One that got away

In a society in which multicultural pieties have for so long replaced genuine thought, it is hardly surprising that very little real interest has been evinced in how important minorities actually live. The fate of many young women of Indian sub-continental origin has not excited the interest, much less the sympathy and outrage, that it ought to have done, at any rate among people who like to parade the breadth of their sympathies as martyrs parade their wounds.

The author of this very impressive and moving memoir was born of Punjabi Sikh parents in Derby. Although her mother spent more of her life in England than in India, she never learnt a single word of English: in itself a tragic self-enclosure.

The author’s parents arranged a marriage for her when she was 15 years old, and in order to escape it she ran away with the boyfriend she was not supposed to have. Unusually in this situation, he stuck by her, and tried his best to support her. By dint of immense courage and hard work, they actually succeeded in making a life for themselves, even becoming prosperous through market trading. But the author remained an outcast from her own family, her mother repeatedly saying that as far as she was concerned her daughter was dead.

With considerable narrative skill, the author allows us to see and feel, from the inside as it were, what it is like to be trapped in a close Indian family and the consequences of the attempt to escape. The tragedies of cultural dislocation and misunderstanding between the generations could not be more vivid. One of the author’s sisters, trapped in a forced marriage abhorrent to her, either sets fire to herself or is burnt to death by her husband.