An Extraordinary Life

April 4, 2007

Hi Khushies,

I recently read a highly interesting non-fiction book, ‘An Extraordinary Life’, by Mehrunissa Khan, Princess of Rampur, a princely state (kingdom) in north India. The author is a daughter of a Nawab i.e. king or the Muslim equivalent of a Hindu Maharaja. She grew up in palaces, surrounded by jewelry and other riches, exposed at once to the often-contradictory pulls of Muslim, Western, Indian and Hindu cultures, yet largely cocooned off from the political developments on the Indian subcontinent during the waning days of British rule.

Like most Indian women of that era, the author was forced into an arranged marriage: a loveless and unhappy one that ended in divorce. She had to go to great lengths to get divorced, since it was rare for a Muslim lady to initiate a divorce. She later fell in love with a man from Pakistan, but Pakistani law forbade Pakistanis from marrying Indians, so Pakistan’s President had to change the law to allow them to marry.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this book was somehow associated with Washington DC, with gays, and with KhushDC in particular? Such links do exist!

* The author is now settled in suburban Washington DC for the past several years, and is a professor of languages at the United States Department of Agriculture.

* The book is about 200 pages long and is highly articulate and well-written. There is exactly one sentence in it that mentions the bisexuality of the author’s father, the Nawab of Rampur. It goes something like, “He was a big womanizer, and he also loved to enjoy himself with men all night.”

Male homosexuality is termed “Nawabi Shauk” i.e. hobby of the Nawabs in North India, and the author’s father was an example.

* The author thanks five people in the acknowledgments. One of them is a well-known and well-regarded longtime member of KhushDC!

* I am acquainted for over a year with one of the persons appearing in the book. That person introduced me to the book when I recently told them about my being gay.

* Other links to KhushDC might exist, but mum’s the word, and my lips are henceforth sealed!

Check out the book if you get a chance. The book is published in India, and is not available in the U.S. The only other personal accounts ranging from India to Pakistan and Europe that I’ve read are some of Salman Rushdie’s books such as Midnight’s Children, Shame, etc. Exceedingly well-written though they are, they are fictional and the satire in them borders on dismissiveness and contempt.

‘An Extraordinary Life’ suffers from no such deficiencies. It leaves us in awe of the author’s courage and gumption – which others around her perceived as gall – and we can empathize with the personal tragedies that the author suffered. The book is literally unputdownable.

--Ninad