Each society is filled with a plethora of stories. These stories reflect upon the hopes, dreams, and challenges people face and overcome. Sana Munir – a Lahore-based author – presents stories of women, their happiness and sorrows, in her book, Unfettered Wings. Though the collection of these stories is fictional, they do compel readers to question why women are subjected to face life’s darker side. Sana Munir brings to fore the injustice and the social limitations women face in our society through various narratives and settings. Munir aptly describes the trials and miseries women go through by men in one form or the other.
Sana Munir has taken ordinary stories of women that the female readers will relate themselves with, which is the strongest point of Unfettered Wings. Even the men reading this book will easily comprehend that such incidents do happen with women and are a commonality in our country’s urban and rural facade. Unfettered Wings comprises ten chapters with each one having a female protagonist from varying age, geographical location and a social status facing some sort of social injustice, a moment of disrespect from a family member or a tragedy. Munir’s writing style and expression make these stories an appealing read. She does follow the basic story writing structure of beginning, middle and the end to introduce the character in the beginning, to add details and bring a climax in the middle before ending the story by presenting a resolution.
As you begin reading a story in Unfettered Wings, you will enter the life of each protagonist. Despite the presence of ten protagonists – one for each story – along with other characters and an antagonist, you will clearly remember the protagonist and her traits. This is because Munir, despite handling a surfeit of characters, keeps the protagonist stand out of the other characters. It is also her storytelling style that helps her focus on the protagonist’s thoughts and actions more than that of other characters. Interestingly, Munir brings a twist in each story when you least expect it. The ten chapters of the book are named after their protagonist namely: Farida, Reema, Maria, Summi, Habiba, Nazia, Saima, Beena, Meera and Eeman.
Intertwined in each story is the main character facing a personal or a social dilemma while trying her best to overcome the external and internal factors that may – hopefully – bring some ease to her quandary. Munir also underlines the social causes drastically affecting the lives of these female protagonists. These incidents take away the protagonists’ identity, compel others to look at them with raised eyebrows, the society raises questions over their honesty and pushes them at the curb of non-existence. MehrTarar, an author and columnist, has praised Unfettered Wings by saying, “Poignant, profound and perceptive, Ms. Munir’s expansive range of stories touch upon issues that affect and alter lives of women a little every day, impacting their lives so deeply, they become extraordinary beings who, despite being flawed, are fearless, resilient, empathetic and unique.”
The kind of stories Munir has presented in Unfettered Wings are the ones we have heard on our media. However, Munir adds a personal touch to them by her storytelling prowess. She does not add cherries on top of her narrative nor makes her character look larger than life. She used realism, sanity, pragmatism and rationality into each story that explores and explains the very essence of what a woman feels when she is going through a rough patch of her life that causes her to lose the motivation to live. All this is said and stated while keeping these protagonists tucked in their humble abode in the Pakistani society. Unfettered Wings will compel readers to question why women in our society are subjected to social injustice, gender discrimination, maltreatment, abuse and oppression. The way Munir explains scenes, settings and action reflect on her command over the English language and her acumen to use the right word and the sentence at the appropriate time. In the opening chapter, Munir describes the scene of the train station in 1947 as, “The cousins, brothers, uncles and friends, who now waited at the train station, had been sensing the vibration of the coal-fuelled vehicle from the time when it was half a kilometre away.” She further writes, “They had come to receive the torn chapters of their filial history – those who had boarded the train from Patiala to Lahore.”
Sana Munir’s Unfettered Wings will leave you with several questions once you finish reading it. Her narrative remains simple throughout the book, there is assertiveness in her voice and a steady flow in her explanation that will let your imagination wander across the ten chapters until you become a part of each character’s story.
The writer is an independent researcher, author and columnist. He can be reached at omariftikhar@hotmail.com