Sense Of Incompleteness In Shahnaz Bashir's The Half Mother

Abstract

The worst sufferer in any conflict zone is the common man, and to add to the existing angst, the victims of the worst species are women. War-oriented zones directly impact the existential sense of completeness of the affected. Bashir's narrative encapsulates this human essence of incompleteness in the way he depicts the women characters in The Half Mother ( 2014). This paper delves into the lives of those women whose agony is felt by none but themselves. That is, the study attempts to look into the women's consciousness whose experiences of loss and cries remain unheard by the world as they witnessed their lives and surroundings crumbling amidst the bloody conflict in Kashmir. One of the most afflicted communities is the mothers. A mother losing her child is a woman's prime and most tormenting forfeiture. It does not only affect the mother but traumatises her in every possible conceivable manner. Bashir's The Half Mother ( 2014) revolves around the incompleteness which gnaws at motherhood through his well-illustrated Haleema, the torchbearer and representative of angst and distress. Subsequently, the paper probes into motherhood to analyse the existential incompleteness of women in the Kashmir-bond conflict zone.