'Sharafat Ki Rawayat’ in Ehsan Manzil

‘MahmoodaBo ney kanwarpat main kabhi dheela pajama nahin pehna, lekin Hamida tang mori ka pajama pehanna apni qasr-e-shaan samajhti thi.’

In a household, where from the beginning, the narrator makes allowance of some sort for a challenging attitude from Ehsan Manzil towards a ratified and dogmatic shareef mohalla - the degeneration of sharafat in the house over four generations is not surprising but arguable. The novel begins with market gossip about a certain daughter of this family receiving an issue of the ‘Ismat’ magazine on her name which is scandalous and conspicuously against the conventional ideas of the 'shareef gharana' but notice the novel also ends  on a fragile event where Harafa, the novel is found in Hamida Bibi’s bedroom. The story explains the ties of women with sharafat and the struggle to gauge it within the Manzil over time. With what all that is changing: there is talk of and action for Azadi, Aligarh and Angrezi; there is still no real change. The final lines of MehmoodaBo reflect how nothing has really changed for women in Ehsan Mazil. The fate of women has been re- iterated time and again and it is hypocritical as the change through four generations is supremely unanimous and binding in the closing lines of the story:

‘Jawan loundia ko ghar main bethana acha nahin hai. Acha bura jaisa launda miley, ussey tikhaney laga do’

The change over the generations was seen in education, literature, clothes and cultural religious events like ‘Niyaz/nazr’. However, the sensibility of the woman and the man in Ehsan Mazil, barring their own history, always boiled down to the marriage of women as the sole way of saving izzat.

Then it is safe to say that what was changing was not sharafat itself but the burden of sharafat. There seemed to be difficulty in maintaining it.  In Sheikh Sajjad’s era in Ehsan Mazil, the values of the conventional sharafat were perhaps getting too challenging as far as women went and the cracking point was this ironic incident where the Muslim shareef woman’s bedroom houses novels such as Harafa. This event was too un-shareef for MehmoodaBo as a woman, and she felt like even Aijaz should be called back home from Aligarh. It is interesting to note that the transformation that MehmoodaBo asked for in her youth (that of low necks) were brushed off by Choti Shaikhani and now Hamida Bibi does wear low necks but MehmoodaBo makes it acceptable on the condition that she wear a duppatta. So who’s to say that when Hamida Bibi takes position, she will not allow the literature to be read but make it conditional to suit the definition of sharafat still?

In this short story, one should notice how the women address/advise/taunt/nurture women into remaining in the shackles of the profound sharafat that Ehsan Mazil should boast. Conclusively, the story over the span of time regresses one point - Muslin women were to harness the sharafat of any household and only their actions, pardah and education would eventually define the kind and level of sharafat associated with that domestic setting – for both outsiders and insiders.