Sophia, the protagonist of Alina Gufran’s debut novel No Place To Call My Own has always lived a dual life. With an Arya Samaji Hindu mother and a Muslim father, even the union of her parents was strenuous under the watchful eyes of both families – only her father’s parents attended the wedding while her mother’s family offered money to the groom to leave her alone. Sophia was once called Mehak by her mother’s side, a name she was not familiar with. As a child, she learned to switch up the greetings – namaste for one and salaam for the other – depending on which family she was around.
Despite their rebellious love, her parents soon fell into the trappings of marriage. Slurs about each other’s religious identity were quick to erupt during a spat. Her father accused her mother of being a skinflint Baniya, while her mother did not hesitate to term him unhygienic like his brethren.
Her parents’ unofficial separation and flitting between two homes disrupt whatever sense of normalcy that the young Sophia had grown accustomed to. And before long come the teenage years, when she dives headlong into indifferent boyfriends and a dangerous affinity for the fast life.
Fast and furious
When adulthood beckons in a few years, Sophia takes the creative route – she wants to be a filmmaker. However, the more practical concerns of living – making money, paying rent, saving up – push her towards jobs that she only half-heartedly takes up and is even less serious about keeping. When fate does put film education in her way, she botches it up by feeling perenially out of place and not living up to her mentor’s expectations.
The constant struggle to fit in is understandable and the pretentiousness of these circles, all too real. But when things go seriously south during an assignment, Sophia finds herself unable – rather, she refuses – to take a stand, thus alienating herself completely from her peers. A refusal that I found rather difficult to accept, for she is fully aware of the wrong she is perpetuating, despite having been a victim of similar aggression. Even so, I’m willing to chalk it up as a trait of “flawed” character.
The downward spiral that began in her teenage years continues well into her twenties. The most we see of Sophia is, in fact, as a 28-year-old. It is here where I found the novel at its most tiresome. At a respectable length of 250 pages, I was struggling to find meaning well after I had crossed the 150-page mark. The protagonist seems to be on an indefinite bender fuelled by indiscriminate sex, drinking, and drugs, but one is forced to ask – to what end?
The focus is so frustratingly inward in these sections that it is easy to tire – and even be bored – as Sophia bounces from club to club, bar to bar, and bedroom to bedroom. There is something unreal about a woman constantly seeking degradation and humiliation. Especially for someone well-educated, who has a creative bend of mine, and is amply loved by her best friend. The names of the men begin to blur into each other at some point, and I realise I do not care. I cannot wait for Sophia to see sense.
Women talking
The novel tips unevenly under this ungraceful weight before suddenly picking up pace ten pages later. Hereon, Gufran breathes new life into the story. The romantic relationships are put aside for the moment and we get a closer view of Sophia’s relationship with her mother. In a chapter that unfolds like a short story, Gufran brilliantly shows the true extent of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. Most of us are too quick to admit to having a “problematic” relationship with our mothers – without realising just how painful and difficult it really is. Gufran treats the dismantling of this conventional relationship with extreme care and caution. The frustration of the daughter is palpable and so is the helplessness of the mother.
The author holds on to her skills as she moves on to examine Sophia's relationship with her best friend Medha. Until now, we learn of their relationship through snatches of conversations, arguments, and anger that neither is able to articulate properly. We are made to wait for a painfully long time before these two women confront – or even acknowledge – the differences between them. In a dizzyingly claustrophobic drinking game, the two unleash the worst of their accusations. The strained moment of hostility slowly makes way for reconciliation. The arrival of this moment is imperfect, still raw, but beautiful nevertheless. For what it’s worth, Medha is the centre of gravity in Sophia’s life. With her as the unfaltering axis, Sophia can finally admit that she wants a “normal” life. Happiness is right here.
Whatever complaints I had with No Place To Call My Own disappeared at this point. The realistic approach to female friendships is welcome. It’s not always a cocktail-sipping-Sunday-brunching relationship. The ebbs and flows are just as heartbreaking as they are uplifting, but unlike most heteronormative relationships, the love here is true and timeless. Gufran’s eye for women’s relationship with each other is astute and compassionate – I only wish she would have revealed this talent sooner.
A vein that runs through all 250 pages of the novel is that of unbelonging. And the stifling nature of life that Muslims experience in India. In Sophia’s case, this is exacerbated by her status as a single woman and an unstable career. The alienation reaches home when her mother struggles to sympathise with Muslims during the “riots” following the citizenship movement and becomes easy prey to propaganda. A scene on the train where Sophia finds herself alone with a right-wing politician is especially harrowing. In every instance of abandonment and conflict, Gufran manages to find humanity (however imperfect) in strangers and loved ones who rescue us again and again even when we feel not worthy of saving. And herein lies her greatest achievement as this novel’s creator.
No Place To Call My Own, Alina Gufran, Tranquebar/Westland.
