Shame; by Jasvinder Sangheera.

I am not sure if this was the book published under the name Bezti, meaning dishonour, with death threats for the writer subsequently from males of various Asian communities in UK including - especially - the one she belonged to.

There have been various books and films about the travails of the children growing up in Asian immigrant communities, with a mixed heritage including a contrast of home and surroundings - East Is East being a very popular and famous one amongst them. That one has a mixed ancestry at home to begin with, and the travails of a brood mostly male, while this one gives the real dire version of immigrants (sans mixed race) living in localities where the populations are mostly people like themselves, so the version here is the starker one.

Both are about the insularity of the first generation immigrant parents to the ambient society and its values and opportunities, which often has children caught between the world of parents that they are trying to recreate half a world away, and the ambient society the children live in and also belong to, far more than the parents do. The recent very well received Bend It Like Beckham is another milder version of the reality, where the edges have been trimmed to show a community mostly doing well. This one goes into the travails, the horrors, the swept-under-the-rug realities.

If I were not exhausted when I began reading this it would have been finished in one go, and as it is it was in two days - never read anything that fast for a long time now, and generally I take time to savour reading. But this one cannot put down, not easily. Moreover, when I began and was only about halfway there was some question about if it was a work based on the general stereotype albeit there was no doubt about the authenticity of the whole life depicted herein, of a community living half a world away from their roots and trying to preserve ties to home by the worst route possible, by keeping to the dark ages practices that are now only in poor or rural or generally unenlightened communities back "home", but are far gone into oblivion, especially in urban or middle class and above or educated and enlightened parts of the society (especially in India).

At a few pages more, however. there was no doubt as to the reality, the absolute authenticity of the story being completely autobiographical. One pities the poor rural folk that go to distant lands half a world away and live there in urban settings but dare not open their hearts and eyes and minds to the whole new world of opportunities open to them through education and other freedoms, and work hard and menial labour to preserve and create another copy of their social setting back home where they came from. But this pity can only go so far, while the brunt of their burden is carried willy nilly by the hapless women - indeed little girls - of the emigrants and at the pain of death too, not merely physical abuse and worse.

In a poor society, when the social setting makes it imperative to balance the reality with aspirations, one can understand a lot about marrying children while still young - especially when both the groom and bride are of a compatible age.

There is a twofold reason for this, the urgent one being a security for a girl found early in form of a home and clan that claims her and would at the very least be likely to strike back at anyone harming her, so a girl thereafter can grow up with relative safety from male adults around. A girl in her teens in a poor locality, either rural setting or an urban slum, and without parents strong and rich enough to protect her in the former, might be prey to unsavoury male adults around; but a knowledge of a husband somewhere generally deters such attention from being at a level where the husband and his clan might be obliged to defend or avenge her honour with death of anyone offending.

The other reason of course is that people do wish to secure a marriage for a daughter and if the social custom is to do it early then waiting might leave no good possibilities of a match for her around in the society. So the family tries to find the best possible match for her by doing it early enough so the best possible match is not lost (with another family getting it instead) due to waiting. If the society one lives in has a norm of children being married by the age of eight, one benefits by looking as early as childbirth for a match, and begins to lose by the time the child - especially a daughter - is near ten. Such might be, in fact is, the reality in many parts of the world.

This is far from saying it is desirable much less universally so, and as a matter of fact even in Panjaab (usually spelt Pubjab) where most of immigrants termed "Asian" hail from, there is no dearth of families with better practices and women who not only are not forced into an unwanted marriage (goes without saying men are forced into marriages quite often too, although women suffer more either way), but in fact very often women are exemplary in their careers and they in fact have set universally shining examples too.

Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi and many many more such women hail from smaller towns of Panjaab, and for that matter even Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Provoked is her autobiography) is from a small village - she had had a college education before her relatives looked for a match and she was very central to the process (unlike the daughters of the immigrants in UK who are forced with no voice in the matter) of finding a suitable person, as is usual in an "arranged marriage", a key difference from a forced marriage. Kiranjit Ahluwalia had not known trouble much less pain or abuse until she married a man living in - born and brought up in - UK; and this too is common, daughters in India finding pain and abuse only after they are married.

But when people emigrate to a free country such as UK from rural parts of poorer countries, and then do not see much less allow themselves or their children to take advantage of all the possible opportunities, education and career and development of mind and self, much evil results - and it is all here in this little account of a life and surroundings. And this includes not only beatings and locking up the daughters, but rapes too, by brothers and uncles - since the males bear no burden of keeping virtue by any norm while the women bear it in every way possible.

In a sense one might say such immigrants live in a time warp, where they hang on to a culture they think is theirs but are in fact contributing to the creation of one that is changing rapidly back home for far better, even as they are creating a draconian version of it in a far more liberal and progressive society, wasting all opportunities in their blind quest to hold on to what they left behind.

It is all the more pathetic and horrible therefore to find that those you might think - and they do in fact think - are in a better position in the world are not only harking back to but rather creating all on their own a version of dark ages far worse than one can imagine, what with daughters not allowed to wear clothes worn in society around or possess mobile phones or not being allowed to speak to their local peers (plenty of racism and other forms of discrimination involved, with only those from one's own original roots being termed one's community). Or of course finally being forced into marriages before they are eighteen, with deception of a holiday visiting relatives used to force them to marry and then leave them before they come back (so they can work in low paying jobs to sponsor the new unwanted husbands to arrive in UK) - and in all this suffering physical abuse and other forms of abuse plenty. The descriptions here, all factual, are horrific.

One relatively recent Indo-Canadian documentary film (Canada is the other country where a major population of immigrants from rural Panjaab and neighbourhoods to the north and west of Panjaab flock to) showed a mother living in Canada hiring killers and ordering them to murder her daughter and son-in-law, for the sin of having married someone in India having fallen in love on a visit, against her - the mother's - will. The killers had the daughter speak to the mother on the cell phone, the daughter pleaded for her life and asked forgiveness for having married and assured her she was happy in the marriage; the mother listened and then asked the daughter to give the phone to the assailants. Then she asked her to kill the daughter. The son-in-law was beaten up badly, left unconscious unable to save his much beloved bride, and has been in hiding until the time of the film; the poor and much grieved, bereaved mother-in-law of the dead girl, filmed in the poor rural house she lives in where the loving daughter in law had "adjusted very well" in spite of being a well to do woman from a rich nation, had her body brought home and cremated as per tradition with all the ceremony involved, since the mother couldn't care less apparently, and the body had been thrown in a ditch along the road where she was murdered.

Read Provoked, read this one, and then there is the recent film (Heaven On Earth) too, by Mehta. And then ask yourself if you have been closing your eyes to such gross injustice, nay, crimes and sins, around your home. Chances are, it might be so. School teachers and other authorities in UK have been aware of it all for a few decades, what with students from certain background regularly going missing and their marriages no secret. When they die, just as often it is termed accident or suicide, conveniently. The community knows the truth of honour killings, has always done and has condoned it too.

What is truly wonderful is how this young spirit struggles again and again overcoming various deprivations and abuses, and more than coping finds paths out of the locked situation that others like her are staying in; and what is more goes all out to help others like herself, after getting a degree from a university while caring for her small children and helping other women, and yet dealing with the abusive males (not by passive acceptance, but attempting to have a good marriage until it is clear it won't happen) - and is forging ahead too.

I am already beginning the sequel, Daughters of Shame.