-Brian Mendonca
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is a novel about Alice Bhatti. Or Sister Alice Bhatti. Because she works as a nurse in the Sacred Heart Hospital somewhere in Karachi. Mohammed Hanif offers us an inside view of what it means to be to work in a hospital which also doubles up as a mental asylum.
This is a world of pain. Even though some may be inured to it. The hospital becomes a microcosm of the world. Inspector Malangi and his G squad are just lackeys who ratchet up the stakes.
In fact it is through an encounter with the insane in the Charya Ward that Teddy Butt - her paramour and later husband - enters the narrative. However the relationship is fragile he being a moosla and she being a follower of Yassoo.
Though they get married in what seems to be a submarine, differences arise almost immediately on - of all things - the length of her pubic hair. Having lost a convict on his beat the pressure gets too much for Teddy, who moonlights as a police informer. 'Why don't you get a regular job?' Alice asks him.
When the baby is on the way, Alice must contend with another newborn who she helped deliver though her mother did not make it. Somehow Teddy is not kept in the loop about these things which leads him into doing an Othello.
The pacing of the novel is good. The events occur at the right time to push the action forward. Noor and his dying mother Zainab are the subplot. Noor knows Alice from their days at the Borstal - a prison house. But incredulously it is with Noor (17) that the Mauser-wielding Teddy suspects Alice's infidelity.
Hanif portrays the life of Joseph Bhatti - Alice's father - with great dignity. He is a human scavenger but he still manages to gift Alice a peacock he obtained from the sewers.
The tragedy of the novel is everyone is searching for love but no one seems to find it. We all crave happiness - a little sugar, as Hina Alvi the senior nurse puts it - sometimes. But the pursuit of happiness like that of sugar leads to unwanted outcomes - like gangrene, as Alvi sagely reminds us.
As the novel opens Alice (27) is a novice appearing for an interview at the Sacred Heart hospital. We see her becoming Teddy's fiancee, a wife and a mother. Her mother is raped and dies accidently when she was 12. The odds are stacked against Alice.
The way her life ends remind me of a recent news item where a couple from Orissa ran away to get married. They came to Shiroda, Goa. The husband (30) suspected the wife Rita Badakia (24) of a relationship and killed her on 5 June 2022. The child who is two and a half is in Apna Ghar. Truth is fiction.
Comments