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The most intriguing takeaway for me while reading this book is that you don’t need an adult narrator or a very intelligent sounding narrative to make a point and garner empathy towards people who have suffered atrocities.
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#theguywiththebookreview presents The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
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Review contains inconsequential spoilers
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Quick summary is that our protagonist is a 12 year old girl with a twin brother, their mother died while giving birth to them. They live with their father and grandmother. The girl decides to write letters to her mother every night before sleeping. She starts this a few days before the Partition of India on 15th August 1947.
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Some of you might not be aware about the partition, so here’s a brief from Wikipedia: “The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India; the Dominion of Pakistan is today the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh.�
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The core idea behind the existence of Pakistan is that Muhammad Ali Jinnah believed that Muslims will face oppression at the hands of Hindus and so a separate country is ideal for Muslims. (Please note I am giving the briefest possible reasoning and have not included all details)
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Coming back to the book, Nisha, our protagonist is a very quiet girl and keeps to herself. Her daily joys including helping the family cook in prepping food. Her twin is a dyslexic boy who has trouble reading but is good at drawing. Their father is a busy doctor and their Grandmother mostly spends her day praying. Their mother was a Muslim and their father is Hindu. It isn’t socially acceptable to have interfaith marriages so they were outcast by society.
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The way Veera has written the book, you will very soon forget that this is a fictional piece and start feeling that you’re actually reading letters from a child who has written these for her dead mom.
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The naivety in the girls voice is clear and you will feel an urge to try help her understand where she’s going wrong and how real life is so much more complicated than she believes it to be. There are harrowing moments in the second half of the book when it gets very intense and you will want to keep reading letter after letter to know what happens next.
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The book does not delve into the political details and touches only on the effects of it on people. This makes it easier to empathize and understand that at the end of the day we’re all humans and all we really want is to live in peace with the ones we love.
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I’d recommend this as a great starting point for those who have only heard about the partition in bits and pieces. It is a very fast book to go through, a weekend of relaxed reading should be more than enough.
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