'Crossing Thresholds': Radical Notes in Women's Writings ... - JPCS
'Crossing Thresholds': Radical Notes in Women's Writings ... - JPCS 'Crossing Thresholds': Radical Notes in Women's Writings ... - JPCS
Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)Then first she throws the Tehsildar in the ravine, his wallet , cigarettes, hishandkerchief. Stone after stone. Hyenas and leopards will come at night, smellingblood. Or they won‘t.Mary comes out. Walks naked to the cut. Being naked in the cut she feels her facefills with deep satisfaction. As if she had been infinitely satisfied in a sexualembrace. (16)After the ‗big kill‘ she wants her fiancé Jalim. As women drink, dance and sing aroundthe fire at night and celebrate the Janiparab festival, Mary quietly leaves them and runsfast in the dark. She knows the way to Tohri where her fiancé Jalim lives. Then, both ofthem will then escape to some faraway place.She looks back to find ‗the spring festival fires … scattered in the distance‘ (17). ‗She isnot afraid, she fears no animal as she walks…Today all the mundane blood-conditionedfears of the wild quadruped are gone because she has killed the biggest beast‘ (ibid).Mary, thus, ‗activates ritual into contemporary resistance‘ as she kills her mainstreamexploiter-cum-potential rapist as part of the Jani Parab.Mahasweta Devi, in conversation with Spivak informs that ‗every event narrated withinthat story is true‘ (2001: xi). Recollecting the memory of a ‗light skinned‘ tribal girl in ayellow sari, she says:I see her in the Tohri market, bargaining for fruit and other produce, chewingpan(spiced betel leaf), smoking biri(tobacco leaf cigarettes), arguing and alwaysgetting the upper hand. Such a personality. Then I learnt what she had done onJaniparab day in order to marry the Muslim boy.(ibid)This incident of a woman‘s assertion is open to multiple interpretations which may besummed up as follows: First, according to Mahasweta Devi , Mary ‗ resurrected the realmeaning of the annual hunting festival day by dealing out justice to a crime committed‘Crossing thresholds: Radical notes in women’s writings from contemporary South Asia,’Madhu SinghJPCS Vol 2 No 4, December 201190
Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)against the entire tribal society‘(Devi 2001: xi). Thus, in her we find the concretealternative to resist and destroy not only the injustice of gender politics but also theincursion upon tribal land and forests by feudalism, colonialism, and global capitalism.As a result, the subaltern figure of Mary Oraon become s a metaphor for tribals andmarginalized people all over the globe. The story of Mary‘s resistance also points to the‗profound ecological loss‘, ‗complicity of local developers with the forces of globalcapital‘ (Spivak2001:201)Secondly, Mary‘s act of killing her ardent suitor and sexual harasser and a wealthy loggerTehsildar Singh from the city, is a clear statement of transcending and destroying bothpatriarchies that are totally corrupt. Moreover, by this very act, Mary challenges thedominant structures of middle-class, upper-caste heteronormative femininity andgendered subjectivity. And, finally, Devi merges the ritual of the tribal women's huntwith Mary's murder of her suitor, suggesting that indigenous practices still provide afertile ground for myths that can be deployed to combat contemporary oppressions. As acreative artist, however, she would not like to allow the First World reader to understandher work as an exotic artifact of the Third.Contemporary women's writing in India has moved away from the confines ofdomesticity to engage with the historical, political and economic dimensions of the publicspace. Women's poetry in India has responded to communal violence in their own way.Writers like Saroop Dhruv ‗transcend their class-religion-region affiliations and adopt acosmopolitan liberal-humanist secular stance to document their anguish (Beniwal andMehta 2011) The creative response from women poets is not merely a gendered responseto escalating violence in the contemporary world and its devastating toll on women; but ismultifocal, complex and nuanced(ibid). Gujarati poet Saroop Dhruv based in Ahmedabadis also a playwright and cultural activist who writes modernist, feminist and politicallyengaged literature in her mother tongue. Her poem ( translated into English) ‗It‘s All inMy Hands‘ captures the agony of the poet at the communal frenzy and experiences the‘Crossing thresholds: Radical notes in women’s writings from contemporary South Asia,’Madhu SinghJPCS Vol 2 No 4, December 201191
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Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1845 (Pr<strong>in</strong>t); 1948-1853 (Electronic)Then first she throws the Tehsildar <strong>in</strong> the rav<strong>in</strong>e, his wallet , cigarettes, hishandkerchief. Stone after stone. Hyenas and leopards will come at night, smell<strong>in</strong>gblood. Or they won‘t.Mary comes out. Walks naked to the cut. Be<strong>in</strong>g naked <strong>in</strong> the cut she feels her facefills with deep satisfaction. As if she had been <strong>in</strong>f<strong>in</strong>itely satisfied <strong>in</strong> a sexualembrace. (16)After the ‗big kill‘ she wants her fiancé Jalim. As women dr<strong>in</strong>k, dance and s<strong>in</strong>g aroundthe fire at night and celebrate the Janiparab festival, Mary quietly leaves them and runsfast <strong>in</strong> the dark. She knows the way to Tohri where her fiancé Jalim lives. Then, both ofthem will then escape to some faraway place.She looks back to f<strong>in</strong>d ‗the spr<strong>in</strong>g festival fires … scattered <strong>in</strong> the distance‘ (17). ‗She isnot afraid, she fears no animal as she walks…Today all the mundane blood-conditionedfears of the wild quadruped are gone because she has killed the biggest beast‘ (ibid).Mary, thus, ‗activates ritual <strong>in</strong>to contemporary resistance‘ as she kills her ma<strong>in</strong>streamexploiter-cum-potential rapist as part of the Jani Parab.Mahasweta Devi, <strong>in</strong> conversation with Spivak <strong>in</strong>forms that ‗every event narrated with<strong>in</strong>that story is true‘ (2001: xi). Recollect<strong>in</strong>g the memory of a ‗light sk<strong>in</strong>ned‘ tribal girl <strong>in</strong> ayellow sari, she says:I see her <strong>in</strong> the Tohri market, barga<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g for fruit and other produce, chew<strong>in</strong>gpan(spiced betel leaf), smok<strong>in</strong>g biri(tobacco leaf cigarettes), argu<strong>in</strong>g and alwaysgett<strong>in</strong>g the upper hand. Such a personality. Then I learnt what she had done onJaniparab day <strong>in</strong> order to marry the Muslim boy.(ibid)This <strong>in</strong>cident of a woman‘s assertion is open to multiple <strong>in</strong>terpretations which may besummed up as follows: First, accord<strong>in</strong>g to Mahasweta Devi , Mary ‗ resurrected the realmean<strong>in</strong>g of the annual hunt<strong>in</strong>g festival day by deal<strong>in</strong>g out justice to a crime committed‘Cross<strong>in</strong>g thresholds: <strong>Radical</strong> notes <strong>in</strong> women’s writ<strong>in</strong>gs from contemporary South Asia,’Madhu S<strong>in</strong>gh<strong>JPCS</strong> Vol 2 No 4, December 201190
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