Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
Sharmila, a Bangladeshi immigrant in Toronto, uses the extraordinary power of smell that her magical Jamdanee sari gives her, to overcome the trials and tribulations of immigrant life. It whisks her through time, where she experiences the rose-scented Mughal gardens, and sumptuous pomegranate-laden feasts of emperors. It also creates visions where she perceives the injustices of an unfair world in which third-world children sit and sew duvet covers, trembling in the bitter cold.
Thus, starts her magical journey though time and space, giving us glimpses of Tara, her British-born grandmother, in the leafy tea-garden estate of colonial Sylhet and Lolita, her daughter, in modern-day Toronto. The women of the sari are bound to each other by intergenerational ties and by this opulent sense of smell that the Jamdanee sari bestows on its owners.
When young Lolita, falls in love with Saad, a war orphan, from the 1971 Indian-Pakistan War, Sharmila is in agony, knowing that her husband will object to Saad’s Pakistani heritage. Adopted by Canadian parents, Saad visits Pakistan in search of his roots and undergoes a transformation. He begins to associate with people who have extreme views on life, religion and politics. He has a disturbing influence on Lolita. One frosty morning, Sharmila and Saad’s foster mother, Ruth, find to their great dismay that both Lolita and Saad have left Canada for the Indian subcontinent.
What will Sharmila do to save her young daughter? How will she keep her away from the broken fragmented path? Will the magical powers of the Jamdanee sari help Lolita? Are things what they seem to be?
Set against the backdrop of the Mumbai Attacks 2008, the Swat Valley in Pakistan, a tea estate in colonial Sylhet, Bangladesh and the diaspora in Toronto, The Song of the Jamdanee Sari examines the possibility of innocence in a world torn by grief and injustice. It entwines a tapestry of the historical, the familial, with the charmingly magical to culminate in an astonishing ending.
The author: Sayeeda Jaigirdar