Lihaaf: Chughtai's Use of the "Child Gaze

Abstract In this paper, I will endeavor to explicate the politics behind the use of the ‘child gaze’ as a machinery to mystify, aestheticize, and also reveal the traumatic associations of the child narrator to the figure of Begum Jan. This paper will also try to present the difference between the various gazes of the shifting narrative identity—the ‘innocent naïve’ commentary of the child narrator and intelligent conclusions of the adult. This text has been primarily read as a queer feminist story celebrating women’s sexual liberation. In most of these readings, the position of the child as a victim of the Begum’s emotional manipulation and sexual violation is ignored. I will attempt to foreground the nuances of the child’s experiences in the Begum’s house while also highlighting the incidents that consequently resulted in her being traumatized by a plain, innocuous object like a quilt. The portrayal of the homoerotic relationship between Begum Jan and Rabbo will be problematized and scrutinized from the child’s perspective, and how the child’s gaze basically interrelates with the overall orthodox inspecting gaze of the society. The interplay between the various gazes—the child’s, the adult narrator’s, society’s, and also the audience’s gaze—presents a careful withholding of information while allowing the learned readers to interpret and decode the crux of the story. Additionally, a brief reading of trauma response and how retelling and recounting past hurtful memories can lead to a way of re-living and relieving the trauma in the case of the narrator is also crucial. There is, likewise, an attempt made to briefly register the use of various narration and language changes in order to understand the affiliations of the narrator to Begum Jan and how these affiliations affect her present reality. In doing so, this paper will highlight the exploitative nature of the relationship experienced by the narrator in Begum Jan’s house and how that experience transforms into a core disturbing memory haunting her for life. The mystification of the quilt’s movement while veiling the two lovers underneath is read as an instance of the imaginative minds of the ‘child’ and how fairy tales and creative release can be used as a shield against troubling, dreadful realities of life. Keywords: Child gaze, sexual abuse, violation, trauma, narrative identity, shielding, homophobia.