Nawab Faizunnesa was here

The Dhaka-Cumilla bus tickets are Tk 250 for non-AC, Tk 350 for AC, and Tk 400 for AC VIP. Window seats must be negotiated on the spot. The journey takes three to six hours, past the old capital of Sonargaon, where the moisture in the air inspired the muslin, across the Gomati river and into Cumilla town on the Tropic of Cancer.

In 1834, the year of Faizunnesa Chaudhurani's birth, this journey would have taken up to two days in a palanquin. That same year, teenager Ghaziuddin Haider, the last of the naib nazims, came to power. He much preferred playing with kites to governance and in his 10 years of rule, Ghaziuddin did little and spent a lot. With his death in 1943, the position of nazim came to an end, and with Queen Victoria's blessing, the nawabs returned to power in Bengal. That same year, Faizunnesa refused the first marriage proposal from her distant cousin, Muhammad Gazi. It was not until much later that, at the age of 23, she finally said yes.

But no, this is not a story about the power of persistence, and it does not end well.

It is September 2024 when we visit Cumilla. We cruise the city in three-row limo chargers, past dighis, temples, mosques, and viharas, engaged in perhaps the only permissible type of stalking—that of the deceased. Everywhere, I look for Faizunnesa. Like a hopeless romantic, I ask of the roads, the trees, the bricks—Did you know her?

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It is easy to imagine Faizunnesa wandering the thousand year old ruins of Shalban Vihara and Itakhola Mura, drawing from them the inspiration for her Rupjalal (1876), the kaleidoscopic fairy tale of the adventures of Jalal, the failable prince, who keeps forgetting his magic mantras and delaying the rescue of his damsel, Rup. The novel was first published in 1876, when Faizunnesa was 42 and her marriage had collapsed after Gazi chose to return to his other wife. Her language about heartbreak is snarky. Her disappointment and disdain are expressed with great wit; in verse and prose, she ridicules the "heroic" narcissism of Prince Jalal for over two hundred pages.

Jalal is Gazi, and Gazi is Jalal. In his journey to save his damsel, the prince accidentally gets married to another woman. He still loves Rup truly, which means that she must accept his predicament. And while Rup does accept, because what choice does she have, really—Faizunnesa does not. After a seven-day fight, she leaves her husband and gives up one of their two daughters, for she refuses to come second. She was devout enough to know that there is only one worthy submission. She says:

​​I know I should not blame you.

It is not you; it's in man's nature.

When he attains one woman, he desires another.

[...]

The fault is mine; It's my own doing.

I should have thought about this when

I had time. It's but my destiny to suffer.

Do what you please. I care no more.

In Cumilla, we eat rasmalai for lunch, dinner, and breakfast. At night as a storm blows in from the bay, there are 30-second and two-hour power cuts. The candlelight is a shared experience with Faizunnesa. There are ghost stories told in the semi-darkness: the one about the woodcutter who had returned to finish cutting a tree, and the cut had closed; the one about the night-bus ride down a road that couldn't be found anymore in the morning; and the one about the guests that don't come anymore because everyone has their own screens now.

At Nawab Faizunnesa's city home, only the outer veranda is accessible and the spirit of abandonment reigns. Through the ground floor windows, we peek into the rooms: red-oxide floors, split-painted walls, damp spots in full bloom. A rocking chair in one. In another, a giant chest, strewn with empty ring-binders, velcro game paddles, an old calculator. The third room is arranged for an audience—a setting for a reading or an announcement, long given. Old photographs on the walls: the family assembled in front of the house, a turbaned patriarch, an unsmiling couple. In "Jalal's Letter to Rupbanu" in Rupjalal, Faizunnesa writes:

To The love of my life, my heart's idol, my hypnotizer, redeemer of

danger, sojourner of sorrows, lavishly mirthful lover, enchantress of

the world, my amusing darling, nectar-lipped, sweet-voiced, dearest

Srimoti Rupbati…

Was it to this address that in 1889, Queen Victoria sent Faizunnesa Chaudhurani a long-awaited letter with the title and insignia of Nawab? This was no vanity title for Faizunnesa, it was a much needed symbol to navigate the world of regional land administration. Long before Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Faizunnesa set up a secondary girls school and clinics for women. She built roads. She dealt with feuding neighbours, land grabbers, paddy thieves, tigers, the British, her teenage daughter, all the while nursing her broken heart—

Light Three Lined Verse:

I took this pen to ease my pain

I want my readers to know,

How the happy life of Srimoti Faizun

Became a tale of sorrow.

Faizunnesa died in 1903, long before the partition, the great wars, famine, and the fall of the British Raj. But she still persists and transcends—her fairy tale, like all fairy tales, is a warning and an instruction: do not accumulate regret by wasting youth, do not compromise your faith, do not agree to things your heart does not want—a chosen emptiness is better than a forced companionship.

I did find Faizunnesa in Cumilla. She was in the air.

There was a fourth ghost story: the one about a broken heart that kept singing in a chorus, long after it was dead.

Rupjalal was first published from the Munshi Moula box printers, Dhaka in 1876. It went out of print and was forgotten, until in 1976, when the Bangla Academy reprinted a centenary edition of the book. The Leiden English edition of Rupjalal, translated by Fayeza S. Hasanat, is available at the Sister Library.

Katerina Don is the curator of HerStory Foundation and together with Shoma Sharmin and Zaima Hamid Zoa hosts Sister Library Dhaka.