(By Farzana Hassan Shahid)

If you look deeply into the abyss, the abyss will look into you declared Nietzche. The force of the evil in trafficking young girls is so awesome, so terrible that the first temptation of most of us is to recoil, to turn away as if by doing so it will cease to exist. But Medusa like, the countenance of this great social evil, with its relentless horrors of inhumanism, threatens to destroy even those who actively engage in boldly confronting it. Yet we must find the courage to look down into the abyss. Farzana Hassan-Shahid has done so in this first novel of hers. She regards child prostitution as a sickness, which eats away at the moral strength of any society so that it becomes a sickness unto death. She deals with the issue in a fictional work set in Nepal and India, but the objective is not just to tell a harrowingly gripping tale of Meena, but to provide an overall view of this widespread problem so that whoever reads this book will join in the campaign to stop this brutality. For the exploitation of innocence involves, we are told, two million women and children. In conversation with the author, she told me that she spent three years in doing research for this project.

The novel is written in the first person, for Meena relates her sickening experiences with a direct simplicity that seems to emerge straight from the innermost essence of her being. The echoes of the abyss, into which she had descended continues to reverberate in her mind even when she has attained her freedom. She knows that "all living things celebrate life, but the "enormous stigma" of forced prostitution is difficult to live down.” There is no escape from this prison of painful memories." However, the adoption of a teaching career and marriage prospects provide Meena some chance of happiness.

The story moves between the two contrasting polar settings of the rural majestic serenity of the mountains of Nepal where "sparrows and robins chirp as they fly from tree to tree" to the hot crowded city of Bombay where suspended dust in the "turbid air” rivals the "strong stench" of the open sewers. Farzana empowers Nepal with a natural romantic beauty. Her prose responds enticingly to the "vibrant green” of the grass where "snow clad peaks rise high, almost touching the heavens, as the sun seeks shelter behind them" . She can make her words state with dry factual force that "everything around me felt cold. The walls were damp, and the floor reminded me of the icy water...." and then without a noticeable stir, the words convey the emotional torment of the heroine.

"Outside there had been a constant drizzle for the major part of the night, and the raindrops kept beating against the window in the attic in a nagging, monotonous rhythm"

The child-woman Meena, has just strangled her new-born baby girl. In a dramatically recorded incident, Meena gives birth alone, stuffing the sounds of her agony, so that she can decide independently as to what to do with her baby. In great tragic despair, she decides to strangle her newborn because it was "indeed a wicked and nasty world” She would not let the filth and squalor of the brothel touch the pure and angelic innocence of her daughter".

The victims of the abyss see the external world only through the little window in the attic. Their contact with the outside world is through "these scavengers who came and went as they pleased". To this girl, of fourteen, "they were all scavengers preying on dead bodies as we were indeed their helpless prey, stripped of a life, liberty--of any hope” The writer's deep anger comes through, The indictment of this world of devouring lust is strongly bitter. it seems this murderous epidemic of human exploitation cannot be conquered without exposure, pain and danger, as these are the echoes form the abyss.

Girls like Meena, Pooja, Nanni, Amber and Rani, are individuals who do not act upon the world, for the world in the form of "Sahib" and Chowla Bai, act upon them, stripping them literally naked, and physically making them dance to their tune. "Chowla Bai kept striking my feet, while I jumped to avoid the blows" The poor girl is so mesmerized so paralyzed into submission that stoically she accepts the blows. Phlegmatically, Meena states "All this so that I would acquire the necessary agility to dance to the fast rhythms" This, the writer perceptibly gives a psychological insight into the dehumanizing, tyrannical, darkness of the abyss.

The moral lines between the protagonists and the anti-protagonists, the good and the bad, are clearly demarcated. All the seven delay sins and more are illustrated. The characters typify all sorts of depravity like hypocrisy, cruelty sadism, lust, lies, and even murderous instincts. There is a doctor Pokhrel who appears to be a philanthropist but who in reality exerts relentless pressure on Meena's mother. He sells off the young girl.  The callous lust-crazy "Sahib", the merciless pimps, Ramesh and Mahesh, who obediently indulge in evil deeds at the behest of their sadistically cruel mother, Chowla Bai. She is a graphically vivid study of greed, despotism, and viciousness without any moral qualms-- a fitting demonic resident of the abyss. The helpless child prostitutes are like putty in their hands. The patient, gentle enduring Pooja"I will be released from the cycle of births and deaths" Dying of tuberculosis, she yet imbues Meena with hope, the spirit and will to seek freedom from the chains of the abyss. Meena has an enormous rage to defy the world that is life with cruelty. There is Nanni, determined, lucky, who cleverly seeks refuge in a convent school. There is Rani who fascinates the reader. She is resourceful, self-centered, conniving, a survivor who defeats evil on its own terms. Rani also escapes the abyss after deceiving one of its inmates.

The novel analyses the social economic, political, motives that keep the evil of the prostitution alive. People engage in this oppression of humans because it is a very profitable business. The government does not interfere because the money made from the sex trade is regarded as revenue. It attracts tourists who contribute to the foreign exchange reserve. But essentially it satisfies the animal in man.

The abyss exercises an inexorable control. Rani, advises Meena to be realistic "you must understand that you cannot escape from this situation" her basic needs would be taken care of but Meena, interprets her basic needs as different. She wants to be loved, respected, and honored. Rani insists there is no identity "people don't have names here" it is the existence of an automation where listening to orders is a reflex action. Meena though, does not give in.  She wants her own decisions. Proudly at the end she can state" "Ma, I am, who I am".  Acceptance of the intrinsic self is all, it is the bedrock of identity, and the roadway to freedom.

Echoes from the Abyss, as the opening venture of Farzana Hassan-Shahid, needs to be commended for its determined effort to expose the depth of moral iniquity in the dark abyss so that we can all be compelled to think and ultimately do something, anything, about the great social evil.