Plight of Women in Shafi Ahmad's The Half Widow
Keywords:
WomenAbstract
Shafi Ahmad was born and brought up in Kashmir. He is an engineer turned writer who started his career writing for the newspaper Aftab. He also worked for Television and Radio. He wrote one 13-episode serial and half a dozen plays for Radio and TV but it was a fleeting affair. He has authored two novels The Half-widow (2012) and Shadows Behind the Ghost Town (2014) both set in Kashmir in 1990. This novel was born in the Kokernag area when Shafi and his colleagues were attacked by renegades, they escaped by the skin of their teeth and this escape from death proved a miracle so he started writing the novel The Half-widow. Enforced disappearances in Kashmir have given rise to a fractured identity of ‘half-widows’ and ‘half-orphans’ in huge numbers. "Dedicated to the relentless struggle of those who continue to search for their beloved ones in the conflict zone", The Half Widow is a work of historical fiction on Kashmir (Ahmad 5).
References
Ahmad, Shafi. The Half Widow. Kolkata: Power Publishers, 2012. Print. Bashir, Farah. "Use of Rape as a War Weapon in Kashmir." Kashmir Voice. Web 09 Apr. 2015. Butala, Urvashi, Introduction. Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2002. Print. Dhar, Tej Nath. History-Fiction Interface in Indian English Novel. New Delhi: Prestige, 1999. Print.
Peer, Basharat. Curfewed Night. New York: Scribner Inc., 2010. Print. Shekhawat, Seema. Gender, Conflict and Peace in Kashmir: Invisible Stakeholders. Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print.
