Between the covers

A library in Mumbra,near Mumbai,brings the world of books to Muslim women....

In one of the corner shelves at Rehnuma,the womens library in Mumbra,sits The Original Coming out Stories. The pale green cover reads: personal narratives about the coming out experience and its significance during four decades of lesbian love.

Aquila Khan,the 24-year-old who is in charge of the library,smiles at the mention of the book,though she does not recall too many women reading it. In many ways,ours is a place where women are coming out of many other social taboos, she says in between clipping newspaper articles.

Rehnuma translates into guidance is on the first floor of an apartment block in the Muslim-dominated Kausa neighbourhood in Mumbra near Mumbai. The last time Kausa grabbed national headlines was when local resident Ishrat Jahan was killed in an encounter by the Gujarat police. The eight-year-old library has also branched into a literacy centre and a reading club,besides offering courses in personality development and counseling.

On the racks that stock 5,000 titles in Urdu,Hindi and English,all neatly indexed,are books by writers like Salma Kanwal,Umera Ahmed,Bushra Rehman and poets Kaifiz Azmi and Gulzar. Going by the subscriptions,Premchand seems to be a favourite,along with Saadat Hassan Manto.

Founding member Yasmin Aga recalls the times when young Muslim women from Mumbra and Kausa,many of them married early,would travel long hours in crowded trains to Dongri in South Mumbai to the office of the Aawaaz-E-Niswaan trust,to narrate their problems.

Issues were too many and we at Aawaaz then decided that some day we would plant the seeds of education here, she says. And so,through private funds and donations,Rehnuma was set upwith a few books and loads of attitude. Today this small library stands for personal space and educationsomething that has been denied to Muslim women in this neighbourhood for ages.

Nineteen-year-old Heena Sheikh,who had dropped in to borrow books,was a literacy teacher at Rehnuma for over two years. Sheikh calls her introduction to the library a small revolution. Her parents,who went through a rough period in their relationship,came to Rehnuma to be counselled. My father is a much improved human being and the family is more close knit, says Sheikh,who taught young girls and housewives basic survival English.

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The early days of Rehnuma were not easy,Sheikh recalls. People in the neighbourhood had created problems and wanted the place shut. They had even nicknamed it talaaq centre after they had seen couples with marital problems coming here. It was only after we asked them to see the actual efforts of counseling that the stigma was wiped out, says Sheikh,who is now sitting for her final year BA exam.

As word of Rehnumas activities spread,recalls Aga,girls and housewives dropped in to borrow a book or to sit down with one. Many a times we had parents doing a silent check here. Our doors are always open and they go back convinced that its a study centre, says Aga.

Today,Rehnuma has inspired several Muslim women to apply for correspondence courses in law,politics and arts. Khan herself completed her bachelors through correspondence,without informing her parents. She now wants to study her masters in politics.

Shabana Sheikh,an 18-year-old,studied in an Urdu medium school. But she is now preparing for her higher secondary exams in English. A Rehnuma scholarship student,she says she loves poems by philosopher Allama Iqbal. Earlier I wasnt confident. Now people think twice before arguing with me, says Sheikh.