Daily Times

Haveli, The Contract

Author: Zeenat Mahal

Publisher: Indireads

The age of innocence. When life was simple and emotions were presented on a black and white palette, stirring pathos that appeared to be larger than life in tiny lives. It centred on the mundane lives of ordinary mortals who imagined the effect of their sentiments on a 70 mm vista, with the world coming to an end with each cruel word, any promise broken and all imagined or real heartaches. This was the era when passion was camouflaged in innocent words, fluttering eyelashes, hearts beating faster than the clunky cars on sparsely-used lanes and eyes playing word games that were just for the two enamoured with one another to see and the others to just suspect. The movies hinted at intimacy of the physical type by zooming in on the lovers’ faces, and then in a languid motion on to the nearby full-bloomed flowers — mostly roses — or sweet looking birds, preferably of the parrot family. The leading men were tall, fair/dark (depends on which region you were from) and invariably handsome, with a voice that cast a spell, and eyes that wrote odes on the beloved’s face, and…body (all PG 18). The women exuded innocence, mixed with impish sassiness, dusky hair falling down to the waist, almond-shaped eyes, kajol-lined to perfection, mouths dimly lined to accentuate the natural pout and limbs that put an Ajanta painting model to shame. The families were large and noisy, and a mixture of all that is unique to families in this part of the world. Welcome to Haveli, the novella about a world that is lost in the glare of all that is not so innocent any more.

Meet Zeenat Mahal, the book lover who has been reading earlier than she can remember her spoken words, and who loves to write so much she is even studying the art of creative writing in London. In 2001, she won a BBC short story competition, and now writes regularly for local publications. In her own words, “Her romances are a heady mix of the traditional and the contemporary, old world values, face the challenges of a shrinking globe that impinge upon and help shape South Asian sensibilities.”

In Haveli — the name seems a tad incongruent since the setting is in a mahal (palace) — Ms Mahal takes you on a simple ride down the bygone era where the stories were simple, yet lined with complex feelings, where lives were foreshadowed with traditional rigidity and parental dominance and where fates were sealed without any consent, and no questions asked. The heroine reminds one of an Austen protagonist — beautiful, smart, a rebel-in-the-making-while-trying-to-conform, and, of course, drawn to the wrong man.

The hero is all you would find in a Mills and Boon novel: devilishly good-looking, yet all noble-intentioned. The setting is of 1971. Pakistan is in the throes of disturbance, albeit there is no reference to any socio-political narrative in the story beyond the superficial two-lined mention. The story is so simple it threatens to be boring, yet it endears itself to its reader due to that very same simplicity. The description is of people, their emotions and their experiences, omitting even the landscape and the surroundings.

As I read the tiny book, it brought a smile to my face, transporting me back to the time when I used to read my mother’s Urdu digests, full of romantic tales of damsels in distress, evil villains and the dashing knights in well-cut suits and achkans. There is a plethora of heartache, misunderstandings, hidden identities-motives-agendas, games — double and not-so-subtle — and love that conquers all. And all live happily ever after. Until they do not, but then that is the story that we do not get to hear — well, most of the time.

In The Contract, Ms Mahal’s second novella, the backdrop is the fast and happening world of Lahore, and the characters all move at a pace in sync with the times that are as matter-of-fact as the practical era they represent. The romance is warped, the seduction is unusual, the relationships are stark, the expectations pragmatic and the pathos invisible to the extent of being non-existent. The underpinning of sentiments remain the same while the expression assumes the tone of the age where innocence is only restricted to toddlers, and games are the way to go about playing out relationships, portraying the upside-down way of life that goes for modern living. The value system of honesty, integrity and loyalty forms the bedrock of the personality of the demure but lovely, strong single mother who triumphs over the evil of lies, deception, double games and innuendos of the rich, spoilt vamps in five-inch stilettos, and form-fitting designer outfits. And those who start with tears in their voices, and steel in their reticence end up living happily ever after. And for their sake, let us hope, the carriage does not turn into a pumpkin any time soon.

Zeenat Mahal’s writing is minimal, devoid of literary flourishes and stylistic contortions. Giving the feel of ‘young adult’ fiction, her novellas make a refreshing change from the so-called bestsellers full of sex, violence and a world gone awry. The stories have a yearning for the black-and-white solid traditions and values that seem to be lost in the grayness of indifference to roots, being trumpeted along as the icon of the 2000s. There is a longing to cover the half-naked bodies of women who think nothing beyond what they want, how they want it and when they want it. The wish to see men with old-fashioned chivalry exists in Ms Mahal’s pages, where the rescue is not just of Rapunzels in tall, fortified castles, and lost women on Sunset Boulevard, but also of their own lost souls. The matriarchs replace the patriarchs and the family structures survive conspiracies, coup d’états, evil sons-in-law, rebellious daughters, non-conformist grandchildren and scandals that shame, albeit in hiding.

Get a steaming pot of tea, and a bowl of roadside, freshly roasted peanuts, snuggle up on your favourite couch and settle down to browse through Ms Mahal’s offerings to prose. Forget about Kafka, Marquez, Plath and Hardy for a while, and enter the world of Pakistani Austen — albeit in a much-simplified way, and with much less abundance of characters, plots and subplots, and have a quiet Sunday afternoon, turning pages with a smile, with a mouthful of delicious peanuts and Zeenat Mahal’s sweet, little world. Happy reading!

The reviewer can be reached at mehrt2000@gmail.com, and on twitter at @MehrTarar