9 The Female Imagination: Early Indian Feminism and the Role of Society
Abdul Mubid Islam
Introducing the Poets:
Eunice De Souza was born in 1940 to Roman Catholic parents of Goan origin who received a master’s degree in English Literature from Marquette University and later did her PhD from the University of Bombay. She was later appointed as a teacher in English at St.Xavier’s College, Mumbai where she became the Head of the Department and continued to teach till her retirement in 2000. De Souza’s poetry is characterised by a terse language and brevity of expression which makes her poems minimalistic like the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The simplicity of her poems is underlined with a note of sarcasm and much of her poems deals with the female question. Her published works include Fix (1979), Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990) and Selected & New Poems (1994). She has also edited a number of anthologies chief among which is Nine Indian Women Poets (2001), Purdah: An Anthology (2004), Women’s Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English (2004), Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology 1829-1947 (2005) and The Satthianadhan Family Album (2005). Apart from poetry, she is a talented actress and director. She has also written four children books.
Advice to Women
Keep cats
if you want to learn to cope with
the otherness of lovers.
Otherness is not always neglect—
Cats return to their little trays
when they need to.
Don’t cuss out of the window
at their enemies.
That stare of perpetual surprise
in those great green eyes
will teach you
to die alone.
(Eunice de Souza)
Critical Appreciation:
This is a unique poem of Eunice de Souza as one can see minimal use of words as well as the “liminal” use of perspective. The poem is in fact couched in the form of an advice to women who are jilted in love or feel frustrated due to the growing indifference of their lovers. The need to adapt to such a condition is what the poem tries to justify by bringing in the image of the cat. The speaker does not set specific rules to guide and motivate women; she just barely states the facts and the need of adaptation which rue out the chances of feeling dejected.
The cat then becomes a powerful symbol in this poem. One should however hold no preconceived ideas of such juxtaposition that is to say the general idea of associating the women-kind with the animal instinct of the cat. From the standpoint of behavioural psychology, researchers have found uniqueness in cats as against dogs. A cat is the master of its own will and disposition unlike a dog which is always faithful to its master and obeys every single command. A dog is said to have no ego syndrome while a cat has tremendous ego issues. It will come and snuggle only if it feels the urge to. In other cases, it will remain indifferent and oblivious to any order of its master. It is this trait that de Souza asks the women folk to emulate. The idea is not just to follow any primordial animal instinct but to rather be selective in the choice of a particular trait. This is bolstered in the advice to keep cats in order to learn from them by minutely observing their disposition.
The expression “otherness of lovers” refers to the indifference of the lovers in the course of a relationship. However, de Souza is cautious enough to not fall into the category of generalisation as she immediately counters her argument by stating that “Otherness is not always neglect—“. This is a witty ploy adopted by de Souza as she never takes the ‘Indian women’ for granted, being herself one of them in the first place. She goes on enlisting the qualitative merits of cats by highlighting a series of behavioural symptoms. The returning of the cats to their litter trays without cussing their enemies is a point that the poet tries to drive home to the Indian women. In a sense, the poet wants the women to learn from the cats the indifference they display. Therefore, the poet sees no point in the general taken-for-granted assumption of the women cussing and quarrelling with their neighbour-turned-enemies from their windows. The poem concludes with the poet’s acknowledgement of the grandeur of the “great green eyes” of the cats which she believes has the potential to teach the women how to live. The expression “will teach you/to die alone” is in fact the poet’s greater understanding of the self-sufficiency displayed in the mannerisms of the cats. The expression “to die alone” therefore obviously does not refer to the death of the women in the physical sense but to the cultivation of the habit of being self-reliant and self-sufficient without being ever victimised by “neglect” from their loved ones.
Eunice
Eunice, Embroidery Sister said
this petticoat you’ve cut
these seams
are worthy of an elephant
my dear
Silly bra-less bitch
Eunice is writing bad words sister
she’s sewing up her head
for the third time sister
the limbs keep flopping
the sawdust keeps popping
out of the gaps
sister.
(Eunice de Souza)
Critical Appreciation:
Through this short but revealing poem, de Souza tries to upheld the qualitative standard of the modern Indian woman through the eponymous persona who has the uncanny knack to sabotage the stereotypical image of the Indian women as one whose only avenue of relaxation is embroidery. The reader would also do well to recall the poem Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger by Adrianne Riche in which the speaker complains about the burden of domestic life with the powerful association of the weight of the wedding ring that sits heavily on her hand. The concern of both the speakers in these poems is to seek an opportunity to voice out their mutual angst. However, the former poem is a silent and humble portrayal of asserting one’s identity through the work of embroidery as it is the only creative engagement that the speaker has full access to. De Souza’a poem on the contrary is a more powerful vindication of such an identity freed from the societal norms and hierarchal notions of conceiving the female gender. In a word, the poem is more about flaunting the rules prescribed by the patriarchal society for the sound conduct of women.
The poem unfolds in the third person narrative which gives de Souza ample space to reflect on the condition of the lot of the general women. The persona’s inability to do embroidery work is revealed in the concern of the Embroidery sister. The sister who is also the instructor censors the persona for having made the wrong size of a petticoat. The humiliation faced by the persona for cutting the petticoat into a size “worthy of an elephant” is immediately challenged in the outright denunciation of the Embroidery sister as a “Silly bra-less bitch”. This is a remarkable statement coming from the eponymous character that seems to represent the entire class of Indian women subject to such mean pastime with the age-old belief that the wisdom of the hand is the only knowledge that a woman should crave for. Such candidly vocal denunciation of the sister, perhaps a Christian missionary, might also represent the authority that imposes rules and limitations. It becomes more intriguing because the reader here finds a striking disregard to conventional norms. That embroidery is not and can never be the sole avenue for expressing female creativity is brilliantly stated.
The ‘writing of the bad words’ by the persona is not only presented as a kind of complaint lodged by the other women who consider it a blasphemy to go against or even think ill of the restrictive norm and thereby the authority but also throws light on the unique brand of the persona. The expression “sewing up her head’ cannot be literary interpreted as an act of embroidery work but should be interpreted as a metaphorical statement on the stoic fortitude and determination of the persona to lay waste to all forms of stereotypes. Thus, the poem is an explicit critique of feminine sexuality which not only takes cognizance of the ‘body’ of the female in biological approximation but also interprets it in the cultural context which ordains the discourse of gender in the first place.
Introducing the poet:
Kamala Das was born at Punnayurkulam, Kerala in 1934 into the traditionally matrilineal community of the Nayars. Her mother was the great Malayalam poet Balamani Amma who exerted considerable influence on her along with the influence of her uncle Nalapat Narayan Menon who was a prominent Malayalam writer. It was due to such a rich creative atmosphere that she began to compose and write prolifically in both Malayalam and English and eventually got her recognition by winning the PEN Asian Poetry Prize in 1963. Her poetry is known for the confessional and autobiographical element that seems to provide the necessary thrust to her poems. Her candid and frank admonition of sexuality in case of both the gender has established her reputation as one of the foremost Indian English woman writers who has earned accolades for possessing a voice so unique and powerful. As a poet, Kamala Das is completely obsessed with the theme of love, relationship and sex which she believes is quite natural in human beings along with its counter effects in the form of loneliness and frustration. She makes it a point to openly discuss and bring out the tabooed subjects which make the average Indian shy away even at the very thought of it. The élan and candour of opening such intrinsically private matters for public consumption is reflected in her much- hyped autobiography My Story. She expresses the female desire in a revelatory fashion which shock and baffle the minds of the reader. Nevertheless, despite her preoccupation with the essential notions of female-hood, she never vocally asserted herself as an active feminist. Her published works include Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants 91967), The Old Play House and Other Poems (1973), Tonight, this Savage Rite: The Love Poems of Kamala Das and Pritish Nandy (1979), The Annamalai Poems (1985), Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (1996) and Ya Allah (2001). Interestingly, at the age of 65, Kamala Das embraced Islam and changed her name to Kamala Suraiyya. She has also published a novel The Alphabet of Lust in 1997. She won the Sahitya Academy Award in 1985 and passed away on May 31, 2009 at the age of seventy-five.
An Introduction
I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with
Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings,
my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent muttering of the blazing
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair when
I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
Fro, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank
Pitifully. Then… I wore a shirt and my
Brother’s trousers, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness. Dress in saris, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook
Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don’t sit
On walls or peep in through our laced-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamla, or better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games.
Don’t play at schizonophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love… I met a man, loved him, call
Him not by any name, he is every man,
Who wants a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him…the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me…the ocean’s tireless
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself
If in the world, he is tightly-packed like the
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drinks lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who die dying
With a rattle in mu throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
(Kamala Das)
Critical Appreciation:
The poem ‘An Introduction” appeared in Kamala Das’s first volume of poems entitled Summer in Calcutta which was published in 1965. This poem is fully autobiographical and may also be labelled as a confessional poem. It is confessional in the sense that Kamala Das here takes the reader into her confidence with regard to matters which are strictly private and personal. Like all her other confessional poems, this poem shows Kamala Das’s candour in dealing with themes like sex and the female body which has long been held as a tabooed subject in the Indian context. At the same time, it also shows her capacity for self-assertion. Furthermore, it is a poem of revolt against conventionalism and against the restrictions which the Indian society has imposed upon women since time immemorial. Kamala Das’s feminist outlook and her advocacy in favour of the rights of women although in an indirect manner find ample expression in this poem.
The poem begins in the first person narrative where the speaker asserts that although she does not know much about politics, yet she know the names of those persons beginning with Nehru. This statement is an immediate challenge to the stereotypical image of the Indian women believed to be ignorant of the ways of the world, born only to serve the needs of the masculine gender. In fact the entire poem is replete with instances that celebrate the idea of a liberated female self freed from the bondage of domestic servitude. The speaker then goes on to describe herself as an Indian, of a very brown complexion, born in Malabar with the ability to speak three languages, write in two and dream in the third. She then speaks sarcastically of her relatives who used to advise her not to write in English as it was not her mother tongue. The sense of rebellious spirit of Kamala Das finds its best spokesperson in the form of the speaker who decries all her relatives and friends and takes them to task for giving her a reductive view of her own self.
The speaker then talks about the physical and bodily changes that dawn upon her, appropriating herself more concretely into the feminine gender. But the manner of asserting such changes is quite bold given the generally reserved Indian sentiment on such issues. It is in the most candid terms that the speaker describes the crudity of her husband who fails to reciprocate her tender feelings and her feminine desires. She goes on to speak about people who urged her to engage in female chores like embroidery and cooking or to engage in cheap skirmish with the house servants. They also asked her to tone down her temperament which they believe was not at all congenial for the smooth running of the family and further advised her not to pretend to be a schizophrenic or a nymphomaniac. These qualitative advices at once indicate the restrictive norms that define the life of Indian women who are never given due recognition but are always pitted into an abyss of sexual surrender to the male members of the family.
The speaker finally describes herself as;
…I am sinner
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours,
The feminism of the poet here comes full circle in her spontaneity to break away from the conventional and orthodox limitations of the female sex which has to bear the brunt of male domination and superiority. Kamala Das tries to assert this aspect with gusto that the idea of conceiving females as belonging to a different reality is seriously flawed and unjust, that the female is no different from the male, that like every other human being she is sometimes sinful and sometimes pious, sometimes loved and sometimes betrayed, that she has the same joys and aspirations in life like others and that she too suffers from disappointments like others.
Thus, Kamala Das has successfully given a self-portrait and the anatomy of her mind in the form of this poem. Apart from the ingenuous sexual imagery and metaphors, the title is basically an introduction not only of herself but of the entire community of Indian women afflicted with gender inequality. Although she never professed to be a feminist along set standards, this poem rightly place her as a one. Stylistically speaking, the poem is devoid of any metre and rhyme and so is drafted in vers libre (free verse) which is characterised by compression, compactness and apt phraseology.
The Looking Glass
Getting a man to love you is easy
Only be honest about your wants as
Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him
So that he sees himself the stronger one
And believes it so, and you so much more
Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your
Admiration. Notice the perfection
Of his limbs, his eyes reddening under
The shower, the shy walk across the bathroom floor,
Dropping towels, and the jerky way he
Urinates. All the fond details that make
Him male and your only man. Gift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of
Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,
The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your
Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting
A man to love is easy, but living
Without him afterwards may have to be
Faced. A living without life when you move
Around, meeting strangers, with your eyes that
Gave up their search, with ears that hear only
His last voice calling out your name and your
Body which once under his touch had gleamed
Like burnished brass, now drab and destitute.
(Kamala Das)
The same frankness and candid assertion of private affairs in the poem An Introduction gets reflected in this poem. In fact, the intensity of frankness is much higher here than in An Introduction. The title of the poem indicates that Kamala Das tries to highlight the potential of the mirror to reflect back a virtual image of the female body and thus to establish a discourse of sexuality of difference. One is often reminded of Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror in which the mirror not only assumes the speaking voice but communicates its impartial reflective potential and its unbiased nature. The intertextuality as a matter of fact ends here as Kamala Das in this poem is not concerned with the replicating nature of the mirror but is more concerned about the image replicated in the process. Undoubtedly, the poem deals with sexuality but it is equally important to what extent this issue is carried on and to what end. The poem is a wonder revelation as the reader won’t find any such poem in Indian English engaged in contesting the binaries of sexuality in explicit details. Granted the autobiographical note of Das’s poetry that is said to permeate the text of her poems, it is no wonder that Kamala Das is often considered to be the only Indian poet with the guts of portraying femininity in its essential nudity.
The poem unfolds with the speaker’s belief in the prospects of loving a man honestly by a woman. But the ‘honesty’ of the woman is what proves to be the driving force of the poem as the speaker goes on to enumerate a list of prescriptions that should be mutually followed by both the gender in order to “know” each other more truly. The emphasis on nudity as has been earlier mentioned forms the basis of such a relationship. The speaker expresses the need to “stand nude” with the male partner before the looking glass which gives both the gender to examine and probe into the biological properties, anatomical differences as well as the essential similarities of the respective gender. In a sense, what Das is trying here is to arrive at a negotiation of the heated gendered politics that categorically defines identities in exclusive categories in the form of binaries.
The strength of the male partner should be admired; but this admiration should not be a flattery. The speaker advises the woman to maintain composure while engaged in a careful examination the male body. The often debated and much controversial eroticism of Kamala Das’s poetry gets reflected in the expressions like “the shy walk across the bathroom floor”, “dropping towels”, “the jerky way he urinates” in ascribing male sexuality and “scent of long hair”, “the musk of sweat between the breasts”, “and the warm shock of menstrual blood” in locating female sexuality respectively. The reader is naturally driven out of his/her wits because here is a poem that explicitly deals with tabooed subjects—subjects which are often clubbed as ‘bedroom secrets’ and that is believed to dwarf the dignity and integrity of the woman subject to an unrecuperable position. And it is by dint of such overt sacrilege on the sanctity associated with conjugal life that Das tries to voice her own brand of feminism.
The speaker’s blatant disregard to civic decorum and moral propriety in vociferously demanding from the women the urgency to scrutinise the libidinal nature of gender politics gets bolstered furthermore in the expression “endless female hunger”. It is an astounding demand made on the part of the speaker as it does not tally with the general behaviour of the female body. The “hunger” here should not be equated with ‘lust’; it is a more delicate form of hunger—one that can be satiated only by the mutual recognition of both the gender in ascribing individuality. Interestingly enough, Mahapatra’s poem Hunger too deals with the rawness of sexual gratification; but it is also about the hunger of the belly. There is however no correspondence between these two poems as the latter does not intend to assert the sexuality of a teenage girl compelled to undergo prostitution for poverty. The reader must therefore be conscious in making any intertextual reference because all poems are thematically presented with an ulterior objective.
The speaker is equally aware of a life devoid of love for which she explains the need to secure a partner that would spend the rest of his life with the woman. The sense of waste generated in the last lines (“now drab and destitute”) in the failure to achieve a man is the deeper realisation of the speaker on the fatuity of living a life without relationship. The poem, seen from this angle, can be argued to be the frustrated attempt of Kamala Das to secure the knot of relationship between both the genders. The feminism of Das lies not just in juxtaposing the essentialism of gender enmeshed in sexual politics but also in forging out a new identity of the women with a mutual recognition from the Other.
The Dance of the Eunuchs
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
They dance, oh, they danced till they bled… There were green
Were in each of them. Even the crows were so
Critical Appreciation:
In this poem, Kamala Das introduces the notion of “aberrant” in the form of the eunuchs who are perceived to be ‘social outcast’ in India and are often subject to ridicule and questioning due to their doubtful sexual identity. Having said that, this poem cannot be solely analysed from the typical lens of Indian feminism; one must adhere to the ongoing debates on sexuality of the “third gender”. The idea of the third gender has gained prominence due to the rise of queer theories in the academic field. The Indian term for eunuch is “hijiraah” which is a controversial word. It is not that this third gender is something new in the socio-political climate of India. Indian mythical history asserts the existing notion of the third gender in the form of “hariharan” (a mixed form of Krishna and Shiva). However, granted the homophobic nature of Indian society, the third gender has often been granted a neglected presence although the Indian parliament has now offered seats to this category. No matter what politically nuanced category the third gender has sought to upheld, it has perpetually faced censor before the sexual binary. In this poem, Kamala Das tries to uphold not the negative connotation of the third gender but the ritualistic element that has been attached to it. The Indians often consider the ‘hijiraahs’ as people having a certain prophetic power—the power of predicating the future, the power of cursing someone and the power of satiating the demands of the gods in the form of ritualistic dance and songs. It is this last aspect that the poem tries to configure in terms of describing a situation of drought.
The poem begins with the eunuchs’ dancing in circles which has led their skirts to flow wide. The idea of transvestites serves to be an interesting read but it defies the context. Therefore, the reader should bring down his perception and should focus more on the nature of such a performance. One should note that the idea of performance is always already attached to the identity of the hijiraahs and the Indian reader cannot let go such configurations. The jingling of the anklets, the long braids of hair, the flashing eyes made black by multiple layers of Kaajal and surmaah, the green tattoos on their checks, their hair adorned with jasmine flower are all graphic images that portray them in the stereotypical light. The conceptual notion of violence that serves to be a fitting corollary to their identity is thus vindicated by Das in delineating their physical appearance.
The speaker of the poem places importance on the harshness of their voices which makes their song even more melancholic and sturdy. The themes of their songs were not happy memories but quite calamitous. The act of beating drums along with the beating of the breast is a significant image as it conveys and foreshadows the upcoming ritual of rain-seeking. This dance of theirs tantamount to equate the religiously sacrosanct nature of the various Indian types of veneration (yaggyas) sought to please the gods. It becomes quite ironic that the Indians who often consider these people with a doubtful identity ultimately have to seek their help. The speaker introduces a striking simile in the form of half-burnt logs from funeral pyres while commenting on their anatomical features—their limbs being dry and thin. In a sense, the speaker wants the reader to have a fair estimate of the prevailing atmosphere that is replicated in the physical properties of the eunuchs.
The images of the crows perching silent on the trees and the children watching wide-eyed on the strange but familiar genuflections made by the eunuchs in their dance is a reminder of the contumely atmosphere as well as a statement on the trance-like dance form. The poem concludes with the ultimate revelation in the form of the rain that descends like a drizzle. The reader feels that the dance of the eunuchs has finally satiated the gods who have crackled the sky with thunder and lightning. Das’s ingenuity of detail description comes to the fore when she tries to offer a realistic touch to the rain that carries the stink of dust and the urine of the lizards and mice. Thus, the poem is a statement on the “purposefulness” of the eunuchs and serves to be a documentation of the uniqueness of their alleged identity.
Introducing the poet:
Imtiaz Dharker was born in 1954 in Lahore who has carved a niche in the edifice of the Indian English Literature by the sheer power of her poetic composition which is both politically viable as well as artistically delightful. She considers herself as a Scottish Calvinist Muslim and this conception gets reflected in the confluence of three divergent cultures in her poetry. Her poetry is a convincing assurance of the fact that irrespective of geographical disparities, the female condition is universal. Her poetry unfolds new vistas of considering the essential identity of the female as the most marginalised of identities in society. Her anthologies include Purdah and Other Poems (1988), Postcards from God (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001) and The Terrorist at my Table (2006). Apart from being a poet, she is an accomplished documentary filmmaker and an artist.
Purdah I
One day they said
she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.
Purdah is a kind of safety.
The body finds a place to hide.
The cloth fans out against the skin
much like the earth falls
on coffins after they put the dead men in.
People she has known
stand up, sit down as they have always done.
But they make different angles
in the light, their eyes aslant,
a little sly.
She half-remembers things
from someone else’s life,
Perhaps from yours, or mine –
carefully carrying what we do not own:
between the thighs, a sense of sin.
We sit still, letting the cloth grow
a little closer to our skin.
A light filters inward
through our bodies’ walls.
Voices speak inside us,
echoing in the spaces we have just left.
She stands outside herself,
sometimes in all four corners of a room.
Wherever she goes, she is always
inching past herself,
as if she were a clod of earth
and the roots as well,
scratching for a hold
between the first and second rib.
Passing constantly out of her own hands
into the corner of someone else’s eyes…
while doors keep opening
inward and again
inward.
(Imtiaz Dharker)
Critical Appreciation:
Anyone interested in unravelling the salient features of Indian feminism will do good to start with Imtiaz Dharker’s poem Purdah I in which one finds what kind of importance do Indian poets impart to feminism. One should however understand that apart from the official gendered politics and the polemics verging in the study of feminism, the concern of poets like Dharker lies in unearthing the feminine mystique. Considering the potential of such a mystique, it is quite natural to find Dharker voicing out the bitter experience of injustice, oppression, violence and gender politics faced by the Indian women. The poem therefore can be seen as a documentation of a psychological violence engineered through the culture of purdah.
The Holy Qur’an Saarif makes a clear cut statement on the compulsive nature of the purdah as the defining factor in the life of a female. However, this was originally enunciated as a safety measure for the sake of the women and also to secure their dignity and integrity from profaning eyes.
But today, given the different political times and geographical condition, it has been seen as a “flagrant violation of the basic rights, freedom and dignity of women. Purdah is seen as symbol of repression on women as it is devastatingly ruinous to the personality of women”. (Tiwari, Kanak Lata, “The Real Feminist in Indian English Writing: Kamala Das and Imtiyaz Dharker”). By extension, the idea of the Purdah bears a close affinity with the traditional Indian custom of the “ghungaat” which is also a crucial signifier of the restrictive norm imposed on women at the sight of a stranger. The “ghungaat’ therefore like the “purdah” or the “hijaab” is also a cultural text, having a discourse that is steeped in the ideology of patriarchy. However, one must never generalise and consider the epistemic parallels of these terms. All these terms, being gender/identity markers, have different layers of association and should be interpreted accordingly.
The poem begins in a casual fashion with the speaker adopting the third person narrative mode where she categorically asserts the grand narrative of “shame” as something quite “natural” to women. It is here that the famous French feminist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s postulation comes into play. Beauvoir states that nobody is born as a women but it is the condition of culture that gives birth to such a type in the first place. Even Birbal’s experiential mode of discovering the gender of two Siamese twins on the request of Akbar was based on the essential behavioural differences between the twins which further assured him of their gender. Likewise, in the poem the speaker’s assertion is heavily couched in the behavioural disposition of females who has to ‘learn” shame. This idea of learning begets the contention of “shame” being one amongst the few disciplining tools advocated by the society or for that matter culture in the growth of a girl. It serves to be a turning point in the life of a girl who suddenly becomes conscious of her sexual growth. This consciousness is brought about by the culture she belongs and goes on to project the gargantuan difference between the two sexes.
The speaker in the poem brings in the contentious assumption of purdah being a kind of safety for women. In a lighter vein, the speaker reasons out that it serves to hide the body with the use of an unfamiliar simile. The purdah is compared to the earth that hides the dead body. Again, the pervert nature of men and their curiosity to know the female body with scientific interest is bolstered in the expression “But they make different angles/in the light, their eyes aslant,/ a little sly.” It is also interesting to note that Dharker does not fall into the abysmal position of making any value judgement in the poem regarding the purposefulness or insignificance of purdah as a specific standard of femininity. And it is this objective distance so created that lands her in a position from which she could have ample opportunity to debate on the prejudicial nature of a patriarchal culture.
The speaker brings in a striking carnal image of self-abnegation when she assets that a burgeoning sin afflicts the female. The expression “between the thighs, a sense of sin” is a clear degradation of the female body. However, this statement should not be interpreted in the psychoanalytical sense of castration complex or penis envy. More importantly, it is an affirmation of the amount of frustration the female undergoes in possessing a body that turns out to be the prime agent of patriarchal repression. That “voices speak inside us” is in fact a vindication of the sheer pressure felt by the female in the search of her identity.
The poem becomes more fascinating because although the speaker is aware of the limitations of the female body, yet she is equally confident of a certain growth that differentiates her from inanimate objects. The growth here is both physical and mental. The poem concludes with an interesting metaphor of the door which can be seen as Dharker’s envisioning of the female not only as an object of fascination suggested by the opening of the door but also as a symbol of alienation and isolation from the outside world suggested by the closing of the door. The expression “while doors keep opening/inward and again/inward.” is an instance in point. Thus the poem questions the logical validity of culture-specific ideological beliefs and in doing so highlights the predicament of the women.
Eunice De Souza: Life and Works
- Eunice De Souza was born in 1940 to Roman Catholic parents of Goan origin.
- She was later appointed as a teacher in English at St.Xavier’s College, Mumbai where she became the Head of the Department and continued to teach till her retirement in 2000.
- Her poems is underlined with a note of sarcasm and much of her poems deals with the female question.
- Her published works include Fix (1979), Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990) and Selected & New Poems (1994).
- She has also edited a number of anthologies chief among which is Nine Indian Women Poets (2001), Purdah: An Anthology (2004), Women’s Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English (2004), Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology 1829-1947 (2005) and The Satthianadhan Family Album (2005).
Themes and Issues explored in the Poems: Advice to Women
- Couched in the form of an advice to women who are jilted in love or feel frustrated due to the growing indifference of their lovers.
- One should however hold no preconceived ideas of such juxtaposition that is to say the general idea of associating the women-kind with the animal instinct of the cat.
- A dog is said to have no ego syndrome while a cat has tremendous ego issues. It will come and snuggle only if it feels the urge to. It is this trait that de Souza asks the women folk to emulate.
- de Souza is cautious enough to not fall into the category of generalisation as she immediately counters her argument by stating that “Otherness is not always neglect—“.
- The poet sees no point in the general taken-for-granted assumption of the women cussing and quarrelling with their neighbour-turned-enemies.
- The expression “will teach you/to die alone” is in fact the poet’s greater understanding of the self-sufficiency displayed in the mannerisms of the cats.
Eunice
- De Souza tries to upheld the qualitative standard of the modern Indian woman through the eponymous persona who has the uncanny knack to sabotage the stereotypical image of the Indian women as one whose only avenue of relaxation is embroidery.
- A more powerful vindication of an identity freed from the societal norms and hierarchal notions of conceiving the female gender.
- The poem unfolds in the third person narrative which gives de Souza ample space to reflect on the condition of the lot of the general women.
- Seems to represent the entire class of Indian women subject to such mean pastime with the age-old belief that the wisdom of the hand is the only knowledge that a woman should crave for.
- The poem is an explicit critique of feminine sexuality which not only takes cognizance of the ‘body’ of the female in biological approximation but also interprets it in the cultural context which ordains the discourse of gender in the first place.
Kamala Das: Life and Works
- Kamala Das was born at Punnayurkulam, Kerala in 1934 into the traditionally matrilineal community of the Nayars.
- She began to compose and write prolifically in both Malayalam and English and eventually got her recognition by winning the PEN Asian Poetry Prize in 1963.
- Her poetry is known for the confessional and autobiographical element.
- As a poet, Kamala Das is completely obsessed with the theme of love, relationship and sex which she believes is quite natural in human beings along with its counter effects in the form of loneliness and frustration.
- The élan and candour of opening such intrinsically private matters for public consumption is reflected in her much-hyped autobiography My Story.
- Her published works include Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants 91967), The Old Play House and Other Poems (1973), Tonight, this Savage Rite: The Love Poems of Kamala Das and Pritish Nandy (1979), The Annamalai Poems (1985), Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (1996) and Ya Allah (2001).
- At the age of 65, Kamala Das embraced Islam and changed her name to Kamala Suraiyya.
- She has also published a novel The Alphabet of Lust in 1997.
- She won the Sahitya Academy Award in 1985 and passed away on May 31, 2009 at the age of seventy-five.
Themes and Issues explored in the Poems: An Introduction
- Like all her other confessional poems, this poem shows Kamala Das’s candour in dealing with themes like sex and the female body which has long been held as a tabooed subject in the Indian context.
- It is a poem of revolt against conventionalism and against the restrictions which the Indian society has imposed upon women since time immemorial.
- In fact the entire poem is replete with instances that celebrate the idea of a liberated female self freed from the bondage of domestic servitude.
- The speaker then talks about the physical and bodily changes that dawn upon her, appropriating herself more concretely into the feminine gender.
- The speaker describes the crudity of her husband who fails to reciprocate her tender feelings and her feminine desires.
- The feminism of the poet here comes full circle in her spontaneity to break away from the conventional and orthodox limitations of the female sex.
- Kamala Das has successfully given a self-portrait and the anatomy of her mind in the form of this poem.
The Looking Glass
- The title of the poem indicates that Kamala Das tries to highlight the potential of the mirror to reflect back a virtual image of the female body and thus to establish a discourse of sexuality of difference.
- Undoubtedly, the poem deals with sexuality but it is equally important to what extent this issue is carried on and to what end.
- The poem unfolds with the speaker’s belief in the prospects of loving a man honestly by a woman.
- The poem enumerates a list of prescriptions that should be mutually followed by both the gender in order to “know” each other more truly. The emphasis on nudity as has been earlier mentioned forms the basis of such a relationship.
- Das is trying here is to arrive at a negotiation of the heated gendered politics that categorically defines identities in exclusive categories in the form of binaries.
- The often debated and much controversial eroticism of Kamala Das’s poetry gets reflected in the expressions like “the shy walk across the bathroom floor”, “dropping towels”, “the jerky way he urinates” in ascribing male sexuality and “scent of long hair”, “the musk of sweat between the breasts”, “and the warm shock of menstrual blood” in locating female sexuality respectively.
- Blatant disregard to civic decorum and moral propriety in vociferously demanding from the women the urgency to scrutinise the libidinal nature of gender politics gets bolstered furthermore in the expression “endless female hunger”.
- The feminism of Das lies not just in juxtaposing the essentialism of gender enmeshed in sexual politics but also in forging out a new identity of the women with a mutual recognition from the Other.
The Dance of the Eunuchs
- Kamala Das introduces the notion of “aberrant” in the form of the eunuchs who are perceived to be ‘social outcast’ in India and are often subject to ridicule and questioning due to their doubtful sexual identity.
- One must adhere to the ongoing debates on sexuality of the “third gender”.
- The Indian term for eunuch is “hijiraah” which is a controversial word.
- Indian mythical history asserts the existing notion of the third gender in the form of “hariharan” (a mixed form of Krishna and Shiva).
- the third gender has often been granted a neglected presence.
- In this poem, Kamala Das tries to uphold not the negative connotation of the third gender but the ritualistic element that has been attached to it.
- Indians often consider the ‘hijiraahs’ as people having a certain prophetic power—the power of predicating the future, the power of cursing someone and the power of satiating the demands of the gods in the form of ritualistic dance and songs.
- The idea of performance is always already attached to the identity of the hijiraahs.
- The jingling of the anklets, the long braids of hair, the flashing eyes made black by multiple layers of Kaajal and surmaah, the green tattoos on their checks, their hair adorned with jasmine flower are all graphic images that portray them in the stereotypical light.
- The act of beating drums along with the beating of the breast is a significant image as it conveys and foreshadows the upcoming ritual of rain-seeking.
- The images of the crows perching silent on the trees and the children watching wide-eyed on the strange but familiar genuflections made by the eunuchs in their dance is a reminder of the contumely atmosphere as well as a statement on the trance-like dance form.
- The poem is a statement on the “purposefulness” of the eunuchs and serves to be a documentation of the uniqueness of their alleged identity.
Imtiaz Dharker: Life and Works
- Imtiaz Dharker was born in 1954 in Lahore.
- She considers herself as a Scottish Calvinist Muslim and this conception gets reflected in the confluence of three divergent cultures in her poetry.
- The female condition is universal; the essential identity of the female as the most marginalised of identities in society.
- Her anthologies include Purdah and Other Poems (1988), Postcards from God (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001) and The Terrorist at my Table (2006).
- Apart from being a poet, she is an accomplished documentary filmmaker and an artist.
Themes and Issues explored in the Poem: Purdah I
- One should however understand that apart from the official gendered politics and the polemics verging in the study of feminism, the concern of poets like Dharker lies in unearthing the feminine mystique.
- Dharker voicing out the bitter experience of injustice, oppression, violence and gender politics faced by the Indian women.
- It is a documentation of a psychological violence engineered through the culture of purdah.
- The Holy Qur’an Saarif makes a clear cut statement on the compulsive nature of the purdah as the defining factor in the life of a female.
- It has been seen as a “flagrant violation of the basic rights, freedom and dignity of women.
- Purdah is seen as symbol of repression on women as it is devastatingly ruinous to the personality of women”.
- The idea of the Purdah bears a close affinity with the traditional Indian custom of the “ghungaat” which is also a crucial signifier of the restrictive norm imposed on women at the sight of a stranger.
- The “ghungaat’ therefore like the “purdah” or the “hijaab” is also a cultural text, having a discourse that is steeped in the ideology of patriarchy.
- In the poem the speaker’s assertion is heavily couched in the behavioural disposition of females who has to ‘learn” shame; a turning point in the life of a girl who suddenly becomes conscious of her sexual growth.
- Dharker does not fall into the abysmal position of making any value judgement in the poem regarding the purposefulness or insignificance of purdah as a specific standard of femininity.
- The expression “between the thighs, a sense of sin” is a clear degradation of the female body.
- That “voices speak inside us” is in fact a vindication of the sheer pressure felt by the female in the search of her identity.
- The poem questions the logical validity of culture-specific ideological beliefs and in doing so highlights the predicament of the women.
Poetic Devices/Structure/Stylistic Features:
- The cat then becomes a powerful symbol in the poem.
- A cat is the master of its own will and disposition unlike a dog which is always faithful to its master and obeys every single command.
- The expression “to die alone” therefore obviously does not refer to the death of the women in the physical sense but to the cultivation of the habit of being self-reliant and self-sufficient without being ever victimised by “neglect” from their loved ones.
- The poem unfolds in the third person narrative which gives de Souza ample space to reflect on the condition of the lot of the general women.
- The reader would also do well to recall the poem Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger by Adrianne Riche in which the speaker complains about the burden of domestic life with the powerful association of the weight of the wedding ring that sits heavily on her hand.
- The former poem is a silent and humble portrayal of asserting one’s identity through the work of embroidery as it is the only creative engagement that the speaker has full access to.
- The expression “sewing up her head’ cannot be literary interpreted as an act of embroidery work but should be interpreted as a metaphorical statement on the stoic fortitude and determination of the persona to lay waste to all forms of stereotypes.
- The poem An Introduction is fully autobiographical and may also be labelled as a confessional poem.
- Apart from the ingenuous sexual imagery and metaphors, the title is basically an introduction not only of herself but of the entire community of Indian women afflicted with gender inequality.
- Stylistically speaking, the poem is devoid of any metre and rhyme and so is drafted in vers libre (free verse) which is characterised by compression, compactness and apt phraseology.
- One is often reminded of Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror in which the mirror not only assumes the speaking voice but communicates its impartial reflective potential and its unbiased nature. The intertextuality as a matter of fact ends here as Kamala Das in The Looking Glass is not concerned with the replicating nature of the mirror but is more concerned about the image replicated in the process.
- The “hunger” here should not be equated with ‘lust’; it is a more delicate form of hunger— one that can be satiated only by the mutual recognition of both the gender in ascribing individuality. Interestingly enough, Mahapatra’s poem Hunger too deals with the rawness of sexual gratification; but it is also about the hunger of the belly.
- The conceptual notion of violence that serves to be a fitting corollary to their identity is thus vindicated by Das in delineating their physical appearance.
- Importance on the harshness of their voices which makes their song even more melancholic and sturdy.
- Their dance tantamount to equate the religiously sacrosanct nature of the various Indian types of veneration (yaggyas) sought to please the gods.
- The speaker introduces a striking simile in the form of half-burnt logs from funeral pyres while commenting on their anatomical features—their limbs being dry and thin.
- Das’s ingenuity of detail description comes to the fore when she tries to offer a realistic touch to the rain that carries the stink of dust and the urine of the lizards and mice.
- The poem Purdah I begins in a casual fashion with the speaker adopting the third person narrative mode where she categorically asserts the grand narrative of “shame” as something quite “natural” to women.
- The famous French feminist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir states that nobody is born as a women but it is the condition of culture that gives birth to such a type in the first place.
- This consciousness is brought about by the culture she belongs and goes on to project the gargantuan difference between the two sexes.
- The speaker reasons out that it serves to hide the body with the use of an unfamiliar simile.
- The poem concludes with an interesting metaphor of the door which can be seen as Dharker’s envisioning of the female not only as an object of fascination suggested by the opening of the door but also as a symbol of alienation and isolation from the outside world suggested by the closing of the door.
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Reference
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