Summary and Analysis: (Chapter-5)
The
chapter starts with a pronoun pronounced by Baji, not to call anyone but to
show the gesture of putting a charge on Aliya as she has done something illegal
or wrong. Baji is another important and strong character. Aliya is not welcomed
warmly by Baji neither does she feel any excitement and compassion for her.
Conversely, to it, Aliya feels more close affection toward Rehana, Baji’s
granddaughter. Some tolerable talks are shared between Aliya and Baji when
Rehana, who is an architect by profession,(ch-iv) entered and both heaved a
sigh of relief.
Aliya
feels uncomfortable at Baji’s lament about the death of her half-brother in the
riots during the partition. As Baji blames Dadi for the decision of migrating
to Pakistan. Whereas Aliya knew with, “utter certainty” that the Dard e Dill
family left for Pakistan in full security and a premier style. Furthermore, the
person who was killed was not royal like Dard e Dills.
Although
Baji is blaming Dadi for the family split during Partition but Aliya gets
emotional as she flashed back to the scene when Dadi burst into tears for not
getting a chance to meet the “mysterious Prufrock relative from India” due to
this Partition. Here the writer is very successfully able to exhibit the pain
people were suffering from those days. Unfortunately, the Partition, the
splitting of families was a scar still fresh in our memories and the writer is
pointing out and painting the same pain.
Then
Aliya shares the details about the same picture frame she has already seen at
Dadi’s place. She talks about the founding members of the Dard e Dill family,
the house where triplets were raised, and Abida her Dadi too young to recognize
her, and her face is “spilling over with laughter”. Baji too takes the edge of
that photograph to unwind from the roasting situation between her and Aliya at
the start of the scene.
Meanwhile,
Rehana appears with a roll of paper. That was the Dard e Dil family tree kept
by Babuji and his forefathers. The scene becomes more interesting when the
scheme of colors is elaborated. The direct descendants are inked with purple
and the rest of the colors are used to show how far or how close the person is
to the purple color, “I was purple, but it appeared my children would be red
unless I married a fellow purple” or if, “I were to marry a non-purple Dard e
Dil..” her children might ink with some other color, maybe maroon or some else
instead of red. The writer creates a situation where the color scheme gets more
important than that of attitude and behaviors or other life matters.
The
reference to Oedipus Rex while describing the starred children is an eminent
reflection of the writer’s profound knowledge of literature. The sleeplessness
and discomposure of Hamiduzzaman after killing two Not quite Twin and further
razing of the mausoleum building to the ground to make that land,” a holy
shrine” depicts the amoral approaches of Dard e Dils from Dard e Dil archives.
The analogy of the TajMahal by Shah Jahan and the Mausoleum by Hamiduzzaman is
nothing to do with any historical grounds except to create interest in the
narrative mode of the story.
It
is through the stream of Aliya’s consciousness that we come across the factual
position of Dard e Dil’s ancestral background that Nawab Hamiduzzaman was not a
Nawab, he stole that title after the death of the real originator in Mughals.
Not only was this, but the lands comprising “the kingdom of Dard e Dil” also
managed during the holding of the position of ‘Subahdar’. Even that position
was not hereditary but rather “in contravention of the standard of Mughal
policy” that no one administers the same lands over and over again but the
so-called royalty of Dard e Dil's ancestors somehow handle and hacked those
lands to make Dard e Dil,’ Palace’. The reason behind, according to Aliya, that
they were and to some extent are, “Sycophants” who are, “willing to sacrifice
anything that might stand in the way of an auspicious future for Dard e
Dils,…even a pair of mewling babies” or maybe because the Mughals put their
trust in them for being the cousins of Timurid Line.
It
is in the chapter- 2 that we know something about Taj’s mysterious role, now
again at the end of the chapter she is discussed, ‘with her head full of family
lores’. The strange secret of triplets being Not quite Twins. Baji’s doubt
about this secret again points out the amoral attitudes of Dard e Dils running
in the blood.
The diction used in the chapter is simple with less Desi touch. The reader finds historical touch not only of Dard e Dils but of Mughals as well. The plot moves onward with new things evolving along with the characters. The chapter ends with star secret, pointing to Mariam Apa and Aliya herself.
