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PAPER VII
LITERATURES OF INDIA : AN
INTRODUCTION (PART-II)
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SECTION - A
POETRY
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The Contexts of Modern Indian Poetry : part of Anglo- American modernism in which poets in almost every
language broke away from traditional styles, techniques and themes.
An Introductory Note They dealt with characteristic modernist themes like the alienation of
The defining feature of modern Indian poetry is its variety. There the individual in urban society, the pain of unresolved doubts, and a
are generalities and patterns as well as uniqueness; there are continuities sense of disillusionment. Irony became the prevailing mode.
as well as discontinuities. There have been many movements and counter-
movements; some of them have been national in scope, bringing together 5. The postcolonial era-largely represented in the selection for this
most of the languages while others have been local or regional, being semester – has been marked by the emergence of voices from hitherto
confined to one or two languages. marginalized groups. This includes women writers, poets from the lower
castes and class, particularly Dalits and poets from the smaller non-
1. In the first half of the 20th century (about1900-1930), the various metropolitan centers. As a heterogeneous group of writers, they challenge
languages collectively went through a phase of nationalist writing- the the traditional upper-class, upper caste male literary establishment and
movement included thousands of popular poets who wrote rousing poems force us to question our assumptions about “Indianness” and “Indian”
about Mother India. During the nationalist movement, Indian poetry as literature. “Converging unexpectedly in the 1970s and 1980s, the women
a whole seemed to be at one with its social and political environment. In poets and the ‘subaltern’ poets have broadened and challenged the social
subsequent movements, this identification gave way to a sense of
world of contemporary poetry to an extent we still cannot assess or
alienation between the poet and his milieu.
foresee.” (Vinay Dharwadker, 1994)
2. Between 1920 and 1935, the Indian languages passed through a l
This note is largely based on Vinay Dharwadker’s brilliant analysis
nation-wide phase of “Romantic” writing which overlapped with the
“Modern Indian Poetry and its Contexts”, which appeared as the
nationalist movement. A large number of Indian poets attempted to
Afterword to The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry edited
replicate what the English Romantics had done. The primacy of the unique
by Vinay Dharwadker and A. K. Ramanujan (1994).
human individual and of intense personal experience, the use of the lyrical
mode produced a body of “private” poetry contrasting with the public
rhetoric of nationalist poetry.
3. A third movement appeared in the 1930s. This was the Progressive
Writers’ Movement launched in 1936 (and continuing till the 80s) which
emphasized the significance of Marxist thought and socialist and
communist ideas. Many of the Progressive writers criticized and rejected
the patriotism and romanticism of their predecessors and attempted to
paint a bleak, even anti-nationalist, portrait of Indian society.
4. The fourth nation-wide movement that started in the 30s – and
continued to affect writers till the end of the 70s- was the Indian counter-
 7 8
Indian Poetry in English: A Note
Where does Indian poetry in English stand in the domain of Modern
Indian poetry? There are two distinct views. First that it stands apart as
the output of a restricted group of upper-class, Western-educated urban
elite who do not know nor deal with the “real” India. There is a perception
that English is still a partly alien language, that the poetry is narrow in
scope and is often irrelevant to the more important aspects of the Indian
situation, particularly since many of the poets have lived abroad or are
expatriates and thus have little to do with the lived experience of India.
But now that the idea of a unitary, monolithic “Indianness” is largely
contested, the recognition that there is nothing like one “Indian” literature,
it is becoming more acceptable to regard Indian English poetry as part
of Indian literatures, responding largely to the same impulses as the
bhasha or regional language literatures. This integration into the larger
world of Indian literature has been possible because of the determination
of the writers to cultivate an idiom close to the English language as it is
used in our country, along with the determination to deal with
contemporary Indian themes and situations. Commenting on the evolving
body of Indian English poetry, Bruce King comments: “English is no
longer the language of colonial rulers; it is a language of modern India
in which words and expressions have recognized national rather than
imported significances and references, alluding to local realities,
traditions and ways of feeling… With each decade an increasing
immediacy and heightened awareness of actual Indian experience is
noticeable.”
Further Reading :
Dharwadker, Vinay and The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian
A. K. Ramanujan, eds. Poetry. New Delhi :OUP,1994.
King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. New
Delhi: OUP, 1987.
Satchidanandan, K., ed. Indian Poetry : Modernism and After. New
Delhi : Sahitya Akademi, 2000.
Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004)
Nissim Ezekiel, poet, playwright, editor and art critic, is a founda-
tional figure in the postcolonial Indian literary scene. Born in a Jewish
family of Bombay, Ezekiel was educated in Bombay and London. He
lived in England from 1948-52, studying philosophy and returned to
Bombay to settle down to a life as a teacher of English in leading colleges
and in Bombay University. Besides his teaching assignments, he edited
a number of journals and was also, for some time, Director of the Theatre
Unit, Bombay. During a long creative span covering over twenty eight
years, Ezekiel produced six collections of poems. His works include A
Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The
Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Snakeskin and Other
Poems (1974), and Hymns in darkness (1976). In addition, many of his
poems have been published in prestigious national and international
journals. His plays have been published in the collection Three Plays
(1969). He has also produced a substantial amount of literary and art
criticism.
In his authoritative critical work Modern Indian Poetry in English,
Bruce King recognizes Ezekiel as the first true professional among Indian
English poets, crediting him with bringing “a sense of discipline, self-
criticism and mastery to Indian English poetry.” Ezekiel developed a
contemporary manner which would voice modern concerns in a style
which achieved precision in diction and imagery. Being an Indian Jew
provided him with the advantage of being both an insider and an outsider
to the Indian scene, a combination of attachment and detachment which
lends his poetry a peculiar strength and validity. In poems like Night of
the Scorpion or Goodbye Party to Miss Pushpa T.S, he is a remarkable
observer of Indian life, “sharp, accurate, unsentimental, even caustic”
(William Walsh Indian Literature in English). In poems like Enterprise
and Philosophy, he can be quietly reflective while in other poems like
Commitment or Case Study, he can adopt a tone of intimacy without
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lapsing into the sentimental. But in whatever he writes, there is always a
scrupulous attempt to be “accurate, calm, deliberate” (Walsh).
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher has the combination of lucidity and
suggestiveness characteristic of Ezekiel’s best poetry. Like most poets,
Ezekiel wrote about the poetic process and his views on art and poetry.
In Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher, parallels are drawn between the poet, the
lover and the birdwatcher. All the three have to wait patiently in their
respective pursuits; their ‘waiting’ is a sort of strategy which bears fruit
if persisted in and followed with patience. Paul Varghese comments,
“What is striking about the use of images in this poem is that the transition
from one image to another is so unobtrusive that the poet, lover and
birdwatcher lose their separate identities and merge into one another to
carry the poem forward to its end.” The act of poetic creation described
here can be studied in the context of the lines from A Poem of Dedication
which is often regarded as the poet’s poetic manifesto:
Not to hanker for a god-like range
Of thought, nor the matador’s dexterity.
I do not want the yogi’s concentration
I do not want the perfect clarity
Of saints nor the tyrant’s endless power.
I want a human balance humanly
Acquired, fruitful in the common hour.
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering—
In this the poet finds his moral proved,
Who never spoke before his spirit moved.
The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more.
To watch the rarer birds, you have to go
Along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow
In silence near the source, or by a shore
Remote and thorny like the heart’s dark floor.
And there the women slowly turn around,
Not only flesh and bone but myths of light
With darkness at the core, and sense is found
By poets lost in crooked, restless flight,
The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Examine the manner in which the images of poet, lover and
birdwatcher merge in the poem.
2. How does Ezekiel present his view of the poetic process in the poem?
Further Reading:
King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English, Delhi: OUP,
1987.
Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English, Harlow:
Longman, 1990.
 11
Keki N. Daruwala (b.1937)
Keki Nasserwanji Daruwala is one of the major Indian poets writing
in English today. Born in Loni, Burahpur (now in Pakistan), he moved
with his family to Punjab during Partition and after a varied schooling,
completed his Master’s degree from Government College, Ludhiana.
He became an IPs officer and served in many important assignments,
including Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on International affairs.
He appeared on the Indian English poetic scene in the seventies, and has
eight collections of poems to his credit. His post-1980 volumes include
Winter Poems (1980), The Keeper of the Dead (1982), Landscapes
(1987), A Summer of Tigers (1995), and Night River (2000). He has also
published Sword and Abyss (1979), a collection of short stories. He has
successfully evoked the Indian ethos and landscape in his poetry and
portrayed contemporary reality to such an extent that he ranks among
the front- ranking post-colonial Indian English poets along with Nissim
Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, R.Parthasarathy and Jayanta Mahapatra. He
is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award in 1984 and the
Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in 1987.
Daruwala is not a common man’s poet. Like many of the other leading
Indian English poets, Daruwala is a conscious craftsman. In the four
decades of his writing career, his poetry has changed in form and themes,
but there are certain common features which have remained more-or-
less- constant. He has sculpted a style which, at its best, is compact and
precise in its use of language and free from redundant expressions. His
poetry is distinguished by its profusion of images, mostly pictorial and
precise, marked by clarity of perception and expression. He is very often
sardonic and sarcastic in tone and attitude. If creation of a new idiom in
English is one of the characteristics of postcolonialism, then Daruwala’s
claim to be a postcolonial poet cannot be overlooked. He attempts to use
a new idiom and create new themes by writing about contemporary Indian
reality. According to Bruce King, Daruwala’s poetry reveals “the moral
seriousness, intellectual consciousness, technical competence, concern
12
for high standards and precision of language” which Nissim Ezekiel
made the hallmark of contemporary Indian English poetry (King, 1987).
The King Speaks to the Scribe is a dramatic monologue in the mode
of Robert Browning. The poet deals with the historical theme of King
Asoka’s transformation after the fierce battle of Kalinga. The arrogant
king’s thawing into humility has been presented through a seamless
merging of the words from the 13th edict of Asoka’s Rock inscription
reflecting the great remorse the king felt after observing the devastation
of Kalinga. In the course of the monologue with the silent but important
interlocutor Karthikeya, the character of the speaker also changes.
Though he denies humility in the beginning, he moves towards it in the
end. When Keynote magazine asked him to comment on any of his poems,
Daruwala chose The King Speaks to the Scribe. He described its subject,
Asoka, the emperor, as a ‘favourite king whose change of heart following
the battle of Kalinga is one of the greatest dramatic moments in history’.
He says, “I consider this one of my most significant poems because the
language of the edicts merges into it without jarring. I have tried to
bring out the passion and the quiet dignity of the man and yet avoid
pomposity.”
The poem brings out vividly the sense of the futility and emptiness
of victory and kingly glory. Acutely aware of the irreparable and
unforgiveable crimes he has committed against humanity in the name of
war, King Asoka is seen meditating on atonement after the slaughter;
with simple dignity he asks the scribe to engrave with care the lessons
learned from the terrible massacre. The self-effacing and repentant king
is a complete contrast to the ambitious and arrogant emperor with his
grand desire for conquest. The poet employs rich imagery that reveals
the transformation in the character of the king through his utterances to
the scribe. The scribe is the link between the king and the rest of the
world and even posterity, in a way.
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The King Speaks to the Scribe
(Third century B.C.)
First Kartikeya, there’s no pride involved,
nor humility; understand this. Ispeak
of atonement, that is, if blood can ever
be wiped away with words. We will engrave
this message on volcanic rock, right here
where the earth reeks of slaughter.
A hundred thousand courted death, mind you.
The battlefield stank so that heaven
had to hold a cloth to its nose. I trod
this plain, dark and glutinous with gore,
My chariot-wheels squelching in the bloody mire.
Nothing stands now between them and destruction,
neither moat nor bridge nor hut nor door-leaf.
No lighted tapers call them to their village.
It is to them that you will speak or rather
I will speak through you. So don’t enunciate
the law of piety, no aphorisms
which say that good is difficult and sin easy.
And no palaver about two peafowl
and just one antelope roasting in my kitchen
instead of an entire hetacomb as in
my father’s days. There may be huts where
they have nothing to burn on the hearth-fires.
Spare me the shame. And no taboos, please,
forbidding the caponing of roosters
or drinking of spirituous liquors,
the castration of bulls and rams and
the branding of horses. So listen with care,
Kartikeya, and I will tell you what to write.
14
First talk about the sorrows or conquest
and other miseries attendant on
enslavement. In all lands live Brahmins,
anchorites and householders, each enmeshed
In the outer skin of relationships.
That network of duty and herd impulse
through which each charts his particular furrow.
And the sword falls on such people and their
children are blighted, while the affection
Of their friends remains undiminished.
Mark that, don’t talk merely of rapine and slaughter
but also of separation from loved ones.
And about my sorrow what will you say?
How will you touch that weed-ridden lake floor
of my despair and keep from drowning?
Say simply that of all the people killed
or captured, if the thousandth part were to
suffer as before, the pain would overwhelm me.
Tell them I have abjured pride, the lowest
can abuse me now and I shall not answer.
Let the dust of humility cover my head.
Even the tribals, dark and bullet-headed,
the blubber-skinned, the ones from whom our demons
and yakshas have borrowed their faces,
I invite to my fold. Let them turn from crime
and their aboriginal ways and they will not suffer.
Cut deeper than the cuts of my sword
so that even as moss covers the letters
they are visible. Write whatever
you chance on. Don’t look for a white-quartz boulder.
Anything will do, a mass of trap rock
 15
or just a stone sheet. And the language simple,
something the forest folk can understand.
I am not speaking to kings, to Antiyoka
and Maga or Alikasudra. And no
high-flown language, I am not here
to appease gods. Even they must be ignored
for a while and their altar-fires turn cold.
Men don’t have enough fuel to burn their dead.
Mind you, Kartikeya, between me and them is blood.
Your words will have to reach across to them
like a tide of black oxen crossing a ford.
Glossary :
Antiyoka: refers to AntiochusII Theos of Syria(261-246 B.C.), who
controlled the Selencid Empire from Syria to Bactria in the
east and was a direct neighbor of Asoka
Maga: refers to the Magas of Cyrene(300-258B.C.)
Alikasudra: refers to Alexander II of Epirus (272-258B.C.)
Questions for Discussion :
1. Examine Emperor Asoka’s sense of guilt and desire for atonement
as described in the poem.
2. Critically analyse the significance of Asoka’s utterances to his scribe.
Further Reading :
King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Delhi: OUP,
1987.
Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English .London: Longman,
1990.
Satchidanandan,K. Indian Poetry: Modernism and After. New Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 2000.
16
Kabita Sinha (1931 – 1999)
Kabita Sinha was a versatile Bengali poet, novelist, short story writer,
feminist and radio director, noted for her defiantly forthright manner.
Born into a literary family in Calcutta, she started writing at as a child.
At the age of 20, she discontinued her studies in Botany at the Presidency
College, Calcutta, to marry author and editor, Bimal Roy Choudhury,
against the wishes of her family. Years later she resumed her studies and
graduated with distinction from Ashutosh College. She was also involved
in various dissident movements in the 1950s. Preoccupied with issues
related to women, she addressed several of them in poems like Ajibon
Pathor Pratima(Stone Goddess All My Life), Apamaner Jonyo Firee
Asi( Because I Crave Your Insults), Ishwarke Eve (Eve Speaks to God),
etc. For a while, Kabita Sinha worked as a school teacher before joining
the state government service as an assistant editor. In 1965 she joined
All India Radio. Along with her husband, she started the poetry magazine
Dainik Kabita in 1966. She often wrote under the pseudonym of Sultana
Choudhury.
Primarily known for her poetry, Kabita Sinha initially entered the
arena of Bengali literature as a novelist. Her first novel, Charjon Ragi
Juboti (Four Angry Young Women) appeared in 1956, followed by Ekti
Kharap Meyer Golpo (Story of A Bad Girl) in 1958 and Nayika
Pratinayika (Heroine Anti-heroine) in 1960. Meanwhile her poetical
genius found expression in Sahaj Sundari (Easy Beauty) – her first
volume of poetry, published in 1965; and her collection Kabita
Parameshwari (Poetry Goddess) in 1976 became widely popular. Her
novel Paurush (Manliness/ The Third Sex) 1984, won the Nathmal
Bhualka Award in 1986. She also won several other awards including
The National Fellowship of the Government of India in 1977. Her later
works include Horina Boiri (1985); Shreshto Kabita 1987; and Momer
Tazmahal (The Wax Tajmahal) 1989.
 17 18

Kabita Sinha is primarily regarded as a feminist, focusing on issues Eve Speaks to God (Ishwarke Eve)
of women’s identity in the contemporary scenario. Bengali women’s
passage to the realm of poetry began with the medieval poet Khanaa I was first
whose fame so irritated her husband and father-in-law, that they severed to realize
her tongue in an attempt to silence her. Since then, times have changed, that which rises
but the refusal to be silenced, the determination to represent the woman’s must fall
view-point, can still be traced in the texts of post-colonial Bengali women inevitably.
Like light
poets. Kabita Sinha’s forthright protest, her anger against patriarchal
like dark
prescriptions, contributed to a certain extent to her marginalisation in
like you
the patriarchal milieu of the Bengali literature of her times.
I was first
The prescribed poem, Ishwarke Eve (Eve Speaks to God) is a poem to know.
from Kavita Sinha’s well-known collection Kabita Parameshwari. The Obeying you
poem is the gendered subaltern’s reaction to patriarchal hegemony; ‘she’ or disobeying
talks back. In this her most representative poem, Kavita Sinha turns to means the same.
the popular feminist device of re-visionist writing, the re-presentation I was first
of a familiar story or myth from a woman’s perspective. The re-telling to know.
of the Biblical story of Eve offers a refreshingly new perspective to Eve I was first
who emerges as a defiant and strong individual, proud of the fact that to touch
she was instrumental in bringing knowledge of good and evil to mankind. the tree of knowledge
Kabita Sinha’s Eve is a defiantly rebellious figure, openly implying her first
superiority to ‘meek’ Adam and challenging an authoritarian, patriarchal to bite
God; she is an intelligent woman, curious enough to investigate, to take the red apple.
risks, a person who wants to know rather than live in blissful ignorance. I was first,
The refrain “I am the first” repeatedly emphasises the sense of pride in first –
the act of defiance. In the poem, Eve is not merely the Biblical figure but first to distinguish
also represents the feminist preference for a real, if painful, living outside between modesty
and immodesty –
the golden cage created for women by patriarchal authority. She also
by raising a wall
represents the voice of the woman poet who is “exiled” because of her
with a fig leaf
refusal to blindly surrender to patriarchal strictures, but is proudly
I changed things
exultant rather than regretful.
totally.
 19 20

I was first. Listen, love,

I was first yes, my slave,
pleasure I was first
my body consoled rebel –
the first sorrow. banished from paradise,
exiled.
I was first
I learned
to see
that human life
your face
was greater
of a child. than paradise.
Amidst grief and joy I was first
I was first. to know.
I first (Translated by Pritish Nandy)
knew
sorrow and pleasure, Glossary:
good and evil, I was…inevitably: ‘I’ refers to Eve the first woman and also to all
made life women. The ‘rise and fall’ refer to the fall from the Garden of Eden
so uncommon. I was…same: She was the first to understand the consequences of
I was first obeying or disobeying God. Similarly, women in patriarchal society have
to break an inherent knowledge of the consequences of not conforming to the
the golden shackles dictates of man.
of luxurious
pleasure. I was first…apple: In the Biblical story, Eve was the first to taste
I was never the fruit of knowledge, to bite into the red apple, i.e. the fruit. It refers to
a puppet the curiosity of garnering knowledge and forming decisions based on it.
to dance Distinguish…things: On partaking of the fruit of knowledge, Eve
to your tune was the first to interpret differentiate modesty from immodesty, by
like forming a cover to hide the nudity with the help of fig leaves. From then
meek Adam. on things changed entirely. Thrown out of the Garden of Eden, they
descended on Earth.
I was
rebellion First pleasure…consoled: On Earth, Eve first understood pleasure
first and pain of the body. It was then that the body’s gratification was noted
on your earth. by her. After her descent on Earth, she came to know happiness and
 21 22

tears, the bodily cravings, desires and longings. The process of Further Reading :
reproduction is equally pleasure and pain. l
Susie J. Tharu, K. Lalita, Women Writing in India: The Twentieth
see…child: that she had undergone the labour of giving birth. She Century, Vol 2, CUNY Press, 1993.
speaks of creating life and in the child she saw the reflection of God’s l
The Unsevered Tongue, tr. Amitabha Mukherjee, Nandimukh
face. The creation of life mirrors God’s creative force.
Sangsad Kolkata, 2005.
Sorrow…uncommon: That it was the combination of sorrow and l
‘Eve: Mother of Humankind’ in Women of God, Women of the People
joy, good and evil, which distinguishes life on earth from the life on the
by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz (users.drew.edu/aisasidi/cd/eve.html)
Garden of Eden. This combination lent meaning to life, making life on
earth exceptional.

I was…pleasure: just as Eve was the first to break the restrictions

on the Garden of Eden which was so luxurious yet provided the life with
no meaning, similarly women in patriarchal society break the confines
of the male-dominated culture that cages them to realize their own selves.
These confines are luxurious in terms of materialistic pleasure, but restrict
the women’s individuality.

I was…exiled: Not only refers to the Biblical exile of Eve, but could
also refer to the exile of women poets from the exalted position of
recognition equivalent to that of the male poets. The poet also talks
about her own experience as not been accorded recognition like her male
contemporaries.

I was first to know: the refrain highlights that Eve was the first to
gain knowledge. Eve stands for women who have also been empowered
by their knowledge to understand that the gilded cage presented to them
is still a cage.
Questions for Discussion :
1. Discuss the feminist concerns of Kavita Sinha in the light of the
poem, Eve Speaks to God.

2. How is the Biblical Eve related to the plight of women in

patriarchal society in the poem Eve Speaks to God ?
 23
K. Satchidanandan (b. 1946)
One of the most translated of contemporary Indian poets,
Koyamparambath Satchidanandan is a poet, critic, translator and editor.
Born in 1946 in Central Kerala, Satchidanandan writes poetry in
Malayalam, and prose in Malayalam and English and has more than 20
collections of poetry besides several books of travel, plays and criticism
including five highly acclaimed books in English on Indian literature.
He has also edited 12 works in English and 8 in Malayalam besides
having edited many journals including Indian Literature, the journal of
Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Literature). His work
has been translated into over seven Indian languages and into Irish,
French, German, Italian and Arabic languages apart from English. He
was a Professor of English, and later the chief executive of the Indian
National Academy of Literature (Sahitya Akademi) and the Director of
the School of Translation Studies, Indira Gandhi Open University, Delhi.
He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 27 literary
awards including the Indian National Academy award, besides
Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Government of Italy and
India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland and has
represented India in several international literary events.
Satchidanandan’s early poems were highly experimental and the
publication of his first collection, Anchusooryan (Five Suns, 1971) was
an important event in Malayalam literature. The same year he launched
“Jwala” (Flame), an avant-garde journal dedicated to experimental
writing. He had earlier published a collection of essays on modern
Malayalam poetry (Kurukshetram, 1970). He was also translating poetry
from across the world for Kerala Kavita and other poetry journals, and
writing critical articles on modern literature, arts and culture. By the
mid-seventies, he had aligned himself broadly with the political left in
Kerala, and was close to the New Left movement and active in its cultural
wing, “Janakeeya Samskarikavedi” (The Forum for People’s Culture).
24
He was also associated with other liberal political and secular forums
like Desabhimani Study Circle and Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad, an
organisation for promoting scientific outlook. He wrote many poems in
protest against the Emergency in India (1975–77); many of his poems
were censored and he was also interrogated by the Crime Branch. In 1978,
he launched a small publishing house called Prasakthi Library that
brought out anthologies of poems and short stories as well as political
tracts. A collection of his poems, written between 1965 and 1982 was
published in 1983. He was invited to participate in the Valmiki Interna-
tional Poetry Festival in New Delhi and to represent India at the Sarajevo
Poetry Days in former Yugoslavia in 1985. In 1988 he visited the U.S.S.R.
as part of a poets’ team to take part in the Festival of India there.
Gandhi and Poetry, one of Satchidanandan’s remarkable poems,
appears in a collection of poems entitled While I Write: New and Selected
Poems – one of his recent anthologies. The poem constructs an imaginary
dialogue, more precisely an eyewitness account of a meeting, between
Mahatma Gandhi and poetry (personified). In the process of doing it,
the poet intervenes with his oblique comments on the appropriation of
the Indian poetic tradition by elitist predilections.
The poem also can be seen as an explanation to the question as to
why there has been a disconnect between the famed and much vaunted
Indian poetic tradition and the common man’s concerns. The focus of
the poem gains importance as it highlights poetry’s origins in the common
man’s terrain and its subsequent movement away from it.
Gandhi and Poetry
One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi’s ashram
to have a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi spinning away
his thread towards Ram
 25 26

took no notice of the poem Questions for Discussion:

waiting at his door
1. From a reading of the poem, trace the development of poetry in India.
ashamed as he was no bhajan.
The poem cleared his throat 2. Does the poem succeed in bringing out Gandhi’s major preoccu-
and Gandhi looked at him sideways pations?
through those glasses
Further Reading:
that had seen Hell.
‘Have you ever spun thread?’ he asked, Mohan, Anupama Utopia and the Village in the South Asian
‘Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart? Literatures, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
Ever stood the smoke
Pauwels, R M (Ed.) Indian Literature and Popular Cinema: Recasting
of an early morning kitchen?
Classics, NewYork: Routlegde, 2007
Have you ever starved?’
The poem said: ‘I was born
in the woods, in a hunter’s mouth.
A fisherman brought me up in his hamlet.
Yet, I know no work, I only sing.
First I sang in the courts:
then I was plump and handsome;
but am on the streets now,
half-starved.’
‘That’s better,’ Gandhi said
with a sly smile, ‘but you must
give up this habit
of speaking in Sanskrit at times.
Go to the fields, listen to
the peasants’ speech.’
The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with the new rain.
(Translated from Malayalam by the poet)
 27
Chandrashekhar B. Kambar (b. 1934)
Dr. Chandrasekhar B. Kambar is one of the most outstanding
personalities in contemporary Kannada literature. A multi-faceted
personality, he has earned great repute as a playwright, novelist, poet,
film maker,lyricist and administrator. Born in a small village in Belgaum
district of Karnataka, he did his M.A. and Ph. D from Karnatak University
and went on to carve out a rich and varied career. He taught for a short
time at the University of Chicago and then at Bangalore University.He
was founder-Vice Chancellor of Kannada University, Hampi and
Chairman, National School of Drama .He has also been a member of the
Legislative Council, Government of Karnataka .He has published twenty
four plays, eleven anthologies of poetry, five novels and sixteen research
books on folklore, theatre and literature. Among his most outstanding
works are the plays Jokumaraswamyand Siri Sampige, the novel Shikhar
Soorya and the epic poem Chakori. He has also directed five feature
films, including Kaadu Kudure which won the national award in 1987
and has also composed music and written lyrics for many films and
television serials. Dr. Kambar is the recipient of numerous awards
including the prestigious Jnanapith award in 2010.
Chandrasekhar Kambar is well recognized as a master of folklore.
His writing is greatly influenced by the oral tradition and is replete with
its symbolism, myths and intense imagery. His plays are marked by a
blending of folk or mythological elements with contemporary forms and
issues. The debate between mind and matter, transgressions of man into
the other world, reconciliation of contraries, the clash between tradition
and modernity, the search for a utopian world are some of the preoccu-
pations that recur again and again in his work. He seeks out folklore to
answer some of these issues and at times seems to lament the fact that
folklore seems to be a thing of the past in today’s world of globalization.
The poem The Fiend of the Folktales very clearly captures the conflict
between tradition and modernity. The fiend in the poem is the creative
symbol of folklore. In an age of technological innovations, the place of
28
folklore is limited. The fiend has been given the name ‘Roaring laughter’,
suggesting that carefree enjoyment was what was sought in an earlier
era. The celebration, the spirit of entertainment central to the oral tradition
is missing now. Everything has dried up. Man’s imagination seems to
have come to a standstill. His creative potential has been nullified.
Technology seems to have had this kind of a benumbing, debilitating
effect on man. Folklore has gone out of man’s sphere of imagination.
Therefore the fiend finds himself without a job. There are no topics to
fire one’s imagination nor are there people to listen to the various
escapades of the fiend in the folk tale. The debate of man vs machine
finds mention here. In a world in which stocks and shares are man’s
major preoccupation, the automated robot is considered much better than
man. The fiend is finally reduced to a museum piece, a thing which
belongs to the past. The worrying fact is that the fiend seems to have
resigned himself to such a situation and feels himself an anachronism.
K. Satchidanandan comments, “The poem is not only an elegy for the
vanishing indigenous cultures with their roots in oral and performative
traditions, but also an elegy for man steadily turning into a machine.”
The Fiend of the Folktales
Here, under this tree,
often slept
the fiend of our folktales.
Roaring laughter was his name!
His laughter was not crude or bad, though.
His story has no beginning, has no ending
Now he has no likes or dislikes.
The seven seas have dried up,
the forests on seven seas are razed.
no mysterious castle or a cage with a parrot,
not even a handful of berries to devour.
As no one tells the tale
 29 30

the fiend needs no more
the tremendous makeup or his fiend’s costume.
He need not steal the princess any more.
The fiend
gets up in the morning
adorns his horns with jasmine,
and then
till the next day, sits quietly
having nothing in particular to do.
His story has faded out,
and that, worries his heart.
Now he belongs to a different realm
and we to another province.
Between the two of us
much water has flown in the river.
we can no more make him even grin.
Bordering on his realm
sprawls the snaky civilized world.
The bulls and bears of the market
take out an endless procession
headed by useless numskulls.
The robot seems far better than the fiend.
The fiend can’t jump to the skies,
can’t conduct the star wars,
can’t rape the souls,
can’t provoke the perversity.
The other day, in a story told by the Americans,
it seems there was a furious battle
between him and the robot.
The robot beat the fiend black and blue.
And the fiend ran away to cover
and hid himself in the folktale.
The folk didn’t let him alone.
Dragged him out,
made a beautiful frame,
and displayed him
on the walls of the museum.
Now he looks no more at the robot
or, even at the children.
For,
he says,
the children, after all,
are the off spring of the robot.
Aren’t they?
(Translated by Dr. O.L. NagabhushanSwamy)
Glossary:
Bulls and bears: terms used in the stock market
Questions for Discussion:
1. Comment on the predicament of the fiend in the poem.
2. Examine the poem as a comment on the conflict between tradition
and modernity.
Further Reading:
Kambar, Chandrasekhar. The Rocks of Hampi transl. O.L. Nagabhushan-
swamy. New Delhi: Sahitya, 2004.
...................................... Siri Sampige and Other Plays. Bangalore :
Provokeindia, 2009
Satchidanandan, K. Towards a Poetics of Inversion: The Poetry of
Chandrasekhar Kambar. Sahitya Akademi
Vol. 40 No. 4 (July- August 1997)
 31 32

Dalit Literature: A Note
Dalit literature represents a powerful emerging trend in the Indian
literary scene. The history of the Dalit movement in literature goes back
to the 11th century, to the first Vachana poet Madara Chennaiah, who
was a cobbler. In modern India, Dalit literature got an impetus in
Maharashtra due to the legacy of Jyotiba Phule (1828-90), Prof. S. M.
Mate (1886-1957) and Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956). The
word Dalit in Marathi literally means “broken”. It was first used by
Jyotirao Phule in the 19th century in the context of the oppression faced
by erstwhile “Untouchable” castes. In the years immediately preceding
and following independence, the Dalit movement got a forceful represen-
tation with the advent of leaders like Dr. Ambedkar in Maharashtra. It
was Dr. Ambedkar’s strident politico-cultural denunciation of the caste
system, coupled with his life-long battle to generate a new identity for
the oppressed castes, that gave the term ‘dalit’ a force and currency that
it carries to this day. The Dalit movement is a revolt against caste-based
oppression and humiliation and a demand for social justice. The Dalit
Panther Manifesto of 1972 used the term to include ‘members of
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, neo-Buddhists, the working people, the
landless and poor peasants, women and all those who are being exploited
politically, economically and in the name of religion’.
Dalit literature is to draw attention to the relentless oppression of Dalits
in India’s caste hierarchy and to inspire the possibility of their social,
economic and cultural development. Since Dalit literature has its roots
in the lives of the people who are suppressed, crushed and downtrodden,
it is by nature oppositional, with the primary motive being protest and
liberation. As such, it has often been compared to African American
literature.
Dalit women are subjected to extreme forms of social, economic,
physical and psychological exploitation. Like African-American women,
they are twice oppressed-in terms of gender as well as of caste. Since
the 1980s, Dalit women have formed their own distinct networks. They
preceded the broader Dalit movement in building a nationwide network
in the second half of the 1980s. In 1995, the National Federation of
Dalit Women (NFDW) was formed; the same year they also took part in
the Fourth UN International Women’s Conference in Beijing, building
transnational alliances. The writings of Dalit women writers are based
on the lives, experiences and consciousness of Dalit women, expressing
their anguish as well as demands for justice and equity.

The term “Dalit Literature” came into use in 1958, when the first
Conference of Maharashtra Dalit Sahithya Sangha was held at Mumbai.
Although started in an unorganized way, the Dalit literary movement
gained pace with the active support of Ambedkar’s revolutionary ideals
which stirred into action all the Dalits of Maharashtra. Dalit literature
emerged into prominence and as a collective voice after 1960, starting
in Marathi and soon appearing in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telegu.
Since then, Dalit literature which looks at history as well as current
events from a Dalit point of view, has come to occupy an important
niche in the body of Indian literary expression. The primary motive of
 33 34

Jyoti Lanjewar (b.1950) also in her dying moments. The refrain “ I have seen you” adds to the
poignancy of this heartfelt tribute to motherhood and the spirit of Dalit
A pioneering Dalit woman poet today, Jyothi Lanjewar is a well- women .
known figure in Marathi literature. Born in Nagpur on 25th November,
1950, Jyothi Lanjewar grew up in a family that had dedicated itself to Mother (Ai)
the upliftment of the down-trodden. After completing her M.Phil., and I have never seen you
Ph.D, she became Professor and Head of the Marathi Department at Wearing one of those gold-bordered saris
S.B. College, Nagpur. A noted writer, poet, feminist scholar and social
With a gold necklace
activist, she has authored more than fourteen books out of which four
With gold bangles
are poetry collections. A compilation of her poems translated into English
With fancy sandals
has come out in the form of the book Red Slogans in the Green Grasses.
Mother! I have seen you
A recipient of numerous literary awards and fellowships, Jyoti Lanjewar
Burning the soles of your feet in the harsh summer sun
is a force to reckon with in the field of contemporary Indian women’s
poetry. Hanging your little ones in a cradle on an acacia tree
Carrying barrels of tar
Like many poets, Lanjewar dislikes being fitted into slots. Her poetry Working on a road construction crew…………
speaks on diverse themes such as womanhood, motherhood, friendships,
human values and love. It speaks of the socio-cultural oppression of I have seen you
women belonging to the poorest strata of Indian society. She comments, With a basket of earth on your head
“My poetry is about humanity and its seemingly endless struggles for Rags bound on your feet
survival, for change, for justice, and sometimes humanity happens to be Giving a sweaty kiss to the naked child
the oppressed marginalized.” Who came tottering over to you
Working for your daily wage, working, working………
Dalit identity and politics have been powerfully conveyed in the
poem Mother (Ai) which presents a daughter’s perception of her mother I have seen you
and her deep admiration of her self-respect, her hard work and Turning back the tide of tears
commitment to the Dalit cause. The use of the negative ‘never’ in the Trying to ignore your stomach’s growl
opening line and in the conclusion provides the framework for the Suffering parched throat and lips
contrast between what the Dalit mother can never hope to possess and Building a dam on a lake………
the harsh reality of her life. The world of the mother is portrayed in all
its starkness with the use of realistic details and vivid descriptions. The I have seen you
mother’s life of struggle - hunger, poverty, hard physical labour, sexual For a dream of four mud walls
exploitation, humiliation- is delicately balanced with the compassion Stepping carefully, pregnant
and sacrifice of motherhood. The inspiring presence of Ambedkar is On the scaffolding of a sky scraper
woven in effectively, not merely in the mother’s advice to her child but Carrying a hod of wet cement on your head………..
 35 36

I have seen you I have seen you working until sunset

In evening, untying the end of your sari Piercing the darkness to turn toward home,
For the coins to buy salt and oil, Then forcing from the door
Putting a five paise coin That man who staggered in from the hooch hut……..
On a little hand I have seen you
Saying ‘go eat candy’- At the front of the Long March
Taking the little bundle from the cradle to your breast The end of your sari tucked tightly at the waist
Saying “Study, become an Ambedkar” Shouting “Change the name”
And let the baskets fall from my hands………… Taking the blow of the police stick on your upraised hands
Going to jail with head held high………
I have seen you
I have seen you
Sitting in front of the stove
Saying when your only son
Burning your very bones
Fell martyr to police bullets
To make coarse bread and a little something
“You died for Bhim, your death means something”
To feed everybody, but half-fed yourself
saying boldly to the police
So there’d would a bit in the morning………..
“If I had two or three sons, I would be fortunate.
I have seen you They would fight on.”
Washing clothes and cleaning pots I have seen you on your deathbed
In different households Giving that money you earned
Rejecting the scraps of food offered to you Rag-picking to the diksha bhumi
With pride Saying with your dying breadth
Covering yourself with a sari “Live in unity……. fight for Baba………. don’t forget him……….
That had been mended so many times And with your very last breadth
Saying “Don’t you have a mother or a sister?” “Jai Bhim.”
To anyone who looked at you with lust in his eyes………. I have seen you……..
I have never seen you
I have seen you
Even wanting a new broad-bordered sari
On a crowded street with a market basket on your head
Trying always to keep your head covered with the end of your sari Mother, I have seen you………..
Chasing anyone who nudged you deliberately (Translated from the Marathi by Sylvie Martinez, Rujita
With your sandal in your hand………… Pathre, S. K. Thorat, Vimal Thorat, and Eleanor Zelliot.)
 37 38

Glossary:
Long March : Organised by the followers of Dr. Ambedkar, it took
place in Maharashtra in 1956. It was part of the move-
ment which resulted in the mass conversion of about 3
million ‘untouchables’ to Buddhism in late 1956,early
1957. Following this agitation, the name “Dalit” was
adopted. The Long March could also refer to the
agitation of the Maharashtra Dalits on December 6, 1979
to rename Marathwada University after Dr. Ambedkar.
Bhima : refers simultaneously to Dr. Ambedkar and the character
in the Mahabharatha, who was physically the strongest
and most heroic of the five Pandavas. Bhima is a
common double symbol of power, strength, tenacity and
heroic struggle in Dalit writing.
Jai Bhim : a greeting used mostly by Dalit converts to Buddhism
as a mark of respect towards Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar.
“Jai Bhim” literally means “Victory to Bhim” ie Bhimrao
Ambedkar.
diksha bhumi : the place in Nagpur where Dr. Ambedkar embraced
Buddhism along with 5 lakh followers on October 14,
1956.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Consider the poem as a tribute to motherhood and the spirit of Dalit
women.
2. Comment on the picture of the lives of Dalit women presented in
Mother.
Further reading :
Bama : Karukku Trans. Lakshmi Holstorm. New Delhi : OUP,2012.
Hardtmann, Eva- Maria. The Dalit Movement in India: Local Practice,
Global Connections. New Delhi: OUP, 2009.
 39 40

SECTION - B

SHORT FICTION
 41
The Short Story in Malayalam : A Note on
the Background
The Malyalam short story has acquired a pan-Indian character which
has become a major characteristic that differentiates it from other
literatures as the modernists, most of whom had left Kerala, also began
to bring in characters from different regions. This is symptomatic of the
fact that the people of Kerala are scattered all over the world, compelled
as they have been to seek their livelihood elsewhere since the still largely
unindustrialized state provides few opportunities for gainful employment.
During the diasporic phase, the short story became a vehicle for the
articulation of individual sorrows, tensions and desires. Society had not
disappeared, yet it was pushed into the background; it was only a milieu
that produced the various individuals who dominated the story. The
dominant paradigm had changed, shifting the focus from the event to
the character, from behavior to the psyche, from action to contemplation.
Short stories were no more tales of external events told by an author;
they were revelations of an inner drama, often soliloquies, and streams
of consciousness. The ‘story’ element now became secondary, what
mattered was the exploration into the character, into the mind, even the
unconscious. In this sense, the short story may be said to have moved
closer to poetry in this phase. Time was no more the historical time but
the internal, the psychological one. Space too was more internal; the
story was enacted in the inner space, the de-populated inner courtyard
of the mind.
In the next ‘modernist’ phase, the focus of the short story shifted.
The general theme now was the human condition relegating time and
place to the background. Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Beckett, Borges and
Salinger were the most popular models, to be joined later by Marquez
and his ilk. Death now became one of the most dominant themes of
short fiction. This was also a period of format experimentation and
42
structural innovation. The short story became primarily a linguistic
artifact. Naturalism was replaced by fantasy, surrealism, black humour
and irony which became the chief vehicles of expression. The short
story ceased to be the description of an event; it was a metaphor that
captured a state of mind. The younger readers of literature, who were
disgusted with the useless education they had received and the amoral
society they found around, could easily identify themselves with the
characters in these stories who were tormented with self-doubt, existential
angst and a depressing sense of futility. The modernists became
immediately popular among these young, often unemployed, intellectuals
who had already befriended the anti-heroes of Western modernism,
despite stiff resistance from the progressives who condemned these
stories as decadent exercises in futility. Most of the pioneers of
modernism, in Malayalam, lived in the metropolis outside the state, like
Bombay and Delhi that lent authenticity to their nausea and desolation.
Kakkanadan, M. P. Narayana Pillai, O. V. Vijayan, Anand, M.
Mukundan, Zachariah, Sethu, V. K. N., all of them wrote under the impact
of the cities with their anonymous crowds, labyrinthine streets, squalor
and sin. If some like Kakkanadan and O. V. Vijayan attempted to develop
an oriental modernism that combined a sense of the metaphysical with
existential despair, some other like M. P. Narayana Pillai and Paul
Zachariah used humour and fantasy to reveal the hollowness at the heart
of modern life. Writers like O. V. Vijayan and Anand also shared a moral-
political concern as they were disgusted with the macabre real-politik
pursued by political parties of various hues. Some of the modernists,
like Kakkanandan and Vijayan, who had embraced communism in their
early years were sad about the dissensions within the movement, and
angry with the Stalinism that they found not only in the Soviet Union
but in the daily practice of the Indian communists too. M. Mukundan’s
anarchy in his early stories also comes from a similar frustration. The
social renaissance in Kerala was by now exhausted; the very forces that
had led the reforms had compromised their principles for temporary
 43
material gains. The caste-reformist organizations had turned rabidly
communal; the Congress had become mostly corrupt, the communists
had taken to the politics of bargaining and conciliation. No alternative
had emerged; there was little to look forward to. Sethu’s nightmarish
tales, Kunhabdulla’s anti-romanticism, Zachariah’s cynicism, V. K. N’s
sarcasm, Anand’s intellectual rebellion, Vijayan’s sense of the absurd,
Narayana Pillai’s irrationalism, K. P. Nirmalkumar’s sense of solitariness,
T. R’s spiritual questioning and Mukundan’s introspection have their
roots in the post-Independence social scenario of India, even though
some of them are admittedly Western in their sense of form and technique.
This saves their stories from being mere specimens of ‘cultural pastiche’
that some critics find much of modernism to be.
44
O. V. Vijayan (1930 – 2005)
One of the most distinguished of Malayalam writers,Vijayan was
born in Palakkad on July2, 1930. His father O. Velukutty was an officer
in Malabar Special Police of the erstwhile Madras Province in British
India. Formal schooling began at the age of twelve, when he joined Raja’s
High School, Kottakal in Malabar, directly into sixth grade. The following
year Velukutty was transferred and Vijayan joined the school at
Koduvayur in Palakkad. He graduated from Victoria College in Palakkad
and obtained a Master’s degree in English Literature from Presidency
College. While he lived outside Kerala for most of his adult life, spending
time in Delhi and in Hyderabad, he never forgot his beloved Palakkad,
where the wind whistles through the passes and the clattering black palms.
He created a magical Malabar in his works, one where the mundane and
the inspired lived side by side. His Vijayan-land, a state of mind, is
portrayed vividly in his work. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan,
India’s third highest civilian award, in 2003. He has also published in
Malayalam three novels, three novellas, five collections of short stories
and several books of political essays. One of his novels, The Saga of
Dharmapuri, has been published in English translation by Penguin.
After the Hanging features in a collection of the same title “After
the Hanging: and Other Stories”. Most stories in the collection are
allegories of terror inspired by the ‘State of Emergency’ placed on the
country by Indira Gandhi in the mid 1970s while others are tales of love,
the supernatural, mysticism and ordinary men and women. The
protagonist, Vellayi-appan, of After the Hanging is a peasant going
to the jail to meet his son. Much of the short story describes his journey
and efforts to meet his son who is sentenced to be hanged. The pathos of
the father becomes all the more grim as the bundle of rice he carries for
his son is forgotten in the catatonic grief of seeing his son and knowing
that there is no divine intervention, he walks away from the scene in a
grief-stricken stupor.
 45
After the Hanging
As Vellayi-appan set out on his journey the sound of ritual mourning
rose from his hut, and from Ammini’s hut, and beyond those huts, the
village listened in grief. Vellayi-appan was going to Cannanore. Had
they the money, each one of them would have accompanied him on the
journey; it was as though he was journeying for the village. Vellayi-
appan now passed the last of the huts and took the long across the paddies.
The crying receded behind him. From the ridge he stepped on pasture
land across which the footpath meandered.
Gods, my lords,Vellayi-appan cried within himself.
The black palms rose on either side and the wind clattered in their
fronds. The wind, ever so familiar, was strange this day -the gods of his
clan and departed elders were talking to him through the wind-blown
fronds. Slung over his shoulder was a bundle of cooked rice, its wet
seeped through the threadbare cloth onto his arm. His wife had bent
long over the rice, kneading it for the journey, and as she had cried the
while, her tears must have soaked into sour curd. Vellayi-appan walked
on. The railway station was four miles away. Further down the path he
saw Kuttihassan walking towards him. Kuttihassan stepped aside from
the path, in tender reverence.
‘Vellayi’, said Kuttihassan.
‘Vuttihassan,’ replied Vellayi-appan.
That was all, just two words, two names, yet it was lika a long
colloquy, in which there was lament and consolation. O Kuttihassan,
said the unspoken words, I have a debt to pay you, fifteen silvers.
Lets that not burden you, o Vellayi, on this journey.
Kuttihassan , I may never be able to pay you, never after this.
We consign our unredeemed debts to God’s keeping. Let His will be
done.
46
I burn within myself, my life is being prised away.
May the prophet guard you on this journey, may the gods bless you,
your gods and mine.
The dithyramb of the gods was now a torrent in the palms. Vellayi-
appan passed Kuttihassan and walked on. Four miles to go to the train
station. Again, an encounter on the way. Neeli, the laundress, with her
bundles of washing. She too stepped aside reverentially.
‘Vellayi-appan,’ she said.
‘Neeli,’ said Vellayi-appan.
Just these two words, and yet between them the abundant
colloquy.Vellayi-appan walked on.
The footpath joined the mud road, and Vellayi-appan looked for the
milestone and continued on his way. Presently he came to where the
rough-hewn track descended into the river. Across the river, beyond a
rise and a stretch of sere grass, was the railway. Vellayi-appan stepped
onto the sands, then into the knee-deep water. Schools of little fish,
gleaming silver, rubbed against his calves and swam on. As he reached
the middle of the river Vellayi-appan was overwhelmed by the expanse
of water, it reminded him of sad and loving rituals, of the bathing of his
father’s dead body and how he taught his own son to swim in the river,
all this he remembered and, pausing on the bank, wept in memory.
He reached the railway station and made his way to the ticket counter
and with great care undid the knot in the corner of his unsewn cloth to
take out the money for the fare.
‘Cannanore,’ Vellayi-appan said. The claerk behind the counter pulled
out a ticket, franked it, and tossed it towards him. One stage in my journey
is over, thought Vellayi-appan. He secured the ticket in the corner of his
unsewn cloth and, crossing over to the platform, sat on a bench, waiting
 47
patiently for his train. He watched the sun sink and the palms darken far
away, and the birds flit homewards. Vellayi-appan remembered walking
with his son to the fields at sundown, he remembered how his son had
looked up at the birds in wonder. Then he remembered himself as a
child, holding onto his father’s little finger, and walking down the same
fields. Two images, but between them as between two reticent words, an
abundance of many things. Soon another aged traveller came over and
sat beside him on the bench.
‘Going to Coimbatore, are you?’ the astranger asked.
‘Cannanore’, Vellayi-appan said.
‘The Cannanore train is at ten in the night’.
‘Is that so?’
‘What work do you do in Cannanore?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Just travelling are you?’
The stranger’s converse, inane and rasping, tensed round Vellayi-
appan like a hangman’s noose. Once you left the village and walked
over the long ridge, it was a world full of strangers, and their disinterested
words were like a multitude of nooses. The train to Coimbatore came,
and the old stranger rose and left. Vellayi-appan was again alone on the
bench. He had no desire to untie the bundle of rice, stead he kept a hand
on the threadbare wrap, he felt its moisture. He sat thus and slept. And
dreamt. In his dream he called out, ‘Kandunni, my son!’
Vellayi-appan was woken up from his sleep by the din andclatter of
the train to Cannanore. He felt for the ticket tied into the corner of his
cloth and was reassured. He looked for an open door, he tried to board
the compartment nearest to him.
‘This is first class, O older.’
48
‘Is that so?’
He peered into the next compartment.
‘This is reserved.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Try further down, O elder.’
The voice of strangers.
Vellayi-appan got into a compartment where there was no sitting
space left. He could barely stand. I shall stand, I don’t need to sleep, this
night my son sits awake. The rhythm of the train changed with the
changing layers of the earth, the fleeting trackside lamps, sand banks,
trees. Long ago he had travelled in a train, but that was in the day. This
was a night train. It sped through the tunnel of darkness, whose arching
walls were painted with dim murals.
The day had not broken when he reached Cannanore. The bundle of
kneaded rice still hung from, his shoulder, oozing its wet. He passed
through the gate into the station yard, the dark now livened with the first
touch of dawn. The horse-cart men clumsily parked together did not
accost him.
Vellayi-appan asked them, which is the way to the jail?’
Someone laughed. Here is an old man asking the way to the jail at
daybreak. Someone laughed again, O elder, all you have to do is to
steal, they will take you there. The converse of strangers tightened round
his neck. Vellayi-appan suffocated.
Then someone told him the way and Vellayi-appan began to walk.
The sky lightened to the orchestration of crows cawing.
At the gate of the jail a guard stopped him, ‘What brings you here
this early?’
 49
Vellayi-appan shrank back like a child, nervous. Then slowly he undid
thecorner of his cloth and took out a crumpled and yellowing piece of
paper.
‘What is that?’ the guard enquired.
Vellayi-appan handed him the paper; the guard glanced through it
without reading.
Vellayi-appan said, ‘My child is here.’
‘Who told you to come so early?’ the guard asked, his voice irritable
and harsh. ‘Wait till the office is open.’
Then his eyes fell on the paper again, and became riveted to its
contents. His face softened in sudden compassion.
‘Tommorrow, is it?’ the guard asked, almost consoling.
‘I don’t know. It is all written down there.’
The guard read and re-read the order. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘It’s tomorrow
morning at five.’
Vellayi-appan nodded in acknowledgement, and slumped on a bench
at the entrance of the jail. There he waited for the dark sanctum to open.
‘O elder, may I offer you a cup of tea?’ the guard asked solicitously.
‘No.’
My son has not slept this night, and not having slept, would not have
woken.Neither asleep nor awake, how can he break his fast this morning?
Vellayi-appan’s hand rested on the bundle of rice. My son, this rice was
kneaded by your mother for me. I saved it during all the hours of my
journey, and brought it here. Now this is all I have to bequeath to you.
The rice inside the threadbare wrap, food of the traveller, turned stale.
Outside, the day brightened. The day grew hot.
50
The offices opened, and staid men took their places behind the tables.
In the prison yard there was the grind of a parade. The prison came
alive. The officers got to work, bending over yellowing papers in tedious
scrutiny. From behind the tables, and where the column of the guards
waited in formation, came rasping orders, words of command. Nooses
without contempt or vengeance, gently strangulating the traveller. The
day grew hotter.
Someone told him, sit down and wait.Vellayi-appan sat down; he
waited. After a wait, the length of which he could not reckon, a guard
led him into the corridors of the prison. We’re here, o elder.
Behind the bars of a locked cell stood Kandunni. He looked at his
father like s stranger, through the awesome filter of a mind that could no
longer receive nor give consolation. The guard opened the door and let
Vellayi-appan into the cell. Father and son stood facing each other,
petrified. Then Vellayi-appanleaned forward to take his son in an
embrace. From Kandunni came a cry that pierced beyond hearing and
when it died down, Vellayi-appan said, ‘My son!’
‘Father!’ said Kandunni.
Just these words, but in them father and son communed in the fullness
of sorrow.
Son, what did you do?
I have no memory ,father.
Son, did you kill?
I have no memory.
It does not matter, my son, there is nothing to remember anymore.
Will the guards remember?
No, my son.
 51 52

Father will you remember my pain?
Then again the cry that pierced beyond hearing issued from Kandunni,
Father, don’t let them hang me!
‘Come out, O elder,’ the guard said, ‘the time is over.’
Vellayi-appan came away and the door clanged shut.
One last look back, and Vellayi-appan saw his son like a stranger
met during a journey. Kandunni was peering through the bars as a traveller
might through the window of a hurtling train.
Vellayi-appan wandered idly around the jail. The sun rose to its zenith,
then began the climb down. Will my son sleep this night? The night
came, and moved to dawn again. Within the walls Kandunni still lived.
After the last shovelful of earth had levelled the pit, Vellayi-appan
wandered in the gathering heat and eventually came to the sea-shore. He
had never seen the ocean before. Then he became aware of something
cold and wet in his hands, the rice his wife had kneaded for his journey.
Vellayi-appan undid the bundle. He scattered the rice on the sand, in
sacrifice and requiescat. From the crystal reaches of the sunlight, crows
descended on the rice, like incarnate souls of the dead come to receive
the offering.
Glossary:
Colloquy: a conversational exchange, dialogue.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Bring out the pathos in the short story.

Vellayi-appan heard the sound of bugles at dawn, little knowing that 2. What could be the reason for Vellayi-appan’s matter of fact
this was death’s ceremonial. But the guard had told him that it was at acceptance of his son’s death?
five in the morning and though he wore no watch, Vellayi-appan knew Further Reading:
the time with the peasant’s unerring instinct.
Abdulla, R and Asher R E. Wind Flowers: Contemporary Malayalam
Vellayi-appan received the body of his son from the guards like a Short Fiction, New Delhi: Penguin, 2004.
midwife a baby.
Dhar, Tej Nath. History-Fiction Interface in Indian English
O elder, what plans do you have for the funeral? Novel: Study of Indian English Novelist\’s
Involvement with History. New Delhi:
I have no plans.
Prestige Books, 1999.
Don’t you want the body?

Masters, I have no money.

Vellayi-appan walked along with the scavengers who pushed the

trolley carrying the body. Outside the town, over the deserted marshes,
the vultures wheeled patiently. Before the scavengers filled the pit Vellayi-
appan saw his son’s face just once more. He pressed his palm on the
cold forehead in blessing.
 53 54

Literature of the North-East: A Note political unit, but a place of many languages and cultures.” (Pratilipi
2010) It is in this context that (re)viewing the works of many writers of
Literature from North-East India abounds in tales of the troubled the North-East region becomes important to discover the rich legacy of
political climate, violence, backwardness, underdevelopment and poverty. the place, its people, their cultures and traditions.
The unique geographical positioning of the seven states and their equally
different political, economic and social situations from the rest of the
country, have resulted in the rise of a body of writing that is considered
to be different from mainstream Indian English Literature. However,
many contemporary writers of the North-Eastern states like, Dhruba
Hazarika, Mamang Dai and Harekrishna Deka, have expressed their
discomfort with the terms ‘North-East literature’ and ‘North-East writers’
as they relate those with the colonial legacy. Senior Editor of Zubaan,
Preeti Gill states “To say that the North eastern states are different from
the rest of India in almost every way is to state the obvious, but it is
important to recognise that these ‘differences’ have created rifts, giving
rise to insurgencies, demands for secession from the Indian state and
years of internal conflict and discontent. To the people of the Northeast
their world is central to themselves; to ‘mainland India’ it is a borderland.”
(Tehelka 2009) There is a growing tendency among the writers of these
states to break themselves free from the shackles of stereotypical writing.
The strong political awareness, issues related to identity and ethnicity,
violence in different forms, and above all the shadow of the gun are
some of the common realities of North-East India which hardly any writer
of that region can ignore. Many writers of the modern day period,
however, have shown a desire to move away from the over-stereotyped
and typical ‘North-East’ issues and have brought to light other under-
represented remarkable features of the region. It has been pointed out
correctly that “It is tragic that the long-running unrest, violence and
terrorism in the North-East has remained a mere digression in the
mainstream of the Indian nation-state….The poems by Uddipana
Goswami….stories by Mitra Phukan, Srutimala Duara and Aruni
Kashyap, serve as a reminder that the “North-East” is not a geographical,
 55
Temsula Ao (b.1945 )
One of the most prolific writers of the North East region, Temsula
Ao is a poet, short story writer, novelist and ethnographer from Nagaland.
She is a retired Professor of English in North Eastern Hill University
(NEHU), Shillong, where she had been teaching since 1975. She has
also served as Director, North-East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur on
deputation from NEHU. On completion of her Masters Degree in English
from Gauhati University, Assam, Ao obtained her Post Graduate Diploma
in the Teaching of English from CIEFL (now EFL University), Hyderabad
and Ph.D from NEHU. Ao was also a Fulbright Fellow to the University
of Minnesota. A Padma Shri awardee (2007) and the recipient of the
Governor’s Gold Medal (2009), Ao is widely recognized as one of the
most profound literary voices from North-East India. Ao’s works have
been translated into German, French, Assamese, Bengali and Hindi. She
has to her credit five books of verses, a book on Henry James, two
collections of short stories – These Hills Called Home: Stories From A
War Zone (2006) and Laburnum for My Head (2009) and a book on her
own culture called Ao-Naga Oral Tradition (2000).
Temsula Ao’s stories focus on issues which have remained under-
represented but are close to the hearts of every human being living in the
North-East. With the stereotypical writing about the various North-East
problems in the forefront, what is generally overlooked are many
distinctive features of the region, like the “…the wonderfully open
presence of women in almost every facet of life” and the “considerably
lesser levels of patriarchy and male oppression”. (The South Asian 2008)
No doubt, there are innumerable cases of patriarchal subordination; they
do not merely emerge as internal social phenomenon. Writers like Mitra
Phukan, Easterine Iralu, Indira Goswami, Mamang Dai, Anjum Hasan,
Jahnavi Baruah, Anuradha Barjupari and many more have brought alive
the unique presence of North-East women in their works. These different
views regarding the status of the North East women make it all the more
56
necessary for us to understand the real picture as well as the representation
of these women in literature. Temsula Ao’s collection of short stories
These Hills Called Home: Stories From A War Zone and Laburnum For
My Head portray the strong voice of the women in the Naga society.
However, conflicting images are presented by Ao as she cannot
completely negate the “patriarchal mindset and ideology” present among
her people and she thus maintains, “...many men tend to protect women
not necessarily out of love, but because they consider women as weak
and vulnerable. If we want to revolutionize this, we land up going against
our own fathers, brothers and uncles. Therefore, change has to start at
the village level.” (The Sentinel 2009) Ao’s narratives highlight the
obvious scenario of subordination of women through cross politico-
cultural interactions which is inescapable in the North-East situation,
but the depiction of women in all the cases has not necessarily been in
terms of victims. Her narratives bring to light the defiance or the attempts
at defiance, against domination, of these Naga women as important
literary images.
In the collection These Hills Called Home: Stories From A War Zone,
Ao projects how a whole community of people stood exposed to insane
violence during the period when the Nagas sought their independence,
the decades of strife, guerrilla warfare, plundering and killing. During
this war for independence, countless young men were killed and yet
more women were ravished. Several people were dispossessed of their
land and belongings. The stories in this collection bring back alive a
tragedy that can never be forgotten by those who have suffered the agony.
Amidst all the violence and insanity, the stories mainly revolve around
women, who in any case, bear the brunt of oppression, at dual levels – at
the hands of the insurgents as well as the security forces. Interestingly,
however, Ao’s narratives also focus on women voicing their defiance
against the domination that they come across. Like many other North-
East writers, she projects the strong voice of these women who play
significant roles in the everyday politics of the region.
 57
The Jungle Major, the introductory story of the collection, presents
one of these intelligent and determined women who make a mark for
themselves in the family, community, and the larger society. The readers
are introduced to the young and beautiful wife of Punaba, an ugly,
unassuming Ao-Naga man who joins the Naga underground resistance.
Khatila, his wife, exploits the physical ugliness of her husband to outwit
the army and save him and the entire village from their clutches. Her
intelligence gives her a prominent position in her community even after
the war is over and her husband is not in the least ashamed to recall in
front of others how his life was saved by her. The relationship of Khatila
and her husband is also portrayed as one in which there is immense love
and respect for each other, even though she is not able to give him a
child. No doubt, the community of other women views this deficiency
in Khatila’s life in a very critical manner, assuming that “the man was
either impotent or sterile; or the woman was barren” but gives up
ultimately when they find her living life to the fullest with the moral
support of her husband. Ao, in this collection, is able to create immense
emotional impact on her readers by her poignant description of the
troubled North-Eastern region which marked the history of the Naga
people, but her stories stand apart mainly because of the portrayal of the
women – strong, intelligent, and determined – even in adverse
circumstances.
Tensula Ao’s narratives bring alive many remarkable features
of the North-East, usually kept in the periphery, and are able to prove
wrong the “assumption that literature from North-East should capture
the blood, violence and terror that ravages this part of India.” (Kashyap)
Ao’s stories, instead, capture the traditions, culture and beliefs, and
lifestyle of the people in the North-East. Narratives like The Jungle Major
may be regarded as trendsetters in portraying the unique position of the
Naga women which in many cases is contrary to the images presented in
mainstream Indian English writing.
58
The Jungle Major
In the pre-dawn warmth of togetherness, they made love again with
the fervour of lovers meeting after a long absence. They were indeed
meeting after a lapse of about five months, but lovers would be misnomer
to describe these two. They were a most mis-matched couple. When
their marriage was first announced in the village, people stopped in their
tracks, gaped in wonder at the sheer improbability of this match and tsk,
tsked, some with disbelief and some in utter disgust at the thought. The
girl’s father was soundly berated by his clansmen, who said he was
lowering the prestige of their clan by agreeing to the match. Why was he
condemning his beautiful daughter to life with such a man, they wanted
to know.
The relatives’, as well as the general public’s indignation over the
proposed marriage was due to the immense disparity between not only
the outward appearances but also the family positions of the girl and her
betrothed. The man was short, dark and had buck teeth. He was a mere
driver who knew some mechanics and was employed by a rich man in
town to drive a one-ton vehicle called a Dodge, now long gone out of
use. He had read only up to class five and could speak some Hindi and a
smattering of English picked up in the course of his journeys. He also
came from a minor clan in the village.
But the woman. Ah! She was quite another story! She was tall, fair,
slim and possessed of the most charming smile. Not only that, she came
from a good family and belonged to a major clan. Her elder brother was
studying in the engineering college; her sister was married to a Dobhashi
in Mokokchung. Another brother was studying to be a veterinarian doctor.
It was rumoured that this beauty had had a string of suitors who courted
her but every single one of them eventually drifted away to marry some
other village girl much inferior to her in many ways. The villagers were
amazed that any sane man would reject such a comely and eligible girl
and marry these typically dowdy looking ‘village’ girls.
 59
But the there it was, the apparent mismatch was on, and the marriage
took place in due course. The couple moved to a house of their own, as
was the custom, and seemed to be leading a normal life. The man, whose
name was Punaba, earned enough to keep his wife in relative comfort.
The woman, who was called Khatila, seemed happy and content in her
new role as a housewife. Many years passed, but the couple did not have
any children. At first the villagers did not pay much attention to this
fact. But as it happens in any community, soon rumours began to circulate:
the man was either impotent or sterile; or the woman was barren. Some
even went to the extent of saying that she did not allow her husband to
touch her. Just as the initial announcement of their marriage had produced
adverse reactions, now their childless state became the subject of many
lewd comments and absurd speculations.
All through this period, the couple, though unaware of village gossip,
ignored the broad hints and snide remarks and appeared to be totally
absorbed in each other and their own household. Punaba went on regular
trips to nearby villages and after collecting fares, would go to
Mokokchung to give the money to his boss and to receive his salary.
Khatila cultivated a small field on the outskirts of the village and grew
some vegetables in her kitchen garden. The years of married life seemed
to suit her; her beauty remained as fresh as it was during her youth.
It was after a year or so of Khatila’s marriage, that the entire land
was caught in a new wave of patriotic fervour that swept the imagination
of the people and plunged them into a struggle, which many did not
even understand. This particular village also became a part of the network,
which kept the underground outfit supplied with information, food and
occasional arms. The subject of independence became public talk; young
people spoke of the exploits of their peers in encounters with government
forces and were eager to join the new band of ‘patriotic’ warriors to
liberate their homeland from ‘foreign’ rule. Some actually disappeared
from the village and their names henceforth were spoken only in whispers.
60
Skirmishes were taking place close to the village and the atmosphere
within the village became one of fear and mutual suspicion. People
returned from their fields much earlier than they used to. It seemed that
a pall had descended upon the entire land.
Some villages, to which the underground leaders belonged, were
severely punished. The houses were ransacked by the security forces,
the grain in their barns were burnt and the people themselves were herded
into camps away from the villages and kept in virtual imprisonment
inside areas fenced in by bamboo stockades. This form of group
incarceration was the infamous ‘grouping’ of villages which the Nagas
hated and dreaded even more than bullets. Numerous stories proliferated
of women being molested by the security forces and the obstinate ones
who refused to give information being severely beaten; not only that,
sometimes they would be hung upside down and subjected to unspeakable
tortures like chilli powder being rammed into their extremities. But so
far, Khatila’s village was not touched by any of these horrors as none of
their boys who joined the underground movement was of any importance
in the eyes of the government and many of them even managed to remain
unreported.
One day, Punaba did not return from his usual trip but Khatila did
not seem unduly worried by this. A month passed and then another, but
there was no sign of this quiet man. When asked about his absence,
Khatila replied that he was plying his business in Mokokchung. That
sounded plausible, because people there had greater need of a vehicle
than the villagers in the area. Before long however, the village grapevine
brought news that their very own Punaba had joined the underground
army and was, in fact, doing pretty well for himself. It was also reported
that strange people visited Khatila with provisions when the adults were
away in their fields and disappeared before their return. She became
more reclusive and her visits to her parents’ home also became less
frequent than before.
 61
Not long after the news of Punaba joining the underground army
reached the authorities, the government forces came to the village and
began questioning the villagers about Punaba. Even Khatila was
summoned and asked where her husband was. She replied that she did
not know and she did not care whether he came back or not. Judging
from the description of the man given by the gaonbura, the officer
concluded that a beautiful woman like her could not be heartbroken
over the disappearance of an insignificant man like Punaba from her
life. So they went away after threatening the villagers that if they were
withholding vital information about the rebels, they would come back
and raze their village to the ground. They even cautioned Khatila that if
she was lying to them, she would be punished in a very special way. ‘We
know how to deal with women like you,’ the officer said giving her a
lascivious look. In the evening some of the village elders came to her
hut and asked her to send word to Punaba not to visit her. Khatila merely
nodded her head and meekly replied, ‘I shall try.’ She knew that even if
she could not get in touch with her husband, he would surely come to
know about the incident through the underground grapevine. But she
had to play the part of a dutiful woman because she knew that in her
position she could not afford to antagonise the village authorities in any
way.
It was not long before the entire land was engulfed in the flames of
conflict between the rebels and the government forces. The oppressive
measures adopted by the army to quell the rebellion backfired and even
those villages, which were till now not directly involved in the conflict,
became more sympathetic towards the underground forces when they
heard of the atrocities committed by the armed forces on innocent
villagers. By this time, Punaba’s fellow villagers were in total sympathy
with the so-called rebels and this village became one of the main conduits
for supplies and information to them. Punaba sent messengers to Khatila
regularly and she knew all that was going on in the underground outfit
that her husband was now heading. Because of his age and leadership
62
qualities he rapidly rose in rank and after only three years of service,
was made a captain in the rebel army. During these years he even managed
to visit his wife several times, even though the visits were short. While
he was in the village, lookouts would be posted at strategic points to
note the movements of the other army, which patrolled the outskirts of
all suspect villages as a routine.
This was one such visit when Punaba had come to see his wife after
a gap of five months during which he had been wounded twice and was
at the moment recovering from the most recent bullet wound on his right
arm. The restful stay with his wife after the arduous and dangerous
activities of underground life seemed to be doing wonders for Punaba;
he felt healthy and happy for the first time in many months. But all that
was soon to be over. That morning, before they could get up from the
bed exhausted from the morning’s bout of ardent lovemaking, urgent
thumps on the bamboo walls were heard, with the whispered warning,
‘Sir, sir, wake up, they are almost here, our sentries fell asleep. Run
away sir.’ Another voice, that of Punaba’s orderly joined in, ‘Sir, I will
hide under the house, throw your gun and uniform to me and I will wait
for you on the northern bank of the third well.’ The voices melted away
with the approaching dawn.
Khatila was in a quandary, what should she do? How could she save
her husband, herself and the netire village from the approaching soldiers?
She could now hear their voices and the sound of their footsteps on the
rocky path leading to their house. For Punaba trying to escape now was
out of the question; he would be immediately spotted and shot down
like a dog. He would never surrender and she could not lie this time
because their small bamboo and thatch house had no hiding place. Though
extremely agitated, this woman had enough presence of mind to first
bundle up his uniform and gun in a sack and throw it down to the waiting
orderly who immediately grabbed it and vanished into the thick jungle.
Next, she fished out some of her husband’s old clothes and ordered him
 63
to get into them, then she smeared his face, hands and feet with ash from
the hearth, hid his sandals, ruffled his hair and began shouting at him,
‘You no good loafer, what were you doing all day yesterday? There is no
water in the house even to wash my face. Run to the well immediately or
you will rue the day you were born.’ While she was shouting at the top
of her voice in this fashion, she was at the same time emptying all the
water containers through the bamboo platform at the back. By the time
the soldiers reached her house, she was loading the water-carrying basket
with the empty containers and showering more abuses at the hapless
servant. Someone called out her name and thumped on the door but
Khatila continued with her tirade ignoring those standing outside her
door. When there was another loud thump she shouted in an irritated
voice, ‘Who is it now? Don’t you see what I am doing?’ Taking her own
time she opened the door with a loud yawn. ‘What do you want?’ she
growled at the young Captain who looked somewhat surprised at her
manner. Whereas he had expected a cowering woman, crazy with fear
for her husband and herself, he was confronted by a dishevelled but
defiant person who displayed no agitation and seemed to be utterly
oblivious to any danger. He stood there in confusion; surely the
intelligence report was right; that Punaba had come to the village on his
periodical visits to his wife and that this was his house. But where was
he? He could not have escaped through the tight cordon that was so
efficiently put in place by his boys.
Just when he decided to affect a sterner stance, Khatila turned her
back on him and began to shout again, ‘Hey, where is that lazy so and
so? Haven’t you gone yet?’ The servant, now with the water-carrying
basket on his head shuffled out from the bamboo platform at the back
and proceeded towards the front door. The young captain tried to stop
him, but Khatila was prepared for this; she said, ‘Sahib, no use talking
to him, he cannot talk. Besides, don’t you see there is no water in the
house? What do you want with a servant?’ So saying, she gave a shove
to Punaba with some more choice abuses and he hurried out of the house
64
and onto the path leading to the third well. Soon he and his small party
vanished into the jungle and out of the cordon set up by the soldiers. The
Captain did not actually have a clear idea about the person they were
looking for, except for the fact that woman’s husband was the wanted
man and this house was the target of the search, though several other
searches were being carried out by different groups simultaneously in
different sectors of the village. The army often employed this tactic to
protect their informers, so that in the course of a general search, they
would exultantly ‘discover’ their quarry. Watching the retreating back
of the ungainly ‘servant’, he thought, surely he could not be that person.
The young and inexperienced army officer did not realise that the
beautiful but simple village woman had thus foiled a meticulously
planned ‘operation’ of the mighty Indian army and that a prized quarry
had simply walked away to freedom.
Alone in the house now, she assumed another pose, asking the Captain
coyly whether he would like some tea; she could get that much water
from her neighbour. The officer was temporarily dazed by Khatila’s
beauty and would have sat down for tea; but his JCO politely but firmly
reminded him, ‘Sir aor bohut gharka talashi baki hai. Hame chalna
hai.’ (Sir there are many more houses to search. We have to move now.)
Though slightly irritated, he said ‘Thik hai, chalo.’ (All right, let’s go.)
Reluctantly he led the search party away from the house. Only after the
entire search party left the village could Khatila relax and she was never
more grateful than on that particular morning for the ugliness of her
husband which had saved not only them but the entire village. Had he
been killed or captured that morning the entire village would have been
punished for harbouring a notorious rebel and not informing the
government forces about his presence in the village. As had happened to
other villages, their barns would have been set on fire, their houses
destroyed and the people would have been taken to the ‘grouping’ areas.
But thanks to the audacity of Khatila’s ploy, the entire village was saved
from such a fate.
 65 66

Meanwhile the struggle between the rebels and the underground Skirmishes : episodes of irregular or unpremeditated fighting
forces continued. So did Punaba’s periodical visits to see his wife. It Gaonbura : village head
was never discovered whether one of their villagers informed the
Quandary : a difficult situation
authorities or the information was supplied by someone else. The escape
of Punaba and his party that day was, however, construed differently by Quarry : an object of pursuit
the underground bosses and the credit was attributed to his shrewd Ploy : a cunning plan or action designed to turn a situation
planning. He continued to serve in the outfit for some three more years to one’s own advantage
and for this particular escape and several other subsequent exploits, he
Questions for Discussion:
was promoted to the rank of Major in the underground army. When a
general ceasefire was announced, Khatila persuaded Punaba to come 1. Temsula Ao’s stories capture the voices of common Naga people
overground and be with her. She told him that life was becoming too who are trapped in the struggle between the state and the Naga ethnic
lonesome without him. It also happened to be the period when the insurgency groups. Explain with reference to “The Jungle Major”.
government was trying to rehabilitate the ‘surrendered’ cadres of the 2. In saving her husband and the entire village, Khatila represents the
underground army, and though he did not possess a regular certificate, strong voice and public presence of the worldly wise North-east
Punaba was given a job in the State Transport Department as a mechanic women. Comment.
and was posted at Mokokchung.
Further Reading:
Years later, the real story of what actually happened on that morning
was told, at first only to a few close friends. But by and by this ‘exploit’ Ao, Temsula. These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War
of Punaba, the jungle major, soon became the favourite subject whenever Zone. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006.
friends dropped in to share a drink in the evenings. Every time the story Ao, Temsula. Laburnum for My Head. New Delhi: Penguin
was recounted, Punaba would look at his wife and ask playfully, ‘Aren’t Books, 2009.
you glad that your jungle major is so ugly?’ And equally playfully she
Ananthanarayanan, “Strength and Public Presence of Women in
would answer, ‘So, where is the water I sent you to fetch that day?’
Sriram. North-East India”. The South Asian, May 26,
Glossary : 2008.
Misnomer : a word or term that suggests a meaning that is known Baruah, Manjeet. “Literature in North-East India: An Overview”
to be wrong. in Literature, Society, Polity: Trends and Perspec-
Clan : a group of people united by actual or perceived tives. Volume 5, Issues I, April – June 2008.
kinship and descent Gill, Preeti. “Singing in the Dark Times” in Tehelka Magazine,
Dobhashi : a tribal judge; the Dobhashi system of social justice Vol 6, Issue 36, September 12, 2009.
is found to exist among some Naga communities of
Kashyap, Aruni. “Some thoughts on Literature from India’s North-
Nagaland who settle disputes as per traditional
laws. East”. Sunday, November 15, 2009.
 67
Githa Hariharan (b.1954)
Since the 1960s, Indian English fiction by women has developed
into a significant body of work. Starting with the early masters Kamala
Markandaya, Nayantara Sahghal and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, moving on
in the 70s and 80s to the second generation comprising distinguished
talented writers like Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande, it has scaled
new heights in the post -80s era. Novelists like Arundhati Roy, Kiran
Desai and Githa Hariharan have won international acclaim and
readership. Although these writers have largely directed their literary
forays into the novel form, many of them, particularly Anita Desai, Shashi
Deshpande and Githa Hariharan have also distinguished themselves as
short story writers. Although many of these writers have expressed their
discomfort at being labeled ‘feminist’, their work often provides sensitive
insights into the challenges facing women in contemporary India,
particularly in terms of the uneasy co-existence of tradition and
modernity. In addition, in the last two decades, Indian English women
writers of fiction, like their bhasha counterparts, have increasingly
engaged with the larger political concerns of the nation including caste
and class distinctions, fundamentalism, terrorism and the dangerously
divisive forces threatening the integrity of the nation.
Githa Hariharan is one of the most accomplished of Indian English
women writers who came into prominence in the post-90s era. Educated
in leading institutions in Bombay, Manila and the United States, she has
a masters in communication and worked as a television editor and editor
in a leading publishing house before becoming a fulltime writer. Her
first novel The Thousand Faces of Night (1992) won the Commonwealth
Writers’ Prize in 1993. Her other novels include The Ghosts of Vasu
Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003),
and Fugitive Histories (2009). A collection of highly acclaimed short
stories, The Art of Dying, was published in 1993, and a book of stories
for children, The Winning Team, in 2004. Her work is marked by
68
conscious craftsmanship, constant experimentation with narrative modes
and a gradual widening of the canvas from the woman-centric first novel
The Thousand faces of Night to her later novels which deal with wider
issues which link the private and public domains. Githa Hariharan is
also a committed activist, involving herself in several current national
concerns. She has successfully fought for a reinterpretation of the Hindu
Minority and Guardianship Act 1956, has actively worked towards
nuclear disarmament, but her primary concern has been, in her own words
“to oppose and counteract, in every possible way, the growing funda-
mentalism in India”.
The Remains of the Feast is one of Hariharan’s most anthologized
short stories, originally contained in the collection The Art of Dying. In
this collection of twenty short stories the writer , with great economy,
delves into the meaning of death and varied responses to it. In an
interview, she commented about the story,” It must be the most widely
published of all my work. I wrote that in a tearing hurry as if it were
something that was just gushing out” (Interview with Joel Kuorti) The
story is a first person narrative account of a young woman’s memories
of the last days in the life of her great-grandmother, a ninety year-old
Brahmin widow whose entire life has been dictated by the rules of gender,
caste, religion and class. A suspicious lump on her neck, the foreboding
that her days were numbered, leads the feisty old woman to do what she
had not done throughout her life- flout all the restrictions on food enjoined
on a Brahmin widow. Colluding with her in the enterprise of smuggling
in the forbidden food from the nearby bazar is the narrator, her favourite
great grand- daughter. The never-say-die spirit of the elderly dying woman
as well as the affectionate support of the much younger woman provides
scope for a feminist analysis of the story. The suffocating customs which
restrict women’s natural human longings are here questioned and opposed
by a most unlikely person- a woman who has through her long life carried
the burden of expectations of her age, her caste, her class, her religion
and her widowhood. Her all-consuming appetite, her relish of every
 69
forbidden food item, confronts a religio-cultural discourse which preaches
abstention and self-control as the path to salvation.
The Remains of the Feast
The room still smells of her. Not as she did when she was dying, an
overripe smell that clung to everything that had touched her, sheets,
saris, hands. She had been in the nursing home for only ten days but a
bedsore grew like an angry red welt on her back. Her neck was a big
hump, and she lay in bed like a moody camel that would snap or bite at
unpredictable intervals. The goitred lump, the familiar swelling I had
seen on her neck all my life, that I had stroked and teasingly pinched as
a child, was now a cancer that spread like a fire down the old body,
licking clean everything in its way.
The room now smells like a pressed, faded rose. A dry, elusive smell.
Burnt, a candle put out.
We were not exactly roommates, but we shared two rooms, one corner
of the old ancestral house, all my twenty-year old life.
She was Rukmini, my great-grandmother. She was ninety when she
died last month, outliving by ten years her only son and daughter-in-
law. I don’t know how she felt then, but later she seemed to find something
slightly hilarious about it all. That she, an ignorant village breed woman,
who signed the papers my father brought her with a thumb print, should
survive; while they, city-bred, ambitious, should collapse of weak hearts
and arthritic knees at the first sign of old age.
Her sense of humour was always quaint. It could also be
embarrassing. She would sit in her corner, her round plump face
reddening, giggling like a little girl. I knew better than ask her why, I
was a teenager by then. But some uninitiated friend would be unable to
resist, and would go up to my great-grandmother and ask her why she
was laughing. This, I knew, would send her into uncontrollable peals.
70
The tears would flow down her cheeks, and finally, catching her breath,
still weak with laughter, she would confess. She could fart exactly like a
train whistling its way out of the station, and it gave her as much joy as
a child would get when she saw, or heard, a train.
So perhaps it is not all that surprising that she could be flippant
about her only child’s death, especially since ten years had passed.
“Yes, Ratna, you study hard and become a big doctor, madam,” she
would chuckle when I kept the lights on all night and paced up and
down the room, reading to myself.
“The last time I saw a doctor, I was thirty years old. Your grandfather
was in the hospital for three months. He would faint every time he saw
his own blood.”
And, as if that summed up the progress made between two
generations, she would pull her blanket over her head and begin snoring
almost immediately.
I have two rooms, the entire downstairs, to myself now since my
great-grandmother died. I begin my course at medical college next month,
and I am afraid to be here alone at night.
I have to live up to the gold medal I won last year. I keep late hours,
reading my anatomy textbooks before the course begins. The body is a
solid, reliable thing. It is a wonderful, resilient machine. I hold on to the
thick, hardbound book and flip through the new smelling pages greedily.
I stop every time I find an illustration and look at it closely. It reduces us
to pink, blue and white colour-coded, labelled parts. Muscles, veins,
tendons. Everything has a name. Everything is linked, one with the other,
all parts of a functioning whole.
It is poor consolation for the nights I have spent in her warm bed,
surrounded by that safe, familiar, musty smell.
 71
She was cheerful and never sick. But she was also undeniably old,
and so it was no great surprise to us when she suddenly took to lying in
bed all day a few weeks before her ninetieth birthday.
She had been lying in bed for close to two months, ignoring concern,
advice, scolding, and then she suddenly gave up. She agreed to see a
doctor.
The young doctor came out of her room, his face puzzled and angry.
My father begged him to sit down and drink a cup of hot coffee.
“She will need all kinds of tests,” he announced. “How long has she
had that lump on her neck? Have you had it checked?”
My father shifted uneasily in his cane chair. He is a cadaverous
looking man, prone to nervousness and sweating. He keeps a big jar of
antacids on his office desk. He has a nine to five accountant’s job in a
government owned company, the kind that never fires its employees.
My father pulled out the small towel he uses in place of a hand-
kerchief. Wiping his forehead, he mumbled, “You know how these old
women are. Impossible to argue with them.”
“The neck,” the doctor said, more gently. I could see he pitied my
father.
“I think it was examined once, long ago. My father was alive then.
There was supposed to have been an operation, I think. But you know
what they thought in those days. An operation meant an unnatural death.
All the relatives came over to scare her, advise her with horror stories.
So she said no. You know how it is. She was already a widow then. My
father was the head of the household. How could I, a fourteen-year old,
take the responsibility?”
“Well,” said the doctor. He shrugged his shoulders. “Let me know
when you want to admit her in my nursing home. But I suppose it’s best
to let her die at home.”
72
When the doctor left, we looked at each other, the three of us, like
shifty accomplices. My mother, practical as always, broke the silence
and said, “Let’s not tell her anything. Why worry her? And then we’ll
have all kinds of difficult old aunts and cousins visiting, it will be such
a nuisance. How will Ratna study in the middle of all that chaos?”
But when I went to our room that night, my great-grandmother had a
sly look on her face. “Come here, Ratna,” she said. “Come here, my
darling little gem.”
I went, my heart quaking at the thought of telling her.
She held my hand and kissed each finger, her half closed eyes almost
flirtatious. “Tell me something, Ratna,” she began in a wheedling voice.
“I don’t know, I don’t know anything about it, “ I said quickly.
“Of course you do.” She was surprised, a little annoyed. “Those
small cakes you got from the Christian shop that day. Do they have eggs
in them?”
“Do they?” she persisted. “Will you,” and her eyes narrowed with
cunning, “will you get one for me?”
So we began a strange partnership, my great-grandmother and I. I
smuggled cakes and ice cream, biscuits and samosas, made by non-
Brahmin hands, into a vegetarian invalid’s room. To the deathbed of a
Brahmin widow who had never eaten anything but pure, home-cooked
food for almost a century.
She would grab it from my hand, late at night after my parents had
gone to sleep. She would hold the pastry in her fingers, turn it round and
round, as if on the verge of an earth- shaking discovery.
“And does it really have an egg in it?”, she would ask again, as if she
needed the password for her to bite into it with her gums.
 73
“Yes, yes,” I would say, a little tired of midnight feasts by then. The
pastries were a cheap yellow colour, topped by white frosting with hard
grey pearls.
“Lots and lots of eggs,” I would say, wanting her to hurry up and put
itin her mouth. “And the bakery is owned by a Christian. I think he hires
Muslim cooks too.”
“Ooooh,” she would moan. Her little pink tongue darted out and
licked the frosting. Her toothless mouth worked its way steadily,
munching, making happy sucking noises.
Our secret was safe for about a week. Then she become bold. She
was bored with the cakes, she said. They gave her heartburn. She became
a little more adventurous every day. Her cravings were various and
unpredictable. Laughable and always urgent.
“I’m thirsty, “ she moaned, when my mother asked her if she wanted
anything. “No, no, I don’t want water, I don’t want juice.” She stopped
the moaning and looked at my mother’s patient, exasperated face. “I’ll
tell you what I want, “she whined. “Get me a glass of that brown drink
Ratna bought in the bottle. The kind that bubbles and makes a popping
sound when you open the bottle. The one with the fizzy noise when you
pour it out.”
“A coca-cola?” said my mother, shocked. “Don’t be silly, it will
make you sick.”
“I don’t care what it is called,” my great-grandmother said and started
moaning again. “I want it.”
So she got it and my mother poured out a small glassful, tight-lipped,
and gave it to her without a word. She was always a dutiful grand-
daughter-in-law.
“Ah,” sighed my great-grandmother, propped up against her pillows,
the steel tumbler lifted high over her lips. The lump on her neck moved
74
in little gurgles as she drank. Then she burped a loud, contented burp
and asked, as if she had just thought of it, “Do you think there is something
in it? You know, alcohol?”
A month later, we had got used to her tasted, unexpected, inappro-
priate demands. She had tasted, by now, lemon tarts, garlic, three types
of aerated drinks, fruit cake laced with brandy, bhel-puri from the fly-
infested bazaar nearby.
“There’s going to be trouble,” my mother kept muttering under her
breath. “She’s losing her mind, she is going to be a lot of trouble.”
And she was right, of course. My great-grandmother could no longer
swallow very well. She would pour the coke into her mouth and half of
it would trickle out of her nostrils, thick, brown, nauseating.
“It burns, it burns,” she would yell then, but she pursed her lips
tightly together when my mother spooned a thin gruel into her mouth.
“No, no,” she screamed deliriously. “Get me something from the bazaar.
Raw onions, Fried bread, Chickens and goats.”
Then we knew she was lost to us. She was dying. She was in the
nursing home for ten whole days. My mother and I took turns sitting by
her, sleeping on the floor by the hospital cot.
She lay there quietly, the pendulous neck almost as big as her face.
But she would not let the nurses near her bed. She would squirm and
wriggles like a big fish that refused to be caught. The sheets smelled,
and the young doctor shook his head. “Not much to be done now,” he
said. “The cancer has left nothing intact.”
The day she died, she kept searching the room with her eyes. Her
arms were held down by the tubes and needles, criss-cross, in, out. The
glucose dripped into her veins but her nose still ran, the clear, thin liquid
trickling down like dribble onto her chin. Her hands clenched and
unclenched with the effort and she whispered, like a miracle, “Ratna.”
 75
My mother and I rushed to her bedside. Tears streaming down her
face, my mother bent her head before her and pleaded, “Give me your
blessings, Pati. Bless me before you go.”
My great-grandmother looked at her for a minute, her lips working
furiously, noiselessly. For the first time in my life I saw a fine veil of
perspiration on her face. The muscles on her face twitched in mad,
frenzied jerks. Then she pulled one arm free of the tubes, in a sudden,
crazy spurt of strength, and the I.V. pole crashed to the floor.
“Bring me a red sari,” she screamed. “A red one with a big wide
border of gold. And, her voice cracked, “bring me peanuts with chilli
powder from the corner shop. Onion and green chilli bondas deep fried
in oil.”
Then the voice gurgled, her face and neck swayed, rocked like a
boat lost in a stormy sea. She retched, and as the vomit flew out of her
mouth, her nose, thick like milkshakes she had drunk, brown like the
alcoholic coke, her head slumped forward, her rounded chin buried in
the cancerous neck.
When we brought the body home – I am not yet a doctor and already
I can call her that—I helped my mother to wipe her clean with a wet,
soft cloth. We wiped away the smells, the smell of the hospital bed, the
smell of an woman’s juices drying. Her skin was dry and papery. The
stubble on her head—she had refused to shave her head once she got
sick—had grown, like the soft, white bristles of a hairbrush.
She had had only one child though she had lived so long. But the
skin on her stomach was like crumpled, frayed velvet, the creases running
to and fro in fine, silvery rivulets.
“Bring her sari,” my mother whispered, as if my great-grandmother
could still hear her.
I looked at the stiff, cold body that I was seeing naked for the first
time. She was asleep at last, quiet at last. I had learnt, in the last month
76
or two, to expect the unexpected from her. I waited, in case she changed
her mind and sat up, remembering one more taboo food to be tasted.
“Bring me your eyebrow tweezers,” I heard her say. “Bring me that
hair-removing cream. I have a moustache and I don’t want to be an ugly
old woman.”
But she lay still, the wads of cotton in her nostrils and ears shutting
us out. Shutting out her belated ardour.
I ran to my cupboard and brought her the brightest, reddest sari I
could find: last year’s Diwali sari, my first silk. I unfolded it, ignoring
my mother’s eyes which were turning aghast. I covered her naked body
lovingly. The red silk glittered like her childish laughter.
“Have you gone mad?” my mother whispered furiously. “She was a
sick old woman, she didn’t know what she was saying.” She rolled up
the sari and flung it aside, as if it had been polluted. She wiped the body
again to free if from foolish, trivial desires.
They burnt her in a pale brown sari, her widow’s weeds. The prayer
beads I had never seen her touch encircled the bulging, obscene neck.
I am still a novice at anatomy. I hover just over the body, I am just
beneath the skin. I have yet to look at the insides, the entrails of memories
she told me nothing about, the pain congealing into a cancer.
She has left me behind with nothing but a smell, a legacy that grows
fainter every day. I haunt the dirtiest bakeries and tea-stalls I can find
every evening. I search for her, my sweet great-grandmother, in plate
after plate of stale confections, in needle sharp green chillies deep-fried
in rancid oil. I plot her revenge for her, I give myself diarrhoea for a
week.
Then I open all the windows and her cupboard and air the rooms. I
tear her dirty grey saris to shreds. I line the shelves of her empty cupboard
with my thick, newly-bought, glossy-jacketed texts, one next to the other.
 77 78

They stand straight and solid, row after row of armed soldiers. They fill
up the small cupboard in minutes.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Examine the relationship between the narrator and her great grand-
mother.
2. How does the dying old woman launch a challenge against traditional
codes regulating the life of a Brahmin widow?
Further Reading:
Choudhuri, Maitrayee.ed Feminisms in India. New Delhi. Kali
for Women, 2004.
Kuorti, Joel. Tense Past, Tense Present: Women
Writing in English. Kolkata: Stree,
2003.
Pandey, Suryanath Pandey. Contemporary Indian Women Writers in
English: A Feminist Perspective. New
Delhi: Atlantic,1999.
 79 80

SECTION - C
ESSAYS
 81
Sudhir Kakar (b. 1938)
Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and writer whose
major focus of study has been the formation and constitution of the Indian
psyche and identity. Holder of a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering
degree and a doctorate in Economics, he began his training in psycho-
analysis at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, Germany in 1971.
He has taught at leading Indian, European and American universities.
He is the recipient of many honours, including the Boyer Prize of the
American Anthro-pological Association and Germany’s Goethe Medal.
He has written seventeen highly acclaimed books of non-fiction which
include, among others, The Inner World (now in its sixteenth printing
since its first publication in 1978), Shamans, Mystics and Doctors,
Intimate Relations, The Analyst and the Mystic, The Colors of Violence
and The Indians: Portrait of a People (with Katrina Kakar). He has also
written five novels. His books have been translated into twenty-one
languages around the world.
The Inner World is widely recognized as an excellent example of
applied psychoanalysis and has been hailed by critics globally as the
best application of psychoanalysis to Indian culture. It is an inquiry into
the construction of the Indian identity. It examines the network of social
roles, traditional values, and customs with which the threads of Indian
psychological development are interwoven and, in doing so, reveals
important aspects of Indian society, myths, rituals, fables, and arts.
The essay Mothers and Infants contained in The Inner World
examines the nature of an individual’s first relationship – that with his
mother- as one which “profoundly influences the quality and ‘dynamics’
of social relations throughout his life. “(Kakar, introduction). The basis
of this vital relationship is, according to Kakar, linked to the perception
of feminine identity in Indian culture. In the selected extract Sita : the
Ego Ideal, Sudhir Kakar provides an insightful analysis of the psycho-
social matrix which creates the Indian feminine identity. He argues that
82
“the role of myths, especially those of religious derivation, in defining
and integrating the traditional elements and the common features of
identity and society in India cannot be over-estimated.” According to
Kakar, in the popular Indian imagination, Sita, the quintessence of wifely
devotion, is the ego-ideal. The ideal of self-effacement, submissiveness
and unpolluted chastity represented by Sita is confirmed through the
legends of Damayanti and Savitri. Kakar argues that these stereotypical
ideals have embedded themselves firmly in the Indian psyche, both male
and female. He also suggests that these ideals have been deliberately
promoted and propagated in order to control possibilities of sexual
relationships outside marriage particularly within the environs of the
Indian joint family. In the context of the great changes which have been
taking place in Indian society in the last two-three decades, it would be
interesting to discuss if and how far, Sita continues to be the ego-ideal
of Indian women of the 21st century.
Sita: The Ego Ideal
An extract from The Inner World
For both men and women in Hindu society, the ideal woman is
personified by Sita, the quintessence of wifely devotion, the heroine of
the epic Ramayana. Her unique standing in the minds of most Hindus,
regardless of region, caste, social class, age, sex, education or moderni-
zation, testifies to the power and pervasiveness of the traditional ideal
of womanhood. Sita, of course, is not just another legendary figure, and
the Ramayana is not just another epic poem. It is through the recitation,
reading, listening to, or attending a dramatic performance of this revered
text (above all others) that a Hindu reasserts his or her cultural identity
as a Hindu, and obtains religious merit. The popular epic contains ideal
models of familial bonds and social relations to which even a modernized
Hindu pays lip service, however much he may privately question or reject
them as irrelevant to the tasks of modern life.
 83
Sita, like the other principal figures in the epic – Rama, Lakshman,
Hanuman – is an incomparably more intimate and familiar heroine in
the Hindu imagination that similar figures from Greek or Christian
mythology are in the fantasies and deliberations of an average westerner.
This intimate familiarity does not mean historical knowledge, but rather
a sense of the mythical figure as a benevolent presence, located in the
individual’s highly personal and always actual space-time. From earliest
childhood, a Hindu has heard Sita’s legend recounted on any number
of sacral and secular occasions; seen the central episodes enacted in
folk plays like the Ram Lila; heard her qualities extolled in devotional
songs; and absorbed the ideal feminine identity she incorporates through
the many everyday metaphors and similes that are associated with her
name. Thus, ‘she is as pure as Sita’ denotes chastity in a woman, and
‘She is a second Sita’, the appreciation of a woman’s uncomplaining
self-sacrifice. If, as Jerome Bruner remarks, ‘In the mythologically
instructed community there is a corpus of images and models that provide
the pattern to which the individual may aspire, a range of metaphoric
identity’, then this range, in the case of a Hindu woman, is condensed in
one model. And she is Sita.
For western readers unacquainted with the myth, the legend of Sita,
in bare outline, goes like this; One day as King Janaka as ploughing, an
infant sprang up from the ground whom he named Sita. The child grows
up to be a beautiful girl whom the king promises to give in marriage to
any man who can bend the wonderful bow in his possession. Many suitors
– gods, princes, kings, demons – vie for Sita’s hand but none is even
able to lift the bow, until Rama, the reincarnation of Vishnu and the hero
of the epic, comes to Janaka’s country and gracefully snaps the bow in
two. After their wedding, Sita and Rama return to Ayodhya, which is
ruled by Rama’s father, Dasharatha.
After some time Dasharatha wants to abdicate in favour of Rama
who is his eldest son. But because of a promise given to the mother of
84
one of his younger sons, he is forced to banish Rama to the forest for
fourteen years. Rama tries to persuade Sita to let him proceed in his
exile alone, pointing out the dangers, discomforts and deprivations of a
homeless life in the forest. In a long, moving passage Sita emphasizes
her determination to share her husband’s fate, declaring that death would
be preferable to separation. Her speech is an eloquent statement of the
dharma of a Hindu wife:
“For a woman, it is not her father, her son, nor her mother, friends
nor her own self, but the husband. Who in this world and the next is ever
her sole means of salvation. If thou dost enter the impenetrable forest
today, O Descendant of Raghu, I shall precede thee on foot, treading
down the spiky Kusha grass. In truth, whether it be in palaces, in chariots
or in heaven, wherever the shadow of the feet of her consort falls, it
must be followed.”
Both Rama and Sita, mourned by the citizens of Ayodhya who adore
their prince and future king, proceed to the forest in the company of
Rama’s brother Lakshman. The Ramayana then recounts Sita’s
kidnapping by the powerful king of the demons, Ravana, and her
abduction to Lanka, Ravana’s kingdom, Sita is kept imprisoned in one
of the demon-king’s palaces where he tries to win her love. Neither his
seductive kindness nor his grisly threats are of any avail as Sita remains
steadfast in her love and devotion to Rama.
Meanwhile, Rama raises an army from the Vanar (monkey) tribes in
order to attack Lanka and bring back Sita. After a long and furious battle,
he is victorious and Ravana is killed. Doubting Sita’s fidelity through
the long term of her captivity, Rama refuses, however, to accept her
again as his wife until she proves her innocence and purity by the fire
ordeal in which the fire-god Agni himself appears to testify to her virtue.
The couple then return to Ayodhya where amidst the citizen’s happy
celebrations, Rama is crowned king.
 85
But Sita’s ordeal is not yet over. Hearing of rumours in the city
which cast suspicion on the purity of his queen, Rama banishes her to
the forest where she gives birth to twins, Lava and Kusha. She and her
children live an ascetic life in a rustic hermitage, Sita’s love for Rama
unfaltering. When the twins grow up, she sends them back to their father.
On seeing his sons, Rama repents and Sita is brought back to Ayodhya
to be reinstated as queen. On her arrival, however, Rama again commands
her to assert her purity before the assembled court. His abiding mistrust
and this further demand prove too much for the gentle queen who calls
on her mother, the earth, to open up and receive her back. The earth
obliges and Sita disappears where she was born.
How are we to interpret the legend of Sita? Philip Slater has pointed
out that a myth is an elaborately condensed product, that there is no one
‘correct’ version or interpretation, for no matter how many layers one
peels off, there will remain much to be explained. In the interpretation
that follows, I will set aside such elements as social history, religious
ritual and artistic embellishment, although I am well aware of their
importance to myth-making. Rather, my aim is to attend to the themes in
the Sita legend from a psychoanalytic and psyco-social perspective. In
this kind of interpretation, we must ask questions such as: how does the
myth influence the crystallization of a Hindu woman’s identity and
character? What role does it play in helping to ward off or assuage
feelings of guilt and anxiety? How does it influence her attitude towards
and images of men? How does it contribute to the individual woman’s
task of ‘adapting to reality’ and to the society’s task of maintaining
community solidarity? And finally do the different mythological versions
of a single underlying theme correspond to different ‘defensive editions’
of unconscious fantasy at different life stages of those to whom the myths
speak?
The ideal of womanhood incorporated by Sita is one of chastity,
purity, gentle tenderness and a singular faithfulness which cannot be
86
destroyed or even disturbed by her husband’s rejections, slights or
thoughtlessness. We should note in passing that the Sita legend also
gives a glimpse into the Hindu imagery of manliness. Rama may have
all the traits of a godlike hero, yet he is also fragile, mistrustful and
jealous, and very much of a conformist, both to his parents’ wishes and
to social opinion. These expectations , too, an Indian girl incorporates
gradually into her inner world.
The legend of Nala and Damayanti provides a variation on the ideal
of the good wife; Damayanti cheerfully accompanies Nala, her husband,
into the forest after he has gambled away everything they own, including
his clothes. And when he leaves her sleeping in the forest at night, taking
away half of the only garment she possesses to clothe his own nakedness,
Damayanthi does not utter a single word of reproach as she wanders
through the forest, looking for her husband. The ‘moral’ is the familiar
one: Whether treated well or ill a wife should never indulge in ire.
In another popular myth, Savitri, in spite of the knowledge that her
chosen husband is fated to die within a year, insists on marrying him and
renouncing the luxuries of her palace to join him in his poverty. When at
the end of the year, Yama, the god of death, takes away her husband,
Savitri follows them both. Although Yama assures her that she has loved
her husband faithfully, that she need not sacrifice her own life but should
return, Savitri replies that wherever her husband goes she must follow
for that is the eternal custom: ‘Deprived of my husband, I am as one
dead!’
In the Savitri imyth, the ideal of fidelity to one man takes on an
added dimension and categorical refinement: Exclusive devotion to one’s
husband becomes the prerequisite for the all-important motherhood of
sons. Thus, as Savitri follows Yama to his country, the land in which all
wishes come true, she refuses to accept his assurance that with her
husband’s death, all her wifely obligations have expired. Only through
her demonstration of wifely devotion, even after her husband’s death,
 87
can she finally persuade Yama to revive him and grant her the boon of
offspring: ‘Of Satyavan’s loins and mine, begotten by both of us, let
there be a century of sons possessed of strength and prowess and capable
of perpetuating our race.’
To be a good wife is, by definition, to be a good woman. Thus
Markandeya discourses to Yudhishtra of ‘wives restraining all their senses
and keeping their hearts under complete control. [They] regard their
husbands as veritable gods. For women, neither sacrifice, nor sraddhas
(penances), nor fasts are of any efficiency. By serving their husbands
only can they win heaven. This is the ideal, purveyed over and over
again, in numberless myths and legends, through which the Hindu
community has tried to mould the character and personality of its female
members. Moreover, a woman is enjoined that her devotion to her
husband should extend also to his family members, especially to his
parents. A married woman’s duties have been nowhere more fully
described than in Draupadi’s advice to Satyabhama, Lord Krishna’s wife:
“Keeping aside vanity, and controlling desire and wrath, I always serve
with devotion the sons of Pandu with their wives. Restraining jealousy,
with deep devotion of heart, without a sense of degradation at the services
I perform, I wait upon my husbands . . . Celestial, or man, or Gandharva,
young or decked with ornaments, wealthy or comely of person, none
else my heart liketh. I never bathe or eat or sleep till he that is my husband
hath bathed or eaten or slept. . When my husband leaveth home for the
sake of any relative, then renouncing flowers and fragrant paste of every
kind, I begin to undergo penances. Whatever my husband enjoyeth not,
I even renounce. . . Those duties that my mother-in-law had told me in
respect of relatives, as also the duties of alms-giving, of offering worship
to the gods. . . and service to those that deserve our regards, and all else
that is known to me, I always discharge day and night, without idleness
of any kind.”
I have quoted from the ancient text in detail in order to emphasize
the formidable consensus on the ideal of womanhood which, in spite of
88
many changes in individual circumstances in the course of modernization,
urbanization and education, still governs the inner imagery of individual
men and women as well as the social relations between them in both the
traditional and modern sectors of the Indian community.
Together with this function as a more or less conscious ideal which
leaves indelible traces in the identity formation of every Hindu woman,
the Sita myth also plays an unconscious role as a defence against the
anxiety aroused by a young girl’s sexual impulses, whose expression
would almost seem to be invited by the nature of family life in traditional
India. Freud has clarified for us the universal themes of infantile psycho-
sexual developments in terms of the vicissitudes of the libido. He left it
primarily to others to differentiate among the social influences and
cultural variations. Thus, sexual development in Hindu daughters is
socially influenced by the communal living pattern, the close quarters
of the extended family and the indulgent adult attitudes towards infant
sexuality. In this intimate daily setting where constant close contact with
many members of the family of both sexes and several generations is
part of a little girl’s early bodily experience; where the infant girl is
frequently caressed and fondled by the many adults around her; and
where playful exploratory activities of an explicitly sexual nature among
the many cousins living in the same house or nearby in the neighbourhood
are a common early development experience, often indulgently tolerated
by the more or less ‘permissive’ adults—a promiscuous sexual excitation,
as well as the fear of being overwhelmed by it, looms large in the
unconscious fantasies of an Indian girl. Later, as she leaves childhood
behind, the identification with Sita helps in the necessary renunciation
of these childhood fantasies, in the concentration of erotic feeling on
one man, and in the avoidance of all occasions for sexual temptation
and transgression. Sita sets the compelling example: Although Rama’s
emissary, the monkey-god Hanuman, offers to rescue Sita from her ordeal
of imprisonment in Lanka by carrying her on his shoulders and
transporting her through the air to her waiting husband, she must refuse
 89 90

the offer since it means touching Hanuman’s body, and of her own free her husband’s family, and the meaning of childbirth in her particular
will she may, on no account, permit herself to touch any man except her personal and social setting: these factors too are paramount; taken
husband. This enigmatic tension between the memory of intense and together, they are the ‘psycho-social matrix of infancy’ in India.
pleasurable childhood sexuality and the later womanly ideal which
Questions for Discussion :
demands restraint and renunciation, between an earlier indiscriminate
‘availability’ and the later unapproachability, may account for that special 1. Examine Sudhir Kakar’s views on the impact of the Sita ideal on the
erotic presence in Indian women which has fascinated the imagination construction of feminine identity in India.
of many writers and artists. 2. How, according to Sudhir Kakar, have the myths of Sita and other
On still another level, the identification with Sits contributes to the mythological women shaped the psycho-social identity of the Indian
Hindu woman’s adaptation to married life in her husband’s extended woman?
family and to the maintenance of this family as a functioning unit. Such Further Reading:
a family, composed as it is of other men besides her husband, affords the
Kakar, Sudhir The Inner World : A Psycho-Analytic study
Hindu wife temptations and opportunities for sexual transgression, the
of Childhood and Society in India . New
indulgence of which would destroy the necessary interdependence and
Delhi : Oxford University Press,1978.
co-operation of the Indian family. At some level of consciousness, every
Hindu couple is aware, for instance, Sita‘s exemplary behaviour towards Kakar, Sudhir and The Indians : Portrait of a People. New
Rama’s brother Lakshman during the fourteen years of their exile together Katrina Kakar. Delhi : Viking,2007.
there exist, of course, elaborate codes and rituals of social behaviour
and discretion between the male and female members of an extended
family, such as the injunction that the elder brother never directly address
his younger brother’s wife (nor enter her room when she is alone). Like
most taboos, these are broken in fantasy. In a Bengali folk song, for
example, a woman expresses her desire for amorous relations with the
elder brother of her husband, regretting that he is not the younger brother
so that her desire might be gratified. These taboos are designed to preclude
intolerable jealous passions and disruptive rivalries; the reigning presence
of Sita in the Indian inner world, in all her serene forbearance, is an
important psychological reinforcement of these special codes.
The short description of daughterhood and the elaboration of the
Sita ideal of womanhood cannot fully account for an Indian woman’s
emotional preparation for motherhood. Her chronological and develop-
mental stage of life at marriage, her experiences and relationships with
 91
Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan is one of the important voices that have
contributed to the critical discourses on the relationship between gender,
post colonialism and culture in the backdrop of the rising wave of
nationalism in post-Independent India. Her critical interventions,
especially Real and Imagined Women (1993) and Scandal of the State
(2003) have been instrumental in reconstructing the terrain of postcolonial
feminist studies.
Educated in Bombay and Washington D C, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
taught for several years in India before going to U K, where till recently
she held the chair of Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College and Reader
in the English department at Oxford University. She has also been a
Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at the Centre
for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi. She was also the Shanshi
Visiting Professor at Oberlin College, Ohio, USA.
The essay The Language Debate is an extract from Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan’s longer essay, “Fixing English: Nation, Language, Subject” which
forms the background for all other essays included in the book The Lie
of the Land: English Literary Studies in India, a book she edited in 1992.
Books like The Lie of the Land and Gauri Vishwanathan’s Masks of
Conquest were extremely influential in opening up the field of post-
Independence English Studies in India to renewed examination in an
attempt to re-present literary studies in the country.
The extract begins with Sunder Rajan advancing the argument that
English language does not occupy the same position in all countries that
were formerly Britain’s colonies and insists that any examination of its
position in India must be located in the larger socio- cultural dynamics.
She argues that the primacy accorded to English in India is more due to
the operation of ideological, regional and class related politics than the
usually tendered explanation that it is a means by which the country can
92
keep itself globally connected in matters of technology and international
commerce. Thus the extract suggests that English in India is ‘not simply
[a] language, but the locus of a set of values’ and must be seen in the
context of an “essentially conflictual social dynamics”. The extract also
attempts to show how English and Hindi have acquired hegemonic
proportions in the spheres of education and culture accentuated by
popular culture. The inevitable consequence of mix of the hegemonies
of the two languages and popular culture is the generation of a hybrid
linguistic product generally termed ‘Hinglish’ or ‘Hindlish’.
The Language Debate
The position of English in different third world countries, or even
among Britain’s former colonies, is not identical. In India, English is
only a second language in most states, after Hindi or the regional
languages; but it also shares the status of the official national language
with Hindi, and hence is the language of state, administration and the
law courts. The chief importance of English in India - as in other non-
English-speaking nations - is its global currency; as the language of
technology and inter-national commerce it serves as an important
communication link. While its widespread use, prestige, and even
expansion in India in recent decades are rationalized by this development
- which is more properly attributable to the post-war hegemony of the
United States than to the British empire - the preserve of English in
India is guarded by interests predominantly defined by ideology, region
and class.
Therefore ‘English’ – not simply the language, but the locus of a set
of values loosely termed ‘westernization’ - must be viewed within an
essentially conflictual social dynamics. I identify the chief parties to the
conflict in three areas: the first is between the opposed advocates of a
national language; the second is between linguistic regions; and the third
is between the privileged classes.
 93
For advocates of Hindi, the use of English is anti-national because it
displaces the ‘rastrabhasha’, Hindi. The colonial origins and the un-
deniable foreignness of English obviously validate this argument. But
English is precisely claimed by its advocates as the pan-Indian, the link,
the national language, the logic being that it is not the first language of
any specific Indian region, 1 as well that it is the language of
administration: the ‘nation’, as Aijaz Ahmad points out, is in this
argument, ‘co-terminal with the state itself.’2
More crucially, English figures in the conflict between linguistic
regions as the ‘lesser evil’. While Hindi is the language of roughly half
the Indian population, the other half speaks a multitude of languages
unrelated to it.3 Therefore the continuation of English in these states
ensures that there will be no imposition of Hindi. ‘If English, which
protects us like a shield, is banished, the Hindi sword will cut us to
pieces’, warned M. Karunanidhi, chief minister of Tamilnadu4. Major
language riots took place in Tamilnadu in 1965, exiling the Congress
party from power in the state and bringing in the DMK and AIADMK
parties on anti-Hindi planks. The much-touted three-language formula
was evolved soon afterwards as a solution to the language problem in
the school education, but it was never implemented with any vigour.
With this curious function – of imposing an equality of handicap on
learners from all regions – English finds perhaps its most powerful raison
d’être in India.
Finally, and in a sense subserving these opposed interests, is the fact
that English is the asset enjoyed by the English-speaking upper classes;
the lack of it is a handicap suffered by the rest, traditionally known as
the masses. It has thus constituted the most visible divide between the
ruling classes and the ruled. In an acute and penetrating essay, D.L. Sheth
argues that the recent anti-English crusade in the Hindi belt must be
located in the context of the more recent changes in social structures:
the debate reflects a conflict over power in society between two
elite groups: the nationally entrenched English-educated elite and the
94
new but ascendant elite sans the trappings of an English education. The
former have successfully managed to continue and tighten their hold on
the levers of power at the national level since independence. They control
the higher echelons of politics, bureaucracy, armed forces, corporate
business and the professions.
The members of the latter group have, as a result of democratic
politics, risen at the regional level and come to exercise power in the
states for the last three decades. They are now attempting to create for
themselves spaces in the power structure at the national level. (They are
known by various names: regional elite, rural elite, mofussils or simply
kulaks.) The differences between the two are indexed in terms of their
urban-rural and caste backgrounds. While there is some overlap between
them in economic terms, the sharp differences between them in socio-
cultural terms are marked by the language divide. In the life-world of
the former, English occupies a central role; for the latter its role is at
best marginal…the regional elite … because of the numbers they
represent … are seeking to change not only the terms of discourse on the
language issue in their favour but are generally proceeding to challenge
the role the English-educated elite have been playing since independence,
both as norm-setters and pace-setters of India’s public life5
Given that English is the site of these several and overlapping
conflicts between ideologies, linguistic regions and classes, it is necessary
to be clear about the material consequences of the choice of national
language. Language in society can be hegemonic in two spheres: culture
and education. Though the distinction between them is not an absolute
one, in India we may usefully, if broadly, distinguish between the spread
of Hindi in the cultural arena, and the influence of English in education.
In spite of its central importance, English in India is less widely
perceived as a cultural and linguistic threat to indigenous literatures and
languages than it has been, for instance, in Africa, where its colonial
imposition displaced or marginalized entire cultures. The languages and
literatures of India, many of them older and better developed than English,
 95
did not altogether languish in the shadow of a hegemonic English; and
the phenomenon of bilingualism (and even trilingualism) has divided
up the spheres of actual language use in such a way that English and
Indian languages co-exist in a fairly natural way within social discourse6
.In post-Independence India the reorganization of states on a linguistic
basis, the vigorous development of print media in the regional languages,
and the rise of new socio-cultural groups that have been educated through
the medium of a regional language are all factors that have contributed
to the influence of Indian languages.7
All this is not deny the profound and pervasive influence of English
literature on colonial and post-Independence Indian literatures and
criticism. This history, and features of this influence, are matters too
vast to be gone into here.8 Periodic crises of conscience occur among
writers seeking to write ‘as Indians’; but, as U.R. Anantha Murthy has
pointed out, no simple option to re-write history exists for Indian artists.
Even when the contemporary writer seeks to write for ‘the masses’, he
is confronted with the issue of literacy before that of language. The
small reading public that exists is one ‘whose sensibility [has been]
formed by a study of English literature’ - and it is within ‘the defined
frameworks of the cultural and literary expectations’ of this group that
the writer is obliged to create - unless he can resurrect an oral tradition.9
Therefore the forms of fiction, the metrics of poetry, the conventions of
theatre - the very sensibility and politics of Indian literature - are often
derivative, even when the language is Indian.
Beyond the influence of the high cultural product – literature – there
is also the widespread use of English in journalism – a fifth of all
newspapers are English language dailies; and in academic publications
– a third of all Indian publishing is in English. Entertainment productions
from the west – the best-selling paperback, the video film – Western
music, Hollywood cinema, the western theatre, the local imitations of
all these – are also popular and influential, the reach and speed of their
96
transmission being enormously increased by the advances in
telecommunication and print technology.
But it is the more striking popularity of Hindi cinema and television
programmes that is responsible for the significant development, in recent
years, of something like a pan-Indian culture, dubious and contested
though it may be. These ‘ground level forces’, as Sheth terms them, are
likely to eventually assure Hindi a cultural hegemony, with the conse-
quence of a reduction in the importance of English as a cultural resource.
Regional cultures, even as they seem to resist the imposition of national
TV in Hindi and the hegemony of commercial Hindi cinema, nevertheless
inevitably succumb to their influence.
The combined and contested hegemonies of English and Hindi in
the arena of culture have resulted in a form of hybridization that the
popular columnist Jug Suraiya has lampooned as an aspect of Indian
‘post-modernism’:
In post-modern India, there is a resurgence of nationalism… It is a
nationalism of ethnic chic …. a neo-indigenous identity based on mirror-
image mimesis, containing element of self-consciousness, if not self-
parody . . . This mirage of a mirage is a refraction largely caused by the
electronic distortion generated by television, the intangible, all-pervasive
rainbow bridge between post-modern India and unregenerate Bharat.
The contemporary battle of Kurukshetra is being waged in the
televisionary ether, whizzing with the missiles that are the message of
conspicuous commercialism.
In the new mythology, the Janus face of India has found an appropriate
double-speak in ‘Hinglish’ or ‘Hindlish’ . . . . This pseudo-demotic idiom,
claimed by its advocates to be a linguistic triumph of post-colonial India,
gives voice to our national split personality . . . So-called ‘Hindlish’
lacks both reach and resonance, except within its own solipsistic context.10
This hybrid linguistic product may be defended of course, both as
the historically inevitable indigenization of a foreign language (in line
 97
with the assimilation of Sanskrit and Persian in India’s earlier history),
as well as a creative enrichment of both the Indian and English
languages.11
This postmodern hybrid culture is, as Suraiya stresses, the product
of the new middle classes and, specifically, of their consumerism. The
phenomenon of a vastly expanded middle class, formed by the entry of
new upwardly mobile social groups into the traditional ruling elites, has
resulted in a change in the cultural outlook of this class. They are
perceived to be ‘more in tune with the global metropolitan world’, out
of touch with regional cultures, and incapable of the kind of bilingualism
that earlier educated elites (Gandhi, Tagore, Tilak) possessed. In short
‘they lack the cultural basis to their political power.12
But it is primarily because English is the chief, even sole, language
of official administration in the country that knowledge of it is crucial
for white-collar job-seekers. It therefore remains a major component
of Indian higher education. This demand and supply situation is hard to
destabilize through political intervention alone. Though state
governments have on occasion removed the English requirement in
their schools and colleges as a populist measure, the proliferation of
bazaar institutes, private English medium (‘convent’) schools, and – in
extreme instances, as in Nepal – even the emigration of students to areas
offering English education, are indications of the pursuit of English by
aspiring white-collar job-seekers. What exacerbates the elitism of English
speakers is the prevalence of what Sheth has termed the ‘dual system’ of
education: the existence of (a small number of) expensive public schools
where English is the medium of instruction from the lowest classes,
along with (a preponderance of) regional-language schools, for the most
part run by governments or municipalities, where English is taught –
badly – as a subject for a few years.13 The continuing availability of ,
and recourse to, English has also prevented the sustained and systematic
development of Indian languages for technical and higher education
purposes, and even of viable translation schemes.
98
All this has implications for how English is taught. Clearly it must
be taught ‘better’. Since the demand for functional, specific, goal-directed
language pedagogy is reflected only in a few school and university syllabi
– in most cases it is the ‘classic’ texts, including Shakespeare, that are
used for imparting language skills – there is a trend towards such teaching
moving out of the academic arena of schools and colleges. The
mushrooming of bazaar institutes offering crash courses in spoken
English and for a variety of other ‘real life’ communication purposes –
interviews, exams, business correspondence – is an indication of the
marketplace response to this need.
The radical move would be the universal adoption of an Indian
language as the medium of instruction in all schools, with English taught
uniformly as a second language, or as a subject.14 English literary studies
would then lose some of their rationale as language courses.15 They might
then move – if they do not wish to continue as the cloned version of Eng.
Lit. in the Anglo-American academy – more meaningfully into the area
of cultural studies.
Any consideration of the teaching of English, however, cannot
confine itself only to the conflictual language situation in the country; it
must also take into account the scene of education – which partakes of
the conflict but extends beyond its dimensions.
Questions for Discussion:
1. How, according to the author, have Hindi cinema and television
impacted the emergence of a “pan- Indian culture”?
2. Examine Rajeshwari Sundar Rajan’s observations on the
considerations that determine the practice of English teaching in
India.
 99 100

1
English is the state language of four language in the north-east, Further Reading :
Manipur, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and of all the union territories except
Delhi. But it cannot be called the ‘native’ language of any of these regions Chandra, Sudhir. The Oppressive Present: Literature
2
Aijaz Ahmed, “Third World Literature” and the Nationalist Ideology, and Social Consciousness in Colonial
Journal of Arts & Ideas , June 1989. India. New Delhi : OUP, 1992.
3
The claim that Hindi is the ‘majority’ language has been questioned by
Sundar Rajan, Rajeshwari. Lie of the Land. New Delhi: OUP,1992.
C Rajagopalchari, among others. According to linguistic census of 1961,
only 23 percent of the population knew Hindi well. Hindi is spoken in Tharu,Susie (ed). Subject to Change: Teaching
only fifteen states, and even in many of these, there are several dialects
unrelated to Hindi. Literature in the Nineties. New Delhi:
4 Orient Longman,1998.
Quoted by V Jayantha, ‘A Ploy to thrust Hindi’, The Hindu, 26 August
1990. Vishwanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and
5
D L Sheth, ‘No English Please, We’re Indian’, The Illustrated Weekly of British Rule in India. Faber and Faber,
India, 19 August 1990.
1989.
6
Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Novel in a Multilingual Society’, unpublished paper.
7
Sheth.
8
For an account of the influence of western ‘realism’ on Indian fiction, see
Meenakshi Mukherjee, Realism and Reality’ (OUP, 1985) and Harish
Trivedi, ‘Reading English, Writing Hindi: Indian Writers and English
Literature’.
9
U R Anantha Murthy, ‘The Search for an Identity: A Kannada Writer’s
Viewpoint’ in Dialogue: New Cultural Identities, ed. Amirthanayagam
(Macmillan, 1982).
10
Jug Suraiya, ‘The chips are down for post-modern Hindi’, The Times of
India, 19 June 1990.
11
See Braj Kachru, ‘Indian English’, Seminar 359 July 1989 (Special Issue
on Literature and Society). For a disquisition on the ‘amazing mix, the
English we speak’, see the opening pages of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s
‘English, August : An Indian Story’ (Rupa, 1989).
12
Sheth
13
Sheth
14
Various educational committees, from the nineteenth century onwards,
have been recommending this step, without success.
15
Yasmeen Lukmani concludes, on the basis of a study conducted, that English
literature is studied primarily as a means of acquiring language proficiency.
 101 102

SECTION - D
DRAMA
Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man
 103
Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like A Man
A Note
Chronologically speaking, the birth of Indian English drama with
the publication in 1933 of K.N. Banerjee’s The Persecuted is contempo-
raneous with the birth of Indian English poetry in 1827 with the
publication of Henry Derozio’s first book of verse Poems. It also preceded
the birth of Indian English fiction with Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s
Rajmohan’s Wife being published in 1864. In spite of this, and in marked
contrast to the invigorating growth and experimentation of drama in the
Indian languages, Indian English drama never displayed the verve and
life of the other literary forms. The foremost reason could be the lack of
a living theatre. It is a well-known fact that the real success of a play can
be tasted only on stage. A playwright needs a living theatre to put his
work to acid test, evaluate its total effect on the audience and thereby
get a chance to improve upon his performance. The absence of such an
audience could be a major deterrent in pursuing the writing and
production of drama in a systematic and comprehensive way. The last
two decades have brought significant change in this aspect as an
increasing larger group of urban English-educated theatre lovers are
coming forward to support a drama which deals with issues both
contemporary and universal in an idiom which is close to the English of
current usage. In recent years, two playwrights- Girish Karnad and
Mahesh Dattani - have helped to finally give Indian English drama an
identity and a status as not only a literary form but also one which
succeeds in performance and has the capacity to draw and engage an
involved audience.
Mahesh Dattani, director, actor, playwright, screenplay writer, dancer,
all rolled into one and hailed as one of the “most serious contemporary
playwrights” (Alyque Padamsee), was born in Bangalore on August 7th
1958. He was educated at Baldwin’s High School and later graduated
from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore in History, Economics and Political
104
Science, going on to obtain an MBA (in Marketing and Advertising
Management) degree. While still a college student in the early 1980s,
Dattani joined Bangalore Little Theatre (popularly called BLT), a well-
known theatre group, and participated in workshops, acting and directing
plays. He also underwent training in western ballet as well in Bharata
Natyam.
In 1984, he founded Playpen, his own theatre company, and began
to look for Indian plays in English, not the usual Western canonical texts
that were generally performed. This experience brought him face to face
with an issue that confronts all Indian writers in English: the validity of
using English for creative purposes in India. Dattani speaks of his choice
of English as his medium as one that is home grown and Indian – a
‘hybrid language’ that is spoken normally and unobtrusively, in an
uninhibited way, as a matter of course by his characters who are
essentially Indian. His first play Where There’s a Will was first performed
in 1988 in the Deccan Herald Theatre festival. The play immediately
attracted tremendous critical attention and the playwright Mahesh Dattani
came into being.
He has been writing regularly for the stage from then on. In 1993, he
took to scriptwriting for cinema, television and radio as well. All his
plays are first tried out with Playpen, where he puts the concluding
touches on his dialogue in rehearsal, using the input from his actors. His
plays are staged, published, and translated in India and abroad. Dattani
has also been working with films since 1993, having written screenplays
for films like Ek Alag Mausam for which he was also the creative
consultant. As a stage director turned filmmaker he has to a great extent,
succeeded in translating his vision and shown dexterity in handling
dramatic action, personal moments and emotional insight into cinematic
technique.
The range of his themes, his mandatory split level stage, and his own
internalization of his craft by way of the fact that stage worthiness is never
 105
compromised upon, have all contributed to the continued growth and
renewal of his art both in terms of form and content, His plays boldly
engage with controversial issues such as sexuality and gender, communal
disharmony, and the workings of personal and moral choices as they
explore the complex dynamics that underpin human relationships in
contemporary India. From Where There’s a Will, to the matrix of gender
roles in Dance Like a Man and Tara, to Bravely Fought the Queen that
explores the shams of the upper middle class joint family, to Final Solutions,
a gripping and sensitive play about the Hindu-Muslim conflict, to Do the
Needful, originally a radio play that comically talks about alternate sexual
choices as do On a Muggy Night in Mumbai and Seven Steps Around the
Fire, to Thirty Days in September which addresses the issues of incest and
child abuse, Dattani has never been found wanting in highlighting the
gaps in the Indian socio-cultural fabric and taking courageous stands that
have not always been politically correct. He explains, “Thematically, I
talk about the areas where the individual feels excluded. My plays are
about such people who are striving to expand ‘this space’ ”...
At fifty plus, Mahesh Dattani is at the peak of his creative powers,
continuously experimenting with new forms and manners of expression,
resisting the commercial temptations to be stereotypical. The varied
content of his plays seldom have his characters mouthing quotable lines,
nor does his thematic material rise to extraordinary heights. But what
makes Mahesh Dattani one of India’s finest playwrights is perhaps his
manner of speaking to the audience with complete honesty.
Dattani has the distinction of being the first Indian dramatist in
English to have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1998 for
Final Solutions and Other Plays.
Dance Like a Man
Dance Like a Man, one of Dattani’s most popular plays, was first
performed at Bangalore in 1989 as a part of the Deccan Herald Theatre
Festival and was subsequently in Mumbai in 1990. The play deals with
106
one of Dattani’s important concerns – gender – through one of his
principal passions, dance. The automatic assumption, when one refers
to gender as a principal concern, is that the exploration would be of
women’s issues. Says Dattani of this play: “I wrote the play when I was
learning Bharatanatyam in my mid-twenties. […] a play about a young
man wanting to be a dancer, growing up in a world that believes dance is
for women…” (Ayyar, 2004). Characteristically, Dattani raises a few
unlikely questions about the sexual construct that a man is. The
stereotypes of gender roles are pitted against the idea of the artist in
search of creativity within the restrictive constriction of the world that
he is forced to inhabit. Jairaj with his obsession for dance is all set to
demolish these stereotypes. This is the twist that the playwright gives to
the stereotypes associated with ‘gender’ issues that view solely women
at the receiving end of the oppressive power structures of patriarchal
society. The play dispels this notion and explores the nature of the tyranny
that even men might be subject to within such structures.
The basic question that is placed before the audience is: can a man
take to dance as a profession? And it is linked with another question—
that is, should a man allow his wife to practice her dance at the cost of
the family life? Jairaj allows his wife Ratna to pursue her carrer in dance
much against his father Amritlal’s wishes. Ratna too encourages her
daughter Lata to dance. Lata informs Vishwas about her grandfather
who built that grand house and blamed his son Jairaj for being a dancer.
But in spite of their differences, Jairaj has always respected his father.
Jairaj has a deep attachment to that house built by his father and would
not sell it under any circumstances. Lata makes this clear to Vishwas
who suggests that the house should be sold, for it would fetch a large
amount. Lata replies ‘Are you crazy?’ They have spent all their dancing
lives here.”
As the play proceeds, Ratna gets worried about her daughter’s dance
performance scheduled to be held that evening. Since it is about her
 107
making a career as a dancer, Ratna is understandably cautious and tense.
She tells her husband with excitement that “Our daughter is giving a
performance that will make her career and she is not going to have
mridangam playing for her. How do you expect her to give her best?
How do you expect her to dance? What will be announced to the President
of India if he comes? There will be no dance tonight? Tell all those
foreign diplomats to go home?”
Frustrated with the failure to get a mridangam player for Lata, Ratna
recalls her father-in-law’s attitude to dance and cites it before her husband.
In a flashback, Jairaj recalls the incident of how his father stopped him
from rehearsing in the house. Ratna in her tirade blames her husband for
not leaving the house. “You stopped being a man for me the day you
came back to this house…”, she tells him and holds him responsible for
not winning recognition in life. However, her daughter pacifies her. On
being challenged by his son Hairaj about the dignity of dance, Amritlal
retorts that he has no objection to his son reviving the art but objects to
the people he associates with.
The conversation between the couple reveals that they were good
friends before marriage. The play encapsulates their present tension and
past struggle as well as their present efforts and past discontentment.
The underlying marital discord and domestic conflict is unveiled and
forms the substance of the play.
They have gathered to talk about Lata’s marriage to Vishwas, but
the mrindangist’s absence at Lata’s high profile dance show becomes
the bone of contention between Jairaj and Ratna. The acrimonious
argument that Vishwas witnesses disappoints him and he wishes to leave.
But Jairaj insists he stay to discuss the marriage of their daughter. Vishwas
expresses his desire to allow Lata to continue her dance after marriage
and brings a short reprieve in the play.
Jairaj and Ratna live within a structure where even men are subject
to such ‘gender’ issue: the domain of the patriarch Amritlal. His antipathy
to a great many things that concern the activities of his son and daughter-
108
in-law draws the boundary lines for their behavior within his sphere of
influence. Dance for him is a prostitute’s profession, improper for his
daughter-in-law, and absolutely unimaginable for his son. He forbids
Ratna from visiting the old devadasi who teaches her the intricacies of
Bharatanatyam; he cannot tolerate the sounds of the dancing bells that
ring through their practice sessions; is aghast at the long-haired guru
with an effeminate walk and cannot, most of all, stomach the idea of his
son – a man- becoming a professional dancer. The underlying fear is
obviously that dance would make him ‘womanly’ an effeminate man –
the suggestion of homosexuality hovers near, although never explicitly
mentioned. And hence Amritlal must oppose, vehemently, Jairaj’s passion
for dance. He makes a pact with Ratna. He will consent to her career in
dance only if she helps him pull Jairaj out of his obsession and make
him a ‘manly’ man offering his wealth in return.
Through the seamless movement in time and space, Dattani weaves
in the intricate web of gender relationships and the givens of societal
norm spanning three generations: The minimal use of characters
maximizes the staged impact of the stereotypes through time. As the
characters don the roles of past and present characters much like the
stream of consciousness technique, the resonating sense of time and
change illuminate and give newer meanings to the issues that Dattani
raises. Amritlal, the frustrated patriarch changes into the equally
frustrated and alcoholic Jairaj who interviews Vishwas, the prospective
groom for his daughter. Meanwhile, Vishwas, the son of a rich mithai-
walla, an alien to the world of dance, transforms into the young Jairaj
who is consumed by his love for the art form. Lata, the most pragmatic
and level-headed of the characters also plays the insecure, calculating
and scheming young Ratna who has to survive despite the few choices
that are offered to her. She will be haunted as the older Ratna by the
ghosts of the past that nonetheless do not daunt her determination to
realize her own unfulfilled ambitions through Lata, her daughter.
Amritlal,s house too moves through time, changes character along with
its owner. The old cupboard, the shawl, the rose garden and the rest of
the stage set all leave their impact in the juxtaposition of the stereotypes.
 109
Slowly we realize that at the receiving end of the politics of gender
is not Ratna so much as Jairaj : kept on a leash by his father, eclipsed by
his wife, a failure as a dancer, and an alcoholic. His father and wife have
colluded to achieve their own selfish ends, to perpetuate the old
stereotypes and reinforce their own sense of security at his expense. The
tragedy for Jairaj is that he has chosen to pursue a career that is considered
‘right’ only for women. That is why Amritlal is willing to have Ratna as
the dancer and not Jairaj. Amidst these resonances is played out the
angst of Jairaj and Ratna who are obviously holding back a deep dark
secret, which heightens the play’s suspense.
Dattani refuses to assign the blame or the status of the ‘wronged’
party to anyone: Ratna is not, as many would suggest, the negative
presence in the play. Jairaj, being present in the house when the double
dose of opium is inadvertently administered to the baby, is equally
culpable and shares the blame. However, it is this death that binds the
two together in shared tragedy. The last lines reverbate even long after
the play has ended – “We were only human. We lacked the grace. We
lacked the brilliance. We lacked the magic to dance like God”.
Exploring and juxtaposing the contemporaneous and the early history
of India in personal terms, the play probes into three generations of
conflict in the backdrop of classical dance. Dattani achieves this feat
and goes further to work out a critique of the social mores and attitudes
within which his characters evolve and situate themselves. In the
materialistic society of contemporary India, Dattani in his typical style,
raises important questions on the very constituents of a man’s identity-
in terms of sexuality, as the head of the family and as an artist. The play
reflects on the self and the significance of the other, through the
frameworks of gender and gender roles: the prostitute as a dancer and an
artist; the man as a dancer; the guru who sports long hair and has an
‘effeminate’ walk—categories that the older generation, fed on its
perception of the self cannot come to terms with. This clash brings out
the play of property and money in deciding and manipulating the
110
construction of identities that would conform, but the result is tragic.
Perhaps, the resolution is suggested in the third generation, where the
earlier sets of categories collapse and Lata is seen as a successful dancer
and a mother, happily married to Vishwas, the son of a rich mithaiwala.
The play successfully brings several social prejudices under a
powerful critical microscope exposing the deeply entrenched gender
biases even in educated and urban spaces. The play also highlights the
prevalent social prejudices against the devadasis as well as the clash
between tradition and modernity that especially surfaces in the marriage
of Lata and Vishwas.
The play also offers us a peep into the other side of dance as an art
form. Dattani shows us how ‘dance’ as an ‘art’ has its pitfalls and social
repercussions. It breeds jealousy, suspicion and brings misunderstanding
in the family - more so, if both the husband and wife are artistes-reminding
an Indian viewer familiar with the popular Hindi movie Abhiman.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Critically examine Dance Like a Man as a play of choices.
2. How does Dattani re-position the male-female stereotypes within
patriarchy - the ‘strong’ women and ‘weak’ men in Dance Like a Man?
3. Comment on the play’s dramatization of the clash between tradition
and modernity.
4. Examine the effectiveness of the use of flashback technique in the play.
Further Reading:
Chaudhuri, Asha Kuthari. Contemporary Indian Writers in English,
Mahesh Dattani An Introduction,
Foundation Books Pvt. Ltd. 2005.
Das, Bijay Kumar. Form and Meaning in Mahesh Dattani’s
Plays, New Delhi: Atlantic Publ., 2008.
Parmar, Bipin Kumar. Dramatic World of Mahesh Dattani-Voices
and Vision, Jaipur: Aadi Publications, 2012.
 111 112

SECTION - E
NOVEL
Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084
 113
Mahasweta Devi ( b.1926)
Mahasweta Devi is one of the most original voices in contemporary
Indian literature, equally respected as an activist and a story-teller. She
was born in the city of Dacca in East Bengal (modern day Bangladesh).
Her father Manish Ghatak was a well-known poet and novelist of the
Kallol era and her mother Dhatri Devi a writer and activist. After the
partition of India, the family moved to West Bengal in India. Born into a
literary family, Mahasweta Devi was also influenced by her early
association with Gananatya, a group who attempted to bring social and
political theater to rural villages in Bengal in the 1930s and 1940s. After
finishing her B.A. English (Honours) degree from Vishwabharathi
University in Shantiniketan and a Master’s degree in English literature
from Calcutta University, she began working as a teacher and journalist.
In 1984, she retired from her job as an English lecturer at Calcutta
University and concentrated on her writing.
Mahasweta Devi has a considerable oeuvre comprising novels,
story collections, children’s books and collection of plays. Her first work,
Jhansir Rani (1956) was a fictional reconstruction of the life and character
of Rani Laxmibai who challenged British might in the mid-nineteenth
century. Several of her other early works such as Amrita Sanchay (1964)
and Andhanmalik (1967) are also set during the British colonial period.
The Naxalite movement of the late 19602s and early 1970s were also an
important influence on her work. Devi, in a 1983 interview, points to
this movement as the first major event that she felt “an urge and an
obligation to document” (Bandyopandhyay viii). The publication of
Aranyer Adhikar in 1977 established her position as the leading novelist
in Bengal. In addition, she has written some remarkable short stories,
including “Agni Garbha”, “Stanyadayani” and “Draupadi”. Mahasweta
Devi has also been a regular contributor to several literary magazines
and editor of Bortika, a journal dedicated to the cause of oppressed
communities within India.Increasingly translated into other Indian
114
languages, her work is now read and admired throughout the nation. Her
writing, both fictional and otherwise, is a powerful denouncement of
post-independence development politics. She is been the recipient of
several literary prizes, including the Sahitya Akademi award and the
Jnanapitha . She is also the recipient of the Padma Shree award for her
contribution to the welfare of tribals and of the prestigious Magsaysay
Award in 1997 for journalism, literature and creative communication.
Being a writer is not Mahasweta Devi’s only major identity. She is a
highly–respected social activist who has wholly involved herself in
working for upliftment and justice for tribal people in the states of
West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh. Her creative writing, her
journalism and active field work and personal life are complementary.
In an interview she said “In my case, editing Bortika, writing columns
for newspapers and journals, creative writing and activism each sustains
the other. They are not four separate watertight compartments, but a
whole.” (Interview with RadhaChakravarty, 1997) In the introduction to
Agnigarbha,her 1978 collection of stories related to the great Naxalite
uprising, she writes: “ A responsible writer standing at a turning point in
history, has to take a stand in defence of the exploited. Otherwise history
would never forgive him.” She says that she has “never had the capacity
nor the urge to create art for art’s sake.” (Preface to Shreshtha Galpa,
1985).
Hazar Churashir Ma or Mother of 1084 was originally written as a
story for the periodical Prasad in 1972 and adapted for the stage by the
writer in 1973; it grew into a novel (or novella as it can properly be
named because of its length) a year later. Unlike in her earlier short
stories like “Stanadayini” and “ Draupadi”, the focal centre here is not a
tribal woman but an upper middle-class “apolitical” woman Sujata
Chatterjee whose world is forever changed when her son is killed due to
his Naxalite beliefs. Mother of 1084 grew out of Mahasweta Devi’s
concern about the Naxalite movement in Bengal in the 60s and 70s. The
 115
leftist militant movement, which started in the Naxalbari region of West
Bengal, began as a rural revolt of landless workers and tribal people
against landlords and moneylenders but swiftly became a rallying point
of idealistic and disillusioned intellectual youth from the urban areas,
particularly Kolkata. From the last quarter of 1970, vested political
interests of various parties came together to ruthlessly stamp out this
movement. The novel is set against this climactic phase of annihilation.
While her short stories “ Draupadi” and “Operation Boshai Tutu” captures
the rural face of the movement, Mother of 1084 presents its urban
dimension. The Barasat killing of November 1970 when the bodies of
eleven young men were found on the road to Barasat and the Baranagar
killings on 12 August 1971 in which more than hundred Naxalites were
openly decapitated were part of “the organized massacre of the Naxalites
in 1970-71, perpetrated by the police, the party in power, hired assassins,
and even parties of the Left establishment acting in unholy collusion.
“(Samik Badhyopadhya, Introduction to Five Plays by Mahasweta
Devi). Mahasweta Devi observed, “In the seventies, in the Naxalite
movement, I saw exemplary integrity, selflessness, and the guts to die
for a cause. I thought I saw history in the making, and decided that as a
writer it would be my mission to document it. As a writer, I feel a
commitment to my times, to mankind , and to myself.” In a 1983
interview, she points to this movement as the first major one that she felt
“an urge and an obligation to document” (Bandyopandhyay viii).
There is thus a clearly political dimension to the work-the impulse
to document a movement as well as the corrupt inhuman Establishment
that it challenged and which attempted to crush it . The novel is a scathing
indictment of the corruption, self-interest, hypocrisy and moral bank-
ruptcy which have spread throughout society, in the administration, in
the cultural-intellectual establishment, in politics. However, the political
aspect is explored through the personal dimension. Mahasweta Devi’s
intense and disturbing narrative records a situation in which the
demarcations between the private and the public spheres of life are
116
effaced. The particular phase of the Naxal movement-the idealism of
young educated men and women as well as the brutal reprisal of the
Establishment - is presented through a bereaved mother’s desperate
attempts to understand her son’s allegiance to a revolutionary movement
and in the process, finding herself by identifying herself with her youngest
son and the value system he represented. Mahasweta Devi described the
theme of the novel as “the awakening of an apolitical mother.” Sujata,
the mother of Brati Chatterjee, the murdered Naxalite identified only by
the faceless number 1084, is the focal consciousness of the narrative.
The author explains, “Sujata is essentially apolitical. Yet as she reaches
towards an explanation for the death of her son killed in the seventies,
she too finds the entire social system cadaverous, and as she takes a
closer look at the society, she finds no legitimacy for his death” ( Samik
Badhyapadhya, Introduction to Mother of 1084).
The entire action is confined to a single day. Divided into four
sections-Dawn, Afternoon, Dusk and Late Evening -, the novel does not
follow a linear but a cyclic pattern, moving back and forth through the
memory of Sujata Chatterjee. The novel begins on the morning of the
second anniversary of Brati’s death with Sujata writhing in pain from an
acute appendicitis attack which reminds her of the labour pains she had
undergone when giving birth to Brati .An early morning phone call takes
her back to another phone call two years earlier asking her to come to
identify the body of her son. It is also the day- coincidentally the day of
both his birth and death- that the family had, with its typical insensitivity,
fixed up the engagement of the younger daughter. On this day, exactly
two years after the death of Brati, Sujata gets to know of the facts behind
his sacrifice for the cause he believed in. The learning process continues
till the end of the novel, involving her in a series of encounters with the
people whose cause Brati championed.
Although the writer herself expressed her rejection of the term
‘feminist’, there is no doubt that many of Mahasweta Devi’s women
 117 118

protagonists are prototypes of feminist characters - women who are strong Bandhypadhya Introduction to Five Plays); she is now determined to
and self-reliant, and, moving from submission to defiance, grow towards break out of her cocoon of social respectability. Her death at the end of
a strong individuality. Sujata Chatterjee is one such woman. The four the novel might seem dramatically disappointing but is symbolically a
time frames - dawn, afternoon, evening and night - each “marks a new re-union with her son on the day of his birth and his death, thus befitting
stage in the evolution of Sujata’s consciousness. From a weak-willed, the direction of the narrative. The novel which follows a cyclic pattern
hopelessly dependent and non-assertive moral coward Sujata is trans- through its four sections returns to its starting point of birth and death.
formed into a morally- assertive, politically-enlightened and socially
Questions for Discussion:
defiant individual.” (G. Gulam Tariq). Initially Sujata is shown to be
trapped in a stifling, oppressive patriarchal family set-up. She begins as 1. Mother of 1084 is the story of a woman’s journey towards empower-
a typical woman of a bourgeois ‘bhadralok’ family–her husband a ment and identity. Discuss.
successful professional and incorrigible philanderer who demands a 2. Examine how the political and personal dimensions merge in the
physical relationship with his wife as a matter of right, her mother-in- novel.
law openly supporting her son’s ways as being normal masculine 3. Examine Mahaswetha Devi’s depiction of the Naxalite movement
behavior, and children who seem like strangers. Though she is a sensitive in the novel..
wife and a loving mother, she is a stranger in her own household that has 4. Consider the novel as a sharp attack on a morally-bankrupt upper
reduced her to an insignificant cog .Her only attachment is to her youngest middle class society.
child Brati; however, she has no idea of his Naxalite allegiance. Even
before Brati’s death, Sujata had made her acts of self-assertion; she had Further Reading:
asserted her rights over her body by refusing to have a fifth child; she Devi, Mahasweta : “Draupadi” “Operation Boshai Tutu”.
had refused to give up her job in the bank and lose her financial
Bandyopadhyay, Samik. Introduction Five Plays. Seagull Books Pvt.
independence. Despite these quiet but firm acts of revolt, she had
Ltd., Calcutta, 1986.
maintained the façade of social respectability. However, the family’s
callous response to Brati’s death, their attempt to wipe him out of their Sen, Nivedita and
lives shakes her into casting aside all pretensions and realizing the extent Nikhil Yadav. Mahasweta Devi: An Anthology of Recent
of their hypocrisy and superficiality as well as the extent of her own Criticism. Pencraft International Publishers
alienation from them. She slowly unearths the tragic details of his death 2008.
through visits to the home of Somu, the comrade Brati had died to save.
Tariq, G. Ghulam. “The World of “Marginalised” in Mahasweta
Her conversation with Nandini, Brati’s girlfriend and fellow-Naxalite,
Devi’s Mother of 1084. The Criterion: an
recently released from prison, not only gives her an idea of his total
International Journal in English
commitment but also leaves her moved at Nandini’s disclosure of Brati’s
deep concern for her. She sees in Brati’s revolt “an articulation of the
silent resentment she has carried within herself” against her family (Samik