But jali also serves to illustrate some of the social, political, and gender hierarchies that play important roles throughout the novel. In this aside, James uses the jali to riff on the work of gender in this fairly male-dominated story:

"As for Tipu's wives and daughters, they are confined to the zenana, behind windows of jalli-worked teak meant to keep them from seeing and being seen. (And yet they know how to see what they are not meant to see; they've been seeing this way for ages, seeing inwardly, and if you try the same method, you just might see the fingertip of a little girl, tracing a hollow in the jaali-work that seems, to her, tapered exactly like the tiger's eye of her imaginings."

I am only through part one but this playing with what is seen and what is hidden, the idea of partial barriers, is nicely woven throughout so far.

#TaniaJames #Loot #NowReading

They are super cool, of course, but in *Loot* the lattice of the #jali as a motif does a lot of work. As a screen, it filters the world aesthetically, such as in this beautiful image:

"For a time Abbas stares at the opposite wall, where the jali-carved window has made a puzzle of the moonlight."

#Loot #TaniaJames

#Loot by #TaniaJames begins in late 18th-century India, and the author references "jali-carved windows" quite a few times in the first few chapters --- after a few instances, I had to look up #jali.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jali

Moment of recognition! "Oh -- *that's* what those are called!"

#Bookstodon