Powerful & Heartbreaking

Lilac Skies by Shivani Bansal is a powerful and heart-breaking historical novel that consumed me.

Lilac Skies is a novel by a woman about women. It is set mainly from 1942 and onwards to the mid 1960’s as we follow a young Asian girl from her teen years to marriage and beyond. We witness that girls are not always valued. They are seen as second class citizens. It is heart-breaking to witness. “Every night she swore she would love her daughter for eternity, should she ever have one.”

Arranged marriages are part of the culture. It is hard to witness the pain as a young girl is severed from her birth family to marry a stranger and to move across a continent.

The role of women in a marriage was often hard, so much was expected of them. They were at the mercy of their husbands, seen as possessions and punching bags more than a life partner. “She had heard neighbours hitting their wives before… She knew it was potentially part of being a wife.” It is heart-breaking to see that hitting is normalized and no one does anything about it.