A Comment on Suleri's portrayal of women in the first chapter of her novel Meatless Days

Comment on Sara Suleri's potrayal of women in the chapter 'Excellent things in Women' of her novel Meatless Days.

Sara Suleri is an author and, since 1983, professor of English at Yale University.Her memoir, Meatless Days (1989)is an exploration of the complex interweaving of national history and personal biography which was widely and respectfully reviewed. She encapsulated the memories of her Lahore childhood, at the heart of which were the tragic accidents that killed her mother and sister. Furthermore, she observed political events and political opinions being forged from close quarters and wove the story of Pakistan into her narrative.

The first chapter of her book Meatless Days is titled Excellent things in Women, in which she chiefly talks about all the women she had the company of back in Pakistan, before settling in New Haven. The woman who's account is given a generous space in the chapter is Dadi, the narrator's father's mother. She was a woman married at sixteen and widowed in her thirties, a woman who slowly evolves into a pitiable character, arousing the reader's sympathy. Dadi is portrayed as a woman whom no one understands, who often annoys the family members, who has a contradictory countenance with her son, and who has suffered both physical and emotional pains in her life. However, she is a notable family member, whose presence is not forgotten by the author and who's character is etched with minute details. Dadi's two favorite indulgences, food and God, make her a typical Pakistani elderly female. The elderly always become more religious when they age. Dadi is allowed to do as she pleases, be it stopping cars on the street and preaching them God's word, or bringing a butcher for the family's beloved pet goat. Perhaps because she is an old woman who's life is spent, and out of respect, she is never stopped, rebuked or blamed for her actions. Her loneliness too, is described with detail. She was alone in saying prayers in the house, alone because her husband had died a long time ago and she had lost her children in one way or the other, literally and figuratively. Her daughter had died in childbirth, her youngest son had never returned from Switzerland and her older son, the author's father, had married a Welsh woman. Dadi had her own little world, with rituals and habits no one else shared. She represents the kind of women who, after dedicating their whole lives to maintaining relationships, slowly become an invisible ghost when those relationships disappear and dwindle. Dadi was nothing without her husband and her children. This was her reality. Even though she had her grand-children, her older son and daughter-in-law, yet she was alone. She was seen by all but she remained invisible. Her invisibility reached its pinnacle when she died and no one came to her funeral or even bothered to remember her with respect or love; “she too ceased being a mentioned thing.”

The author's Welsh woman is shown as a reserved woman who suffered a cultural clash. She did not understand the religious rituals of the Eid which celebrates Abraham's sacrifice. The author's father was more harmonious with his wife's mindset than his mother's. The author's mother too, suffered a departure from her oldest son, just like Dadi. She felt disconnected with her grand-children because of a language barrier. Her influence on her children's and grand-children's lives slowly receded and she assumed a more private space. After the departure of her son, she turned her attention to her daughters, Tillat and the author. She shares a mother's grief of losing children with Dadi, and this grief is also shown in the life of the cleaning woman, Halima, who lost an older child as she gave birth to one. It seems almost as if this is the fate of motherhood, giving birth to children and watching them leave; this grief knows no boundaries of age, race or social standing. However, these mothers put on a brave face and swallowed their pain, they did not turn away from their other responsibilities, and this is the noteworthy thing in women, as the title says. Mamma went back to Wales when her own mother was about to die, and there she realized she felt no familiarity with her childhood dwelling. Her unfamiliarity with both Wales and Lahore did not matter to her, because familiarity did not come with places, it came with people. And she did not have the people. This loneliness of Mamma is not so different from that of Dadi. Mother's behavior was admirable when her husband took to prayers, after Dadi quit praying when she suffered serious burns due to a conflagration in the kitchen. The mother's deep love for her family is portrayed when she did not mind her husband's recent inclination towards religious duties, and when she decided to do a task for herself when her obstinate daughter Ifat refused. The author's mother showed the support and love for her children when the author decided to move to America, and Tillat to Kuwait. Showing great patience and courage, she helped her children take flight and leave her to pursue their own destinies. She accepted the fact that her eldest son would not return and that she had to support her daughters in embracing a change in their lives. This was the duty of a mother, no matter how painful or heartbreaking it would be. “Mamma and Daid remained the only women in the house, the one untalking, the other unpraying.” This unexpressed tragedy of the mother's life was not appeased by her sudden death after becoming a victim of a hit-and-run. It is ironic that despite all her sacrifices for her family, her tombstone bore Urdu poetry, a language she had always been shy of, and a completely counterfeit place of birth, as the father tended to forget these sort of things.

The author's relationship with her sister Tillat and her little brother Irfan is recited too. Being an elder sister the author felt a sort of parental responsibility over her younger siblings. The author always tried to exercise a control over Tillat, as she felt fearful of what the world might to do her, but she did not realize that her behaviour could prove to be more damaging to Tillat's upbringing. This set a sorrowful bond between the two, however, the sisterly love between them and the rest of the sisters did not altogether diminish. The author too, like her mother and grandmother, suffered loss of familial relationships due to the deaths of her mother and sister. Their deaths resulted in a loss of familiarity and connection with Pakistan. Like her mother, the author had lost the people that would cause familiarity with a place.

CONCLUSION

The author portrays the women from her past life in the way she saw them, engrossed in their roles of being a mother, a grandmother or a sister. Each and every thing she described about them was attached with these roles that become a source of their recognition. These women are important for the author and thus become a part of her memories. The author did not tell what every woman had felt when she underwent 'trying times' because none of those women expressed their pain transparently. Even Dadi had a secret place inside of her that no one could reach. And this is what the author tries to point out throughout the chapter. The sufferings and the exhibit of patience through the trying times is what is noteworthy about women, and even if women do not exist on their own as individuals in Pakistan, their reality does have something worth mentioning and remembering. 

REFERENCE: Suleri, S: (1987) Meatless Days ; The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Ch 1.pp.1

Credits: Muneeza Rafiq