Thrity Umrigar’s writing is pregnant with horror as it describes the barbarian behavior of men in the name of religion that makes you want to claw at their faces, to slap them. ‘Honor’ is a book that will raise all these questions and will anger you to no end. Who the heck gave them the right to do that? Where does this god complex come from? How do they figure themselves to be at the top of the pecking order? Who gave them the right to oppress women? Just men, thousands of years ago, who were so full of themselves that they thought it right to filter down these thoughts through millennia and generations. Of them slapping, raping, burning, killing women for ‘dishonoring’ them by loving someone from a different religion. Of them saying that women need to serve them because God willed them to be. The hypocrisy, the utter assholery of men trying to act like God wrote the bloody, violent rules that they think they need to act upon. And I gag on my own runaway thoughts, the what-ifs, the whys, the hows.
Every time I read a book like this, I lose faith in humanity because I know that the extent of these barbarisms isn’t fictionalized. It was my first book of 2022 and reading it has broken something inside of me. Thrity Umrigar’s ‘Honor’ is a searing story of honor killings, religious fundamentalism and extremism, and the worst of humanity. Little does she know how her life is going to change in so many ways, that she just cannot count and comprehend. When Smita begins work on this story, little does she know how all of this is going to affect her. Meena, whose case has now been taken up by a lawyer who wants to bring justice to her, but is that the lawyer’s intention? Meena, whose house was set on fire by her own brothers for ‘tarnishing’ their family name by marrying a Muslim man and whose husband died in that fire. Meena, who married a Muslim man, and was promptly disowned by her Hindu family. Coming to Mumbai is going to open old wounds and bring her secrets spilling out, but she figures Meena’s story is an important one to tell. Smita, an America-based journalist, is called to Mumbai to cover the story of a burn victim because her colleague is unwell.
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