SHADOW CITY and ORIENTING: On the Road with Two Indian Women Across Asia
Two recent travel books by Indian women—Taran N. Khan’s Shadow City and Pallavi Aiyar’s Orienting—bring a unique, gendered perspective to the social and cultural complexities of expat life in Afghanistan and Japan.
Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, published in 2019 by Vintage Books, is an account of author and journalist Taran N Khan’s time living in Kabul, Afghanistan. Two years later, another writer and journalist, Pallavi Aiyar published Orienting: An Indian in Japan (HarperCollins India) based on her experience living in Japan. On the face of it, the two books do not have that much in common: Aiyar’s account is that of a peaceful life in a prosperous country, while Khan’s is about life in a place that had been torn by war and conflict for decades. Yet, they both stand out as recent writings by Indian women about other Asian countries.
The title of Aiyar’s book brings forth the idea of the ‘orient’ and hence the concept of ‘orientalism’. In his monumental work Orientalism (1978), Edward Said had discussed how knowledge production on the so-called ‘Orient’ had for the most part been in the hands of the West. By portraying the ‘Orient’ as in opposition to the occident (the West), and taking it upon themselves to represent it, Western writers have created certain conceptions of Asian countries that have remained in the popular view to this day.
There have been Asian writers who have taken it upon themselves to respond to such representations by writing about their nations from their own perspective. In this context, Khan’s and Aiyar’s works stand out. Both these books have been written from an outsider’s point of view, yet they are different from most books about these regions, as they represent Kabul and Japan respectively through uniquely Indian eyes. These two books are not about what Afghanistan and Japan are like when compared to the West, nor do they purport to make lofty comparisons to the ‘rest of the world’. They are, to a large extent, about what Afghanistan and Japan respectively are like when compared to India.
Out of the two books, Pallavi Aiyar’s Orienting is the lighter, easier read. That is not surprising, considering that her experience was one of relative comfort and privilege, in a country known to be safer and more developed. Her account can be said to be one of an explorer, writing a book for a curious audience who want a taste of Japan for themselves. This is not to say the work is frivolous or superficial; in fact, it goes into an interesting and intellectually-stimulating deep dive into politics, culture, history, society etc., in an attempt to understand a country.
Shokunin refers to the relentless pursuit of perfection through the honing of a single craft. Aiyar refers to the difference between the two methods as the ‘jugaad-shokunin divide’ and cites it as one of the reasons Japanese companies find it hard to do business in India.
In Orienting, Aiyar presents India—and in some cases China and Indonesia—as points of reference to compare and contrast different aspects of Japan. The attitude of the Japanese in several respects are compared with that of the Indians and the Chinese. This is especially seen in passages where Aiyar explores the idea of ‘shokunin’ prevalent in Japan. Shokunin refers to the relentless pursuit of perfection through the honing of a single craft. Aiyar refers to the difference between the two methods as the ‘jugaad-shokunin divide’ and cites it as one of the reasons Japanese companies find it hard to do business in India. Similarly, she also talks about the importance the Japanese give to manners and civic responsibility and contrasts it with India, particularly stressing on the relative public safety in Japan.
One of the areas where the Indian perspective in the book seems most apparent is in the discussions on history, culture and religion. While Japanese history consists of a number of topics that have gained international interest—ranging from the samurai to World War II—Aiyar takes a special interest in aspects that are entwined with India, and sometimes China. In the chapter titled “Monks, Movie Stars, Revolutionaries, Elephants”, Aiyar writes of an 8th century Buddhist monk from India, Bodhisena, who had a significant influence on Japanese Buddhism. She also mentions the pan-Asianist movement and figures: including Rash Behari Bose, an Indian revolutionary whose writings had influenced Japan; Rabindranath Tagore, who had praised Japanese aesthetics while being critical of the nationalistic tendencies of the country; and Radhabinod Pal, an Indian jurist who had taken part in the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, and had dissented against the allied judgment.
Aiyar furthermore details the religious connections between India and Japan, with some Hindu deities being incorporated into the Japanese Buddhist pantheon. There is even a section dedicated to Japanese enthusiasts of Indian cinema. While Indian cinema has been observed to be not as popular as in China, Japan does seem to have a few niche fan groups.
The comparison with India also takes on relevance in the sections about social injustices. While talking about the importance given in Japan to keeping one’s surroundings clean, Aiyar touches on caste and how different Indian society is from the Japanese one because in middle-class homes like hers, the responsibility of cleaning was usually delegated to a lower-caste domestic help. In Japan, meanwhile, cleaning has usually been a responsibility inculcated in one from a young age. At the same time, Aiyar mentions the burakumin, a traditionally reviled ‘caste’ in Japan, comparing their plight to that of Dalits in India.
Aiyar dedicates a whole chapter to her observations about racism and xenophobia in Japan, and how she feels that it seems to be less nefarious than its Indian counterpart. Aiyar observes how the extreme culture of homogeneity in Japan was shown to make casual racism pervasive, under a façade of politeness and respectability. She talks about the instances of bigtory that manifested in Japanese society throughout history: against the Ainu, the Zainichi Koreans, the burakumin, and against foreigners—as well as the slow but palpable changes observed.
While she notes that people from other countries, including India often think of Japan as a country of ‘misogynist men and meek, long-suffering women’, she believes that situation to be much more complicated. She finds the situation of women in Japan quite favourable when compared to India, considering that they were safe and had the freedom to occupy public spaces, dress how they liked, and were more sexually liberated than the global norm. They also had a relatively high rate of participation in the workforce. Still, patriarchy remains deeply entrenched in the country and there were some instances where it manifested itself in a particularly egregious manner.
In this context, she also mentions the culture of overwork present in the country, and how it often prevented women from balancing career and family together.
Unlike Aiyar, Khan in her book Shadow City does not make a generalized comparison of the subject of her book with a universalized Indian experience; rather her perspective is specifically mentioned to be that of a Muslim woman from Aligarh of Pathan heritage, with a grandfather who had an interest in Urdu and Persian poetry which often references Kabul. While some of the references Khan includes like Tagore’s story “Kabuliwala” and Indian cinema are relatable for people all over India, other parts, like her description of her upbringing in Aligarh, hone in on a narrower vision. This is interesting, as it highlights the multiplicity of viewpoints that can exist within a country—especially a country as diverse as India.
In the first chapter “Returns”, Khan talks about her personal cultural connection to Afghanistan. Her father’s family is descended from the Pashtuns (also known as Pathans) and both she and some of the Afghans she met had been enthusiastic about her ‘return’ to Afghanistan (though it is admitted that the reality is more nuanced than it seemed, with Kabul’s population being quite diverse, and with the possibility that her ancestors actually hailed from the other side of the Durand line).
Khan’s Aligarh experiences had influenced her view of Kabul to a great extent. Growing up in what she describes as a ‘conservatively liberal’ family, she already knew what it was like to have restricted mobility in the outside world. Since she could only venture out of doors with an ‘acceptable’ reason—like school, family outings to the cinema and a few social occasions with friends—the inability to walk around freely in Kabul was not quite as alien to her as it was for other expatriates. In Aligarh, she used to spend her time inside reading books, and she took to the same in Kabul.
Another factor that greatly influenced her view of Kabul was her grandfather’s knowledge of Persian and of the canons of literature and thinkers who defined the region.
In one instance in Shadow City, Khan even evocatively compares the cemeteries in Kabul to those in Aligarh.
In the chapter on film and cinema culture in Kabul, she writes of her own relationship with the movies back in Aligarh. Her interest in Afghan cinema culture could also be linked to the influence of Bollywood on the country. She writes: “Braving imprisonment for something as trivial as Bollywood entertainers seemed ill-advised, even sort of a betrayal of the high standards expected from stories of war and repression. Secret groups for reading Lolita perhaps, but for watching a romantic drama called Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Something Happens)?”
Growing up in what she describes as a ‘conservatively liberal’ family, Khan already knew what it was like to have restricted mobility in the outside world. Since she could only venture out of doors with an ‘acceptable’ reason, the inability to walk around freely in Kabul was not quite as alien to her as it was for other expatriates.
Later in the book, she compares the complexity of carrying out a love affair in Kabul with the same in Aligarh.
In another chapter about mental illness and drug addiction, Khan writes of how women’s experience with hunger, poverty and domestic violence in Afghanistan could also be seen in India, with a key difference being that in Kabul, they were seen under a backdrop of constant violence and trauma rising from war and political conflict.
While there is a larger representation of Indian identity in Khan and Aiyar’s books, one cannot ignore the fact that these books were specifically written by Indian women, and there is a gendered dimension to their narratives. In the past, travel writing (with some notable exceptions) has mostly been the domain of men, while women who have written such narratives have often provided perspectives on subjects that may have been missed out by male writers, particularly about the situation of women in various countries. Female travel writers of the past have dealt with the subject of women in other countries (particularly countries where women are known to be more oppressed) with attitudes ranging from condescension to empathy.
Khan’s attitude is definitely one of empathy towards the women of Afghanistan. She is particularly drawn to stories like that of Naheed, a teenaged girl who ended up dying in the midst of civil war. Khan even goes on to try to find Naheed’s grave.
Shadow City was published two years before the Taliban took over Afghanistan for the second time. After reading this memoir, one cannot help but wonder about the places and people Khan had encountered in the present day. What are the lives of the people she encountered like now? These people include her friend Nazira, who is described as a ‘chic young Kabuli woman’, one who had studied French in Kabul university. There’s also Zafar Paiman, an archeologist keen on studying Afghanistan’s Buddhist past, who claims to be “in love with archeology and Buddhism” Perhaps someday we might get a follow up to this memoir to learn more about their lives, but for now, we can only speculate.
Needless to say, neither Orienting nor Shadow City should be regarded as final word when it comes to the perspective of other Asians or even Indians in these regions. In Orienting, for example, Aiyar mentions how her experience was that of a particularly privileged foreigner in Japan, as a journalist with a fancy address and a European diplomat husband. The experience of immigrants who worked lower down the social order in blue collar jobs would be completely different.
Yet, the reader can still experience these fresh and interesting perspectives on two much-talked about parts of the world, adding to the different accounts surrounding them that can be added up to provide a more complete picture.
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Nileena Sunil is a writer based in Bangalore. A postgraduate in English Literature and Communications, she works as an instructional designer for a tech company, and writes fiction in her spare time. She has had short stories published in Borderless Journal, Tales from an Unfamiliar Nation, and the anthologies The Collapsar Directive and Flash Fiction Addiction. Sunil has attended the Bound India Virtual Writer’s Retreat and runs a book blog ‘The Book Window’. You can find her on Instagram: @nileena_sunil.
