'Crossing Thresholds': Radical Notes in Women's Writings ... - JPCS

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