Roundabout | Grandma tales lead to stories of women in colonial Punjab
Bibi happens to be the late maternal grandmother of a scholar-author Harleen Singh whose one-of-a-kind book with a curious title lies on my computer table as I struggle for ways and means to share with you in not a single word more than seven hundred of this fortnightly column
If it had not been “Bibi” then perhaps the stories of women in colonial Punjab would never have been told in vivid detail and in the authentic voice of a woman who has been there and has seen and felt it all. Now you will ask who this Bibi is? She happens to be the late maternal grandmother of a scholar-author Harleen Singh whose one-of-a-kind book with a curious title lies on my computer table as I struggle for ways and means to share with you in not a single word more than seven hundred of this fortnightly column.
Now it all started, as the author says, in a big-fat Punjabi wedding in Delhi in December 2012 when he heard his grandma and other older women singing the traditional Punjabi ‘Suhag’ which seemed to his young years monotonous with voices of the women in discord as compared to the contemporary vibrant Punjabi music that he had heard as a boy post the Gurdas Maan era. Conversations with his grandma led him to the pre-Partition colonial era when men and women lived in different worlds under the same roof including his Bibi who hailed from rural Sheikhupura, then in West Punjab and now in Pakistan.
Chats with his “nani” led him to the secluded lives of women of those times when they had only distant-formal relationships even with their fathers. Bibi’s revelations haunted him even when he went for higher studies to Canada. He realised that those times meant two worlds, the world of men of the house and the world of the women. He recounts: “While women did not observe purdah (seclusion) from their fathers, there was a strict etiquette of lihaz, tameez and sharm (deference, decorum and shyness) when daughters and fathers interacted....half a century later these strict patriarchal norms were still a part of her psyche.”
This influenced him so much and the result is an amazingly thick and readable book titled ‘The Lost Heer: Women In Colonial Punjab’, mint fresh from Penguin Viking. One may ask how and why this long and deeply researched project acquired the name of Punjab’s medieval folk heroine? Well Heer, whose legend inspired many kissas (ballads) with the one rendered by the 18th century Punjabi Sufi poet Waris Shah on top of the charts and the hearts. Described as the rebel daughter, she showed great courage in challenging patriarchy, community and clergy who were against her love for the love of her beloved Ranjha. The conservative society of our border state saw to it that the courage of the girls was crushed and so much so that till recent times, through the centuries, no one named their daughter Heer.
In search of women’s voices
The year 2014 proved to be a turning point for the author, doing his engineering in Toronto, came home to Delhi to spend his summer break after his first year. To keep himself busy he volunteered for the 1947 Partition archive run from Berkeley, California. For four months he interviewed men and women who had migrated from Pakistan. He says: “Men’s stories were more rags-to-riches takes, a story of loss, survival, perseverance and rejuvenation.” However, the women’s stories attracted him more as they talked of more intimate things like family recipes, the pleated ghagras (skirts) of the women and their intriguing purdah schools as well as complete segregation from men. He found that women narratives on the great divide had been bypassed by much of the literature and thus he became more drawn to their narratives and ‘The Lost Heer’ project took root in which he decided to document the voices of women on both sides of the Indo-Pak border. What makes the book exceedingly readable is that it deals not just with facts and numbers but peeps into the hearts and souls of women to bring back stories that touch the soul and inspire the reader, told as they are with the same emotion that women reveal in telling of their lives and times.
The inspiring story of Fatto Mai
Most intriguing and interesting is the story of Fatto Mai. As children we often heard the mention of Bhain Fatto or Mai Fatto for girls who showed some leadership or enterprise. In this book one comes face to face with this brave and courageous woman. As the story goes Fatto’s parents buried her alive when she was born, one of the methods of female feticide in medieval times. When a holy man heard of this he refused to take food from the parents. Repentant, they went and dug the grave and found the baby girl breathing still. She lived and at age nine was married to Ala Singh, chief of the Patiala principality. Those were times when Ahmad Shah Abdali (Durrani) invaded Punjab eight times between 1748 to 1767. This led to the popular phrase ‘Khada-peeta lahe da/ Rehanda Ahmed Shahe da (What you eat or drink is yours and the rest will be taken away by Ahmad Shah) also shaping the Punjabi penchant to live in and enjoy the present. In 1761 while Ala Singh and the Marathas were being targeted at in the Battle of Panipat, Fatto living in Barnala organised all the women and children in carts and moved to the safer citadel of Bathinda and even organised meetings with the Afghans to spare her husband. The book is a rich read and author Amandeep rightly endorses the book saying: “The women protagonists of The Lost Heer tear down the triple walls of colonialism, feudalism and patriarchy to reclaim their space in Punjab’s society”.
nirudutt@gmail.com
