Dear Reader,

Great literature tends to shake us up by laying bare the skull beneath the skin. By lifting the veil of everyday illusions to expose the behemoth of reality that lies deep down—obtuse, amoral, indifferent to our hopes and struggles—it shocks us, cracking our complacency. This is the effect Pakistani writer Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, had on me when I read it in 2009, the year of its release. I had not expected to be so affected: one encounters such discomfiting profundity only in classics. It intrigued me—who was this author who had quietly dropped a bomb of a debut collection, without the drumrolls that accompany big releases?

The author bio on the dust jacket was curt. “Daniyal Mueenuddin was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008, selected by Salman Rushdie. His collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For a number of years he practiced law in New York. He now divides his time between Oslo, Norway, and his farm in Pakistan’s South Punjab.”

A law school graduate who runs a farm in Pakistan; an author already well known in Western literary circles when he makes his debut in Pakistan and India; a person dividing his time between places as far-flung as Oslo and south Punjab—the mystery deepened.

The interconnected stories In Other Rooms are set chiefly in Pakistan—in Lahore and rural Dunyapur—with one taking us briefly to Paris. They give nothing away about the author, who seems to inhabit each of the characters, irrespective of gender or class. The subjects are the staff and extended family of an elite landlord, K.K. Harouni. The set-up in distinctly feudal: K.K. is at the apex of the social pyramid, sustaining a large number of people in his pay, and the behaviour of the master is replicated in concentric circles lower down, with circumstantial changes befitting the social status of the person whose story is narrated.

The plots are probably unfolding in the 1980s and 1990s but the timeline is vague. The characters are plagued by the eternal agues of life—love, separation, loneliness, ageing, a dysfunctional system—rather than by period-specific political strife. This gives the stories an expansive, universal quality that, again, one usually equates with classics. In all of them, it is reality—hard, uncompromising, implacable—that drives the plots, pushing the author away. It tramples upon romantic expectations, on hopes of radical transformation, dramatic personal rebirth. Even the moneyed characters, with the means to escape the socio-political system they are born in, are ground down, cut to size, by reality.

In the first story, “Nawabdin Electrician”, the eponymous protagonist—a poor member of Harouni’s staff who is an expert at repairing the pumps that work the numerous tube wells in the farm—is given a brief chance at the end to rise above his character. The man who assaulted Nawab in the fields, trying to steal his ramshackle motorcycle, lies dying in a counter attack. As his eyes cloud over with death, he splutters about his circumstances—which are revealed to be direr than those of Nawab—and begs for forgiveness.

“I was brought up with kicks and slaps and never enough to eat. I’ve never had anything of my own, no land, no house, no wife, no money, never, nothing. I slept for years on the railway station platform in Multan. My mother’s blessing on you. Give me your blessing, don’t let me die unforgiven,” he pleads. Nawab hardens his heart, telling the dying man that his own wife and children would have been rendered destitute had he been killed in the skirmish. He refuses to forgive, “thinking instead of the motor cycle, saved, and the glory of saving it.”

If we harden our hearts at Nawab at this point, we must remember the earlier domestic scenes revealing the rare, tender love between Nawab and his wife, his evident concern for his large brood of children in spite of a tough, resource-scarce life, his precious motor cycle (a result of Harouni’s munificence), which has made his life just a wee bit easier. Recalling these, we mutter, “None does offend,” and turn away, abashed.

Notions of right and wrong keep shifting in these stories, making it impossible to single out a hero or a villain. Even Harouni, the rich master living off the land and the labour of his servants, is no fiend. Rather, he is affable, gullible, generous even, and is regularly fleeced by his minions, whom he continues to trust.

In the next story, young Saleema, married to a heroin addict, sleeping with men to survive, finds love in Harouni’s aged valet, Rafik. The season of kindness and acceptance offers her a brief respite till reality closes in. Rafik’s first wife and son return to reclaim what is rightfully theirs and Saleema is thrown back to the streets

The love between Saleema and Rafik is precarious, yet so worthwhile that we start caring for them, wishing them continued togetherness. But we are made to question our sympathies too. Is Saleema wrong in getting close to Rafik knowing he has a family? Is she being unscrupulous in her ambition for a better life? Is Rafik being an old fool in sleeping with a woman half his age when he has a devoted wife at home? The ending, however, makes a mockery of our attempts to judge, to take sides. It comes down like an implacable sword, cutting through the haze of the romance and jolting us back to reality: “And then, soon enough, she died, and the boy [the son of Saleema and Rafik] begged in the streets, one of the sparrows of Lahore.”

Midway in “Saleema”, Harouni dies, shattering Rafik and all the other servants. He is resurrected in the titular story, where he, like Rafik, falls in love with a much younger woman, Husna, creating consternation among his family members, similar to the way in which Rafik’s affair had disturbed his wife and son. That master and servant reflect each other is not accidental—it drives home the point that no matter how far apart they are in terms of their social stations, they are alike in their vulnerabilities, in their weak human desire for love and companionship.

This want, aptly described by Helen in “Our Lady of Paris” as “my barefoot need”, haunts all the characters, as they haunt us. They remind us of mortality, which is also emphasised in Other Rooms by the things that outlive us—trees, rivers, birds, mountains. Elemental nature is contrasted with the accoutrements of living—a house smelling of cooking, its walls painted with glossy colours, a television set covered with an embroidered cloth—representing all that we fight for in life and all that is rendered insignificant by our mortality. 

Also, it is us humans who think that nature beckons at something higher, timeless, or extra-human. We ascribe meaning where none exists. In itself, nature is self-contained, inscrutable, simply there, uninterested in our presence. Wallace Stevens’ poem, “The Auroras of Autumn” (1950), brings this out. The title alludes to the northern lights, which are depicted by Stevens as a serpent, which embodies in its formlessness our persistent desire for form and meaning.

Mueenuddin’s recent release, This Is Where the Serpent Lives, borrows its title from a sentence in the poem. The penultimate story in Other Rooms, “Lily”, also ends with a reference to serpents. City-bred Lily is bitterly disillusioned in herself and her new husband, Murad, with whom she shifts to the countryside after their marriage. Following a quarrel, she runs away to a nearby patch of wilderness with a bottle of whiskey and has a series of sinking realisations. The place is rumoured to be infested with snakes.

Sensing a telltale movement in the undergrowth in the darkness, Lily stands still, hoping to court death. But nothing as momentous as death happens to offer her an easy escape from the mess. The epiphany is damning: “...there was no moment of forgiveness, no renewal, just a series of negotiations, none of them final.”

Coming nearly two decades after Other Rooms, the new book carries a lot of expectations. To get a foretaste, read this excellent review by Aditya Sondhi in the latest issue of Frontline. Adding to it is a are and insightful interview with Mueenuddin by Attaul Munim Zahid here.

Finally, an announcement. We are reverting to the fortnightly format of Reading with Frontline from this edition. We will be discussing literature as usual, but at a more leisurely pace. However, as Mueenuddin tells us, no negotiation is final: perhaps we will go back to the weekly format again in the near future.

 Thank you,

Anusua Mukherjee

Deputy Editor, Frontline