I love, love, love stories about ways we decolonize — and Ladies’ Tailor is absolutely a tale of life unravelling and rebuilding in the post-colonial, post-Partition Era. Set in India and Pakistan in the era after Partition (post 1947), the novel follows a cast of characters as they try to find a new place for themselves, heal from the violence of the migration and the ethnic hatred, and build a new purpose and identity. The story begins with one man as he navigates his migration into India as a refugee. He’s not a hero — or even a particularly nice man. He is an ordinary man with dreams and hopes to open a shop for women’s clothes for women.
As he begins to establish himself in India, the novel’s landscape begins to widen and the reader is introduced to the man’s circle of new acquaintances and business contacts — as well as the obstacles and hardships of navigating in a new environment.
A central focus of the novel are the inevitable ties between Pakistan and India, between Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and how unbreakable and crucial those relationships were (and are!) to a successful post-Partition rebuilding. As a cultural and social historian, this thread of the novel was especially profound; the characters in Ladies’ Tailor are not only navigating new spaces, but also trying to rebuild old traditions, re-create parts of their lives and heritages they have lost. The novel focuses intently on those tensions, and the flexibility required of individuals to be successful. And of course, things never quite turn out the way things are planned.
The story is not the sole attraction: Hajeela delivers the story with well-crafted, economical prose. The characters are fleshy and tangible. Sometimes they seem like unpleasant people, sometimes they are oblique to the reader in their motives. Hajeela’s characters are real, and indeed, the story is based on true events and real individuals.
As far as its textual style, readers should know Ladies’ Tailor is not reflective, subjective literary fiction; it is not deeply emotional (it does not dwell on the horrors of the Partition, even while it acknowledges this wrenching event) or focused on internal strife and struggle, but the collective efforts of a community. It is written in a commercial style, what I might categorize as “summer reading” but in the vein of historical fiction. Its subject matter is sombre and serious, but its delivery lightens the load readers might expect to carry.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 