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Interview

In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

Sahitya Akademi winner Aruna Chakravarti

A woman who weaves stories from the past, from history, from what has been and makes them so real that they become a part of ones’ own existence – this has been my experience of Dr Aruna Chakravarti and her writing. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, Vaitalik award and Sarat Puraskar, Chakravarti was the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fifteen published books. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors have sold widely and received rave reviews. Jorasanko and its sequel are based on the women in the household of Rabindranath Tagore. Jorasanko is one of the best and most impactful books I have read in my life and with a flavour of realism that transports you into that era. The focus on the strength that resided in women trapped with a set of patriarchal values in colonial India is amazing and attractive. Suralakshmi Villa, her latest novel which was released at the start of 2020, is also modelled on a woman from the past as she will reveal in this exclusive interview.

You are a multiple national award- winning writer. At a point you stopped writing. Why?

I had started writing during my childhood and had continued to do so through my school days happily and unselfconsciously. I wrote poems, short stories and even tried my hand at a novel. But when I joined the English Honours course in college and was introduced to the academics of literature; when I learned the principles of criticism and picked up the ability to distinguish good writing from mediocre, a change came over me. I suffered from a loss of self-worth. I felt I was not and could never be a good writer. Self-criticism is good but unfortunately it worked adversely for me. I convinced myself that my work was imitative and lacking in merit. From that time onwards I stopped writing.

When did you take up writing again? Did your translations come first?

It happened nearly twenty- five years later. Yes, my translations came first. The cycle of negative feelings about my writing, to which I had strapped myself, broke in a miraculous way. The year was 1982.  At a chamber concert of Rabindra sangeet, in which I was taking part, a Gujarati gentleman from the audience made a request. He asked if one of the participants could translate the songs that were being sung so that non-Bengalis, many of whom were present, could understand the words. Since I was teaching English in a Delhi University college at the time, all eyes turned to me. I was horrified. To be called upon to translate a literary giant like Rabindranath Tagore, that too his lyrics, without any preparation whatsoever, would have daunted anyone leave alone me with my record of diffidence and self-doubt. But to my own shock and bewilderment, I agreed. The rest is history. There was a publisher in the audience who offered to bring out a collection of Tagore songs in translation. That was my first publication. Tagore: Songs rendered into English came out in 1984. Though the publisher was practically unknown, the book created waves in literary circles. Other translations followed. Srikanta by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and later Those days and First Light by Sunil Gangopadhyaywere published by Penguin India. I also picked up a number of awards.

It was Sunil Gangopadhyay who advised me to try my hand at creative writing. After some hesitation I did so. My first novel The Inheritors was accepted by Penguin India and published in 2004. After it was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I found the courage to write more.

You were the Principal of a Delhi University college. Did your work impact your writing?

No strangely enough it didn’t. My creative inspiration never drew from my experience as a Principal. I was dealing with women from a younger generation. I was privy to their concerns, their joys and sorrows, their fears and aspirations.  I understood their psychology. Yet I never wanted to write about them except in a tangential way. As part of a larger context. For me the present failed to provide the spark that kindled my creative imagination. That came invariably from some past memory. In a strange way the past seems more meaningful to me than the present.

But my role as an administrator helped me in another way. Office work is dry and prosaic. But it is worthwhile work. And, much as I felt good doing it, I looked forward intensely to the end of the day when I could doff my Principal’s hat and don my writer’s one. And, having indulged myself by writing till late into the night, I was ready to take up my work schedule the next morning. The two interests sustained each other and created a balance.

Why did you translate the writers? What did you learn by translating them? Did it impact your own story telling or knowledge base?

My first translation, as I’ve just explained, was commissioned. But I would not have taken up the offer if I didn’t consider the original work a significant contribution to Bengali literature. My other books were self-chosen. For me the most important consideration when taking up a translation project has been the literary value of the piece. I had to enjoy the process of translation and could only do so if I thought the subject worthwhile. And, yes, I learned a lot. I learned how lyricism could be infused into prose from Rabindranath. I learned how to write with brevity and precision from Saratchandra and the art of simple, direct, almost colloquial communication with the reader from Sunil Gangopadhyay. The process also intensified my interest in Bengal and the evolution of its society, literature and culture. I was enthused to read and learn more.

Some awards nowadays ask for applications from authors. Did you apply for your awards? Did you work towards getting an award?

No. This is the first time I’m hearing that authors can apply for awards. I thought that was the publisher’s job. As for working towards getting an award — no, I’ve never even thought of it.  Networking is a totally alien term for me. I admire people who can do it perhaps because I, myself, have very little skill at it. Whatever recognition has come my way has come as a surprise. I feel some of the books that have brought me awards didn’t deserve them. On the other hand, the ones that I think should have attracted them, didn’t do so. However, I suppose writers aren’t always the best judges of their work. Assessment of quality should be left to critics.

How long does it take you to churn out a book?

In the case of novels, it depends on the amount of research that has to go into it. For example, Jorasanko took nearly three years. But Daughters of Jorasanko was completed in a year and a half. That’s because most of the research had been done already. Translations take less time depending on the length. Srikanta, Those Days and First Light, took about two years each. The shorter ones The Way Home, Primal Woman and On the Wings of Music were done in less than a year.

Were your novels Jorasanko and Daughters of Jorasanko impacted by your translation of Tagore? Did having done the translations help?

I suppose it did… at some level. Some of the lyricism and emotionally charged quality of Rabindranath’s language must have seeped into my consciousness while doing the translation. But its manifestation is present not only in the Jorasanko series. It is there in all my writing. The Inheritors is suffused with a Tagorean kind of heightened sensibility. So is Suralakshmi Villa.

In your latest novel Suralakshmi Villa you have drawn a very independent woman in the last century — so independent that it would be difficult to find people similar to her in today’s world. Is she modelled on a real person?

I had heard of such a woman from a colleague of mine. The lady, a relation of my friend’s, belonged to a conservative South Indian Brahmin family of Chennai. A few years after her marriage she abandoned her husband and infant son, for no apparent reason, left Chennai and started teaching in an obscure village school. This was way back in the twenties when such an action was unheard of. She never came back. But that was all I knew. I had never met her or heard anything more about her. My imagination provided the rest. So, the answer to your question is both Yes and No. Suralakshmi has been modelled on someone I have heard of. That too only in partial context.

The Inheritors was based on your own family’s past if I’m not mistaken. What kind of research went into it? How long did it take you to write the book?

You are right. The Inheritors is a semi-fictional reconstruction of life as lived by previous generations of my paternal ancestors. Though names have been changed, many of the characters are drawn from real people. Most of the events, too, are located in family history. Not all though. Some are purely fictional. Since everything I wished to describe happened before I was born, it has all been seen through the light of the imagination.

To answer your query about research–there was a lot of primary reading involved. But I had been doing that for years before I took up the project. The ambience was provided by my reading of the classics. Rabindranath, Saratchandra, Bankimchandra, Bibhutibhushan, Tarashanker and many other writers provided sketches of rural life in the 19th and early 20th centuries, all of which were invaluable to my understanding of how life was lived in a Bengal village at the time.

I had very little real material to rely on barring faint memories. Anecdotes heard from my parents, uncles and aunts. Family legends passed down the generations. But I did visit my ancestral village a couple of times. I was shown the house in which my forefathers lived, the location of the Adi Ganga — now extinct, and the temple, Vaidyanath Mandir, which bore the name of the village in an inscription on a terracotta tablet above the door. I also managed to get hold of a family tree, dating from our earliest known ancestor Srikrishna Tarkapanchanan, and an ancient map of the area.

It took me about a year and a half to do the actual writing.

Both in Jorasanko and Suralakshmi Villa, you have strong heroines. Can you tell us if you are doing so with an intent?

Well, I do believe that women of the past had a lot of inherent strength. Most of them kept it hidden because that is how patriarchal society liked its women. Silence and obedience were highly rated qualities and most women abided by family and societal expectations. Some, of course, were exceptionally ahead of their times and displayed courage and independence even at the risk of upsetting the applecart. But even those who were apparently meek and subservient were seen to display enormous inner reserves of strength at a time of crisis. I have shown both kinds in my novels.

What are your future plans? When can we expect a new novel?

I am working on something but it is still in the initial stages. The pandemic has made travelling impossible so field work has had to be postponed. It is too early to share details and impossible to tell when the work will see the light of day.

This has been an online interview conducted by Mitali Chakravarty.

Click here to read more by Aruna Chakravarty.

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Categories
Musings

Time and Us

Anasuya Bhar takes us through 2020 — what kind of a year has it been?

We take Time for granted; we take our years for granted, dividing them into months and days of work and schedules of various kinds. We get lost in the maze of the small measures of time, the days, hours etcetera being our only counters of the great Hands. We forget the larger cosmic Time, which veers forward, with its own plan. In our break neck haste we, perhaps, only inch forwards to the inevitable end. The year 2020 began with the usual fanfare, banality, uncertainty and some trepidation for what it might bring. Some of my life’s uncertainties, incidences and vagaries usually keep me anxious and restless in an effort to secure some peace of mind. The first month brought in distress due to the misfortunes of a loved one. There were some other losses too, but what really put the fear of death among us, was Death itself, with the looming shadows of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Although I have not lived through any of the political or military wars, I felt I was going through some kind of a war in 2020 – a struggle for survival. I was unable to give a comprehensive shape to any of my thoughts. I could hardly account for anything that was happening and gazed at the rising pile of corpses in Europe and the other parts of the world. Poverty is a greater source of ailment where I live. Many succumb to it. As more of those who have less are out of work, poverty seems to be even more powerful an epidemic in this part of the world. There were many deaths, initially not from COVID19, but other instances of carelessness. But these too were passé for us who live in a country with an overflowing population. Things still happened to others in the remoteness of newspaper print.

That changed, however, and soon there were friends, cousins, and relatives getting infected. Doubt played hide and seek with a possible asymptomatic variety as well. There was always fear — fear that shook even the deepest layers of the consciousness and even allayed the strongest faith. There were children and aged parents. Death came stealthily and claimed its victim leaving no scope of any fuss or fanfare. The personal gave way to the public with invincible heroes succumbing to the virus. The list included many from our former President to actors, performers, sportspersons, poets, artists, and to academics. Even an icon as distinguished as Amitabh Bacchan was infected with virus, but he emerged triumphant. Many others were not as fortunate. We lost legends like Sean Connery and our own Soumitra Chatterjee in this year. In the case of the latter, it was a prolonged fight that the aged actor fought against the pandemic. With him, passed an entire era of Bengali culture that was more or less continuous in the spirit of the Tagores or the Rays.

The loss of both ‘Bond’ and ‘Feluda’ marked too much of a co-incidence in our lives. The lacuna that is left after the going of these stalwarts is not only felt particularly in their trade, but also to the entire global cultural scenario. We had just begun commemorating Satyajit Ray’s birth centenary, and Soumitra, the largest living icon of the former’s films and, perhaps, one of the greatest translators of his intellection, succumbed to the banal virus of Corona. The tiers in the uppermost rung of artistry and professionalism are being vacated; and perhaps, one may say, gradually making way, albeit reluctantly, for a new generation.

The year also had us think much about the dystopic and the apocalyptic in civilization, at large. There were also familiar prognostications of the ‘end of the world’ myth. The year, most definitely, marks the beginning of a whole new consciousness. We had stepped into a new millennium two decades ago, but one really did not feel any change overnight or even within a few days or years. Paradigm shifts happen over a period of time. The fault-lines take time to emerge and there needs to be enough distance, aesthetically and culturally, to perceive the changes with sufficient detachment.

For a particular century to emerge as the past, and the next to emerge as the present, one needs perspective. One also needs a new world view. People also succumb naturally to their deaths, especially those having seen most of the last century. A preliminary survey of each century usually shows drastic changes in the first two, three or four decades. The twentieth century saw most of its global events in the first four decades, after which there was reasonable calm and quietness. Equally interesting is the pattern of pandemics in the last few centuries. There is an uncanny similarity with them all dating in the 20s of each century.

The year 2020 seems to mark a new kind of beginning in various ways. While there is a most dystopic flavour to the times, one must acknowledge and also appreciate the spirit of resilience among humans. Newer modes of educating, connecting globally in the most unique and ingenious manners seems to be in vogue. The world of arts and letters has also perfected newer ways of expressions. The pandemic has, in many ways, proved to be a great leveller – the European, the Asian, the African or the American are going through a common crisis. There is, distinctly, a spirit of human solidarity that underlines the community, at large, keeping in abeyance the cultural, racial and political differences. Just like Picasso, Rabindranath, Einstein, and several others survived the last pandemic, the Great Wars or the holocaust, so did many of our grandparents. Would it be too presumptuous to count on destiny and chance, with the hope that we too would survive this, and have some stories to recount, perhaps, to our own grandchildren?

A philosopher had once said, that life would have lost all its meaning had there not been death; and that, we rush forwards doing what we do, because we know that there is a finite end for us. And Thomas Hardy had taken our minds to the chilling observation that our day of death lies skilfully hidden in the calendar year. We laugh, we cry, we continue through years with the nitty-gritty of life, but one particular year that day claims us, in an eternal embrace. Death is the only inevitable, irrevocable and irreversible truth and end in our lives. This year has taught us, among other things, the value of our lives, the value of relationships, the value of the world of nature, and taught us to value our time, before its ‘winged chariot’ gets hold of us.

Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and the Dean of Postgraduate Studies in St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata. Dr. Bhar is the sole Editor of the literary Journal Symposium (ISSN 2320-1452) http://www.spcmc.ac.in/departmental-magazine/symposium/, published by her Department. She has various academic publications to her credit. Her creative pieces have been published in Borderless Journal, Setu Bilingual and Ode to a Poetess. She has her own blog https://anascornernet.wordpress.com/.

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Categories
Poetry

Noh Ka Likai

By Shakti Pada Mukhopadhyay

Noh Ka Likai: Photo Courtesy; Wiki

Noh Ka Likai*

The enraged splashes of the cascade,

surrounded by eerie ghost vales,

echoed through the hills

and Sal and Pine trees,

roaring down a thousand feet,

through their milky ways

along escarpment.

Looked foggy, like holy spirits

thrashing to effervescence

and unspooling forever,

reminding us of the sad demise of

Likai’s infant daughter.

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A legendary dame of the hills, Likai,

jumped from the cliff to end her life,

since her second husband killed her earlier daughter

 in envy and plotted to let her devour

ignorant that it was the flesh of her own daughter.

The hills failed to catch her

before she fell, without a break,

succumbing to the summons of gravity.

Since then the hills are in tears

and the falls run down the cheeks.

We, on a tour, could correlate the tragedy of Likai

with that of King Oedipus, who, after killing his father

and marrying his own mother unwittingly,

pierced two gold pins in his own eyes

and later died in exile. His mother

hanged herself to death. Oedipus Rex

ended with the chorus wailing,   

‘Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last’.

But I closed my wife for a peck,

to swab her weeping rains, soothing all the pains.

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*Noh Ka Likai, is a beautiful waterfall of Meghalaya, India. The words “Noh Ka Likai” literally mean “jump of Ka Likai”,where Ka is prefixed to name a female personality in Meghalaya.

Shakti Pada Mukhopadhyay, MA( English), writes poetry and prose. A lyrical drama written  by him has been staged. He enjoys acting, singing, travelling and reading books.

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Categories
Review

The Brass Notebook

 A recently penned autobiography by eminent economist Devaki Jain, written based on a suggestion made by Doris Lessings in 1958, with a forward by Amartya Sen and reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha.

Title: The Brass Notebook – A memoir

Author: Devaki Jain

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020

This is an unusual memoir. Unusual because it isn’t archetypal, not old-fashioned nor even written in a sequential order. The autobiography is set apart into personal and professional years, covering all that happened in a long and distinguished career.

The Brass Notebook by the celebrated economist-writer, Devaki Jain, is structured in such a way that it is no-holds-barred and edifying. In the brilliant life account, she recounts her own story and also that of an entire generation and a nation coming into its own.

Born in 1933, in Mysore, Karnataka, Devaki Jain was the daughter of the Dewan (prime minister) in the Princely States of Mysore and Gwalior. A student of Mysore University, where she studied Mathematics and Economics, she furthered her education in St Anne’s College, Oxford University and graduated in Economics and Philosophy, where she is now an Honorary Fellow.


Devaki Jain made significant contributions to feminist economics, social justice, and women’s empowerment in India. From 1963 to 69, she was a lecturer in economics at Miranda House, Delhi University. She moved on from teaching to full-time research and publication as the director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust.

Over the years, Devaki Jain founded a wide range of institutions such as the Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era (DAWN), a Third World network of women social scientists, and a research Centre in Delhi — Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST). She had been a member of several policy-making bodies in India and abroad, including the State Planning Board of Karnataka; the erstwhile South Commission, established in 1987 under the chairmanship of Dr Julius Nyerere; the Advisory Committee for UNDP Human Development Report on Poverty (1997), and the Eminent Persons Group associated with the Graca Machel Committee (UN) on the impact on children of armed conflict.

A recipient of the Padma Bhushan (2006) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Westville, Durban, South Africa, the eighty-seven-year-old wrote: “It was difficult to reveal my personal life, but because I felt that my story could be a source of strength for many women, I decided to share both my political engagements and my personal adventures.” Her earlier works include Close Encounters of Another Kind: Women and Development Economics and Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy: Rebuilding Progress.

With a ‘Foreword’ by Amartya Sen, The Brass Notebook has been inspired by Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Not just the title, but the idea of the book itself was suggested by Lessing when Jain first met her in 1958. It took Jain 60 years to honour that advice.

In the memoir, Devaki Jain begins with her childhood in south India — a life of comfort and ease. But there were restrictions too, that come with growing up in an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family, and the rarely spoken about dangers of predatory male relatives. 

She writes in the autobiography, “While most of the other students, largely Anglo-Indian or Goan Christians, would walk or cycle from their nearby homes, my younger sister and I came to school every day, to our great embarrassment, in a coach drawn by a beautiful chestnut brown horse. There were no buses or any form of public transport from where we lived to the Cantonment. It was like two different cities. We wore the standard school uniform: a blue serge pleated skirt with a white shirt, tucked neatly in, and a brown-and-gold tie with diagonal stripes. We all sang the school anthem–‘Brown and Gold’–with great fervor, every morning at assembly.

I loved the various prayers and litanies that were part of the Roman Catholic tradition of the school. I would go to the chapel, make the sign of the cross, and sing all the hymns, ‘do’ the rosary (a friend gave me one to pray with). The rosary had to be hidden when I was at home, and my private devotions restricted to the bathroom. Like so many girls who feel the aesthetic appeal of Catholicism, I wanted more than anything to be a nun. Of course, I breathed nothing of these thoughts to my family at home, upper-caste Hindus who would have been shocked at one of their children abandoning both her family’s religion and hopes of a happy domestic life.

“As it was, we were not allowed to enter the house proper without first shedding our uniforms, bathing and changing in the bathroom which we were to enter by the back door. We had two very orthodox grandmothers living with us who regarded close proximity to Christians as polluting.”

Elsewhere in the memoir she writes about the Gandhian way of life at Wardha Ashram: “Another experience, which took me deeply into the ethos of India’s freedom movement, while I was still cocooned in the orthodox family, was a student seminar in Bangalore in 1953. This was convened by the Quakers, in this case the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Normally I would not be allowed to go to such workshops and conferences, but as I have mentioned earlier in this memoir, my brother Sreedhar had me invited. He was studying in the US and was drawn to the spirit and culture of the Quakers.

“At the seminar, I was gripped by the simple attire and eclectic ideas of two young men, aged twenty-one and nineteen, who had come all the way from Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha–one British, David Hoggett, and the other Indian, Vasant Palshikar. I was fascinated by their attitude, behaviour, clothing and ideas. They were living in Wardha at the Sarva Seva Sangh Ashram. They dressed like Gandhi–that is, dhotis made of khadi, tucked high up between their legs, a light sleeveless banyan, vest, also made of khadi, and coarse handmade leather chappals. They were very calm, friendly and totally at ease with the mixed bag of people that we were.”

Ruskin College, Oxford, gave Devaki Jain her first taste of freedom in 1955, at the age of twenty-two. Oxford brought her a degree in philosophy and economics — and hardship, as she washed dishes in a cafe to pay her fees. It was here, too, that she had her early encounters with the sensual life. With rare candor, she writes of her romantic liaisons in Oxford and Harvard and falling in love with her ‘unsuitable boy’– her husband, Lakshmi Chand Jain, whom she married against her father’s wishes. 

Devaki’s professional life saw her becoming deeply involved with the cause of ‘poor’ women — workers in the informal economy, for whom she strove to get a better deal. In the international arena, she joined cause with the concerns of the colonized nations of the south, as they fought to make their voices heard against the rich and powerful nations of the former colonizers. 

The book — divided into seven parts and running into a little over two hundred pages and with photographs from the album —  is as absorbing as thought-provoking. In all these encounters and anecdotes, what sparkles is Devaki Jain’s uprightness in telling the story. In the chronicle, there is a message for women across generations: one can experience the good, the bad and the ugly, and remain standing to tell the story. Honesty permeates the narrative in whatever challenges Devaki Jain has faced in her life.

An entrancing memoir, The Brass Notebook is a must-read for women who want to know how to survive and succeed in a patriarchal society, for men to know that women are not a weaker sex but just uninformed about their inherent strength, and for policymakers to know that even seven decades after Independence, the basic flaws in their policies on women’s empowerment have still not been addressed.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Essay

Remembering Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis

In this tribute, Azfar Hussain takes us on a journey into the world of Madam Rokeya who wrote more than a century ago in English, Urdu and Bengali. Her books talked of women, climate and issues related to patriarchy.

I repeat the same truth, and, if required, I will repeat it a hundred times.

— Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain*

 What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?

—Audre Lorde

December 9 marks both the birth and death anniversaries of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). The Rokeya Day in Bangladesh also falls on December 9. Indeed, Rokeya has by now been institutionalised, iconised, and, for that matter, even reified. This means a certain misappropriation and depoliticisation of her work as well. But there are now several biographies of Rokeya and scores of books and articles on her. Although I do not intend to recount Rokeya’s biographical details here, I should stress the point right at the outset: Rokeya’s life as a Muslim woman — lived courageously and even dangerously — illustrates nothing short of sustained struggles against religious bigotry, lack of education, shifting vectors and valences of colonialism, patriarchy affecting the practice of everyday life, and other forms and forces of oppression in colonial Bengal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Theorist-activist, essayist, fiction-writer, poet, translator, journalist, educationist, organizer — and an organic intellectual in her own right — Rokeya produced a remarkable corpus of written works, making distinctive contributions to Bangla literature while articulating with full force the cause of women with a particular, if not exclusive, focus on their education and emancipation. Roushan Jahan already characterized Rokeya as “the perceptive feminist foremother,” given the ways in which she anticipates a constellation of feminist questions and concerns broached later, although Rokeya and what a whole host of third-world feminists have called “Western, white feminism” do not go hand in hand. 

Rokeya’s important works include Motichur, vol. 1 (1904); Motichur, vol.2 (1921); her only novel Padmaraag (1924); and Aborodhbashini (date uncertain), among numerous others. Rokeya knew five languages — Bengali, English, Urdu, Arabic, and Persian — while she directly wrote in three of them — Bengali, Urdu, and English. Her work Sultana’s Dream — a novella first written in English and later translated into Bengali by the author herself — is usually described as “a feminist utopia” that, as Roushan Jahan rightly points out, “antedates by a decade the much better-known feminist utopian novel Herland by [the American novelist and poet] Charlotte Perkins Gilman” (1860-1935).

Yet another work in English by Rokeya is instructively titled “God Gives, Man Robs” (1927). It’s a powerful essay that carries her famous words: “There is a saying, ‘Man proposes, God disposes,’ but my bitter experience shows that God gives, Man Robs. That is, Allah has made no distinction in the general life of male and female — both are equally bound to seek food, drink, sleep, etc., necessary for animal life. Islam also teaches that male and female are equally bound to say their daily prayers five times, and so on.” Some contend that this work advances Rokeya’s nuanced version of what is called “Islamic feminism” at a conjuncture that witnesses androcentric and colonialist abuses of religion itself. Rokeya of course already puts it clearly and simply: “Men dominate women in the name of religion”*.

Although it is impossible for me to characterise or summarise the entire range of Rokeya’s written works, I can readily call attention to one particularly predominant concern that prompts, energises, and constitutes the very production of her words and her world: the woman question relating to the question of the total emancipation of humanity — of both women and men. And the woman question itself is constitutively and irreducibly a revolutionary question insofar as in the final instance, it prompts us to interrogate, combat, challenge, and even destroy the historically produced system of male domination called patriarchy on the one hand, and, on the other, those systems of domination and exploitation that variously support and even enhance patriarchy itself. And Rokeya’s specifically revolutionary stance decisively resides not only in raising the woman question but also in making that question integral and inevitable to the entire horizon of her work — literary, pedagogical, organisational, social, familial.

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Let me return to Sultana’s Dream (1905), because a number of its aspects still continue to remain ignored, although these days this work often gets discussed by those who claim to do postcolonial studies. I think this work is more than just a subversive and satirical intervention in the genre of what might be called “political dream-fiction” or “political science fiction.” And I read it as a work offering—through a radical reversal of the patriarchal or male-dominated order of things—a social imaginary that looks forward to, or even creates in imagination, a space and a place in which not only patriarchy spells out its own death but in which also science, political economy, ecology, and the forces of nature and the forms of justice remain adequately responsive to one another in the best interest of not only all humans but also all living beings themselves. And, thus, this work remains opposed to the destructive and oppressive logic of colonialism, militarism, and masculinism—and even anthropocentrism—profoundly interconnected as they are. In Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya also brilliantly anticipates a version of feminist science, offering a critique of colonialism’s relationship with science as a power/knowledge network. Indeed, “Sultana’s Dream” is, thematically and stylistically, the first work of its kind in the entire history of literary productions in Bengal.

Rokeya is also an early but powerful theorist of women’s liberation, a tireless organiser, an exemplary pedagogist of hope, and even a revolutionary in her own right. And her revolutionary moves reside in ways in which she gave voice, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to an entire generation of women struggling in confinement, or struggling against the purdah system itself, against the abuse of religion, against the shackles of not just double but multiple colonisations of women by patriarchy and colonialism and ‘feudalism,’ for instance.

Rokeya’s work Aborodhbashini is often reckoned the locus classicus of the discourse surrounding the purdah system, but does Rokeya combat the system of women’s seclusion and segregation à la Western feminists? No. For Rokeya, purdah is not just a floating signifier but heavily meaning-loaded, conjunctural, contextual; it’s more than an external veil covering a face or any part of the body, but it refers to an entire system of both mental and physical imprisonment to which the questions of colonial patriarchy and patriarchal colonialism remain relevant. Rokeya says: “The Parsi women have gotten rid of the veil but have they got rid of their mental slavery* [manosik dasattya]?”. It’s here where Rokeya not only anticipates Kazi Nazrul’s own formulation of “mental slavery” (moner golami) — but she also accentuates — way before Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ngugi wa Thiong’o — the need for anti-colonial, emancipatory education for both women and men.         

Last, Rokeya is also a politically engaged satirical poet whose apparently playful wit and sarcasm could be devastatingly subversive at times. Some of her famous poems include ‘Banshiful’, ‘Nalini o Kumud’, ‘Saugat’, ‘Appeal’, ‘Nirupam Bir’, and ‘Chand’. And her poetic but satirical interventions at various levels keep making the basic point about praxis itself: your silence is not going to protect you. Notice, then, a stanza in a poem she wrote as a response to those sell-outs, those middle-class bhadralok collaborators of the Raj who not only resorted to silence, but who were also nervous about losing their “honorific title”s, in the face of the Indian nationalist movement gathering momentum in 1922:

The dumb and silent have no foes

That’s how the saying goes

All of us with titled tails

Keep so quiet telling no tales

Then comes a bolt from the blue

Passes belief, but it’s true

All of you who did not speak

Will lose your tails fast and quick

Come my friends and declare now

In loud and loyal vow

Listen, ye world, we are not

God’s truth, a seditious lot

(quoted in Bharati Ray’s Early Feminists of Colonial India)

I’ve so far quickly contoured only a few areas of Rokeya’s interventions but honouring the legacy of her work calls for rereading, remobilising, and even reinventing Rokeya in the interest of our struggles for destroying patriarchy and all systems of oppression.

* These phrases have been translated by the writer, Azfar Hussain.       

Azfar Hussain teaches in the Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department within the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Grand Valley State University in Michigan, and is Vice-President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies, New York, USA.

First published in the literary page of Daily Star Bangladesh

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Categories
Poetry

Three poems from Armenia

Poems by Eduard Harents, translated from Armenian by Harout Vartanian

Eduard Harents

Yearning

The shadow of colour
is scaling
the scars of day;
walking the serenity
of an encountered dream…
.
The flower is the secret
of pain;
an introspective smile.
The scion names the sin.
.
Beyond personal bandages
of prayer,
the self-denial of a tree
is as much bright
as warm are the hands
of night.
.
I am freezing… your name.

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Odyssey

We ate poetry,
smoked silence
with a cup of coffee,
we got away from death
         chewing colours,
but still we are gazing
at the word…

***

.
I know, I will wake up someday
from the mystical dinner,
will wear my father’s
damaged footsteps
as little pockets
filled with immeasurable love…
Can my days — I wonder —
scale that much unbearable
lightness?

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Eduard Harents, born in 1981, is the most translated Armenian writer of all times. His poems were translated into more than 50 languages. He lives in Yerevan, Armenia. He has graduated from Yerevan State University, the faculty of Oriental Studies. Harents has authored 10 poetry collections. He has been published in numerous Armenian and foreign periodicals and anthologies.

Harout Vartanian, Armenian poet and translator, was born in Aleppo (Syria) in 1973, where he still resides. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from the American University of Beirut.
His first poetry book Triangular Sun was published in 2001. Active in several literary activities, he contributes regularly to literary journals.

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Categories
Stories

Flash Fiction: Happily Ever After

 

Sohana Manzoor explores the myth of happily ever after with three short & gripping narratives set in modern urban Bangladesh

No matter how people dream of being happy together, dreaming, like sleeping and living, is done alone. There just might be a few couples that would dream of doing the exact same things. Ninety-nine percent of couples don’t and yet they are known as happy couples.

1

Trina eyed Porag like a cat eyeing a mouse. Porag was looking wistfully through the window and it was not too difficult for her to guess what he wished. As for herself, the newly bought Devil’s Diadem was beckoning her from the bedside table where she had left it last night.

So, before Porag could propose anything, she said coquettishly, “The rain is lovely, isn’t it, darling? Wish we could go out in the rain. But I feel feverish. Can we read together?”

Porag’s face fell; he was about to ask his newly wedded wife to take a rickshaw-ride with him. But if she was feeling feverish, there was nothing much he could do, could he? Yet why did he feel somewhat cheated? He looked at Trina who was gazing back with imploring eyes. He shook off the nagging thought and took a seat by her.

An hour later, Porag was snoring on the bed while the house-cat Minty dozed and purred over his chest contentedly. Trina was poring over the fantasy book and was oblivious to the rest of the world. If Porag was asleep, that must mean that he was very happy too.

Everything’s right with the world!

2

Israr got into the car and drove out cheerfully. He just needed to believe that it was a special day, and it indeed turned out very special. Yes, the man she was betrothed to died last year, but surely, she would not be grieving him through the rest of her life?

He was Rupam’s best friend and he did everything he could to save him. It is not that Israr was always in love with Sruti. But watching her taking care of Rupam during his dying days made him fall for her. He was tired of all the glossy social butterflies and became totally smitten with Sruti. Israr knew that if she could learn to care about him half as much, she cared about Rupam, he should be very happy. He waved at the young woman who stood still in the veranda. Even though she did not wave back, he felt joy rushing through his veins.

“Our life together will be the happiest, I promise you!” Sruti stared at the receding figure of the young man driving away. Her heart almost felt that it would break. Did people still believe in that kind of happiness? Or such dreams? It seemed as if they did.

She had accepted the proposal. Israr came from a very affluent family and would gladly take care of her brother who was slowly dwindling away because of bone cancer. At her heart, she felt the presence of a dried up river. The grotesqueness of the reality that she had just sold herself hit her hard even if that buyer was very nice and caring.

3

Ria uploaded all the eleven pictures of the “perfect couple” on Facebook. All were taken the previous evening at Eppi’s engagement ceremony. Ria admired her blue jamdani studded with silver stars. It may not be as expensive as Tania’s golden one but was certainly more beautiful. Ria admired her own oval shaped fair skinned face with just the perfect blush. The smile was enchanting. And Ashik looked as dark and handsome as ever. Speaking of Ashik, where was he? Still stuck in the bathroom? The sound from her phone made her look at the screen again. A message in the messenger: “You look lovely. But did you have to cling on to his arm?”

A dimpled smile played at Ria’s lips. There are so many ways to play. Jishan had not called her or talked to her in the past one week. But this one post got his attention, and he was back in line. So, would she have lunch with him today? Hmm, that would be nice but weren’t they supposed to visit Ashik’s sister that same afternoon?

Ashik scrolled up fast. Did he lose the message? Piu would kill him if he did not find the number. Just imagine him agreeing to run this errand! He would never agree to do this for anybody else. But Piu was his oldest friend; more than a friend, to be honest. Okay, he found it and heaved a sigh of relief.

The door opened and a neutral voice said, “Call apa* and cancel the lunch today, Ria. An emergency meeting has come up.”

Ria could not believe her luck but she pouted nevertheless. “Haven’t seen apa in a while. But, oh well… will do.”

The perfectly happy couple danced away in pursuit of their separate interests.

*apa: Elder sister

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Sohana Manzoor is Associate Professor, Department of English & Humanities, ULAB.

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Categories
Poetry

Ten Islands

                                  Poetry from Korea by Ihlwha Choi

Ten people are eating rice cake dumpling soup

Same price

Same taste in the same bowl

Made by the same cook

They are eating the same soup delivered by the same waiter

Among them

Young people arrive through the falling snow

One young girl wearing a red backpack

Another girl wearing a baseball cap slightly tilted on the head

One male student with black eyebrows 

who has ever written love letters

Sitting with a boy who has never written love letter

And also two privates coming out of army camp for vacation

One grandma with her little grandson

Among the ten

Some ones know each other and some not

Some seem to have seen each other somewhere

The wind is blowing very hard outside

Though ten people are eating hot rice cake dumpling soup

They are all islands surrounded by ten oceans

Ten islands different in shape

Are eating hot rice cake dumpling soup cooling huhu

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Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Categories
Musings of a Copywriter

Pray to Win

Devraj Singh Kalsi gives an entertaining account of ‘Tumpji pujas’ across India during the US elections

The strength he mustered to defy the writing on the Mexican wall and challenge the mandate had come from a country he had called dirty just a few days ago. We do not mind his saying so because our own writers and filmmakers have sold this image to the West for several decades.  

Faith can move mountains. Orisons can deliver miracles even in Arizona and the man in office – By Georgia! – knew something incredibly magical was on his way from the East. Kudos to the cabal of jingoist well-wishers who were engaged in performing yajnas* and havans* with pure desi* ghee to propitiate the powers of heaven to spread dollops of glee on his face, to ensure another term for him in Safed Ghar* and keep the world supposedly safe though I ran away from this false belief amid fears of a lurking strike in his second innings. Every nuke and corner of the world under his glaring watch would upset and reset the ticking clock of global peace. 

The feisty flames inflamed the mercurial man who was determined to trump his foes with his planetary virility. He spewed balls of fire to hang on and refused to cow down, setting a new precedent as a president in the history of the nation. Only if the organisers could spell his name correctly instead of Tump, the omnipotent gods would have transferred the votes he required to win, by influencing the counting officials to detect more inaccuracies with the postal votes that went against him.     

The inner voice guided and goaded him to prove winners never quit and quitters never win. He felt re-elected in his mind despite the mismanaged pandemic and wished to make a bonfire of all anti-incumbency votes in the havankund* – only if he could get those picked out by an invisible force in the closely contested polls conducted in the few crucial states that slowed down his juggernaut. Most of the leaders who swept to power around the time he had won were given another term and they would now feel lonely without his bombastic company and pack of white lies. 

Praying to win is a common – and effective – practice among contestants the world over. Cadres of all parties do so for their beloved leaders during election time. Sometimes the native people pour unadulterated love for global leaders perceived as friendly and helpful for the home country – those who can be a pillar of support against hostile neighbours. Tump Ji is one such beneficiary of generous and spontaneous love showered by legions of admirers here. 

Havankund and yajnas are also performed for friendly countries and their leaders. We want these friends to occupy the office for a long period. Though we cannot elect or re-elect them through the voting process, we can surely seek divine deliverance for them. Even if we have few friends around the world, a powerful ally is what we need to keep our neighbours under control. If Tump Ji remains in favour, we do not fear our neighbours. With Tump Ji as the ring master, the Chinese cannot drag on further with their LAC plans. He has been a pillar of support for us in the past few years – the one guy we can ring up any time to share our woes and he jumps to our defence by scolding our mischievous neighbours with veiled threats and dire warnings. 

When the news finally reached Tump Ji that the land of seers has the divine power to flip electoral outcomes and influence voters without any fraud, he was elated and wondered why his Indian buddies did not part with the secret mantras of success earlier. He suspected a conspiracy of sorts hatched in the native village of a democrat. He was now told there were many pundits with manic and talismanic powers who could swing the verdict right in his favour before the voting was over, but it was a tough call to reverse what was already cast. He was told of the potency of keeping red hibiscus and marigold underneath his pillow for nine consecutive nights to avoid getting pilloried. He was advised to chant Jo(e) Boley So Nahin Hovey* 555 times every day. Such tweets and messages were sent to him and he read and followed them all. 

Tump Ji was also advised to avoid kissing during this critical phase as it would suck out the chances of victory and spell the proverbial kiss of death for him. He was told to eat a vegetarian diet as this sacrifice would prove rewarding. Simple lifestyle modifications: Drink tall glasses of buttermilk instead of wine to show power without intoxication. He was assured of a divine shower of blessings if he stayed away from sausages and beef. As the election results began to pour in and his drubbing became imminent, he overheard his better half talking of a possible split though he could not be very sure whether she talked of a split in votes or their marriage.  

Coming to the aspect of divine intervention, the chanting of mantras gifted him with nerves of steel. He pinned high hopes on the judiciary to act as his saviour – the supreme power would reside in the unanimous verdict of judges. This would allow him the opportunity to ride back to power and occupy the same house instead of indulging in frivolous thinking of constructing another one on the opposite side because he still believed he was wanted by half of his countrymen. It was impossible to accept defeat with grace as he felt he was still very much in the presidential race. 

*yavanas, havan: prayers around the fire

*Desi ghee: Ghee made from cow’s milk

*Safed Ghar: White House

*Havankund: The container in which a fire is built for prayers

*Joe boley so nahin hovey: A take off that means whatever Joe utters shall not be fulfilled. The take off is from the shout of victory and exaltation among Sikhs, Bole so nihal.

Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.  

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Categories
Poetry

Clocking a Harvester

By Tom Merrill

Clocking a Harvester by Tom Merril Clocking a harvester, from nut to underground larder and back, I found the course consistently run in thirty-five, forty seconds maximum— and I clocked his clockwork awhile; and seeing how hard he worked at building up his stockpile— at such a relentlessly steady pace— and since a rest seemed due, I slipped out and scattered a few by the hole to his home. When I looked, later on, they were gone. I had put out the peanuts to see if the jays or the squirrels would get to them first, but instead found a new mouth to feed— not at all to complain. Truth be told, sharing such stores I suppose is an old custom of mine, and recalls a time when all my best handfuls were aimed at arming another against the coming cold.


Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs.He is Poet in Residuum at The Hypertexts and Advisory Editor at Better Than Starbucks.

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