Maps for Lost Lovers

I have since long wanted to explore the concept of 'honour killings'. So,when I read the description written on the jacket of 'Maps for Lost Lovers', I picked the book up.

One advice that writers are often given is that their first line, their first paragraph should be able to lure the reader into reading the bulk that follows. In this book, even the first chapter failed to do the trick. I found it too metaphor-driven. There was too rich a description of falling snow and a man standing in it. But I plodded through those pages because I had already been lured by the theme of the book.

This book tells the story of a poor Punjabi neighbourhood in London. Most of these immigrants are Pakistanis, Muslims. Lack of opportunities back home has forced them to migrate to England, but once here, they want to cling onto their Pakistani, their Islamic identity.

This orthodox neighborhood is scandalized when a twenty-five year old, twice-divorced girl, Chanda, moves in with a forty-eight year old, never-married man, Jugnu. The two lovers want to marry but they cannot, because Chanda's third husband has not divorced her. When she was still sixteen or so, her parents had married her to a first cousin in Pakistan. The man divorced him soon after. So, the parents married her to another man in Pakistan. He too divorced her. She then came back to England. Her parents and brothers felt much embarrased and shamed by her double-divorcee tag. But they knew how difficult it was now to get a good man to marry her. So, they arranged her marriage to an illegal immigrant. That man vanished the day he got his British citizenship. But, since he did not divorce her, she could not marry Jugnu till he had been absent for seven years. Not wanting to wait for so long, she simply moved in with him.

Her brothers kill Jugnu and her for daring to be so shameless.

The themes of this novel are the realities that we, the Indians, and more specifically, the Punjabis, are well familiar with.

Heer too was mentioned in one of the pages in the novels.

Heer and Ranjha loved each other but when her father discovered that fact, he married her off to Saida. She stayed cold to Saida. Then, Ranjha came to her marital home, in the guise of a jogi. Soon, she eloped with him. Her father's men caught up with the runaway lovers, and brought them back. Her father then agreed to marry Heer to Ranjha and asked him to go to his village and bring a baaraat. Ranjha happily went away. Heer's family poisoned her.

This tale is one of the celebrated love stories of Punjab.

What has fascinated me for many years now is the fact that each famous love story of Punjab has been a tragedy. To fall in love with somebody and to make a promise to marry him is to take the most important decision of your life on your own, and Punjabi women have traditionally not been allowed that freedom. If anyone did take that decision, she was ruthlessly crushed. And everyone agreed that that action was necessary. But then, such women became heroines in public imagination. That is why, there exists a shrine to Heer in Pakistan, where people go and pray to her as a saint. The people who are the descendants of those who had approved of Heer's murder. The people who themselves approve of Heer's murder and would do the same to their daughter if they discovered she too has run away with a Ranjha.

In this novel too, till Chanda and Jugnu are not dead, the people in the area taunt her brothers for being shameless, for just sitting at home, wearing bangles, watching quietly as a man carried their sister away. They are satisfied when the pair is killed. Then, after sometime, they start talking about two ghosts being seen every night near the lake of that town. Some talk about the two lovers having turned into a pair of peacocks.

Thus, another mythical love story is being born in the public imagination. In a few years perhaps, people would narrate 'The Love Legend of Chanda-Jugnu' with the same reverence and awe as they do the stories of 'Heer-Ranjha', 'Laila-Majnu' etc. And, even then, were any girl decide to become a Chanda and a boy, Jugnu, they would suppress them equally violently.

There were many sub-stories within this novel that I found very interesting:

1. A dying woman donates her heart. However, her son steals it from the hospital as soon as he learns that the heart of his white mother is going to be transplanted into a black man.

2. Suraya is an English girl who is married to a Pakistani cousin as soon as she turns sixteen. She has an eight year old son by him. One night, in drunken rage, he divorces her. "Talaaq. Talaaq. Talaaq." He says and the deed is done. He can remarry her now only after another man has married her and divorced her. Such is the Islamic law for remarriage. He says he loves her, is very sorry for the drunken divorce and wants to marry her but cannot bear to see another man 'having her' in front of his eyes. So, he asks her to go to England, find a husband and get divorced from him. She dutifully agrees, comes to England, and lives in great agony, away from her son, away from her husband. Many men want to marry her- she is really beautiful- but they won't divorce her. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law starts telling her over the phone that her son needs a wife, and so, if she will not hurry, he would have to marry somebody else; he cannot wait for her, forever.

Suraya is desperate. And, she fails to understand why it is she who is being punished, she who is going to lose her everything, when it was her husband who had made the mistake- of divorcing her.

3. A Christian priest tells the Sunday gathering at his church that two Christian lovers from their area, who have recently eloped, are sinners, and so will be condemned to Hell upon death. Then, he tells the people, that if they love those two souls and want their good, they should not help them at all- not give them food or shelter or money- because if they helped them, the two sinners would be confirmed in their belief that what they did was right.

It fascinated me, this whole idea of punishment- ruthless, heartless punishment- being an act of love. Of course, it is not a new idea.

The book's writer, Nadeem Aslam, talks about himself as a writer here.