After reading Ismat Chughtai’s short stories, I thought I’ll read one of her novels, and I picked this one, ‘Masooma‘.
‘Masooma’ tells the story of a young woman who hails from a rich family and what happens to her when her family’s fortunes sink and she ends up in Bombay. Her mom changes her name to Nilofar, and she ends up becoming the mistress of a movie producer. We get an inside glimpse into the movie industry through Masooma’s eyes and we see the nasty stuff that happens there.
I was hoping to like ‘Masooma’ more than Ismat Chughtai’s short stories, because there was more room to develop the plot, we could get to know the characters in a more deeper way, and the surprises would hopefully get revealed in a more natural way. But somehow this book didn’t work for me. It was disappointing, especially because the story had a wonderful start and the first page was brilliant and the first four pages were wonderful. But unfortunately, I wasn’t invested in the story or the characters, and I just wanted the book to end. One of the reasons might be that none of the characters were likeable. Maybe at the time it was published, the book offered a veiled commentary on the movie industry, especially Bollywood, and maybe the characters in the book might have been fictional versions of real people. This might have made the book shocking and appealing to its original readers. But now, decades later, I’m not able to see the connections, and so the book somehow didn’t work for me.
My first novel-reading experience of Ismat Chughtai didn’t go well, unfortunately. But hopefully the next novel of hers that I read will be better.
Have you read ‘Masooma’? What to you think about it?
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