RESEARCH PROPOSAL

ON
STUDYING ALIENATION “IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER
WONDERS” BY DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN: A MAXIST
PERSPECTIVE

By
MUHAMMAD QASIM
Reg. # MPELN-023R18-18

Supervised by

Dr. MASROOR SIBTAIN

Master of Philosophy

In

English Literature

At

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHERN PUNJAB MULTAN,

PAKISTAN
 ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to discuss Marxist alienation in selected stories from
Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. These stories revolve around
a rich Pakistani landowner K.K. Harouni, his family, and employees. These stories are
set in the socio-economic transitions in late 20th century. In them we find the
exploitation between social classes. The result of this exploitation is alienation. The
Marxist Critical Theory is applied to highlight the factors that create alienation between
classes and show how the alienation leads to the destruction of the individual. This
article focuses on Pakistani-American writer Daniyal Mueenuddin's notable first
collection of interlinked short stories In Other Rooms, Other wonders (2009) as an
example of an emergent wave of contemporary transnational fiction that foregrounds
the figure of the domestic servant as central rather than marginal and emphasizes
diverse servants' vulnerability and agency. The essay situates Mueenuddin's fiction in
the contexts of Anglophone South Asian literary history and Pakistan's postcolonial
feudal system and argues that he makes a significant intervention by crafting strategies
of subaltern representation that explore servant interiority and highlight the interlocking
systems of power that dehumanize stigmatized subaltern individuals locked in domestic
servitude. It examines the intersections of gender, sexuality, and class evoked in
Mueenuddin's stories; the psychic complexities of individuals who struggle against
habitual abjection, subordination, and disempowerment; and the ways that servants,
working in the intimacy of employers' homes, strive to ameliorate their lot within
frameworks of patriarchy, corruption, and violence. Mueenuddin's cultural work aims
to shift readers' ways of seeing, defamiliarize the familiar, and encourage empathy and
ethical action in specific postcolonial contexts.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of story
Daniyal Mueenuddin was born in 1963. His debut collection of short stories set
contemporary Pakistan, In Other Rooms, Other wonders, was released in 2009 to near
universal acclaim for bringing alive the world of rural Pakistan to English language
readers worldwide. The reader finds something very unique in this work of fiction. The
stories announce themselves instantly as classes and in this labyrinth of power games
and exploitation, Mueenuddin instills luminous glimmers of longing, loss, most
movingly unfettered love. Mueenuddin's stories show a clarifying beauty and
sophisticated language.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonder, Daniyal Mueenuddin aims at telling about the
exploitation which the shrewd and wicked landowners do to the sustain their power and
dominance over underprivileged people. Set in the Pakistani district of Punjab, the short
stories in this excellent book follow the lives of the capitalist Harouni's family and its
employees, managers, drivers, gardeners, cooks, servants. This research proposal is
based upon the events which lead to Marxist alienation in the book.

1.2 Significance of the study

The study tries to unfold the exploitation which the shrewd and wicked
landowners do to sustain their power and dominance over under controlled people.

1.3 Research objectives

The objective of the research project will be to:
1. To highlight the elements of alienation from Marxist perspective in
Mueenuddin's stories.
2. To explore the norms behind social inequality based on capitalistic concerns.

1.4 Research Questions

The research will find out that:

1. What are the social impacts of capitalism on society as depicted in “In Other
Rooms, Other Wonders” by the writer?

2. How does the writer portray the theme of alienation in “In Other Rooms, Other
Wonders”?
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Daniyal Mueenuddin's stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders highlight the art
of the short story narrative form. One moment, one life evokes a whole world. ’ Dirda,
M. (2009) in an article comments on In Other Rooms, Other Wonders: “We learn about
a character's past, and then zero in on the central crisis of his or her life and, even while
we expect more development, suddenly find everything wound up in a paragraph or
two: "The next day two men loaded the trunks onto a horse-drawn cart and carried them
away to the Old City."(l37)

Pal (2019) reviews, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s short stories highlight the class
tension and hierarchy of exploitation in this vast society. She says: Ruled by the values
of a traditional society in the throes of change, tension between the classes and power
struggle between the genders take central place in these string of short stories. Simple
and direct in its style the stories bring out universal emotions of love, betrayal,
decadence as they concentrically revolve around the Harouni empire in its decadence.
The social context of the late 20th century Pakistan with its westernized glitzy elite
often given to crass immorality and the hierarchy of exploitation within their retinues
of domestic help different rooms spill out in different wonders for the reader; a world
where a thriving middle class is practically non-existent.(nd.) Norton (1998) in an essay
‘ Power and Desire: Change and the limits of change’ defines that the estate gives a
haunting picture of a larger landscape and culture. . . Daniyal Mueenuddin's stories
offer an unsettling, sometimes humorous but mostly tragic look into a landscape divided
by class, a landscape in the midst of change but where the constraints of station, family
structures and gender often leave individuals open to the whims of more personal
smaller scaled changes.

Daniyal Mueenuddin has a gift for drawing the reader into the lives of his
characters, their dreams and hopes, their relationships and their difficulties and
humanity. (nd) The word “haunting” has been used by the two critics. Both are showing
different concerns regarding the understanding of Mueenuddin’s stories. Pal (2019)
uses this as “haunting in its content” whereas Norton,(1998) uses it as “a haunting
picture of a larger landscape and culture”. Trachtenberg (2000) establishes in an article
published in New York Times in which he evaluates the short stories by Daniyal
Mueenuddin: “What distinguishes this collection is that it focuses on class struggles
within Pakistan . .Mr. Mueenuddin unveils a nuanced world where social status and
expectations are understood without being stated, and where poverty and the desire to
advance frame each critical choice. "He captures the experience of the class system,"
says Bialosky (1957), who acquired the book for Norton (1998). (nd) Pal (2019) further
states: “A deep understanding of people across the social pile, also the extreme honesty
in depicting the loss, infidelity, the livelihood smuggle of real characters, this collection
of short stories is one that brings you closer to the inevitable quandary of the human
condition”. (n.page) In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, the poor are trying to better
themselves by whatever means are at their disposal, fair or foul. And the rich are trying
to hang onto what’s theirs and what they believe to be theirs. New York Times
published an article based on one of the Daniyal Mueenuddin’s interview in which he
stated:

“Actually, the book is about the end of the feudal era. It

is becoming less and less significant. (For instance those)
who have gone into business have done better. In Punjab,
the landholdings are smaller now and, more and more,
owned by the locals”.
He describes a hidden world of servants and their feudal masters, the
powerlessness of poverty and the corruption that glues it all together in a very
impressive manner. Through these stories we find social exploitation and its
consequences in the shape of alienation of an individual.

3. Research Methodology
Marxist theory drawn primarily from The Communist Manifesto Marks (1883)
considered as the basis of Marxist criticism serves as the theoretical framework for the
present study. Marxist critique has been selected as appropriate, for highlighting the
class stratification embedded in the feudal system and the exploitation of the lower class
(proletariats) by the upper classes (bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie) owing to the
similarity between the capitalist classes denounced by Marx and the feudal system of
Pakistan that may be reveal by following the close reading techniques. Marxism
attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source
of our experience" Tyson (2015). The sample is Daniyal Mueenuddin’s three short
stories titled ‘Saleema’, ‘Provide, provide’ and ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ (title
also used for the collection) Mueenuddin (2009). The selection of the stories was made
on the basis of their setting being feudal as representative of feudal system of Pakistan,
also the selected stories are more descriptively rich and lengthy.

The approach used to analyse the data is critical content analysis. Content
analysis is a flexible research method used to analyze texts and to describe and interpret
the written 35 artifacts of a society White & Marsh (2006). A further classification
Content Analysis is Critical Content Analysis where the use of the word Critical is
explained by Short (2016) as containing a, “stance of locating power in social practices
in order to challenge conditions of inequity” Short (2016). Taking up Critical content
Analysis as the methodology, this research will study the power relations (mainly
oppression and resistance) imbuing the feudal system portrayed by Mueenuddin from
a Marxist Critical lens. As Marxism is also concerned with the power relations between
different social classes, critical content analysis is a justified approach for this study.
Some known studies applying critical content analysis to literature include
Rupter (1983) and TAXE (1986) as well as recent work by McGillis (2000) and
Bradford (2007). Data is codified according to the Marxist divisions and classifications.
Analysing the data, commonly emerging patterns of exploitation and power relations
between different classes are highlighted and discussed.

4. Data Analysis and Discussion

Based on Marxist criticism the characters are coded as belonging to the three
Marxist classes. These include the bourgeois class as, "the class of modern capitalists,
owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour". (Marks
(1883) & Engels,(1970) and Bourgeoisie (1940) standing between the bourgeoisie and
proletariat as, "In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a
new class of petty bourgeois has been formed" Marks (1883). Bourgeoisie (1940) in
modern capitalist society applies also to a section of employed persons involved in
superintendence and the lower levels of management. These employees have a
supervisory role, “who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the
capitalist". Finally, the poor class or the working class is called the Proletariats.
Marxists define the proletariat or working class as, that class of modern wage labourers
who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour
power in order to live Mark (1883) The applicability of these classes outlined by Marx,
on the feudal system portrayed by Mueenuddin is explored here.

Mueenuddin’s (2009) short stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders give us a

detailed description of the exploitation which creates alienation in a society. In this
book, he explains the socio-economic transitions in late 20th century. Society and
individual are seen as forces thrusting each other to suppress. This opens the ways of
exploitation in a society resulting in social alienation. In this regard, Marxism gives us
reasons behind the socio-economic exploitation.

Marxs (1883) believed that historical change was primarily the result of class
struggle and that the State, for as long as it has existed, has used its power to oppress
and exploit the laboring masses for the benefit of a wealthy elite. He thus developed an
oppositional relationship between the proletariat (the working class) and the capitalist
bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production). (244)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, the capitalist K.K. Harouni makes his
oppositional relation with the proletariat in order to gain the socio-economic benefits.
In the story “Provide, Provide”, Harouni’s elderly and opportunistic estate manager
Jaglam, who has long been exploiting his master’s property, sells Harouni’s vast lands
at half price, keeping the best parcels for himself as “though he had become crooked on
a larger scale, Jaglani did not believe himself to have broken his feudal allegiance to
K.K. Harouni, but instead felt himself appropriately taking advantage of the master’s
incapacity and lack of oversight,. . ..(56) Shrewdly tracking his thoughts, Mueenuddin
tells us that in the end Jaglani has to confront with his inner alienation. This paragraph
gives a clear depiction of Jaglani’s ’whole life as:

Jaglani has lived an opportunistic life, seizing power wherever he saw it

available and unguarded, and therefore he had not developed sentimental attachments
to the tokens of his power, land, possessions, or even me. Walking into the silent dark
house, he felt, for the first time, that he would regret losing a place…he had aged greatly
in the past weeks as the disease bit into him. He had never loved his wife, his children
were fools, and he had no friends. (80)

As the Marxist criticism comments on this kind of alienation as: Marxism sees
progress as coming about through the struggle for power between different social
classes. . .the result of this exploitation is alienation, which is the state which comes
about when the worker is ‘deskilled’ and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks
in a sequence of whose nature and purpose he or she has no overall grasp.(157) The
overarching character of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is K. K. Harouni, an aging
Pakistani landowner who has shepherded his lucrative family assets reasonably well as
the country moves into the industrialist age. Harouni is not much competent as the
family is still well off, the serfs are treated well, the landlord is still respected. As
Marxist theory believed: “the capitalist-run system would eventually and inevitably
break down, due to the chasm of inequalities it engenders between the privileged few
and the deprived, overworked many.” (244)

This situation is well described when the story “Provide, Provide”, begins we
observe that K. K. Harouni is at a dinner. At the dinner there is a discussion of the
Industrialists and through this we come to know about a capitalists approach “like other
members of the feudal landowning class, Harouni greeted the emergence of these
people with condescension overlaying his envy. He had a capital, as he observe
expansively….he began selling tracts of urban land and pouring more and more cash
into factories”.(5 1) Through this illustration of capitalistic approach Mueenuddin
shows that how the proletariat is exploited and this socio-economic exploitation
frustrates the proletariat and at the end it leads to an individual to alienation. In the
story, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”, in which we meet K.K.Harouni in his last
days. In this story, we come to know about his wealth that brings him on an alienated
stage. His wife has long been dispatched to another location, his children are distant at
best, he is alone. Into his world comes Husna: “Husna needed a job. She stole up the
longdrive to the Lahore house of the retired civil servant and landlord K. K. Harouni,
bearing in her little lacquered fingers a letter of introduction from, of all people, his
estranged first wife”. (107) In these lines, Mueenuddin explains the struggle for power
between different classes as Husna is on a mission; K.K. may be 70 but he is the key to
her need as these Lines show: she had always believed she would escape the gloominess
of her parents’ house in an unfashionable part of the city. She would escape the bare
concrete steps, layered with dust, leading up into rooms without windows, the walls
painted bright glossy colors, as if to make up for the gloom, the television covered with
an embroidered cloth. She had spoiled herself with daydreams, until her parents were
afraid of her moods. (l 13-1 14)

So in both stories, lack of money is a persistent issue for servants locked into a
lifestyle they hate, living great distances from their families (who are not always their
loved ones) just to make it from day to day, perhaps holding on to hopes that they can
acquire the wealth that will make their struggles end.

Mueenuddin (2009) in his stories highlights the materialistic approach which

shows that the struggle of reforming any individual, in this specific exploited society is
proved to be a vain attempt. As in one of the stories “Saleema” in which we a find a
character Saleema “was born in the Jhulanclan. her father became a heroine addict, and
died of it, her mother slept around for money and favors” (19). The story shows that
how the proletariat are exploited in the world of capitalist K. K Harouni.

After his death, Saleema along with other servants has to suffer. The following
paragraph is very well described according to the uncertainty of the servants as:
“Crushed, they all left. They had expected this, but somehow hoped the house would
be kept. . ..the servants would never find another berth like this one, the gravity of the
house, the gentleness of the master, the vast damp rooms, the slow lugubrious pace, the
order within disorder”.(50). In this regard Marxism defines this materialistic philosophy
as:

“Marxism is a materialist philosophy: that is, it tries to explain things without

assuming the existence of a world or of forces beyond the natural world around us, and
the society we live in”. (156) When Rafiq leaves Saleema after his master’s death,
Saleema turns to drugs and street begging before an early death and an orphaned son: “
Within two years she was finished. . .she cradled the little boy in her arms, holding him
up to the windows of cars. Rafiq sent money, a substantial amount, so long as she had
an address. And then, soon enough, she died, and the boy begged in the streets, one of
the sparrows of Lahore” (51).It all happens because of the change in existing system,
the proletariat will experience dispossession, unemployment and uncertainty leads to
alienation. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, centering as it does on class conflicts and
the futility of such divides, bringing pleasure to no one. From servants struggling to
feed their families to rich men bored with their luxurious life, the stories cast a dismal
yet true light on the varying hardships we all experience. These stories elaborate the
vicious circle of socio-economic struggle that leads to exploitation of an individual.
Even the capitalist K.K.Harouni experiences this alienation but in a different way
because this alienation is brought by the money as Harouni’s life depicts in the end:
‘K.K. sat impressive; on the chair, raised above the crowd, then lowered at the doors,
like an awkward king, three king onstage”.(l 32) According to Marx, alienation is a
systemic result of Capitalism. Marx's theory of alienation is founded upon his
observation that, within the Capitalist Mode of Production, invariably lose
determination of their lives and destinies by being deprived of the right to conceive of
themselves as the director of their actions, to determine the character of their actions,
to define their relationship to other actors, to use or own the value of is produced by
their actions. Workers become autonomous, self-realized human beings, but are
directed and diverted into goals and activities dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the
means of production in to extract from workers the maximal amount of surplus value
possible within the current state of competition between industrialists. (n.pag)

5. Conclusion

This research describes the socio-economic transition which occurred in

twentieth century in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. Marxist criticism which explains
class distinction and power struggle is reflected throughout the short stories. The
objective of this research project was to highlight the Marxist perspective in
Mueenuddin’s stories, where exploitation leads to alienation in different classes.
Further research on this book can be employed but this paper only highlights the points
which leaded to the facts of alienation created by exploitation. In this course, gender
concerns are strongly noticed. Gender inequality is further elaborated. From the
outstanding title to the final pages of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Mueenuddin
takes us to a far away land. Mueenuddin is a prodigiously talented writer whose stories
have given us the complicated power structures that we find between master and
servant, parent and child, husbands and wives and even lovers. We can say that this is
a collection which is full of pleasures and it has revealed the violence and callousness
of everyday life in rural west Pakistan. We have found a bold portrayal of a truly
troubled society especially a feudal society.

CHAPTERIZATION
Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Literature Review

Chapter 3 Research Methodology

Chapter 4 Data Analysis

Chapter 5 Conclusion
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