A Beggar at the Gate is Thalassa Ali's second novel, part of a trilogy set during the tumultuous period of Punjab history that followed the glorious reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The first book, A Singular Hostage (2002), featured an adventurous Victorian woman, Mariana Givens, who risks her life and reputation to save Saboor, a young boy with mystical gifts. In Beggar at the Gate, we follow the fortunes of Givens and Saboor as they return from a two year sojourn in Calcutta . The novel is a fast-paced tale of their experiences in Calcutta , their adventures on the road, and their involvement in the political upheaval following the death of Kharrak Singh, Ranjit Singh's opium-addicted heir.
The novel begins in Calcutta . We learn that Mariana lives with her uncle and aunt and is shunned by the English because of her marriage to Saboor's father, Hassan Ali Khan Karakoiya,. The marriage and the events leading up to it are the subject of A Singular Hostage , which one should read for the plotting of the second novel to make sense. This interracial, inter-religious marriage was orchestrated by Hassan's father, a Sufi mystic and leader in Lahore , who learns in a dream that his grandson is in danger and only Mariana can save him. On her wedding night, and before consummating her marriage, Mariana jumps out of a window with the child and runs away to Calcutta to keep the boy alive.
At the beginning of this novel, Ali paints a picture of the English in Calcutta that is stereotypical—snobbish women, delicately constructed social hierarchies, religious hypocrisy, and the occasional decent people. A scene in Calcutta 's St. John's Cathedral deftly delineates the nature of this society:
“ Around her [Mariana] the congregation twitched and whispered. A woman nudged her husband. Another woman, in black, who had appeared to be sleeping, sat up and began to fan herself vigorously. Two rows away, a newly arrived girl and her sharp-faced companion turned in their seats to look back at Mariana, smug satisfaction on their faces. Like her, they knew what was coming. Unlike her, they were enjoying themselves (8).”
As the story develops, Mariana's uncle is posted to Kabul and Mariana herself receives a letter from Lahore requesting the return of the child. Consequently, she, her aunt and uncle, Lady Macnaghten's servants and baggage, Charles Mott (Lady Macnaghten's nephew), Mariana's devoted servant Dittoo, the albino courier Ghulam Ali, and Saboor, together embark upon a cross-continental journey from Calcutta to Kabul . Ali details the logistics of this move, with its horses, elephants, china, silks, chandeliers, and an army or servants, with such an eye for the absurd that it forms one of the most entertaining segments of the novel:
“ Lady Macnaghten had made a great display of nerves as she watched more valuable belongings being packed onto the bullock carts, but nothing dire had yet happened to her chandeliers, her porcelain, or her brandy, although the camels had managed to smash more than half her ordinary china before the train reached Allahabad ” (84).
As the entourage wends its way across the subcontinent, Mariana endures more than her fair share of adventure with a strong dose of British fortitude. Not only is her fate connected to the role the British would eventually play in the political life of the Afghans and Sikhs, but she must also come to terms with her own unresolved emotions about Hassan Ali Khan.
Mariana is a plucky heroine, the Punjabi and English protagonists are given equal play in the novel, and we are introduced to a host of intriguing characters, from Punjabi royalty and the family of the Sheikh to numerous servants. Mariana's encounters on the road allow Ali to draw a nuanced portrait of 19 th century India that takes into account class, gender, region, religion, and race; the historical research is well done; and the plot is fast-paced and engaging. For all these reasons, the novel is well worth a read. However, it is also troubling. Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism about 25 years ago, discussions have raged in literary and intellectual circles both in South Asia and in the West about the relationship between culture and imperialism. Thalassa Ali, however, seems to have bypassed all these debates. She unabashedly recreates an imperial world in which the most exciting, non-stereotypical character is an English girl with enormous courage. In contrast, the Punjab is tyrannical and savage: the predominantly royal characters are depicted as bloodthirsty and eager to kill in their struggle for the throne, and a scene depicting sati reflects very much what 19 th century British travelers often noted as one of the most savage elements of Hindu India.
While these depictions are driven by historical research, one must also question this unrelenting English historical lens. My concern here is not with historical accuracy - one cannot deny the practice of sati - but rather the ideological lens through which it is argued. The sati stands in contrast to the signs of civility that exist only in the Sheikh's haveli . The British occupy an intermediate position with regard to civility and women's rights; although they don't burn their widows, the English women do experience sexual vulnerability. The sheikh's haveli , on the other hand, is both a sanctuary and a model for women's rights. It is this compartmentalization that I question in the ideology that underlies the depiction of Panjab.. In Ali's India, we never escape the notion that the “East”, especially the Islamic East, is mysterious and exotic, a background for one English woman's voyage of self-discovery. One might argue that this novel reflects Ali's own experiences, as an American who married a Pakistani, lived in Pakistan for several years, and studied Islamic poetry and Sufism. However, when the novel is so thoroughly focused on English colonial history in the Panjab, with a fictional Victorian heroine as the character through whom one assesses the impact of English imperialism, it is problematic todo a simplistic autobiographical reading of the character of Mariana. Although one admires Mariana for having taken the effort to study Urdu language and poetry, ultimately her acquisition of knowledge leads to what Said defines as Orientalism and which he argues is a “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”. In light of the scholarship that has followed Said's work (including that of Gayatri Spivak, Robert Young, Homi Bhabha, and Antoinette Burton), as well as the novels of Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Allan Sealey and others on British imperialism in India, one can't help but wonder: isn't it time for us to leave behindhistorical romances dripping with Raj nostalgia and find other ways of writing about a very critical period in South Asian history?
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