Pen, Pain and Poem: Feminist-Humanist Works of Sarup
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JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 Pen, Pain and Poem: Feminist-Humanist works of Sarup Dhruv Dr.Khevana Desai Assistant professor, Department of Sociology, Mithibai College of Arts, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Email: [email protected] Abstract Sarup Dhruv, a voice from Gujarat was born in an independent nation (born a year after India attained freedom) and ultimately became the voice of the ones who never tasted freedom. She is not just the voice of the neglected but a voice most neglected in the mainstream and standardized Gujarati literature. She is the one who experienced marginalization in the literary world and yet never ceased to worry, write or work for every single strata of the marginalized society. Her poems are an emblem of passion with which she has moved in the world of Gujarati literature like wings on fire. Her works are a reflection of her activism filled with social compassion, social work and ideas of empowerment of women, dalit and other marginalised sections that reshaped her vocabulary, insight and perception. For her poetries of protest could not and should not be confined to rigid „forms‟ with stereotyped content. It should be the voice of the voiceless and not a song for applauses and appraisal. Her poems and other writings are denoted as fearless, „free‟ and fiery or rather for the mainstream literary world „a deviance from the established‟. The paper attempts to highlight and analyse the path breaking and unconventional contribution of Sarup Dhruv not just in Gujarati literature in particular but in Indian women‟s writings at large. Key words: Feminism, humanitarianism, Gujarati literature, women‟s writings. No more poems of flowers from me/ they say seasons change with flowers but flowers that bloom naturally can’t even usher a word when they are picked or plucked, rumpled and crumpled, rubbed and crushed, brutally smashed and destroyed to death and yet taken to convert them for perfumes and vase, garland to graves or to the stoned lifeless temples and tombs, mosques and churches. - Sarup Dhruv (Hastkeshp, 2003) Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 307 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 For anyone who loves feminist-humanitarian Gujarati literature Sarup Dhruv is not a name but an Institution. A powerful septuagenarian poet-writer, playwright, activist and a human right crusader.Sarup Dhruv, a voice born in an independent nation (born a year after India attained freedom) became the voice of the ones who never tasted freedom. Alas, she is not just the voice of the neglected but a voice most neglected in the mainstream and standardized Gujarati literature. She is the one who experienced marginalization in the literary world and yet never ceased to worry, write or work for every single strata of the marginalized society. Her poems are an emblem of passion with which she has moved in the world of Gujarati literature like wings on fire. Her entire work and vision can be summarised in her statement “I always said the truth, not to establish myself but to express, to express the pain in its all honesty and universality”. Born in an upper caste, educated community of VadnagraNagars, she remained alien to words like atrocities or scarcity in her nascent years. Both her highly educated parents were at the forefront of socio-cultural milieu in the city and had close affiliations with the progressive and intellectual elites including Sarabhai family. Dhruv, in her early days witnessed the glory of literary activities of the elite by the elite and in most cases for the elite of Gujarat. She believes that the seeds of poetry were sown during that period. A progressive and secular mind expanded its horizons in the diverse and multicultural environment at St.Xaviers College. Inter- dinning and mingling became a natural act. Neither surrounded by activists in the family nor a product of any direct student union activities, Dhruv was an ardent reader and a follower of utopian literary world in her early college and University days. And it was here where her love for Gujarati literature turned into a passion, madness. Reading, writing and teaching literature had become her sole purpose. She aimed to have a distinct identity by doing so, by breathing and living literature and making a living out of it. Establishing oneself in that world and making a mark as a literary figure was what she dreamt of. Away from the politics in society, of society, indifferent to the world full of inequality and injustice she had confined herself in a cosy tranquillity of words and dreams. Poems of ‘personal is political’ Late sixties and early seventies was a time when she began to enter the world of existentialism, modernism, surrealism prevailing in hitherto world literature. Here enormous readings of classics and contemporaries of Indian and world literature including the subaltern voices only remained an ideology to be pondered upon and not write about. It was then that her euphoria with words got a point of contact. She joined and became an active member of hotel poets group spearheaded by Chinu Modi, a modern voice in Gujarati poetry. She was also associated with „Re math’, poetry group of experimental writers in modern and postmodern Gujarati literature in 1970s and 80s. She came in close contact with LabhshankarThaker, Madhu Rye, Rajendra Shukla and Manhar Modi. Dhruv, with all her overarching influence of her ancestors, kept herself away from realistic or reality oriented literature. She wrote, wrote a lot during those poet‟s group meets, discussed and imbibed new forms, new methods of critical Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 308 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 appreciation of literature and protested against the feel-good factor of literature from Gandhian era. Later she published her first collection of poetry MeraHathni Vat (1982), which won an award from the Gujarati SahityaParishad. It had expressions of her world and personal struggles of an urban educated woman. But soon that euphoria vanished. The initial need to identify with the „in-group‟ had withered away and so had the pleasure of being called a „poet‟ and „establishing‟ one‟s self amongst that reference group. Infact, even for „Mara haathnivaat‟ that was published post this bubble burst, she felt like “accepting the illegal child publicly”. She couldn‟t identify with most of the expressions of the collection. She realized the hollowness behind those ideologies. Vague and ambiguous thought processes about „change‟. It was all shallow and aimed towards replacing the pre-existing authoritarian voices with one‟s own. It lacked social concerns, all pervasive injustice and life oriented vision. It‟s when she realized that she never wanted to write what she did so far. Her heart revolted against all that and all those whom she thought were her guiding forces. The flowery language of her contemporaries began to hurt her like a thorn. The romanticism and surrealism of „Mara Hathni Vat (1982)‟ transformed into flames of fire in „Salgatihavaao’ (1995). The utopian castle of poetry had demolished by now and a new terrain of reality was being cultivated and continued to flourish in her latest collection poems „Hastakshep‟ and SahiyaraSurajniShdohma (2003). Post 1982 her personal pains and anger were expanding its horizons and took path that was less travelled. She began to question the very essence of hitherto written poetries. A path less travelled Late eighties and early nineties, made her personal pain, political. That taught her the poem of protest. That gave her the power to persist. Beginning with being an educator at Jesuit society, where she could witness or observe her own literature and culture from outside and then slowly entering into the world of social compassion, social work, empowerment of women, dalits and other marginalised. Her vocabulary was changing and so was her perceptions and insight. In 1984, She along with her co-traveler Hiren Gandhi established „SamvedanSanskritikManch’ and crossed the threshold of the burgeoiselietraray world for the first time. With no support from the elite cultural groups or rather amidst great protest they began their journey as playwright of some of the most revolutionary acts of that time. And slowly they moved beyond the horizons of the city, the state and joined hands with several other comrades from different parts of the nation. A fight that began just as a demand for freedom of expression turned in to a movement for humanity, equality and justice. A journey that began to express anger turned into working for the ones who face the anguish every day. Expanding the arms and encompassing every voiceless, marginalised, down trodden, women, dalit, tribal, homeless, slum dweller, unemployed, daily wage labourers, child labour, the wide strata of exploited minorities. She along with her group participated in every possible rally against inflation, displacement, Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 309 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 riots, tragedies, anti-reservation bills and got associated with programmes for peace, awareness, empowerment and justice. All the traditional, compartmentalized shackles of poetries were breaking. She realised the poetries of protest couldn‟t and shouldn‟t be confined to rigid „forms‟ with stereotyped content. It should be the voice of the voiceless and not a song for applauses and appraisal. It was here that her poems became fearless, „free‟ and fiery or rather for the mainstream literary world „a deviance from the established‟. Her vocabulary was harsh, heart wrenching, acidic and bitter just like reality. She was often questioned for writing „only those kind of poems‟. Social commitment to that world was for skits, journalism and reports.