Daily Times

All adults were children once, but they simply don’t remember it. As soon as they endorse their parenting role, this new wordd of responsibilities suddenly masks the past realities. They come to think their preoccupations — bills, rent, work- are far more important than their children’s. “Those were the days”, as they say. Reason of this non-sense phrase being that what you feel in present time seems much stronger than what you felt. Nevertheless, teenagers live in their own reality and their sentiments are truly vivid and powerful. This book, the first Pakistani novel for young adults written in English (soon available in Urdu), relates a girl’s journey from her childhood to adulthood and is definitely a good entertainment bound for young readers. But it is also a guide for parents, a reminder if you will, not to forget what it is like to endure those years of not being a child anymore, nor being a grown-up yet.

Since the action takes place in contemporary Lahore, the story of Javariya, a fifteen years old O level student, brings a double dimension to this reflection on teenage years with a mix of modern aspirations and traditional education. “I love opening the fridge door even during Ramadan because you never know when there might be a chocolate cake waiting for you.” Through amusing anecdotes, the narrator highlights the adolescent condition as a constant contradiction between what you’ve been given and the belief system you create for yourself. “Your rules seem against my wishes”, Jav tells as she recites a poem in front of her classmates. How a teenager manages to reconcile nature versus nurture to rise as the adult she wants to be is the subject of this novel. As Javariya is looking forward to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, she confides in her diary her ambitions, hopes and despairs, hoping and praying she’ll be able to attain the ‘Perfect situation’ before she crosses the frontier of adulthood. The title itself, the Perfect situation, is a tell-tale of this budding woman’s state of mind, yearning for perfection, the Absolute. “How wonderful it is to have a system that just purifies everything on its own. So when I watch rain washing dirt away from every tree, I get inspired and try to wash out dirt from within”. This quest is the very essence of this transitory period through which one leaves the childhood’s candour to enter grown-up’s realism. Jay’s preoccupations as a Pakistani teen appears universals: boys, girlfriends, arguments, grades, weight (eating too much, eating too few), make up and obviously parental authority. These daily vagaries eventually leads her to deeper questioning. “Will I ever suicide? Will I ever Marry?” Of course, given the social context Jay is growing in, characterised by many society’s taboos, her rebellion is inhibited as she faces many obstacles. Though, this necessary movement of emancipation growing from within is stronger than rules and limits, which she eventually transgresses. But soon, she will also experience the other side of the coin and feel ashamed. One night, because she goes over the wall with two friends, her parents blame her for disgracing the entire family. As the day approaches when Jay blow her 16 candles, her aspirations confront the hardness of the world that surrounds her and finish blooming a garden of Eden. “Deepest desires are mostly impossible to achieve. I mean let’s face it”, she tells to herself with a touch of cynicism, as she starts giving up on her illusions. “As I move, the tunnel gets longer and darker. (…) Suddenly I see light and walk toward it and finally exit the tunnel but enter into an entire different world.”

She certainly goes through some disillusions but doesn’t resign for all that. Her experiences, her mistakes, she uses them to upgrade her objectives. After disappointing her parents for instance, she makes a promise to herself to take care of others more. Still, it’s out of the question to forget who she is, so… “After I offered my Maghreb prayers, got in my favourite Levi’s jeans”!

This life story is not inspired by Tanzila Kahn’s personal experience which eventually reinforces this feeling of universality. Her intention when she wrote the book six years ago, at the age of sixteen, was to give a story to a young generation who can relate to it and have fun with it. The only regret one might have is the single narrative line the author follows. Since Tanzila Kahn and Javariya raise the question of a cultural and generational gap, it would have been appropriate to incorporate a second level of reading including historical or philosophical aspects. But hey, it might just be the adult talking. And defects happen to reveal the message’s crux : life is worth it, get up and find your purpose!

The writer is an intern at Daily Times