A night train stalled for eternity
In 2009, Greek film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos made a film called Kynodontas (Dogtooth in English), a dystopian drama about children brought up in isolation by controlling parents. It was a tale of terrifying distortions. Bangladeshi-British writer, actor, scriptwriter and filmmaker, Leesa Gazi’s Bengali novel Rourob is mildly reminiscent of Dogtooth. Written a few years ago, and recently translated by Shabnam Nadiya, Hellfire is the story of a household ruled by matriarch Farida Khanam, who exercises autocratic control over the family, the support staff, and especially her two daughters, Lovely and Beauty. The story begins on a winter morning in Dhaka. Lovely, the older sister, is allowed to step out of home all by herself for the first time in her life on her fortieth birthday with explicit instructions to be back home by lunchtime. The first half of the narrative is about Lovely’s day out as she people watches in a park and has ordinary encounters in the outside world -- a little girl selling peanuts and a man in a red muffler who falteringly propositions her. All the while, she parries with the voice in her head, a male alter ego who guides, provokes and often cackles wickedly at her many predicaments. Seizing the day, she deliberately commits an act of transgression and returns home hours beyond her curfew.
The linearity of what takes place within the span of a single day unfolds visually one frame after another. The present is punctuated with back stories that reveal the complex web of unhealthy family dynamics via the interplay of characters. In an acutely patriarchal society, here is a family paradoxically ruled by a woman with an iron fist. In the guise of protecting her children, Farida usurps personal space and inflicts emotional abuse. Juvenile punishments are doled out to grown women. It is an existence where hours are filled with watching television, indulging in elaborate beauty routines or playing secret games.
As the story progresses, the many shades of Farida Khanam emerge to reveal her gradually crumbling core. The father is a man who lives in the shadows. Sweetly lulled by old Hindi film songs, Mukhles Shaheb keeps a wary distance from his wife’s wrathful personality. Lip-service is paid to his position as head of the family in the form of a seat at the head of the dining table. Hierarchical norms and roles are etched in stone just like the class divide between the family and the house help is immutable.
But Gazi does not entirely circumscribe the inner lives of her characters even as they acquiesce to their repressed lives. The girls explore the salacious world of Rashomoy Gupta’s porn booklets smuggled into the house by a visiting male cousin. His presence gives Lovely an opportunity to engage in a furtive fling. Beauty, the mercurial one finds her release through clandestinely bought marijuana sticks. Nadiya’s translation is justly stark and captures the mood of inevitable foreboding.
On occasion, there are lines that transcend the act of storytelling: “Her gaze is as unshifting as the white of a riverine island, as the light of a half-moon, as the headlights of a night train stalled for eternity.” Gazi writes a dark, thought-provoking pageturner. Hellfire is a slim and easy read about a very uneasy story with a chilling denouement.