Living in a fair ‘word’ : The Tribune India

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Living in a fair ‘word’

Acasual comment heard recently, “In many ways, a woman is like an onion; the layers are endless,” stirred something in me as a writer, reader and student of the past.

Living in a fair ‘word’

Author Rakshanda jalil



Suparna-Saraswati Puri

Acasual comment heard recently, “In many ways, a woman is like an onion; the layers are endless,” stirred something in me as a writer, reader and student of the past. Over the years, from Shakespeare’s Portia to Colleen McCullough’s Miss Mary Bennet to Tagore’s Binodini of Chokher Bali to Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife and countless more interesting women characters have influenced and intrigued me. 

In the context of Indian contemporary writings, too, there is a great deal as regards portrayal of women. Whether it is campaigns like # Me Too that spark off a global discourse on gender abuse and violence or a sociological trend that aims at voicing new perspectives on how women have been scripted and are being written about, the treasure trove of stories is phenomenal. 

“Like everything else in contemporary Indian fiction, the portrayal of women too is coming of age. From Ismat Chughtai’s Shama in Tedhi Lakeer to Qurratulain Hyder’s Champa in Aag ka Darya to Manu Bhandari’s Nila and Pratima, it has been a journey of self-discovery,” avers Delhi-based writer, translator and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil. 

Speaking about the kind of women characters in contemporary Indian literature and the way they get etched, Chennai-based author, Chitra Viraraghavan, shares, “Two women characters come to mind, Talamai Tisku in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s, November is the Month of Migrations from The Adivasi will not Dance and Prema in K. R. Meera’s The Gospel of Yudas. Prema, at 15, tries to escape a tyrannical father by falling in love with an ex-Maoist, who pulls out dead bodies from the village lake for a living. Talamai, at 20, is matter-of-fact in what she has to do as a migrant: sleep with men for food and money. The cages which these two characters find themselves in could not be more different; it is their striving for agency that makes them so compelling, so moving, so real.”

Given the incredible range and rich tapestry of women representations in Indian mythology, do recent writings engage readers differently about them? Delhi-based writer Manju Kak is of the view, “In broad terms, one can say that women continue to be portrayed through two ends of the spectrum of human experience: the reduced marginalised victim of social inequity or in the Kali avatar as the avenger Wonder Woman who seeks to perfect the imbalance in the universe through corrective action. In this category also comes the woman as the sex symbol who is either exploited as a prostitute or is a tramp or seducer, again a revengeful model. Like a diaphanous veil over these two categories is the overarching exposition of women’s sexuality.” 

For bureaucrat-poet Sumita Misra “the portrayal of women in contemporary Indian literature has been characterised by both evolution and rebellion. Women writers of today have naturally been more assertive of their new identities and roles…moving beyond the earlier narrative that centred around sexuality as the means of expression for women writers. For instance Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions provided a refreshing depiction of Draupadi. Another interesting trend is male writers writing from a deeper and more ‘modern’ female perspective.”

And what do say men in this context? “Gendered studies on Indian art are radically changing our standpoint. Where Khajuraho's nayikas were once a source of titillation and hence, embarrassment, instead informed viewers are now embarrassed that there are a few equivalent sculptures of men for heterosexual women to be titillated by. While there are so many Puranas named after male deities, there is just one Devi Mahatmaya that serves the need to encompass all goddesses. There is no gain saying the one-sided and entrenched patriarchal view in classical art and literature. Yet, equally, it would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that images of yoginis and saptamatrikas challenge the very foundations of patriarchal positions. Their worship, as well as the voices of women Bhakti and Sufi saints and their followers have been revived from time to time in different parts of India as empowering histories,” elucidates Professor of Indian Art and Architecture, Naman P. Ahuja at JNU, New Delhi.

It is indeed interesting to observe the sheer scale of contexts and concerns within which women characters have been created in Indian contemporary writings. Author Madhulika Liddle says, “I don’t think the portrayal of women in Indian contemporary literature can be easily slotted. It depends upon the genre, the writer, even the very book: it’s very individual. On one hand you have powerful and sensitive writers (many of them writing literary fiction) who write of real, three-dimensional women. On the other hand, there is no dearth of writers, especially in fiction genre, who stick to the typical Bollywood template of women: beautiful, air-headed, and with no ambition in life other than to be good wives and mothers — or, conversely, irredeemable vamps. It’s sad that the writers who can write entertaining fiction featuring real women are so few in number: we need more genres of fiction that portrays women in a real way.” 

And how about those who write about women-centric stories away from the shores of India, do they see any change? Mauritius-born multilingual author Ananda Devi feels, “There has been so much exciting writing coming out in the recent years as well as in not so recent years, that it would be difficult to summarise or isolate a few. Recently, I read an autobiographical text by Meena Alexander entitled Fault Lines (first published in 1993 and republished in 2003) that I found absolutely superb, encompassing the experience of a child and young woman going from India to Sudan to the US with an absolute and raw and poetic honesty. I also loved A Restless Wind, by Shahrukh Husain, a novel that moves between the UK and India and has a strong female protagonist as well as range of wonderful female characters, and at the core of which is the quest for identity — if such an identity exists. There is obviously a very large number of books that come out in India every year and that, I am sure, explore perhaps even more unflinchingly the condition of women.”

Interestingly, the co-founder of India’s first feminist magazine, Manushi, Prof Ruth Vanita, talking about her most recent book, Dancing with the Nation says, “This book pays tribute to the way courtesans, shown in films as working women, intellectuals and artists (all of which they were in real life), bring music, dance, ideas, and the playfulness of eros to modern Indians across all divides. Even in the films of the 1940s and 1950s, courtesans make their own choices regarding whom they want to love, live with and marry. They often take the initiative in pursuing a man. Courtesans became a model for modern Indians ways of loving and desiring; today’s heroines incorporate many elements of courtesan eroticism.”

The complexity of the subject (woman) renders it beyond easy explanation or conclusive answers. It is not so simple as merely reinventing Sita or entwining present day gender discourse around identifiable women characters. In which case let the un-layering continue because undeniably the world will remain curious about what lies within ‘her’.

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