Malika is the maid in the story. She's driven by her desire to rescue her sonMomin, a child labourer in a carpet factory. The wife of the factory-owner is Mrs Masood.She is the mistress in the story and, when the book begins, we find her wanting to buy abed for her soon-to-marry daughter. Conveniently, Mrs Masood comes to Malika's housewhose husband's a master carpenter. Later, Malika joins Mrs Masood's house as amaid and engineers what we could call social change.
If the Bronté sisters could achieve fame writing about maids making it big, surelydesi writers in English shouldn't be spared the same happy fate? After all, NobleRot follows Jane Eyre's example by even installing a mad woman in theattic. But, alas, the book has the "noble rot" of clichés clinging to its skin.Melodrama replaces plot and the language strives too hard for effect: "Malika pushedaside the clawing and dawdling alike, one of whom caressed her throat, then yanked off herdupatta. While retrieving it, she stepped on a big toe swollen past the size of theheel...a loose flap of red skin hanging in place of the nail...the toe was a foreshadowingof what Momin's hands would become...."
Last year, Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke had introduced us to some compellingfiction in English from the other side of the border. Noble Rot serves anotherkind of reminder: publishers like Penguin need to bend their efforts to publish qualityfiction in Urdu and other languages in translation.
