Remembering the forgotten

Forgetting: the inability to recall old memories or the ability to overlook the Donna Julianas, Mahlaqa Bai Chandas, Chand Sultanas, Rudramma Devis, Hayat Bakshi Begums and Radha Bais of the world. Forgotten is a recalling of the adventures of outstanding women who’ve for ages been wandering the corridors of history unnoticed. Bilkees I Latif has found them and their lives, and pieced together their significant life events in a commendable effort to restore their due visibility in Indian history.

Written by Padma Shri winner Bilkees I Latif whose other works include The Andhra Cookbook, The Fragrance of Forgotten Years and O Dharavi, Forgotten reminds the reader of a number of lives conveniently neglected or distorted by history. Partly real and otherwise imagined, the achievements of these women at a time when women were conspicuous by their absence from all documented evidence, is incredible.

Donna Juliana, a pious Catholic of Portuguese ancestry, turned around the sour hand she was dealt in life to become an advisor, arbitrator and confidante at the Mughal court. She even crowned a Mughal Emperor. Mahlaqa Chanda was a poet, singer and warrior who was also the first woman to publish a collection of Urdu poetry (called diwan). In addition to sponsoring a chronicle of history, she also established a cultural training centre for over 300 girls.

The book also narrates the story of Chand Sultana who was born the princess of Ahmednagar. Her claim to fame is her ingenuity and her caring nature. While being attacked by the Mughals when the Deccans ran out of gunshot to fire, Chand Bai ordered the making of fresh ones using any metal available, including her jewels.

Rahim Bi, also known as Radha Bai, the only live specimen in these accounts, was Latif’s ayah. The story of her life is the search for someone to call her own. Having battled out the odds, the author leaves us with this heartwarming story of a courageous woman ready to face any challenge.

The book begins in a first person narrative with Donna Juliana telling us the story of her life. An interesting use of first person narrative, this jolts our mind out of the mundane historical detailing we expect from any book about history. Using this technique the author expertly convinces us about the book being a mix of the real and the imagined, simply by showing us the seams of the two worlds.

However, Latif fails to retain the magic of her opening lines through the book. The inside pages turn into murky meanderings about back stories that tread the thin line between relevant and irrelevant. This diversion does give the reader opportunities to know amusing anecdotes like Hayat Bakshi Begum was not only the daughter of a king, but a wife of a king and a mother of a king. But, another way of looking at it is that these anecdotes and background checks fill pages while the stories of central characters remain sketchy. Specifically, the section about Rudramma Devi and Hayat Bakshi Begum was a glitch as it did not focus on the ‘extraordinariness’ of the women but got lost in the stories around the said characters. The problem with Forgotten is that the onus lies squarely on the data than on the writing style. The book, therefore, lacks a concrete structure that houses the impressive information collected.  

Having said that, there are little moments of amusement which lay secretly tucked in within the sheets of the book. These take the form of personal asides like how she had gotten to know of Mahlaqa Chanda, story of the woman who had experienced a miracle by praying at Mahlaqa’s shrine and locating the venues of her stories in today’s Hyderabad.  

My favourite part of the book is the section about Rahim Bi, Latif’s ayah. She is, for me, the real Indian woman. Not of privileged background, trying to make ends meet, she is the quintessential Indian woman who deals with her life to the best of her ability. She is the courageous woman who you are likely to meet; the one who will do whatever it takes. What’s more interesting is the fact that the author has used certain clever techniques to switch narratives, thereby swatting narrative monotony. I wish she had used her clever writing style to mould this cauldron of information into a comprehensive and interesting piece of literature.

With letters written by Mahlaqa Chanda, quotations from various sources with relevant referencing and translation of Chanda’s poetry, it is evident that a lot of groundwork and research has gone into the content of this book. Forgotten could have made a strong case against forgetting women out of history. While the concept is gripping, sadly, the book stops at being a long-winded piecing together of a lot of irrelevant details with a few relevant ones thrown in for flavour.