Sunlight on a Broken Column

Set in Lucknow, India, from the 1930s through the early 1950s, the novel traces the life of Laila, an orphaned Muslim girl raised in the aristocratic household of her grandfather, Baba Jan, a powerful taluqdar (feudal landowner). Narrated in the first person, the story charts the dissolution of a feudal way of life against India's struggle for independence, the communal violence of Partition (the 1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan), and Laila's own fight for personal freedom.

The novel opens with 15-year-old Laila living in Baba Jan's sprawling house, Ashiana, where the women occupy the zenana, a secluded wing separated from the men's quarters. Baba Jan is gravely ill, and anxiety pervades the household. Aunt Abida, the younger of Baba Jan's two daughters, has raised Laila since both her parents drowned in a river accident. Laila shares a room with her cousin Zahra, daughter of Baba Jan's elder daughter Aunt Majida. The two girls are opposites: Laila reads voraciously, while Zahra is pious, domestic, and preoccupied with her marriage prospects.

A family discussion about Zahra's marriage exposes the household's tensions. Uncle Mohsin, a dissolute kinsman, brings a proposal from a government official. Aunt Abida insists the girls hear the deliberations, clashing with Mohsin's traditional view that elders decide alone. The meeting is interrupted when Jumman, the washerman, drags in his daughter Nandi, accused of impropriety with the cleaner. Mohsin strikes Nandi, and when she retaliates by accusing him of having tried to seduce her, he strikes her again. Laila rushes to Nandi's defense and is struck herself. Abida disciplines Laila afterward, insisting she apologize and uphold the family's traditions. Laila retreats to Hakiman Bua, her devoted childhood nurse, who comforts her with stories of her dead parents.

As Baba Jan's health temporarily improves, daily life resumes. Laila observes estate management and the poverty of tenants whose pleas Aunt Abida dispatches with detached efficiency. Asad, an orphaned 18-year-old cousin living in the household, confides his desire to join the nationalist cause. He is secretly in love with Zahra, who hides her own feelings for him. During Muharram, a religious period commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandsons, communal riots erupt when a Muslim procession collides with a Hindu temple. Asad is caught in the violence and brought home wounded. Zahra breaks down sobbing, revealing her concealed feelings. That night, delirious with fever, Asad cries out Zahra's name. Aunt Majida reacts with cold fury, and Laila understands that his inadvertent confession has sealed his fate: Zahra will be married off quickly, and Asad can no longer remain in the household.

Baba Jan dies shortly after. His eldest son, Uncle Hamid, a senior Indian Civil Service officer who has raised his sons Kemal and Saleem in England, arrives and assumes control. Laila is permitted to continue her education. Asad announces he will leave for Delhi to study at a nationalist institution. Within the year, both Aunt Abida and Zahra are married: Abida to a colorless retired widower, Zahra to Naseer, an ambitious Civil Service officer. Laila watches the ceremonies with detachment, wondering why she alone questions what others accept.

Part Two finds Laila living in the transformed Ashiana with Uncle Hamid and Aunt Saira. Old servants have been replaced, including a new butler named Ghulam Ali, and the house has been refurnished in Western style. Laila feels she inhabits two worlds: an observer in her uncle's social sphere, and solitary within herself. At college she forms a circle of friends whose convictions sharpen her thinking: Nita Chatterji, a fierce nationalist who accuses Laila of escapism; Nadira Waheed, a devout Muslim who insists Muslims must defend their heritage; and Joan Davis, an Anglo-Indian scholarship student who challenges Laila's prejudices. A student demonstration against a Viceregal visit turns violent, and Nita dies days later from brain injuries sustained during a police beating, deepening Laila's guilt over her own inaction.

At a Taluqdars' reception for the Viceroy, Laila becomes separated from her family and crashes into a young stranger who steadies her. They exchange a single direct look before parting, and his face imprints itself on her memory. Later, when the stranger visits Asad at Ashiana, Laila learns his name: Ameer, a poor cousin of the Raja of Amirpur's family and a junior lecturer at Aligarh University.

Part Three opens with the return of Kemal and Saleem from England, drawing Laila into an active social life. During a summer holiday in the hills, Ameer reappears, and the two talk with increasing ease. Aunt Saira disparages Ameer's background and lack of wealth. At a farewell party for Kemal, Sita Agarwal, Laila's childhood friend now a sophisticated woman, confesses she still loves Kemal but refused to marry him because of her own deep-seated prejudice against Muslims, choosing instead to accept an arranged marriage. The next morning, Laila and Ameer ride to a secluded ridge overlooking the Himalayan snows. He kisses her, tells her he loves her, and asks her to wait while he improves his position. She agrees.

Back in Lucknow, Laila pursues postgraduate studies while the political landscape shifts. Uncle Hamid faces challenges from opportunistic politicians. Saleem grows closer to Nadira and the Muslim League, a political party advocating for Muslim interests in an increasingly polarized India. A bitter dinner argument ends with Saleem announcing he intends to marry Nadira, and Uncle Hamid storming out. On the night of Uncle Hamid's election victory, Ameer arrives unexpectedly, having applied for a university post in Lucknow. That evening, Aunt Saira opens a curtain and finds Laila and Ameer in an embrace. Kemal intervenes, assuring Laila he will manage his mother. As they drive away, Laila looks back at the house knowing she has already left it forever.

Part Four leaps forward roughly 14 years. Laila, now widowed and in her early thirties, returns to Ashiana one last time before it is sold. The house is in decay, strangers occupying part of it. Wandering through empty rooms, she reconstructs the family's trajectory. Her marriage to Ameer was happy but brief. In 1942, he joined the Army and was sent to the Middle East, where he was taken prisoner and later killed trying to escape. Laila's grief nearly destroyed her; only her daughter and letters from Asad, imprisoned during the Quit India movement, a mass campaign of civil disobedience against British rule, drew her back to life.

Aunt Abida had refused contact with Laila after her marriage, viewing it as defiance. Abida died before Laila could reach her. Standing over Abida's peaceful face, Laila felt spiritually cleansed, learning that sorrow needs to be shared and that love cannot bargain with time. She recalls the family's final gathering before Partition: Saleem and Nadira chose Pakistan, Zahra and Naseer followed, and Kemal stayed in India, declaring it his country regardless of consequences. Uncle Hamid died of a heart attack before seeing the constitutional abolition of the zamindari system of feudal land ownership. The family scattered across newly drawn borders.

Laila reflects on the fates of those she loved: Zahid, Asad's devoutly orthodox brother, slaughtered on a train to Pakistan on the eve of independence; Nandi, her face scarred by Ghulam Ali's knife in an act of revenge, yet fiercely loyal and now caring for Laila's daughter; Ranjit Singh, grandson of Baba Jan's old friend, who risked his life to rescue Laila during the Partition violence; and Sita, glittering in Delhi society but hollowed by unrequited love for Kemal. And Asad, now a rising politician in the Indian National Congress party, has told Laila repeatedly that he loves her. Sitting before a dusty mirror, Laila recognizes she has been her own prisoner.

Asad arrives at the house, calling her name. Laila answers: "I have been waiting for you, Asad. I am ready to leave now" (306), a statement that signals both a literal departure and her acceptance of the future.