Ashvamegh Vol.II Issue.XXII November 2016

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About Us: Ashvamegh Vol.II Issue.XXII November 2016

Ashvamegh Biharsharif, India [email protected], +91 7004831594

Editorial Board on Ashvamegh:

Alok Mishra (Editor-in-Chief) Murray Alfredson (Sr. Editor) Dr. Shrikant Singh (Sr. Editor) Nidhi Sharma (Sr. Editor) Vihang Naik (Sr. Editor) Pooja Chakraborty (Editor) Anway Mukhopadhyay (Editor) Munia Khan (Editor) Dr. Sarada Thallam (Sr. Editor) D. Anjan Kumar (Sr. Editor) Ravi Teja (Editor)

Advisory Panel on Ashvamegh: Dr. Swarna Prabhat Ken W Simpson N. K. Dar Alan Britt

Ashvamegh is an online international journal of literary and creative writing. Publishing monthly, Ashvamegh has successfully launched its 22nd issue in November 2016 (this issue). Submission is open every day of the year. Please visit http://ashvamegh.net for more details.

Find Ashvamegh on Facebook Twitter Website Table of Contents: Ashvamegh Vol.II Issue.XXII November 2016

Cover About Us

Authors whose papers have been selected

• Dr. Tarit Agrawal • Dr. Prakash Narain • Dr. Tukaram S Sawant • Pallavi Mishra • Neeti Agarwal • Neha Purohit • Karthiga KB & Dr. Isaac Jebastine • Ujawal Rathore • Ananth • MK Shamsudheen • Dr. Lalita Gupta & Dr. Lucky Gupta • Sayanti Mondal • Dipanvita Sehgal • MC Thenmozhi & Dr. Srinivasan • Mohini Kaushik

Essays:

• Hisham M Nazer • Neera Kashyap • Preeti Singh

(note: you can download research articles and essays in a different non-fiction edition of the issue from the website)

Find Ashvamegh on Facebook Twitter Website Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Alok Mishra: Editorial ISSN: 2454-4574 I don’t know if someone else in the past had said it or not, I think that literature is a fluid thing. If you think that literature is a phenomenon, then I will say that it keeps happening every single moment. If you that literature is a window, then I will say that the room you are talking about has only 4 large sized windows instead of the walls. What I want to say is that literature is just ‘that important’! We have lost one gem from our literature just some days ago – the legendary Leonard Cohen! Leonard Cohen was one my favourite poets alive. Not only a poet, he was also very famous for his songs and especially the way he used to sing them. The literary fraternity will surely miss the figure who just left us alive ‘a thousand kisses deep’. This weekend, the Ashvamegh Literature group on WhatsApp was discussing the topic ‘Global Literature’. Of course, the discussion was initiated by me and I wanted the academicians to think in a certain way which goes against the classic notion that world literature and global literature are somewhat same. How much I could succeed and how valid my arguments were can be traced here: “Discussion on Global Literature in Ashvamegh WhatsApp Group” I have also another great news to convey. Some days ago, Ashvamegh has organized a poetry competition on our WhatsApp platform. The winners and all other entries can be seen here: Ashvamegh poetry Competition on WhatsApp. The theme of the competition was sympathy, and worth mentioning that we had a great deal of discussion the poems submitted. That was good to see. I wish best to all the poets, authors and scholars to be published in this issue. We can surely make things happen! Keep on writing and reading! Best wishes for the coming days, Alok Mishra

Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Agrawal: Modern sensibility: meaning & concept ISSN: 2454-4574

Modern Sensibility: Meaning and Concept With Special Reference to the Poetry of Today By – Dr. Tarit Agrawal

Introduction to the Author:

At present, working as assistant professor in English in Govt. Degree College, Pulwara, Bar, Jhansi, U.P., Dr. Tarit Agrawal has written many articles in international peer reviewed journals, presented papers in National seminars. A social activist, pedantic scholar and poet at heart, he is a good human being who always pines for broadening the horizon of knowledge through new researches and novel thoughts.

Abstract

Modern Poetry is the real mirror of twentieth century life. It analyses our politics, our ideology and economic system and so on and so forth. The poetry of today is not the poetry of sun-set, or of twilight, or of clouds; it is a bitter and faithful expression of day-to-day actions and experiences of man living in a society which seems to have absolutely no integration of values, no immediate relief from pains one continually suffers from and no hiding place from the chaos, frustration and confusion of everyday life; it is the poetry of man’s struggles, his labour, is misfortunes. It would not be wrong to comment that Modern Poetry is no longer a Utopian contemplation of the region of dream and idealism. It has a distinct program for the regeneration of dwindled humanity. It seldom takes into consideration the glamour of old romance though in very rare cases, we do come across the streaks of moon-light and shadowy figures of knights. Dream of Romance is shattered by the grim realities of life. The modern poet is a rebel and he revolts against the present artificial social structure of the world, against the unequal and unjust economic system that makes a few chosen persons enjoy and roll in wealth, while under it, hundreds of millions of workers and labourers live semi-naked, half-fed and unsheltered. As a matter of fact, modern sensibility does not allow to go into the realm of the past or to peep into future. It inevitably presents the present with a true representation of what actually happens and what it actually means. Briefly speaking, the meaning of sensibility has been understood differently during different volumes of time, but modern sensibility, with reference to modern poetry, is what helps us the most to understand the true picture of the twentieth century world we live in.

Key-Words: Modern Poetry, Modern Sensibility, Ideology, Dwindled Humanity, Utopian.

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Sensibility may be described as a juxtaposition of a man’s experience and the nature of his responsiveness towards it or in other words, man’s sensibility may be described as the outcome of his positive or negative attitude towards whatever experiences he has in his practical or theoretical life. Man is a social creature meaning that he is bound to live in this social atmosphere, no matter to what extent he likes it and to what measure he dislikes it. He has many experiences from such a society and through the reasoning faculty of his mind, he makes a show of his response towards those experiences and the result that comes out of it may be described as his sensibility. Thus, sensibility is something which is definitely related to his practical life but at the same time, apart from his practical life, he has a number of imaginative experiences or the experiences which are related to his own inner self and if a man uses his scruples to know whether he is permitted by his reason to justify such experiences or not, and through this, if he comes to any conclusion, the same can be described as his sensibility and surely such a sensibility is something which is related to his theoretical or speculative life.

It would not be appropriate to relate sensibility to the capacity for having the feelings and experiences only for oneself but the term refers to a capacity of identifying with and responding to the feeling and experiences of others too, and to respond to the beautiful. In this sense, the meaning of the term sensibility seems to be paradoxical to the theory propounded by Hobbes(A) – a famous exponent of the seventeenth century stoicism that man is self-centered and always activated by his own self-interests. The sermons and philosophical writings of the early eighteenth century give the confirmation for the inappropriateness of Hobbes’ theory by claiming that man is a replica of philanthropy and thereby, always wishes the success and good luck of others. In this respect, we can obviously mention that the term sensibility refers to a tendency of feeling the miseries and catastrophes of others with inward pain. During the eighteenth century literary atmosphere, sensibility declined into sentimentality. It became “a pejorative term applied, in a general sense, to an excess of emotion to an occasion, or in a more limited sense, to overindulgence in the ‘tender’ emotions of pathos and sympathy”.1 In other words, the term sensibility seems to exhibit a propensity for the luxury of grief. In this respect, the following lines deserve to be quoted:

“The term (sensibility) became popular in the eighteenth century when it acquired the meaning of ‘susceptibility of tender feelings’; thus, a capacity not for feeling sorry for oneself so much as being able to identify with and respond to the sorrows of others – and to respond to the beautiful. This quality of empathy was probably a reaction against seventeenth century stoicism and Hobbes’ theory that a man is innately selfish and motivated by self-interest and the power drive. In sermons, essays, fiction and philosophical writings (in the early eighteenth C.), it was averred on the contrary that man was innately benevolent and thus wished others well. The Earl of Shaftsbury”s Characteristics (1711) proclaimed this view. In the periodical The Prompter (1735), a writer defended the human attitude that is not content merely with good natured action but feel the misery of others with inward pain’. This was deservedly termed ‘sensibility. By mid-century, such feelings were an accepted part of social ethics and public morality. It was a sign of good breeding and good manners

1 A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams, Prizm Publication, p. 284, 1999.

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to shed a sympathetic tear, as indeed in Grey’s “Elegy” (1750), Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (1770) and Cowper’s The Task (1785), not to mention the various odes to sensibility from the 1760s onwards. To other relevant works in the history of this attitude were Stern’s A Sentimental Journey (1768) and Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). ‘Dear sensibility!’ writes Stern (in an almost ode-like tone), ‘source unexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys or costly in our sorrows.’ In The Man of Feeling, sensibility became self-indulged. It declined into sentimentalism and showed a propensity for the luxury of grief’…”2

The above mentioned lines give a clear concept about the meaning of sensibility as considered during the eighteenth century that the term included an extraordinary emotional and sentimental response towards the joys and sorrows of others. Thus, it came to be believed during this period that it is this ‘sensibility’ of a man which obviously confirms his benevolence and sympathetic nature. In order to have a better understanding, we can mention the following lines:

“For most of the eighteenth century, a man of sensibility, a quality, supposed to be characterized of all persons of virtue and breeding, was one who possessed a sympathetic heart, a quick responsiveness to the joys and sorrows of others, and a propensity towards the shedding of compassionate tears. The doctrine of sensibility, a reaction against the seventeenth century, emphasizes on reason and the Hobbesian theory of the innate selfishness of man was found on the concept of man as inherently benevolent and sympathetic”.3

The term sensibility in the modern age seems to cover the entire literary area because the term from the modern perspective, suggests a highly developed emotional and intellectual capacity for literary creativity. It came to be believed in the twentieth century that it is sensibility which describes the temperament of a poet towards different experiences, towards his emotional and intellectual apprehension and towards aestheticism which altogether become the source for his literary creation. From this perspective, it must be noted that while reading poetry, the reader basically tries to make out what is the sensibility of the poet towards his literary creation and it is nothing but the sensibility of the reader through which he becomes able to evaluate or appreciate that literary creation. In other words, it is poet’s sensibility which attracts him towards the aesthetic and thereby enables him for literary creation and it is the reader’s sensibility which enables him to first get at the poet’s sensibility behind that literary creation and then to judge and evaluate, to which rank of literature, the work should be placed. This act of making out the sensibility of the poet on the part of a reader through his own sensibility has been described in the modern age as the ‘Phenomenological Criticism’(B) which states that “the real is a closely woven fabric. It does not await our judgment before incorporating the most surprising phenomena, or before rejecting the most plausible figments of our imagination. Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out and is presupposed by them.”4

2 A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, edited by J.A. Cuddon, 1989.pp.346-347. 3 A Reader Guide to Literary Terms, edited by Karl Beckson and Arthus Gan, 1982, pp. 278-79. 4 Phenomenology of Perception, M.Merleau Ponty, Translated from French by Collin Smith 1982.pp.X-XI.

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In this way, the Phenomenological criticism lays emphasis on the apprehension of only the sensibility of the genetic force i.e. of the poet by the sensibility of the reader. And the act of ‘judging a literary work on the part of a reader through his own sensibility’ has been described in the twentieth century as the ‘Reader Respond Criticism’(C) which states that “the definition of what literature is, i.e. not an object but an experience obliterates the traditional separation between reader and text and makes the responses of the reader rather than the contents of the work, the focus of critical attention”.5 Thus the term ‘sensibility’ may be described as the cardinal factor for the literary creation, literary apprehension and literary evaluation. Constantly, the term has a special appeal for the “New Critics”(D) as they are concerned with the factors that contribute to the literary creation and apprehension and with the tools with which to approach literature. “Today, the term sensibility suggests a highly developed emotional and intellectual apprehension and particularly a kind of responsiveness to aesthetic phenomena. With varying shades of meaning, this word has been used by a number of the ‘New Critics’ to describe qualities of the temperaments which produce or appreciate poetry”.6 In order to have better understanding, it is necessary to understand what is meant by the term ‘modernism’(E). In fact, modernism is one of those terms that have constantly eluded proper definition. What does the term ‘modernity’ exactly connote in the context in which the term is being used? First of all, let us have it clear in our minds that contemporaneity does not ensure modernity. The fact that if all the significant works of a poet are published in the twentieth century and he is a contemporary of such towering poets like Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Auden and Ezra Pound, this does not automatically grant his modernity. Some writers of the past appear to be breathing just behind our backs much nearer to us in spirit and thought than many of the contemporary poets. To elucidate the point, a few lines of John Lucas are worth quoting:

“Attempts to define modernism are necessarily contentious. Should we try to bracket it within certain dates, pin it down to place, identify it by formal and stylistic concerns, or link it to particular ideological positions? It is an extension of earlier movements, such as Romanticism or a repudiation of them? Merely to put the question is to indicate that a short essay cannot hope to deal satisfactorily with the many issues they raise. Such questions do, however, make clear that the blanket term ‘modern Poetry’ inevitably covers a number of widely divergent poets and poetic enterprise. Like the modernism of which it is a part, it is far less homogenous than has sometimes been assumed. And as it is almost certainly better to speak of ‘modernisms’ rather than the abstractive ‘modernism’ so the all-inclusive phrase ‘modern poetry’ is probably less satisfactory than the more cumbersome but also more enabling term ‘modern poetries’.

There is though one generalization which does less harm than most, it is that modernism was born at the stroke of a pen with mass commodity culture. The usefulness of this statement, when applied to poetry, is that it signals the determination of a number of writers to try to resist the incorporation of their poetry into a culture which would treat it as merely consumable matter. This is not to say that they succeeded. There is virtually nothing that cannot end up on the coffee-table.

5 Reader-Respond Criticism: From Formalism to Post Structuralism, Edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 1978,p.xvii. 6 A Reader’s Guide to Literary Terms, by Karl Beckson and Arthur Gan, 1982, p. 298.

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Nevertheless, the works I have in mind, and which may be said to constitute the canon of modern poetry is made as inassimilable as possible. Hence, the difficulty of such poetry. Hence, too the accepted split between the popular and the good. This split was eloquently traced by Henry James, in an essay of ‘The Art of Fiction’ (1884). Disputing what he saw to be a growing orthodoxy, one which took for granted that fiction ‘should either be instructive or amusing’; James insisted that the writer’s ultimate responsibility must be to his art and not to its consumers. His impassioned resourceful defence of the right of the novelist to consider only the needs of his work became one of the central dogmas of modern poets, especially Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Like James, the two poets were American émigrés. Both of them were intense admirers of James’ art and theoretical writings. Neither, however, saw anything to admire in the poetry of pre-great war England, which was the poetry they were introduced to as soon as they arrived here, Pound in 1908, Eliot six years later. This is not to be wondered at. English poetry at that time was for the most part dull, often technically incompetent, and the poets who produced it exuded a deep complacency which was bound to be anathema to Pound and Eliot.”7

It is interesting to observe that when we describe a work of literature as ‘modern’, we do not merely mean that it has been published in the last year or two, or since the beginning of the twentieth century, perhaps, since the Renaissance, or perhaps, since the decline of the Roman Empire and the earliest poems and chronicles written in a vernacular European tongue. For modern times might be thought to being, for some points of view with the Christian era itself. Now, when we describe a work as ‘modern’, we are ascribing certain intrinsic qualities to it though we may be vague in our minds about what these qualities are. Thus the question of date needs not rise at all. In order to understand ‘modernism’ in form of a movement a few lines of Peter Barry are worth mentioning:

“‘Modernism’ is the name given to the movement which dominated the arts and culture of the first half of the twentieth century. Modernism was that earthquake in the arts which brought down much of the structure of pre-twentieth century practice in music, paining, literature and architecture. One of the major epicentres of this earthquake seems to have been Vienna, during the period of 1890-1910, but the effects were felt in France, Germany, and Italy and eventually even in Britain, in art movements like Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism. Its after-shocks are still being felt today and many of the structures it toppled have never been rebuilt. Without an understanding of modernism then it is impossible to understand twentieth century culture.

In all the arts touched by modernism what had been the most fundamental elements of practice were challenged and rejected: thus, melody and harmony were put aside in music; perspective and direct pictorial representation were abandoned in painting in favour of degrees of abstraction in architecture traditional forms and materials (Pitched roofs, domes and columns, wood, stone and bricks) were rejected in favour of plain geometrical forms, often executed in new materials like plate glass and concrete. In literature, finally, there was a rejection of traditional realism

7 Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism, Edited by Martin Coyle, Peter Garside, Malcoem Kelsall and John Peck – Chapter 21 – “Modern Poetry” by John Lucas. First Printed – 1990. pp. 303-309.

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(chronological plots, continuous narratives relayed by omniscient narrators, closed endings etc.) in favour of experimental forms of various kinds.

The period of high modernism was the twenty years from 1910 to 1930 and some of the literary ‘high priests’ of the movement (writing in English) were T.S. Eliot(F), James Joyce(G), Ezra Pound(H), Windham Lewis(I), Virginia Woolf(J), Wallace Stevens(K) and Gertrude Stern(L) and (writing in French or German), Marcel Proust(M), Stephane Mallarme(N), Andre Gide(O), Franz Kafka(P), and Rainer Maria Rilke(Q)…

The overall result of these shifts is to produce a literature which seems dedicated to experimentation and innovation. After its high point, modernism seemed to retreat considerably in the 1930s, partly, no doubt because of the tensions generated in a decade of political and economic crisis but a resurgence took place in the 1960s (a decade which has interesting points of similarity with the 1920s when modernism was at its height). However, modernism never regained the pre-eminence i9t had enjoyed in the earlier period.”8

Apart from all this it should be acknowledged here that the outbreak of the First World War produced a tremendous change in the tendency of the English poets. The trumpets of the national war stirred many younger soldiers to poetry. The finest exhilaration of war gave rise to much exaltation of spirit and patriotic fervour, but the horrors and waste of the war brought only disillusionment and cynicism. Robert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Gibson and many others reflected the earlier facile idealism as well as the indignant pity to which the fact of war had moved them.

The period between the two wars 1919-1939 witnessed a great change in the poet’s attitude to life. Heroics no longer interested them and they settled down to a resigned acceptance of fate. From the sorrow and despair that had reared their emotion, they turned to explore their own mind. They approached the task by first rejecting all traditional valued and beliefs. These were held to be responsible for man’s failure to conquer his environment with the help of science.

The Second World War has produced a deep effect on English poetry and as a matter of fact, it has made English poetry the finest poetic art in the realm of world literature. While the First World War had brought about a Spiritual Idealism in the mind of mankind, the Second World War has given to mankind something Higher- Spiritual Realism. Purification of Soul – not through idealistic imagination but through concrete realism has been the main aim of the modern poets after the horrible war created a terrible and formidable havoc in the sea and in the air.

It is interesting to observe that poetry today can be written on almost any subject. The modern poet finds inspiration from railway trains, tram-cars, telephone, the snake charmer and things of common place interest. Modern poets have not accepted the theory of great subjects for poetic composition. The whole universe is the modern poet’s experience. He writes on themes of real life and also makes excursion in the world of religion, mysticism and fairy land.

8 Beginning Theory – An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory by Peter Barry, Manchester University press – Chapter 4 – ‘Postmodernism’ – First Printed – 1995, pp. 81-83.

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In the final analysis, it should be stated that poetry is a criticism of life. It must maintain its contact with life. Modern poetry is the reflection of modern life with its modern sensibility. It is realistic in tone and expresses the spirit of the age. It cannot be denounced as petty, wayward and puerile. It can safely take its place of pride in the kingdom of poetry produced from the times of Chaucer to the modern times.

Select Reading

1. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, ed., The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds of Modern Literature. 1965.

2. Robert M. Adams, Nil: Episodes in the Literary Conquest of Void during the Nineteenth Century. 1966

3. Irving Howe, ed., The Idea of the Modern in literature and the Arts. 1967

4. Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture. 1968

5. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations. 1969

6. Paul de Man, “Literary History and Literary Modernity,” in Blindness and Insight. 1971.

7. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era. 1971.

8. David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode. 1976.

9. Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus. (2d. ed.,) 1982.

10. Sanford Schwartz, The Matrix of Modernism. 1985.

11. Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. 1986.

12. Austin Quigley, The Modern Stage and Other Worlds. 1985.

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End Notes

A: Thomas Hobbes was an English Philosopher, best known today for his work on Political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most of later Western political philosophy.

B: Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20the century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Gottingen and Munich in Germany. It then spread to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl’s early work. Phenomenology is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness.

C: Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to othe4r schools and theories that focus attention primarily of the author or the content and form of the work. Although literary theory has long paid some attention to the reader’s role in creating the meaning and experience of a literary work, modern reader-response criticism began in the 1960s and ’70s, particularly in the US and Germany, in work by Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland Barthes, and others.

D: New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom’s 1941 book The New Criticism. The work of English scholar I. A. Richards, especially his Practical Criticism and The Meaning of Meaning, which offered what was claimed to be an empirical scientific approach, were important to the development of New Critical methodology.

E: Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I.

F: T. S. Eliot was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and one of the twentieth century’s major poets. He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working and marrying there. He was eventually naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship.

G: James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant- garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century.

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H: Ezra Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, and a major-figure in the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language.

I: Windham Lewis was an English painter and author. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticist, Blast.

J: Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals.

K: Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

L: Gertrude Stern was an American author, journalist, and essayist. She also wrote under the pen names of Leah Morton, Eleanor Morton, and E. G. Stern.

M: Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist, best known for his monumental novel A la recherché du temps perdu (In Search of Lost time), published n seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest French authors of his time.

N: Stephane Mallarme was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.

O: Andre Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight. Gide’s career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anti-colonialism between the two World Wars.

P: Franz Kafka was a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.

Q: Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian Austrian poet and novelist, widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German language poets, writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke’s works as inherently mystical.

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The Presentation of the Western World in Indo-Anglian Fiction By – Dr. Prakash Narain

Introduction to the Author:

Dr. Prakash Narain is the head of English Department, MGM (PG) College, Sambhal, UP. He has attended various conferences and presented papers on different literary topics. Also, he has published papers in different literary journals on vivid literary opinions.

The western world is presented in the novels of several Indian English novelists whether it is Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth; Amitav Ghosh or Upamanyu. The main focus of the novels after the nineties is to show Indian born people, rather the expatriate in different countries of the globe and how they react against or for the society of that particular country. In this way Indian novelists open up the door of the western world to the Indians and the vice-versa. In Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’, Upamanyu’s ‘English, August’, Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Calcutta Cromozome’, Salman Rushdie’s ‘Ground Beneath Her Feet’ and ‘Enchantress of Florence’, etc. the western influence, rather the global journey is very much evident. Now, the question which automatically arises before us that whether the exposure of the western world or the East-West relationship in the novels after nineties a bane or a boon for the Indian writing in English Naturally it has its positive as well as the negative aspects. The global journey, in the one side gives us the scope to roam without physical journey to see the world through the black letters of the novels and to think and evaluate the cultures of the different countries with our culture and habits on the other way, critics are also of opinion that such a journey marks the intrinsic merit of the novels because the novels based on journeys on a foreign land seem more a travelogue or itinerary rather than a compact work of fiction. The problem of unity and disunity in structures, themes and content appear from the very issue as we are discussing in the previous section that whether the global journey a boon or a bane for the Indian English novels.

Critics like M.K. Naik are of opinion that “such an excessive journey as is evident in the recent novels down from Anita Desai or Shashi Deshpande will create disorder, chaos and frustration in a particular fiction”. The problem of unity and disunity should be understood in its detail because it is the core of essential good writing whether it is fiction or poetry; prose or short-stories. The particular problem rises due to the rapid growth of ideas as ‘globalization’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘diaspora’. For all its revolutionary and therapeutic benefits there are, as Fanon has written, many pitfalls to national consciousness. Foremost among these are uncritical assertions and constructions of cultural essentialism and distinctiveness. Fanon, as Bhabha points out, “is far too aware of the dangers of the fixity and fetishism of identities within the calcification of colonial culture to recommend that “roots” be struck in the celebratory romance of the past or by homogenizing the history of the present. The entrenched discourse of cultural essentialism merely reiterates and gives legitimacy to the insidious racialization of thought which attends the violent logic of colonial rationality. Accordingly, the unconditional affirmation of Indian culture reinstates the prejudices embodied in the unconditional affirmation of European culture. Clearly, the nationalist work 10 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Narain: Western world and indo-anglian fiction ISSN: 2454-4574 of psychological and cultural rehabilitation is a crucial and historically expedient phase in the liberation of a people consigned, as Fanon puts it, to barbarism, degradation and bestiality by the harsh rhetoric of the colonial civilizing mission. Nonetheless, aggressive assertions of cultural identity frequently come in the way of wider international solidarities. Ideally, national consciousness ought to pave the way for the emergence of an ethically and politically enlightened global community. National consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension. The same thing is evident in the neo- novelists of the Indian diaspora. The fake nationalism inspires disunity within the structure and theme of a particular fiction but according to Salman Rushdie, “the unity can be achieved through the management of themes into a particular framework so that the effect of globalization would not affect the unity”. However, the problem of unity and disunity is a complex problem to comprehend for a layman who doesn’t have enough literary nourishment. But it is a serious problem and that is why, we discussed it in a comprehensive way. The recent novelists of Indian origin and the European novelists of the twenty-first century concentrate also on this particular problem and it is also the Ulysses’ bow of criticism among erudite personalities.

For instance, as a global problem, the mass migration happening from the villages to the cities and it is shown intricately in the case of Rasheed in A Suitable Boy. Even Arun moves to Calcutta for his job and he takes up a cosmopolitan identity in A Suitable Boy. These migrations can also be seen in an Equal Music where Michael moves away from his hometown in the countryside to Vienna and then to the city of London to pursue a musical career. The characters take up a cosmopolitan identity rather than a pan-national identity and this is one of the traits of globalization. Seth uses different styles and genres which are amply reflected in his works. His poetry, novels, a novel in verse, a travelogue, a libretto, a memoir, all these reflect his inclination to travel on uncharted territories and very few people can claim to have achieved fame by experimenting with such different genres. Even his works reflect a global nature in the variety with which Seth provides his readers. One can only marvel at the length he went to so as to give such an in-depth study in all his works. In the novel ‘English, August’ by Upamanyu Chatterjee, we see that the story centers around a westernized city-boy Augustya who is stranded in a small village with a job he isn't interested in at all. The western influence on young generation and vast difference between urban and rural lives form a part of the theme as well. The influence of over sexuality of the western life can easily be seen in this novel. Agastya is often shown indulging in masturbating. The reference of Mrs.Shrivastava’s black bra under yellow or pink blouse is enough proof of this fact.

Amitabh Ghosh’s ‘Calcutta Cromozone’ also presents the influence of the western world. The novel begins with the story of Antar, an employee of the LifeWatch organization, who recounts an encounter with L. Murugan, an employee of Life Watch who has disappeared in Calcutta. The plot is quite complicated and its timelines are deliberately mixed up. Antar starts to track Murugan’s disappearance in Calcutta many years back. Murugan has asked to be transferred to Calcutta because of his fascination with the life of Sir Ronald Ross. The Calcutta of Ronald Ross is well separated in time from the Calcutta that Murugan visits, but the New York of Antar and the Calcutta of Murugan seem to overlap in time, though it is clearly stated in the novel that they are separated by many years. Through his research into old and lost documents and phone messages, Antar figures out that Murugan had systematically unearthed an underground scientific/mystical movement that could grant eternal life. Loosely described, the process is as follows: the disciples of this movement can transfer their 11 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Narain: Western world and indo-anglian fiction ISSN: 2454-4574 chromosomes into another, and gradually become that person or take over that person. In the novel, Ronald Ross did not discover the mysteries of the malaria parasite; it was a group of underground practitioners of a different, mystical "science," natives of India, who helped to guide Ross to the conclusions for which he is famous. These Indians provided Ross with clues in the belief that in the moment Ross made his discovery, the parasite would change its nature. At this point, a new variant of malaria would emerge and the group's research using the chromosome-transfer technique would advance even further Western silence is a recurrent theme in the novel, originating from the often-stated premise that to say something is to change it. Huttunen notes that the workings of the Indian scientific/mystical movement uncovered by Murugan "constitutes a counter-science to Western scientific discourse". The tenets of the group contain aspects of the Hindu belief in the transmigration of souls as well as of contemporary scientific ideas about genetics and cloning. Its native Indian members operate through means kept secret from the more Westernized characters and from the reader, and their activities become progressively clearer as the novel continues until their plan is revealed to the reader. Huttunen explains that the methodology of this group is based on the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas about communication by way of silence. In Levinas' view, "the other exists outside the traditional ontology of Western philosophy which conceives of all being as objects that can be internalized by consciousness or grasped by adequate representation ... Consequently, silence in this novel represents the kind of unattainable experience that transcends the level of language, or knowing". It is this enigma that the novel leaves behind as an abiding theme. The reader is forced to keep thinking about it much after turning the last page. The mystery at the heart of the story is never completely resolved by the author, leaving much to the reader's understanding and interpretation.

In his novel ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’, Salman Rushdie brings us an epic report about western life at the end of the second millennium. The story centers on Vina Apsara and her lover Ormus Cama, a pair who have brought almost unthinkable influence and change to western music: to rock and roll. Together their music has dwarfed that of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones and any other influential group you might care to name. Apsara and Cama have been the pair that all others have given their props to throughout the tumultuous last three decades of rock. Their story -- the story of their love, music and rise to the heights of their lives and influence -- is told by Rai, a photographer who was Ormus' and Vina's childhood friend and who becomes Vina's sometime lover. Rushdie presents a reflection of the western life, thus:

Meanwhile, Vina's playboy lover had been taken to hospital in the grip of drug-induced seizures so extreme that they eventually proved fatal, and for days afterwards, because of what happened to Vina, the world was treated to detailed analyses of the contents of the dead man's bloodstream, his stomach, his intestines, his scrotum, his eye sockets, his appendix, his hair, in fact everything except his brain, which was not thought to contain anything of interest, because it had been so thoroughly scrambled by narcotics that nobody could understand his last words, spoken during his final, comatose delirium.

This novel of Rushdie, defined by Toni Morrison as "a global novel", the book sets itself in the wide frame of Western and post-colonial culture, through the multilingualism of its characters, the mixture of East and West and the great number of references that span from Greek mythology, European philosophy and contemporaries such as Milan Kundera and the stars of rock'n roll. 12 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Narain: Western world and indo-anglian fiction ISSN: 2454-4574

The Western influence can be seen in his other novel ‘Enchanterss of Florence. The central theme of The Enchantress of Florence is the visit of a European to the Mughal emperor Akbar's court and his claim that he is a long lost relative of Akrbar, born of an exiled Indian princess and an Italian from Florence. The story moves between continents, the court of Akbar to Renaissance Florence mixing history, fantasy and fable A tall, yellow-haired, young European traveler calling himself “Mogor dell’ Amore,” the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar, lord of the great Mughal empire, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the imperial capital, a tale about a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, and her impossible journey to the far-off city of Florence. The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers–the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power.

To conclude, my research paper has clearly shown the presentation of the western world in the Indo –Anglian fiction with its intense influence on the different characters and situations of several Indian English novels.

Woks Cited :

1. Naik, M.K. ‘Indian English Fiction – An Overview’; Sterling Publishers, Delhi, 1995, P. –21.

2. Bhabha, P. Literature, Politics and theory,’ Methuen, London, 1994, P. –09.

3. Rushdie, Salman, ‘Seminal Lectures at Harvard’, (ed.) E. Simpson, Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1999, P.– 24.

4. Weller Paul “Literature Update on the Salman Rushdie Affair” Discernment 4.2 (1990) p.35-41 5. Fletcher,M.D. “Salman Rushdie :An Annotated Bibliography of Articles about His Fiction” Journal of Indian Writing in English 19.1 (1991),p.15-23 6. Naik Dr. M. K, “A History of Indian English Literature”, Sahitya Academy, New Delhi, 1982.

7. Shirwadkar, V.W. Indian Literature Today. 156.

8. Kurup G. Sankara. Qtd. in Gandhi the Writer…. 247.

9. Ambika Charan. Qtd. in Indian Writing in English. Majumdar, 13 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Narain: Western world and indo-anglian fiction ISSN: 2454-4574

10. Nehru, Jawahar Lal. Qtd. in Indian Writing in English

11. Albertazzi, Silvia (20 January 2005), "An equal music, an alien world: postcolonial literature and the representation of European culture", European Review, Cambridge University Press,13, pp. 103–113 12. Sharma, Anjana. "What others have to say about Upamanyu Chatterjee". Upamanyu Chatterjee at the complete review. Retrieved 26 June 2011. 13. "Upamanyu Chatterjee Gets French Award Officier Des Arts Et Des Lettres". Retrieved 26 June 2011.

14. UNI (22 December 2004). "Sahitya Akademi award winners". The Hindu. Retrieved 26 June 2011

15. ‘’Amitav Ghosh". Fantasticfiction.co.uk. Retrieved 28 May 2012. 16. Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English. London: Longman, 1990.

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Shashi Deshpande’s Roots and Shadows: A Tragic Story of Strained

Marital Relationships

Introduction to the Author:

Dr. Tukaram S. Sawant has been teaching English since 1981. Currently an associate professor of English at Tulijaram Chaturchand Arts, Science and Commerce College, Baramati, he takes on the undergraduate and postgraduate classes. He has authored a book entitled The Female World in Shashi Deshpande’s Novels. He focuses on English Language and Literature teaching in India.

The Abstract

Shashi Deshpande, the Sahitya Academy Award winning Indian woman novelist in English, started her literary career with the publication of her first short story in 1970. She became popular as an Indian woman novelist in English with the publication of her first novel, The Dark Holds No Terrors, published in 1980. She has written eleven novels including her latest novel, Strangers to Ourselves published in 2015. She has been awarded Padma Shri for her significant contribution in the field of Indian English novel. In addition to her novels, she has written four children’s books and essays available in a volume, Writing from the Margin and Other Stories. Her novels are born of her observations and experiences of the life of educated middle-class Indian women, victimizes creatures, caught in the trap of Indian patriarchy with its issues such as gender-discrimination, a patriarchal attitude to the female and strangely strained and oppressive marital relationships. She is basically concerned with the theme of human relationships, in general, and husband-wife relationships, in particular. She strongly believes that it is necessary for the woman to live within relationships. She is trained to play a secondary and inferior role in a man-woman relationship. She is denied a place and status equal to her male-counterparts. Deshpande, an Indian feminist, whose novels are rooted in Indian soil and context, is not happy with a pathetic and tragic lot of middle-class Indian women. She has raised a voice of protest against a patriarchal attitude to women in a contemporary male-centric Indian society.

Key words: commodity, exploitation, gender-discrimination, patriarchy, subordination, victimized, virginity

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Shashi Deshpande’s Roots and Shadows: A Tragic Story of Strained

Marital Relationships

Shashi Deshpande, one of the most prolific women writers in English in a contemporary India, has eleven novels, six collections of short stories, four books written for children, and a screen play to her credit. Her first novel, The Dark Holds No Terrors, published in 1980 brought her praise and admiration. Her novel, That Long Silence, published in the U. K. in 1988 and in India in 1989, won her the Sahitya Academy Award and Tanjangad Thirumlamaba Award. She has been known for her sincere and realistic projection of Indian feminine sensibility and her portrayal of middle-class, urban and educated Indian women with their suppressed dreams and aspirations, unavoidable silence, patience, tolerance and tolerance, sorrows and sufferings, suppression and oppression, pain and agony, issues and problems, trials and tribulations, plight and predicament, and with their strengths and weaknesses. Her novels are a sincere attempt to explore the hidden psyche and consciousness of Indian women who have been victimized from time immemorial. Her real contribution lies in her artistically and realistically portraying a complex and intricate web of human relationships, in general, and a man-woman relationship, in particular. Indian women, she believes, are caught between traditional beliefs and values, on one side, and the fast-changing world with new ideas, beliefs and values, on the other. She wants her women to challenge age-old constraints and restraints imposed on her in an Indian patriarchal set-up and to march forward with confidence and determination.

Deshpande writes of the ordinary men and women in their relationship with one another. Her novels, an outcome of her personal experiences as a woman, are the stories of Indian women with their suppression and oppression, subjugation and exploitation in Indian male-oriented society. She once remarked in an interview that most of her writing comes out of her intense and long suppressed feelings about what it is to be a woman in our society. Her novels, usually, have women as protagonists who grow, develop and evolve along her understanding of women as human beings. Almost all her novels deal with a crisis and a dilemma in the life of her women

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protagonists in their relations with people around them. The relation of a man to a woman, according to Simone de Beauvoir, is the most natural relation of a human being to another human being. (Beauvoir 741). However, we know very little about a man-woman relationship. Deshpande herself said in an interview: “We know a lot about the physical and the organic world and the universe in general, but we still know very little about human relationships. It is the most mystifying thing as I am concerned. I will continue to wonder about it, puzzle over it and write about it. And still it is intriguing, fascinating” (Geetha Gangadharan).

Deshpande is concerned with portraying the woman and her dilemmas, her efforts to understand herself and others and to preserve her identity as wife, mother, daughter, and above all, as a human being in Indian society. She feels sorry that the woman is denied a separate existence apart from her husband and his family. She is made to submit herself to the authority of a man: father, husband, brother or son. She is treated as a commodity and property which can be owned, controlled and disposed of by her male-counterpart. Deshpande does not want her to be treated as a private property. Woman, she feels, should not be reduced only to the level of a breeding machine. She told in an interview: “I have a very strong feeling that until very recently women in our society have been looked upon as breeding animals. They have no other role in life. I have a very strong objection to treating any human being in that manner”. (Geetha Gangadharan). The woman is caught in the trap of gender-discrimination before her marriage and that of marriage after her marriage.

Marriage, a social institution, plays a vital role in the life of an Indian woman. Getting a husband is one of the most important undertakings for her in her life. Marriage is something that allows her to keep her social dignity intact; it is something that frees her from the restraints and restrictions imposed on her at her parental home in the name of gender-distinction; it is something with which she opens up her new career by handing herself over to a new master, her husband; it is a turning point especially in the life of the woman. It is an ordeal especially for the woman as she is expected to adjust herself completely to a new environment of her husband’s home. She accepts marriage as an escape route to achieve her freedom from the dos and don’ts tradition imposed on her in her parental family. She accepts the role of a wife with a simple hope and need of winning her freedom and asserting her individuality. However, her tragedy lies in

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the fact that she sets herself from one cage only to be caught in another cage. Unfortunately, she has been deprived of true freedom before as well as after her marriage. Marriage has been an obstacle in her way of being a free and independent individual. Simone de Beauvoir, in ‘Introduction’ to the book, The Second Sex, rightly points out: “Reared by women within a feminine world, their normal destiny is marriage, which still means practically subordination to man; for masculine prestige is far from extinction, resting still upon solid economic and social foundations”.

Marital relationship as a social necessity is at the centre of Deshpande’s novels. The woman hopefully looks at marriage as an escape route leading her towards attaining her freedom from the bondage imposed on her in her ancestral family. In fact, the patriarchal domination is so deeply rooted in our culture that it is difficult for her to escape from the trap of her parental home. Jessica Benjamin observers: “The anchoring of this structure so deep in the psyche is what gives domination its appearance of inevitability, makes it seem that a relationship in which both participants are subjects - both empowered and mutually respectful - is impossible.” (12). Her observation clearly highlights a woman’s sexual subjectivity and her recognition as an object used by a man to fulfil his sexual hunger. The tragedy of a woman lies in the fact that she has to submit to her husband’s sexual desire passively and ungrudgingly. She finds it difficult to bear sexual attacks of her aggressive husband. She feels utterly humiliated at the very thought of being used as an object. But she cannot help it. This is her unavoidable tragedy.

The very womanhood seems to be a kind of shame, a kind of curse for the woman. The woman, to a large extent, has been her own enemy; she herself has been responsible for her own tragedy. She doesn’t allow herself to develop in Indian patriarchy. Joan Gallos remarks: “Development for men has meant increased autonomy and separation from others as a means of strengthening identity, empowering the self, starting a satisfactory life course . . . for women, attachments and relationships play a central role in both identity formation and concepts of development maturity . . . colouring how women see themselves, their lives, their careers and their ongoing responsibility to those around them”. (Gallos 1989). The woman herself is an architect of her own destiny. It is necessary for the woman to use the strength of her mind, her potential to deal with her pain, agony and anguish. Though caught in the trap of gender-distinction, she has to be

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her own support and guardian. Stoller defines gender identity: “Gender identity starts with the knowledge and awareness, whether conscious or unconscious, that one belongs to one sex and not the other, though as one develops, gender identity becomes much more complicated so that, for example, one may sense himself as not only a male but a masculine man or an effeminate man or even as a man who fantasies being a woman”. (Stoller 1968). A man knows that he is the man and a woman the woman. A man’s approach to everything in life seems to be dominating and aggressive whereas a woman’s meek and submissive. Love and understanding, attachments and relationships play a vital role especially in the life of a woman. She is incomplete without her parents before her marriage and without her husband after her marriage. Marriage is something that matters most in her life.

Simone de Beauvoir opines: “Marriage is the destiny traditionally offered to women by society. It is still true that most women are married, or have been, or plan to be, or suffer from not being. The celibate woman is to be explained and defined with reference to marriage, whether she is frustrated, rebellious, or even indifferent in regard to that institution . . . It has always been a very different thing for man and for woman. The two sexes are necessary to each other, but this necessity has never brought about a condition of reciprocity between them . . . A man is socially an independent and complete individual . . . the girl seems absolutely passive; she is married, given in marriage by her parents . . . In marrying . . . she takes his name; she belongs to his religion, his class, his class; she joins his family, she becomes his ‘half’. . . She gives him her person, virginity and a rigorous fidelity being required . . . No doubt marriage can afford certain material and sexual conveniences: it frees the individual from loneliness, it establishes him security in space and time by giving him a home and children; it is a definite fulfillment of his existence”. (Beauvoir 445-451). She gives her husband almost everything. She, however, has a secondary role to play in a marital relationship. The functions assigned to her after her marriage are to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs, to provide children to her family, and to take care of her husband, her children and her household.

Marriage even today has retained its traditional form in one way or the other. It is of greater benefit to a woman than to a man. For her, it is the only means of her integration into her community. However, it is also the beginning of her greater sacrifices in the form of her name,

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person, self, identity, freedom, virginity, dreams and aspirations. She, as we find in the case of Padmini, in Roots and Shadows, is more eager for it than a man is because she considers marriage a passport of complete happiness and freedom. But she comes to her senses when she realizes that it is something that enslaves her. Simone de Beauvoir writes: “The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to assure woman the promised happiness - there is no such thing as assurance in regard to happiness - but that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition and routine”. (Beauvoir 496). She is thought to be incapable of making her living on her own. She is trained to prefer marriage to a career, and to accept her husband who, as per conventions and traditions, is above her in each and every respect.

Most marriages fail on account of one reason or the other. They are fraught with one or the other kind of disease or malady. Deshpande is essentially concerned about the issues and problems related to marital relationships. She attempts to find out basic causes responsible for the unhappy and failed marriages. The tragedy of marriage, according to Simone de Beauvoir, is that it mutilates the woman and dooms her to repetition and routine, and that “it is the duplicity of the husband that dooms the wife to a misfortune of which he complains later that he is himself the victim. Just as he wants her to be at once warm and cool in bed, he requires her to be wholly his and yet no burden; he wishes her to establish in a fixed place on earth and to leave him free, to assume the monotonous daily round and not to bore him, to be always at hand and never importunate; he wants to have her all to himself and not to belong to her; to live as one of a couple and to remain alone. Thus she is betrayed from the day he marries her”. (Beauvoir 496). Nature has really played a trick on the woman by making her tolerate everything in the name of gender-distinction and marriage. It has also played a trick on her by making her dream of seeking happiness only through a man. It is but natural for her to aspire for natural companionship, physical, mental and emotional satisfaction, social status and respect and also material comforts, but she is far away from the realization of her dreams and aspirations. Who are to be blamed for the failure of marriage? Simone de Beauvoir opines: “Individuals are not to be blamed for the failure of marriage; it is the institution of marriage itself”. (Beauvoir 497). It fails on account of male-ego, male-domination and a patriarchal attitude of the male to the female. The woman herself and circumstances, too, are responsible for its failure. The belief that a husband and a

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wife are to satisfy each other throughout their lives is monstrosity which gives rise to hypocrisy, lying, hostility and unhappiness.

Neena Arora remarks: “Man considers it as a normal behaviour to satisfy his desires at both the emotional and the physical levels outside marriage, while it is ruthlessly condemned as adultery in case a woman indulging in it even though accidentally, the slightest hint of any deviation on her part which may not even involve sex, man turns violent towards his wife and starts persecuting her. This condemnation is dictated by man’s interest in preserving his property rather than by any moral consideration”. (Arora 61). Indian culture does not allow her to get involved in extra-marital relationships. It is treated as a crime of adultery. According to Sudhir Kakkar, Indian women have to adhere to the image of a good and ideal woman - ‘pativrata’, subordinating her life to her husband’s happiness. The ‘pativrata’ conduct is not a mere matter of sexual fidelity, but an issue of great importance in all patriarchal societies. (Kakkar 66). Indian culture allows the husband to have all the freedom to enjoy his conjugal rights as and when he desires, but the wife does not have that freedom. Indian husband has the liberty to have another woman if he is not satisfied with his wife. Lord Rama-like ‘ek-patni’conduct is not expected from him. Full freedom is given to him to satisfy his physical hunger the way he likes. However, Deshpande’s female protagonists do not adhere to the image of ‘pativrata’, the image of a true and faithful wife. She expresses her concern about the female who is a victim of marriage in one way or the other. She has raised some important issues regarding the place and position of women in Indian society. She is concerned with the intricate nature of human relationships within and outside a family. A man-woman relationship, a husband-wife relationship interests her most. The present article is a sincere attempt to highlight intricate and strained marital relationships in Deshpande’s novel, Roots and Shadows.

Roots and Shadows is an exploration of Indu’s urge for the realization of her inner self, the assertion of her individuality and liberty with reference to her relationship with Jayant, her husband, and the members of her ancestral family. Being a girl child, she was taught to be meek, obedient, docile, submissive and unquestioning in her childhood. Suppressed in Indian patriarchy, Indu, the protagonist of the novel, rebels against Akka, the head of a matriarchal family, who represents age-old and orthodox beliefs and conventions, and marries Jayant, a man

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of different caste, but of her own choice, with the hope to escape from her caged existence in her conventional and orthodox ancestral family with its rigid values and beliefs. In her quest of freedom and happiness, she leaves her parental home with a very simple dream that her marriage would help her to realize her need to belong, to be wanted, to be needed, and to be loved. She seeks marriage as an alternative to the restrictions imposed on her in the name of gender- distinction in her ancestral family. After her marriage, she surrenders and submits herself wholeheartedly to her husband in the name of love. In marrying Jayant, she enters into an independent and free world of her dreams. She feels: “I had thought I had found my alter ego in Jayant. I had felt that in marrying him, I had become complete. I had felt incomplete, not as a woman, but as a person. And in Jayant, I had thought I had found the other part of my whole self, not only that, but total understanding, perfect communication. And then, I had realized this was an illusion. I had felt cheated”. (Deshpande 114-115). But very soon, in the absence of a perfect understanding between them, she realizes that her husband, a typical Indian husband, wants her to live according to his views and ideas, dreams and aspirations. She feels deceived and disillusioned in her marital life. She begins to taste the bitter fruits of marriage, a trap. She strongly believes: “Behind the façade of romanticism, sentiment and tradition, what was marriage, after all, but two people brought together after cold-blooded bargaining to meet, mate and reproduce so that the generations might continue”. (Deshpande 3).

She is physically and emotionally dissatisfied with her husband who has only a practical approach to life. Her feminine dreams are suppressed as her husband takes her for granted and expects her to submit in one way or the other. Her marital life seems to have nothing to do with love, a noble feeling. She fails even to understand the meaning of love. She thinks to herself: “And anyway, love, that’s a word I don’t really understand . . . What I feel for Jayant . . . can I compress all of it within this word?” (Deshpande 88-89). Her marriage with Jayant fails to give her freedom and happiness. The chains of her marriage are really heavy, and she is expected to adjust and modify herself to the situation from which it is difficult for her to escape. She is not satisfied because she gets neither love nor support or happiness. Her answer to Atya’s question, ‘Are you happy with him, Indu?’ is: “Happy? Who can say that? But I know I can’t be without him”. (Deshpande 67). She herself does not know whether she is happy or not. Atya is reminded of Akka’s words: “Such marriages never work. Different castes, different languages . . . it’s all

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right for a while. Then they realize . . .” (Deshpande 68). Akka, who wanted everyone in the family to be happy, was against inter-caste marriages.

Though, she is not happy with Jayant, she always tries to please her husband. She considers herself incomplete without her husband. Away from her husband at her ancestral home, she thinks: “This is my real sorrow that I can never be complete in myself. Until I had met Jayant I had not known it . . . that there was, somewhere outside me, a part of me without which I remained incomplete. Then I met Jayant, and lost the ability to be alone”. (Deshpande 31). In her attempt to please her husband, she loses her identity. She totally surrenders herself to her husband in each and every respect. She remembers: “Then I had met Jayant. And I had found out that he too expected me to submit. No, not expected. He took it for granted that I would. And I did it, because, I told myself, I loved him. As if that justified everything . . . And remembering how I had surrendered to him, step by step, I realize now, that it was not for love, as I had been telling myself, but because I did not want conflict . . . that I had clung tenaciously to Jayant, to my marriage, not for love alone, but because I was afraid of failure . . . And so I went on lying, even to myself, compromising, shedding bits of myself along the way, which meant that I, who had despised Devdas for being a coward, was the same thing myself. I had killed myself as surely as he had done”. (Deshpande 158-159). She compares herself with Devdas, and in despising Devdas, she despises herself.

Indu and her life moves around her husband. She has killed her feelings, emotions, dreams and aspirations, and even her ambition of being a creative writer. She changes, shapes and moulds herself according to her husband’s desires and needs. She faces her husband and her marital life silently. She learns that ‘silence’ and ‘submissiveness’ are the gifts of marriage. Jayant, a practical, authoritative, and dominating male, not only suppresses the female voice of expression in his wife, but makes her life dull and mechanical. The woman in Indu can neither express herself nor choose for herself on her own. She can neither love nor hate but pretend to be happy. Her marriage strengthens her capacity for pretence and deceptions. She knows that she can shatter her husband with withdrawals and rejections. But she hides her reactions and pretends to act out a pleasant willingness to respond. Though, she prefers involvement to detachment, she never gets what she wants. She puts on a mask of a meek and submissive wife.

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She knows: “But my marriage had taught me this too. I had found in myself an immense capacity for deception. I had learnt to reveal to Jayant nothing but what he wanted to see, to say to him nothing but what he wanted to hear. I hid my responses and emotions as if they were bits of garbage”. (Deshpande 38).

She understands that her husband and she herself are on different planes. Her husband chooses his level while she tries to choose the one he would like her to be on. She is so frank and bold that she tells everything about her relationship with her husband to Naren. She says: “And so I pretend. I’m passive, and unresponsive. I’m still and dead . . . So that’s all I am, Naren. Not a pure woman, not a faithful woman, but an anachronism, a woman who loves her husband too much, too passionately, and is ashamed of it”. (Deshpande 83). She gets humiliated when she sees herself to turn into an ideal Indian woman following her husband’s wishes and fancies, ideas and plans willingly and obediently. She is shocked to find herself a woman with no choice, no wants, no dreams, no aspirations, no identity and no individuality. Her feminine instinct and consciousness, her dreams and aspirations are suppressed in Indian patriarchal set-up. Always ready to please her husband, she submits to his wills and desires and does everything for him. She even forgets to dress herself the way she wants, the way she likes, and the way she pleases. She admits: “When I look in the mirror, I think of Jayant. When I dress, I think of Jayant. When I undress, I think of him, always what he wants, what he would like, what would please him. And I can’t blame him. It’s not he who has pressurized me into this. It’s the way I want it to be. And the day I had thought . . . isn’t there anything I want at all? Have I become fluid, with no shape, no form of my own? . . . Am I on my way to becoming an ideal woman, a woman who sheds her ‘I’, who loses her identity in her husband’s?” (Deshpande 49). She becomes a typical Indian woman living her as per the expectations of her husband.

She realizes that her love for her husband is quite disturbing and her complete surrender to him is painful and frightening. She feels disgusted and frustrated by her silence and passivity. She even thinks of leaving her husband hoping to be free and ‘whole’ self again, but she has no courage to do so. She feels guilty to have cheated Jayant by entering into a physical relationship with Naren twice. She questions herself: “What, then, had I achieved by giving him my body, apart from wronging Jayant? Wronging Jayant? . . . But had I not wronged Jayant even before

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this? By pretending, by giving him a spurious coin instead of the genuine kind? I had cheated him of my true self”. (Deshpande 171). She decides to move on with her marital life even though she knows that her marriage is a failure. She surrenders to Jayant in order to prove her family that hers is a happy and successful marriage. She has dreamt of a happy married life, but unfortunately her calculations go wrong and her dream remains unfulfilled. She is not satisfied with her husband. Her husband takes her for granted and wants her to submit in one way or the other. He hesitates, rather fails to realize that his wife also is an individual with her own flesh and blood, wishes and desires, dreams and aspirations, feelings and emotions. He takes her silence, patience, charity, fidelity, propriety, everything for granted. She, innocently, measures her marital life in terms of so-called freedom and happiness that she receives and comes to the conclusion that her marital life is far away from freedom and happiness. For her marriage is only a trap in which she is caught by her husband to satisfy his sexual hunger. She calls it “a cage with two trapped animals glaring hatred at each other”. (Deshpande 61). Though unhappy in her marital life, she feels that to live without her husband is the greatest in her life. She admits that she can never be complete all by herself. She, therefore, decides to sell her ancestral house and return to her husband to live her life afresh on her own terms.

Indu contemptuously calls an Indian woman, a martyr, a heroine, just a stupid fool carrying a world of darkness in herself, a pure female animal, a subordinate creature of a new world filled with ignorance, prejudice and superstition, or a typical breed only interested in getting married, bearing children, having sons and then grandchildren. She is not the only woman who suffers a lot in her marital life. Vithal’s mother is a meek, silent and suffering wife who has been a victim of the sadistic anger of her husband. Indu learns from Old Uncle: “Vithal’s father . . . a grim man who rarely spoke and never smiled, there was a streak of cruelty in him that came out in his relations with his meek, silent wife. The boy, as a child, had been a frequent spectator of scenes in which the father had worked out his sadistic anger on the mother for the merest trifles”. (Deshpande 138). Unable to bear physical cruelty and mental torture, she leaves her marital home, her husband and son.

Indu is terribly shocked to hear a tragic and pathetic story of Akka’s marital life. She remembers what Atya said: “She was just twelve when she got married. And he was well past

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thirty . . . Six months after her marriage, she ‘grew up’ and went to her husband’s home. What she had to endure there, no one knows. She never told anyone . . . But I heard that twice she tried to run away . . . a girl of thirteen. Her mother-in-law, I heard, whipped her for that and locked her up for three days, and starved her as well, and then, sent her back to her husband’s room. The child, they said, cried and clung to her mother-in-law saying, ‘Lock me up again, lock me up’. But there was no escape from a husband then . . . He had a weakness for women . . . And Akka could never give birth to a living child . . . But every time she had a miscarriage, her mother-in- law blamed her for it and made life hell for her”. (Deshpande 69-70). The story speaks a lot about the tragedy of a married woman with her physical and sexual harassment, mental torture and exploitation, inhuman and beastlike treatment.

References

1. Arora, Neena. A Feminist Studies in Comparison - Nayantara Sahgal and Doris Lessing. New Delhi; Prestige Books Ltd, 1991. 2. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New Delhi; H. M. Parshley. (Trans. and ed.), Penguin

Books Ltd, 1972

3. Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of

Domination. Virago, London. 1990.

4. Gallos, J. V. Exploring Women’s Development: Implications for Career Theory, Practice and Research. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1989. 5. Geetha Gangadharan Gangadharan, Geetha. 1994. ‘Indian Communicator’: An Interview.

6. Kakkar, Sudhir. Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. New Delhi; Penguin Books, Ltd. 1989. 7. Stoller, Robert J. Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. London; Hogarth Press, 1968.

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Re-Engaging Myths, Archetypes, Rituals, Folkways and Reconstruction of Pro-Naturalistic Belief-Systems – an Anthropocenic Necessity.

By – Pallavi Mishra

Introduction to the Author:

Pallavi Mishra teaches English Literature in Government P G College Uttarakhand. She has done her PhD on the topic, “The Writings of Mahasweta Devi- a Socio-Cultural Study.” “Disdain- A Fiction” is her first novel. She regularly writes for research journals in English.

Abstract: The future of Nature being in human hands in the Anthropocene; revisionist approach in regard to history of human-nature relations, resorting to past-practices and reconsidering them for furthering the possibilities of carving a “gardened Anthropocene” may be explored at this critical juncture, for Nature is in the continuous process of becoming an abstracted, aesthetic landscape in the Anthropocene. Devaluing/demystifying myths is a necessary pre-condition for establishing equal, socialist, democratic human societies as they act segregators perpetuating differences and the Post- Colonial texts rightly, incorporate in them an indirect attack on the dominant traditional myths or their representations. The re-recognition of myths and inherent belief-systems in regard to Nature may sound a weird, ridiculous, nugatory propaganda to the enlightened academia as the base/structure of Myths, Rituals and Beliefs is illogical, unscientific, irrational, lacking in all the adequate, required proofs that a scientific discourse posits. Through this paper, I intend to argue that Myths in all oriental pristine, primitive societies have simultaneously been symbolic of the grandeur of Nature, upholding the values/ethics /acts/beliefs that have been pro-nature. Being ingrained in the collective psyche of the ‘ordinary citizens’; Myths have assisted humans to co-habit Nature simultaneously energizing the social sphere and quite unconsciously and indiscreetly culminating a human response for Natural phenomenon.

Reinforcing mythical symbols, Bestiaries, images and objects with the message of natural conservation can act as ‘emotional drivers’ for safeguarding nature. They may have a susceptible validity yet nobody seems to mind (even in the western world) as they stand as a proof of the human belief in the divine powers. These may be categorized within the non-linear behaviour or “other patterns of behaviour” that are typical of complex systems. Mythic messages and the associated aestheticism can enforce the ethical responsibility among the ‘ordinary citizens’ to carve protective, living landscapes by marking their living-preferences and folkways. Even to this day, in the Indian context, denying the mythic belief-systems by the pro-scientific political set-up often causes anguish amongst the ‘common, ordinary citizens.” The Kedarnath natural- disaster in Uttarakhand showed this anguish against the defilement of belief-systems. Instead of

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carving imaginary future apocalypses; exploring pristine pasts and histories may shape the anthropocenic social ecology.

Key Words: Original citizens, Public Memory, domesticity, political ideology, aestheticism, belief-systems, social medicine, rituals, community-behaviour, taboos, folk- consciousness, global- consciousness, ethical-responsibility, organic-relationship.

In his essay, “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” (2013), the Princeton scholar and former soldier Roy Scranton writes: “this civilization is already dead” and insists that the only way forward is ‘to realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves’ and therefore ‘get down to the hard work without attachment or fear.’ “Make the new, re- carve it from the old” is the message he gives. This ‘re-carving from the old’ may be a spontaneous but with all probability a deliberate articulation to ‘look into the past’ for getting signs and messages that can enhance the sustainability of the human civilizations that are rapidly losing their hold over forces of nature; thus becoming prone and vulnerable in the face of changing natural landscape. The dominant, rigid, crude control of man over nature in the process of getting materially strong and powerful has changed the shape of the landscape and simultaneously, the shape of the Anthropocene has emerged as a political, ethical and aesthetic question. The ethicality of the Anthropocene rests on the questions of preservation, re-creation and the “sense of giving and sacrificing” for a greater cause and a greater space.

Whatever is unmanaged is devalued and vice-versa and this devaluation of nature especially after the on come of Industrial Revolution caused the degradation of landscape increasing the risk-factor of losing life-forms and making the Anthropocenic age an unaccommodative one to other planetary mates. Men’s control over the natural landscape becoming a regular, general phenomenon; the control has to become more sensible, sensitive and benign as in this gardened Anthropocene, nature is at the risk of becoming an abstracted, aesthetic presence around men. The devaluation, exploitation and mis- management of nature had largely been the planned strategic control of a few men, the “global elite” constituting scientists, industrialists, businessmen and politicians who rarely sought the consent of commoners in their decisions concerning the landscape dismantling. In the pristine, primitive cultures (Asian & African) the common mass, mostly dependent on nature’s resources; carved mechanisms for its protection by engaging on myths, rituals, taboos, belief-systems. Myths, though illusionary are social in nature, shared by a great number of people. The ‘gardened Anthropocene’ needs the social and emotional participation of the common mass as protection could be feasible only by mass-involvement. Myths sustained “organic relationship” of man with nature, nature acquiring the role and image of a healer and nurturer in the belief-system. Myths get interactive, speaking to the psyche of the original citizens, energizing the social sphere indistinctly culminating a human response. This organic relationship based upon care sustained both man and nature. Myths can restrict over-hunting, over-use of land and its resources; thus allowing space to the other species. Dismantling western frames of knowledge- stereotypes, strengthening native traditions and retrieving vernacular

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memories through myths, rituals and folk-ways can show the way to recovery. The exotic, Asiatic forms of idealism, resistance and aestheticism can render Political energy to the ideas centring on the landscape preservation. A culture’s collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experience, behavioural models, purpose and moral and practical issues.

Giving value to the picturesque, making organic, health-friendly, pollution-less landscapes could be made into a typical Indian stance, a pose…an Indian idea (in Indian context). Sartre’s idea of picturesque that he validates in “From One China to Another” could be made into praxis; for him the picturesque is exotic, looks exotic that which arouses curiosity, is not ignored; but noticed. The framework of ‘people with the landscape’ could be exoticised to gain the recognition. Aesthetics is most often assigned to ‘nature’ as a symbol of the purity and beauty of one’s own people. Aestheticized nature as the homeland occupies a central place in the literature and philosophy of various traditions but especially those of the Romantics. In these representations, not necessarily objectified in art forms but present as mental constructs, idealized nature is both a spatial and a temporal representation of the self. Emiko Ohnuki Tierney in her essay, “Betrayal by Idealism and aesthetics” points out that ‘Nature’ as a symbol of cultural nationalism can move easily into the realm of political nationalism. Mosse details the process in the late 19th century Germany whereby the soil, representing agricultural communities, became the spiritual and economic source of the Volkisch movement and the symbol of their utopia and the Heimat (homeland), and thus eventually an instrument of their race theory. It was Rudolf Darre, the Nazi minister of agriculture, who coined the term ‘Blut and Boden’ (blood and soil) as a Nazi motto. He also promoted Naturschutz (protection of nature) as a state policy. An aesthetics is assigned to the symbols that stand for the most cherished values of the people-their land, their history, idealism and the moral codes of purity and sacrifice. People respond to this aesthetics, interpreting it in terms of their own idealism and aesthetics, while the state can use the same aesthetics and symbols to co-opt them. “Images, when they are materialistic, bring men together; that is to say when they begin at the beginning; with bodies, with needs, with work.”

The population that may appear as a crowd; have the ability to organize themselves. But no one has the right to confuse this swarming with the plague of locusts. Chinese crowds are organized; they fill up the pavements and spill onto the road, but they each immediately make themselves a space while, at the same time, acknowledging that of their neighbour. The China is a microcosm of the whole Asia; “organized crowd” can push up the creation of an organized eco-friendly space. The process of organizing, adjustment, trimming, and carving is important. Masses can take control of history by controlling landscapes, by surveying and supervising it and building organic relationships based on care and concern. This being not done, the masses would be subject to history. Mythico-ritual basis of landscape protection is not to aggrandize the politics of purity, place, nation and history. Myths from below are primitive, pro-nature, all encompassing. They define living ethics that correspond to the ethics of a place. The presence of religion in the lives of ordinary citizens cannot be ignored; in which the rituals are an active, participative element. According to Malinowski & Durkhiem, Rituals have a functional

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aspect. Religion as such, is more than mere contemplation of the supernatural; it affects our actions and practices. With increasing complexity and secularization of society there was separation of the sacred and the secular. The Cultural Anthropologist, Edmund Leach defined rituals as culturally oriented behavioural patterns which seek to make a symbolic statement about human beings relationship with a Supreme Being. Making landscapes into a well-defined identifiable ritual space can add an element of sanctity thereby restricting human intervention into it. Defining the ritual space with a well-defined setting renders sacredness to the space thus, restricting human involvement in it. Incorporating landscape preservation in ritual behaviour could make it a spontaneous practice as the ritual behaviour demands a conscious engagement on the part of believers. The voluntaristic component of the ritual ultimately transforms the personal will to the collective will. Ritual behaviour has a power of connecting the mass-consciousness and they involve a raising of consciousness to a greater or higher level. Egdon Becker, a founding father of the new Frankfurt school of ‘Social Ecology’ focuses the analysis of societal relations to nature. Becker characterized the world as a “crisis- ridden, self- organising complex system” of which humanity is an integral part and increasingly powerful driver. This requires a new world view and is the point of departure for conceptualizing the provisioning functions of nature. For framing ‘a new world view’ myths and archetypes may be given specific meanings in ecological contexts. The inherent belief-systems can make the need of conversation “a human programme” acting as ‘emotional drivers.’ The community practices and neighbourhood planning exercises centring on rivers, plants, trees, cleanliness of soil, land, water, air, need to be recognized and given a social and political edge. Individuals and groups participating in rituals display a high degree of emotional solidarity with the larger community. The pristine ritual behaviour involves the worship of plants, rivers, trees, animals and landscapes. Trees and plants like Peepal (Ficus religiosa) Tulsi or Tulasi (Ocimum tenuiflorum) have ritualistic significance that invokes their preservation. Uprooting and cutting branches of the plant is prohibited. As it withers, the dry plant is immersed in a water body with due religious rites, a prayer of forgiveness is offered before the act. The ritual marriage with a banana tree to ward off evil influences arising from malefactory planetary positions is ingrained in the belief-systems. It may occur as a humiliating, meaningless practice but the sanctity associated with it can provide it with a space in the landscape.

Historically, humans have interacted with nature through Myths. Pro-naturalistic belief- systems existed since the Anglo-Saxons. At an early date Christian literature gave symbolic meaning to natural phenomena, and particularly to animals which were especially fabulous. Bestiaries were an interesting mix of fact and fable, weaving new scientific evidence with long-standing legend. Every animal, alive or imaged, found its way into the Bestiaries. Christianity, eager to show that creation proved the existence of God, began adding commentary to the Bestiaries; showing how these “facts” revealed parts of God’s nature. Mythical and legendary animals occupied the literary scene and the social imagination. Religion, no doubt, played a definite role in engendering and validating these belief-systems. Myths acting as cultural tools and cultural narratives supported value-systems for the needed sustainability of domesticity, ecology etc. Myths get interactive, speaking to the psyche of the ordinary citizens, energizing the social

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sphere indistinctly; culminating a human response. In the Bestiaries, Birds represent human souls; if a bird is perched on a vine then the soul is abiding in Christ. The butterfly symbolizes the resurrection; Bees represent tireless activity, a good work-ethic and being diligent at a task. The mythical white bird Caladrius is mentioned as living in the King’s house. If the bird is placed in front of a sick person and looks at the person, he or she will get well. The Caladruis opens its beak and miraculously takes upon itself the person’s sickness. Nature and its picturesque effect rendered a reality in the pristine human imagination that defined the way of life. This Anglo-Saxon collective mythology/ Archetypes helped convey belongingness, shared religious experience, behavioural models, moral and practical lessons. The aesthetics linked to these bestiaries, concepts and rituals have profound socio-religious dimensions. Rendering these with a political ideological stance; the aesthetics can bring in positive changes in the landscape scene. Re-recognition of the aesthetics associated with myths and archetypes can be strategically deployed by the government. The mythic structures could be revalidated to make humanity responsive to Nature. Myth for mythic people, who live mythically, is never some detached story.

Carving out gardened Anthropocene where it is mandatory to protect the natural habitat of animals since they hold sacred religious value in the human psyche may prove a positive endeavour towards natural preservation. The Public memory plays a vital role in preserving the identity of a figure/concept/ ideal/belief that is significant in human history or is crucial for human civilization and it does so through stories, myths, narratives, folklores and sometimes through rituals. This Public memory doesn’t allow the imprints of an identity to get erased so easily if the identity is self-establishing; rather gives a material space to it in the form of “Memorials” or in its songs and stories and the Persona continues to live on with its celebrated abstractions and symbolic significances. The negation of a body from the geographical space doesn’t negate its existence from the social and political sphere rather it lives on in the collective memory of a community, a Tribe or a Nation. At times, history gets its shape from these folklores, myths and stories. In the similar vein, Public memory can preserve the rituals, belief-systems and myths and simultaneously protect and preserve a space or landscape if the political state considers/supports and encourages such a practice purely for the sake of nature. Mythic Icons could be made into the cultural and national memory embodying ideals of natural conversation and the icons could be furthered for representing the political need for conversation as the public memory is always political. Traditionally, embedding in it a scope for a more conducive better future could be paid heed to and celebrated for natural preservation. Myths and rituals can act as a source and vehicle of hegemonic control; thus restricting the mindless pilferage of nature induced by inordinate ambitions of men as they govern the public memory more organically. Myths reveal to the mythic people how and why the Cosmos was created; how and why their tribe, clan, ethnic group, religion, or nation state was created; why they suffer and experience natural disasters, meaninglessness, oppression, injustice, poverty, violence, war, mortality and death; and what they should do, how they should live their lives, so that they can cope with and even overcome and solve their human existential crises in the world. Keeping in view the anthropocenic need, the belittled mythic beliefs that are dismissed by the spirit of

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scientific rationalism can be revived in the modern period from the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, psychology and literature. Myth provides us with structures for organizing experience and for many postcolonial and post-slavery writers dislocated by history; myth often provides ways of claiming the margins of their gendered and racial positionality with resonant force. In short, myths can assume a sense of urgency passing into ideology. In Mahasweta Devi’s, The Book of the Hunter, both myth and history are juxtaposed together to provide a space for communication of the urgency of preservation and simultaneously considering the belief-system as an innovative tool for this. In this powerfully subversive tale, Mahasweta Devi portrays the tribal’s burden of memory engaging with his/her contemporary reality, with ironic and tragic effects. The Shabars are considered to be one of the most disadvantaged groups among the tribal of modern India, as they are the most affected by the depletion of forest land. Kalya, trying to recover his racial, cultural identity and pride through the enacting of the myth of the hunt, is defeated by his uncomprehending resistance of his own tradition. It is not the forest alone that has been affected by the encroachments of ‘civilization’, but the forest- dwellers too. Her innovative use of the forms and features of native traditions give her narratives a subversive power that challenges the conventions of both the creation and the reception of narrative fiction.

Certain Pro-naturalistic belief-systems as prohibition of talking loudly, walking in a group etc. in the “Bugyaal” (Bugyaals are grasslands in the Garhwal hills), prohibition of menstruating women to bath in the river, river-obligation (paying obeisance to the river considering it as an important force that has been in space since eternity), death, birth and marriage-rites, taboos associated with the felling of trees like Peepal, Vat, Neem, Tulasi, Banana etc. can be carried forward, rather encouraged by the administration, society for their naturalistic value. The legitimate power that the political systems exercise could be involved for furthering the project of carving the gardened anthropocene rendering it the required aesthetic value and the need to protect the aesthetic associated with it.

As Uttarakhand was tragedy-struck during Kedarnath-disaster, the electronic communications carried over the “ideas” that generated out of the “Common-psyche” based on myths. Communications occurred instantaneously between individuals and thereby communities of the violation of sanctified spaces through extreme human intervention. Through mythic messages the common mass tried to convey and prove this violation as the major reason behind the disaster. Much to the anguish of the residing hilly communities, government/media/science ignored this response resulting out of a primitive belief-system that lacked the required reasoning and scientific logic. Their repeated plea of leaving out the sacred space from constant public intervention did not get any positive response from the greater socio-political set-up and the practice is continuing for the sake of state government’s agenda of propagation of religious-tourism.

‘Unless they accept and pay heed to our beliefs, there would be further degradation.’ the communities warn the administrative officials, social-workers, engineers, mountain- climbers and the pilgrims. Though the holy town of Kedarnath was completely destroyed

32 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Mishra: An anthropocenic necessity ISSN: 2454-4574 in flash floods, the massive tragedy reinforced people’s faith in the divine. The more compelling legend is of Dhari Devi, guardian deity of Uttarakhand, whose idol was removed from her temple hours before the cloudburst. In the legend, Dhari Devi is a manifestation of Goddess Kali and is revered as the protector of the Char Dhams. Believers per se, Uttarakhand had to face the Goddess’ ire as she was shifted from her original abode to make way for a 330 MW hydel project that now lies in ruins. Local historians record that a similar attempt in 1882 by a local king had resulted in a landslide that had flattened Kedarnath. Built by Alaknanda Hydro Power Company Ltd (AHPCL), a subsidiary of infrastructure major GVK, the Srinagar hydel project had faced opposition from the local populace as they were opposed to the plan to relocate the Dhari Devi temple from its original site on a small island in the middle of the river Alaknanda. The project dam would have submerged the island. The legend says that only the upper half of the idol of goddess Kali is called “Dhari Devi” while her torso is worshipped as a “Shree- Yantra” at Kalinath Temple near GuptKashi. As per local lore, Dhari Devi changes in appearance during the day from a girl to a woman and then to an old lady. Only a visit to both the temples makes the darshan of the Goddess complete.

As per reports, the original plan was to cut the upper half of the island and shift it to a higher location. However, owing to the lack of logistics required to carry out such a mammoth task, the plan was later altered and it was decided that only the visible part of the idol would be shifted. Importantly, the Union Minister of Environment and Forests (MOEF) had also opposed the relocation of the temple. In an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, the minister defended the right of the people to worship at the temple, drawing the parallel with the Vedanta case in which the Apex court had upheld the right of the Dongria Kondh tribal people to worship the Niyamgiri hill, earmarked for blasting for bauxite mining. However, despite opposition from MoEP, the Supreme Court gave its nod to relocate the idol to a raised platform. Armed with all gear, the officials arrived at the temple-site at 7:30 pm on Sunday June 16, and cut off the idol from its base. Three priests and two locals then lifted the idol and placed it at the artificial platform constructed by AHPCL as the deity’s new seat. Just when the idol was lifted there was lightning and heavy rains followed by cloud-burst in Kedarnath that left thousands dead. Also, two pillars of the new structure at Dhari Devi temple gave way, forcing the removal of the idol. Dhari Devi’s wrath may or may not be behind the trail of destruction in Uttarakhand, but the folk-consciousness considered it as the main reason behind it and rose up in protest, venting their anger on the AHPCL officials and administration.

By citing the Dhari Devi story, I do not support the myth or mark it as “real”; the point of argument is certain mythic/ legendary existentialities in the common psyche can be “utilized” for protecting the already disrupted ecosystems. While environmentalists described the tragedy as a man-made disaster; geologists felt that the extent of destruction could have lessened if stricter regulations had been put in place; there was another group that was insistent that the human- intervention, commercialization of the pilgrimage site, high frequency of human movement causing pollution and defilement of the sanctified premises of the shrine resulted in the disaster of all three arguments, the common psyche relied heavily on the “defilement” hypothesis and blamed the administration/ government

33 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Mishra: An anthropocenic necessity ISSN: 2454-4574 for allowing more of human activities in a sacred space. Early pilgrims respected ecology and traversed much of the Char Dham by foot. Though illusionary, myths are social in nature and are shared by a great number of people. They are not the act of certain individuals only, or even of many, but the act of everyone. If the past histories can be reactivated for restoring agency to the marginalized, for recognizing the common mass as contemporaneous with modernity, the past myths can be rediscovered to prioritize nature in the discourse of human socio-ecological experiences. John Elder insists that bioregionalism constitutes a more responsible pedagogical model than cosmopolitanism. Bioregionalism, in Parini’s words, entails responsiveness to “one’s local part of the earth whose boundaries are determined by a location’s natural characteristics rather than arbitrary administrative boundaries.

The Anthropocene, being an integrated society, efforts can be made to make “Folk- Consciousness” into the “global consciousness” through the required ‘suspension of disbelief”; so that the conservation programmes can be carried out at the psychological level of the ‘ordinary citizens’ for whom mythic deliberations and rituals are a way of life. Arousal of Folk-consciousness to establish a distinctive local identity in their pristine myths and belief-systems can encourage the creation of the gardened Anthropocene and its modelled preservation. With passing time, the local flavour and its distinctiveness can be intensely involved in conceptions and representations of the local self at the individual and collective level. The Folk-Consciousness keeps the communities together instilling in them the consciousness and emotion of togetherness; that their relations are binding and they stand on an equal footing. It can help instilling an awareness of our impact on our immediate environment, help ground our sense of environmental responsibility. Also, the undefined, unexplained belief-systems incorporate in them a knowledge that though secretive is useful having a social-value which Ghosh calls “Counter-Sciences”. Counter science is secretive with unknown technique and procedure and it begins with the premise that it is impossible to know certain truths. Counter Science finds its roots in native traditions wherein a cure for a malady is achieved without a scientific explanation of the working of the therapy. In many native traditions, plants, herbs, animals etc. are considered to have healing, recuperating effect; some are considered pure and sacred. In his Calcutta Chromosome, Ghosh tries to indicate that cures can be achieved instinctively even without well-developed laboratory work and procedural formalities. Ghosh’s notion of science celebrates mystery and through it Ghosh questions the basic tenets of experimental science-fact, motive and intention. The scientific practices of the third world, especially the healing techniques do not occupy the space of texts; they occupy the space of silence, as pieces of unexplained truth. By speaking about the power of silence, he asserts the basic way in which counter science operates- under a mask of religion and cultural practice. What he also implies is that in a country like India where religion or spirituality is more accepted than rationalism, even a scientific practice has to take the cover of religion. Nature is already in the protected mode in the traditional practices, so the need is to re-discover this mechanism inherent in the thought-processes and convert it into practical, experimental, field activity. The dichotomy between universalism (nature and human relation are the same everywhere) and particularism (different cultures and contexts ‘produce’ different natures) should be reconceptualised as a continuum. There

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are indeed local and regional variations, but, at the same time, there are universal features of the socionatural relation, as Darwinism comes to show: evolution is a universal natural device, and so is the human adaptation to the environment.

Anthropogenic hybridization can never give us the biological diversity that evolution has given us and cannot produce genetically viable and biologically diverse species that can thrive in the further ever-changing eco-systems. The natural rate of speciation is seriously affected by human activities, predator and prey relationship is severely disrupted and researches indicate that biodiversity is not only heading toward extinction, but evolution itself is facing the risk of extinction. The mythological lizard in Mahasweta Devi’s The Book of the Hunter and its extinction points towards the forced extinction. Postcolonial writers depict the harsh changes in nature affecting the human genetic make-up causing deformity, sterility etc. Rediscovered myths, belief-systems and archetypes may be given specific meanings in ecological contexts. The community practices and neighbourhood planning exercises centring around rivers, plants, trees, cleanliness of soil, land, water, air need to be recognized, politically idealized and venerated by the governments. The task of the natural preservation of the gardened anthropocene could be penetrated into the mass-consciousness through school-songs and textbooks, as well as through the mass- media in the form of popular songs, films and plays. Dislocating myths and archetypes from their grand, allegorical, mystical pedestal so that they fit into the socio-political- regional space and become a much-pursued reality; emphatically guided towards nature and landscape preservation is an anthropocenic necessity. The burden of carving out living landscapes may be unconsciously shifted to the “ordinary citizens” if stimulation is done through mythic messages. The myth of king Midas; a tragedy of avarice that “the golden touch of progress and machine” that the human has generated is in reality more a curse than a blessing and the myth of Icarus, similarly shows that with all his limitless powers, man is destined to fall to ground before the grandeur of Nature.

Works Cited:

Nair Bindu, Subversion and Resistance: The Uses of Myth in Mahasweta Devi’s “The Hunt” and “The Book of the Hunter” in LITTCRIT An Indian Response to Literature Vol. 34. Issue 66 No.2 Dec. 2008.

Allen Douglas, Hind Swaraj: Hermeneutical Questions of Interpretation, Mythic Construction, and Contemporary Relevance Journal of Contemporary Thought, 2009 (Winter) p.16.

Tierney Ohnuki Emiko Betrayal by Idealism and Aesthetics Special Attack Force (Kamikaze) pilots and their intellectual trajectories (Part I)

Nixon Rob, Environmentalism and Postcolonialism in Ania Loomba and A. Burton eds. Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. New Delhi; Permanent Black.pp.233-251.

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Das Protima, Counter Science: A Study of Subaltern Agency in Amitav Ghose’s The Calcutta Chromosome in B.K.Sharma edited The Fiction of Amitav Ghosh A Post colonial Perspective.

Maldonado Arias Manuel, “Environment and Society: Socionatural Relations in the Anthropocene” https://books.google.co.in/books?id=7XEQBWAAQBAJ&PG.accessed on 12th August.

Preface to From One China to Another in Jean Paul Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism Translated by Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer and Terry McWilliams London and New York; Routledge.

Leach Edmund R, Rethinking Anthropology, London: Atlone, 1968.

Sills L.David ed. Ritual in The International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences. Vol.13, New York; Macmillan.

http:// Zeenews.india.com/news/uttarakhand/uttarakhand floods_ dhari-devis-wrath- myth- or-reality_857295.html. accessed on 29th of July 2015. https://bharatbharti.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/httpwp-mepei6d-efo// accessed on 1st August 2015.

36 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Agarwal: The last labyrinth ISSN: 2454-4574

The Reverberation of Indianness in Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth

Introduction to the Author:

Dr. Neeti Agarwal Saran is a Guest Faculty in English Department, University of Allahabad. She has done her research on “A Study of Postcolonial Themes in Indian English Literature with Special Reference to The Last Labyrinth, Shame, The Shadow Lines and The Inheritance of Loss. Her chief area of work lies on the suppressed and the marginalized class. She has got multiple papers printed on colonized class, females and dalits.

Abstract:

Indian English Literature voices the Indian ethos that makes it distinctive from other literatures both in theme and style. It expresses the psyche as well as the culture of the nation. This paper aims to discuss Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth from the perspective of Indian tradition and culture.

Som Bhaskar, the hero of the novel is a rich and Western educated man. He is completely absorbed in acquiring other people’s wealth, and in this he neglects his own family and health. He continuously suffers from insomnia and a call from inside of “I want, I want”. Som is unable to understand the desire of I want. Som in order to overtake Aftab’s business goes to the spiritual land of Benaras and comes in contact with Aftab, his beloved Anuradha and the spiritual guide Gargi. Here on the banks of Ganga, under the influence of Anuradha and Gargi he realizes that Ganga is not only a river rather a spiritual soother and a desire of “I want, I want” is not for the worldly pursuits rather for the spiritual needs.

Joshi’s novel The Last Labyrinth is a book for the post-colonial youths who have lost their spiritual and cultural moorings and are wandering for worldly pleasures. Joshi suggest that Westernization can never give happiness rather the happiness lies in one’s culture and traditions.

Keywords: Spiritualism, materialism, Indian ethos, religion, desire, postcolonial, Westernization.

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Indian English Literature concerns the body of literature by the writers of Indian descent whose national language could be one of the abundant local languages of India. It originated under the colonial rule in India where the native writers felt an urgency to express their native culture, tradition and language through literature. Braj B. Kachru addresses Indian fiction;

Indian English Fiction is now being studied and discussed in the entire English speaking world by those interested in the Indian sub-continent or in non-native Englishes, and by linguists for its thematic and stylist Indianness, At least half a dozen Indian English novelists have created a small but slowly increasing international reading public for themselves, e.g. Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamla Markandaya, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Khushwant Singh and Nayantara Sahgal.

The writers express themselves through various themes, culture, tradition, myths, images, symbols and indigenous language. Alastair Niven remarks;

Commonwealth Literature is all about the shift away from the notion of centrality. Far from attempting to impose unity upon diversity, to force a Euro centric precision of focus on many different cultures, it recognizes a multiplicity of equally valid centers, but then proceeds to evaluate their individual absorption of local influences.

Thus Indian English Literature voices the Indian ethos that makes it distinctive from other literatures, both in theme and in style. It expresses the psyche as well as the culture of the nation. This paper aims to discuss Arun Joshi's The Last Labyrinth from the perspective of Indian cognitive content and culture.

Arun Joshi is one of the most distinguished Indian English novelists. His novel The Last Labyrinth is unrivaled in the treatment of Indian ethos based on Hindu philosophy as told in the pious scriptures of the Upnishads and the Gita. The novel deals with a man's endorsement with four stages of human life that are- dharma, artha, kama and moksha respectively known as duty, wealth, lust and salvation. The novels ultimate goal is the attainment of moksha or salvation by crossing the barriers of kama (lust), artha (wealth), and aishwariya (name and fame). The novel is deeply immersed in the Hindu philosophy and thoughts.

The hero of the novel Som Bhaskar is divided between the hunger of the soul and body, and in this tug-o-war his body dominates the mind. Som Bhaskar is a thwarted soul who is engrossed neck deep in attaining materialistic wealth. His residence is also named as maya, echoing the web of wealth. Som is completely immersed in earning wealth and overtaking else s' people abundance. His voracious hunger want's to grab Aftab's enterprise, giving a peril to his own establishment. Som's sacred vacuum cannot find a way out from this web and gets entangled in it. The only way out from this muddle is salvation. The novel upholds Som's desire for salvation as he has been uprooted from his spiritual and cultural

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berths. Som's beloved Anuradha, wife Geeta and the sage Gargi makes Som realize the hollowness of worldly pursuits and encourages him towards salvation. In the postcolonial era the itinerary to spiritualism has become a trap as the youths like Som are completely engrossed in worldly pursuits, neglecting their spiritual needs, but ultimately its religion that soothes them.

Arun joshi inorder to present the Indian ethos has infused the culture and tradition of the Worls'd oldest and spiritual land Benaras. In the novel Ghosh has presented the corporal and unearthly beauty of the river Ganga and its ghats. Joshi has also presented the various religious cults in India like the Bhakti Movement, Sufi Cult, Buddhism and Vedanta.

Ganga is considered as the most pious river of India, also known as “Maa Ganga”. Its touch is considered so pure that it reinstates one from all sins, not only of this birth but of past lives too. The watercourse Ganga holds an important place in the book as Aftab's Lal Haveli is built near Ganga and from its patio the streaming “kalashes” and Aurungzebe's mosque can be viewed. Som, a misanthropic, “felt as though this was not Ganga but some unknown stream, in some unknown segment of the Universe leading to a reality that I had not known” (44). Such elevating is river Ganga. Its ghats are also of deep importance, they are considered as the most reverent funeral terminus. Som's visit to the ghat's of Benaras with Anuradha and Aftab reminds him of his father's death. Having a ride in the river Ganga, Som realized its piousness and depth. Som though Westernized feels it not only a river but a bigger reality of the Universe.

Arun joshi was deeply influenced by the Bhakti Movement. The Bhakti movement originated during the medieval period. It encouraged vernacular languages in various parts of India. In an interview Joshi expresses his spiritual views;

I certainly have some affinities with this country India; I have found it lately. One is that affinity of the spiritual kind, then there is the affinity of the sensual kind and there were others, too. Each country (i.e. States) in India is very unique and all Indians still remain unique. You know, historically, India has always been very inner- directed and not outer –directed like many other country countries... There is no other country like this for the religious size, for the spiritual the Bhakti Movement ... India then has dealing with God which is peculiar. (Web)

The movement focuses on Lord Krishna as God, father, friend, master and beloved. Joshi celebrates Krishna Janamashtmi at midnight in the novel;

The city’s celebration of the Lord’s birthday was not yet ended. I could hear the sing-song of half-a-dozen aartis. Every temple bell was being rung. Every conceivable sect was present on the mushy steps. Men and women sang, beat drums, clanged enormous cymbals, pirouetted. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Hare, Hare. An American junkie, a bare skeleton, grinned: ‘this is it, baby. This is it’. Indifferent to the

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shit under their feet, indifferent to the smell of a thousand bodies, the pilgrims jostled from step to step, ecstasy on their faces…Anuradha was no different. Her face suffused with a strange ecstatic glow, she muttered prayers, made offerings at every possible shrine. The leper’s guard had been doubled for the occasion. (214)

The festival Janamashtmi is symbolic of human love. People, despite of their religion celebrate the festival with singing and dancing. Joshi's The Last Labyrinth and E.M. Foster's A Passage to India could be compared to eachother as both the books celebrate the Janamsahtmi festival. The festival upholds universal love and compassion among people of all religion and faith.

The novel reflects deep faith of Anuradha, geeta, gargi and Som's mother in Lord Krishna. This faith comes in sharp contrast to Som's rational beliefs. Som's mother was a deep follower of Krishna. She was suffering from cancer and still believed that Krishna would give her power to fight with the disease. Anuradha's mother also had deep faith in Krishna. Lord Krishna was a lover to her and she was married to him. She sung and wept before Krishna whenever she was sad. Like her mother Anuradha also seeks a lover in the Lord. Her name itself speaks her love for the Lord. The name Anuradha means the companion of Krishna. Anuradha adores and even dresses up for Krishna. Som observes this on the day of Janamashtmi;

“She looked like as if I had never seen her before: draped in a saree of heavy silk, its muted colors woven on the loom of some exquisite ancient craftsmen of Karachi, she looked like a medieval courtesan around whom wars might have been fought. There was a diamond in her nose. Which had not been there before… there was mehendi on her hands. All this preparation I knew was for Krishna.” (121)

Som Bhaskar's wife Geeta, though living in the materialistic world, loves Krishna. Geeta is not keen in accumulating earthly pursuits rather her aim of life is the purgation of soul. Gargi, the divine women is an incarnation of God on earth. She is deaf and dumb but still she can hear the voice of the almighty and can communicate with people. She can hear people's problem and suggest solutions too. Som, Geeta, Anuradha and Aftab get tranquility from her smile. Aftab too has faith in Krishna and does not bother if his business gets ruined. He is soul elevated man whose priority in life is Anuradha.

Som Bhaskar is contrary to other characters in the novel. He is born and brought up in India, with religious faith of his mother but gets higher education at Harvard University. The Western education instills skepticism in Som. He himself articulates his crossbreed;

I had been to the World’s finest Universities…And there were things hat I had picked up by myself. I knew that money was a dirt, a whore. So were houses, cars, carpets. I knew of Krishna,

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of the lines he had spoken: of Buddha at Sarnath, under the full moon of July, setting in motion the wheel of righteousness; of Pascal, on whom I did a paper at Harvard: ‘Let us weigh the gain and loss in wagering that God is, let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all, if you lose, you lose nothing’ All this I knew and much else. And yet, at the age of thirty-five. I could do no better than produce the same rusty cry: I want, I want. (9) It appears colonial education has reduced modern man to zero in cultural values. Brahmins were considered as the most learned and knowledgeable about spirituality in Indian society. But young postcolonials like Som have lost their cultural moorings Som is a Brahmin by birth but has failed to understand the teachings and philosophy of Upanishads and Gita. Anuradha caustically remarks to Som “You are a Brahmin, after all. A Bhaskar, what is a Bhaskar doing in business?” (102) Mathur and Rai comment on this condition of Som Bhaskar: Som Bhaskar, too, is a Western-educated industrialist. He, too, though an Indian by birth and domicile, and a Brahmin at that, is unable to make head or tail of the mumbo-jumbo of Hindu religion, depending on which his mother sacrificed her life as a victim of cancer, nor of the tantra practiced in the ancient city of Benaras. He, too, is unable to believe in God, and contemptuously treats the idol of Krishna just as a “wooden creature.” (102) It appears that only Indian spirituality can give Som comfort and harmony in life. Though Som has inherited some spirituality from his mother he is still a perturbed self. He finds some comfort in Anuradha, whom he finds at first glance “obsolete” and a monument, “tall, handsome, ruined” (12). It is Anuradha, however, who realizes that the endless desire in Som is not for physical or materialistic gains but for spirituality. She says: It is not me you want—I know. You want something. You badly want something. I could see that the first time we met. But it is not me. That, too, I can see. I told you so in the dargah. (58-59)

Gargi also pacifies Som by saying that the Omnipotent will soon send someone to help him, and she relates it with Anuradha, saying: “‘go with her,’... ‘Don’t quarrel. She is your Shakti.’”(110). It is Anuradha who can help Som to come out of the labyrinth of rationality and move towards the mystical power of the soul. His longing for Anuradha is the longing for his soul. In contact with Anuradha, Som slowly starts believing in God. His journey to the mountains to face Krishna symbolizes his journey towards the realization of his soul. In the mountains when he sees the man- high flame burning he feels that: Its perfect stillness could hypnotize. I had heard of people who, staring into such flames, had enjoyed the Eternal Bliss. Others had discovered their Oneness…with the Brahma A man I once traveled with—one of the most sophisticated I have ever met— claimed he had seen in such a flame his previous incarnations…This little flame of mine, however, yielded

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nothing beyond an ounce of tranquility which, of course, was not to be laughed at.(193-94)

Anuradha succeeds in partly cleansing Som’s soul but his Westernized outlook keeps on troubling him. Though Som’s wants to be spiritually enlightened he is unable to reach his goal. Bearing the hurdles of his life Som is incapable even of committing suicide. One of the basic aspects of Postcolonial literature is the transformation of culture through novels. Religion and spirituality establish values and systems in a society; therefore, they have a significant role in cultural decolonization. Joshi, through The Last Labyrinth, shows the decolonizing of the Indian spiritual identity that was tainted by Westernization. In The Last Labyrinth Joshi has narrated some strange religious beliefs in India like Anuradha says a story to Som of a Sufi Pir who drank heavily as he felt, “When I am drunk Allah comes to me, stares at me but says nothing. So I drink the more. One day He will speak to me”(54). In another incident Som witnesses the day of vows where people come to flip a coin and ask a wish from Krishna. It’s believed that every wish is granted over there. In another incident the hills are blessed with the healing touch as several lepers across the nation comes to take a dip in the tank near the temple. It’s said that a dip in the tank cures leprosy. In the novel Joshi has revealed the strength of Indian tradition and culture. Though Som is Western influenced but he starts believing in religion and God. He too visits the mountains in search of hope and happiness. Joshi has also presented the religious words like “mantra”, “aarti”, “dancing bhakts”, “kirtans”, “Prasad” and “panda”. Joshi also makes use of Indian addressing words like “jaan”, “premika”, “namaskar” and “shrimanji”. Indian eatables too find their place in the novel like “paan”, ‘chaat”, “kulfi”, “khir” and so on. Thus to conclude Joshi has explored the Indianness in The Last Labyrinth. The post-colonial youths are spiritually impotent and the re-discovery of spiritual roots is a only solution to it. Joshi through the novel suggest that Westernization can never give happiness of life as native culture and tradition lies deep in the sub-conscious mind and again and again reverberates to the conscious mind for fulfillment. The message of Bhagavad Gita, as quoted by G.A. Ghanshyam and vasumati Nadig is relevant in this context; Sarva-dharma parityajya Mam ekam saranam vraja Aham tvam sarva papebhyo Moksayisyami ma sucah (Abandoning all duties, come to me alone for shelter. Be not grieved, for I shall release thee from all evils).

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Works Cited

1) Braj, B. Kachru, The Indianization of English: The English Language in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, p.87. print. 2) Naikar, Basavaraj. Indian English Literature, Vol IV. India: Atlantic Publishers, 2003. Print. 3) Joshi,Arun. ‘Back cover of the Book'. The Last Labyrinth. Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi, 1981. Print. 4) Dhwan. R.K. The Novels of Arun Joshi. India: Prestige Books, 1992. Print. 5) Nayar, Pramod K. Postcolonial literature An Introduction. India: Dorling Kindersley Pvt. Ltd, 2008. Print. 6) Pandey, Mukteshwar. Arun Joshi: The Existentialist Element in His Novels, New Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1998. Print.

43 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Purohit: Protest and novels ISSN: 2454-4574

A study of “protest against social evils through literature” with reference to Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn as a protest novel.

Introduction to the Author: Neha Purohit is an adhoc faculty in KV no.2 in Bhopal. She has completer her masters in English Literature in 2011 from Govt. DB Girls College, Raipur. Further, she got her B.Ed from Savoiur College. She has been writing research artilces and got them published in various magazines and journals.

Abstract: This paper reveals about the word “PROTEST”with taking certain important writers into consideration.Each writer expresses his thought with a motif. We can say that “Protest is perhaps as old as the human race itself”. Right from the time when Adam and Eve defiantly turned their back on the authority of God and walked out of heaven, hand in hand, protest has come to man more naturally than accommodation. Protest here depicts the daily suffering of the people under a force.The force may be political,emotional,social or psychological or economical.Its main concern are classes, clashes,oppression and segregation.As literature is basically the product of social forces, a writer cannot help projecting his experience into his writing. The history of the Negroes in America has been a history of slavery, cruelty, oppression, lynching, racial discrimination . Jim Crowism, meted out to them by the whites. These hurts are deep-rooted in the Negro psyche. So the "black writer, partly because of his own hurt consciousness and partly because he is in some way supposed to be the spokesman of his race, has often tried to raise the voice of protest in his writing. The urge to protest has been basic to the Negro novel since its inception. But the Negro novelist, or that matter, the Negro writer, is often branded as a propagandist by white critics or sometimes by the black critics also. It is true that the confusion between the realms of arts and propaganda plagued the early black literature. Yet there have been two streams of protest tradition among the black writers.Those who follow the first stream refuse find any difference between art and propaganda. Most of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and before that come in this category. W.E.B.DuBo is believed that art has a primary political function. He said: "All art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists, I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda, for gaining the right of the black folk to love and enjoy." (DuBois ,W.E.B.10) By the apex of the Harlem Renaissance, then, certain latent assumptions about the relationship between "art" and life had become prescriptive cannon. Some writers outlined what they called : "the social compulsion of black literature, built as it was on the sorrow and strain inherent in .American slavery, on the difficulties that sprang from emancipation, on the feelings of revenge,

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despair, aspiration and hatred which arose as the Negro struggled and fought his way upward."( Fisher.13). The other stream of protest literature came into being with the publication of Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son. But whereas DuBois considered art to be propaganda and did not mind being branded a propagandist of the black cause, Richard Wright and the others of his school believe that their work should not be called propaganda as it was only the expression to the feelings of the blacks and their position in the white society. Robert Bone thinks that for the Wright School, literature is an emotional catharsis — a means of dispelling the inner tensions of race. In these novels, we find a lot of violence which is used as a weapon of protest. When a black person kills a white person in these novels, it is in largely, the fulfillment of desire long repressed. An attack upon a white person or his "black representative is an attack upon a symbol of racism and oppression. Ann Petry's Lutie Johnson in ‘The Streetbludgeons’ a black man to death when he tries to rape her in preparation for turning her over to the rich white Harlem gangster who employs him. But in killing that "black man, she is only killing “the white world which thrust "black people into a walled enclosure from which there was no escape." Closest to unalleviated racial protest is Chester Himes’ novel “If He Hollers Let Him Go “(1945), a novel whose neurotic, race conscious protagonist Bob Jones makes Wright’ s Bigger Thomas seem well adjusted by comparison. This story of racial discrimination in a wartime California shipyard has a kind of political sequel in Himes’s second novel Lonely Crusade (1947) Here the protagonist, a labor organizer by profession, struggles against discrimination in the unions and exposes the wartime betrayal of the Negro by the Communist party. Baldwin’s essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” published when he was only 24, initiates a lifelong battle to overcome his own vulnerability as well as his society’s fantasies and prejudices. His main objection to “Native Son” was that it confirmed the damning judgment on African-Americans delivered by their longstanding tormentors. Damaged by hatred and fear, Bigger Thomas tries to redeem his manhood through murder and rape. But this vengeful cruelty only validates “those brutal criteria bequeathed him at his birth,” reinforcing old degrading notions about black men. This is why the “protest novel,” far from being disturbing, had become a “comforting aspect of the American scene,” cherished by white liberals. To accept, then, that violence and degradation were “the everlasting potential, or temptation, of the human race” was to disclaim moral immunity for any individual or collective; it was to break the simple opposition between virtue and guilt. The protest novel, however, soldered to a Manichaean notion of good and evil, ended up denying the “disquieting complexity” of the human being: the fact that, black or white, he is “something resolutely indefinable, unpredictable,” trapped eternally within a “web of ambiguity” and “paradox.” To conclude, Robert Bone has said about the element of protest in black literature: "To succeed aesthetically, a novel must develop a theme of universal significance from an otherwise isolated segment of human life."(Bone,Robert.25)

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This paper focuses on Mark twain an american writer who wrote a novel The adventure of huckleberry finn which dealt with this issue but in satirical tone, denouncing the slavery issue,brutality ,racism and hypocrisy of society

“The Adventure of Huckleberyfinn :as a protest novel Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to be classified among protest novels. Its main aim was to protest against some evil practices that were frequent in mid-19th century America frontier society. To make it more attractive to the readers and more affective to change society, Mark Twain used satire, which is a literary manner of denouncing, criticising and laughing at the foibles, crimes or vices of a person or society, with the aim of correcting them. Usually, humour plays a great role and makes people laugh, which makes it easier for satire to reach its targets. This exactly applies to Huck Finn, for it attacked the vices of the 19th Century American society, with the intention of correcting them. Many of those vices had been witnessed by the author, who was sometimes victim of them. His life and experience provided him with much material. This proves that Mark Twain dealt with a situation that really existed and which he knew very well. He had lived in many areas, in many conditions, bad and good, had chanced his luck in printing, steamboat piloting, the army, mining, journalism, novel and essay writing,…All this rich background and experience allowed him to scorn and ridicule his contemporaries’ misdeeds. Also, Mark Twain chose his characters according to what he wanted to denounce, and all contributed to the success of his work. His satire was so severe toward society that the latter considered it to be outrageous, rough, coarse, immoral and inelegant. It was banned from libraries for years. This proves how deeply Huck Finn had reached its targets, namely corrupt society and institutions. The central idea of Huck Finn is “man’s inhumanity toward man”. Mark Twain depicted it under various forms, notably slavery and violence. These were the first targets of his satire, and the main cause of his pessimism and disappointment. Other minor targets were the frequent vices that had become part of frontier culture and life. These were drunkenness and materialism. Mark Twain confronted his here with all those evils one by one, and made him overcome them. Some of them were supported by social and religious institutions, and Huck’s victory over them confirmed Twain’s intention to change society. In short, Huck Finn was aimed at pointing out the ugliness, falseness, dishonesty and hypocrisy of society. As his contemporary writers did, Mark Twain too used the image of the shore being an awful place, and the river a safer and freer one. Two more themes explored include racism and slavery in the South. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery, demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed.The protesting aspect of Huck Finn and author’s opinions about his times has been focused. Firstly, concentrating on Huck’s protest on all the targeted social evils, notably slavery, drunkenness, racial discrimination, religious hypocrisy and materialism will be analysed one by one. Finally, the slavery issue and religious hypocrisy will be tackled from different angles, namely the slave’s non-human status, the relationship between Huck and Jim, religion’s support for slavery and so on. It is believed by many scholars and critics that the first thing that led Mark twain to write the adventure of huckleberry finn was’man’s inhumanity towards man’. In Huck Finn we find many scenes of inhumanity under various forms.In addition, Mark Twain used Huck Finn, to attack with all his might religion, which he accused of having corrupted Huck’s innocent

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heart.Huck was about to be “a slave” of his conscience by denouncing Jim. His conscience had been corrupted by the slave-holding society and its hypocritical religion.The victory of instinct over conscience is highly moral and makes religion appear ridiculous in the mind of the readers. It was also an overwhelming victory of Huck who stands for the right, over society and religion which supported that immoral practice – slavery. As far as morality is concerned, Brander Matthews said that some of the qualities of Huck Finn are : “the morality of it, the essentially ethical doctrine, the natural sense that underlies it…”( McMichael George.53) Mark Twain also attacked religion which was the major supporter of slavery. In Huck’s action and reflection, Twain ridiculed religious principles that encouraged immorality. He always made Huck choose the right and moral side and disobey religious norms. Through Huck’s hesitations and choices, Twain encouraged people to listen to their instinct rather that to their conscience. He proved that the latter may easily be corrupted by society and religion. Huck – used his inventiveness, his quickness, his morality, his innocence and his love of adventure to ridicule not only the above mentioned vices, but also social, cultural and religious institutions. Violence was one of the first evils Mark Twain satirized. He first presented the most frequent forms of it through Pap Finn’s brutality, the bloodshed resulting from a feud opposing two aristocratic families and Lynch Law. Then he ridiculed them. This violence had been on Mark Twain’s mind since his childhood, and its different forms in Huck Finn are strikingly similar to what he himself had witnessed. He found no other means to fight it but through satire, which is a much more efficient weapon than any other means in terms of ridding society of vices and other mischievous practices. The other major evil that Mark Twain wanted to denounce with all his might was slavery. In the mid-19th century, life on the frontier was based on slavery. A slave was not a man, could be sold any how and at any time, and had no way to show his worth and claim his rights. Certainly, one of Twain’s goals was proving to the entire universe that a slave too, was a man, that blacks were not different from whites since the latter too were subjects to the same follies as blacks. Besides, in some cases, Mark Twain presented a black as being kinder, more loyal and more moral than whites. To reach his goal, he used various means among which one may cite allowing Jim to achieve positive things, allowing him to display his human sentiments as well as good-naturedness, his kind-heartedness and his loyalty. Satire and humour played a great role in Twain’s success, because they served as a vehicle of his disgust and hatred against the frontier’s evil practices. Mark Twain also attacked religion which was the major supporter of slavery. In Huck’s action and reflection, Twain ridiculed religious principles that encouraged immorality. He always made Huck choose the right and moral side and disobey religious norms. Through Huck’s hesitations and choices, Twain encouraged people to listen to their instinct rather that to their conscience. He proved that the latter may easily be corrupted by society and religion.One may even be tempted to assert that the only fictitious things in that novel are the characters’ names.

CONCLUSION

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Through above example we have explored how not only black writers but also american writer have tried to exteriorize the daily struggle of people with the force of society. Twain chose characters who exactly gave a clear idea of mid-19th century frontiersmen and their way of living, thinking and acting. Huck Finn is a fictitious work which took inspiration from those times’ day- to-day life, and which is not far from reality and now it became an inspiration for us to deal with the social evils in our society. In the mordern age, brutality, slavery, racism is still seen in our society. No one from the community crowd came forward to help poor or needy people.The term “human trafficking” is a term most people have heard is actually just a modern term for slavery.Human trafficking does not refer to illegal immigrants being smuggled across borders who are then free to go their own way.The vast majority of slaves are held in collateralized herediatary debt bondage which means that a son or daughter can be born into slavery is the payment.There is no end to his debt .It spans generations with no end to this payment. At last we can say that Global slavery and brutality is growing ,rather than shrinking. Like in, Huck Finn appears to be simultaneously a literary, sociological and anthropological document. It dealt with a real situation of life and social evils practised in the society, in every part of the world . Mark Twain’ s attitude towards’ evil practices which was appearing in almost all over the world,is a path for a human being to work aginst such social evils.. Protest novels came to rescue the voices of many oppressed,to protest against tranny.Thanks to protest novel that the world came to knew about the social evils and problems faced by the people but ,still it is just decided to ignore.

PREFRENCES & CITATIONS

Fischer, Victor, and others. eds. Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001.

Packard, Chris. Queer Cowboys and Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Walsh, Lynda. Sins against Science: The Scientific Media Hoaxes of Poe, Twain, and Others. Albany: State U of New York P, 2006.

Lathbury, Roger. Realism and Regionalism (1860-1910): American Literature in Its Historical, Cultural, and Social Contexts. NY: Facts on File, 2005

Barrish, Phillip. White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005.

Claybaugh, Amanda. The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo- American World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2007.

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www.wikipedia.com

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Eschatological Dimensions: A Study of Lakshmi Kannan’s

Short Stories “Please, Dear God,” “A Sky All around,”

“The Turn of the Road,” and “Pain”

Introduction to the Author:

Dr. C. Isaac Jebastine is the professor and H.O.D, department of English, Bharathidasan University, TN. The co-author, K. B. Karthiga, is a Ph.D. research scholar at the same department.

Abstract

Death is an inevitable part of human life. It continues to baffle mankind since time

immemorial. Hence it becomes important to study how literature represents the essential human

experience of death and also the relationship of the living with the dead. This paper attempts to

examine how death and dying appear as tropes in four short stories of Lakshmi Kannan namely

“Please, Dear God,” “A Sky All around,” “The Turn of the Road,” and “Pain.” There is an

eschatological vein that runs through these short stories. This paper argues that not only the dying

but also the living goes through the painful experience of death.

Death has been a great mystery for mankind since ancient times. And even today it has

managed to elude human understanding and knowledge. Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist, argues

that though death is a reality in human life, it still remains inexplicable and unknown. Dying is

also a harrowing phase in human life through which everyone has to go through one day. People

encounter the experience of death in different ways such as by watching the death of others and

also with the help of fiction one can have a feel of death (Bauman 1992). The German philosopher

and literary critic, Walter Benjamin, is another scholar who asserts that what we seek in fiction is

the knowledge of death that is denied to us in real life (Hakola Intro i).

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This paper examines how literature represents the essential human experience of death and also the relationship of the living with the dead. Death and dying appear as tropes in literature

whether the focus is on meeting it, surviving it, or even accepting it. This paper analyses the treatment of death tropes in the four short stories of Lakshmi Kannan namely “Please, Dear God,”

“A Sky All Around,” “The Turn of the Road,” and “Pain” from various perspectives.

Lakshmi Kannan is a renowned Indian woman writer who has penned a novel, poems, and short stories in both English and Tamil. She has written four collections of short stories in Tamil under the nom de plume Kaaveri. These stories have been translated into English by herself. The stories taken for study “Please, Dear God” and “A Sky All Around” are from the collection

Nandanvan and Other Stories (2011), whereas “Pain” is from India Gate and Other Stories (1993), and “The Turn of the Road,” is from Parijata and Other Stories (1992).

In all the four stories Lakshmi Kannan conjures up an eschatological dimension and situates “the reader between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead” (Indra14). The story

“Please, Dear God” is about a woman Chandra who lies in coma in the ICU. Her husband

Ramachandran, visits her daily with the hope that she would recuperate soon. He sees other patients in the ICU dying every day. There is a thin and decisive line that distinguishes the living from the dead inside the ICU. As observed by C.T. Indra, “The act of pulling the white sheet tightly over the head and tucking in the sides ‘neatly and decisively’, is the one symbolic act to distinguish the dead from the living” (15). Ramachandran poignantly pleads with and prays to God that the nurse who seems to be an expert in tucking the shroud around the corpse should not get a chance to do it to his wife. His devout prayers breathe life into Chandra and she recovers.

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In the story “A Sky All around” too, the setting is the ICU where an elderly man,

Varadarajan, lies in coma. The narration is from the point of view of the consciousness of the comatose patient. Lakshmi Kannan describes the minutest details such as his helplessness as he

‘hears” the doctors talk about him conclusively, his mute “reactions” to the queries of his family, and his inability to communicate with them. He goes to the region of the dead and meets his dead mother and his former colleague, Bhaskaran, who died of a heart attack. As Tulsi Badrinath rightly puts it in Deccan Herald review, “Lakshmi Kannan skilfully blends the auditory point of ‘view’ of a comatose patient in an ICU with his vivid astral travel across an ocean-like sky.” Before his dear ones’ prayers bring him back to life, he has travelled to the region of the dead and seen much about death. In both the stories “Please, Dear God” and “A Sky All Around”, death is fought with the

gentlest of weapons such as prayer resulting in miracles.

Another story, dealing with the death trope, is “Pain.” It is a moving story that deals with

the feelings and emotions of a woman, Padma, who is on her deathbed, suffering from cancer. The

cancer which started initially in her uterus has also spread to her breasts with terrific speed. She

writhes her body out of pain which seemed to bore the very marrow of her bones. Lakshmi Kannan

relates her condition as that of being on a parole from Yama, death-God in the Hindu mythology.

Padma’s husband, Seshadri, feels utterly helpless when a team of doctors unanimously predicts

that Padma would not survive beyond certain point. The relations who visit the house after

knowing the news start dissecting Padma’s body. One of the women even goes to the extent of

commenting that Padma’s body is ready to be offered to the pyre as it has served its purpose of

giving birth to two daughters. Padma’s elder daughter, Usha, protests against this kind of

fragmentation and argues that her mother is one whole being. Padma has accepted pain and the

imminent death with stoicism.

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“The Turn of the Road” is another short story of Lakshmi Kannan which reminds us that

death is inevitable and unpredictable too. In this story the father goes to a hospital for his by-pass

surgery and he expresses his desire to go to the Perumal temple after his surgery. But unfortunately

he dies the day before the surgery. His son wants to fulfill his father’s desire by slowing down the ambulance which is carrying his father’s body in front of the temple. But he is unable to do so as the priest admonishes him saying that the Hindu religion does not allow to take any dead body to

the premises of any temple.

In all the four stories, death occurs as a result of some kind of disease: coma, edema, renal

failure, cancer, and heart disease. While Chandra in “Please, Dear God” has slipped into coma

after a routine surgery for burst appendix, Varadarajan in “A Sky All around” has been in coma

for several days and has developed edema (accumulation of serum in tissues). Padma in the story

“Pain” suffers from cancer. Mahadevan in “The Turn of the Road” has some problem in the

functioning of heart and undergoes angiography and catheterization. He dies the day before his

by-pass surgery. As observed by Sudha Rai, Lakshmi Kannan presents “individuals helplessly trapped by disease and acute illness in wards and ICU’s” (33).

Owing to disease each of the major characters in these short stories experiences excruciating pain. Though Varadarajan in “A Sky All Around” lies in coma, he is very much alive to the happenings around him. As he narrates the story by himself, the reader is able to understand his pain as a comatose patient. When the doctors press his legs to confirm whether he has sensation,

Varadarajan cries out: “Aiyyo! It’s paining….That’s enough, stop it for God’s sake, STOP! Now all of you are not just pressing my legs, you’re also turning and twisting my toes so mercilessly.

Amma, I’m in agony” (Nandanvan 186). In fact, it’s pitiful that no one can actually hear his

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mutterings. Finally, he appeals to his dead mother: “Aiyyo, Amma, save me from this torture.

Come. Come soon…” (Nandanvan 187). In addition to this physical torture, he experiences mental

agony too. On seeing his wife Kanaka’s sobs, he tries to comfort her but in vain. At last when the

doctors say, “‘We’re sorry. We tried our best but couldn’t save him,’” Varadarajan cries out silently: “No, no! I’ll come through this alive! I can hear Kanaka’s prayers. I can hear the chanting

of Ganesh, Chitra, and Revathi. Please have faith in the prayers of my family” (Nandanvan 196).

Pain has become all pervasive in the titular short story “Pain” in which Padma who suffers

from cancer submits to pain. It is expressed in the following lines:

“The frontier of pain. At first it was pain, pain all the way. Varieties of pain. After

an initial apprenticeship in suffering, she had got habituated to it….The blue veins

turned purple and were swollen into throbbing ropes, pulling and tearing at the

muscles and tendons, the body curled in hopeless surrender as the pain went on in

uninterrupted waves, boring into the very marrow of the bones chillingly. When the

nerves pulsate explosively I wonder how this fragile human body even has the

strength to register the entire range of the pain in all its variety and depth?” (India

Gate 54)

Mahadevan in “The Turn of the Road” is also subjected to a similar sort of pain during his

angiography and catheterization. The doctor while inserting a catheter, a thin, long tube into his

vein persuades him saying, “Don’t be afraid, you won’t feel any pain. You’ll only feel some

discomfort, that’s all” (97). Mahadevan wants to retort but his inability to speak is expressed in

the following lines: “Some discomfort…Hmm…It’s easier said than endured….‘Discomfort’?

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What a mild word. Here you’re, torturing my body without even aneasthetising…” (Parijata 97,

98).

Not only the dying but also the living goes through painful experience. Chandra’s husband,

Ramachandran, in “Please, Dear God” goes to the hospital every day to see his comatose wife in

the ICU. He keeps staring through the glass pane of the ICU ignoring his hunger, fatigue, and

discomfort. He is deeply moved by the death of other patients in the ICU and fervently prays to

God: “‘God, save everyone here, save Chandra and that one, and that one there, and that…don’t

let them die yet’” (Nandanvan 69). C. T. Indra opines that “Lakshmi Kannan superbly internalises

the consciousness of a desperate human mind in fear of death” (14). Just as Ramachandran prays

to God in Sanskrit, in Tamil, in English using a few verses from the New Testament, quoting

Buddhist incantation of Tibetan monks in order to save his wife, the family members of

Varadarajan in “A Sky All Around” chant the Gongyo and daimoku (the supreme Law of

Buddhism) in unison inside the ICU. In both the cases it is the firm belief of the living in prayer

that brings the dying back to life.

The relationship of the living with the dying or the dead also forms a vital part of the study.

The purpose of existence of Padma’s husband Seshadri and her two daughters Usha and Prema in

the story “Pain” undergoes a sea change after knowing Padma’s bout of cancer. Seshadri recedes

quietly as he is unable to see the suffering of his wife suffering and the daughters also become

more pensive and sadness surrounds the girls like a soft cloud.

Literature also discusses death-related social issues and the resultant emotions. For

instance, in “Pain” Padma’s elder daughter, Usha, protests against the dissection of woman’s body

when her mother’s body is assessed on utilitarian terms by Seshadri’s aunt: “Just see how this

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cancer has timed itself. It had taken care to grow in her uterus and breasts only after Usha and

Prema have been born” (India Gate 55). Padma’s aunt, Pattamma, goes a step further and issues

passport to Padma for dying: “But one should be consoled that when she goes, she would go as a

Sumangali, bedecked with kumkum, haldi and flowers on her person. She is lucky that way” (57).

On hearing all this, Usha defines womanhood as given below: “Amma is one whole being. She is

Padma. She is a person, having a homogenized existence….Is that all she is worth, giving birth to us as an ultimate atonement for being female?” (56). Outi Hakola and Sari Kivistö assert that

“Literary descriptions of death are thus not merely preoccupied with the painful scene of dying or individual loss, but the concept of death can be understood more widely as a site of many projections and fantasies and as a metaphor of many social issues” (Introduction viii).

Another social issue related to death surfaces in the story “The Turn of the Road.” As averred by Christine Gomez, the hypocrisy of religion is being questioned in the story as “his

father’s death alienates Mohan from the rituals of his religion, which refuse entrance to his father’s body within the temple that he had loved to visit while alive” (23). The same religion which

believes that god dwells in our living body becomes restless to dispose the body when someone is

dead in the name of purity. In an Agraharam, people are impatient to dispose of a dead body. It is

far worse in villages as the villagers do not even cook any food until the body is taken out for final

rites.

Lakshmi Kannan draws our attention to the Christian practice of keeping the dead body in

the church before taking it to the graveyard and in many churches the graveyard is in the premises

of the church. This particular aspect of Christianity is appealing to the readers.

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Padma in the story “Pain” brings before her mind’s eye the image of the Arlington

cemetery. This attests to the fact that death is a leveler. In the graveyard there’s no gender

discrimination or caste discrimination or racial discrimination or class discrimination. Once the

body is placed beneath the earth and covered with greenery, then the decomposition starts. There

is no bias in the process of decomposition. Beneath the soil, equality is maintained.

As death and dying are viewed from various perspectives in literature it is necessary to

investigate how people approach death—whether it’s survival or acceptance of death. The

characters Chandra in “Please, Dear God” and Varadarajan in “A Sky All around” manage to

survive death with the help of the prayers of their dear ones, whereas Padma in “Pain” and

Mahadevan in “The Turn of the Road” accept and submit themselves to death with stoicism. Padma

welcomes death as it liberates her from the world of distress and pain.

In an interview with Sudha Rai, Lakshmi Kannan points out the fact that

“These (death) experiences take man and woman to the very brink of existence.

While some people crumble and get crushed under this kind of adversity, a few

others are amazingly resilient and courageous. The existential struggle with the

uncertainty of life brings out the best in them. I am drawn to the two seemingly

contrary traits—an indomitable human spirit on the one hand and a graceful

acceptance of destiny or mortality on the other.” (33)

The treatment of death and dying in the four short stories of Lakshmi Kannan has been

examined from various perspectives and at different depths of meaning. It can be argued that the

awareness of the finitude of life will help in structuring one’s life in a meaningful way. At the same

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time one should understand the ubiquitousness of death and view death not as the opposite of life

but as a part of life.

Works Cited

Badrinath, Tulsi. “Soulful Delights.” Rev. of Nandanvan and Other Stories. Deccan Herald.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/217447/soulful-delights.html. 28 Sep. 2015. Web.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Cambridge: Polity Press.

1992. Print.

Gomez, Christine. “From Balanced Feminism to an Androgynous Vision.” Rev. of Inru Maalai,

Ennudan. The Book Review 18.6 (June 1994): 23-24. Print.

Hakola, Outi and Sari Kivistö (Ed). Death in Literature. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,

2014. Web.

Indra, C. T. “Phenomenological Explorations – Introducing Lakshmi Kannan’s Short Fiction.”

Nandanvan and Other Stories. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2011. Print.

Kannan, Lakshmi. Nandanvan and Other Stories. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2011. Print.

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--- . India Gate and Other Stories. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 1993. Print.

--- . Parijata and Other Stories. New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1992. Print.

Rai, Sudha. “A Conversation with Lakshmi Kannan.” Nandanvan and Other Stories. New Delhi:

Orient Blackswan, 2011. Print.

59 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Ekka & Rathore: Disturbed adolescence in deshpande’s novels ISSN: 2454-4574

Marriage: The Trauma of A Disturbed Adolescence In The Selected Novels Of Shashi Deshpande

Introduction to the Authors:

Ujawal Rathore is a research scholar in the English Literature department at Barkatullah University, Bhopal, MP. Dr. Mamta is an assistant professor teaching English Literature in the English department at Govt. Hamidia Arts and Commerce College, Bhopal.

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande is one of the prominent contemporary women writers in Indian writing in English. Her protagonists find themselves entrapped in the roles assigned to them by society, but achieve self-identity and independence within the confines of their marriage. The present study ,based on the selected novels of Shashi Deshpande deals with the complexities of man woman relationship especially in the context of marriage, the trauma of disturbed adolescence with reference to five novels of Shashi Deshpande namely That Dark Holds No Terrors(1980), Roots And Shadows (1983),That Long Silence (1989),The Binding Vine (2002),A Matter Of Time (2001).She depicts what happen to men and women in and after marriage, what they have been, what they have become and what is in store for them. The changes in status of men and women after marriage and the changing nature of marital relationships are presented in these five novels. Focusing on the marital relation she seeks to expose the tradition by which a woman is trained to play her subservient role in the family. Shashi Deshpande’s novels also show how carefully she expresses the frustration and disappointment of women which they experience in their marital relationship. It suggests concerted efforts by men and women towards creating a mature and balanced gender relationship.

Key Words : Entrapped, Assigned, Self identity, Confines, Complexities, Context, Trauma, Disturbed adolescence, Expose, Tradition, Subservient, Concerted.

“Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side”.1 -Zig Ziglar

60 “Marriage is a very strange thing. It’s a very public institution, it’s meant to tell the world that two people are going to live together, to declare that their children will be legal, that these children can inherit their property. It’s meant for social living, to ensure that some rules are observed, so that men and women don’t cross the lines drawn for them. At the same time, marriage is an intensely private affair; no outsider will know the state of someone else’s marriage. It’s a closed room, a locked room………………….

-Shashi Deshpande

The theme of marriage holds a great fascination for Shashi Deshpande. The theme of marital discord in Shashi Deshpande’s novels reveals her consummate craftsmanship. Shashi Deshpande sincerely broods over the fate and future of modern women particularly in male-chauvinistic society and her annihilation at the altar of marriage. The novelist however does not challenge the futility of marriage as an institution but discloses the inner psyche of the characters through their relations.

Shashi Deshpande’s female protagonists are generally caught in a web of painful circumstances, their struggle and the outcome of which is usually the basis of novel. Marital Discord, a lack of understanding between man and woman. Shashi Deshpande deals with the treatment of domestic relationship, especially disturbed man-woman relationships and the resultant alienation in middle class Indian family. The main reason behind this is temperamental incompatibility, which is further aggravated by loneliness, lack of communication, escapism, isolation and also quest for identity. Almost all the novels of Shashi Deshpande focus on the problems of marital disharmony-the conflict and discord in husband wife relationship.

Shashi Deshpande is one of the most accomplished contemporary Indian Women Writers in English. Daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar, Sriranga, she was born in Dharwad in Karnataka in 1938. At the age of fifteen, she went to Bombay, graduated in Economics, and moved to Banglore, where she gained a degree in law. She devoted early years of her marriage to the care of her two young sons. Later, she took a course in Journalism and for some time worked in magazine. She is an award-winning Indian writer whose talented craftsmanship includes nine immensely popular novels: The Dark Holds No Terrors(1980), If I Die Today(1982), Roots and Shadows(1983), Come Up and Be Dead(1985), That Long Silence(1988), The Binding Vine(1994), A Matter of Time (1996), Small Remedies(2000), Moving On(2004), In the Country of Deceit(2008) and Shadow Play(2013). Furthermore, she has written umpteen short stories in the following anthologies: The Legacy and Other Stories (1978), It Was Dark (1986), The Miracle and Other Stories (1986), It Was the Nightingale (1986) and The Intrusion and Other Stories (1994). She has also written four children’s books: A Summer Adventure (1978), The Hidden Treasure (1980), The Only Witness (1980) and The Narayanpur Incident (1982). Deshpande has won many awards and honors including the Padma Shri award in 2009. Shashi Deshpande is considered as one of the most proficient women writers in India. She being a person of Indian origin with cultural values never gave much importance to her career. She had devoted her early years of marriage taking care of housework and nurturing the children.

61 I never decided that I was going to become a writer; it was never a conscious decision. I got married, I had no definite career, and I had two children. I was restless with being just a housewife and mother; I was looking for a job. Then we were in England for a year, my husband was a doctor. I was very isolated there because he was at work all day and I had these two children and no friends, so then we returned and he said ‘why don’t you write about our year there?’. Then I joined a journalism course. I loved writing, I felt at home with it...so I think in one way I stumbled into it but I really think of it this way as writing was something which was waiting for me along the tine and then I reached that point, and then I knew what my life was going to be about. (BBC World Service). Shashi Deshpande has a penchant for writing whose major themes are inclined towards human feelings and emotions. Her writings are the realistic depiction of the people and the complexities of the everyday mundane life. Her primary concern is the women’s struggles in the Indian society. And to elucidate the same, she keeps women center stage and delicately puts limelight on some of the thought provoking issues. Her protagonists include the middle class and married working women. And being well educated, they very well understand the social inequality prevailing in the Indian patriarchal society.

Her writing career began in 1970, initially with short-stories, published in various magazines. Later, these were published in book form. She is the author of four children’s books and nine novels. She lives in Bangalore, with her pathologist husband. She has emerged as a great literary force. In her writings, she reflects a realistic picture of contemporary middle class women. She focuses on women’s issues. She has a woman’s perspective on the world. One of the finds that the primary reason for Shashi Deshpande to write is that she allows to create her own world. Creative writing allows her a ‘safe place’, from which she can explore a wide range of experience, especially– in regard to woman’s status in society. While writing Shashi Deshpande has touched a major aspect of women’s life, which is marriage. In an interview taken by Geeta Vishwanatha she said: Geeta Vishwanatha : Every novel of yours focuses on marriage and its crises. Could you explain this centrality you accord to marriage? Shashi Deshpande: ' see it this way. In The Dark Holds No Terrors it's the relationship of the daughter with the mother which is equally critical, though it is the past. We are shaped by our childhood and our parents. So, that relationship is also very much there. Now in adult life, our relationship mainly concerns the partner, spouse, lover, and husband whoever it may be, a wife and children. Now these are the different relationship, which most concern us. Marriage is a more complicated relationship because it is not a blood tie. Also there is the physicality of sex. And there are enormous demands made on each other and it is that which interests me. Because when it comes to a crunch, you put stress on it, it comes apart. It is so human-made. I don't see it as anything but an institution made for certain purposes and so much has been built upon this foundation, monogamy, the sanctity of marriage – all these are things which are hard for human beings to adhere to. This is why marriage interests me. In times of crisis, when there is a small flaw, the whole machine seems to come apart. The parent-child relationship is equally important for me. This is again a very deep and complex relationship. But yet, marriage is important for me and so is the family. I am interested in the family. Not just marriage. These are the two relationships one is generally concerned with.

62 Kenneth W. Phifer on Marriage as an Institution-

The institution of marriage was begun that a woman might learn how to love and, in loving, no joy; that a man and a woman might learn how to share pain and loneliness and in, sharing. know strength; that a man and woman might learn how to give and, in giving know communion. The institution of marriage was begun that a man and woman might through their joy, their strength, and their communion become creators of life itself. Marriage is a high and holy state to be held in honor among all men and women.

G.B. Shaw on Marriage as an Institution

G.B. Shaw, the great Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics, described marriage as an institution that brings two people together. He said that marriage should be based on intense, profound love and a couple should maintain their ardor until death does them par.

Hindu Marriage K.M.Kapadia, while discussing the concept of Hindu marriage, writes: “Marriage was a social duty towards the family and the community, and there was little idea of individual interest. The social background provided by the authoritarian family afforded no scope for the recognition of any personal factor, individual interest and aspirations, in the relation between husband and wife”2 (Kapadia, 1958, p.169).

Guru Amar Das Says, They are not said to be husband and wife who merely have physical contact only. Rather they alone are called husband and wife who have one soul in two bodies3.

The works Shashi Deshpande suggest deep insight into the intricate issues of life and marriage, and also express social, economic and political upheaval in Indian society. The Indian male is caught in the midst of a rapidly changing social set up with empowered women vying for space in his professional and personal arena. It is in this context that Shashi Deshpande discusses marital rape perpetrated by the modern Indian male in her novels. Rape is a sexual act that is seen as a potent tool in overpower, control and ‘put women in their place ‘by men. Men have been using sexual violence and rape as a means to wield control over women from time immemorial and across cultures. Fran Hosken says that violence against women is perpetrated “with an astonishing consensus among the men in the world”.4When it comes to marital relationships, many men consider themselves the sole owner of their wives and their bodies and would go to any extent to assert their right. There are many untold stories of marital rape happening within their four walls of seemingly happy home in India which most of time are not even construed as rape as it is thought that men have only taken what is rightfully theirs, while women remain mute spectators robbed of their dignity in their own homes. The oldest text Rig-Veda, welcomes the daughter-in-law in the husband’s family like an empress “samrajni-iva” as a river enters the sea: “Come, O desired of the gods, beautiful with tender heart, with the charmed look, good towards your husband, kind towards animals, destined to bring forth

63 heroes. May you bring happiness to both quadrupeds and bipeds”5 (Rig-Veda, X, 85.27). The equality of partnership between the husband and the wife is advocated in the Vedic ideal of marital relationships. The rituals, the vows and counsel in the marriage ceremony enjoin the same equality and prestigious status to the woman. There is of course a gap between the cup and the lip, the precept and the practice, the professed ideal and the actual practice. These five novels by Shashi Deshpande like her remaining nine novels reveal this gap between the desired and the real. These five novels illustrate this changing trend in marital relationships between the husband and the wife.

The Dark Holds No Terrors, her debut novel published in the year 1980, analyzes the complex relationship between a successful doctor Sarita (Saru) and her professionally frustrated and irritated husband Manohar (Manu). A simple storyline but with a complex theme brings out the strong emotions of Saru. The patriarchal belief in claiming the male child as a precious one is enforced in the novel. The accidental death of her brother by drowning makes her develop a sense of guilt throughout her life. Her mother puts the blame on her as though she is responsible for her brother’s death. Saru’s choice of education and life partner Manu shows her revolt against her mother. Her success as a famous lady doctor instills a sense of pride in her husband initially but causes a sense of humiliation in him later. Saru is subjected to marital rape as an outlet for her husband’s hurt ego. Manohar uses rape as a weapon to rein in his wife and show her, her rightful place within marriage. She says that “He attacked me like an animal at night I was sleeping and I woke up and there was this man...... this man hurting me with his hands, his teeth, and his whole body (Dark, 201).” Now love and romance were only illusions, she feels that the code of the present age is sex. Fulfillment and happiness come out through love alone but sex and for me sex was a dirty word.

Manohar thinks very little about the consequence of his actions as he is gravely affected by his hurt male ego and as a result, he jeopardizes his marriage and his life. The funny thing is that Manu does not mind enjoying the luxurious lifestyle bought with Saru’s money. But he minds Saru’s professional success. So Saru is put in a dilemma. Her advice to the young unmarried girls to be cautious in choosing a husband is a testimony to her frustrated, disappointed married life. She warns: “A wife must always be a few feet behind her husband. If he’s an M.A., you should be a B.A. If he’s 5’4”tall, you shouldn’t be more than 5’3”tall. If he’s earning five hundred rupees, you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety-nine rupees. That’s the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage (Dark, 137).” Deshpnded has brought to the fore the issue of marital rape which is often not discussed in public and which does not necessarily amount to violence under the law because it is the husband who the perpetrator. Women have been living in pain and silence for ages as victims of male dominance and sexual violence. Male sexuality is regarded as a symbol of power and strength whereas female sexuality is considered passive and something to be ashamed of.

The novel focuses on the trauma faced by a modern woman who has a traditional upbringing. She shows herself as an independent and a modern woman in her outward appearances but in her psyche she is timid and does not know how to solve her domestic problems. She understands that she cannot run away from her responsibilities both at domestic and societal levels and so decides to reunite with her husband and to re-establish her relationship with him.

Her fourth novel Roots and Shadows (1983) won the Rengammal Prize for the best English Novel. It is about a young woman who has rebelled against her authoritarian and traditional joint family. The novel presents the deprived womanhood through the character of Akka. She is married at the age of twelve and her husband’s brutality and her mother-in-law’s cruelty towards her make her soul wither. She is expected to bear the insults, injuries and humiliations with patience and without complaints. She returns to her parental home after the death of her husband and takes the entire responsibility of the family and establishes herself as a dictator. This novel expounds the complexities of man-woman relationships especially in the context of marriage, the trauma of disturbed adolescence.

The Binding Vine (1993) is about surviving amidst odds and ends. Urmila in The Binding Vine calls arranged marriage an absolutely cold blooded affair because in such a marriage the girl’s feelings are ignored and she suffers and remain vanquished throughout her life. Here Kalyani’s marital life is also a miserable one and she is neglected by Shripati. A woman pines for love and understanding in marriage. Instead, she is made to suffer of fear. For a woman the worst kind of a trauma is rape under the shelter of marriage. The novel touches upon many other issues that simmer below the surface – dynamics in marriage, filial relations, marital bond etc. The novel questions the role of the chauvinistic husband in a male dominated society. It deals with the personal tragedy of the protagonist Urmi and focuses attention on victims like Kalpana and Mira. Urmi narrates the pathetic tale of her mother-in-law Mira, who is a victim of marital rape. Mira’s poems in her solitude were posthumously translated and published by Urmi. It is through the narration of Urmi that the tale of Shakutai, a woman deserted by her husband for another woman gets its impact. A mother’s paranoiac anxiety in protecting her daughters from sexual assault is the significant theme in the novel.

THAT LONG SILENCE

“I had learnt it at last no questions, no retorts, only silence” (143). These lines reveal the oppressive, debilitating life situation of a house wife, who journeys from ignorance to knowledge, through suffering.

Deshpande’s novel That Long Silence has received the most prestigious Sahitya Akademi award in 1990. The theme of marriage holds a great fascination for Deshpande. In most of the cases, marriage culminates in a travesty of faith man and women seek in each other, leading to suffering and the conflict between traditional limitations and modern aspirations. In the present novel, Deshpande critically analyses the institution of marriage in the modern context.

The author has portrayed the explicit gender discrimination in a man-woman relationship that is socially constructed and further worsened by our own people like parents, in-laws, relatives and neighbors. The author has dealt with the female psychic frustrations in the novel and the silence rooted in the complicated web of relationships between a man and a woman.

Set in a typical Indian background, That Long Silence brings forth an eerie tale of the protagonist Jaya an educated middle class girl, Jaya, who finds herself restricted in her married life.

She is presented in relation to tradition and the different relationships she enters into, with a family. She has depicted the experience of Jaya in different roles-as a dutiful wife (of Mohan), as an affectionate mother (of Rahul and Rati) or even as a professional writer (who has given up on genuine writings). She is shattered and feels subjugated with her marriage and life yet she remains silent because a girl is always trained to be silent since her young years in an Indian social set up. The silence between Jaya and her husband further deteriorates the situation. Towards the end of the novel, she realizes that she should break the silence and try to achieve her identity as an individual through self-realization and self-assertion. Through this simple story of Jaya, Deshpande has raised many issues related to matrimony, and questioned the concepts of love and marriage. This is what S.P. Swain means when he says: “A sensitive and realistic dramatization of the married life of Jaya and her husband Mohan, it [That Long Silence] portrays an inquisitive critical appraisal to which the institution of marriage has been subjected to in recent years.”10

Deshpande depicts two different pictures of Indian women at two parallel levels in the novel –the lower class women engaged in menial domestic chores to earn their living; and middle class women of some financial independence. She further divides middle class women into two categories: those who never question their marriage and submit to insult, injuries and humiliation without any complaint; and those who, refusing to become the victim of trends, raise voice against their oppression. Jaya, the protagonist, belongs to the second category of middle class women. In the beginning, she is not different from other women of her class, but towards the end, we notice a great change in her personality. Deshpande brings out the similarities and differences among Jaya and other female characters in the novel –among women of different generations (Jaya, her mother and her grandmother), among women of the different classes (Jaya, Nayana and Jeeja), among women of the same class and generation (Jaya, her cousin, Kusum and her neighbour, Mukta).

The condition of women from lower class, as presented by Deshpande, is really pitiable. Their suffering starts much before their marriage. They start adding to the family income at a tender age, the way Jeeja’s granddaughter, Manda, does. They continue working and earning all their life. They are married off at the age considered suitable by their parents, to any boy who has one head, two eyes, two ears, two hands and two legs like any man. Marriage does not bring any positive change in their lives, but it brings with it endless pain, suffering and burden. They have to work to earn bread for the family, as in most cases husbands fail to earn, and become targets of their husband’s ill-treatment.

The lives of Jeeja and Nayana, housemaids of Jaya, are like a hell. Their life is a continuous drudgery. They both receive very bad treatment at the hands of their husbands. Nayana has an apathetic attitude to life. She wants a son not because she expects any help from him in her old age, but because she does not want her child, her daughter, to suffer at some drunkard’s hands as she herself has suffered. Nayana says to Jaya, “Why give birth to a girl, behnji, who’ll only suffer because of men all her life? Look at me! My mother loved me very much, she wanted so much for

66 me ... a house with electricity and water, shining brass vessels, a silver waist chain, silver anklets ... and what have I got? No, no, behnji, better to have a son (p.28).”

Jeeja’s husband is also a drunkard like Nayana’s and often beats her. The burden of the whole household is on her shoulders, yet she never complains. She accepts his second marriage as perfectly justified because she fails to give him any child. She has only one question: “With whom shall I be angry” (p. 52). Tara’s life is another example of the suffering and the marital problems of the lower class woman. Her husband, Rajaram, is a drunkard and he treats her very badly. He even beats up Tara when she refuses to give him her earning. Frustrated by such a miserable married life, she curses her husband and says: “So many drunkards die ... but this one won’t. He’ll torture us all to death instead” (p. 53) . ……..Jeeja shuts her up saying that husband is a symbol of social prestige because he “keeps the Kumkum” on her forehead, and “what is a woman without that” (p. 53)?

The situation of women belonging to middle class is different. Work outside the house, for them, in most of the cases, is not a compulsion but a matter of choice. They receive much better treatment as compared to lower class women. But the idea that marriages is the only career and husband the only destiny for a woman does not lose ground here also. They also become victims of trends, but their suffering is more mental than physical. Middle class girls get good education and caring atmosphere in family, but they are also conditioned to mould themselves to suit the requirements of their future life partner. From early girlhood, a girl is conditioned in a certain way by the society so that she can be a good wife in future. She is taught to merge her identity in that of her husband. In childhood, Jaya used to be of witty and inquisitive nature which made her grandmother say, “Look at you –for everything a question, for everything a retort. What husband can be comfortable with that” (p. 27)? Jaya is thus conditioned towards the comforts of her future life-partner. At the time of Jaya’s marriage, Ramukaka tells her that the happiness of her husband and home depends on her. Dada advised her to be good to Mohan. And Vanitamami tells her about the importance of being with a husband: “Remember, Jaya ... a husband is like a sheltering tree .... Without the tree, you’re dangerously unprotected and vulnerable” (p. 32). These words keep on echoing in the ears of Jaya and she realizes that since a husband is like “a sheltering tree,” he must be nourished and nurtured adequately even if the wife has to suffer to give it nourishment.

After her marriage, Jaya, who used to consider herself independent and intelligent, shapes herself to suit her husband’s model of a wife. She gets transformed into “stereotype of a woman: nervous, incompetent, needing male help and support” (p. 76). Apparently she has all the material comforts and is almost satisfied. But she has to compromise and suppress many aspects of her individuality for this. In order to become an ideal wife and mother, she devotes herself to the comforts of her husband and to the maintenance of the house. In this process, she feels that she has no identity, no status of her own. When the editor of a magazine asks her to give them her bio-data, she feels that she has nothing meaningful in her life. She thinks of only irrelevant facts: “I was born. My father died when I was fifteen. I got married to Mohan. I have two children and I did not let a third one live” (p. 2).

In fact, Jaya keeps on changing herself according to her husband’s likes and dislikes. As a result of this, her individuality gets annihilated. Now whatever she practices or whatever she follows is

67 dictated by only one consideration and that is, what her husband will think of it. In order to please her husband, she even transforms her appearance. She gets her hair cut and wears dark glasses. After marriage, Mohan renames Jaya as Suhasini. The name „Jaya‟ means „Victory‟ and „Suhasini‟ means “a soft, smiling, placid, motherly woman. A woman who lovingly nurtured her family. A woman who coped” (p. 15-16). Slowly and painfully, she learns what is expected of her. She learns how sharply defined a woman’s role is. A wife should not be angry with her husband because that undoes his position of authority. She knows very well that to survive within marriage, one has to learn many tricks, and silence is one of these tricks. Therefore, she silences her emotions as well as her physical desires.

A woman is often given no right to express her physical desires. She has to submit to the desires of her husband. Jaya also follows the same tradition which results in frustration in her marital life. She pines for emotional communication between her and her husband. But she finds in her relationship with Mohan nothing except emptiness and the suppressed silence as she tells Mukta: “... nothing between me and Mohan either. We lived together but there had been only emptiness between us” (p. 185). She realizes that despite seventeen years of married life, they have not become one, only their bodies occasionally meet, not their souls.

Jaya, like Indu of Roots and Shadows, subdues her independent spirit to the expectations of her husband. She describes her relationship with Mohan as a mechanical and forced relationship: “A pair of bullocks yoked together .... A man and a woman married for seventeen years. A couple with two children. A family somewhat like the one caught and preserved for posterity by the advertising visuals I so loved. But the reality was only this. We were two persons. A man. A woman” (p. 8). But this image of the animals performing their duties mechanically undermines the husband-wife relationship. Marriage is expected to bring joy, glory and fulfilment to both man and woman. But in most cases, as we see in the novel, marriage fails to give the promised happiness to the individuals, especially to the woman. According to Indian tradition, a wife is expected to stay at home, look after the babies and keep out the rest of the world. She is expected to have the qualities prescribed in Indian tradition:

Karyeshu Mantri, Karaneshu Daasi, Rupeeha Lakshmi, Kshamayaa Dharitrii,

Bhojyeshu Mata, Shayanetu Rambha,

Shat Karma Yukta, Kula Dharma Patni.

(Like a slave while serving; a minister while counseling; Goddess Lakshmi in her looks; the earth in forbearance; a mother while feeding; as wife like Rambha, the celestial prostitute; these six are the true characteristics of an ideal wife.)11But Jaya resents the role assigned to a wife in our country. To Jaya, married life becomes unbearable and monotonous. She gets frustrated and says: “Worse than anything else had been the boredom of the unchanging pattern, the unending monotony” (p. 4). Marriage stifles the growth and right to free expression of a wife. A woman’s role and contribution to the society is defined in terms of her role as a wife, daughter, sister or mother. Commenting on her married life, Jaya says that waiting is a part of her existence: “But for women the waiting game starts early in childhood. Wait until you get married. Wait until your

68 husband comes. Wait until you go to your in-laws‟ home. Wait until you have kids. Yes, ever since I got married, I had done nothing but wait” (p. 30). Because of the emptiness in her marriage, Jaya is drawn towards Kamat, a middle-aged intellectual. He treats Jaya as an equal and Jaya gives expression to her real self in Kamat’s Company. But there is no physical relation between the two. In society, a married woman cannot be seen as a friend of another. The friendship between Jaya and Kamat suffers due to this reason. People, including her friends and neighbors like Mukta, do not approve their relationship. One day when Jaya finds Kamat lying dead on the floor, she silently leaves the place because of the fear of social disgrace. Moreover, Jaya has to stifle her creative urges to save her career as a wife. Mohan objects to her creative writing because he finds that her themes reflected the autobiographical details. In order to avoid conflict in her marriage, Jaya gives up creative writing. Then she starts writing middles in newspapers which cause no trouble to her husband, which do not hurt him as Jaya says: “I had relinquished them instead, all those stories that had been taking shape in me because I had been scared –scared of hurting Mohan, scared of jeopardizing the only career I had, my marriage”(p. 144)

Mohan is a traditionalist who wants Jaya to conform to his expectations. He wishes his wife to be modern and educated, but also expects her to have traditional qualities like submissiveness and flexibility. As a husband, Mohan never tries to understand his wife, her emotions and her psychological needs. On the other hand, Jaya annihilates the creative aspect of her personality to keep Mohan happy. She devotes herself to the care and fulfillment of her husband’s and her children’s needs. Thus,obedience and loyalty, which are considered to be the virtues of Hindu womanhood, degenerates into silent bearing of oppression. A woman is even expected not to be angry or revolting as stated in the novel: “A woman can never be angry; she can only be neurotic, hysterical, frustrated. There’s ... no room for despair, either. There is only order and routine” (pp. 147-148).

Marriage not only hinders Jaya’s intellectual growth, but also undermines her sense of self. Mohan gives meaning to her existence. Her status as a wife, as mother, as a housewife owes itself to Mohan. She is aware that Mohan is her profession, her career and her means of livelihood. But this also denies her place as an individual. This realization that she has no existence as Jaya but only as a complement of Mohan becomes more acute when Dr. S.K. Vyas, her brother’s classmate, invites her to his house with Mohan: “And drop in some time–with your husband, of course. „With your husband, of course‟ –what did he mean by that? Was it impossible for me to relate to the world without Mohan? A husband is like a sheltering tree ... Vanitamami, did you, without knowing it, speak the most profound truth I’m destined to heart in my life” (p. 167)?

A woman is subordinated in a number of ways and this result in disharmony between the two sexes. A husband denies his wife the right of her individuality. He wants her to see the world around her only in the way he would like her to see. He expects complete devotion, complete allegiance to his vision of life from his wife. This is what Mohan wants from Jaya when he is charged with corrupt activities. He seeks emotional support from Jaya. Having failed to get any

69 sympathy from Jaya, Mohan leaves the house. This proves to be a traumatic experience for Jaya. Like any other traditional Indian wife, Jaya cannot bear Mohan’s absence. Even the thought of his death horrifies her: “The thought of living without him had twisted my insides. His death had seemed to me the final catastrophe. The very idea of his dying had made me feel so bereft that tears had flowed effortlessly down my cheeks” (pp. 96-97). After Mohan’s departure, she feels that she is secure only with Mohan and has no face to show, no identity without him. It awakens her to her real place in life. Under these frustrating circumstances, Jaya gets terribly disturbed and starts questioning herself. She rethinks over her marital relationship. She realizes that she is not only Mohan’s wife, rather she is an individual having her own distinct identity as she states: “I’m not afraid any more. The panic has gone, I’m Mohan’s wife, I had thought, and cut off the bits of me that had refused to be Mohan’s wife. Now I know that kind of a fragmentation is not possible” (p. 191). She hopes to be on equal terms with Mohan, and at the same time, accepts the established norms and values.

Now Jaya comes to know that the reason of her depressing condition is not the society alone, but she has to take the responsibility of her own state and work according to it. The idea of marriage as “two bullocks yoked together” is rejected by her. Understanding that life cannot be lived in vacuum, she no longer looks at Mohan and herself as two bullocks, rather as two individual with independent minds. She realizes that meaningful co-existence can be achieved only through understanding and compassion, not through domination, subjugation or rejection. Sarala Parker beautifully sums up the idea when she says: “The important insight that Shashi Deshpande imparts to us through Jaya is that women should accept their own responsibility for what they are, see how much they have contributed to their victimization instead of putting the blame on everybody except themselves.”12 Jaya makes her choice by refusing to become a victim of trends and is determined to break her long silence which has plagued her family since long. But there are other women who, like Jaya, belong to the middle class, but unlike her, suffer silently without protest taking the suffering to be their fate. The figures of Vanitamami, Kusum, Mukta, Mohan’s Mother and Mohan’s sister, Vimala can be quoted as examples. Vanitamami, “who had never known what it was to choose” (p. 45), represents another facet of the traditionally suppressed woman. After her marriage, her life was ruled by her mother-in-law. As a daughter-in-law, her role has remained submissive and she is allowed no participation in decision making. The interest she takes in Kusum is the only protest she can register successfully. Kusum is also a victim figure. Passive surrender and insecurity which have been her lot in her mother’s home pursue her in the new family after marriage. Kusum becomes insane as she has internalized all her anger. She becomes a burden on her family. Finally, she commits suicide. Mukta, Jaya’s neighbor, works under financial compulsions. She is a widow caring for her old mother-in-law and teenage daughter, Neelima. She is independent and capable of holding against strange situations, yet she is unable to overcome superstitions. But she wants her daughter to be free from them. She has accepted ill-treatment at the hands of her husband, as she could not have a son. In is the height of irony that if a woman fails to give a male inheritor to her husband, all the blame is put on her. Women are the victims of generations of conditioning in which a woman is unchangeably suppressed. The husband is traditionally given the role of mentor and guide. To serve one’s husband is considered to serve God. The slightest sign of independence on her part is not acceptable to him. Mohan’s father, for example, is shown as dominant and authoritative figure

70 embodying the patriarchal attitudes. He wants fresh food to be served when he returns home. Mohan’s mother’s failure to provide fresh chutney late one night drives him to wild fury. He picks up the plate and throws it. Mohan’s mother picks up the plate, cleans the wall and sends her son next door to borrow some chilies. Patiently, she prepares fresh chutney, lights the fire, cooks the meal again and sits down to wait which is an important part of a woman’s life, not of man’s. Talking about women being treated cruelly by their husbands, Mohan says that this tolerance of violence is the strength of women. But Jaya thinks differently as she says: “He saw strength in the woman sitting silently in front of the fire, but I saw despair. I saw a despair so great that it would not voice itself. I saw a struggle so bitter that silence was the only weapon. Silence and surrender” (p. 36).

The chains of traditional marriage are heavy. In the absence of any other alternative, wives often seek consolation in obsession or mental slavery leading to physical decay, disease and death. This unacknowledged martyrdom becomes an essential part of a housewife’s existence. She is expected to subordinate her own needs to those of her family. She is supposed to bear her exploitation and suffering silently as her fate. Mohan’s mother and his sister, Vimala, both suffer throughout their lives. But they never utter a single word of protest. Finally, they die in silent agony without getting any help from their in-laws.

No doubt, some generation-wise changes are seen in the attitude of man towards marriage and towards woman also, but basically man remains a patriarchal figure, exercising his authority. These generation-wise changes are not limited to man only, but are also seen in the case of women. In the novel, women belonging to the older generation like Ajji, Mohan’s mother and Vanitamani endure the tyranny and injustice of male-dominated society as a natural way of life. They are depicted as docile and subdued figures following the tradition as a virtue. These uneducated women, though victim of male chauvinism, adapt themselves to the tradition completely. But the protagonist, being educated and awakened, fails to conform to the views of the women belonging to the older generation. She feels angry when these women ask her to conform to tradition. The main reasons of difference in the attitudes of these women are the generation gap and education. Deshpande shows the influence of mother on daughter and of father on son in spite of the generation gap between them. Vimala, Mohan’s sister, follows her mother in suffering silently as Jaya says: “I can see something in common between them, something that links the destinies of the two ... the silence in which they died” (p. 39). Mohan, like her father, holds that a wife is a docile animal who can never be angry. When Jaya talks to him in a daring tone, he retorts, “How could you? I never thought my wife could say such things to me. You’re my wife.... My mother never raised her voice against my father, however badly he behaved to her” (pp.82-83). In fact, Mohan had seen his mother obeying his father and bearing the insults silently. But Jaya is brought up somewhat differently by his father, we can say, in an unconventional manner. This disparity in background is also a reason of lack of understanding and clash of expectations between them. But Jaya has to adapt herself to the expectations of Mohan. In India, a girl is married not only to a man, but also to his family traditions. She has to adapt herself according to his husband’s family rituals and traditions without any complaint. Jeeja’s husband and her son, Rajaram, represent the male domination in lower class. The son follows the father in drinking and beating his wife. They demonstrate their manhood by being violent to their wives.

71 She finds herself trapped in the roles assigned by the male-dominated society and wants to liberate herself from a life where everyone considers her worthless. She wants to unfetter the bonds of unsuccessful marriage in which she has lost everything and become miserable. She is very much disappointed with the suffocating happenings for these many years and finds no other way but silence as her means of communication. But now, she revolts against the stifling traditions of the Indian society and attempts to break the seventeen year long silence. She leaves behind the frightening feeling of suppression and oppression.

Shashi Deshpande has presented a drastic transformation in the protagonist’s personality where she realizes that she herself is responsible for her victimization. Initially a nervous and dutiful wife, Jaya emerges as an individual full of confidence and learns to live for herself. She refuses to dance on her husband’s tunes and eventually feels emancipated. In a nut shell, the author has beautifully presented the subtle nuances of the struggles of women trapped in married relationships. Feeling liberated and composed, Jaya moves ahead in her married life with a new zeal.

A MATTER OF TIME Shashi Deshpande’s A Matter of Time particularly deals with the theme of the quest for a female identity the complexities of man-woman relationships especially in the context of marriage, the trauma of a disturbed adolescence, the attempt to break traditional moulds in which women are trapped, sexual discrimination, the rejection of the dependency syndrome and introspection.

A penetrative study of the novel reveals that it raises many issues pertaining to marriage. This analysis of the institution of marriage in the novel provides useful insights into Deshpande’s art and fiction. Here the theme of marriage is explored in its different forms and complexities along with the changes which are coming in this institution with the changing socio-cultural milieu.

The novel, A Matter of Time, depicts a society in transition with the portrayal of the institution of marriage. A comprehensive picture of the Indian women belonging to different generations, different educational and economic levels emerge on the large canvas of the novel.

The story comprises four generations of women of a middle class family. Deshpande’s perspective of marriage is elaborated through these four different generations : Manorama, an uneducated woman representing the first generation; Kalyani, the grandmother, who is not really educated; Sumi who is educated but has not worked outside home; Aru, Charu and Seema, who all aspire for independence and careers. All co-exist in a family that is modern but with certain old values. All of them have their own mindsets and values about marriage. Manorama, who represents the first generation, came from a humble background and married to the rich Vithalrao. After her marriage, she broke off all the ties with her family except her younger brother, Shripati, who was born after her marriage. Manorama failed in giving a male heir to the family. She had a daughter, Kalyani,whom she regards as a symbol of her failure to have a son.

72 Vithalrao, Kalyani‟s father, never grudged the birth of Kalyani. Manorama wanted to have a son. But for Vithalrao, it made no difference whether he had a son or a daughter. Vithalrao was an educated man for whom the patriarchal values and ideals had little value. He was not like any other traditional father who put restrictions on his daughter. He allowed Kalyani to study. He wanted Kalyani to become an engineer. But Manorama was tormented by the fear that Vithalrao might marry again to have a son. She very well knew that a husband is traditionally allowed to leave his wife if she cannot give birth to a male heir. This fear affected her whole life and she could not establish a healthy relationship with her daughter, Kalyani.

Moreover, Kalyani was average in looks and this led to disappointment to Manorama. Manorama wanted Kalyani to be beautiful so that she could find a better match for her. In fact, a girl’s appearance is given much importance by society as it is an important consideration in match- making. Deshpande depicts this aspect of matrimony in The Dark Holds No Terrors also. In The Dark Holds No Terrors, the protagonist’s mother says to her, “Don’t go out in the sun. You’ll get even darker.... We have to care if you don’t. We have to get you married ( Dark, 45).”

A boy’s interest in Kalyani infuriated Manorama. Manorama did not allow Kalyani to complete her studies. Moreover, in order to prevent the property from going away to another family, Manorama got Kalyani married to Shripati,Manorama’s youngest brother. Manorama forced Shripati to marry Kalyani by appealing to his sense of gratitude to her. So, Kalyani was married to her uncle for monetary purpose as Deshpande states in the novel: “Perhaps, after this, Manorama felt secure. The property would remain in the family now. Her family (p.129).”

Manorama emerges as an insecure woman in the novel. She represents the domineering woman who takes the traditional superior place of her husband. She breaks the image of suppressed wife. Both Kalyani and Shripati are forced into a loveless marriage by her. It is a clear dig at the conservative society where marriage and son are the only things that matter.

Through the portrayal of the second generation pair, Kalyani and Shripati, Deshpande depicts the predicament of women who are confined in the framework of traditional marriage and lead a life of self-denial and suffering. Kalyani’s life is an example of forced incompatible arranged marriage in which a woman has to suffer endlessly. Even if marriage fails in giving happiness of any kind to woman, it is preferred because it gives a security and a sense of dignity to woman in society. Kalyani is the only daughter of her parents. She is not allowed to complete her studies because marriage is the main consideration for her mother. She has to accept her uncle as a husband in order to prevent the property from going away in the hands of others. This is the main reason of “the hopelessness that lay within the relationship, that doomed it from the start” (p.143).

Manorama’s bitter attitude towards Kalyani gets soft when Kalyani gives birth to a son. But this child turns out to be mentally retarded. Kalyani’s real tragedy begins when her four-year-old son, Madhav ,is lost at railway station while she is to board the train to Banglore .A son even though retarded, holds so great an importance in the Indian social setup that Shripati doesn’t talk to

73 Kalyani for the next thirty years. Soon after the incident, Shripati send her back to her parents home with their two daughters. Shripati returns home only after Manorama, her mother-in-law ,urges him on her death bed to return. Although he obliges but not a word is exchanged between them. His return makes no difference to her life or her existence as they live under one roof as two separate individuals. Sumi reflects: “But for many others this may well be a sound arrangement where husband and wife are living together under the same roof even if there is only silence between them”(167).Here Deshpande lays bare the social compulsion and the vulnerability of such women in a male-dominated society. Even if nothing is left of married life between the husband and the wife, women suffer in silence just to keep their marriage going .She consider her situation better than widows. Sumi, her daughter, questions this kind of existence: “Is it enough to have a husband, and never mind the fact that he has not looked at your face for years, never mind the fact that he has not spoken to you for decades? Does this wifehood make up for everything, for the deprivation of a man’s love .. . But her Kumkum is intact and she can move in the company of women with the pride of a wife”(167).

Kalyani’s father, a man of science, turns from science to astrology to know about her daughter’s future life. He is hurt to see the misery of his daughter.

Kalyani finds herself in a situation in which she has no choice but to accept the pain of loneliness. The lack of communication between Shripati and Kalyani raises various issues related to matrimony. In spite of all this, Kalyani does not turn bitter to other family members, rather she becomes the support for the rest of the family. She brings up her daughters alone. She fears a similar fate to her daughter, Sumi. Her fears are based on the patriarchal oppression in the framework of marriage where a woman has to suffer silently. She is made to realize that she has lost her right as a wife by losing her son. She becomes very upset when she comes to know about Gopal’s decision of leaving Sumi. She never wants that her daughter should suffer like her. She cries, “No, ... no, my God, not again” (p. 12). She goes to Gopal and takes the entire responsibility of Sumi‟s carelessness, if any, on herself. In spite of her own bitter experiences of marriage, Kalyani does not turn pessimistic. She has a very bright and optimistic attitude towards life. She is very enthusiastic about getting a good match for Aru, her granddaughter. With Shripati’s death, Kalyani’s hope of reconciliation and her hopeless marriage both come to an end. Though Shripati had no feelings for her, she cries bitterly after his death.

Through the portrayal of Sumi’s life, Deshpande questions the tradition which permits a man to abandon his responsibility of a householder in the name of religion or anything else. But a wife is unable to do so.

Sumi takes Gopal’s decision with resignation and moves towards achieving an independent identity. She is so self-controlled that she never talks about Gopal. She understands that they cannot get along. She meets Gopal after this, not deliberately but accidentally, only for a brief while. No doubt, Sumi is hurt but she does not crumble to pieces. Sumi faces the trauma of a deserted wife and the anguish of an isolated partner. But she is different from Indu in Roots and

74 Shadows and Jaya in That Long Silence as she is not affected by the crisis. After Gopal’s departure, she does not behave like a traumatized person. She does not behave like a child who has lost his way. She realizes that Gopal is “going his way and I have to go mine” (p. 161). Sumi has the support and help of her family members –her parents, her daughters and her sisters. This support of the family helps her to withstand the trauma of desertion. But Sumi does not want any kind of economic assistance either from her parents or her other relatives. The step taken by Aru against Gopal for providing them maintenance is not approved by Sumi. She wants to be independent. She tries to transform her emptiness into meaning in order to redefine her identity.Sumi starts a new phase of her life and devotes herself to her job and her children.

A woman’s happiness is considered to be dependent on marriage. But Sumi revolts against this tradition. She brings normalcy back in her life and also in her daughters‟ lives. She starts writing and her first play, The Gardener’s Son, becomes successful. Now, Sumi decides to deal with more daring themes like female sexuality. She decides to rewrite the story of Surpanakha from a different perspective: “Female sexuality. We’re ashamed of owning it, we can’t speak of it, not even to our own selves. But Surpanakha was not, she spoke of her desires, she flaunted them. And therefore, were the men, unused to such women, frightened? ... It is this Surpanakha I’m going to write about” (p. 191).

Sumi gets a job and decides to go to Devgiri. Aru is shattered when she comes to know about it, but Sumi says, “Be happy for me, Aru. This is the first thing in my life I think that I’ve got for myself” (p. 220). Sumi dies just before she is about to begin a new life. But she has established her identity and found a meaningful existence before her death. Traditionally, marriage is considered to be the “only means of support and the sole justification”9of a woman’s existence. But Deshpande has shown that a woman can also find meaningful existence even outside marriage. Sumi’s daughters also establish their identity. Aru is going to be a lawyer and Charu is on her way to become a doctor. They are pursued by two capable young men-Rohit and Hrishi. The novel ends not on Sumi’s death, but on Aru and Kalyani standing together to face the life with the hope of betterment.

Concludingly, it can be said that Deshpande has minutely analysed the institution of marriage in its different dimensions in the novel. She has shown different types of marriages in the novel – love marriage as in the case of Sumi and arranged marriage as in the case of Kalyani. She has shown that a wife’s individual self is given no importance in patriarchal society and self- effacement is her normal way of life. But in this novel, Manorama, Kalyani, Sumi and Aru emerge ultimately as strong women who claim and achieve independence. They learn to live harmoniously in society neglecting neither the family relations nor the modern aspirations for autonomous self.

“The protagonists of Shashi Deshpande enter into marriage with the hope that the marriage would provide them respect security and status in the society, unfortunately, they get disappointed and subsequently disillusioned.”2But at the end of each novel, Shashi Deshpande makes her

75 protagonists ready to face the reality. Her women neither seek divorce nor commit suicide in spite of their trauma and plight of their married life. So Saru who is tired of her husband’s ego centered behavior hopes for reconcilement and compromise to bring harmony in her marriage. “A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” -Dave Meurer

References:

Ziglar, Zig. Courtship After Marriage: Romance Can Last A Lifetime. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004.

Vishwanat,Gita. 2005,”In conversation with Shashi Deshpande.”Writing Differences : The Novels of Shashi Deshpande. Ed. Chanchala K.Naik,New Delhi: Pencraft International,p.229.

Kapadia.K.M. Marriage And Family In India,2nd edition ( Bombay : Oxford University Press,1958) 169.

Sri Guru Granth Sahib,788,Var Suhi.

Hosken, Fren. Female Genital Mutilation And Human Rights. New York: Kitchen Table Press,1983.

Rig-Veda, Bhandarkar Institute Publication, Pune 1970.

Deshpande, Shashi: The Dark Hold No Terror. Penguin Books India Ltd, 1980.

All subsequent references to this edition will be referred to as Dark.

Deshpande, Shashi:, Roots and Shadows, Hyderabad, Orient Longman ,1983.

Deshpande, Shashi: The Binding Vine. New Delhi: Penguin, 1994.

Deshpande, Shashi: That Long Silence. New Delhi: Penguin, 1989.

Subsequent references are to this edition, page numbers are included parenthetically.

76 Swain, S.P.: Feminism in Shashi Deshpande’s Novels,Contemporary Indian Writing in English: Critical Perceptions,ed.N.D.R. Chandra, II (New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2005), 129.

Swain, S.P.: Articulation of the Feminine Voice: Jaya in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence,” Shashi Deshpande : A Critical Spectrum, ed. T.M.J. Indra Mohan (New Delhi : Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2004), p. 87.

Quoted in Urvashi Sinha and Gur Pyari Jandial, “Marriage and Sexuality in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande,” Shashi Deshpande : A Critical Spectrum, p. 130.

Parker, Sarala. qt. in S. Prasanna Sree, Woman in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande: A Study (New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2003), p. 86.

Deshpande, Shashi. A Matter Of Time (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1996).

Subsequent references are to this edition, page numbers are included parenthetically.

Deauvoir, Simone de .The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H.M. Parsley (1949; rpt. U.K: Vintage Classics, 1997), p. 446

Meurer, Dave.Daze Of Our Wives: A Semi Helpful Guide To Marital Bliss, (Benathy House Publishers 2000). http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/deshpande_life.shtml.web

77 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Ananth: short stories & tribal evolution of the world ISSN: 2454-4574

When the World was Young:

Short-stories with a tribal vision of the evolution of the world

Introduction to the Author:

Ananth Padmanabha Y. Saravandi is a Ph.D. research scholar, department of English,

Karnatak University.

One of the greatest things that could have happened in the colonial period of India’s history was the arrival of Verrier Elwin as a Christian Missionary to India and his association with the indigenous tribes of the country. And what is even more interesting is the fact that he chose to say goodbye to the Christa Seva Sangh after associating himself with the vast tribal population of India. This obviously paved the way for the enrichment of Indian English literature for

Verrier Elwin worked untiringly in translating tribal poetry, short-stories, etc., into English.

Thus Indian English literature owes a lot to Verrier Elwin for its enrichment.

Ramachandra Guha, in his foreword written in 1999 for Verrier Elwin’s famous book of short-stories, ‘When the World Was Young’ pontifically states thus:

....But Elwin’s interest in the tribals was by no means a narrowly scientific one. Deeply disturbed by their loss of rights in land and forests, and the erosion of their culture he became a self-appointed yet uniquely effective spokesman for the 25 million ‘adivasis’ of Central India.

Indeed, it was chiefly through Verrier Elwin’s books, articles, lectures, films and photographs that urban Indians first became aware of the life and problems of their tribal countrymen. (x)

Verrier Elwin dedicated his entire life for the noble cause of fighting for the tribals of

India. He crusaded against the false beliefs and stereotypes prevalent in the so-called civilized world that the tribals are savage, unclean, uneducated and uncivilized.

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The present work of Verrier Elwin When the World was Young, written in the year 1961

is, as made clear by Elwin himself in the very preface, in fact, a selection of stories from his

earlier books- Folk-Tales of Mahakoshal (1944), Myths of Middle India (1999), Tribal Myths

of Orissa (1954), Myths of the North-East Frontiers of India (1958) and The Baiga (1939).

The book, When the World Was Young has 38 short but very beautiful stories arranged

under six sub titles- a) “The Beginning of Things” b) “The First Men” c) “Discoveries” d) “The Talking Animals” e) “Adventures in a Magic World” and f) “The End of Things”

The Baigas of Central India, the Kamars and Saaros of Orissa, the Idu Mishmis, the

Singphos of North-East India and the Akas of North-East Frontier Agency have their own folk-

tales to relate. Thus, inspite of such an immense contribution towards the folk literature of India

the fact unfortunately remains that this went without recognition and the tribals were dubbed

savage and uncivilized.

Elwin, as a champion of the tribals, has really done a good job in documenting the

stories and tales related by the tribal community of India on various subjects under the sun and

thus, this volume holds the mirror up to the civilized nature of the tribals of India.

The very first short story, “The Making of the World” of the first category, “The

Beginning of Things” has a very interesting story to relate.

Different traditions in the hills and forests of India are connected with the creation of

the world. Though some say that it was hatched out of an egg or moulded by God with his own

hands, the majority believe, as the Baigas of Central India do, that the earth was brought up

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from the bottom of a great ocean. The story throws light on the genesis of the earth and the

work of the Baiga in making the earth steady. Here, the birth of Agaria and his role in making

the earth steady is of great interest.

The tribals, in a way, like geologists, are at their best in narrating the story about the

formation of the earth. We learn from the story, that there was, in the beginning, nothing but

water everywhere. “There was no voice of God, no voice of demon, no wind, no rocks, no

paths, no jungle. As the sky is now, so was water then...” (1). This makes us know about the

knowledge of the tribals with regard to physical geography. Moreover, the story relates that the

Great God, who sat on the lotus leaf, was all alone and he had asked the crow, which came

from the dirt of his arm when he rubbed the same, to bring some earth for him so that he could make a world.

When, after flying a long distance, she falls with a thud on the back of a Tortoise sitting in the water with one arm on the bottom of the ocean and one arm reaching the sky, she is

directed by the tortoise to look for the worm, at the bottom of the ocean, who has swallowed

the earth. And, they both go to the Lord of Iron, who calls his twelve brothers Loharsur, who

worked in iron, the thirteen brothers Tamesur, who worked in copper and the fourteen brothers

Agyasur, who worked in fire. Here, a conclusion can be arrived at. One can easily make out

that there is a division of the different tribes in accordance with their work in different metals.

It is akin to the concept of the division of caste on the basis of the work done.

Further, the crow and the Tortoise are lowered down in the sea with the help of an iron

cage made by the brothers of the Lord of Iron. The Worm does not readily agree to give the

earth back. When threatened by the crow at first and then by the tortoise that he will get a good

thrashing, the worm says that the earth is not with him but with an ogre. He is at once seized

by the neck by the Tortoise and then the worm vomits twenty one times and at each time he

brings up some part of the earth about the size of a berry. To quote from the story:

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His first vomit brought up Mother Earth; his second, yellow earth; his third, black earth; his

fourth, sinful earth where a tiger can kill you; his fifth, arid earth where you sow but get no harvest; his sixth, unclean earth; his seventh, untouched earth; his eighth, earth white as milk; his ninth, the good earth; his tenth, the earth that quakes; his eleventh, a mixture of all kinds of earth; his twelfth, red earth; his thirteenth, naked earth; his fourteenth, white clay; his fifteenth, rocky earth; his sixteenth, red gravel earth; his seventeenth, sandy earth; his eighteenth, deaf earth; his nineteenth, fertile earth that gives grain; his twentieth, earth where nothing grows; his twenty-first, virgin earth (4)

These above-quoted lines make us think that the tribals are no ordinary people. They have a rich mental faculty. Their imagination is quite staggering. They have a wide knowledge

of the geography of their region.

Thus, the earth was then brought to the Great God who had his own role to play in the

formation of the earth. He called a young virgin to make a pot out of leaves, and he put the

earth in it, and she churned it. For eight days and nine nights she churned till all was ready.

Then God rolled the earth out like a great thin cake, and spread it on the face of the waters,

where it grew and grew until it covered it entirely. As such, there is room to speculate how the

rivers made their way on the surface of the earth.

Later, it is learnt that God sent his daughter Crow to fetch Pawan Daseri, the Wind-

God, when the Wind God is not fully successful in making the earth firm, it was the turn of

Bhimsen who first asked for the spirit and when he got plenty of it, he drank the same and then

he took to the task of making the earth firm. “Where it was thin he put a mountain, where it

was too heavy he made a valley. Where it slipped about, he put trees to hold it together”(5).

Thus, the tribals have their own theory of the physical features of the world.

Later, when Bhimsen too was not fully successful, the Nanga Baiga and his wife, who

were born out of a crack in the ground, came to the scene. The Nanga Baiga made a fiddle for

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himself from the Maiden Bamboo and the sound of the same shook God and thus, God got a

signal that the Baigas were born. When God calls the Nanga Baiga and asks him to drive his

nails into the earth to make it steady, the Nanga Baiga, as he had no nails, cut off the little

fingers of his right hand and drove that into the ground. When God was not satisfied and asked

for strong pillars, the Nanga Baiga called Agyasur, the God of Fire and he blazed up with the

great flames from which the Blacksmith Agaria was born. This Agaria, who was not at all

fearful of fire, made twelve pillars of Virgin iron and set them at the four corners of the world.

Thus, when the world became steady God sowed seed everywhere, and the earth was made.

The Dancers in the Sky

This story is, in fact, a folk-tale of the Baiga from Orissa that deals with the idea behind

lightning and thunder. It narrates the story how the Cloud God when delighted to watch the

beautiful dance of the virgin daughters of Jogi Thoria at the year’s greatest festival, retained

them in the sky without letting them go back to the earth so that they could dance in the form

of lightning and thunder. Here, the Cloud God calls the girls ‘lightning’ and the boys ‘thunder’.

However, the Noctes of North-Eastern India have a different story to relate. According

to them, there are two brothers of whom the elder lives on the earth and the younger in the sky.

“From time to time the younger brother dances and throws showers of rain drops down. Then

he asks the lovely fair-coloured girls of earth whether they have ever had such beautiful beads

to wear, sometimes too he throws the lightning down and asks whether the earth people possess

such marvellous magic. Sometimes he beats his drums and when it thunders across the sky he

asks the earth people whether they have any music to match it”(11).

The Mishmis believe that the clouds are the pigs of the air and when two pigs meet they

fight. “Their bristles scrape against each other and lightning flashes round the world. The pigs

grunt loudly as they fight and we hear the noise as thunder”(11).

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The second set of stories under the caption “The First Men” throws light on how the

men were to look at when the world was formed, how they began to talk, how the women were

to look at, etc.

“The Bearded Women” is a short-story that is sure to cause much laughter among the

readers. It says that long ago women had beard and moustaches. A woman pulled off her beard

and moustache and gave it to her she-goat so that she could marry the Tiger’s son. The goat did not turn up again and from then the faces of women have been free of hair.

The third category of stories, “Discoveries” throws light on man’s quest for making his

life secure in the world.

The very first story, “How to Build a House” relates that a man called Jangu Saora,

used the leaves of the toddy palm and made a house like an umbrella with a circular roof on a

single pillar. But it had no walls. The saoras lived in such houses for many years and what is

interesting is that they make little temples like their houses even today. “Later, they made

proper homes of wood or mud, which were dry and warm. At last, in order to be near each

other, they made houses in villages”(30).

However, the Singphos of North-Eastern India have a different story to tell and the

story has for its object the idea given by animals to enable man to build his first house.

Two friends, Kindru-Lalim and Kincha Lali-Dam, had made up their mind not to live

in caves but to build a house for themselves. In their quest to for an idea as to how to build the house, the elephant tells them to make pillars strong and thick like his legs, the snake asked them to cut the poles as long and thin as himself, the she-Buffalo showed them her dead

husband and asked them to put cross poles and make a roof like the bones of the skeleton of her dead husband and at last, the fish asks them to get plenty of leaves and put them on the roof, one above the other like its scales. Thus, the friends got an idea of building a house from

some animals.

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Wonder how iron is found everywhere? The answer to this question can be traced in

the story, “Hammer and Tongs”.

Intupwa, a craftsman, tried to find something better to cut wood and sharp stones. As

he had dreamt of something called iron he went in search of the same and asked the trees, the

grass and the animals. But they did not tell him about it for they feared that he may make an

axe and arrows of the same and kill them. At last, water asked him to go to Numrang-Ningpu to find the iron.

Intupwa found no iron there. But he found a goddess living there who gave birth to a child that very night which was red as fire at the time of birth. But, he became black as iron as he cooled. When Intupwa chopped a small bit off him and took it home the child then broke into a hundred pieces which were carried away by a stream and scattered them about the world.

Thus, afterwards, there was iron ore everywhere.

Intupwa learnt to make a hammer out of a stone when he saw an elephant’s feet crush everything. And, when he saw the claws of the crab he made a pair of tongs and was soon turning out axes, knives and arrow-heads.

“The Talking Animals” is yet another set of short stories. And, the first short story,

“The First Monkeys” will make the theory of evolution even more curious.

The fist short-story, “The First Monkeys” puts forth a strange idea that monkeys

descended from men and not men from monkeys. Though it sounds strange it cannot be denied that the tribals too thought of the theory of evolution when, paradoxically, they were dubbed as savage and uncivilized devoid of any capacity of free and practical thinking.

According to the Juangs of Orissa, it so happens that one day, men went to the jungle to cut down trees and to make a clearing for civilization according to their old custom. What is interesting is that the dry shrubs and branches did not catch fire when the men tried to burn them. Seeing this, they brought fire from the headman’s house, from the priest’s house, from

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the magician’s house, from the house of the village watchman, etc. But the wood did not catch

fire. “Their hands were sore, their faces running with sweat. Their moustaches and beards were

burnt, but their clearing was not burnt” (41). Fearing that they would get a scolding from their

wives, they made a plan to divert the angry women and tied bits of wood to their backs and

started to jump about shouting, ‘Hoop–hoop-hoop-hoop’. “But the bits of wood turned into

tails and the dirt and sweat into hair all over their bodies. Now they were monkeys and they

went to live on fruit in the jungle”(42).

But, the Gadabas have yet another story with regard to the monkeys.

Twelve boys and twelve girls lived in a certain village and were crazy about dancing.

One evening a monkey, dressed in a coat and turban, comes to the village and sits nearby on a

stone and plays its fiddle so well that the girls dance to its tunes and all the girls are in love

with the monkey. This was too much for the boys and they carefully watched the monkey and

when they saw its tail stuck out behind, hitherto believed to be a stick, the boys fully realized

that it was a monkey.

Next day the boys put wood round the stone where the monkey always sat and set fire

to it, thus making it terribly hot. When the monkey sat on it, it burnt the skin off his back and

he ran away screaming with pain. Thus, the monkey ever since has had a red bottom.

“The Two Friends” is a beautiful short-story throwing light on the intimate friendship

of a tiger and a frog. It so happens that the tiger always gave very good food to the frog

whenever it paid a visit to the tiger’s house. The Frog too invited the tiger to come to his house

and the tiger replied,

“Friend, I am a meat eater. If you can give some meat I will certainly come to your

house”(48).

The Frog said, “Of course, you will have what you like; come tomorrow to my house”

(48).

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Though the frog had invited the tiger to come to his house, he was rather worried as to

how he would be able to feed the tiger. He comes across a horse on the bank of a river. He

hopped on to its back and tired to bite some of his flesh. But he failed as the horse kicked him

off and thus the frog’s legs were broken. “This is why even today the frog cannot walk straight”

(49).

When the tiger came to his house, the frog felt ashamed for he had no meat to offer to him. Thus, he crept slowly up to the left and there began to remove the flesh from his legs.

Unable to bear the pain he cried, “O mother, I am going to die” (49). Hearing this, the tiger climbed up to see the frog and thus came to know everything. He felt bad and said, “Friend, there was no need for you to do this. In any case, I wouldn’t eat your flesh”(49).

The frog felt so ashamed that he left his house forever and went to live in the water.

“This is why the frog always lives in the water and why his legs are so thin”(49).

The next short story, “The Flying Elephants,” answers three important questions: How did the peacock get its tail? What is the reason behind the great leaves of the plantain tree?

Why are the elephants afraid of men?

The Saoras of Orissa believed that elephants originally had wings and could fly about.

In fact, they had four great wings. The elephants became a nuisance when the world was made and they caused too much trouble for the people as they would crow like cocks and fly up into the sky; when they were tired they came down and perched on the roofs of the houses, thus making the houses collapse beneath them.

The great God was so annoyed that he invited the elephants for a great feast and gave

them much to eat and drink and when they were asleep he cut off their wings. Then, he gave

two of them to the peacock, which originally had no tail, and thus the peacocks came to have

its tail. “The other two he stuck on the plantain tree, which accounts for its great leaves”(50).

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“When the elephants woke up and found they had lost their wings, they were very

angry; they ran away into the jungle and ever since have been afraid of men” (51).

Death has always been mysterious to many a people who have tried to know about it

but they have met with failure. As such, the concept and idea of death is largely to be found in

the domain of the mysterious and the unexplored.

The very next story “How Death came to the World” is the only story in the last category,

“The End of Things” of the present work. However, there are two sub-stories under the same title.

The story goes thus: “At the beginning people did not die and did not know how to weep. They grew very old and as they got older and older their misery increased. They could not walk, they had very little to eat and there was no joy or comfort in their lives” (95).

A squirrel living in a tall tree was killed by a kite and the body was thrown down to the ground. A man called Singra-Phang-Magam saw the dead squirrel and was astonished, for he had never seen a dead creature before. He wondered how it is that his own people do not die even after getting old and lie still being unable to use their arms and legs. He took the dead squirrel to his home and put it in a corner covering it with a piece of cloth. Then he called the moon and stars saying, “A man has died, come and see him” (95). This made the moon and

stars come weeping with all the spirits of hill and forest and Singra-Phang-Magam and his wife wept too. And when the Moon and the Stars saw the body of a squirrel they became angry and said that it is not a man but only an animal.

Singra-Phang-Magam told them, “But how has this squirrel died and why don’t men die in the same way?” (96).

The Moon and the Stars asked, “Do men also want to die?” Certainly they do,” he said.

As one grows old, life becomes intolerable”(96).

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Then the Moon and the Stars and all the spirits said, “If you eat the squirrel’s flesh, you

will all die”(96).

Thus, Singra-Phang-Magam cut the body of the squirrel into many pieces and

distributed the same to all and as all the people ate the flesh death came to them and from then

on they learnt how to weep.

However, the Akas have yet another story to relate.

According to the Akas, there were two Suns who were men, and two Moons who were man and wife and the heat was so severe that there was great destruction of life and vegetation on the earth. But it so happened that the Sun’s wife and Moon’s husband fell in love with one another and as they could not meet in the sky, they used to come to earth to meet. But whenever they met, everything around them caught fire and that is why today the earth is sometimes red and sometimes yellow; when we see this we know that the Sun and Moon made love to one another.

As the men and animals started running for fear of being burnt to death when the Sun and Moon came to earth, the two brothers Chou-Siphu and Kharo-Libji, came to know what had happened and they resolved to kill these evildoers and when they came, Chou-Siphu and

Kharo-Libji shot at them with their bows killing the Sun’s wife at once and the Moon’s husband, who was injured, fled away with the arrow in his body to his own wife and died in her arms.

The Sun said, “My wife had died down on earth, but the husband of my sister the Moon has died here. If now she gives his body to men and animals they too will die”(97).

So he went to warn the men and animals. “When my sister the Moon calls to you,” he said, “make no reply, but when I call you may reply” (97).

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When the Moon came out of her house weeping with her husband in her arms everyone

was asleep except the barking-deer and the peacock in the forest and the two heard the Moon

weeping and they asked about the reason.

When she heard them the Moon let the body of her husband fall to the earth and cried,

“As you killed my husband so may you all—men, animals and birds—die too” (97).

This is how death came to the world.

When the cock called the Sun to come and help, he said “it is too late and you all must

die” (97).

Verrier Elwin observes:

“But to the hill people death is not the end. The soul lives on, in a village not unlike the villages

of earth, and in time he is joined by the souls of those he loved in life. The soul continues to be

one of the family: the living put out food for him: he appears to them in dreams. Many of the

hill people believe that he returns to earth in another form.” (98)

The very title of the book When the World was Young does have significance, for it

points to the fact that the tribals have dwelt a lot upon the idea of the beginning of life on the

earth in its nascent stage. The tribals have their own idea with regard to the making of the earth and they deal with the idea of God being the main creator of this world, and like geographers and geologists they speak about the sun and the moon, about thunder and lightning in the sky,

about the formation of snow, about the quaking of the earth and then the evolution of man and

other animals on the earth and a host of other things that the book presents. What deserves

special mention is the fact that the tribals are in no way inferior to the citizens of the so-called

civilized world. They are broad-minded too and they too think about the happenings around

them and they reflect on the same.

What is more important in this regard is that the tribals are a neglected lot and are

marginalized and are the Other, in a way. This fact is yet another image of India wherein a vast

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mass of people though marginalized and dubbed uncivilized, are in fact more civilized than the

other parts of the world. The stereotype needs to be destroyed and tribal literature should be

made a part of mainstream literature.

I strongly feel that these kinds of short-stories should become a part of the syllabi

prescribed for schools and colleges in India so that one can have a better understanding of the

tribal world of India.

REFERENCES:

Elwin, Verrier. When The World Was Young: Folk-tales from India,s Hills and Forests. National

Book Trust, India, 1961. Print.

Devy, G.N. The Oxford India Elwin: Selected Writings.OUP, 2008. Print.

Guha, Ramachandra. Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India. Penguin,

2014. Print.

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Politics of Representation: A Study of Concerns and Mission of Dalit Literature

Introduction to the Author: The author of this paper, MK Shamsudheen, is a research scholar in the department of English at AMU, Aligarh. Abstract This paper aims at analysing the concerns and mission of Dalit Literature. Dalits were considered the lowest and have the fewest advantages in society. They were denied access to public amenities, like wells, schools and even they were restricted from entering the temples. Dalit literature emerged out of this resentment and humiliation. Dalit literature creates a parallel literature against master literature. A sort of revolution has been created to mark their protest against age old segregation and mistreatment.

Key words: mission, resentment, humiliation, revolution, segregation

The main concern of Dalit Literature is the emancipation of Dalits from the ageless bondage of oppression. The agony, represented by Dalit writers is not that of an individual but of the outcast society. The word Dalit drives from the Sanskrit language that means suppressed or crushed. The Oxford dictionary defines Dalit as a member of the caste that is considered the lowest and that has the fewest advantages. Untouchable was denied to participate in religious ceremonies. They were denied prestigious job and had to cope up with menial occupation, like leather works, butchering, and lower grade works. And they were also denied to access public amenities, like wells, rivers, and schools. They were even restricted from entering temples. Socio-religious movements in India advocated for the liberation of the Dalits from the oppressive forces. DR B.R Ambedkar also strongly stood for the eradication of exploitation and for the equal status in the society. Generally, Dalit writers do not adhere to any conventional narrative technique. In Dalit literature, a Dalit expresses his anger and resentment of Dalit against the social inequality. Limbale, a famous Dalit literary critic and writer, observes that:

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To start with, there will have to be a definite explanation of the word ’Dalit’ in Dalit Literature. Harijans and neo-Buddhists are not the only Dalits, the term describes all the untouchable communities living outside the boundary of the village, as well as Adivasis, landless farm labours, workers, the suffering masses, and nomadic and criminal tribes. In explaining the word, it will not do to refer only to the untouchable castes. People who are lagging behind economically will also need to be included (Limble 30)

Dalit works indeed have created its own parallel aesthetics in mainstream literature. All these writings attack the social snobbery and preoccupied reservation on downtrodden sections of society. Dalit literature often touches upon the themes of caste oppression, question of identity, poverty, untouchability and revolution. Dalit literature questions master literature, which they call as Hindu literature, and always poses a challenge to it. The ultimate purpose of Dalit literature is to ensure the uprooting of caste oppression; it rejects Varna order of Hindu belief. Dalit literature is a kind of literature, which realistically draws the attention to the sorrows, tribulation, slavery, humiliation, poverty, etc. experienced by Dalits.

The Hindu religious order considered Dalit as Untouchable and impure. Dalits were not allowed to accommodate properly or wear valuable ornaments. In addition to it, they should partake of food only in clay utensils and denied having a good name. The propaganda that God created Dalits to suffer left Dalit behind all other communities. Baburao Bagul opines that “The established literature of India is Hindu literature. But it is Dalit literature which has the revolutionary power to accept new science and technology and bring about a total transformation ‘ Dalit’ is the name of a total revolution, it is a revolution incarnate” (Bangal 281). Dalit literature is distinguished from mainstream literature due to former’s denial of Indian tradition based on caste and class. Limbale points out that “Revolt is the stage that follows anguish and rejection. I am human, I must receive all the rights of a human being - such is the consciousness that gives birth to this revolt. Born from unrestrained anguish, this explosive rejection and piercing revolt is like a flood, with its aggressive character and an insolent, rebellious attitude”(Limbale 31)

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Mission and politics of Dalit Literature:

Dalit literature is not a mere fiction. It is part of the larger movement to bring about changes. Dalit writings are based on real life experience. Some critics have the view that writers, like Mulk Raj Anand and Prem Chand do not represent the Dalit life as it is, but they represent Dalits as hapless and mischievous who are unable to take their own decisions and action. One of such an examples is Bakha in Untouchable who concedes to Gandhi’s pacifism rather than to go for revolution. Post independent events and fundamental transformation changed the life of people. Democratic form of government and different welfare schemes helped common people to understand their own rights and laws of the country, but by the course of time new movements in post-independence emerged against rampant corruption, poverty, and unemployment, atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities. Unfortunately, the spirit of education spread among people has not helped the society to change the narrow-mindedness towards weaker sections of the society. Widespread discourse on resistance literature intensified a sort of consciousness of liberation in Dalit’s quest for dignity and social justice. Limbale rightly gives a summation of background for the origin of Dalit literature. According to him:

There was a tremendous awakening in Dalit society due to knowledge, science and law, and on other hand poverty and the caste system trapped them in a state of decrepitude. Spread of education, pressure of the Dalit movement, and the struggle against conditions of existence caused Dalit youth to express their aversion for and anger against the established unequal social system in their writings. This writing, specifically, should be termed; Dalit Literature (Limbale 25).

Dalit writers refuse to accept the established tradition as they think that they do not belong to this tradition, while they firmly believe that, the tradition of Budha, Kabeer, Phule, and Ambedkar was part of their tradition. That was a resistant tradition against established tradition and the hegemonic nature of the established tradition. Dr. B.R Ambedkar fought against segregated attitudes of upper-class Hindus both in India and abroad. Dr. BR Ambedkar’s thoughts helped Dalits society to understand their misery and their fundamental rights. This subjugation is the progenitor of Dalit literature. The Politics of collectiveness is visible in the most of Dalit writings. It is a collective social voice, a social voice for equality, liberty,

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fraternity, and justice. Their consciousness to free Dalits from the intensified bitter experience and expression of their anguish is a kind of revolt. Dangale points out that “The established class always tries to establish a convenient tradition that does not damage its vested interests. The weak groups in society are tired of this tradition, in fact, all our traditions so far whether religious, social, literary or cultural, have been imposed on the marginal by a handful"(Dangale 261).

Another important political aspect of Dalit writings lies upon its language and its narrative style. They reject upper-class language, they always lash out the so-called standard language, validated by upper-class people, because they think that this is a language of oppression and subjugation. Moreover, standard language lacks many unique cultural vocabulary of Dalit lives. Dalit writers do not bank upon the existing symbols and metaphors of Hindu sacred literature, instead they construct new myths, in case they use the symbol from Hindu scriptures, this would be a deconstructed myths or symbols with new meaning. Dr. Ambedker’s view on literature is also important to be highlighted. He asserts that writers should take inspiration from the experience of common people.

Through your literary creations cleanse the stated values of life and culture. Don’t have a limited objective. Transform the light of your pen so that the darkness of village is removed. Do not forget that in our country the world of the Dalits and the ignored classes is extremely large. Get to know intimately their pain and sorrow, and try through your literature to bring progress in their lives. True humanity resides there. ( qtd in Limabale 50)

Dalit writers are from different sects and some of them were not converted to Buddhism. Writers from different castes, sub- castes and tribal group enriched Dalit literature with original creation and experience, thus it is obvious that it not only talks about Buddhist Literature, but it also talks exclusively on non-Buddhist philosophy, often the way of Dalit propaganda is akin to Marxism. Marxism is a kind of humanist thought with a vision of forming an exploitation free society. It is based on an egalitarian philosophy and Dalit writers also stand for equality and they raise voice against exploitation. Another major resemble of Marxism with Dalit

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writings lies in its portrayal of the life of common man. The protagonist often belongs to lower strata of the society. Dalit writings deal with not only social affairs but it also deals with an economic matter, this economic condition paves the way for social exploitation. Dalit autobiographies are the recollection of Dalit experience with a mission. Events are returned with an intention. Most of the Dalit autobiographies have helped to interpret socio-cultural aspects of Dalit life. The narrative reconstruction is a creative assertion of one’s identity. Dalit literature is an image of grief and plight. It is exactly the creative portrayal of bitter experiences of Dalits, hoping for a total metamorphosis in thought and minds sets of the society towards underprivileged sections of the society. “Dalit literature is one which acquaints people with the caste system and untouchability in India. It matters with a sociological point of view and is related to the principles of negativity, rebellion, and loyalty to science, thus finally ending as revolutionary” (qtd in Das 265)

A medieval attempt to castigate against segregated attitudes was from Bhakthi poets, like Ravidas NamDev, Kabeer they inspired Dalits consciousness. All these poets have always questioned the orthodox and repressive Brahminical face of Hinduism. According to Narayana Das, Kabeer often highlights in his poems the contrast between high caste and low caste community as well as the differences that arise between the two entities. Kabeer is the best- known voice for equality of caste and religious divisions in poetic, picturesque fierceing strong terms (Das 268). He also observes that “Kabeer is the best-known voice for equality of the caste and religious. He composed his verses in the ordinary language of the people”(268).There are a number Dalit writings in contemporary Dalit literature which have enriched Indian writing. Some works like Joothan: A Dalit’s Life, have debated widely among literary critics. Joothan by OM Prakash Valmiki has been counted as one of prominent works in the Dalit canonical discourse and it is told as a serious of piercing vignettes. It tells the metamorphosis of a boy from rampant social economic conditions to forefront as social critics. Asserting the importance of Dalit Literature, Arundhati Roy observes that “I do believe that in India we practice a form of apartheid that goes on noticed by the rest of the world. And it is as important for Dalits to tell their stories as it has been for colonised people to write their own histories when Dalits literature has blossomed and is in full stride, then contemporary upper caste. Indian literature’s amazing ability to ignore the true brutality and ugliness of the society, in which we live, will be seen for what it is bad literature, it will become irrelevant. (Quoted on Wikipedia)

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All genres of Dalit writings, especially Dalit autobiographies are a kind of political movement, voiced for the liberation against old discrimination and exploitation of Dalits by upper caste Hindu. An article in Times of India points out that “The first generation of Dalit writers questioned the idea of India ; says Rajkumar, a professor at DU ’They felt they were not a part of it and rejected it. Later writers like Valmiki have a more natural approach. They engage with and explore the possibilities of Dalits being a part of India. They see hope in Ambedker’s goal of annihilation of caste. The contemporary Dalits autobiography is an inclusive exercises. The Dalits are trying to write themselves into the India narrative (Times of India )

In short, Dalit literature represents the miseries and oppression, experienced by Dalit communities for centuries in India. Though there are different genres of Dalit literature, each represents bitter experience of Dalit with a mission to liberate Dalit from the yoke of oppressive forces and their exploitation. On the other hand, non Dalit writers, who pinpoint the agony of Dalit in India, infact have represented Dalit as helpless victims and their writings often lack the spirit of emancipation from the oppression and exploitation.

References:

1) “Dalit Literature” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,21,July2016.web.23,July,2016 2) Bagu,Baburao.”Dalit Literature is But Human Literature.”Poisoned Bread.Ed.Arjun Dangle.Mubai :Orient Loman,1992 3) Dangle,Arjun.”Dalit Literature:past present and future.”Poisoned Bread.Ed.Arjun Dangle.Bombay:Orient Longman,1992. 4) Das,Narayan.”Dalit Literatuire Contents,Trends and Concerns.” NewDelhi : Centrum press, 2014.print 5) Limbale,Sharankumar.Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature:History,controversies, and consideration. Translated by Alok Mukharjee,Oriental Blakswan,2004 6) Mart and Kaishik.Newspaper report.Times of India,April.5 2015

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Child Subjugation in the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand with the special reference to 'Coolie'

Introduction to the Authors: Dr. Lucky Gupta is the head and reader at the department of English, T.R.P.G College, Aligarh. Dr. Lalita Gupta is a Ph.D. in English Literature.

One thing always become perplexing and make pathetic to me when I see any child working at any hotel, house, shop, cleaning utensils, running bare footed, in half shirt in foggy, rainy or hot season. But I could not do anything. People accept children as their servants because to control a child is easy by beating, threatening etc. I want to tell you a tiny incident which happened at my relative's house. Her maid servant was cleaning stairs and all of sudden she slipped and fall down. My relative had a great sympathy for her and gave medicine and suggested to rest. But she said to her girl for cleaning and other household works till her mother recovers. Was it not a type of subjugation of that child?

The present paper is focused on the problem of subjugation of child in our country with the special reference of Mulk Raj Anand's novel Coolie.

In the Indian English fiction, a large number of novels and short stories from pre- independence to post-independence, India, presented a forming brilliant images of child life. The writers have taken child.

Characters as an instrument to project the social-vices like Tagore, R.K. Narayan, Munshi Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand etc. Mulk Raj Anand presents a well-knit pattern of subjugation of child in his many novels and short stories. Indian writing in English is not too old than two centuries has bloomed tremendously today by number of Indian writers who got remarkable awards on their literary ferber. Indian writing in English today has become a literary firmament where innumerable stars twinkle every night and help each other shine. These stars have provided much light to enable the beneficiaries to understand the "complexities of Indian life, which is getting

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transformed very fast under the impact of forces from all over the world since independence."' But the attempt to bring out the camouflaged crises enveloping Indian masses and the mind was agog in its pre-independent day too. Mulk Raj Anand, one of the three pioneers of Indian writing in English led this movement with a charismatic zeal to portray the penury and the predicament of common man in India crushed and trampled under the demoniac yoke debarring man from his fellow beings in the name

of petty man-made dichotomies. `Coolie' is the second novel of Mulk Raj Anand, which is written in 1936. In this novel Anand provides an exploration of the limits of pain, central to existence Munoo, a weak and helpless person is subjected to a degrading society offering only hostility. Munoo is an orphan boy. At

all stages of life, he is ill-treated, insulted and disdained. He is subject to insult, humiliation and exploitation. He tries to understand his position in the world. In 'Coolie' Anand shows that sufferings and pains are inevitable features of human existence but man cannot control pain and erode sufferings by universal brotherhood, love, compassion and equality. In fact, Munoo, represents a class, the poor class struggling to earn its living. Probably, Munoo is only an inconsequential waif in the eyes of the world, but for Anand he is as important as any other human being in flesh and blood, and he brings to bear such profound pity on the boy that the novel gives the impression that his death implies the death of all that is good at the altar of cruelty.2 In his adventures Munoo meets not only cruel and bad people, but kind and good fellows also. Chota Babu in Sham Nagar, Prabha Dayal and his wife in Daulatpur, The elephant driver of circus and Ratan in Bombay show kindness of him. Munoo suffers not because of fate or chance. He is victim of circumstances of the cruelty of man. Since most of our problem have been created by man, they can also solve by

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man. Munoo is not treated as human being but as a beast of burden. The novel invokes pity for him and other exploited children. This novel depicts the sad and pathetic life of Munoo. He is the victim of the irrational systems and the inhuman cruelties of society. Anand portrays the plight of coolies before India got her independence and portrays the tribulation of coolies in a class-ridden society. Munoo, who is the victim and hero of the novel 'Coolie' is an orphan boy from Kangra Hills. He sets out in search of livelihood. First of all he is tortured by his uncle and aunt at village Bilaspur, later on, as the house servant with the family of a sub-accountant at Shamnagar. This turns out to be a painful experience. Being fed up with the miserable life that he is stung by insults and slowly settles into the routine of domestic slavery.

Though the Shamnagar episode is only the first act in Munoo's tragic drama of exploitation, he learns from it his first lesson. He was to be a slave, a servant who should do odd jobs, some are to be abused even beaten (33). This forced him going to Daulatpur to work in a pickle factory. Here life for Munoo is pleasing in the beginning owing to the affection of Prabha and his wife Parvati, but; Happiness, is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain.3 Life becomes ugly and hellis because of Ganpat's wicked behavior. Munoo becomes jobless when the factory is closed down because of Ganpat's forging and treachery in business. As a result, Munoo not only loses his natural vivacity but is possessed by modes of extreme melancholy and dark feelings of self-distrust. Thereafter again in search of livelihood, he reaches Bombay, where he works as a labourer at Sir George White Cotton Mills, which exposed to the full force of the modern capitalistic machine.

Anand vividly portrayed the harsh lives of the workers and their families, the squalor of their slums. The working hours are long and tedious. From these intolerance conditions, a strike erupts and turns into a Hindu-Muslim riot. As the ill-paid, ill-

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housed and under nourished labourers like Hari are broken, both in mind and body. Munoo gives him self-introspection; Am I really ominous? ... My father died when I was born and then my mother and I brought misfortune to Hari now. If I am ominous, why don't I die? (217) After that in an injured position he is brought to Shimla by a European lady Mrs. Mainwaring, when her car knocks him down. After his convalescence, she uses him as her rickshaw puller and personal servant. But after some days he became unable to bear the strain of a rickshaw puller and consequently he meets his tragic end as a result of consumption at the age of 16 S.C. Harrex observes; It is the conventional 'tragic' ending of the naturalistic novel, the life principle is wiped out. Death completes the hero's victimhood.(4) `Coolie' touches the pathetic and the sublime areas of human experience. Thus through the novel, the scene shifts from one place to another carrying same misfortunes for the poor boy, Munoo, who is treated by his masters not better than a sub-human being.

Munoo is a sensitive and intelligent boy full of high spirits and zest for life. Poverty compels him to be apprenticed to a servant's life at the age of 14. His only prayer is;

I want to live and I want to know, I want to work. (311) Munoo is a miserable creature. His condition becomes even worse, when he shifts from his uncle's house to Babu Nathuram's house appears to him like a madhouse, inhabitated by mad people quarrelling and shrieking all the time. The lady of the house, Bibi Uttam Kaur, snobbish and suspicious termagant underfeeds, nags and humiliates him. The man who gives solace to Munoo is Chota Babu. Finally, he realized that his position is like a slave, a servant who should do the work, all the odd jobs, someone to be abused even beaten also.

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In this novel Munoo is the central character and he shifts from one place to another in search of his dreams to be settled safety and happily with some job at one place. He never finds rest. To get rid of beatings of Babu Nathuram and his wife, Munoo runs aways from their house at midnight and hides himself inside a train, where he meets with a kind Seth Prabhadayal, who take away with him to Daulatpur. But Munoo fails to receive their parental care for long as Ganpat, Prabha's partner is callous and cruel. Ganpat refuses to help Prabha in the business and goes away. He is not able to pay the debts at once and he falls ill with fever and ultimately has to leave Daulatpur on the advice of doctor. He cannot take Munoo with him because of shortage of money. Munoo is again left alone.

At the railway station Munoo stood sadly looking at his master and mistress... He felt miserable and alone, as if he had already been cut off from them forever. (152) In Bombay, Munoo sees the miseries of others. The next employment, he finds in a

cotton mill, which is another hell for him. Coolies are brutally treated here.

The coolies toil with their sweat and blood while oppressor discusses the weather over a cup of tea.5 The factory is a huge octopus with its numerous tentacles clutching the labourer in its deadly grasp, slowly paralyzing and poisoning him. The British Management offers no security of tenure, a landlord, who rents out ramshackle cottages at exorbitant rent and money-lender all rolled into one. The Pathan, door-keper practices usury with even more drastic methods. The ill-paid, ill-housed, under nourished and bullied labourer is broken. Anand tries to lift the image of Munoo, a boy, Coolie represents all the cadres of the society starting from coolies to autocratic Englishman. The variety of the ranks of people is basically selected to highlight the contrast among the various classes. At last, Munoo's suffering became end with his own death, and the remains are his wishes, his desires. He was wanted to live. He was wanted to do work.

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But God finished his all miseries, all wishes with his death. Thus the novel `Coolie' of Mulk Raj Anand gives the picture of the subjugation of child, who is not only victimized by the society but also crushed by the, cruel hands of society. Anand visualizes their predicaments with full of sensitivity and reality. He exposes that the norms of society crushes human values and again human laws works against the law of nature. Man is made for love and sympathy but man made rules and deformities in the society kills all that comes in their way. Subjugation of child is one of the social vices. Every child is the future of India and that future is under subjugation, For that, people should improve yourself and should understand human liberty, quality and dignity.

WORK CITED

1. Maheshwari, V.K. Preface to Perspectives on India English

Literature, New Delhi : Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002.

2. Anand, Mulk Raj. Coolie, Arnold Associates, 1981. (All the

subsequent references from the text are cited from this edition).

3. Thomas, Hardy. The Mayer of Casterbridge, London : Macmillan,

1974.

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4. Harrex, S.C. The Fire and the Offering : The English Language

Novel of India, 1935-70, Calcutta : Writer's Workshop, 1977.

5. Paul, Pramila. The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand : A Thematic Study,

Delhi : Sterling Publishers, 1978

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The Pleasure of the Carnivalesque: Performing the Rituals during Shiv Gajan.

By - Sayanti Mondal, Introduction to the Author:

Sayanti Mondal is a Junior Research Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She has currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program. Her area of interest includes Postcolonial studies, Translation studies, Folk Studies, Culture studies and Indian writing in English.

Abstract:

Shiv Gajan, a Bengali folk festival includes a variety of rituals which are acts of self-penance. But the devotees while performing them transcend the pain and experiences pleasure. The onlookers too become enmeshed in watching them. In addition, the festival is accompanied by a range of amusements which eventually become the cynosure. It conforms to the three essentials of Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalesque. The paper would inspect into the following issues: Can the festival be then seen as an excuse to a temporary anti-hierarchical society, a protest to the existing norms in the society? Is the pain that is converted to pleasure become an indigenous source of pleasure for the onlookers? How are these festivals perceived in contemporary times?

Keywords: carnivalesque, pain, pleasure, ritual, spectacle, festival.

In the era of modernization, surprisingly a recent endeavor has been noticed among the urbane people for their search of ethnic identity. The ethnicity bears the proof of the cultural unity and bondage over the years that had been shared by a certain community. It maintains as a constant reminder of the self being a part of a larger culturally similar group, with a sense of belonging, attachment and shared responsibility towards it. Festivals, in the words of Kristin Kuutma, can be interpreted as a performative communication which ensures to preserve this ethnicity. According to Beverly J. Stoeltje,

festivals occur at calendrically regulated intervals, are public in nature, participatory in ethos, complex in structure, and multiple in voice, scene, and purpose. Festivals are collective phenomena and serve purposes rooted in group life. Systems of reciprocity and of shared responsibility ensure the continuity of and participation in the festival through the distribution of prestige and production. (Bauman, 261)

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It acts as a conscious manifestation of the ethnic traits and unity with the “special objective to demonstrate and experience a particular identity.”1 The paper intends to explore this identity in the context of its realization of pain as pleasure during Shiv Gajan, the folk festival of West Bengal.

Shiv Gajan is a festival held mainly in West Bengal on the last two days of the last month of the Bengali year, the month of Chaitra. Though the period of its origin cannot be specified, according to some historians, during the middle ages when Buddhism had strengthened its hold in India, few Buddhist monks had come and settled in West Bengal. The rituals performed during Gajan bear stark resemblances with the Tantric rituals of Buddhism. The rituals included acts of self-penance, as a mark of renouncing the material aspects of the world and be imbibed within the spiritual sphere or what is now popularly known as monasticism. The Hindus not only celebrate it for a better future harvest in the ensuing year, Lord Shiva being the god of fertility, but also celebrates the union of Shiva and his consort. It also signifies the union of the Sun and the Earth. Etymologically, the word Gajan comes from the word “Garjan” meaning loud shouts of the devotees. An alternative meaning of the word derives from the word ga meaning “village” and jon meaning “people” which in short can be translated as a ‘festival for the people’. Festivals involve a certain participatory ethos which makes the event public, public in the sense of the engagement and its accessibility to all. According to Stoeltje, they are, “complex in structure, and multiple in voice, scene and purpose.” (Bauman, 262) He elaborates on this stating that such festivals not only uphold the cultural heritage of the community but its participatory aspect allows the people to explore new relationships, new equations not only among themselves but also with the Nature. The social interaction gets a boost and this fortifies its collective identity. Kristin Kuutma continues, stating that the purpose of such engagements is the articulation of the “shared experience of the group and multiple interpretations of that experience. Festival brings the group together and communicates about the society itself and the role of the individual in it.” (Kuutma, “Festival”) The festival takes place on an elaborate scale for three consecutive days, filled with mirth and revelry. The devotees or the gajan sanyasis make sacrifices and perform acts of devotion in order to please Lord Shiva. But the cynosure of the festival is how the devotees turn pain to pleasure through acts like body piercing, lying on a bed of nails, crucifixion or walking on burning

1 Kristin Kuutma, “Festival As Communicative Performance And Celebration of Ethnicity”.

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coal. In this light, while the rituals are being performed the pain converts to pleasure or combines into one which augments the grandeur of the celebration. It unites the devotees and the onlookers. The following sections would try to look into two aspects of the festival: the rituals where the body lays down itself as a site for inflicting pain, which is sensed as pleasure by the devotee, as an act of mere submissiveness or sacrifice to God and the carnivalesque quotient of the festival, the manner it operates. The paper would probe into these above mentioned issues and would question the significance of such festivals in the contemporary scenario where the celebration for the sake of enjoyment takes an upper hand.

The festival is held in its most carnivalesque fashion, conforming to Mikhail Bakhtin’s three essentials of a carnival: the grotesque, the laughter and the public space.2 The devotees cross- dress themselves as various deities, like Shiva and Parvati, with bright hues smeared on their bodies to perform plays or engage in hilarious feats. It becomes an act of deliberate intermingling of the sacred and the profane, a balanced mix of the comically gnarled versions of the traditionally sober, reverent Hindu deities. The display is not restricted to its contorted presentation. The laughter, revelry and merrymaking become a jovial accomplice to it. The site of the festival tends to lack serious discipline, law and order. The space slowly and willingly slips into an alternate world of unrestricted jollity, glee and hilarity. The participants tend to abandon their heavily-bound social, responsible roles to carefree beings with none to worry of. This celebration of mirth, enjoyment, drinks and amusements get aggravated by the loud hailing of Lord Shiva in an open space near the temple courtyard. The proceedings are conducted in an open public space not bound within the traditionally sacred, religious walls of the temple. It defies the otherwise usual binaries of restricted entry of the upper caste Bramhin. Traditionally, such proceedings were to be limited within the socially recognized sacred spaces as temples and its adjoining courtyard. But in this case, the festival gets staged in a public space, mainly market place, to facilitate the untrammeled participation of the village folks from the neighborhood. This involvement adds to the social chaos which, according to Bakhtin, is one of the prime characteristic features of a carnival. It facilitates not only an effective intra-group communication, but also builds up an inter-group connection. During the course of this festival the social order topples down. The lower caste people usually

2 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky, 2009.

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perform the various rituals in their attempt to appease Lord Shiva’s anger. Something to note is that these ritual performers, in spite of belonging to the lower rung of the society, are venerated by all including the landlords and the Brahmins. For these three festive days, the site becomes a classic example of an anti-hierarchical society. It acts as an instance of social-leveler which encourages free interaction of people irrespective of their caste. It is through this active engagement that the trait of the community as a united group, alongside the surfacing of various societal issues through discussion that, in Kristin Kuutma’s words, lends to the ‘shared experience’. In this context, to quote Bakhtin, Gajan becomes “the decentralization of a culture which has undermined the authority of social establishments.”(Rabelias: 37) As argued by Bakhtin, that such events were organized in early days as a strong rebuttal to the Church authority, it holds the same in the case of Gajan, as a stance of confutation against the prevalent hierarchial caste system in West Bengal. The popular belief being that the devotees attain the stature of a demigod, with the benediction of Lord Shiva during the performance of the rituals, the Bramhins venerate and, to a certain extent, worship these devotees. This allows, though for a brief while, an experience of an egalitarian society by the fellow participants.

The devotees perform rituals which include feats like lying on a bed of nails, crucifixion, body piercing and walking on a bed of burning coal to name a few. Something interesting to note here is the readiness and enthusiasm with which such painful acts are carried out. The devotees during the rituals submit themselves to God by turning the pain (of the penance or sacrifice) to pleasure. They experience the pain, in Plato’s words as, “…the very condition of pleasure is the pain caused by another superiority to ourselves.” (Hackforth, 93) This experience of an esoteric pleasure through the conduct of an unpleasant and disturbing act lies within their assumed understanding and firm belief in their unrestrained effort to propitiate Lord Shiva’s wrath. Through their act of self-compliance, the ritual performers transgress into a realm of pleasure. As Sri Swami Sivananda had stated, “Pain and pleasure pertain to the mind. Maya is all powerful seat in the imagination of the mind. Freedom from body is the real freedom from the atma”3, these performers too consider their experiencing of pain as a mental situation, a feeling they can overpower if they have the will to. It rests on their keenness and effort to attain the pleasure. They undergo a certain

3 Sri Swami Sivananda, “Pain and Pleasure”. 1998.

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form of naturalization which effectively silences the distinction between these two discreet feelings. This act of voluntarily hurting oneself can be read in Thomas Szasz’s usage of the term “pleasure” as the philosophical abstraction of the “absence of pain”- “pleasure” as being a state of mind where one can transcend himself to if he has the willingness to do so. To echo Szasz, pain, pleasure and other bodily feelings are “affects” which may not refer to the body.

The onlookers, too, experience pleasure in watching agape the rituals being conducted and this merges with the pleasure of the devotees performing the ritual. The audience become enmeshed in watching the suave and ease with which the devotees endure the pain, to the point of transgressing it. R. Scott Appleby recalls Rudolf Otto associating a kind of ambivalence with people’s reaction to sacred things or rituals. He says,

…the sacred projects numinous quality (from Latin numen, meaning “dynamic, spirit- filled, trans-human energy or force”) that inspires simultaneous dread and fascination in the subject. An utterly mysterious yet seductively intimate presence, the sacred evokes awe and compels the human spirit, drawing it beyond the ordinary range of imagination and desire. (Appleby, 28)

The onlookers, like the performers, undergo a sensation where their passive experience of pain turns into a soothing impression encouraging them to remain engrossed. Subconsciously, the onlookers become aware of what the performers go through, yet, a sense of amazement binds them; a sense of wonder and bewilderment strike the bystanders which ensures their captivating attention. Soon, they detach themselves from the existing reality to be absorbed into this space of performativity. In Otto’s words, “the daunting and the fascinating combine in a strange harmony of contrast.” (Appleby, 28) Slowly, the performance becomes a source of entertainment for them through which they can experience pleasure. A certain curiosity wraps the audience in rapt attention. In this light, something interesting to note is how a ritual turns itself to a spectacle for its viewers. And this becomes prominent in the manner the festival is carried on. For John MacAloon, “audiences are often induced to accept the deeper significance of the phenomenon, becoming not just watchers, but celebrants, believers and partisans as well.” ( MacAloon, 295)

According to Roy A. Rapparort, ritual is

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the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers logically entails the establishment of convention, the sealing of social contract, the construction of the integrated conventional orders we shall call Logoi…the investment of whatever it encodes with morality, the construction of time and eternity; the representation of a paradigm of creation, the generation of the concept of the sacred and the sanctification of conventional order, the generation of theories of the occult, the evocation of numinous experience, the awareness of the divine, the grasp of the holy, and the construction of orders of meaning transcending the semantic. (Bauman, 249)

Whereas spectacle, which etymologically comes from the Latin word spectare meaning ‘to look’, is in Frank E. Manning’s words,

a phenomenon characteristic of modern societies, it is a large-scale, extravagant cultural production, a performance with dialogic, polyphonic, and polythematic communication… It includes various festivals …public entertainment extravaganzas, exhibitions, civic and political ceremonies, and special religious events… A spectacle is a grandiloquent display of imagery evoking a diffuse sense of wonderment and awe. (Bauman, 292)

The act of performing rituals in Gajan soon gains the stature of a spectacle where an element of awe and admiration takes over the sacred quotient of the activity. The dictionary states two features of a ‘spectacle’-- visually striking or impressive public event and a person and a public show or display, especially on a large scale.4 While the devotees transgress into a certain kind of trance where pain and pleasure become analogous, the audience actively involves into boisterous celebration for the occasion. Certain dynamism can be felt at the site where both the parties contribute to pleasure-making. Moreover, in modern days, such festivals tend to overshadow the traditional purpose of pleasing Shiva by the dominant revelry that takes place. The body piercings garner the attention not for its purpose, but for its sheer unusuality. In this light, it becomes worth questioning the relevance of such festivals and rituals in the contemporary scenario.

To ponder on the issue raised above, one needs to distinguish between the usage of the terms ‘religious’ and ‘sacred’. According to Oxford dictionary, the term ‘religious’ refers to any “belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods”

4 https://www.google.de/search?q=absolve+meaning&trackid=sp-006#q=spectacle+meaning

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whereas ‘sacred’ relates to “connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration” or “embodying the laws or doctrines of a religion.”5 Emile Durkheim defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” (Durkheim, 44) However. he had no belief in anything relative to supernatural or God that could influence religion. He had emphasized on the collectivity of the society; how certain activities may bind a group, how some of them are treated as important and holy, rejecting the others as profane. In this light, one can sense the communal ethos behind the idea of religion, it being a product of the societal factors at work, the beliefs and practices while the sacredness is an aspect that deals with the holy ideas of religion. In modern times, however, these two terms are used interchangeably.

The point of concern is how the onlookers perceive and receive the performance of the rituals being held in the public spaces. Do they still relate to the sacred aspect of it or restrict them as mere spectacle? Considering the society, including the rural space, has undergone modernization, they retain a rare belief in such ritualistic activities. These are, in modern times, perceived as skilful stunts played by the sanyasis that fascinate the onlookers to the extent of amazement. A collective, unified ethos is certainly experienced at the site and the rituals can successfully capture it, but the sacredness of these acts or religions are seldom reasons that influence this unity. The collectivity is perhaps experienced as a single unit of onlookers who grasp the excitement with sheer bewilderment. The unusuality and grandeur of the acts garner the attention of the people. These become an indigenous source of pleasure for the modern cultural society that reminds them of their once existing primitive and kinetic form. In MacAloon’s words a spectacle is a “popular response to the master cultural confusion of the present era- a profound ambivalence and concern about the relationship between appearing and being, image and reality.” (Bauman, 295) This reference of spectacle being a modern cultural phenomenon, engages the audience in a collective, active process of cultural production. The spectacle has, as MacAloon had suggested, “two appearances—an outer set of appearance that attract the audience and an inner sense of authenticity that is accessible through empathy and participation.” (Bauman, 295) The

5 https://www.google.de/search?q=absolve+meaning&trackid=sp-006#q=sacred+meaning https://www.google.de/search?q=absolve+meaning&trackid=sp-006#q=religious+meaning

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onlookers then become an active audience gazing at the marvelous ‘feats’ thus performed by the sanyasis.

For the villagers the event becomes a site for mirth, social interaction and entertainment. Not only has the rituals, fire acts, skits and fair become the cynosure of the festival, but has also identified itself as a tradition which gets followed each year faithfully. The initial intention behind the occurrence of the festival, to appease Lord Shiva, slowly fades and the sheer performativity eclipses its sacred counterpart. The mirth and revelry involved in the performance turns down the sanctity of the event. The festival has evolved, to a certain extent, not only through the recent hiring of sanyasis for the effortless execution of the rituals, but also through inviting popular artist for their skits or orchestra performances. The festival has now added a commercial edge to it. The sacred lingers in the dark corners of the enlightened world. The sacred purpose of the event becomes overshadowed by the allied enticing activities performed.

The recent allowance of media to cover such regional events has made the folk popular among urban masses. They have successfully popularized the folk tradition in city spaces owing to the utter atypical acts performed. In recent times, the festival has invaded metropolitan spaces like Kolkata. The city also arranges for cultural walks6 that provides a guided trip into such Gajan, Charak festivals. The new media, in addition, has contributed to this trend through various blog posts and documentaries. This has invited a considerable international attention who perceive such rituals as ‘exotic’-- a term that frequently gets associated with the indigenous multicultural Indian tradition. Something noteworthy is how these tantric rituals like body piercings have invaded the popular youth culture where such piercings are quite in vogue. The recent hippie look has become a style statement for the youth. To conclude, this folk festival has turned down its sacred quotient in two levels—first, by relating more importance to the revelry that takes place and second, through its evolution in the contemporary times. The sacred, now, grapples with modernity during such festivals.

6 https://culturemonks.in/2016/03/27/art-journey-gajan-charak-festival/

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Works Cited:

Appleby, R. Scott. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: USA. 1956.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Indiana University Press. 2009. Google Book.

Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. Karen E. Fields. New York: The Free press (Simon & Schuster), 1995 [1912], 44.

Hackforth, R. “Mixed Pleasures of Body and Soul”, Plato's Examination of Pleasure: A Translation of the Philebus. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 1958. 92-97. Google Book.

Kuutma, Kuutma. “Festival As Communicative Performance And Celebration of Ethnicity”. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol7/festiva.htm Accessed on 21st September, 2016. Web.

Macaloon, John J. Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle : Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Institute for the Study of Human Issues: Philadelphia. 1984.

Manning, frank E. “Spectacle”, Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments: A Communication-Cerntered Handbook. Ed. Richard Bauman. OUP: New York. 1992. 291-299. Google Book.

Rappaport, Roy A. “Ritual”, Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments: A Communication-Cerntered Handbook. Ed. Richard Bauman. OUP: New York. 1992. 249-260. Google Book.

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Sivananda, Sri Swami. “Pain and Pleasure” Mind-- Its Mysteries and Control. The Divine Life Society Publication: Shivanandanagar, WWW Edition: 1998. http://www.dlshq.org/download/mind.htm#_VPID_26 Accessed on 20th July, 2016. Web.

Stoeltje, Beverly J. “Festival”, Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments: A Communication-Cerntered Handbook. Ed. Richard Bauman. OUP: New York. 1992. 261-271. Google Book.

Szasz, Thomas, Pain and Pleasure: A Study of Bodily Feelings. Syracuse University Press, 1988. Google Book.

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Camus and his meditations on Tragedy in Theatre

Introduction to the Author:

Dipanvita Sehgal is a research scholar with many National and International publications to her name. She has commendable experience in editing that she honed as Editor in Chief at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University. She has co-authored the book, Personality Development and Communication Skills - I : From Pure Linguistics to Applied Linguistics. She is a common figure at most National Conferences where she presents papers on the subaltern and Feminist issues in particular. She has presented a paper at Harvard University, USA this year. Her first novel, A Feminist in the Making is due for release soon.

Camus argues that tragedy in theatre is representative of transition and change and evolution both in thought and religion in civilization. I will argue the same and demonstrate that by using the rise of the atomic age and the corresponding fall of the British Empire.

This Lecture was presented in 1955/56. Camus argues that tragedy represents the change that civilization is undergoing. Essentially, he was making a statement that a new age of tragedy is coming not because of anything in theatre but because of transition in Civilization. He discussed the transition from the dark ages to the Renaissance and in that he talks about Shakespeare in Vega and some other contemporary authors. He also talks about Pre- Socratic thought and the transition into the Socratic Era by examination of Euripides. So, for him the atomic age represents another major transition and of the human civilization going from the colonial to the post colonial.

The year is 1955. The Second World War has come to a bloody conclusion. Change is afoot, but conflict continues to rage. The United States is embroiled in the Korean Conflict. Their mission? To, stop the spread of Communism in a world yearning for freedom and for liberty to have a chance at success. Not only is their tension on the geopolitical stage, but change is taking place across all domains of human civilization. At the forefront of and representative to this change is the world of art and drama.

In Athens, 1955, the French dramatists are meeting to discuss changes in their professional realm, and one man who is presenting a keynote is the thinker and artist Albert Camus. His speech is titled “On The Future of Tragedy”. Briefly, the lecture can be divided into three main parts. The first part is historical. In the first section, Camus discusses what tragedy is and how it is defined. The second part could be described as the present. Camus takes careful note of such things as the dropping of the Atomic Bomb by the Americans on Imperial Japan, as well as other actions on the world stage representative of conflict and war. Finally, the last section deals with what the future may look like.

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In his words, the overarching question is, “is modern tragedy possible”. Camus will argue in the affirmative. He will argue that the conditions in 1955 “favor tragic modes of expression”. He argues that French drama and art are leading the way, beginning in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. He further argues that tragedy is both good and bad, and that it must inspire men to greater and higher things. Freedom comes at the cost of the death of the old, Camus will argue, simply put.

The definition put forth by Camus is simple, for tragedy to take place, human civilization must be transitioning or evolving from one, older form of civilization into a newer evolution of civilization. In 1955 this can clearly be seen to be taking place. Two critical events clearly demonstrate Camus’ definition, the rise of the Atomic Age and the fall of the British Empire.

With the advent of the atomic age, new technologies make way for new ways of waging war and expanding the human horizon. Nuclear technology will give rise to the USS (United States Ship) Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, and which, in April of 1955 will begin its sea trials and subsequent voyage under the Arctic Sea. Just three years later,, President Kennedy will make his now famous statement, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, and in that same speech declare the intention of the United States to put a man on the moon inside a decade. Beginning with the Mercury program, following with the Gemini and finally the Apollo Programs, the United States, along with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, would launch the Space Age, which relied heavily on technology and scientific advances from the Atom Bomb and Manhattan Project of the 1940’s and early 1950’s.

But why do we make mention of these advancements? Because civilization as a whole had begun a rapid transformation. Just ten years earlier, the biggest fears the world had involved massive armies marching lockstep across nations, raping, slaughtering, and pillaging. Now, a Nuclear Missile commander sitting at his silo in Minot, North Dakota, under a direct command from a computer deep inside the fortified mountain in Colorado where NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) has its home, would turn a key, and launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile), and within an hour, millions would die an instant death under a mushroom cloud of something around 160 kilotons.

American SAC (Strategic Air Command) operationally launched its first B-52 Stratofortress nuclear bomber in 1955, and the world would live on a hair trigger for decades to come. The BUFF (Big, Ugly, Fat, Fucker), as it would come to be known by the men who flew it, is capable of carrying up to two dozen nuclear tipped bombs, or something around a million megatons of atomic destruction. Thus, the Atomic Age, while bringing advances in exploration, such as space and under the sea, would also put the world on the edge of its seat. Tragedy is absolutely as defined by Camus in his essay because indeed, human civilization would undergo a paradigm shift in art, philosophy, (cat on a hot tin roof by Tenesse Williams, a dramatization of the diary of Anne frank and the picture by Eugene Ionesco.) and life in general. The major themes of films at the time involved

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the theme of nuclear destruction at the hands of a computer. The 1964 film starring Henry Fonda, “Fail safe”, poignantly expresses just such a change.

But the nuclear and space age is not the only thing that lends support to Camus. A second event that makes his argument even more compelling is the death of Imperialism as evidenced by the dramatic fall of the British Empire after the Allied success in the Second World War. Simply put, the war saw British assets in the Pacific and Asian Theaters regain their national identity and government. From India to the Phillipines, indigenous peoples were freed of Westminster’s overt control. London now had to face threat of Communist invasion primarily to the Home Islands and relinquish control and dominance of vast swaths of territory. True, Hong Kong would not see its Independence until almost the 21st Century, but nonetheless, London would learn to refocus on London. The United States would also see its Imperialist desires brought to a halt in places such as the Phillipines and Cuba. Domination for the major powers would now come in the form of conflicts to “stop the spread of communism”, or in the world of finances and banking, such as the United States positioning the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and establishing the UN Headquarters in New York City.

Finally, Camus argues, that in order for tragedy to be taking place, the world must also be reintroducing the language of the sacred. This, of course, will be expressed in its theaters and art and drama, but will also be found in the population at large. Indeed, the 1950’s saw a resurgence in interest of religious affections. From the Christian Revivals that swept through the Southern United States, to the New Age Movement that began in the East and moved through to the West, religion did come to forefront of the minds and hearts of the people.

Camus made a definition for tragedy, which, can be easily demonstrated. The Atomic Age, brought with it the Duck and Cover drills, the fear of instant death, the joy of exploration. It also saw the death of overt Imperialism in the British Empire, and it gave rise to a plethora of films exploring the question of what would happen in the event of a nuclear war. Camus, indeed defined modern tragedy, and the events of his contemporary world not only support his definition but show him to be an astute artist and thinker. It is now time to embrace the next steps and grow from the birth of the modern tragedy and carry it forward into its young adulthood.

Select Readings

1. McCarthy, Patrick. Camus: The Stranger. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Print. 2002

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2. Camus at Combat: Writings 1944-1947. Ed. Jaqueline Levi-Valenci. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. 3. Algerian Chronicles. Ed. Alice Kaplan. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013. 4. The First Man. Trans. David Hapgood. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995. 5. Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage International, 1995. 6. The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1956. 7. Lyrical and Critical Essays. Ed. Philip Thody. Trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1970.

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Margaret Laurence’s The Fire Dwellers: A Fine Balance Introduction to the Authors:

Ms.C.Thenmozhi is a research scholar at the department of English, National College, Trichirapalli. The co-author, Dr. Srinivasan is an associate professor at the department of English in the same college.

Abstract Margaret Laurence an active feminist contributed to Canadian modernism through her women characters with universal perception. She differs from other writers by projecting female characters of boldness and self-confidence. They fight against their patriarchal superiority in order to create an identity of their own for their survival. Laurence’s The Fire Dwellers is one of her novels of Manawaka literature deals with a brave woman with a psychological insight. Laurence wants to express through her words the unheard voice of the women from the inside home in order to make a societal change. Stacey Mac Aindra is the representative of Laurence who questions the conventions and tries to create an identity of her own which she thought lost inside her family. She hopes to get it outside of her home and finally she finds the survival strategy to balance her dual world. The aim of this Paper is to show how Laurence has created female characters to propagate a voice for them.

Key Words: Feminist modernism, inside, outside, survival, memory, space, time.

Introduction

Canada is moving towards development in every field. Immigrants from all over the world are important factors contributing to Canada’s development. As every country is trying to establish their culture, custom, transformation, destruction through their writings, Canada is not an exception to this.

Canadian writers also bring out what they have endured so far. But there is one particular gender which has been ignored for many years; the unheard voice of the voiceless is being neglected.

Feminist modernism

Helene Cixous in "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacked Ways Out/ Forays" writes of the dilemma for women who look for, but do not recognize themselves in the world: "What is my place if I am a woman?

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I look for myself throughout the centuries and don't see myself anywhere" (574).Canadian modernism paves the way for writers to project themselves and recognized those who have become the voice of the voiceless. Among those writers Margaret Laurence is considered as literary foremother of Canada. She stands distinctively in crafting women characters. Joan Larkin, of Ms. Magazine tells about Margaret

Laurence that she has been haunted by the women in Laurence’s novels, because she could see herself in the women characters created by Laurence. Instead of describing the sufferings of women and evokes pity, the author has created women of pride, brave, self-confidence and their struggle in establishing their identity.

The Fire-Dwellers

Stacey Cameron is the protagonist of The Fire-Dwellers. Stacey Cameron is an elder sister of

Racheal Cameron of Laurence’s Jest of God . She leaves Manawaka at the age of nineteen and marries

Cliff Mac Aindra, a salesman. At the Beginning of the novel she is living with her four Children in

Vancouver, British Columbia. She reveals herself at the age of thirty nine, she feels unattractive, surrounded by the stresses of motherhood, chaotic by the absence of communication with her husband.

Laurence has adopted the method of interior monologue to narrate the story of Stacey and her reaction to the present situation:

Everything would be alright if I only was better educated…….Listen Stacey, at thirty nine, after four kids, you can’t expect to look like a sylph………Everything will be alright when the kids are older. I’ll be more free. Free for what? What in hell is the matter with you, anyway? Everything will be alright….Come on, fat slob on down town, get up off your ass and get going…..All the thing I hate. Hate, but perpetuate. (8-

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Margaret Laurence creates her to study the role of wife and mother in a modern family in which the mothers both promoted and gulped by their children. Even though Stacey does all the unchanging responsibilities related with life as a mother, she worries that she is always sacrificing her life in this sequence of trifles. Although she accepts that taking care of children is a valuable job, she needs a little for herself to be spent. She desires to talk with her husband, her children, and the world. The Fire-

Dwellers is considered a fictional representation of feminist Betty Friedan’s description in The Feminine

Mystique (1963) on the suffering of housewife; she describes it as the problem that has no name. Stacey has attained all of her society’s recognition as a happiest women as her sister think so, she is married, mother of four children and gains respect in the society of middle class. But there is a longing inside her which likes to come out side. From her private place to the public place. So she continually strategies with in and against the confines of home, which is both her house and body. The satisfaction which she finds through taking night courses, drinking, daydreaming, and having an affair which brings only fear and sense of vainness of modern life.

Memory and Dance

It is expected that women must find out other options to fight against this public and private spaces where communal training is twisted as legendry. Stacey at least tries her best to escape from the inner world but most of the women not even recognize it and confined themselves inside their home. Stacey chooses memory of her past. She reaches her past through her memory; she senses a music inside her which makes her dance as Stacey Cameron but not a wife of Mac Aindra. She sees dance as a way to recover her subjectivity. She finds dance and memory as an outer world where she feels relaxed. This is the survival strategy makes her to live both in the present and the past. But she is not aware that she has found way to survive in the present. Simultaneity is a strategy that repels a patriarchal erection which

120 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Thenmozhi & Dr. Srinivasan: The fire dwellers by laurence ISSN: 2454-4574 freedoms an individual over combined involvement. Stacey took a key to open the gates of her new world which helps her to escape from the burdens of the present world.

A Fine Balance

Stacey tries to unite her uneven self into a practical subject point where she can end time over memory. This approach is both modernist and feminist formation. As she has find out her comfortable world she tries to take her children to her world. Though she can find an identity for herself in her simultaneous selves in the memory, she cannot distinguish inside from the outside. So she redefines her strategy instead of reconstruction that by recognizing the trivialities no longer the bad ones and balances her inside and outside simultaneously. At the end of the novel she realises her power of will transformed.

In conclusion, she states,

Okay so in some ways I’ m mean as all out. I’m going to quit worrying about it. I used to think there would be a blinding flash of light someday, and then I would be wise and calm and would know how to cope with everything and my kids would rise up and call me blessed. Now I see that whatever I’m like,

I’m pretty well stuck with it for life. Hell of revelation that turned out to be. (272)

She recognizes that she is a noble mother and owns an inside reservoir of strength and willpower.

Stacey appears at her fortieth birthday with a different intellect of reception and peacefulness but not submission. She fights isolation by moving through time in her memory and through space with her body.

She restores herself in a poetics of dance and enunciates herself in a variety of expressions.

Conclusion

The life of Stacey Mac Aindra voiced an undeniable truth that women, who can’t separate themselves from the outside world, must know the strategy of balancing. This is the message conveyed by the feminist modernist Margaret Laurence through her novel. A Fine balance is expected from the women to maintain

121 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Thenmozhi & Dr. Srinivasan: The fire dwellers by laurence ISSN: 2454-4574 their inner and outer world. The Paper has shown the psychic status of a middle aged women and her quest in creating space for herself. She has searched everywhere and finally finds it inside her and gains the confidence to balance both the world simultaneously.

References

Laurence, Margaret. The Fire dwellers, Chicago: the university of Chicago Press,1988

Cixous, Helen. Sorties: Out and Out Attacks way Out/ Forays. Trans.Betsy Wing.

Contemporary Critical Theory. Ed.Dan Latimer. Florida: Harcourt Brace: 560-86.

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Poetry of Robert Frost is the Epitome of Modernity By – Mohini Kaushik Introduction to the Author: Mohini Kaushik is an assistant professor (guest faculty) and NET qualified. She has written research papers for different journals and magazines.

Robert Frost is a great modern poet. He is the contemporary of T.S. Eliot, WB Yeats, W.H. Auden, Ezra pound, etc. There is a Controversy among a series of critics who interpret or misinterpret Frost. Some critics like Granville Hicks, William van O cannon think that Frost is not a modern day poet but a traditional poet because his poetry manifests his traditional inheritance of American Civilization. Granville Hicks while discussing the modern elements of Frost Poetry Says: “Frost has bound himself to a literary tradition that is out of fashion and has lost its meaning in modern context.” There is an another observation of a critic about the traditional attitude towards poetry. Yvor Winters Says: “Frost insists that man is a creature of impulse not of reason and that attitude is aliens to modern thought”. He proves his point by taking the example of Frost’s Poem “The Bear”, in which Frost ridicules the idea of man as a reasoning creature and this is in marked opposition to modern thought. There is another group of critics which is willing to accept the views. They advance and advocate vigorously, the view that frost’s poetry essentially modern critics like Cleanth Brooks, Lional trilling and John Lynen are most eager and ready to put frost in the fore most position of modern poetry. Frost alike T.S. Eliot is a great advocate of modernity. He portrays the disintegration of values, disillusionment of modern man. His poem deal with characters who suffer from frustration, loneliness, helplessness, homesickness, etc. which are knows as modern evils and ills. Moreover, his poetry is modern in the accepted sense of the term both at the level. Though his depiction of literary conventions and traditions of the past proves that his poetry is the epitome of modernity. Frost’s poems are liked for their modernity which implies a broad outlook, a fusion of the metaphysical and the symbolic. His portrayal of the Disillusionment of modern man is a clean cut indication of his modernity. Diseases of modern life are portrayed in his poem in the poem “The Hill wife”, Frost has portrayed the cumulative sense of fear, loneliness and marital estrangement of an isolated women who is also misunderstood by her husband. In his poem “The Road Not Taken”, he depicts the confusion prevailing in modern life and it is difficult for the man to make a choice among two:

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“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference”. The tragic view of life that emerges in so many of frost’s poems is modulated by his metaphysical use of detail. As frost portrays him, man might be alone in an ultimately indifferent universe, but he may never the less look to the natural world for metaphors his w=own condition. Thus, in search for meaning in the modern world, frost focuses on those moments when the sees and the spiritual intersect John T. Napien calls this frost’s ability “to find the ordinance a matrix for the extraordinary.” The poem “Birches” is an example it contains the image of slender it contains the image of slender trees bent to the ground temporarily by a boy’s swinging on them or permanently by an ice-storm. But as the poem unfolds, it become clear that the speaker is concerned not only with child’s play and natural phenomena, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual reality merge. He says: “When I see brightness bend to light and right. Across the lines of straighter darker trees. I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.” However, “Birches” shows his realistic attitude to life and it also tells us that man constantly aspires for things beyond the world. Frost suggests that one should not do it rather one should know and love the things of the world and let the afterlife take case of its self, So the Speaker says that: “Earth’s the right plans for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” Thus we can say that he is undoubtedly presents a vivid picture of what modernism is doing to mankind. Frost uses the Method of indirection as used by many modern poets like T.S. Eliot and others. In his poetry he juxtaposes rural and urban. In mending wall Ancient world is juxtaposed with modern one. The necessity of fences is emphasized, implicitly criticizing the craze for pulling down fences and imposing brotherhood. “And some are loaves and some of nearly balls, we have to use spell to make them balance.” Frost thought the depiction of modernity in nature depiction his interest on nature. According to frost the world of nature is not world of dreams but is much harsher and demanding than the urban world. His poetry emphasizes the otherness of nature. His approach towards nature is scientific, rational and objective. He presents both bright and bleak aspects of nature. He proves his point by giving the example of his poem stopping woods in a snowy evening: “Woods are lovely dark and deep But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep A mile to go before I sleep:”

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He puts another example of his poem ‘After Apple Picking’ where he gets bored with his routine and mundane job. There is no more interest in apple picking. The poet seems to be feeling tired with his busy life and feed up with the task of apple picking; he says: “But I am done with apple picking now.” In his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”, beneath the apparently beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms. “Be glad of water but don’t forget. The lurking frost in the earth beneath.” Hence his comment on the human issue of modern world his realistic treatment of Nature, his employment of symbolic and metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human problems of the modern society in his poetry as the epitome of modernity. Frost is depicting modernity by using pastoral technique in his poetry. His Pastoralism: “an exploration upstream, past the city with its river side factories and shipping or against the current of time a change to the clean waters of the source”. J.F. Lyman says: “The use of the pastoral technique by frost in his poem is much more effective. It does not mean that the poet seeks an escape from the harsh unpleasant realities of life, rather is provides him with a point of view, a frame of reference, for studying and commenting on the facts of modern life”. This technique takes him from modernity to universality. Another aspect which make his poetry modern is his use of symbols throughout his poetry. His simplicity is deceptive. His poetry has layers within layers of meaning. He also employs a metaphysical symbolistic technique of expression. He juxtaposes such apposite as man and nature, the rural and the urban, and the regional and the universal. His method is indirect. In the poem ‘mending wall’, the poet symbolizes the conflict between the new trend of bringing down barriers between man and nations and old view that for good neighborly relation fences and boundaries are essential. He says: “Good fences make good neighbors”. Something there is that does not like a wall.” In this way, the poem become a symbol of the modern conflict in the minds of the people. There is another aspect of modernity of Frost poetry is that there are traditional and romantic elements are found in his poetry. W.B. Yeats says: “In Frost’s poetry we find evidence of what the modern mind in search of its own meanings”.

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We can say that it is difficult to put his poetry in the main definition of modernity- infect his poetry stands at the crossroads of 19th Century American poetry and modernism. Another Point which proves his poetry an epitome of modernity is that he makes use of imagery in his poem. In his poem, Design he draws a fine picture of a spider which caught a moth on a flower called Heal-All: “I found a dimpled spider, fat and white on a white heal-all holding up a moth hike a white piece of rigid satin cloth.” One thing which also prove modernity of his poetry is his psycho- analytical approach towards the depiction of characters in his poetry psycho – Analysis is one of the feature of modernity. His poem ‘His Burial’, the over wrought mother who is cracking up under a burden of grief over her child’s death. In this way his poetry is the true depiction of modernity. Therefore, his poetry reveals the aspect of modernity to a great extent. The terrifying nature of some of his poem is one of the aspects of modernity. Lionel Trilling calls him ‘A terrifying Poet’ and says that “The Universe that Frost conceives is a terrifying universe”.

Work Cited

Field, Evgene, Poem of childhood. New York! Charles Scribner’s sons Inc.1925 North of Boston, D. Nudd, 1914, Holt, 1915, reprinted, Dodd, 1977.

Lethem, Edward Connery, ed. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New York: NA,1969. Mountain Interval, Holt, 1916.

Stopping by Wood’s On a Snowy Evening, Dutton, 1978.

126 Ashvamegh: Vol–II: Issue XXII: November 2016 Nazer: Message for madhusudans ISSN: 2454-4574

A Message for Madhusudans

Introduction to the Author: Hisham M Nazer, a lecturer of English Language and Literature at the Department of English, Varendra University, is a trilingual poet from Bangladesh, a literary and philosophy theorist, a columnist and an occasional short-story writer. He is a prolific writer, published worldwide and nationally. His works have appeared in literary journals/magazines/anthologies/dailies from Austria, Greece, Belgium, France, USA, UK, Canada, Romania, Philippines, India and Bangladesh. Adding more credit to his literary career, he has been awarded the first prize in the “2016 International Poetry Writing Contest- Shakespeare As You Like It” by the Department of English, Farook College, Kozhikode, Kerala, India (affiliated with the University of Calicut). Worked as a sub-editor for two literary magazines- Shasshwatiki (print journal, Bengali, Bangladesh) and The Browsing Corner (Multi-lingual e-zine, India).

When we write something we write our ideas, we don’t merely write a language. That is exactly where most of us make the mistake, and thus, in the process, end up having misplaced hopes, consequential failures and anxieties, and finally complaints. For many of us English is only a language from a foreign land, a strange tongue, a set of linguistic “structures” that have to be performed properly in order to please somebody else other than ourselves, a gateway to the politics and culture of the English speaking world, and if possible to exploit it using their own tools of exploitation. Then there is this another and more subtle purpose that sometimes works, always unacknowledged, behind the learning of this language: the wish to rise to a status that is generally deemed superior by a group that uses a language geographically common to all. The vague triumph of the tongue, consciously faked and shamelessly enjoyed; the delusional notion of being someone greater, in a cultivated lucrative identity that is not original in us, hypnotizes our brain and wakes us up to a design we have no clue about when we ourselves are the designers, drugged by the potion of dishonesty. This is the stream where we have drowned, often involuntarily, and these are the degenerate and very narrow ends people, of this continent, have brought English down to. In a foreign land it is still a foreign body, looked at with awe and wonder, with fear and veneration. English is still merely a language here, to be learned but never to be loved. The few who truly, and out of an innocent urge, dare to transcend the native ego of the tongue and intend to give it different tunes, often meet obstacles, created by the language conservatives who have never been wholly able to welcome the invasive force of English (the language in itself), that with it brought the portals to other worlds, new colours and music to describe and thus know differently the world we inhabit, along with its human agents who ignited the actual opposition. Although it leaves much room for arguments (and they will duly be addressed in the research) but it can be said that language was always and always is innocent. English as a language, like every other language, only serves the mind, no matter if it is filthy or fair, no matter if it is of Shakespeare or of the atrocious dictator monarchs.

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The polarization of a socially “manufactured”, politically detailed and nationally encouraged linguistic ego marks the beginning of an opposition, that even in its naïve form attempts to estrange—and thus often to demean—the existence of anything that is not soil born. This sense of opposition is rooted deep inside the soul of the “native reality”, which is very carefully designed by history and which does not compromise any logic, even if that logic comprises a harmless truth. In this pursuit to conserve the ego that is often not even threatened, we forget that the word “foreign” does not necessarily imply “enemy” or “alien”. Such was the implication, true, but that was the time of physical imperialism. It does not require anymore the attestation by an omniscient someone to know that like the bio-war the First World countries attempt to dominate the whole world with their other subtler guerrilla schemes, and if anyone blames the language for the idea it translates and transmutes, the entire action might suffer the consequence of misplacement. For even English, very much like all other languages of the world, stemmed not out of a “plan”, but out of a simple necessity to express and communicate (for such is the Genesis of any language!). Like religions, later it has been tortured with political propaganda and painted with manipulative/misleading colours since the dawn of extreme nationalist intellectualism. In the branches of the alphabets today there hide cunning schemes, camouflaged. The language has been charged with so many extralinguistic forces; it has been “used” in such a way so that it can meet the expectations of the minds it serves. And it may even serve the mind of an Easterner as well, whether it is full of dramatic plots for the English audience, or it plots crimes for its own selfish ends. Therefore, language, at its worst, can only be the water that carries the viruses. It is only an innocent but powerful catalyst that stands convicted for all the changes that happen around it. But should we characterize or define something by the changes it is responsible for? Do we define the centre by the periphery or is it the other way around? If all the extra-linguistic forces mean everything to us and if we judge a language on their basis, I am afraid we should altogether stop studying language scientifically and consider it only and only an exclusively cultural product that has no essence of its own and has nothing to do with the necessity of communication. And if we fail first to differentiate the different streams (for after all West is not all Evil) that run down towards us and then to distil it and take what is essentially harmless, then it is only our own failure as a nation that claims to have the potential to judge. The question is- are we truly ready to judge? What is the basis of our questions that we throw on an immigrating body, be it a man or a language? For this very reason of having a pre-programmed mind, for our taking a metaphor as something real and for our ever defining attitude, we make a language stand in trial, in a court where the verdict is always already decided. And this verdict is not individually reached upon but largely dictated, by a class whose intention is otherwise noble but in their excess of care they lose sight of a world where everything is equally welcomed.

It has been frequently asked, especially by those who are Bengali literature enthusiasts (and even by those who aren’t enthusiasts of anything at all!): why does someone write in English? It would be much easier if they were replied thus: “don’t you know, English too is a “language”!” It is a debatable issue and one stream maintains that there can only be an origin of a language, not

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an owner; that English is not American or European; that it is, above everything, a language, a set of signs that have the power to express our innermost thoughts. The question often takes the form of a frown, sometimes of an accusation, and most disconcertingly of a premonition of someone’s doom as a writer. And Mr. Madhusudan Dutt is already there, to give them more reasons why they should look down upon this kind of unreasonable ungodly practice. It is the single name that many have had to hear in all these occasions, invariably. As if he is the standard of failure, for any Bengali writer writing in English! As if anyone whose mother tongue is Bangla but writes in English, is bound to follow inevitably the fall of that deluded poet who had tremendous strength of his own but instead chose to become someone else he was not. Mr. Madhusudan, on the contrary, took English as an American or as a Europe-born product. He was aware of the vast political and cultural background of this language and was naturally tempted towards it. His dream to become a Shakespeare or a Milton blossomed from a sense of history and what that history entailed. He was not there in Calcutta; he was not there within his self Madhusudan. He was in a time that even predates the birth of his own culture. He was always Michael. Mr. Madhusudan undoubtedly was an extraordinary poet and he proved his literary strength through his epic Meghnadbadh Kavya, but he was only himself when he wrote in Bangla, and the moment he attempted to write in English, he ceased to exist in his time and rather woke up to the present of a past. Therefore, his failure as an English poet was obvious. He did not love English; he merely found English admirable, and so out of personal whim that had a very clear vision—not epiphanic rather so purposefully and consciously created—of a cultural future (it was the time of British colonialism in India), he pursued the life of an English poet, when within his soul, probably he was much more deeply a Bengali than anyone else of his time (except the then adolescent Poet- Rabindranath Tagore). His coming back to his own language can be considered the resurrection of a poetic soul that died because the language was more important to it than poetry itself. So here it is. When we take language so seriously, we start to drown in the almost infernal river of mud that cultural theories have created for us, often quite unnecessarily and annoyingly! For that same reason the moment we take English too seriously, it becomes the “other”, charged with so many histories and cultural paradigms we have no idea about, and there we strengthen our native defense and mistake a stream of possibilities as an invasion by all those things that are not ours.

Unlike Mr. Madhusudan if we set the course of our journey towards our own selves, irrespective of the language with which we write our own incantations, we are bound to end up giving birth to something original, even in a language that is not our own. Because we can always discount the “importance” we so love to attach with a language and use it only as a means of exploring the world around us. By the virtue of an indifferent attention the moment the feeling of the “other” (for which we blame the West) vanishes for something that is not our soil-born, we with our own history and culture, with our own individualism, become one with that thing, and in the only true passion for creating beauty, we get consumed by its power and consume it ourselves wholeheartedly, not to achieve a goal, not in the admiration of a history, but only to create, and only in the admiration of the moment that is present and is beautiful.

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Language is at the same time the music and the instrument through which not only we express our ideas but also ourselves; it is the string through which we connect us with others and the world we attempt to realize by means of our human vocabulary. The more we tend to describe, the closer we get to the realities that revolve and evolve around us and it is partly our linguistic endeavours that take this evolution to newer extents. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore we meet the Bengal and smell the incense of a soil that they so musically and magically transform into recognizable signs. The strength of his words is so powerful that this recognition is often intuitive! That means even with his consciously constructed lines, he presented us with a world of images wrapped in Bangla that had the scope of being loved without being fully understood. Such should be the case with any writing that has successfully become what it describes. The metaphors become real in them, and for their artistic force the realities become metaphorical. The interconnections are made so effortlessly visible that no one doubts their veracity anymore. It is the language that gives birth to metaphors, as a natural necessity to render our communications musical and thus attractive.

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Asokan magic at the museum

By Neera Kashyap

Introduction to the Author:

Neera Kashyap has worked as a newspaper journalist, specializing in environmental journalism; social/health communication and research. She has authored a small book of short stories for young adults, Daring to Dream, Rupa & Co, 2003 and contributed to anthologies from Children’s Book Trust, 2003, 2015 & 2016. Her essays have interpreted scriptures and ancient literatures for print journals such as Mountain Path and Life Positive. Her short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction have been published in online literary journals Muse India, Out of Print Blog, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Earthen Lamp Journal, Reading Hour (print), Cerebration and Kritya. She lives in Delhi.

It was only a panel, albeit long, that came down from the ceiling to knee height. Clear as marble in its glossy shades of black, grey and white. Mounted on the abacus were the familiar images of India’s national emblem – the galloping horse and the taut virile bull. The horse symbolized temporal royalty and Buddha’s vehicle towards liberation; the bull, the astrological sign of Buddha’s birth and the great inseminator of his teachings. The one-dimensional panel gave no indication of the animal symbols on the other side of the abacus, originally sculptured in the round: a muscular lion with its twitching tail symbolizing Buddha’s clan – the Sakya Simha, and the moving elephant signifying Buddha’s immaculate birth as the Queen mother dreams of a white elephant entering her womb. All four animals drove before them the 24-spoked wheels of the Moral law – the Dharma chakra, with the abacus surmounted by four lions – mouths open, paws splayed, manes descending shaggily down their chests. This was the first depiction of a lion in Indian history – an elaborate and complete creation of Asoka, bodhisattva and chakravartin of the Mauryan kings who ruled between the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C.E.

Capping a polished chunar sandstone pillar, the mounted lion capital would have stood 40 or 50 feet tall - noble and solemn, majestic and imposing. As a volunteer guide at the museum,

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one found it difficult to explain to tour groups the craftsman’s mastery of his material in this effulgence of perfection, especially after the varied but crude art of the Harappans. Yes, there was the special Mauryan polish achieved by an assiduous rubbing of the stone with hide, sand and cloth. Yes, the Achaemenid sculptors fleeing to Mauryan courts after Alexander’s conquest of Achaemenid Persia, brought a distinctive mastery of style and execution. But the pillar edicts bearing their imperial message came in the 27th year of Asoka’s rule, nearly two decades after he had erected the first minor rock edicts. They themselves characterized the pinnacle of his glory as visionary and implementer of a moral law that sought to bind society together; characterized his discourse on governance and his personal statement of how he saw himself: father to all, not Emperor elect.

The Bharut, Bodh Gaya and Sanchi stupas built to house the relics of the Buddha are rooted in Mauryan and post-Mauryan times. They draw attention to Buddha’s symbolic presence through the empty throne, his footprints, the Bodhi tree, the wheel, the serpent king - narrating stories in stone of his life and previous births. But Asoka’s dhamma or the moral law drew from all religions prevailing then: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. At a lecture I once heard, noted historian and Asokan chronicler, Romila Thapar had taken pains to emphasize that Asoka had been largely seen only as a Buddhist. Liberated from that perspective, he had come to be known as a person committed to changing people and societies. While his dhamma was his own invention and ran parallel with Buddhist teachings, it was borrowed as much from Buddhist as from Hindu and Jain thought, the king attempting to suggest a way of life based on a high degree of personal ethics and socio-civic responsibility - practical, convenient and moral.

He understood his times. This understanding was coupled with an extraordinary degree of idealism. Both gave him the courage to experiment. His was a new political situation wherein imperial control was imposed over an entire subcontinent, previously consisting of small kingdoms and republics, similar but highly disparate. It was a period of doubts, when the Brahmanical stronghold built up through the later Vedic period (900 B.C.E onwards) was being attacked by new forces, spearheaded by Buddhism. There was the opening up of extensive trade. The caste of vaishyas (traders and moneylenders) became more important and felt antagonized by the unjustified privileges of the higher-caste Brahmans (priests and teachers) and Kshatriyas

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(ruling and military elite). The establishment of guilds in city life led to the emergence of a multicultural society at different levels of development, with economic, social and religious forces counteracting each other. Community life became more complex and needed a binding force.

Religious texts of the time stressed man’s responsibility to his religion and to his ancestors. Brahmanism emphasized social responsibility largely within the confines of each caste, seeking solutions in increasing the rigidity of the caste system by leaving out the lower castes. Buddhism, on the other hand, emphasized a broader social consciousness through a system of social ethics by which responsibility was placed in the hands of each individual member of society. By following personal ethics, each individual could bind himself in social responsibility towards his fellow men. This individual-inspired social consciousness became the binding factor behind Asoka’s dhamma – binding region with region, class with class, ruler with ruled, sect with sect. Each individual was left free to follow his/her own religion, yet was unstintingly influenced to follow a common moral law. Persuasion was used over legislation to emphasize social responsibility to one’s fellow beings, the practical task of consolidating conquered territory carried out simultaneously.

Yet this was not dhamma as understood by the Buddhists or by Brahmans. There was no specific reference to Buddha or to his teachings, for the edicts were directed at the entire nation and only a few exclusively at the Buddhist monastic community. There is not a word about prayers, offerings, sacrifices or rituals. If there is reference to gods moving among men this is more as a predictable outfall of a robust practice of the dhamma. And because Asoka understood that, by holding out the possibility of heavenly bliss, he could raise the idea of social responsibility from mere etiquette to a genuinely felt responsibility that people already acquainted with the idea of spirituality in religion could relate to. Not surprisingly, the dhamma contains moral and not religious precepts, drawing from the essence of each religion, yet partisan to none.

The 12th Major Rock Edict is categorical: “(King Piyadassi,) the Beloved of the Gods does not consider gifts or honor to be as important as the advancement of the essential doctrine of all sects….its basis is the control of one’s speech, so as not to extoll one’s own sect or disparage

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another’s on unsuitable occasions, or at least to do so only mildly on certain occasions. On each occasion one should honor another man’s sect, for by doing so one increases the influence of one’s own sect and benefits that of the other man.…..Concord is to be recommended, so that men may hear one another’s principles and obey them. This is the desire of the Beloved of the Gods, that all sects should be well informed, and should teach that which is good, and that everywhere their adherents should be told, ‘The Beloved of the Gods does not consider gifts or honor to be as important as the progress of the essential doctrine of all sects.’”

Large lotus medallions and engravings ubiquitously decorate the gateways and railings to the stupas of Bharut, Bodh Gaya, Sanchi and Amravati – King Asoka’s legacy in that they grew out of what the king started. In Buddhism, the lotus symbolizes primordial purity and cosmic harmony. In Hinduism, it symbolizes beauty and non-attachment and is associated with important deities such as Brahma, Vishnu, Laxmi and Saraswati. The Sungas ruled immediately after the Mauryas. In the low-relief panels of the Bharut stupa built during their rule, there is a sense of motion arrested: men with elaborate head gear stand waiting, their faces quiet, hands placed over their hearts; row upon row of turbaned worshippers stand before a pedestal on which rests a Bodhi tree with a designed scroll flapping down; even an elephant roped down by monkey-like figures stands feet together, the animal bodies slanting forwards but motionless. The panels in the Bodh Gaya stupa are similar but more decorative than Bharut, more three- dimensional, more animated. It is in the later Amravati stupa constructed by the Satavahana kings that the green limestone is deep, delicate and fluid with motion. Just as each animal faces the dharma wheel in the lion capital, the lotus opens everywhere to the dhamma, transcending religions.

And what is the dhamma? In its simplest form, an Asokan edict states, “it is having few faults and many good deeds, mercy, charity, truthfulness and purity”. In its more detailed aspect, it emphasizes kindness, gentleness, obedience, vigilance, self-examination, truthfulness, purity and calmness of mind, forgiveness, enthusiasm, gratitude, self-control and love of the dhamma. Asoka even spelt out the faults to be avoided: jealousy, shortness of temper, harshness, rashness, obstinacy, idleness and slackness. He admonished vigilance and self-examination so people could see for themselves that cruelty, harshness, anger, pride and envy ‘are indeed productive

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of sin’. For Asoka felt convinced that there could be no practice of dhamma without goodness. He professed this to be difficult, both for the humble and the highly placed – especially for the highly placed -without extreme effort and renunciation!

He knew that his officers of dhamma, the dhamma mahamattas, could only follow his special mission of spreading the dhamma as well as imparting social welfare to the lower castes and the poor – a task neglected both by the Buddhist monastic order striving for personal salvation and a rigid Brahmanical caste system – by being impartial and just themselves. Therefore, his appeal to them was intense: “All men are my children. What I desire for my own children, and I desire their welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, that I desire for all men. You do not understand to what extent I desire this, and if some of you do understand, you do not understand the full extent of my desire.”

In its socio-civic aspect, the dhamma translated simply into good behavior towards slaves and servants; obedience to mother and father, friends and relatives; generosity to sramanas and brahmans; abstention from killing living beings; frugality in spending and in owning the minimum of property. These aspects were repeated in different edicts as Asoka believed there was beauty in these topics and repetition may help people conform to them. Repetition was also used to report progress in the practice and reach of the dhamma, even as he appealed to lay practitioners to articulate it to others in a spirit of shared fellowship. The inscriptions on the edicts were engraved in prominent places to reach as large a group as possible. The language used was Asokan Prakrit with regional variations - the language most commonly spoken - and not Sanskrit, the language of culture. The edicts were publicly read out every single day, and at special gatherings and events. This made the public aware of the king’s wishes and the human relationship he wished fostered between his officials and the public.

Asoka lived for 69 years and ruled for 37. In his seventh year of rule, he waged war on Kalinga, the only significant kingdom in the subcontinent to resist his father, King Bindusara. With its conquest and effective subjugation of the remaining unconquered territory to the south, Asoka could regard himself as emperor of all India, the subcontinent experiencing an unbroken peace for the next three decades. This gave him scope to experiment and follow processes that had the

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chance to unfold naturally. As pointed out by Romila Thapar in her book, ‘Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas’, “Mainly Buddhist sources made Asoka out to be a monster of piety – suddenly changing from extreme wickedness to extreme piety and eventually suffering at the hands of non-believers - a picture not endorsed by his edicts and inscriptions.” He was first an upasaka, a lay follower of the Buddha, then approached the sangha, then approached the Bodhi tree and only then traveled with the relics. “Assuming that his deepened interest in Buddhism began after the war, it took him two and a half years to become a zealous Buddhist on his own admission… If he had been suddenly converted to Buddhism, this change would have swung him to the other extreme”, writes Thapar.

The first of Asoka’s public pronouncements were made in the minor rock edicts about 260 B.C.E, three years after the Kalinga war and ten years after his anointment as king. The brutality of the conquest had a devastating impact both on the people of Kalinga and on Asoka. It may have taken him three years to accept this fact and act upon it. Even his dhamma mahamattas were appointed only in the thirteenth year of his kingship, giving him scope to evolve his vision of dhamma from clear personal conviction before attempting its widespread dissemination composite with social and economic welfare. In fact, he categorically states that all his welfare measures – medical care for humans and animals, gifts to ascetics, gold to the poor, compassion to prisoners, planting of herbs and trees for medicine, fruit and shade, digging of wells and watering places and building of rest houses - were done “in order that my people might conform to dhamma.”

King Asoka was neglected and forgotten for over two thousand years. His edicts first began to be deciphered by British archaeologist and historian James Prinsep around 1837, but it was only in 1915 that these edicts came to be identified with him by name. What caused his decline? Thapar suggests that “his humanitarianism was gradually overshadowed by his belief in his own achievement in having changed men’s natures, until at the end of his reign, he appears to have become overconfident of this achievement, and succumbed to his own ego”. Excessive enthusiasm may have also produced a reaction as could have an obsession with the dhamma as the final answer to everything. There are already hints in the edicts of his own great and commendable deeds, albeit to discharge his own debt to all beings, but also as citations of his

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great achievements in establishing the dhamma: “The gods, who in India up to this time did not associate with men, now mingle with them, and this is the result of my efforts.”

Texts indicate that he was physically unattractive. There is a photograph that depicts him in the southern gateway of the Great Sanchi stupa flanked by his two queens. Standing directly below the Bodhi tree, his right arm is over one queen while the other queen holds his left hand. He is tottering backwards, and looks stumpy, pumpkin-faced and faint. French scholar Alfred Foucher interprets this either as overwhelming grief that overcame him when he was told that his beloved tree was perishing, or of the emotion that seized him at the sight of a spot so sacred. There is another photograph – this time of the stupa at Amravati built two centuries after Sanchi. Here the fainting monarch has been transformed into the bodhisattva-chakravartin. He is bejeweled with ear-loops, necklaces, waistbands and bangles. His body is slim and graceful. His eyes are closed and his hands are folded, finger-tips meeting at the chin – folded perhaps in greeting or in prayer - probably prayer.

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The lost writer

By- Preeti Singh

Introduction to the Author:

Preeti Singh, based in Mumbai-India is a freelance French Language Interpreter & Translator as well as a Media Professional, engaged in Writing and Acting work. She is currently a member of the Film Writers Association (FWA), an association for television and cine writers in India. She has equally assisted in film pre-production and script writing. Apart from it, she is also working as an Actor and has portrayed different character roles in Indian television series. She can communicate in English, French and Hindi Languages with adequate fluency.

So here I am sitting in front of my computer and attempting to scribble down some thoughts which are trying to make a haul through my racing mind. Writing is one of the best ways to express our sentiments, desires, hopes, wounds and bliss. We can write what we want and vent our feelings to strangers who won’t judge. It’s comforting and healing to share the load with someone. Some readers can relate and understand where the writer is coming from.

I want to share a story; a story about a girl who forgets her true identity. She was busy running around people, pleasing them and getting their approval. They were the people with whom she shared her life; her teachers, family, relatives, friends, lovers. She was a busy girl; busy playing the role of ‘a good girl’. The one who is supposed to be: a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend, a good girlfriend, who is expected to keep everyone’s needs before hers. In the whole affair of pleasing others she forgot to please herself, she forgot who she really was. She forgot that few years back she had zeal to write, there was a budding talent which was never acknowledged as it was never shared.

In my college days I used to write small stories, personal essays, news articles, scripts, reviews. As life moved forward, I was drifted along and forced to blend with the flow. I simply forgot that I had the desire to write. No matter good, bad, average, non-worthy of being noticed but at least I had an urge to write; and might be recognized for this someday. As time passed, life took a different turn and things changed for me. I was occupied in taking care of trivial things, my priorities changed with the passing years. I started serving others, I became busy living up to their expectations and thought that’s what I was supposed to do and be; be a good girl!

One evening I got a text from an old acquaintance who wanted to discuss a project with me. He contacted to enquire if I am still active as a writer. After receiving the text, I was startled for a moment and replied, ‘Yes, I am’ which was a lie. I was amazed and disturbed at the same time with this text message. I was amazed because people still remember me as a person with writing skills; and disturbed because I had completely forgotten that I had a special skill. How can I let

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slide something of that significance, where was I lost, what was I doing all these years, what kept me occupied or what kept me away? What was I busy with that I over looked the desire to be identified? I must be very busy indeed; yes, I was truly very busy. I was busy playing the good girl.

The ambitious girl was lost becoming the good girl, the goodness took over ambition, and the desire to be accepted took over the desire to be known. She was busy living for others, as per others, in sync with others. She has always been the giver, the one with a big heart and enormous patience to adjust with the unfairness of life. She was just giving and not receiving anything in return and what happens when you put the needs of others before yours? You make them your priority and in return all you are left with is a lost identity. They start to take you for granted and it becomes a pattern, it becomes a thankless job.

You make someone your whole world only to realize that you are just a small part of their selfish world. While you were busy serving others there was someone who was starving for your time and attention. It’s your own self; you have forgotten to make time for yourself. It’s time to gear up, get up and look into the mirror, whose reflection do you get to see? Is it a reflection of someone you were or someone you are? I request you; please don't be the lost writer which I once became.

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