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justprerna's review against another edition
4.0
Reading this book felt like being privy to a woman’s, a family’s, a community’s and a history’s secrets. Layla is living a secret double life - not unlike every other South Asian I’ve ever met, and has a different set of rules to live by in each environment she occupies. The family has a collective memory of aristocratic, communal and domestic violence. They have a specific experience with bodies, specifically women’s bodies, fertility, specifically women’s fertility, and sexuality, specifically women’s sexuality, and women’s virginity. The community has a shared experience of their precarious position in their religion, society and country.
The story plays out on the particular and the universal, speaking about the particular experience of a Muslim American woman living half her year in America and half in India; living half her life abiding by the rules of her family, and half her life living the lives women could live in America. Layla has to endure her entering a new arranged marriage, while balancing her new and forbidden sexual relationship with Nate, and the consequence borne from it. She has to operate within both worlds while battling with her own struggle to reconcile both of her identities in these worlds. The story is also set to the backdrop of postcolonial sectarian violence. There is a conversation between personal and communal history and memory, fueled by inter-generational, religious and gendered violence. Motherhood and birth, though generally flowered and honeyed, is a perilous activity in the novel. There are visceral literary allusions to Layla’s disembodiment - she is a passive vassal, and unembodied - and her mother is desperately trying to push her into her box, so that she will be protected, even if she is unhappy and hurt. Her husband Sameer, surprisingly becomes her ally - he too cannot fit in his box, but no one is checking if he does.
This book is uncomfortable to read, and it is paced to be languid. However, the experience, if you are brave enough to embark on it, is laden with sharp, immersive writing, a storied transmittance, and beautiful imagery. Samina Ali delivers a punch and a half that deserves its place on our bookshelves.
The story plays out on the particular and the universal, speaking about the particular experience of a Muslim American woman living half her year in America and half in India; living half her life abiding by the rules of her family, and half her life living the lives women could live in America. Layla has to endure her entering a new arranged marriage, while balancing her new and forbidden sexual relationship with Nate, and the consequence borne from it. She has to operate within both worlds while battling with her own struggle to reconcile both of her identities in these worlds. The story is also set to the backdrop of postcolonial sectarian violence. There is a conversation between personal and communal history and memory, fueled by inter-generational, religious and gendered violence. Motherhood and birth, though generally flowered and honeyed, is a perilous activity in the novel. There are visceral literary allusions to Layla’s disembodiment - she is a passive vassal, and unembodied - and her mother is desperately trying to push her into her box, so that she will be protected, even if she is unhappy and hurt. Her husband Sameer, surprisingly becomes her ally - he too cannot fit in his box, but no one is checking if he does.
This book is uncomfortable to read, and it is paced to be languid. However, the experience, if you are brave enough to embark on it, is laden with sharp, immersive writing, a storied transmittance, and beautiful imagery. Samina Ali delivers a punch and a half that deserves its place on our bookshelves.
pussreboots's review against another edition
3.0
I had just finished reading North from Calcutta by Duane Evans and was thinking of the Business World review which complained about the lack of Indian literary fiction written by actual Indians. The article contended there was plenty of pulp fiction published every year but rarely was it written in English or translated into English. India was therefore left to outsiders to represent itself to the rest of the world.
I don't know how valid the Business World observation is but it did get me to thinking and I had it in mind when my eyes were attracted by the beautiful colors on the cover of Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali. A quick look at the author info on the back jacket flap and I saw that she had been born in Hyderabad and raised there and in the United States. I thought it a perfect book to use to expand my horizons.
Madras on Rainy Days focuses on an arranged marriage. A nineteen year old Muslim woman has been called home from the United States to marry a man she has never met. She has come home though bleeding from an unplanned pregnancy. She is damaged goods but her family has so much riding on the marriage that she doesn't tell anyone her secret, instead allowing them to believe she might be possessed by demons.
Her miscarriage is one of two elephants in the room that everyone pretends not see. The other is her husband's homosexuality. Both secrets are revealed in the context of Indian Muslim traditions and families that are somewhat broken.
I can't say I loved the novel but I did appreciate Ali's way of weaving in the rich details of Layla's marriage and day to day life in Hyderabad. She manages to engage all the senses with enough detail to paint a vivid picture even if one isn't familiar with all the words used. It's a short but ponderous novel that requires a slower than normal pace of reading.
I don't know how valid the Business World observation is but it did get me to thinking and I had it in mind when my eyes were attracted by the beautiful colors on the cover of Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali. A quick look at the author info on the back jacket flap and I saw that she had been born in Hyderabad and raised there and in the United States. I thought it a perfect book to use to expand my horizons.
Madras on Rainy Days focuses on an arranged marriage. A nineteen year old Muslim woman has been called home from the United States to marry a man she has never met. She has come home though bleeding from an unplanned pregnancy. She is damaged goods but her family has so much riding on the marriage that she doesn't tell anyone her secret, instead allowing them to believe she might be possessed by demons.
Her miscarriage is one of two elephants in the room that everyone pretends not see. The other is her husband's homosexuality. Both secrets are revealed in the context of Indian Muslim traditions and families that are somewhat broken.
I can't say I loved the novel but I did appreciate Ali's way of weaving in the rich details of Layla's marriage and day to day life in Hyderabad. She manages to engage all the senses with enough detail to paint a vivid picture even if one isn't familiar with all the words used. It's a short but ponderous novel that requires a slower than normal pace of reading.
konkie44's review
4.0
The end left me wanted a bit more from it, but overall I really enjoyed this book.
for_esme_with_love's review
3.0
MORD is set in Hyderabad, where I currently live, and it was super interesting to learn more about the social and political dynamics at work in this city where I am an outsider. Ali explored many themes (such as tradition vs. modernity, personal desires vs. duty to community, tensions between Muslims and Hindus in India, and the complex identity of an Indian American living in India) with care. Ali painted a rich picture of the protagonist's community, including various festivals and religious practices, as well as sprinkling Urdu throughout.Unfortunately after a "dramatic" plot twist towards the end of the book (which I saw coming from a mile away) the book took on a very homophobic turn. The gay character was painted in a very negative light and all of the characters including the protagonist were unsupportive at best. This aspect of the plot stuck out like a sore thumb and was not handled with the nuance afforded to the other topics which the book addressed. I wish Ali had devised a different turn of events to move the protagonist's story forward.
juliechristinejohnson's review
3.0
Layla, the young protagonist, spends half the year in Minneapolis with her blended but broken nuclear family, the other half in Hyderabad with this family and a large community of relatives and friends.
The story centers around Layla's return to Hyderabad to reluctantly complete an arranged marriage and continues through the early weeks of the marriage. Layla and her groom, Sameer, each harbor devastating secrets that play out in rather predictable but still engrossing ways.
THe plot does spiral into the melodramatic and slightly lurid, with tantalizing foreplay on a motorcyle in a monsoon downpour, a young bride held against her will, Sameer's "secret" pretty easily divined early in the novel and culminating in a hideous event- I felt slammed over the head with a sledgehammer by all of the monumental events that happen to this young woman in the space of a couple of months.
What I most appreciated about this book was the detailed portrait of an Indian Muslim community struggling to maintain its cultural traditions while moving headlong into the modern, Westernized world. Ali conveys the protagonist's and other characters' cultural confusion- the identity crises, the faulty expectations, the hopes and disappointments- in unsentimental but expressive and colorful language.
The story centers around Layla's return to Hyderabad to reluctantly complete an arranged marriage and continues through the early weeks of the marriage. Layla and her groom, Sameer, each harbor devastating secrets that play out in rather predictable but still engrossing ways.
THe plot does spiral into the melodramatic and slightly lurid, with tantalizing foreplay on a motorcyle in a monsoon downpour, a young bride held against her will, Sameer's "secret" pretty easily divined early in the novel and culminating in a hideous event- I felt slammed over the head with a sledgehammer by all of the monumental events that happen to this young woman in the space of a couple of months.
What I most appreciated about this book was the detailed portrait of an Indian Muslim community struggling to maintain its cultural traditions while moving headlong into the modern, Westernized world. Ali conveys the protagonist's and other characters' cultural confusion- the identity crises, the faulty expectations, the hopes and disappointments- in unsentimental but expressive and colorful language.
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