Sunlight On A Broken Column

Attia Hosain
Chapter Wise Summary
Part Four
Chapter 1:53
The first chapter of the last part is in many senses a choric
chapter, and in it Laila returns to the ‘Ashiana’.
The final part beings early one morning as Laila drive to the
‘Ashiana’ in a car years later. She observes, “The sun was
breaking through scattered clouds, and its warmth flicked over
goose-flesh skin as I drove towards Ashiana, the home of my
childhood and adolescent.”
As she drives past the city, she observes how it has changed
been drastically changed by time, the partition, and the newly
settled refugees. A complex of nostalgia and sadness hits her as
she sees “the familiar names and changed lettering of the road
sings”, the “ruined Residency”, the “proud Club” now changed
to “a Research Institute”, the “faded feudal mansions, the Mall
with new shops and restaurants and cinemas” amongst the
others. One thing that this passage indicates is the commingled
existence of both the old, the ruined, the lost, and the new, the
fractured, the yet-to-come. It also hints at the ability of life to
continue even in the ruins, or perhaps to re-emerge from the
ruins of the past. While these things weaken Laila, they create a
sensation of climax for the readers who grow eager to know the
fate of the ‘Ashiana’.
As Laila looks at the “three-storeyed cement blocks of cheap
flats” built by the Agarwals where the Raja of Bhimnagar’s
palace had once been, beholds the “washing hung across the
balconies”, and is alarmed by the “shrill voices” calling for “the
start of another day”, we get a glimpse of life amongst the
common. The “shrill voice” calling for “the start of another day”
indicates how despite the ravages of time, life still continues.
Time has the potentially drastic ability to alter, but not to end.
Driving past the gates of the ‘Ashiana’, Laila beholds the toll
time and fate has taken on it. The marble slab, that once held
her uncle’s name, was now half-hidden by a wooden board,
while several other boards called attention to the qualifications
of those refugees from the “far north” who now occupied the
house. The ‘Ashiana’ was no longer the ‘ashiana’; its ruins and
crumbling remains rather externalised the emotional trauma
that human lives had went through in the hands of time and
partition. Laila observes, “I stopped the car outside it, and sat
for some moments holding within me the rush of emotions like
a spasm of nausea.”
As Laila walks in, she admits that when she consented to look
around the house for the last time, she knew she would break
down and so had come alone to avoid witnesses. After all, her
“most private emotions” were “contained” by this house—
emotions had become a “part of its structure”, “brick” and
“beam.” Laila reflects, “Its memories condensed my life as in a
summary.” Consequently, its “disintegrated reality”
disintegrated Laila from within. In those rooms where once she
had searched for her mother and father, took refuge in the love
of Abida and Hakiman Bua, developed through conflict with
Zahra and Saira, learned comradeship through Asad and Kemal,
tested by beliefs in arguments with Saleem and Zahid,
disciplined by Baba Jan and Hamid, and finally freed by her
dreams and love for Ameer, today strangers lived there. The
passage brilliantly sums up the entire cycle of development of
her being and helps the readers to realise how much ‘Ashiana’
was a part of her, a living being.
Yet Laila is not critical of the tragedy of these strangers. While
describing the whole process of the entry of the records of
these refugees in government files, she honestly admits, “The
official words describing them had no meaning in terms of
human heartache.” She also describes with irony how these
government records are a part of the “statistical calculation in
the bargaining of bureaucrats and politicians, in which millions
of uprooted human beings became just numerical figures.”
Wandering through the ruins of the ‘Ashiana’, Laila encounters
a child, then an ayah, and finally the watchman, Ram Singh.
Ram Singh’s eyes are full of tears and he enquires as to why
Laila had not informed him of her visit beforehand, for “this is
now how” she should have “come to the house”, while it was
naked, bare of the psychological trauma of time, politics and
partition, lying off guard in its assaulted ruins. Laila enquires
about Ram Singh’s familiar: his wife has passed away and his
son has become peon in the Collector Sahib’s office. When Ram
Singh nostalgically complains that he should have seen her,
Kemal and Saleem’s children grow up in this house, the sense
of the pain of loss deepens on the readers. Laila mentions, “the
house was a living symbol. In its decay I saw all the years of our
lives as a family; the slow years that had evolved a way of life,
the swift short years that had ended it.”
Laila finally reveals some significant information to the readers:
it has been fourteen years since she left ‘Ashiana’ to start a
family with Ameer. When she mentions, “The second half of a
century was now two years old” she refers to the present year
as being 1952. She has a daughter now who is “nearly as old as”
she when Baba Jan died, namely fourteen. Hamid passed away
five years ago.
To Laila, these fourteen years seemed “fourteen moments”.
Mind and memory reaches a sudden touch of molten fire and
she asked Ram Singh to leave her alone, as she leaves to
wander through the house, and “Across the fourteen years.”
Chapter 2:54
In the second chapter of the last part, we learn about Saira’s
fate.
Wandering through the ruins of the ‘Ashiana’, Laila recalls
things. She admits that in the morning when she started out
from Hasanpur for the house, to see it for the last time before it
is sold, Saira went without restraint and her tears had washed
away the “constant aggression between” them.
A few months after partition, Saleem had moved to Pakistan,
believing that there are more opportunities for him there than
in India. Kemal was left to help Saira adjust.
Saira could not accept the fact that she Kemal had no other
alternative than to sell the ‘Ashiana’. She had continued to live
in the ‘Ashiana’, unwilling to accept reality, but with time, it had
become more and more difficult to keep the house in order.
Kemal meanwhile had met Mrs. Wadia’s daughter, Perin, and
they fell in love and got married. The news of his son marring a
Hindu girl was a shock to Saira. Income from the estate steadily
decreased, and when Kemal got posted to Delhi, he asked his
mother to move to a smaller house; the thought was initially
unacceptable for her and she blamed Perin for influencing her
son.
Two years after Kemal’s marriage, another shock came for Saira
when at the “end of a long, legal struggle landowners had to
accept the fact that their feudal existence had been abolished
constitutionally.” Then a new law came like a death blow to
Saira. All the Muslims who had been left for Pakistan were
declared “evacuees” and their property “evacuee property and
to be taken over by a Custodian. With Saleem in Pakistan, a
part of the Ashiana went to the Custodian, though Kemal
managed to declare his share with “scrupulous honesty.”
Saira wailed and cried and railed against “the ‘robber’
Government.” When the Hasanpur house was threatened with
“similar dismemberment”, Kemal asked his mother to let his
sell the ‘Ashiana’ and with that money buy Saleem’s share in
Hasanpur and save the ancestral house. Saira was nowhere to
understood, and she cursed the laws and clamed the Hindus,
while Kemal tried patiently to “explain” to her “as if to a child”,
the “inevitability of such unpleasant laws and regulations
because Government policies could not but reflect the violent
aftermath of the Partition” and point out “how much more
property had been left behind by Hindus in Pakistan.” For Saira,
“he ahd sold himself to a Muslim-hating Government and
married a ‘Kafir’, a non-Muslim.” Laila observes, “It had been as
painful as love turned cancerous.” But Kemal “understood” and
forgave her because he saw the “real core of suffering” that
was hidden behind all her prejudices and absurdities.
Laila also remembers a conversation with Asad, where the
latter had observed, “The ugliness is inevitable. When palaces
are pulled down and mud huts are exposed to view it is not a
pleasant sight. There is rubble and dust in any demolition. But
from this debris we shall build again” and Laila had grown
furious at him for she could not but think of the “worries and
despair, the material problems” of her “family and friends.” She
had complained, “It is harder to begin to learn” and had
realised that her
“dreams had always been of change without chaos, of birth
without pain.”
Wandering through the quiet ruins of the house, Laila
remembered the others pain and felt it as her own.
The narrative at this point of time becomes fragmented,
resulting out of the political fragmentation, or the partition of
India, and the physical fragmentation of the ‘Ashiana’, that
causes Laila’s memories and psychology to fragment.
Consequently, the novel no longer follows a steady path. The
fragmentation of Laila is thus enacted by the jumbled
placement of the incidents of past that soon seem to wear out
of coherence, continuity and constancy.
Chapter 3:55
In this chapter, we come to know about Ameer’s death.
As Laila opened the door to what had once been Hamid’s office,
she recalls Hamid sitting in his chair, exercising “authority” and
remembers the last thing she her will clashed with his in the
room. It was when Hamid questioned her if she was “quite
clear” in her mind about her decision about marrying Ameer.
Hamid made it clear that he did not have the “same old-
fashioned objections” as Saira, but he not take Ameer’s name,
and pointed out that he did not have the means to support the
lifestyle she had lived so far. Laila clearly points out that she
does not care to put a price on herself and Hamid informs her
that she could him after her studies were compete, for till then
she was her his charge, and then the financial affairs of the
distribution of her “considerable amount of property” will be
settled. The marriage was arranged on the same day of
Saleem’s marriage.
Later, when “the years had chastened his pride and taken away
the external props on which his relationships had depended,
and he needed the human affection which alone offered respite
from loneliness”, Hamid attempt at “hesitant gestures of
conciliation”, mostly through Laila’s child, particularly after
Ameer’s death.
Intending not to think about it, Laila thinks about the day
Hamid won the election. Nine years later he had had his first
heart attack sitting at the desk. “In those nine years he had
seen the gradual crumbling of all his dreams and ambitions.”
Politically, he had fought a “losing battle” against the new
forces that were slowly destroying the rights and privileges he
believed in, socially, he had seen the way of his life going to
pieces, and emotionally, his family had gone away from him.
When partition came, Saleem had agreed with Nadira that it
was the “only solution” to all the country’s problems.
Hamid had then taken to gardening and reading newspapers.
Then war came, the Japanese threat to the country, the news
of thousands of captured soldiers and officers joining the Indian
national Army and their allies. The violent eruptions of
extremist nationalism followed when Congress leaders were
imprisoned in 1942. Next came the riots the spiralled the
country across from the East to the West to the North, gaining
murderous momentum towards the bloody climax in 1946. And
in 1947 came the partition when Indians and Pakistanis
celebrated independence in the midst of “bloody migrations.”
Hamid died. He was traditionally buried beside Baba Jan.
Laila observes, “It was easy to be detached as I looked back;
easier than when every thought and action had waited for the
morrow.”
Chapter 4:56
Chapter 4 recalls the day Saleem and Nadira finalised their
decision to move to Pakistan.
As Laila enters the “sitting-room” and remembers how it had
frightened her as a child. She then goes to the dining room and
remembers the last time the family has gathered and had the
final argument by which it was “ultimately scattered.” Only
Zahra was not present. At that time, Laila had wished Hamid to
be there and hold everyone together with his “authority.”
Saleem had clearly expressed his wish to move to Pakistan
because it provided prospects of promotion, nor just for him,
but much more for his children. Nadira had agreed with her.
Kemal, on the other hand, was not willing to put aside his
loyalties and move from the country where his ancestors had
lived for generations.
At one point, Saira had “went on softly muttering prayers. Laila
had observed, “More and more each day she was withdrawing
from the Western attitudes she had sought to cultivate just for
her husband’s and her sons’ sakes.” She had equally not been
able to understand that living in Karachi and Calcutta was
entirely different because a brother would soon begin to exist
between them.
The argument had led them to nowhere, expect making
everyone flare up, hurt, and resentful. Within in two months,
Saleem and Nadira had moved to Pakistan and thereafter it had
been easier for them to roam the entire world then to visit a
home which had once been theirs.
Chapter 5:57
Chapter 5 reveals to us Nandi’s fate.
Laila walks from the dining room to the gloomy pantry and
remembers the time Ghulam Ali used to rule here until his
embittered, lusting love for Nandi had driven him to violence
and prison. She wants, what may have happened to him? Did
he took advantage of the pitiful flight of refugees to escape as
others had done from the consequences of misdeeds?
Laila then reveals about Nandi: at this time she was in Laila’s
home, looking after her child. Nandi had become an ayah. She
was the only one who had “remained unquestionably loyal
throughout the period” of Laila’s “struggle” again her family”
while the other servants have took Saira’s side by working for
Laila as for a stranger. Nandi had observed, “I cannot be faithful
to the salt of those who are unkind to you.”
One day Nandi had come to Laila with her “tin trunk and a roll
of bedding” and said, “I have come home, Bitia. I have come to
look after my little one. I heard you were looking for an ayah.
How could I allow a strange woman to look after my baby?”
Later Nandi had revealed that she was carrying a child. It was
not her old doddering husband’s, who possibly could not have
given her a child. As Agarwal’s business flourished, he build a
small factory on the land of Bhimnagar which employed
“hundreds of men” instead of a “dozen gardeners” (here
obviously the narrator observes the positive sides of
urbanisation), but the song of birds that used to come across
the walls of the ‘Ashiana’ were replaced by the “clang of
metal.”
Then Sita installed an architect to build flats which were soon
filled by rich families from Calcutta who wanted to flee the
threat of Japanese bombs. Then the Americans came down,
and Nandi had a liaison with one of the bearers of an American,
the fierce men of Northern Frontiers who have frightened
Nandi as a child. Since the man was a vagabond, she decided
not to run away and was “left with his child; and no regrets.”
Nandi wanted to educate her son so that he may “become a
babu in a big office” and so Laila sent him to a school run by
Jesuit Fathers.
Laila laughs, thinking about Nandi, as she walked towards the
unkempt garden where she and Nandi had played as children.
Chapter 6:58
In this chapter we learn about the Agarwals and more about
Laila.
Laila walks to the fountain that her grandfather had bought, for
it bore the emblem of the Province—fishes. She is amazed by a
“scarlet rose” that “climbed up the garden wall” as a “vibrant
patch in the neglected garden.”
Laila is then reminded of Agarwal who had build cheap houses
for the refugees. Agarwal was not only a rich business now but
also a minister. Laila remembers the time when Agarwal
schemed with Waliuddin again Hamid. For Waliuddin, fortune
was not so happy. After partition he had asked the Muslims to
be loyal to their Indian homeland, secretly sold all his property,
and stealthily crossed the Eastern boarders with his family. But
opportunities had not been in favour and now had to be
content with profits from vast property he has claimed as
compensation for the alleged wealth he had left in India.
Sita had become a leader of the new social world. She had also
become a patroness of the arts, a benefactress of impecunious
writers and artists, a collector of ancient works of art and young
lovers. Her husband had been made a director of Agarwal’s
concerns, and was content with his wife’s little time for him.
They had built a house in New Delhi, very modern and Western
in appears and conveniences, very Indianband ancient in its
decorations. Laila observes, “It reflected Sita’s character.”
Laila had met Sita last time in the ‘Ashiana’ a few days before
she got married. Sita had been critical of Laila’s decision to mix
love with marriage. She had said, “You are a child dreaming
romantic dreams of love. What has love to do with marriage? It
is like mixing oil and water.” Yet it was Sita who had “travelled a
day and a night” to see Laila when Ameer passed away. At that
time, she had “sensed” Laila’s need to be” distracted from the
unending, inaudible self-communication that made it
impossible” for her “to talk to others” and she had deliberately
started talking about Kemal. She has observed how she
continued to see Kemal even after her marriage and it is only
after Kemal decided to marry that he said that they can’t see
each other anymore.
At one point in the conversation, she had reflected upon having
sexual relationship with her husband, despite loving him, and
had maintained, “One discovers so many reasons for sleeping
with a man once love is put out of the way. I think hate is as
good as any. Certainly it is the only feeling that remains in
memory.” Tears had then streamed down her cheeks and she
had admitted that it was her lack of courage to follow her
dreams that had made her criticise Laila earlier. She had said,
“You will never lost what you have had, and what you had was
fulfilment of your dreams.”
As Laila wandered in the ruins, Ram Singh came once again. In
their short conversation we learn that Asad is coming to see
Zahra at present. Laila finds it difficult to explain to Ram Singh
why Zahra or Saleem could not come to see “Begum Sahib”, as
to how “Time and Space” not the only obstacles. She again
dismisses him, asking him to keep an eye on the gate and
inform her when Asad comes.
Chapter 7:59
In chapter 7, we learn about Laila’s rescues from the hills by
Ranjit.
Saleem came on leave after two years. He was now one of the
senior executives in the new branch of his firm, and his success
had put a gloss on his self-assurance and self-esteem. But in
Hasanpur, he was glad of the feeling of recognised identify after
having lived so long among strangers. Laila observes, “All of us
shared that sensation of ‘feeling’ our roots—whether severed
or not—like the pain left in the extremities of amputated
limbs.”
Nadira had by this time mellowed. Her new county was now a
symbol of her ideals. She was now a selfless social worker of
the million pitiable refugees, and had devoted herself to the
service of unhappy victims of rape and assault and abduction.
Rajit had been married to an attractive girl from a princely
family, but who could not bear a child. For five years he had
resisted his mother’s pressure to marry again for a son. After
his wife had grown bitter, he was finally forced to send her
home and marry again to a village girl who ironically gave him 5
daughters in a row.
One day, everyone meets in Ranjit’s club but the air is tensed
by an Indian refugee who had lost his family in the riots. At one
point he had busted out, verbally abusing the Muslims and it
had sent Ranjit in a palpable fit of rage, for according to him, it
was an insult of him. Laila observes, “Saleem and Nadira were
stunned by a sudden sense of being alien and vulnerable, but
for Kemal and me, such incidents held a challenge. They tested
the mettle of our loyalties and faith at a time when all values
were on the boil and spewed the scum of opportunism and
falsehood.”
Zahra had shifted to Pakistan with her husband. She was
flexible, fitting in every situation, making it her own. When
Majida had been ill, Zahra had been sent for. But Majida had
lived, and after that she wasn’t willing to leave familiar
surroundings and go to her daughter in Pakistan. Zahra was
neither willing to be in India for her mother’s sake. Laila adds,
“She denied the country of her birth with the zeal of a convert.”
While on a visit in Hasanpur, Zahra had complained of having to
report her movements to the police and Laila had teased her
that she behaved as if she were in hostile territory. Zahra had
added sarcastically that Laila could never understand the fear
for she had retreat in the “safety” of the hills, while Zahra
herself had been among the refugees. She bitterly ends by
saying that Laila was refusing to see the injustices and
prejudices that were destroying the Muslim culture and
language and it is her duty to see that her child did not grow up
without a knowledge of her heritage.
This had flared Laila who had burst out, “Where were you,
Zahra, when I sat up through the nights, watching village after
village set on fire, each day nearer and nearer? Sleeping in a
comfortable house, guarded by policemen, and sentries? Do
you know who saved and my child? Sita, who took us to her
house, in spite of putting her own life in danger with ours. And
Ranjit, who cam from his village, because he had heard of what
was happening in the foothills and was afraid for us. He drove
us back, pretending we were his family, risking discovery and
death. What were you doing then? Getting your picture in the
papers, distributing sweets to orphans whose fathers had been
murdered and mothers raped.”
Zahra and accused her of being “prejudiced” in return, but they
had made up before Zahra left, as they always did.
One thing that this chapter shows is the extent to which the
Hindu-Muslim relationship has been strained. Yet, there can be
no one-sided narrative. It is multi-facated, conflicted, and
fractured.
Chapter 8:60
In the second last chapter we come to know about the fate of
the other characters.
Zainab and her family moved to Pakistan. Sharifan and her
daughter who had a golden voice had gone with them. Her
daughter now gave voice to “film stars” with “pleasing looks
and sour voices” which earned them a lot of money. When
Zahra informed Laila that Zahnab’s husband was to be sent as a
clerk to the Embassy in Washington, Laila had remembered
their childhood conversation and observed, “It seems I will be
the only one never to go far from home.”
Romana too moved to Pakistan Laila had met her during the
war on the hills and discovered that she was a “prisoner” to her
“beauty”.
John has remained unchanged, devoted to work and not
allowing herself to be emotional. Her parents wanted to go
back “‘home’ to England”, and after independence they have
migrated. She had written once, “it is not possible—at any time,
at any age, to forget the and the atmosphere where one was
born and brought up” and related that now when her parents
talk of ‘home’ they do not mean England. This indicates at the
rupture identity of an immigrant. Home is not defined by
religion, culture and nationality, it depends on the space of
your birth and where you share experiences of your growth and
maturing; your surroundings begets your identity, and identity
fosters the sense of being at homeland or no land, zone and her
parents are victims of misplaced identities.
Mrs. Martin lived in India, feeding on her memories of youth in
a house for Retired Gentle women. She outlived the Raja of
Amirpur. On the day of Independence she stood beside Laila
and her child and saw the latter join other children in singing
their country’s anthem. Sylvia left a bankrupt Bhimnagar for an
American Air Force Sergeant.
Amirpur retired in his state was last seen to welcome the
President of the Republic to a reception given in honour by the
Taluqdars 4 years after Independence. Yet it had no such pomp
that had once been a years ago. Raza Ali and his family moved
to Pakistan.
Things have not been so fortunate for Zahid. He boarded the
Train to Pakistan on 13th August, 1947; it was to take him to
the realisation of his dreams, on the eve of the birth of the
country for which he have lived and worked. Laila observes,
“When it had reached its destination not a man, woman or
child was found alive. “Laila shivered at the thought in the ruins
of the ‘Ashiana’. She adds, “There were ghosts that could not
be laid by the passing of the years.”
We also learn that Abida had not agreed to Laila’s decision of
marriage; this had strained their relationship. After Ameer’s
death Abida had softened but Laila wasn’t willing to forget the
past; it was Abida’s non acceptance of Ameer that had hurt the
most. For Abida Laila had disrespected her elders and soiled the
family reputation by creating opportunities for gossips and
scandal-mongering. Laila had understood that Abida belonged
to a different world and order of thinking— one she had
rejected.
When Abida wrote to widowed Laila to see her because she
herself was too ill to come, Laila did not respond. Abida was
dead by the time Laila arrived to her in response to her
husband telegram. Her only consolation was in knowing that
she died in Hakiman Bua’s arms. Hakiman Bua later informed
her that Abida had “smiled through her pain” when they told
her that Laila was coming. It was as if the message had
“released her”, for she died within the “hour”. Laila had cried
and realised that “humility, love and grace could not bargain
With Time.” Looking at Abida’s peaceful face, Laila failed
“spirituality cleansed”.
Laila wonders through the room in which she had consented to
marry Ameer, during the marriage ceremony
Chapter 9:61
The last chapter is of Laila’s encounter with her ‘self’.
Laila enters the room where she had spent the night after her
marriage with Ameer. Her reflection in the mirror startled her.
It was her “other self”, “longing for release from the ghosts”
that kept her “from acceptance of the present.” It was the Laila
of the day she had been last in the room. She took a stool and
sat in front of the reflection.
The last time she was in the room, Ameer had complained of
how her family will never accept him. He had also regretted
that their home was “hardly bigger than this room, almost
bare.” Laila did not care. And when they moved to their home,
they were “happy.” Laila observes, “Our happiness was all that
my imagination had created, but with an added dimension of
which I could not have been aware without experience of it.” It
was the “consummation of passion”, and with their “physical
union” came the knowledge of the “oneness of separate
beings.”
Ameer’s friends were poor, but rebels and poets. Ameer and
Laila were “often short of money”, but Ameer did not
appreciate when Laila secretly provided for it from her
inheritance. Initially, the presence of Laila’s family pervaded
everything, and she blamed them for having broken into her
world, not ready to accept that the “vulnerability was self-
created.” When Laila got pregnant, Ameer became moody and
quiet, but he always reassured her. Then in the early 1942, he
revealed his plans and joined the Public Relations branch of the
Army for it provided more money than a lecturership.
After Ameer left, Laila sold her house and moved to a cottage in
the hills. Asad, who had been her closest friends, wrote to her
all the while. Asad was arrested in the August of the same year
Ameer left. Then Ameer had been taken prisoner and was killed
while trying to escape. The war ended that year.
Laila retreaded into depression at that time and Nandi came to
look after her child. With the help of Asad’s letters, she finally
fought “self-pity” and came back to life.
Asad went to Delhi, resumed his educational work, and after
the autumn riots of 1946, left to work in the Eastern riot-
stricken areas, and by that winter, after the Congress accepted
office in the Interim Government, he was drawn into political
work in Delhi. Today Asad’s name had begun to appear in the
papers as one of the most promising men in the Congress. He
was sent as a delegate to the United Nations.
The manner of Zahid’s death was a terrible test for Asad’s faith
in non-violence. He had accepted it nevertheless, “believing
that bitterness and retaliation could only breed violence and
start a never-ending cycle which was a negation of life.” Yet he
was a human and when they were together, had complaint
against Laila’s seeing him as an abstraction. His observation, ‘I
am no saint, and never have been. There have been women
who have seen me and known me as a man, and all the time I
have wished it were you” the readers get a clear idea of his
feelings for Laila. Laila admits to the readers she “each cell” of
her “body” still remembered Ameer. But then questions, “now I
wondered how much my mind had been deceiving me, how
much falsehood there was in my excessive truth.”
Laila looks at her ‘other self’ that will always be like that, with
Ameer, while she will grow old. It was the girl whose
“yesterdays and todays looked always towards her
tomorrows”, while her own “tomorrows were always
yesterdays.” She then began to cry “without violation” and
seeing herself crying in the room to which she will never return,
knew, that she was her “own prisoner” and could “release”
herself.
Laila is distracted by Asad’s footsteps, and Asad calls for her,
she rubs her tears and quickly got up to look at the “tall, thin
figure” of a silhouette at the door. Asad asks, “what have you
been doing so long in this empty house?” And Laila answers, “I
have been waiting for you, Asad. I am ready to leave now.”
The novel ends on an open note. Yet Laila’s last words suggest
that perhaps she finally reconciles with her past, and accepts
Asad. Another important thing that the end suggests is: as Laila
realises, she needs to free herself from the past. The ‘Ashiana’,
in a way, with all its entangled memories, also symbolises the
past—the warmth and security of past. When Laila finally
decides to leave the ‘Ashiana’, she in a way, also sets herself
free. Thus, paradoxically, it is only in leaving the ‘Ashiana’ that
Laila earns her release.