: ‘The Begum and the Dastan’: A novel that shows how to write history without condoning it #IndiaNEWS I don’t remember when my mother first told me, “Boys will be boys.� as an explanation.

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‘The Begum and the Dastan’: A novel that shows how to write history without condoning it #IndiaNEWS
I don’t remember when my mother first told me, “Boys will be boys.� as an explanation. But I trusted it. The 20-year-old I am now knows it’s an eraser. A cleaning towel that wipes away the grim men produce. Over our words. Over our careers. Over our bodies. It’s an explanation that deletes a lived history with a swift and casual swipe. Tarana Husain Khan’s The Begum and the Dastan resists this erasure.Khan’s character, Ameera’s grandmother, whom she calls Dadi, tells her the dastan about Feroza Begum, Ameera’s great-grandmother. Feroza Begum attended sawani celebrations at Nawab Shams Ali Khan’s Benazir Palace, defying her family, only to be kidnapped by the Nawab. Although the premise sounds simple, Khan crafts the dastan carefully, preserving the dynamics in Sherpur, a princely state, like one would sour pickle in a jar. Her writing serves as a citation for the overused “Show, don’t tell� technique, arranging the elements of time, location and character through a nuanced understanding of history. She weaves together the stories of three women, Lalarukh, Feroza and Ameera, with the help of three dastangos, about Kallan Mirza, Ameera’s Dadi, and herself. Each story, within another story, surrenders as a cautionary tale. Sometimes, as a spoiler, that...Read more

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