MULTITUDINOUS NUANCES IN FARKHANDALODHI’S “CRACKS IN THE HEART”

Abstract

Pakistani women writers have been impacted by the consequences of the Partition. This has its ramifications on their narrative strategies and feminist ideologies. One of the strongest and most credited voices of feminism in Pakistan was Farkhanda Lodhi, a prominent Urdu and Punjabi writer, whose works resonate with concerns for women and their rights as did her interest in liberating them in real life as well. Her short story has been translated from Punjabi by Bhushan Arora, an award winning translator, under the title, “Cracks in the Heart”. It is a delicate and touching story of a dove, who, despite being a female, has to contend not only with her natural enemies, but with the intervention of human violence too. Through this story, Lodhi corroborates the fact that, be it humans or children of nature, the women/ female bear the brunt which society imposes upon them. She voices the plight of women through the dove, her struggles in a predatory world, wherein the dove, a symbol of peace, becomes the victim of communal violence.