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Book Review | The grandeur and myriad horrors of a Begum’s dastaan
Updated May 9, 2021, 10:03 am IST
Restless Ameera implores her dadi to tell stories about Feroza Begum, whose own restlessness had ruined her life
Structurally, too, Ameera’s circumstances feel temporary compared to Feroza Begum’s lifelong entrapment; the latter is better synchronised with Lalarukh’s adventures. By Arrangement
Books are defined, at their most basic, as stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But classics like the
Mahabharata and The Thousand and One Nights are enjoyed for how frequently these three sections are interrupted. Structuring a book to consist of stories within stories allows author to escort the reader through some portions of the story, and later force the reader to plunge, unassisted, into a new section. The result is dizzying, but unforgettable. Characters blend into one another, time and space collapse, and dreamworlds feel real.
Cavils apart, this is an immersive novel, remarkable for the thoroughly Muslim world it creates
The Begum and the Dastan could have been titled ‘The Begum & Her Bluebeard’. Bluebeard has many wives Scheherazade, Jane Eyre, Rebecca and their stories are a disjointed, inverted version of the classic fairy tale: a hasty marriage, then a wooing, curiosity, secrets, and finally, a husband who’s revealed to be a monster. The Bluebeard in Tarana Husain Khan’s story is Nawab Shams Ali Khan, ruler of the princely state of Sherpur.
Like all the wives in the Bluebeard tales, the Nawab’s begum, Feroza, the beautiful blue-eyed daughter of Miya Jan Khan, a wealthy Rohilla Pathan, is an independent, curious soul. It is her curiosity that seals her doom.