The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon

“It was a story that had been sitting with me for a very long time, and I just wasn’t able to put it down. The home that the main characters, Misha and Zohaib, live in, is my childhood home. The mulberry tree, the big garden, and the staircase—all of that is based on my childhood home, but the characters are fictional. The story is about a pair of siblings and their househelp’s daughter. I wanted to talk about class structures in Pakistan. Because my first novel dealt with the elite class, I wanted this to be a commentary between the middle, the lower, and the upper class. I draw that comparison by the househelp’s daughter being best friends with the two children in the house. I tried to show how the children are able to form a deep friendship with Nadia, who’s the househelp’s daughter, but there is this resentment and tension in the air when the adults are involved. It deals with harassment, at different levels, in Nadia’s life, and it deals with mental health. I tried to touch upon quite a few things without actually saying too much, but my main focus was on what a woman’s life looks like when she is plucked from a very low class and dropped into the upper class and then the middle class. It’s a commentary on what happens when a girl receives an education she didn’t really ask for. Because here, when you educate someone, you are doing them a favor. You’re trying to make a better life for them, but, at the same time, does the social structure support this escalation in class? Is the girl then able to take agency in her life or is she somehow confused between the two classes? There are a lot of questions that come up within the story.” Read more...

The Best Novels from Pakistan

Safinah Danish Elahi, Novelist