Old Road New Crossings

Malek abandons school and takes to business. He falls in love with a beautiful older woman despite his family's disapproval. Priya, a singer and an academic, faces opposition from her husband at every step. Malek and Priya are brother and sister, very different from each other except for their determination. They are part of a Bengali joint family founded by their father, the rational but trusting Shams. Spanning four decades when their homeland changes from Bengal to East Pakistan and through the Liberation War to Bangladesh, they struggle to build their lives. The shift of people from village to provincial town to capital city as the country develops is depicted as a process through which the joint family structure splits into nuclear families. Shams sees education as the medium his family can prosper by, which notion seems to be born out until the warped and cruel character of his son-in-law undermines his belief. The mother and the eldest daughter-in-law in the family are traditional souls, who are contrasted with daughter Priya and other daughter-in-laws who would like more education, respect and jobs outside the home. While overall the setting is of a middle class Muslim South Asian family with none of the religious angst of the current Middle East, we do have a glimpse of the sectarian violence post-partition with a brother nearly a victim in the notorious train massacres, which is in fact a light hearted moment in the book. Dictatorships and unequal power distribution in the two wings of Pakistan, are touched on, while the fear and disruption of the 1971 Liberation War are dealt with in more detail.