Where did you get the seeds of inspiration to write? Rebellion?
Many years ago, I was traveling in the Sundarbans, and someone told me there was an island brothel there. If you take a boat into the Sundarbans from Mongla, which is a port, you cross it on the way. What an unlikely and almost mythical place, I thought. It shouldn’t be real.
But then I looked it up and did some research, and it’s actually a real place. A brothel has been operating on that island for more than 50 years. I immediately thought of setting a novel there. But I thought it would be too difficult to read until I realized that the novel might not be about the situation of the people there, but about their escape. When I realized that the novel could be an uplifting story about a revolution, about a seismic change, about people taking control of their own destiny, it really excited me and gave me the will to write and finish the novel.
How did you decide to set the novel on a desolate island?
Well, I think islands are very interesting for novelists because they form a very closed community, and you can really do a lot with it. In this case, this community of women were abandoned to their fate.
But things couldn’t really change until Kusum arrived. What’s really fascinating to me as a novelist is the fact that this was a place that was beyond the reach of society, where it had its own laws and its own social structure. I think for the revolution to be real it really had to come from a place where these women were almost in captivity. These women are imprisoned on the island and how do they get out? The island gives you that context and that setting.
Your novel raises the concern of sex trafficking of women. How do you think it can be fought?
As a novelist, I have to think less about what impact it will have on society because I’m not a politician. I am not the person who makes policies. I’m here to give you a glimpse into a world you might not be able to see otherwise. Then it’s kind of up to you. The novel raises some questions. This is to provoke you. It’s meant to make you uncomfortable. After that, what happens in terms of change is beyond the novelist’s scope. But I feel very committed to telling stories that would otherwise go untold. This is a very deep commitment of mine.
I understand, but what are the issues that cause this to happen to some women?
These women are victims of many forms of oppression – not just prostitution, but poverty and climate change. They are vulnerable in many ways, and their status as sex workers or enslaved people is one aspect of this. Many things have to go wrong in society for that situation to arise.
Did you want to write about climate change through fiction?
Absolutely. Climate change is now a reality everywhere in the world. We are all facing the climate crisis, but nowhere more so than in the lower delta of Bangladesh. When setting a novel in contemporary Bangladesh, you can’t really avoid writing about climate change. It is a fact of life. This was certainly one of the governing ideas behind the book.
You write that these women “were always poor.” Do you believe that their suffering is due to poverty or political and cultural issues?
The cause of women’s suffering is patriarchy. The reason women suffer is that we live in an unequal and unjust society. Furthermore, women living in poverty experience forms of violence that women living in relative wealth and privilege do not. So, poverty is another layer of oppression. Climate change is another layer of oppression. All these forms of insecurity affect women more than men. But fundamentally, the reason women are oppressed is because we have accepted that women have less rights and less privileges in all societies and social classes of the world. It is a fundamental fact of human society – that women will accept forms of subordination that men are not required to accept. This is the basic reason why women have to face violence.
How challenging was it to write on Bangladesh issues while living in England?
I live in England, but I go to Bangladesh two or three times a year. My entire family lives there. My sister and my father run an English language daily newspaper. My mother is a human rights activist. So, I live in London, but I am very closely connected to Bangladesh as the source of all my creative output. This is the society that interests me the most. These are the problems I want to write about. So, yes, I will always write about Bangladesh, and I don’t find it difficult. I feel immense respect and humility towards whatever topic I write about and feel the need to do justice in some way or the other. This is just a writer’s Hippocratic Oath – trying to treat your subject with deep humility, respect and an understanding that, at some level, we may know very little about other people.
We live in our own subjective world. Therefore, attempting to see the world from another perspective is what a novelist is all about, no matter where he or she is writing from.
How much research did you do for the novel?
I didn’t go to the island until I finished writing the novel because I really wanted it not to be based on real people or real characters, to preserve their anonymity. I did some research. I researched Bon Bibi, trafficking and climate change, but this novel did not originally come out of research. It stems from a set of ideas about revolution and rebellion. It’s driven by the story of its characters and the arc I wanted those characters to have.
Subsequently, I visited the island, met the women living there, befriended them and am still in touch with them. He was a really important part of it. But I did not write the book based on those people.
Bon Bibi is one of the more interesting characters in the novel.
Bon Bibi is a deity in the Sundarbans. Be it the West Bengal part of the Sundarbans or the Bangladesh part, Bon Bibi is revered as the protector of the forest. There are many stories about him. The myth is that she was left in the forest and raised by a deer, and then she returned to become the protector of the forest. She protects humans from monsters like tigers, but she also protects the forest from humans. She is the patroness of the Sundarbans and a local goddess, deity or mythological figure of that particular part of Bangladesh and West Bengal.
Maternal love is a major theme.
Yes, that’s a huge theme of the book because the kids on the island really just want to be mom. There’s that scene where he says, “On the island, we really want to get lice because when we get lice, we sit on our mom’s lap and she takes the lice out of our hair.” This is a moment of tenderness. How difficult is the life of women. They suffer so much that it becomes difficult for them to be gentle towards their children. When Kusum takes the women on strike and builds tube wells, it is for the first time that they can feel softness or tenderness coming into them. This is a very important thing for everyone – for women and their children.
Then, of course, the cruel madam, who is the villain in the story, is called Amma. So, of course, the theme of mothers and children, what it means to be a mother, and the desire to be a mother is a very important theme in the book.
All the women except Kusum are accustomed to their miserable lives. Why do they look for external forces for their liberation instead of freeing themselves from bondage like Kusum?
When Kusum arrives on the island, they have accepted their fate. Sometimes they talk about their lives like, “Well, at least here, no one is embarrassing me. You know… I can do whatever I want.” They are behaving as if they are more free than they would be anywhere else. This is part of people becoming aware of their forms of oppression, Stockholm syndrome, or whatever you want to call it. Until someone comes along and shows them that there can be a different life or a different future for them and their daughters, they do not have the imagination, education or will to be free.
Do you think that many women in our society have accepted their fate and there are only a few women like Kusum?
I don’t think it’s necessarily women. I think we all live lives where we are blind to our limitations, and sometimes it’s hard to see our way out. We need to remind people that change is possible.
People who accept their fate are not passive. They have just been grounded. They have suffered so much that they lose the ability to see beyond the circumstances of their suffering. That’s why the kids are there to remind their mothers, “We’re going to be free by Bon Bibi.” And mothers say, “Oh, there’s no such thing.” For them, the safest thing is to survive and make the best of their situation.
I think it’s definitely a human condition: We accept our fate. We accept some limitations because we feel it is safer. It is too dangerous or risky to imagine that we can change things.
So, yes, I think progress depends on people who decide to rebel, who decide to show everyone that another future is possible.
Here are some highlights of what happened in Bangladesh recently. Were you thinking about that political change when you wrote this?
Absolutely. The protest in the city where Kusum participates is certainly based on what is now called the Monsoon Revolution, or the July Uprising in Bangladesh. She mentions ousting a dictator and that dictator is definitely based on Hasina, although she is not named in the novel.
Kusum experiences what it means to protest, and feels immensely empowered by it. She tells her sister, “When the police come to beat the feet of the protesters, they don’t know whether they are beating the feet of a rich girl or a poor girl.” She feels like the street is a very equal place, and she understands what it means to have protests on the island with you.
So, on one hand, the novel reflects the idea of ​​women’s resistance, and on the other hand, it reflects resistance against the political system in Bangladesh. Is this a book of resistance?
This is absolutely a book of resistance. Yes. This is called rebellion. It’s about revolutions. It’s about change. It is about the possibility of revolutions. That’s definitely what it’s about.
Who is your favorite author?
I’m hugely inspired by Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie and American writers like Willa Cather and Flannery O’Connor. Beloved by Toni Morrison is probably the book I turn to again and again, and I consider it a masterpiece.
Mo. Farhan teaches English at Jamia Millia Islamia, the central university of New Delhi.
