A peek into the other side

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Daniyal Mueenuddin

If Man Booker prize-winning The White Tiger gave a glimpse into the hidden lives of the poor and powerless in India, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders does the same for Pakistan. And it should not be surprising how similarly the hopeless nature of the poor rings out in both.

However, while in The White Tiger, the protagonist does make it into the upper echelons of the rich—albeit by ill means—in Mueenuddin’s world, the poor have no escape. In this touching collection of 8 short stories, just as a character seems to be making their way up the ladder, she is cruelly pushed back down. I say ‘she’ because in Pakistan, as in India, a poor woman is twice as vulnerable—and it is the female struggle that Mueenuddin usually concerns his tales with.

In the title story for instance, Husna a poor, distant-relative of the ageing landlord, K.K. Harouni seeks refuge in his house, first as a servant and later as his mistress. Conniving her way through, she manages to extract some meager material possessions and even respect and fear of the other servants, by manipulating the old man. Upon his death however, she is cruelly thrown out by his three daughters. In the touchingly ironic last scene, it is Rehana, the youngest estranged daughter who taught “some esoteric form of Islamic women’s studies” in Paris, who strikes the cruelest blow.

In another tale titled Saleema, the young maidservant in Harouni’s household has an affair with the elderly and respected valet, Rafik. She too appears to be building up her life and the semblance of family by bearing Rafik’s bastard son. However, soon things spiral heartbreakingly down for Saleema when Rafik’s wife and legitimate son appear on the scene, and then the landlord dies, leaving her back where she started. In a startling reality-check, Hassan the cook tells Saleema after Harouni’s death, “You came with nothing, you leave with nothing.” He adds, “Its over. There never was any hope.”

The rich too seem to lead similarly hopeless lives. Harouni must sell away acre after acre of ancestral land to pay for losses from bad business decisions, even as his managers make huge profits through their corrupt ways. One of corrupt managers, Jaglani who has risen up the social and political ladder is diagnosed of cancer and his incompetent son must bear the humiliations of his father’s colleagues. The beautiful, rich, young Lily—a party animal filling her days with drugs, alcohol and casual sex—wants to change her life by marrying a young, hard-working and caring man, but virtuousness she finds, does not come easy.

My favourite story though, is the last one—A Spoiled Man. Lonely and poor, Rezak lives like a nomad in a wooden cabin that can be dismantled and carried away. Finally, he too finds a well paying job, buys himself a TV and other luxuries and even a wife. However, as in all the other stories, soon enough the wife disappears, Rezak is beaten by the police and dies. For a while, his cabin remains untouched—like a mausoleum, which the memsahib even visits to pay a momentary homage to the humble Rafik. But then, in a poetic, philosophical way, Mueenuddin encapsulates the emptiness of our being in his final paragraph: “Gradually, like falling leaves, the locks were broken off, one person taking the thermos, another the wood tools…The door of the little cabin hung open, the wind and blown rain scoured it clean."