, but it doesn’t really matter. This column may have been triggered by one bitter ex-wife wrecking revenge on her ex-husband by dishing the dirt on him (allegedly, I hasten to add, I haven’t seen the book myself) but it is really about how you can prevent your ex (wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend) from going all bunny boiler on you.

Success is, by no means, guaranteed. But if you follow these simple rules, you will at least, have the satisfaction of knowing that you tried your best.

·       Get closure: Don’t just ‘ghost’ people once you’ve decided to excise them from your life. As in, don’t close all doors of communication and have nothing further to do with them. Accord them the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting in which you have an honest conversation about your relationship before it ends. Yes, it may get teary. It may get acrimonious. It may even get violent. But you owe it to the other person to let them have their say. And you owe it to yourself to listen.

·       Cooling-off period: Rare is the couple – married or otherwise – who can go seamlessly from being a romantic pair to becoming really good friends. No matter who broke off with whom and why, residual feelings always linger after a long and meaningful relationship. There’s wisdom in acknowledging that and allowing one another space to grow apart before you try and come to a new accommodation – if that is, in fact, what both of you want.

·       Stop re-litigating the past: If you have managed to re-establish a friendship, then stay focused on the present and the future. Stop looking back to see where you went wrong. Don’t fight about who did what to whom when you were together as a couple. Draw a line in the sand and stay on the right side of it.

·       Don’t presume on old bonds: Once you have moved on, stay in the new space that you have found. Don’t revert to old habits just because your ex is still in the vicinity or part of your extended group of friends. It is not his or her job to pick you up because you’ve had too much to drink. And nor is it your job to clean up their messes just because that’s something you always did when you were together. You are in a different space now. And the rules must be different.

·       Don’t bad mouth one another: I know, this one is hard. Its human instinct to vent when you are unhappy. And when you are angry with your partner, the temptation to slag them off to anyone who will listen is hard to resist. But resist it you must. If that seems impossible in the immediate aftermath of your break-up then set a deadline for yourself. Give yourself a week, a month, or even a couple of months to get all that bile out of your system. And then shut the hell up. Going on and on about them after all that time is just allowing them to live in your head for free. You don’t want to do that.

·       Respect their new relationships: Nobody expects you to become best friends with your ex’s new partner (least of all your ex!) but a little civility goes a long way when you’re dealing with your replacement. So say hello, be pleasant, maybe even pay him/her a compliment on their taste! But whatever else you do, don’t perform that old do-you-remember-when dance with your ex while their new partner listens in, feeling increasingly awkward with each new anecdote.

·       Don’t drag the kids into your battles: If you share children, then you are going to be stuck with your co-parent for the rest of your life, no matter what. So, whatever your problems with your ex-husband or ex-wife may be, keep them to yourselves. Your children love both of you. And they need both of you. Trying to turn them against either mom or dad is just setting them up for therapy for the rest of their lives.

·       Try and remember the good: When a relationship ends, it’s human nature to focus on its last, dying gasps. But when we do that, we forget the promise of love and romance with which it all began. So, when you are being split apart, throw your mind back to what brought you together. That may encourage you to be more loving and respectful of your partner even as you separate. And who knows, in time, it may even bring you back together as friends.

Do not disturb

We all need some me-time to get through the day; don’t apologize for it

The hours of two to four in the afternoon were sacrosanct in my childhood home, ever since I can remember. The moment the clock struck two, my mother – having finished the lunch shift in the kitchen – would retire to her bedroom and shut the door on the world. She would emerge from her siesta at 4 pm sharp, to get tea and snacks for the whole household.

But for those two hours, she was not available for anyone or anything. That was her time. And all of us kids – and the adults – understood full well that to knock on her door during this period for any reason whatsoever would bring the wrath of the Gods upon our heads.

As a child, I lived for this interlude in the day. This was the time that I could sneak out with my neighbourhood friends for a bit of rough and tumble. And so long as I got myself back home at five minutes to four, all would be well. No matter what misadventures I got up to, my mom would be none the wiser.

So as far as I was concerned, this two-hour hiatus was the highlight of the day, when I could roam unsupervised, read books that I had expressly been forbidden from touching, and generally get up to no good at all.

It’s only now that I am all grown-up and my mother has departed from this world that I think back on how precious that time must have been for her.

This was a woman who looked after a large joint family with minimal help. She cooked three meals for the household everyday (and separate food for my grandmother, who did not eat onions or garlic). She looked after two ageing in-laws, one husband, and three kids. She ironed our uniforms, got our school lunches ready, and made sure that we had done our homework. She woke early in the morning to get us off to school and then stayed up late making us strong cups of tea so that we could study late into the night.

But in the course of each mad, maddening day, she had the good sense to carve out a moment of time for herself. To this day, I don’t know what she did during those two hours. Did she have a little nap to refresh herself for the rigors of evening kitchen duty? Did she use this time to catch up on her reading? Did she sit cross-legged on the floor and meditate? Or did she do all of this – and more? I simply don’t know.

The only thing that is clear to me, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was those two hours that enabled my mother to get through the rest of the day, where she did not have a minute to call her own. It was that tiny interlude of peace and solitude that allowed her to retain her sanity. It was that breather that gave her a second wind to carry her through to the night. It was that me-time, or as some like to call it, alone-time, that gave a still point to her ever-spinning day.

Even without realizing it, I have incorporated that same habit into my own life. Just like my mother, I crave a few hours of solitude during the day, when I can be alone with my thoughts, maybe catch up on my reading, or just go for walk and empty my mind of all the clutter and white noise of modern life.

Unlike my mother, I don’t have fixed hours in the day to do that. But then, unlike her, I don’t have the demands of in-laws or a brood of children to contend with, and nor do I have an extended family to build my schedule around. Working for myself, as I do, I have the flexibility to steal a few hours out of every day for myself alone. And it is that luxury of me-time that allows me to get through even the most stressful of days without feeling overwhelmed.

No matter how hectic the day has been, if I can steal an hour at bedtime to read a few chapters of a good book, I go to sleep quite content with my lot. Even if I have a writing deadline weighing on me (in fact, especially when I have a writing deadline weighing one me), I still take the time to step away from my desk and go for a walk. And unlike my mother – who cooked so much and so often that it turned into a chore – I often end a long day by cooking a meal for my husband and myself, the gentle rhythm of chopping and stirring serving as my own kind of meditation. 

Whenever I do that, I find my thoughts straying back to my mother and her two to four pm ‘siesta’. No matter how mad the whirl of life got, she knew that she needed that time to make herself whole. And she took that time for herself, without apology, without explanation, and without the slightest trace of shame.

How I wish more women followed her lead, practicing self-care with the same patience and affection that they bestow on the care of others. Not only would they be happier for it, but so would their families.

An Inconvenient Woman

The life and death of Qandeel Baloch

“How I’m looking?” That’s the question Qandeel Baloch asked in her first viral video, writhing sexily as she pouted for the camera. Pakistan duly clicked on the link and didn’t quite like what it saw. Scratch that. They hated it. But even as the outrage flowed and the abuse got more graphic, “How I’m looking” became a catchphrase in that country, and Qandeel became a bonafide social media star – albeit one that everyone loved to hate (or so they claimed, at any rate).

Sanam Maher, a Karachi-based journalist, tells the improbable tale of this unexpected breakout star in The Sensational Life & Death of Qandeel Baloch. The book begins with the death of Qandeel, and the media frenzy that followed. And then traces her journey from her impoverished life in a small village near Multan, to a doomed first marriage at 17 (which resulted in the birth of a son, whom she abandoned), a disastrous appearance on Pakistan Idol, to the hard-scrabble existence she led as she tried to establish herself in the ‘glamour’ business, and finally, to her short-lived triumph when she became an international star.

It was not an easy haul, by any standards. Pakistan, a conservative, hide-bound society that swears by Islamic mores of propriety and modesty, had never seen anyone quite like Qandeel Baloch. There had never been a woman who had no compunctions about doing a ‘strip-tease’ for the Pakistani cricket team to encourage the players to win in a match against India (she promised to go the whole hog for Shahid Afridi if he managed to beat India). Nobody had ever posed in a skimpy outfit and sent out a video message proposing marriage to Imran Khan. Or, for that matter, released pictures of herself with a respected Islamic cleric which seemed to suggest that the two of them had got up to no good in a hotel room.

So, as is usual in such circumstances, Qandeel was dismissed as a ‘whore’, a loose woman who was bringing shame on her family, her country, her religion. She was forced off Facebook (briefly) after a concerted campaign to paint her as a blot on Pakistan. She was threatened with rape and murder. And she was inundated with abuse every single day of her life.

The only problem was that Qandeel declined to play along with this narrative. She refused to be shamed. She refused to apologize for the way she looked, the way she dressed, the things she said, or the videos she released. She was a woman who owned her own story; a woman who was comfortable in her own skin; a woman courageous enough to live the life she had created for herself.

In many other countries, she may well have gotten away with it. Sexy videos, revealing outfits, and outrageous statements are the staple of ‘social media stars’ all over the world. As Qandeel admitted in an appearance on a Pakistani TV show, she was ‘inspired’ by such Indian women as Poonam Pandey, Rakhi Sawant and Sunny Leone. And she was routinely described as the ‘Kim Kardashian of Pakistan’ in both local and international media.

But while all Poonam Pandey and Rakhi Sawant had to contend with was being the butt of cruel jokes in India, Qandeel had to deal with actual hatred and contempt, not just from Pakistani society and media, but also her own brothers, one of whom ended up killing her for the family ‘honour’. While Sunny Leone could follow up a porn career in America by forging a new mainstream avatar in Bollywood, Qandeel was doomed to being dismissed as a ‘beghairat aurat’, a woman with no honour, forever beyond the pale of polite society.

It is tempting to speculate what Qandeel Baloch’s fate would have been if she was born in India rather than Pakistan. Would she still be alive today, putting up risible videos on Youtube, clocking up millions of likes, even as people laughed at her rather than with her? Would she have achieved mainstream stardom if she had fulfilled her ambition of starring in Bigg Boss? Would she have become the new Sunny Leone in our lives and on our screens?

But this is not a story about India. It is a story about Pakistan, and Maher tells it with journalistic rigor and creative flair, pulling together several strands with deceptive ease.

And like all good writers, Maher doesn’t restrict herself to telling the tale of the transformation of a young girl who was born Fouzia Azeem but turned herself into Qandeel Baloch. Instead, she uses the prism of Qandeel’s transmogrification to tell the story of a slice of Pakistan itself, through the medium of different characters.

There’s Khushi Khan, a model coordinator in Islamabad whose family lost everything in the 2005 earthquake, and who had scrambled to make a living ever since, dealing bravely with all the misogyny and sexism she encounters along the way. There’s Nighat Dad, the founder of Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) based in Lahore, which helps women deal with cyber harassment. And then, there’s the handsome ‘chaiwallah’, Arshad Khan, whose picture, taken at his humble tea stall, goes viral and changes his life.

But shining through all these stories is the shimmering figure of Qandeel Baloch, the quicksilver star who burnt all too briefly before being snuffed out for being far too bright.

  

What's in a name?

If Sonam Kapoor wants to adopt the Ahuja surname, it is nobody’s business but her own

Question: Why did Sonam Kapoor change her name to Sonam Kapoor Ahuja after she got married?

There is only one correct answer to that question: because she wanted to.

She wants to be known as Sonam Kapoor Ahuja from now on. And it is not our business to second-guess her or to offer helpful (I jest, of course) commentary on how her decision is a strike against gender equality and an obsequious nod to the patriarchy. Nor do we need fulminating think pieces on how this one decision to take her husband’s name and add it to her own somehow disqualifies Sonam from being a feminist – and is, in fact, a betrayal of the feminist causes she espoused all along.

For one thing, the name that we describe as Sonam’s own, the one she gave up in favour of her husband’s, is also the gift of another man: her father, Anil Kapoor. So, how would keeping it strike a blow against the patriarchy, when the name – quite literally – was bestowed upon her by the patriarch?

Can you see the logic in that convoluted piece of reasoning? No, me neither.

Whether you stick with the surname of your father or take your husband’s, it is still a man’s name you are sticking next to your own. So, why should one be a feminist choice and the other a kick in the rear of the feminist movement?

The short answer is that none of this matters – or more correctly, none of this should matter. If we all agree – and I hope we do – that feminism is about the freedom to make your own life decisions, to choose freely how you want to live your life, and yes, to make up your own mind how you wish to be styled, then every woman is entitled to make the choice that feels right for her. And even if you don’t agree with that choice, it is not for you or anyone else to shame her for it. That is not how a sisterhood works.

In fact, the last thing women need as they go about negotiating a tough world is to have the burden of prescriptive feminism placed on their already overburdened shoulders. We have quite enough on our plates without having a heavily annotated to-do and please-don’t list thrust down our throats as well.

And frankly, when you think about it, how is this prescriptive feminism any different from the demands that the patriarchy places upon us? Just as it was disempowering when women were forced to take on the names of their husband the moment they married, it is equally infantilizing to insist that they must stick with their birth names even if they don’t want to – on pain of having their feminist credentials cancelled by the Surname Police.

In that sense, there is no difference between the patriarchy and prescriptive feminism. Both of them want to dictate how we should live our lives, how we should behave, what we should and should not do, to fall within accepted parameters of approved behavior. So, why should we seek to cast off the bonds of one only to accept the constraints of the other?

If you ask me, we should refuse to acquiesce to the demands of both and live our lives just as we want to. And call ourselves whatever we damn well please. If we want to stick with our maiden names (as they are still rather quaintly called) then we should do so. If we want to be known by our married names, then we are free to do. In neither case, do we owe any explanations or justifications to anyone else.

There may be a dozen different reasons why women choose to stick with their father’s surname: they like the way it sounds; they already have a flourishing career in which they are known by that name; they don’t want to change their bylines or brand names; they don’t want the whole palaver of changing passports, Aadhar cards, bank accounts, Pan numbers and what have you.

And there are plenty of different reasons why women choose to adopt the surname of their husband. They may do it in the first initial flush of romantic love. Once they have children they may want the whole family unit to have the same name (this is also for practical reasons, as any woman who has gone through passport control with a young child who has a different surname than her own can tell you). Some of them may drop their own surnames altogether. Others may chose to hyphenate them with their husband’s.

It really depends on the woman in question and what she thinks works best for her. And that is exactly how it should be.

Which is why I refuse to join the Brigade of Outraged Feminists attacking Sonam Kapoor Ahuja with brickbats and pitchforks because she chose to change her name. She could style herself as Princess Consuela Bananahammock for all I care. It’s her life. It’s her decision. It’s her choice. It’s her name.

And it is nobody’s business but her own.

  

Baby blues

For all those new moms feeling inadequate when they measure themselves against Amazing Kate, I have one word of advice: Don’t

Did you happen to catch a glimpse of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (aka Kate Middleton), as she emerged from the hospital, having given birth to her third child? Wearing a bright red dress with a white lace collar (a homage to her mother-in-law apparently; it turns out that Diana, Princess of Wales, had worn a similar outfit when she left the hospital after having Prince Harry), Catherine held her baby boy in her arms, proud husband William by her side, and smiled and waved for the media assembled to record this moment. Her make-up was immaculate, her hair blow-dried to perfection. She wore glossy tights and – get this! – had her trademark nude stilettoes on as she sashayed out a mere seven hours after giving birth. 

Yes, you read that right. Seven hours after pushing an eight pound seven ounces human out of her body, the Duchess was ready for her photo-call, smiling and waving, and then smiling and waving some more. The only sign she had ever been pregnant was the little bump protruding through her Jenny Packham custom-made dress. But other than that, Catherine looked perfect. No swollen ankles. No back fat. No big bum. In fact, seeing her look as svelte as ever, an unworthy thought popped up in my head: Did she have a baby or a burger?

Well, she had a baby all right. Though you wouldn’t have thought it to look at her. But there were plenty of new moms online who weren’t having this bit of post-partum perfection stuck in their faces. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNearney, who also had a baby recently, posted a picture of a radiantly smiling Catherine and William, tweeting alongside, “Let’s keep this real for the moms. The Duchess is wearing a diaper.” 

Molly was not the only one trying to inject a dose of reality into the proceedings. Social media was awash with pictures posted by women of how they looked hours after they had their babies. Suffice it to say, the contrast with the fragrant Duchess was rather stark. These ladies looked beautiful no doubt, with the first flush of motherhood lighting up their faces. But they also looked like they were just surfacing from a pool of pain and exhaustion. Not what anyone would think about if they saw Kate waving serenely from the doorstep of the Lindo Wing seven hours after giving birth (did I mention it was just seven hours after?).

But those comparisons didn’t exactly make sense. Catherine, a fitness freak, remained remarkably slim (except for the neat little baby bump) throughout her pregnancy. She had a natural birth and a short labour. This was her third child so she had the routine down pat. She had a dedicated team of hair and make-up people who whizzed in even as she bonding with her new-born son to perform those magic tricks on her. But even so, there was something impressive about her ‘jolly hockey sticks’ approach to new motherhood, popping out the baby, and then popping out looking all rested and ready for her close-up.

Looking at her as she performed for the cameras, though, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the Duchess. The other women who gave birth in that hospital could spend time tucked away in a post-birth haze with their families and not worry about the world outside. They could just slip into a tracksuit or a pair of baggy jeans and a T-shirt when it was time to take their baby home. They didn’t need to bother to put on a full face of make-up or have their hair blow-dried. And they didn’t need to run the gauntlet of the international media just to take their baby back home.

Yes, Catherine did make it all look rather easy. In at 6 am with labour pains. Baby out at 11 am. Hair and make-up at 4 pm. Out of the hospital at 6 pm for a photo-call with baby and husband. Back at home by 6.30 pm. It was all in a day’s work for the Duchess. 

Maybe she really is the Superwoman she appears to be. And none of this is even remotely challenging for her. But I do feel for the other new mums who are watching and wondering just how this is possible. How is that they can barely make it to the shower on their own, while Catherine is half-way to Kensington Palace? Why do they look like they went ten rounds with Mike Tyson, while she looks as if she spent a couple of hours at a spa? 

Well, all I can tell these ladies is: just admire the woman for what she is (or at least appears to be; for all you know, she is gnashing her teeth behind that smile until she gets out of range of those cameras) and don’t set yourself up in comparison with her. She is the future Queen of England. She has all the help in the world to look like a million bucks even when she is still hurting from giving birth.

The only thing you have in common with her is that you both have new babies. Just rejoice in that fact. Breathe in the scent of your new-born. Cuddle him/her as if your life depended on it. Stuff your face with cake to celebrate. And yes, keep those diapers handy – both for the baby and for you!

Summer Reading

Now that you have some time off, here’s a list of books to keep you entertained

This is the time of year when newspapers and magazines like to recommend what they coyly term ‘beach reads’. As in fluffy, wispy books that don’t demand much of you, so you can idly read them as you drink up another Mojito or Pina Colada by the sea or poolside.

Well, the books that I am about to recommend for your summer reading are nothing like that. No, no, don’t be scared. They are not thick, dense tomes that will leave you bored or just depressed. Not at all. These are books that tell a cracking good story, that will keep you entertained and engaged until the last page, and will go perfectly well with whatever sugary drink you choose to drink as you dry off after a swim. So, read on – and then read up. And have a great summer break!

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

Yes, you’re quite right. The Only Story (worth telling) is a story about love. More specifically, it is about a May-December romance between Susan, a woman of 48 and Paul, a boy of 19, related in retrospect by the old man he becomes. The first section is related in the first person by Paul. In the second section, the narration shifts to the second person as things begin to unravel. And the third and final section segues effortlessly into third person as Paul looks back on life. As a study of young love, it is heartbreakingly accurate. As a memoir, it is unbearably poignant. And as a novel, it is quite brilliant. But then, you would expect nothing less from Julian Barnes.

Lullaby by Leila Slimani

If you are a parent of young children, you might find that this gory tale of a nanny who snaps and kills her young charges (no, that doesn’t merit a spoiler alert, the fate of those two kids is apparent from the start) cuts a little close to the bone. But if you can power through, you will be rewarded by a book that is a work of dark beauty, with the slow breakdown of the nanny – and the events that contribute to it – laid out in excruciating detail. It makes for difficult reading sometimes, but who said good literature has to be easy?

Tangerine by Christine Mangan

The best way to describe this book is as a re-fashioning of Patricia’s Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley with an all-female lead cast, as seen through the camera lens of Alfred Hitchcock. The novel is set in Tangiers (hence the title, Tangerine) that serves as the location of a reunion of two college mates. Alice Shipley is the young wife living there with her husband, when her old friend Lucy Mason (with whom she had a messy falling out) drops in unannounced. The story is told in the alternating voices of Alice and Lucy, neither of whom is an entirely reliable narrator. That sets up the shifting sands on which this novel rests, leaving the reader bewildered and enthralled in turn. 

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

As debut novels go, this one is unexpectedly assured, pulling together two narrative strands that seem entirely unconnected until we come to the very end. The first story is that of a young woman in her 20s who works in publishing and falls into a love affair with a famous writer in his 70s, Ezra Blazer (Halliday herself had an affair with the much older Philip Roth when she was around that age; so there is no escaping the autobiographical allusions). The relationship is, by its very nature, asymmetrical (hence the title, one assumes) and we can tell at the beginning itself that it won’t end well. The second story is that of an Iraqi-American who is stopped at immigration in London on his way back to Iraq, and who tells us his story in flashback. How do these two halves make a whole? Well, you’ll have to read the book and find out.


An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism by Neyaz Farooquee

The sub-title best summarizes what this memoir is about: Growing Up Muslim in India. The book is sparked by the Batla House Encounter in 2008, which took place only a few doors away from where the author – a student at Jamia University – lived in those days, and how those events affected him. It is from this starting point that Farooquee goes back and forth in time to tell us his story, which begins in a small village in Bihar, from which he is sent forth to study and live in Delhi as a small boy. Written in a simple yet lucid style, this book is required reading for those who want an insight into what it means to grow up Muslim in India.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

This psychological thriller – as is evident from the title – owes a lot to the oeuvre of Alfred Hitchcock. The protagonist is yet another unreliable narrator (they seem to be highly popular these days), child psychologist Dr Anna Fox, who has become agoraphobic after an accident and spends her entire time locked up in her apartment. She spends her time taking pictures of her neighbours until one day she witnesses a murder in a facing apartment. The problem is that no one will believe her; and she is not entirely sure she believes herself. So far, so Hitchcockian you might say. But then, Finn delivers a final twist that you never see coming. And I guarantee, it will leave you winded – and wanting to read the book all over again to see what you missed.