Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses [1 ed.] 1527533220, 9781527533226

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Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama

Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses

Edited by

Arnab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkumar Bhattacharya and Himadri Lahiri

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses Edited by Amab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkumar Bhattacharya and Himadri Lahiri This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright© 2019 by Amab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkumar Bhattacharya, Himadri Lahiri and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior pennission ofthe copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-3322-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3322-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction-Mapping the Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: New Directions and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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ArnabKumar Sinha, Sajalkumar Bhattacharya and Hirnadii Lahiri I: Contemporary Indian English Poetry Changing Canons: Some Reflections The Empirical Eye of the Modernist: Studying Some Modem Indian Poetry in English

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21

AjayKumar Representation of the Nation and the Diaspora "My Piecemeal Shelters" - Exploring the Diasporic Woman's Voice in Selected Poems of Meena Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Sajalkumar Bhattacharya Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition inKashmiri Poetry . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Mousirn Mondal Early Sikh Immigrants in America: A Study of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "Yuba City Poems" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Gargi Dutta The In-between Worlds in the Narrative Called Nation: An Analysis of the Depiction of Nation in Indian English Poetry

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Swetha Antony Representation from the North East Literature in English from the Northeast: A Critical Survey of Poetry from the Imagined Periphery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mridul Bordoloi

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Table of Contents

Stones and Ao-Naga Culture: A Geographical Reading of TemsulaAo's Stone-Poems ................................................................ 101 Sayantan Chakraborty Gender Perspectives

Negotiating the Others as/in the Selves: Liminal Subjectivities in Post-Independence Indian English Poetry by Women ........................ 115 Amab Bhattacharya Problematics of Representation of Women in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry Sandipan Ray Choudhury

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131

II: Contemporary Indian English Drama Changing Canons: Some Reflections

Re-drawing Boundaries of the Canon: Indian English Women Dramatists ................................................................................................ 147 Ainta Singh Contesting Issues in Indian EnglishDrama ............................................. 167 DipenduDas Towards Syncretism: Resisting Critical Stereotypes in the Study of Contemporary Indian EnglishDrama with Special Reference to Girish Kamad's Broken Images Partha Sarathi Gupta

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179

State, Society and Individuals

Time Bombs in a Time Machine: Modem Mythopoeia in Poile Sengupta's Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni Amit Bhattacharya

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195

Representation of the Nation

Narrating 19621Interrogating Progress: The Postcolonial Nation in GurcharanDas's 9 Jakhoo Hill Anindya Bhattacharya

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Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses

Violence, Ethics and Revolution: A Study of Asif Currimbhoy' s Bengal Trilogy Devamitra Chakraborty Contributors

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INTRODUCTIONMAPPING THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY AND DRAMA: NEW DIRECTIONS AND CHALLENGES ARNAB KUMAR SINHA, SAJALKUMAR BHATTACHARYA, HIMADRI LAHIRI

After the publication of Sahnan Rushdie'sMidnight's Children (1981), the scenario of Indian English literature changed remarkably to represent the transfOlmed social, cultural, and political setting of the country and the world. New literary themes and innovative modes of literary writings expanded the horizon of Indian English literature, making it richer and more dynamic than ever before. Rushdie's fiction encouraged literary experimentation. It set an instance of geme that incorporates multiple perspectives of constructing a narrative. Midnight's Children uses the technique of magic realism to present the historic events of India's Independence and the Partition of 1947. Commenting on the significance of this fiction, M.K. N aik opines, "A new era had dawned in Indian English literature" (11). It is no wonder that Rushdie received the Booker Prize in 1981, and many other notable awards for this phenomenal fiction. The course of events after the publication of Midnight 's Children has been very encouraging. Many Indian authors who wrote fiction after Rushdie have gained worldwide recognition. New breeds of fiction have emerged during the post-1980 period, and, even during the post-liberalization era, Indian English fiction has finely fashioned itself to address the demands of the reading public. Urban fiction, crick literature, chick literature, call centre novels, and corporate novels are a few instances of new kinds of fiction that are now popular in Indian English fiction. E. Dawson Varughese, in her book Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian Fiction in English (2013), discusses all the new kinds of fiction that have attempted to represent the 'new India' of the twenty-first century

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Introduction

(Varughese, Kindle Location 451). This euphoria and energy in Indian English fiction is quite conspicuous, and rightly deserves the attention of critics like M.K. Naik and Varughese. But, in this whole process of mapping the journey of Indian English literature, the bright picture of Indian English fiction often shadows the scope and development of Indian English poetry and Indian English drama. Though the fact remains that Indian English fiction today has attained global recognition, critics, and even serious academics, are not quite sure about the global reach of the other two gemes. Are these two gemes as popular as Indian English fiction? How have Indian English poets and playwrights developed their writing style and thematic representations during the post-1980 period? Is it possible to trace the trajectory of the evolution of Indian English poetry and drama? What are the prominently new kinds of writing that have shaped the canon of these two gemes, and how have the readers and critics responded to the ne\Vlless in these two fields? These are the questions that this book, Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama: Changing Canons and Responses seeks to address. The focus of this edited volume, as its title suggests, is on the development of Indian English poetry and drama since the 1980s. In fact, the book contains a time-chart of critical essays on important poets and playwrights, providing a clear understanding of the evolution of these two genres since the 1980s. Such an attempt is directed to generate interest among researchers and students in studying the recent literary trends in Indian English poetry and drama. Before providing a brief overview of the essays in this anthology, we would like to map the growth and evolution of Indian English poetry and drama since the 1980s. Indian English Poetry since the 1980s

In his elaborate study of the history of Indian English Poetry, M. K. N aik classifies the evolution of Indian English poetry from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century into three distinct phases; 'The Romantic Dawn', 'The Modernist Noontide', and 'Younger Accents: Modernism - II' (Naik, 7-8). These phases, as explained by Naik, are well knO\vn to literary historians, scholars, and academics. Such a distinction, as evident in his study, provides a panoramic view of the development of Indian English poetry based on the attitude of the poets belonging to different periods of Indian history. The Indian poets in the first phase adopted a Romantic sensibility, quite similar to their British counterparts. They were primarily influenced by the Romantic poetry of

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Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron. These British poets provided suitable models for poets like HernyDerozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, and Sri Aurobindo, to imitate and create poems bearing the mark of British imagination. While explaiinng the attitude of the early Indian English poets, who belonged to the 'Romantic Dawn' phase, Naik clearly elucidates the basic tendency of these poets: "Almost all the early Indian English poets considered so far had taken the British Romantic poets as their models; in spite of this, they had failed to produce genuine Romantic poetry, because, in a sense, they were not 'romantic' enough, i.e., they merely copied the external features of Romantic poetry, missing the core altogether" (Naik, 12). These poets, as evident from the list mentioned above, belonged to the pre-Independence period. Among these poets, Toru Dutt and Sri Aurobindo made sincere attempts to write poems based on Indian myths and legends, which rendered a spirit of originality to their creative works, though they could not completely resist the imitative mode of writing poetry.l The second phase, 'The Modernist Noontide' indicates the point of view of the post­ Independence Indian English poets. The poets of this phase rejected the Romantic model of writing poetry and developed a Modernist outlook. Following the themes and styles of modem British poets, the poets of the 1950s and the 1960s, acquired a typical modem perspective of representing reality. The Modernism that became prominent in Indian English poetry was derivative in nature, like the earlier period of Romanticism. Naik observes this phenomenon by stating the change in the source of inspiration for the poets of the post-Independence era: "But it is true that poetic taste had changed. The Indian English poet is no longer prone to deriving his light from Shelley and Tennyson. His masters now are T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden" (Naik, 52). This derivative Moderinsm influenced the creative spirit of the Indian English poets as they imbibed all the major traits of British Modernism. Aspects like 'alienation syndrome', 'urbanity', 'obsessive sense of failure', exile, pessimism, intertextuality, and a tendency to experiment with the form and the content of poetry, figure distinctly in the poetry of this phase (Naik, 53). Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawala, A. K. Ramanujan, P. Lal, Gieve Patel, A. K. Mehrotra and Pritish Nandy are the representative poets of the Modernist phase. In fact, the first significant collection of modem Indian English poetry, Modem Indo-Anglian Poetry (1959), edited by P. Lal and K. R. Rao, addresses the poets of the Modernist phase as the 'new poets' (Riemenschneider 26). According to Lal, the poets of this phase must write poems that, "must deal in concrete telTIlS with concrete experience", and such works must also, "be free from propaganda" (Riemenschneider,

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Introduction

27). Lal also urges the poets to realize "the need for the private voice" in poetry, that will "appeal to that personality of man which is distinct, curious, unique and idealistic" (Riemenschneider, 27). These remarks of Lal, which appear in the introductory section of Modem Indo-Anglian Poetry, became the new poets' 'Manifesto' (Riemenschneider, 26). La!'s advisory remarks provided a direction to the new poets, who, instead of simply imitating the style and content of modem British poetry, attempted to write poems that were reflective of their real and private experiences. The various anthologies of poetry published by the new poets in the 1970s reflect a strong desire to establish a canon of modern Indian English poetry. Rajeev S. Patke, in his essay, "Poetry Since Independence" mentions some prominent anthologies that were published in the 1970s: Saleem Peeradina's Contemporary Indian Poetry in English: An Assessment and Selection (1972); R. Parthasarathy's Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (1976); and Keki N. Daruwalla's Two Decades of Indian Poetry:19601980 (1980), to highlight the tendency among these poets to form "an anti­ Romantic canon" (patke, 278). These anthologies, as Palke tries to explain, paved the way for the creation of an Indian brand of modem poetry, soaked in the spirit, culture, and ethos of the nation. Thus, the new poets used the modem aspects of British poetry to experiment with ways of representing Indian reality. This phenomenon directed the poets of the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s to develop new methods of articulating experiences in a language very close to the socio-cultural matrix of India. The poets of the 1970s - K. N.Daruwalla, Shiv K. Kumar, R. Parthasarthy, Jayanta Mahapatra, Arun Kolatkar, Kamala Das, et al. - carried on the legacy initiated by the poets of two decades earlier. Renee, the 1980s was the time when the scene of Indian English poetry was marked by the presence of new poets, new poetry anthologies, and new themes. Three decades of efforts to search a new idiom of Indian English poetry had reached its peak, and there was no urgency now to depend on foreign sources. Indian English poets of the 1980s and the 1990s reflected the tendency to articulate ideas innovatively, using the medium of poetry to represent issues of diverse kinds. 'While discussing the poets of the post1980 phase, Naik draws our attention to the prominent group of 'Bombay Poets', who were young and energetic, and flourished in the initial period of this phase (Naik, 128). The group of 'Bombay Poets', consisting of Saleem Peeradina, Santan Rodrigues, Manohar Shetty, Ranjit Roskote and Eunice de Souza, concentrated chiefly on the representation of the urban life of India (Naik, 128). Their poems capture the various facets of the urban culture with a profound sense of honesty and irony. Peeradina's poems are Bombay-centric, as they sincerely portray the kind of life

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people lead in a metropolis. Rodrigues's poetry focuses on the Goan lifestyle, seeking to represent Goa where he had spent his childhood days. Shetty, like Peeradina, is also concerned with the Bombay's culture and youth. Hoskote's poems reflect his social and political awareness. Being a poet, he has not simply dealt with the urban youth culture, but has also responded to the various political events that impacted on the youth of India. Outside the group of 'Bombay Poets', Vikram Seth is a notable poet of the 1980s. His books, Mappings (1981) and The Golden Gate (1986) are a remarkable contribution to the canon of Indian English poetry. Seth's poetic composition, as Rajeev Patke mentions, is "a curious mix of the modem and the Victorian" (Patke, 309). His 'light verse' was an effective medium of restoring 'the drive of narrative to verse', and this aspect, as Patke observes, is his "principal contribution to poetry" (Patke, 309). Seth's The Golden Gate is a typical instance of this poetic style that fuses a "contemporary conversational idiom into tetrameters of Hudibrastic brio and a Byronic or Audenesque bravado" (patke, 309). From the point of view of experimentation, this verse novel is an excellent piece of technical innovation, as it blends two different gemes to produce a new kind of poetic fOlTIl. Seth's use of foreign locations and portrayal of foreign characters are noteworthy features of his poetry. In Mappings, Seth places his central character in an unspecified foreign location. This character is often considered to be representative of Seth's self, because he had spent a long time in the UK and the US. However, in The Golden Gate, the setting is obviously America. This aspect is quite striking, because in the pre1980 period, poets did not usually use foreign locations as the setting of their poems, and even if there existed such a setting, it was used in telTIlS of its relationship with the native space. Seth's use of foreign setting, and portrayal of foreign characters playing a major role in the narrative, are unique features of his poetry. These traits in Seth's poetry rendered a truly transnational dimension to the canon of Indian English poetry. Seth's contemporary, Sudeep Sen, is also a transnational poet. Being an expatriate poet like Seth, Sen's poetry evokes images of foreign places visited by the poet. His poetic volumes: New York Times (1993), South African Woodcuts (1994), Mount Vesuvius in Eight Frames (1994), Doli 's Twisted Hands (1995) and Post-marked India (1997), are indicative of the wide spectrum of his encounter with foreign places and people. Another poet whose contribution is unique in telTIlS of his thematic representation of homosexual love is Hoshang Merchant. He is probably the first Indian poet to celebrate homosexuality by articulating his desire for another male partner. "Merchant's verse," as Naik opines, "is unique in its frank and uninhibited celebration of homosexual love.. The poet

6

Introduction

records the varying moods and vicissitudes of homosexual love, its tragedies and its triumphs" (Naik, 133). Agha Shahid Ali is anotlier significant poet of the post-1980 period. Though Ali published a couple of poetic volumes in the 1970s, his masterpiece is Half-Inch Himalayas (1987). This was followed by A Nostalgist's Map of America (1992) and The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems (1992). Ali's poems are rooted in Kashmir, the place which is representative of his cultural and religious identity. The poet who created a niche in the field of Indian English poetry, by writing poems reflective of a wide range of experience, is Tabish Khair. Khair is an expatriate writer, and his poems delineate his diasporic experiences. Like Khair, Vma Parameswaran also is a diaspora poet. Her poetry book, Trishanku (1988) aptly reflects the Indo-Canadian diasporic life, representing the ways in which the Indians who are settled in Canada negotiate the alien culture, and in doing so, they never forget the homeland. Hence, the poets of the last two decades of tlie twentieth century provided favourable conditions for the poets of the new millennium to create new kinds of poetry. Indian English poetry diversified into a great range of themes, evolving in the process to acquire dynamism and flexibility. The boundary of the genre became porous, allowing new poetic voices to enter into its domain, and this provided Indian English poetry witli a protean structure. Among the new poetic voices of the new millennium, mention may be made of Imtiaz Dharker, Meena Alexander, Anjum Hasan, Jeet Thayil, Robin S. N gangom, Siddhartha Bose, Tishani Doshi, Mani Rao, et al. These poets are representative of the various issues that have defined the structure of the canon of Indian English poetry in the twenty-first century. Dharker's and Alexander's poetry is informed by tlie post-91l1 diasporic experience, mapping the entire Western discourse on terrorism. Hasan's poetry stands as an instance of vers libre, articulating the diverse shades of her life in Bangalore. Thayil, as a poet, is concerned with religious fundamentalism, and he also loves to deal with the varied experiences of his migratory life. N gangom is a poet of northeast India, and his poetry is rooted in the culture of his native space. Bose loves to experiment with the poetic style. His innovative use of dashes and brackets conveys the desire of the poet to communicate beyond the printed words. Culinary images abound in his poetry, which suggests Bose's interest in interpreting life tlirough food metaphors. Doshi is a poet of versatile genius. Apart from writing poetry, she is a blog writer for a cricket website. She is presently working with the publishers to write the biography of a reno\Vlled Srilankan cricketer, and she is also interested in choreography. Her poems are concerned with exilic experience, citizenship, and Madras life. Rao's poems are short

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pieces exhibiting the myriad interpretations of the Indian mythical characters. The way she recasts the mythical characters and stories in her poetry is really commendable. There is no denying the fact that Indian English poetry matured during this period to produce a typical idiom of its own. The poets of this generation are quite capable of experimenting with new forms of \Vfiting, and in doing so, they seem to be effectively using the British English to articulate diverse cultural experiences that do not appear to be alien to readers. While discussing the poets of the post-1980s period, Naik categorizes the poets of the 1980s and the 1990s as, 'Younger Accents: Modernism-II' (Naik, 127). This categorization appears to be contradictory when one notices the poetry anthology edited by Makarand Paranjape. In the introduction to Indian Poetry in English (1993), Paranjape classifies the post-1980 poets as representative of 'Pos1rnodernism' (26). Though he is not sure about the difference between the poets of the post-1980 phase and the earlier ones, he confidently observes that, "Poets like Kolatkar, Mahapatra and Alexander, have easily moved into the post-modernist mode with relative ease, calling into question the observing self in their poetry. Postmodernism seems to promise a variety of new devices, including parody, pastiche, collage, intertextuality, and literary cannibalism of varying degrees" (paranjape, 26). The question that arises from the above two classifications made by two eminent critics, is whether we should consider these new voices of the post-1980 era as an extension of the tone and tenor of modernism that began in the 1950s. We are probably not sure about the exact mode of defining these poets, and the problem indeed lies in the act of classification. Instead of classifying them as modern or postmodern poets, it is better to recognize the diversity of the canon of Indian English poetry in the post-1980 era. Once we go beyond the 1990s, the new century promises to introduce us to the vast range of themes, styles and techniques. New Poetry anthologies published in the twenty first century are prominently reflective of the panoramic dimension of Indian English poetry. Sudeep Sen's edited anthology, The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry (2012) is an excellent instance of showcasing the immensity and diversity of Indian English poetry. This anthology is a comprehensive one, as it contains the illustrative poems of eighty-five significant poets of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A cursory look at the names of the poets and their poems indicates the vastness and flexibility of Indian English poetry. A broad range of themes, including diaspora, cosmopolitanism, urbanity, love, sex, body, homosexuality, northeast landscape and culture, and dalit identity, has have now permeated the canon of Indian English poetry. This obviously

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Introduction

sends a positive signal attesting the belief that the future of Indian English poetry is bright. But is its future really bright? This question leads us to the initial remarks made at the beginning of this essay on the issues of popularity and visibility of the literary genres. In spite of the richness and the vastness of Indian English poetry, the fact remains that it is not as popular as Indian English fiction. Many poets, after writing for a short period of time, disappear from the scene. This phenomenon is mentioned by Sudeep Sen, who is quite aware of the conspicuous crisis: In the wider cultural arena, very little is knO"Wll about Indian poetry and poets, within, and more so outside, India. Only a handful of contemporary English-language Indian poets command international and national status. And those who are visible happen to be knmvn within very tight and narrow confines of the poetry circles, lUliversity reading circuits, and literary festivals. Beyond the initiated groups, not many follow or read contemporary English poetry, though ironically a great number write it (21 ).

We would like to end our discussion in this section by appealing to readers to consider this particular aspect of visibility and popularity as a threat to the future of Indian English poetry. Academics, critics, scholars and researchers must realize the need to address this crisis, and discuss the methods through which Indian English poetry may become as popular and visible as Indian English fiction. Indian English Drama since 1980s

The heritage of Indian English drama, in comparison with Indian English Poetry, is relatively weak. As a literary genre, it flourished during the post­ Independence era, to establish a canonical structure. During the colonial period, Indian English drama, according to M. K. Naik, suffered due to the lack of any "finn dramatic tradition nourished on the actual perfOlmance in a live theatre" (Naik A History of Indian English Literature, 98). This phenomenon led the dramatists of the colonial period to write "mostly closet drama" (Naik A History of Indian English Literature, 98). Despite the lack of any Indian tradition of drama, the dramatists of the pre­ independent period made sincere efforts to write plays that addressed the problems of the contemporary society. Sri Aurobindo, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, A. S. Panchapakesa Ayyar, Thyagaraja Paramasiva Kailasam, and Bharati Sarabhai, are the prominent dramatists of colonial India. These dramatists drew inspiration from the Western traditions of drama to represent issues related to the mythic and the cultural tradition of

Amab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya, Hirnadri Lahiri

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India. Sri Aurobindo, as Naik notes, "modelled his plays exclusively on the late Victorian pastiches of Shakespearean drama" (N aik A History of Indian English Literature, 100). Kailasam's masterpiece, Kama or The Brahmin 's Curse (1946) is considered by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar as a narrative that is based on 'Oedipus-fatality' (Iyengar, 237). Among the dramatists mentioned above, Bharati Sarabhai is the only female dramatist of the period whose plays reflect her engagement with Gandhian thought and philosophy. Naik refers to her two plays, The Well of the People (1943) and Two Women (1952) to indicate her attitude to Gandhian ideology (Naik A History ofIndian English Literature, 149). Thus, except for a few plays which are thematically significant, Indian English drama during the colonial era was mainly a derivative geme seeking the support and guidance of the rich Western traditions of drama. In fact, many English plays were written during the colonial period, but the quality of most of them is poor, leading to a situation where the geme failed to make any big impact on the literary scenario. The circumstances, however, significantly changed during the post-colonial period, when, due to different government initiatives, Indian theatre, in a sense, revived. Sahitya Natak Akademi was set up in 1952, and the National School of Drama was established in 1959 (Naik A History of Indian English Literature, 255). The Indian government also took the initiative to organize a National Drama Festival in 1954 (Naik A History of Indian English Literature, 255). All such steps were taken by the Indian government in the 1950s, "to encourage the performing arts as an effective means of public enlightenment", but, quite surprisingly, all these initiatives ultimately fostered the growth of regional language theatre (Naik A History ofIndian English Literature, 255). It was because of this phenomenon that Bhasa theatre flourished in the post-colonial period. Different theatre groups from the various regions of India - Marathi theatre, Bengali theatre, Kannada theatre and Hindi theatre - contributed prominently to the canon of Bhasa theatre. Under such circumstances, the canon of Indian English drama grew at a slow pace, with the contribution of those playwrights who were primarily interested in Bhasa theatre but occasionally opted to write in English. These dramatists mostly translated the Bhasa plays into English, and if an attempt was made to write originally in English, those plays were either imitations of Western plays, or very poor in telTIlS of style of \Vfiting and treatment of theme. However, overcoming the initial crisis of lack of production of good plays, Indian English drama strongly made its presence felt in the 1960s, when Asif Currimbhoy, the first major voice of this canon, started \Vfiting plays. Faubian Bowers considers Currimbhoy as, "India's first authentic voice in

10

Introduction

theatre", and this remark attests to the fact that his plays are original pieces bearing the mark of the author's sincere engagement with the history and politics of India (quoted in Iyer, 98). During his career as a dramatist, Currimbhoy produced twenty-nine plays which deal with a variety of themes, reflecting his desire to infuse the spirit of authenticity of representation in the canon of Indian English drama. Natesan Sharda Iyer acknowledges the contribution of Currimbhoy by describing his ability to represent the contemporary society through diverse perspectives: "He chose to write dramas, because he felt that this was the art fOlTIl which allowed him most to show the complexity of society .... He has taken unusual themes from contemporary Indian society and woven them into plays of artistic excellence" (Iyer, 99-100). Hence, Currimbhoy rescued Indian English drama from the shackles of imitation and poor quality productions. He breathed a new life into the canon, refOlming its nature and identity. The dramatists of the 1960s and the 1970s were inspired by the efforts of Currimbhoy to write plays in English, a phenomenon which accelerated the growth of the canon. Pratap Shamm, Nissim Ezekiel, Gurucharan Das, and Girish Kamad, are the important playwrights of the 1960s and 1970s, and their plays are remarkable instances of original perspectives on Indian history, myths, socio-cultural scenarios, and political ambience. Girish Kamad rose to eminence in the 1970s with plays like Tughlaq (1972) and Hayavadana (1975). These plays reflect Karnad's experimental mindset, as he fuses myth, history, politics, and human psychology, to create a complex thematic structure. Gurucharan Das is also a significant dramatist of this period, and his play, Larins Sahib (1970), offers an excellent perspective on the colonial history of Punjab during the time when Henry Lawrence visited India. So, the 1980s were the decade when the area of Indian English drama was fertile ground for new ideas, new experimentation, and new techniques. The contributions of Currimbhoy, Karnad, and Das, helped the post-1980 dramatists to direct their creative genius to write plays that effectively created a big impact on the dramatic literary scene. Mahesh Dattani is a pioneering dramatist of this phase, exhibiting his intense understanding of socio-cultural reality of India, the problematic of gender distinction, and the psychology of diseased patients. Final Solutions (1994), Bravely Fought the Queen (1991), A Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998), and Brief Candle (2010), are some of the important plays of Dattani, displaying the variety of issues dealt with by the author. Dattani, indeed, is the first Indian English dramatist to focus on the subject of homosexuality (Naik and Narayan 206). His play, A Muggy Night in Mumbai, represents the anxieties of a few homosexuals in the city of Mumbai. Brief Candle is another

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interesting play ofDattani's, which deals with the lives of cancer patients. Thus, the innovative themes dealt with by Dattani emiched the canon of Indian English drama. Along with Dattani, Kamad's plays of the post1980 phase illustrate the author's deep engagement witli the interface between the mythical tradition, tlie history of India, and human psychology. Tale-Danda (1993), The Fire and the Rain (1998), The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (2005), and Flowers (2005), are instances of plays that display Kamad's genius as a dramatist. He has the ability of weaving human psychology with Indian myths and history, to create complex characters that are partly real and partly mystical. Apart from Kamad and Dattani, whose contribution to the canon in the post-1980 phase is really phenomenal, the other dramatists of significant repute are Vijay Tendulkar, Gieve Patel, Dina Mehta, Uma Parameswaran, Manjula Padmanabhan, and Rana Bose. Vijay Tendulkar's and Dina Mehta's plays are related to contemporary social reality. Some of their plays foreground the need for female emancipation and freedom. The only play of Gieve Patel that provides a new cultural dimension to the life of the Parsis in India is Mister Behram (1998) (Naik and Narayan, 210). This play offers an interesting perspective on ethnic identity, through the character of Behram. Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees (1987) is a unique play, written by Uma Parameswaran. This play deals with tlie problems experienced by Indian immigrants in Canada (Naik and Narayan, 212). As a diasporic play, this offers a new way of looking at immigrants settled in the West. Manjula Padmanabhan's play, Harvest (1998) deals witli tlie remarkable issue of organ trade. Harvest is an experimental play which addresses the interface of the global organ trade and capitalism, in tlie post-globalization era. Like Parameswaran, Rana Bose's plays also capture the emotional and cultural conflicts of Indian immigrants in Canada. The Death ofAbbie Hoffman and Other Plays (1997) is an excellent collection of Bose's plays, which showcases his ability to read the diasporic experiences from diverse perspectives. The two plays of Gurucharan Das, Mira (2011), and 9 Jakhoo Hill (2011), are dramatic representations of the legendary character, Mira, and the socio-cultural changes that impacted on the psyche of tlie Indian middle class during the 1960s. Many playwrights of the contemporary generation are receiving the attention of a global audience. Girish Kamad, Mahesh Dattani, Manjula Padmanabhan, Rana Bose, and Gurucharan Das, have earned the appreciation of drama critics, and they have also won several awards from reputed international institutes and agencies. Indian English plays are now perfOlmed in different countries, which was previously a very rare phenomenon. These aspects indicate a bright future ahead, hoping that tlie

12

Introduction

canon achieves a protean structure like the other two major gemes. However, the only big challenge tbat the canon is probably encountering at the present moment is the influence of cyber culture. With new kindle editions of novels and poetry arriving in the market, how can drama, which is meant for both reading and performance, negotiate with this new mode of culture? As a perfOlmative art, will drama lose its power to influence people directly? These indeed are vital questions, which will decide the future of Indian English drama. The whole book has been divided into two broad units: Contemporary Indian English poetry, and contemporary Indian English drama. The first unit contains nine critical essays on contemporary Indian English poetry, focusing primarily on new emerging aspects in the canon. The essays in this unit are further classified into four different sections. In the first section, "Changing Canons: Some Reflections", the essay of Ajay Kumar discusses the approaches of modem Indian English poets, mainly focusing on the empirical approach used by Arun Kolatkar, A.K. Ramanujan, and R. Parthasarathy. These modem poets, Kumar argues, have used the empirical approach to trace the roots of their culture. The second section, "Representation of the Nation and the Diaspora", presents four insightful critical pieces. Sajalkurnar Bhattacharya's essay, "My Piecemeal Shelters - Exploring the Diasporic Woman's Voice in Selected Poems of Meena Alexander", offers a remarkable perspective on the poems of Meena Alexander by primarily focusing on the representation of the condition of diasporic women. Bhattacharya believes tbat Alexander's poems brilliantly represent the voice of women, attempting in the process, to construct a woman's aesthetics. The uniqueness of this article lies in its originality of approach, and in-deptb analysis of selected poems of Alexander. The poetry of Agha Shahid Ali is tbe subject of Mausim Monda!'s essay in this section. In her essay, she has attempted to analyze the change in the thematic representation of Kashmir in Ali's poetry. In fact, literary representations based on the Himalayan region of India are a recent phenomenon in tbe domain of Indian English poetry. Kashmir has emerged as a distinct subject of study for many Indian creative writers. Agha Shahid Ali is a representative Kashmiri poet, and his poems capture the cultural spirit of this region. Monda!'s essay sheds light on Ali's creative source, which, according to her, has thematically enriched the canon. This essay of Mondal will provide ample scope for the academics to map the shift in the thematic concerns of the canon. The third essay in this section is by Gargi Dutta. This essay deals with the representation of the life of Sikh immigrants in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Yuba City poems. Swetha Anthony's essay is the last essay in this section.

Amab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya, Hirnadri Lahiri

13

Representation of nation in the narratives of modem Indian English poetry is the topic of her study. This essay maps the various ways India has been represented in Indian English poetry. The third section of this unit is titled, "Representation from the North East". Mridul Bordoloi's and Sayantan Chakraborti's essays in this section provide a critical analysis of northeast poetry. Seeing northeast poetry from a broad perspective, Bordoloi's essay, "Literature in English from the Northeast: A Critical Survey of Poetry from the Imagined Periphery", makes an attempt to study some of the distinct features of this poetry. Temsula Ao's poetry, as Chakraborti argues, can be read from a geographical point of view, signifying the traits of Ao Naga culture. These essays provide new dimensions to the study of northeast poetry. The poetry of the northeast region, though not very new in the domain of Indian English, has acquired great significance in recent studies focused on the region. In the context of new scholarly studies that the literature of this region has inspired, Chakraborti's essay, " Stones and Ao-Naga Culture: A Geographical Reading of Temsula Ao's Stone­ Poems", offers a useful critical intervention. It helps us to grasp the intricate philosophical cOlmection of the Ao-Naga community with the stones. "Gender Perspectives" is the title of the fourth section of this unit. The essays of Amab Bhattacharya and Sandipan Ray Choudhury in this section read Indian English poetry from the perspective of the representation of Indian women. It is through the lens of liminal subjectivity that Bhattacharya analyzes post-independence Indian English poetry written by women. Choudhury's focus is more specific, as he deals with the problematic representation of women in Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry. The second unit of this book, contemporary Indian English drama (19802012), contains six essays, which have been further classified into three different sections based on the thematic aspects. The first section of this unit, "Changing Canons: Some Reflections", presents three insightful essays. Anita Singh's essay, "Re-drawing Boundaries of the Canon: Indian English Women Dramatists", provides a comprehensive survey of Indian English women dramatists, who, according to Singh, have made attempts to redefine the canon of Indian English drama. Analyzing the contribution of the women dramatists of India, Singh identifies the important links between these dramatists, to examine the method of their dramatic composition. This essay critically maps the unique tradition of Indian English women dramatists. Singh's essay is important from the perspective of our book, because it deals with the issue of canon formation and its changing patterns. The canon of Indian English drama, as Dipendu Das states in his essay, contains certain contesting issues, which must be

14

Introduction

considered before arriving at any conclusive decision regarding the future of the canon. Das's criticism of the canon is quite in tune with the spirit of this book. This essay will help the scholars and academics to assess the canon from a wide perspective. Partha Sarathi Gupta's scholarly criticism of Kamad's Broken Images is based on a remarkable study of the 'syncretic' drama. This kind of dramatic fOlTIl, as Gupta argues, reflects the interface between drama and post-globalization cultural fOlTIlS. There is only one essay in the section, "State, Society and Individuals". In this essay, "Time Bombs in a Time Machine: Modem Mythopoeia in Poile Sengupta's Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni", Amit Bhattacharya examines Poile Sengupta's complex approach to Indian myths. Sengupta has, according to Bhattacharya, recast the mythical characters Shoorpanakha and Shakooni - to offer new interpretations that reflect a different aspect of these characters. In our edited volume, Bhattacharya's essay renders a clear idea of Poile Sengupta's treatment of Indian myth, and in doing so, it also seeks to address the innovations that provided a new dimension to the canon. "Representation of the Nation" is the title of the last section of this unit. Two essays in this section aptly foreground the representation of nation in select Indian English dramas. The first essay of Anindya Bhattacharya situates the entire discussion on the events of the 1960s in India, when Nehruvian economic policies changed the socio­ cultural matrix of the country. Bhattacharya reads Gurucharan Das's 9 Jakhoo Hill through the lens of urban modernity, a phenomenon that shifted the whole texture of India in the 1960s. This essay of Bhattacharya is useful in our volume, as it situates the entire discussion on the interface between history and drama, to foreground the dramatic skill of Gurucharan Das. The poetry of Asif Currimbhoy, as Devamitra Chakraborty's essay argues, reflects the poet's understanding of the socio-cultural milieu of India. His poetry, and particularly the Bengal trilogy poems, are, according to Chakraborty, concerned with issues related to violence, ethics, and revolution. This essay is the outcome of Chakraborty's deep engagement with the canon of Indian English drama. Thus, the book addresses some of the very relevant and recent aspects that have redefined the canons of Indian English poetry and drama. It will hopefully ignite the interest of the researchers and scholars working in these areas, in investigating and examining the aspects that have been discussed in these essays. Notes 1 . TOfU Dutt's use of language and choice of themes in her poetry are distinctly different from the other poets of the nineteenth centwy. Her language, as Rosinka Chaudhuri observes, "addresses her experience, her vision radiation beyond the

Amab Kumar Sinha, Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya, Himadri Lahiri

15

boundaries within which most of the nineteenth-century poetry in English was confined" (Chaudlnrri, 81). This aspect is quite remarkable in Dutt's poetry, as it foregrounds her desire to produce an Indian idiom of poetic language. However, her poetic expressions reveal that she could not completely detach herself from Western inspirations. In Our Casuarina Tree, Dutt's style, as noted by Iyengar, reveals her imitation of the Keatsian method of -writing poetry (Iyengar, 73). Sri Aurobindo was instrumental in introducing spiritualism in the field of Indian English poetry. Savitri is lUldeniably his most significant work, but in his shorter lyrics there are traces of Western influence. Peter Heehs refers to poems like, Trance, Liberation, and Descent, to indicate Sri Amobindo's 'interesting metrical experiments', which are recreations of Greek and Latin forms in English (Heehs, 139).

Works Cited

Chaudhuri, Rosinka. "The Dutt Family Album: And TOfU Dutt". A Concise History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008. 64-81. Print Heehs, Peter. "Sri Aurobindo". A Concise History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008. 132-141. Print Iyengar, K. R Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. 5th Edition. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1985. Print Iyer, Sharada Natesan. Musings on Indian Writing in English: Drama. Vol III. NewDelhi: Sarup & Sons, 2007. Print Naik, M. K. Indian English Poetry: from the beginnings upto 2000. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006. Print -. A History ofIndian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982. Print -. and Shyamala A. Narayan. Indian English Literature: 1980-2000: A Critical Survey.Delhi: Pencraft International, 2001. Print Paranjape, Makarand ed. Indian Poetry in English. Madras: Macmillan, 1993. Print Patke, Rajeev S. "Poetry Since Independence". A Concise History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2008. 275-310. Print Riemenschneider, Dieter. "The New Poets' Manifesto: P. Lal and Contemporary Indian English Poetry". Essays on Indian Writing in English. NewDelhi: Rawat Publications, 2016. 26-36. Print Sen, Sudeep ed. The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry. Noida: Harper Collins, 2012. Print

16

Introduction

Varughese,Dawson E. Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian Fiction in English. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Kindle ebook file.

I CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY

CHANGING CANONS: SOME REFLECTIONS

THE EMPIRICAL EYE OF THE MODERNIST: STUDYING SOME MODERN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH AJAy KUMAR

It goes without saying that early Indian English poetry was mystic, and primarily based on religion and spiritualism. Poets like Sri Aurobindo gave a spiritual flavour to the literary world. They were transcendental. But a change happened gradually after the post-Independence era, which we can take as an afiemmth, as an impact of the modernism of European literature. Nothing such as modernism existed in India in its pristine sense. Thus modernism in Indian literature is an outward phenomenon. After the post-Independence era, poets started composing poems which dealt mostly with their personal life. This personal happened to be universal, though. A rigorous fore grounding of personal traumas, emotions, aspirations, and quests, runs dominantly across modem Indian poetry in English. Besides many shifts of focus as regards theme, technique, fOlTIl, etc., modem Indian poets tend to be empirical in their perception of life. Pre­ Independence poets were inward-oriented; they seemed to compose from a mystic poetic inspiration. This inspiration was not essentially empirical. It was generally thought to be a divine inspiration-a kind of Socratic frenzy-that one can call the Indian Muses. But post-Independence poets have shown an epistemic shift. They are outward-oriented, and their poetry is highly physical and empirical. Everything is born of their sensory experiences. Ramanujan, Kolatkar, Mahapatra, Parthasarathy-all derive poetic inspiration from their sensory experiences. The self in their work is, seemingly, to borrowDavid Hume's words, a 'bundle of perceptions' . These modem poets, largely influenced as they are by the industrialized and upwardly mobile society of the present, have filled their poetry with physical, material, and concrete realities. They too have endeavoured to find the self and society in their work. But their approach being outward, skeptic, and highly empirical, means that a substantially and characteristically different body of poetry has come into existence. While they made a

22

The Empirical Eye ofthe Modernist

landmark departure from the existing structures of the Western models of poetry, and took to experimentation with fOlTIl and technique, which is a step praiseworthy enough, European modernism did not leave them untouched. However, the absurd human condition of European literature did not engage them. Despite empiricism and skepticism, the all-pervading essence of Indian culture emanates, albeit irregularly, throughout their poetry. For instance, Mahapatra's Dawn at Puri reflects the faith of Indians who, though they are poor, do adhere to their age-long superstitions. Superstitions transfOlTIl everything into a healing panacea for these people. But the poet's attitude is logical as a consequence of his experiences. What has to account for this change is partly the education the poets have acquired, and the dislocation they have had as a result. It is obvious that a very huge gap exists between the Eastern and the Western education systems. Generally, the word 'education' is mistaken as an equivalent for the Hindi word 'shiksha'. Etymologically, the word 'education' is derived from educare (Latin) meaning 'to bring up', which is related to 'educere' that means 'to bring out', 'to bring forth what is within'. But the connotation of 'shiksha' is diametrically opposite to that of 'education'. Early poetry exudes a deep religious and spiritual experience in an epiphanic manner. The light of knowledge bums inside the poet's soul. It is in this very context that Sri Aurobindo talks of 'godlight' that enlightens the human sight. The 'syllables of the unmanifest' (Aurobindo, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, 190) are identified in soul-vision and soul-sense (Aurobindo, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, 191). Thus, the mystic poets of India closed their eyes and got glimpses of God, while their modem! postmodern counterparts opened their eyes and saw the world with the external sensory organs. The point is, that everything is centred on one's approach. Henceforth, modem Indian English poetry is, for the most part, a product of an empirical approach. Till now, researches in Indian poetry in English have not focused on the approaches of the poets. Approaches can be many, however, two approaches---empirical and rational-have basically been discussed at length in philosophy so far. The quintessentially Indian approach is mystic, transcendental, miraculous, and primarily based on intelligence and intuition, rather than on empiricism. This is the approach that most of the pre-Independence poets applied.

Ajay KlUllar

23

The present study has undertaken particularly three poets-Ramanujan, Kolatkar, and Parthasarathy-for exploration, explication, and evaluation of their poetic output. The sole purpose behind their selection together is the fact that all the three poets are deeply in search of roots, self, and society in a disillusioned world, through a questioning of their faith, cultural heritage, and religious belongings. They seek their roots through an empirical eye. Arun Kolatkar views religion from the eyes of a postmodern pilgrim in Jejuri, which is a record of his impressions and memories. Jejuri is a quest for life's truth with objectivity. In the overriding clash between faith and skepticism, the poet fails to hold aloft the miraculous power of faith. The urbanity and materialistic attitude of the representative pilgrim, Manohar, does not reflect the undefiled consciousness of the village folk at large. Manohar describes the pilgrimage to Jejuri, as if he were describing it through the eyes of a Western pilgrim, an outsider with a completely different type of upbringing. But strikingly, the pilgrim is an Indian, whose modem education has lent him questioning eyes. Obviously, if one looks at pilgrimages with materialistic, skeptical, and questioning attitudes, one might say what the present pilgrim is heard saying. To such people, the caves would seem to be dark and horrible places (this reminds us of the cave scene in A Passage to India). It is the faith of people that transforms the lowly dark structure into a temple. The darkness of A Low Temple signifies the mystery of India that may be lost with the intervention of modernism and technology. Wben the pilgrim says that the gods themselves are in the dark, he is referring to his eyes­ his external eyes-with which he sees concrete buildings, modem structures with huge doors and glaring lights. The faith of Chaitanyais is considered to have a transfonning power. But how much significance does it have for the modern drifter? Chaitanya can transfonn stones into gods and grapes. But does it matter for the modern drifter? The sun, the moon, trees, and stones, have always been worshipped in India. Wby? Out of devotion, Chaitanya says: 'Sweet as grapes/are the stones of Jejuri" (Jejuri, 23). Does the modem man find something in it? These are a few questions which need to be answered. Kolatkar handles this theme with humour, which is transparent when Manohar says:

24

The Empirical Eye ofthe Modernist The door was open. Manohar thought It was one more temple. He looked inside Wondering Which god he was going to find. He quickly turned away When a wide-eyed calf Looked back at him. It isn't another temple, He said, It's just a cowshed. (Jejuri)

At every step, the poet is ironical. Perhaps he is trying to manifest the consciousness of the modern man, who seeks every answer in empirical terms. However, critics do not regard Jejuri as the Indian counterpart of Eliot's The Waste Land, because it does not deal with the central aspects of Indian culture (Naik, Indian English Poetry, 65). But Jejuri undoubtedly remams a picturesque documentation of the changing Indian society in general. What strikes us as much as anything else, is Kolatkar's "forthright way of tackling the physical reality around him" (Daruwalla, 97). This speaks for his empiricism, for his objective observation. In order to create a kind of earthiness, his words are also temporal rather than esoteric. He sometimes seems to be taking a sacrilegious attitude. This attitude is "secular and pseudo-clinical" (Iyengar ,723). The poem Jejuri starts with a search for the sun, and the poet draws a very objective picture. In the end, the poem mentions the setting sun, which touches . . . . . . . . . . . . . .upon the horizon at a point where the rails like the parallels of a prophecy appear to meet (Jejuri, 23).

Rooted in Indian heritage, myth, history, culture, topography and environment, A. K. Ramanujan's poetry is also highly empirical, and seeks the self through what the poet has experienced in his life. Rarnanujan has a very spectacular physiognomy for every object, situation, or idea. This

Ajay KlUllar

25

spectacular is the consequence of his skepticism. He believes in what he sees. Nevertheless, he admires the strong faith of Hinduism in the unity of all life, and contrasts it with the Western dichotomy between man and nature. In A Hindu To his Body, he affirms his faith in the positive qualities of Hinduism, which assert the unity of life. He believes in the oneness of this all-inclusive universe; nature and human beings are never asunder. A minuscule change in man affects a great change in nature. The weal and woes of man are not his experience alone, but those of nature at large. Hindus worship trees. It is a token of love, respect, and oneness with nature. Ramanujan's wish to be one with nature evinces his resort to Indian culture, albeit with a modem and rational bent. He wants: to rise in the sap of trees let me go with you and feel the weight of honey-hives, in my branching and the burlap-weave of weaver birds in my hair (Rarnanujan The Striders, 3 1 ).

The poet is very empirical, in rising "in the sap of trees", in feeling "the weight/of honey-hives", and "in my branching/and the burlap-weave of weaver birdslin my hair". He wishes to merge with nature after death, but the merging is not on the level of the soul but on the physical level. The wish is to be reborn in the present fOlTIl of his body, whereas the Hindu tradition accepts rebirth or incarnation of the soul, not the body. It would, therefore, not be incorrect to say that the spiritual is physicalized and materialized in Ramanujan.The fact that the poet wants to be one with nature in physical telTIlS, reflects his empirical attitude. However, the oneness of man with nature is never denied, a characteristic feature of Indian culture. The vast, all-encompassing Indian philosophy, that all is one and the same in the long run in this existence, appears and reappears. His "The Hindoo: He reads his Gita and is Calm at all Events", exhibits his sense of equanimity and the non-attachment philosophy of the Geeta. Rationally seen, this ideal may seem to be engendering the risk of indifference and heartlessness: "Just to keep the heart's simple given beat/through a neighbour's striptease or a friend's suicide/ . . . . . . . . . At the bottom of all this bottomless/enterprise to keep the heart's given beat/the only risk is heartlessness". Usually it is believed that Hindus have more than one sight. "In Pascal's endless queue/people pray, whistle, or make/remarks. As we enter the dark/someone says from behindIYou are Hindoo, aren't you?Nou must have second sight (Ramanujan, Second Sight, 89).

26

The Empirical Eye ofthe Modernist

The clash of cultures and the problem of communication concern R. Parthasarathy, throughout all his writings. In Rough Passage, Parthasarathy goes back to his roots; his past after his infatuation with England is over. He seeks redemption in his O\Vll land, through his native culture and civilization. Separation has made his heart grow fonder for his roots. He experiences alienation and linguistic distance in a foreign land. This experience has resulted in his composition, Rough Passage. Parthasarathy acquires the sense of the past from his childhood memories and family relations. He has a rich past, which he recognizes after a first-hand experience of the alluring English gods. This past has been studied in relation to the present. The effects of industrialization, postmodemism, and commercialization have got deeply entrenched in the present Indian society. Culture is being connnoditized and commercialized by the film industry and the media. A film and media industry-spawned consumerist usurpation of the pristine, indigenous languages, especially Tamil in the case of Parthasarathy, has been ushered in, and the poet is unable to find his pure Tamil, the Tamil of Valluvar and Nannnalvar. Much has changed, and the poet does not find what he had expected to find after his return. But a note of content continues-a characteristic feature of the Indian ethos.

Rough passage fails in projecting the poet's integrated vision of an entire country in transition. M. K. Naik observes: "Rough Passage fails to be a national odyssey, but remains an evocative record of a highly sensitive Indian's personal peregrination, which is also an eventful journey within" (203). Here, in the case of Parthasarathy, the empirical is not limited to the temporal, or the sensuous. Rather, a mental faculty, a rationalist existentialist approach, seems to be in order. He experiences his life in an alien land, and then realizes the importance of his mother tongue, motherland, culture, and religion. He grows up empirically, though this is not an utterly objective growth, as in the case of Kolatkar and Ramanujan. The indigenous provides a heavenly feeling to Indians. Living for a long time in Dante's inferno-like situation abroad, Parthasarathy gets the paradise-like condition in India. There is also a a strong reaction to skepticism in Indian English poetry. Makarand Paranjape expresses his thoughts on the skeptic approach in the following words: "I do not believe that tradition holds all answers, but I do believe that it must not be discarded. It is a valuable recourse. In literary telTIls, I want the poetry of Henry Derozio, Tom Dutt, Tagore, Aurobindo, and Naidu alive; I don't want to see it buried" (paranjape, n.p.).

Ajay KlUllar

27

Senses are the sole factor in empiricism. This is quintessentially a Western model of reality. Postmodem (and some modem) Indian poets experimented with the Western models of reality, but the result was inertia, torpor, lack of satisfaction. The Western approach to experience is masochistic, cathartic; the entire Greek tragedy, which was meant for catharsis, can be taken as an instance. One has to undergo a lot of suffering in the Christian purgatory to reach the state of bliss. But the Hindu view of life is quite the reverse of it. In it, man is not sinful; he himself is bliss. The necessity is just of seeing the true self. The necessity is of removing the cover of maya, attachment of the soul to the body. Sri Aurobindo aptly indicates, and gives us a glimpse of, that blissful life: Life only is, or death is life disguised, Life a short death until by life we are surprised. (Amobindo, Gemsfrom SriAurohindo, 138).

Only those who are free of suffering can view the reality of suffering as not man's true self. Makarand Paranjape rightly observes, speaking in a somewhat different context: "The spiritual, for Ezekiel, is thus equated with the right way of viewing reality. Those who can see correctly are the ones who are free of suffering. It is they who can apprehend what reality really is like. The rest are deluded by their senses and intellect. They continue to toil blindly and condenm themselves to delusion. This, to me, is the essence of Ezekiel's spiritual genius" (Paranjape, n.p.). Modem poets seem to be narcissistic; they are narcissus-like as they love their physicality, their image, and not their self. Narcissus fell in love with his body, not with himself, his being. As a result, he was sent to hell. This hell is very symbolic. The post-modern poets are more concerned with their physicality. Ramanujan looks at his picture in the glass-window of a shop. Again, he wants to be physically one with nature in A Hindu to His Body. His postmodem condition has the Hellenic torpor of Narcissus. The same applies to the rest of the poets, albeit slightly. Thus, in the ultimate analysis of the above three poets, we find that these things happen­ observation and experience.

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The Empirical Eye ofthe Modernist

Works Cited

Aurobindo, Sri. Gems from Sri Aurobindo: Second Series. Ed. M. P. Pandit.Twin Lakes: Lotus Light Publications, 1994. Print. Aurobindo, Sri. Savitri: A Legend and a SymboL Twin Lakes: Lotus Light Publications, 1995. Print. Daruwalla, Keki N. Ed. Two Decades of Indian Poetry 1960-1980. Ghaziabad: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1980. Print. Iyengar, K. R. S. Indian Writing in English.New Delhi: Sterling Publishing, 1985. Print. Kolatkar, Arun. Jejuri. Bombay: Clearing House, 1974. Print. Naik, M. K. A History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1982. Print. Paranjape, Makarand R. 'A Poetry of Proportions: Nissim Ezekiel's Quest for the Exact Name.' A Poetry ofProportions: Nissim Ezekiel's Questfor the Exact Name.Web. 15 July 2012. . Parthasarathy, R. Rough Passage. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print. Ramanujan, A. K. Second Sight. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print. Ramanujan, A. K. The Striders. London: Oxford University Press, 1976. Print.

REPRESENTATION OF THE NATION AND THE DIASPORA

"My PIECEMEAL SHELTERS" ­ EXPLORING THE DIASPORIC WOMAN 'S VOICE IN SELECTED POEMS OF MEENA ALEXANDER SAJALKUMAR BHATTACHARYA

"On an empowered day, I describe myself as a diaspora(s) daughter with multiple migratory and ancestral reference points in Nigeria, Ireland, England, Guyana, and the United States. On a disernpowered day, I am a nationless nomad who wanders from destination to destination in search of a singular site to name as horne" (Jayne O. Ifek....' l 111 . igwe, 196).

Migrancy, and the consequent state of homelessness, have affected the lives of almost every individual, directly or indirectly, over the last fifty years or so. So pervasive has been the combined effect of de-territorialization (forced or wilful), and attempted fe-territorialization, in these lives, that diaspora studies have not been able, until now, to explore exhaustively all the varieties of case-specific problems arising with innumerable cases of dislocation. These multiple dislocations have posed a serious threat to a stable identity, and have led the migrants to a state of trauma of a very serious order. The situation has become so terrible in most of the cases, that many of these modem nomads cannot clearly distinguish their points of departure from their points of arrival. And finally, it is crucial to remember that this entire traumatic condition, and the subsequent attempt to negotiate it, is highly gendered. The woman's 'doubly colonised' position1 makes her experience of immigration significantly different from that of the man, for her experience in this regard comes to her along with claims of patriarchy on her. The present paper is an attempt to read Meena Alexander's select poems from this angle, and trace particularly how the diasporic woman condition has patterned her poetic creation. The source of Meena Alexander's poetry has, precisely, been repeated dislocations from her roots. Poetry, to her, has been an attempt to engage her self in a quest for shelter and identity. Being thrown from one point of exile to another within a short period, Meena seems to have forgotten the significance of the two terms, 'home' and 'exile', at an early stage of her life. By the middle of her life and career she has so continually been thrust

32

"My Piecemeal Shelters"

into such cultural, linguistic, ethnic and national heterogeneity, that all boundary lines around her have been reduced to 'fault lines'. Born in Allahabad in 1951, Meena was subjected to diasporic dislocation even as early as the age of five, when her father's profession forced the entire family to move to Sudan. As Meena recollects, "I turned five on the Arabian Sea, my first ocean crossing. For the next thirteen years my childhood crisscrossed the continents." (Fault Lines, henceforth referred to as FL, 6). In 1969, when she graduated from Khartoum University, she was sent to Britain as a student. In 1973, she returned to India, dividing her time between Delhi and Hyderabad. The latest dislocation took place in 1979, after her marriage, when she migrated to the United States, where she has lived ever since. This constant dislodging has engaged her in the difficult task of negotiating the frequent shocks of arrival and departure, and attempting a satisfactory definition of her identity, as she observes in Bordering Ourselves: "Having entered this world as an immigrant I felt I was living in a place where I had no history. Who was I? Where was I? When was I? (The Shock of Arrival, henceforth referred to as TSA, 63). Constant shifting has proved to be so unsettling for Meena, that 'here' and 'now' in her life have been reduced to almost spectral existence, to mere shadows of the 'there'(s) and 'then'(s). Ngugi wa Thiong succinctly summarizes her condition, in his preface to her memoir FauIt Lines: "Her here, in India, Sudan, Europe, and the United States, is both everywhere and nowhere, a life of a ceaseless search for answers . . . " (xi) Finding a satisfactory answer to all these issues is a dire necessity in Meena's life, for that alone can save her from mutilation. Her constant anxiety, therefore, is to relate her past with her present, so that her life stands out as a robust collation of well-connected memories, a gallery of images as it were, assorted but nevertheless integrated and organized: How can I make a durable past in art, a past that is not merely nostalgic, but stands in vibrant relation to the present? This is the question that balm!s me (TSA, 127).

Consequently, Meena has been left with no choice but to try to create a home of desire in every foreign space, out of the collage of memories of her roots. But unfortunately for Meena, even this enterprise has been problematized by the absence of a stable, well-defined childhood memory. Different, often bipolar, strands have so inextricably remained mixed in them, that when Meena, much later in Manhattan, attempts to cling to them out of sheer necessity, she realizes with horror that she does not even know what precisely in her past she should miss. And to make matters worse, even before she misses that piecemeal of the past, that memory

Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya

33

would slip into another, refusing to provide Meena with any stable anchor to stick to. Hence exploration of childhood memory, for Meena, ends up in a shocking discovery of 'tangled roots'(TSA, 35). A poignant example of this connection is the memory of her grandmothers. Like everyone, she had two grandmothers, from two sides. But they passed on two legacies of such antonymous nature to their granddaughter, as to destabilize the foundation of her childhood memories for ever. Elizabeth Kuruvilla, her maternal grandmother, was remarkably modern in her times - an active participant in the Nationalist Movement, and, notably, the first woman member of the Legislative Assembly in Travancore. She also taught at the Presidency College in Madras for a brief period. She travelled widely, and had been all over India, to China, and to Europe. Her influence on Meena was profound, as she recollects: The portraits of her in my mother's house, the broad, high forehead and dark eyes, haunted me. I tried to imagine what it might have been like to be born into that era of upheaval, to find one's voice as a woman (TSA, 36).

But this profound influence was juxtaposed with that of her paternal grandmother, Mariamma. She was a matriarch, but opposite to Meena's other grandmother in almost all respects. She hardly ever left her husband's house throughout her life, spoke very little, was married off very young, and most importantly, she barely knew the basics of reading and writing. The result was a thorough confusion for Meena, as she recounts, "How different they were, these two grandmothers. I struggled tofigure out how each could be part o/me . " (TSA, 36, emphasis added). This, exactly, has been the problem for Meena for her whole life - to define exactly the legacy she inherited, the space where she had originally belonged, how to sort them out, and display them, as it were, in the memory shelves. Interestingly, it is not even possible for Meena to disO\vn this entire lot of entangled memory, if she chooses. It is this agony that has been poignantly recorded in the two poems, Poem by the Wellside, and Boating. Poem by the Wellside is an attempted dialogue with the memory of her paternal grandmother: . .

Severed from my birthplace, I hear my name (she cried out my name through her black teeth) shed syllables in air so tender the sOlmds melt, twisting slll1light in threads (TSA, 41).

34

"My Piecemeal Shelters"

The tenderness that such a fond reminiscence may generate is overshadowed by the inevitability of the memory recorded in the second poem. Irrespective of whether Meena liked it or not, accepted it or not, the memory forms an inseparable part of her, making 'a necklace of grief for her: Her silken cloak with the golden pin stuck fast to my fist When they pulled us out we would not corne unstuck (TSA, 44-45).

Even when Meena tries to evade the legacy - realizing how its mixed-up nature may finally traumatize her, it is not possible: I will not turn to her I will not perish. My poem made in a cold country is not about death (TSA, 40).

The grandmothers have presented her with seminal influences, but Meena does not know how to deal with them, what precisely she would do with these inherited legacies, whether she wants to escape or accept them. Ironically, therefore, these memories do not prove exhilarating for Meena, but they trap her into a claustrophobic space, leaving her in an incessant struggle: I look out the windows at the river flecked with mist, the squat houses of New Jersey I cannot see beyond. 'The struggle for sense is compact with the struggle for a past' (Migrant Music, emphases added). Finally, she discovers herself in a dystopic position of 'a clay bow holding afew dried roots. ' (TSA, 126) This image of 'a few dried roots' is a telling one, aptly summarizing Meena's trauma: as a tree dies when its roots die, Meena finds herself in a limbo because she cannot establish the badly­ needed meaningful links with the past, on which alone she could have structured her future: I see my father's father, two decades dead, head bald, fists bristling with banyan roots.

Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya

35

Legs astride the cliffs of New Jersey, muscles squat and monstrous, he is drenched in sweat: I hear him call. He is calling my name (Migrant Music).

Meena's attempt at poetic creation comes precisely from the urge to resolve this crisis in her life, to resist entrapment and subsequent mutilation by the jumbled existence created by nation, migrancy, and the hegemonic, oppressive forces of patriarchy. "The act of writing, it seems to me," Meena writes in Piecemeal Shelters, "makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out mutilated' (TSA, 3, emphasis added). To this end, Meena strives to find a poetic language of her 0\Vll as her source of power. This would be her own language - an exclusively woman's medium of expression employed to register her intensely subjective reflections on a wide range of issues. This language, which she refers to as ' Vak' (a Sanskrit root-word for speech), becomes a tool to define her self amidst all chaos. It is worth noting how, seized by an urge to express herself, Meena invokes the language and its ferocious power in poem after poem: Corne ferocious alphabets of flesh splinter and raze my page That out of the dmnb and bleeding part of me Imay claim my heritage (Alphabets a/Flesh, emphasis added).

Remarkably, it is this strength of the written words to wrest one from oblivion that reminds the female psyche in Meena about childbirth. In spite of the pain involved in it, giving birth to a child is a source of power unique to a woman in an otherwise male-dominated world. The following lines from Passion remarkably unite the two creative processes, possible only by a woman poet: I am she the woman after giving birth life to give life torn and hovering as bloodied fluids baste the weakened flesh. For her there are no words, no bronze, no summoning.

36

"My Piecemeal Shelters" I am her sight her hearing and her tongue (Passion). or Slit in the vulva as the head of the too-big-child tore the mother's tender skin. I was speech swallowing death, verbs all shame stanched: Vak, Vak, Vak crouching, shirting, guts cramped in childbirth the wide-shouldered bullheaded child butting the mother-to-be. She squats astride a blackness monstrous, driven deep Through lips that will not sleep (Skin Song).

This is perhaps the best of Meena, where the woman's voice in her has been aggressively foregrounded over all other selves in her. But even this creation of her own language has not been an easy task for Meena, for the problem of 'tangled roots' haunts her in this regard as well. Like her childhood memory, Meena has not inherited one single legacy of language either. In the first place, she learnt English first in India, and then in North Africa (and that too under a Scottish tutor), and later in a Diocesan school. Consequently, she ended up in struggling with many Englishes. This learning process was complicated further by being punctuated constantly by her mother tongue, Malayalarn, and Marathi and Tamil, the language of her friends. 'While this has been a common predicament with most of the bilingual postcolonial \Vfiters writing from the colonies, with Meena, the challenge was to tear through the different layers of language that vied in her self so intricately, as to choke her voice altogether: It was as if a white skin had covered over that language of accomplishment, and I had to pierce through it, tear it open in order to make it supple, fluid enough to accommodate the rnunnurings of my O\Vll heart (TSA, 4).

The challenge has not only been to deliver the language from the pulls of colonial hangover, but also suit it to a feminine sensibility (as she has effectively done in poems like Passion), by effectively decolonizing the mind, as it were. The problem of finding this O\Vll language, perhaps, has become more and more complicated, after she has finally (7) relocated herself in New York. It has not been a simple task of assimilation; neither could the US

Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya

37

assimilate Meena as its O\vn, in spite of the citizenship the nation has given her, nor could Meena assimilate the US, as she has found it. Eventually, she has always felt the tag of being the 'other' in the US, and her existence, as she herself declares, has become a hyphenated existence: Everything that comes to me is hyphenated: a woman-poet, a woman-poet­ of-color, a South-Indian-woman-poet who makes up lines in English, . . . a Third-World-wornan-poet (TSA, 127).

Meena's latest challenge has been to cope with the 'barbed wire' (TSA , 127) as best as she can, struggling to straddle between two cultures. Re­ rooted in Manhattan (where she is presently a Professor of English and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, City Uinversity of New York) she is eternally caught up between two cultures, or even more than two, trying to make the rivers - the Hudson of the US, the Pamba of Kerala, and the Nile of Khartoum - flow in one self, and that too, within the self of a woman. And here too, like the parrot in Banabhatta's Kadambari, whom Meena has referred to at the beginning of The Shock of Arrival, Meena can wage a successful struggle against the attempts at otherisation by the West on the one hand, and the violence caused by patriarchy in her native culture, (she remembers how women are still bumt in India if they fail to bring enough dowry with them) only by 'talking', telling her 0\Vll story so that she can successfully resist being incorporated into various grand narratives of the nations and patriarchy, as 'other': The city fronts me. I cannot escape the city. It is here I must remember. A female remembering, the body voiced against the shocking white of silence, against the flames another woman was thrown into, in the city of Hyderabad, where I once lived. That woman's sari set on fire with kerosene because she did not bring in enough dowry. Because a woman is nothing who cannot bring in money, property, new manhood. A city where women were raped in the communal riots, their veils shredded, mouths studded with stones (TSA, 138).

Meena's rationale behind writing poetry is very clearly registered in the couple of essays registering her observations about the plight of the postcolonial women writers, whose challenge, she rightly observes, is to confront, "the strictures of an unjust power, whether close to home, indeed making up part and parcel of the inner shelters of domesticity . . . or facing the corrosive demands of colonial power" (TSA 169). Interestingly, for Meena, this double colonization is far from restrictive. Rather, the more the resistance, the more stable is the voice of freedom; a 'double peril'

38

"My Piecemeal Shelters"

inciting 'the woman's imagination to realms of almost inconceivable freedom' (TSA, 169). Meena has, therefore, essentially striven to hatmonise the two resulting voices into one - one is the culturally sanctioned image of woman, and hence docile and conforming (both at home and abroad), and the other restive, because of the otherisation. The final result is that of eruption of a powerful voice of resistance, created out of the tension "between a culturally sanctioned femininity and the claims of female imaginative power" (TSA, 171). It is through this voice that she ultimately, "come(s) to terms with varieties of displacement" (TSA, 170), and, "the woman writer found herself fearfully, perilously, working toward a new world" (TSA, 171). It is in this light that we can most profitably approach Meena's bulk of poetry - poetry as a means to resist the displacement of woman, and an attempt towards her empowelTIlent in a 'new world'. Incessant struggle with this hyphenated existence has directed Meena's poetic psyche from the private to the public domain. And, as she engages herself in a quest for identity, she finds it increasingly difficult to keep the two spheres distinguished from each other. Meena is undoubtedly a product of hybridity, and all that she articulates as her private sensibilities, are actually her responses to a wide range of public issues - from what it feels like wearing a sari in Manhattan, or how her skin gives rise to wide speculations about her ethnicity, or her knee-jerk reactions to the murder of Safdar Haslimi in Delhi. In her short write-up, "A Durable Past", accompanying her poem Migrant Music, she speaks at length on this issue. The struggle of a woman is at once private and public, for, in more ways than one, the domination of patriarchy within the intimate space of family is related to the innumerable sources of social oppression on woman. The poetic utterance of a woman poet attempts to register all these threats: "In our \Vfiting, we need to evoke a chaos co-equal to the injustices that surround us" (TSA, 126). Hence, all such works, "born in privacy, must enter the public space, rapture it, rework community" (TSA, 128). Ultimately, in stitching up these piecemeal shelters that she secures for herself in the private and the public domain, through her poetic utterance, she gives herself that identity she has craved all along: And perhaps this is precisely what -writing in America gives me: a rich, vivid sense of space, a welter of experience that cannot be easily held together in a single language. And only through acknowledging this shifting, coruscating present, can I create a durable past in art. I think of Walt Whitman's meditations on the organic fonn he envisaged: 'From the

Sajalkmnar Bhattacharya

39

eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony ofthings with man' (TSA, 128-129).

Thus, Meena's poems illustrate how, for a sensitive poet like Meena, the subjective voice of a poet ultimately evolves into a powerful chronicle of the nation. And, in Meena's case, it is a very powerful woman's voice, in search of a unique woman's aesthetic. Meena's in-depth analysis of Sarojini Naidu's evolution from a poet to a freedom fighter, in her essay "In Search of Sarojini Naidu", is worth noting in this context. Sarojini initially adhered to poetic utterance only as a means to record her private pain, the trauma of her self, colonized and disempowered by the nation and its patriarchal order. But in course of her poetic career, Sarojini could gradually turn her bruised personal bonds with the society and culture into sources of empowelTIlent through her poetry. Sarojini's poetic language over the years transcended the aesthetic boundaries of a private domain, and leaped into the public domain with indomitable energy. It is this evolution of her poetic voice that marks her evolution from a private woman to a prominent, aggressive, public figure in the nationalist movement of India. Similarly, from a poem like Poem by a Wellside, to For Safdar Hashmi Beaten to Death Just Outside Delhi, is one evolution for Meena. It is but a single journey - intelTIlittently marked by pain and depression, but ultimately evolving as a strong resolute female voice from one who has constructed a 'room of her O\vn' from the bits and shreds of her piecemeal shelters. This is how poetry becomes an effective tool of empowerment. The Shock of Arrival ends with a short prose passage, Well Jumped Women, where Meena recollects how, in her childhood, she heard of a young pregnant woman jumping into a well to avoid the ignominy of having an illegal pregnancy. Ultimately Meena imagines a time when women will not have to jump into wells, but will jump over them: And in the courtyard of a Kerala house I see worlds filled with women, women riding elephants, women like Princess Chitrangada with swords at their hips, bodies covered in rough jute and who can see the softness of cotton underneath, stained with menstrual blood? I see women, saris swept up shamelessly, high above the ankles, high above the knees, women well­ jumping: jumping over wells (TSA, 206).

This is empowelTIlent of woman. Meena, through her forceful lines, is engaged to secure this empowelTIlent for women. That is why, perhaps, she often finds it difficult to contain the passion, the outrage, the eruptive

40

"My Piecemeal Shelters"

voice within the lull of poetic metre, and her poetry merges with poetic prose, giving her poetry a kind of freedom that is only possible when the conviction is strong. Such poetry alone can make Meena rise like a phoenix from the ash heap of mutilation; such poetry alone can testify how strong a tool of postcolonial defiance poetry can be. Meena's empowerment is pelTIlanently secured when she pens lines like these: Corne ferocious alphabets of flesh splinter and raze my page That out of the dmnb and bleeding part of me I may claim My heritage. The green tree battened on despair cast free The green roots kindled to cacophony (Alphabets a/Flesh).

We look forward to getting more lines like these from Meena in future. Note 1 . Kirsten Holst Peterson and Anna Rutherford have used the term 'a double colonisation' in the foreword to their edited collection, A Double Colonisation: Colonial and Post-Colonial Women 's Writing (Dangaroo 1 986), to describe the ways women experience the oppression of colonialism and patriarchy.

Works cited

Alexander, Meena. The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience. USA: South End Press, 1996. Print. (All poems and prose pieces quoted in the article are from this book) -. Fault Lines: A Memoir. New York: Feminist Press, 2003. Print. (Revised and Expanded Edition). Ifekwemigwe, Jayne O. "Returning(s): Relocating the Critical Feminist Auto Ethnographer". Theorizing Diaspora A Reader. Ed. Jana Evans Brazied and Anita Marmur. UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 1 84-206. Print.

AGHA SHAHID ALI AND THE THEMATIC TRANSITION IN KASHMIRI POETRY MOUSIM MONDAL

Kashmir, the contested1 cartographic cro\Vll of India, has long served the purpose of being both the text, and the context, of poetic imagination. As a geo-cultural space, it has also become a site of ideological differences, and often, of opposite and opposing articulations. In recent decades in particular, it has given birth to a good corpus of fictional, poetic, and critical works, reflecting these different ideological positions. This article will briefly explore some poetic representations of, and from, this geo­ cultural space. But being a nOll-Kashmiri, and having little or no knowledge of the local languages of the region, I have to confine my discussion largely to the poetic works written in English. Agha Shahid Ali (4 February 1949 8 December 2001), is the first poet writing in English to have originated from Kashmir, and he is also the first literary artist who is responding to the cataclysmic events taking place in the region. Prior to Ali there is, practically, no poet from Kashmir writing in English. I will discuss some poems of Agha Shahid Ali, the founder of Kashmiri poetry written in English, and of Lalita Pandit, Dr. K.L. Chowdhury, Subhash Kak, and Mohammed Zahid. I shall also refer to some poetic works translated by Trilokinath Raina, Badruddin Muqeem, and Nilla Cram Cook. -

In order to understand the revolutionary nature of Agha Shahid Ali's poems, we need to have some idea about the tradition of Kashmiri poetry, written mostly in Persian, Urdu, and Kashmiri. Against this backdrop, Ali was writing his poems and creating a new tradition to be emulated by his fellow travellers. The following section will give us a bird's eye view of traditional Kashmiri poetry. I

Ghulam Nabi Firaq', a well-known Kashmiri poet, noted that, "if you remove the two themes which the poets [of Kashmir 1 had restricted themselves to, i.e., mysticism and love, Kashmiri poetry disappears"

42

Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

(quoted. in Raina, Anthology, 2). The tradition of Kashmiri poetry begins with the latter half of the fourteenth century, when the mystic poets Lal Dyad and Nundaryosh gave Kashmiri literature the first considerable metrical forms, called the vaakh and the shrukh, both essentially four-lined stanzas with no rigid rhyme scheme, which Lal Dyad used for communication of her intense mystical experience, and Nundaryosh for his moral exhortation (Raina, Anthology, 1). The very titles of Nyndaryosh's poems indicate their mystical content. Badurudin Muqeem, in his book, Kashmir Bliss: Selected Poetry of Nund Reshi, translates the titles as "Attributes of God", "Restitution of Heaven", "Absolutism of God", "Meditation Real", and so on. The evolutionary process of both the poetic and the mystic tradition in the valley of Kashmir are, therefore, coeval. But with the death of the mystic poetess Rwopa Bavaanee in 1721, vaakh and shrukh slowly lost their significance, and a new form called pad a six or eight-lined stanza which evolved from vaakh emerged, and remained popular till the dawn of the nineteenth century. Thus, from the very beginning of the poetic tradition in Kashmir, mysticism remained the most acclaimed mode of literary representation. -

-

Another traditional poetic form called the vatsun3 also evolved. It represented the most exquisite of Kashmiri love lyrics (Raina, Anthology, 1). Revived by the famous poet Habba Khaatoon (1551-1606), vatsun became so popular that it was successively used by Arnyimaal (d. 1 800), Mahmood Gaamee (d. 1 885), Rasul Meer (d. 1 870), Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor (1885 - 1952), Zinda Kaul (1884 - 1965), Rahman Rahi, and by numerous other lesser knO\vn poets. Rahman Rahi in his poem Swona Laanki Pyath (On the Golden Isle), for instance, elaborately describes the enthralling beauty of the 'Golden Isle', situated in the middle of the northern part of the Dal Lake. The purity and beauty of the place is conveyed by the use of the phrase 'unravished beauty' . He uses names of specific places,'Shalamar', 'Telbal', 'Camel Bridge', and 'Naseem Bagh', He also mentions some common cultural symbols, like 'chenar' and 'bulbuls'. The spatial references and invocation of cultural symbols establish On the Golden Isle as a poem of Kashmir. Kashmir is romanticized in the poem: [ . . . ] Lights are still blazing in the boat near Camel Bridge. How many pleasure seekers in Naseem Bagh Must have been lulled to sleep by the soft chenar breeze ! [ . . . ] Think how many have corne here, seeking sensual delights, Crazed by this lake's muavished beauty (quoted in Rina, Anth% gy, 233).

Mousim Mondal

43

Thus, romanticism dominated the poetic tradition in Kashmir for many centuries. Even the British poetess Mrs. Percy Brown, in her collected volume of poems entitled Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir (1921), depicts the supernal beauty of the land: [ . . . ] Turf, soft as breasts of peacocks green Chenars reflect clear in the sheen Of waters which all copious flow And ne'er are dry and we may go [ . . ] On every side enchanting views! "What can with this at all compare E'en in this land of beauty fair? Or where could one more fondly muse Had we the whole wide world to choose? (15)

Everyone, irrespective of national origin, was so enamoured of the beauty of this land that they perhaps preferred to remain oblivious of the other truths of the valley. Since Persian was the court language of Kashmir for more than four hundred years, the growing influence of both the Persian language and its literary tradition4 can be traced in Kashmiri literature during the nineteenth century. Persian being the court language; the language of the aristocrats, and not the language of the connnon man, failed to attract appreciation from the general public as a language of literature. Thus, "the only poems that really reached the common people were devotional verse in both Hindu and Muslim traditions, satirical ballads called ladi shah, dance songs for women called rov, and songs written only to be set to the popular chhakree music" (Raina, Anthology, 2-3). Cultural strangulation, in the fOlTIl of the continued enslavement of Kashmir under the rule of the outsiders, took its toll on the growth of Kashmiri literature. Towards the end of nineteenth century it seemed that the 'muse' of Kashmiri poetry went for a prolonged hibernation, and thus there was a lack of inspirational poetry during that period. At the beginning of the twentieth century, significant developments took place, not only in the historical and political scenario of Kashmir, but also, in the poetic tradition of the valley. "Various historical and political forces led, at first imperceptibly, and after 1930 unmistakably, to the end of the isolation of feudal Kashmir" (Raina, Makers, 11). The construction of the two cart roads - the lhelum Valley Cart Road and the Banihal Cart Road - linked the valley with the rest of India, and thereby made the flow of two-way traffic possible. With these new linkages, people from the rest of

44

Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

India started visiting the valley, both as tourists and traders, and thus the economy of the valley bloomed. The young Kashmiris would now go to other places in India for higher studies, and this, inevitably meant that: "the [clontact with the progressive forces in India, and the powerful impact of the freedom struggle in the country created a new felTIlent in the minds of the intelligentsia and an awakening in the souls of men" (Raina,

Anthology, 3).

The Maharaja of Kashmir tried to stem this tide of new­

awakening, but, "these forces continued to simmer, and socio-political changes were inevitable" (Raina,

Anthology, 4).

Feudalism ended, and

democracy became the new slogan ofKashmir. Towards the beginning of the twentieth century, Urdu replaced Persian as the court language. The middle class now developed a keen interest in Urdu and English. "The publication of Brunt in

1920,

Lalla Vaakh'

by Grierson and

and of the first Kashmiri dictionary by Grierson in

1924,

encouraged some educated men to devote more attention to their mother tongue, and to burn with shame that this language had suffered from neglect for centuries" (Raina,

Anthology, 4).

Kashmiris became more

aware of their sense of identity. Thus, there grew an urge to discard all borrowed literary traditions. There developed a new literary tradition that would bear the smell, sight, and sound, of the valley of Kashmir. And Ghulam Ahmed Mahjoor is the pioneer of this new literary movement. Gulam Ahmed Mahjoor's greatest contribution was to free the Kashmiri language from heavy Persian influence, and to develop and popularize the Kashmiri language as a natural poetic medium. He initially started writing in Persian and Urdu, but soon realized that it is folk poetry which has successfully stood the test of time. He thus started writing in the Kashmiri language, and inspired many others to do

SO.6 His

poetic creations ushered

in freshness of thought and sweetness of diction. Mahjoor celebrated life as a lover of it, and not as a mystic or a recluse. He revived the lyrical tradition of Rasul Meer and enlarged his

0\Vll

canvas to include new

themes, rhythms, and hues, ofKashmir. He was an amalgam of the old and the new, of traditionalism and experimentation. "Though he discarded stylized love, foreign symbols, and sights and sounds of Arabia and Persia, he retained the symbolism of the career" (Raina, Anthology,

gul and

the

bulbul throughout

6):

Corne, gardener! Create the glory of the spring! make Guls bloom and bulbuls sing create such haunts! The dew weeps and your garden lies desolate; Tearing their robes, yom flowers are distracted;

his poetic

Mousim Mondal

45

Breathe life once again into the lifeless gul and the bulbul! (Raina, Makers, 63; emphasis original).

It is, however, ironic that Mahjoor had to be discovered by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, "who called him 'the Wordsworth of Kashiniri poetry', before he was accepted by the 'educated class' in Kashinir as an artist and not a mere rustic rhymester" (Raina, Anthology, 4). Abdul Ahad Azad (1903 - 1948), the other poet who was also responsible for the revival of Kashiniri language, can be called the first rebel poet. He was also the first poet who explored themes like religious fanaticism, social inequality, and war, championed the cause of the modern man, and sang of universal brotherhood and peace. He met Mahjoor in 1935, and under his influence, he started \Vfiting in the Kashmiri language. His valuable work, Kashmiri Language and Poetry, \Vfitten in Urdu, was published posthumously in 1959 by the Jammu and Kashinir Cultural Academy. Zinda Kaul (1884 - 1965), the 1956 SahityaAkademi Award winner,' also began his poetic career by writing in Persian and then in Urdu. In 1948, at the age of fifty-eight, he started writing in Kashiniri. The legacy of mystic romanticism continues in his poems, the search for God, for truth, for solace continues in this land of 'chenar trees', 'snow', and 'ice-cool water' (quoted in Cook, 141). Other leading poets after 1947 are Dina Nath Nadim, Ghulam Nabi Firaq, Mohammad Amin Kamil, Mirza Ghulam Hasan Beg Arif, Mir Ghulam Rasul Nazki, Abdul Rahman Rahi, Dina Nath Wali Almast, Ghulam Nabi Khayal, Muzaffer Azim, Ghulam Rasool Santosh, Vasudeb Reh, Chaman Lal Chaman, Sajood Sailani, and Moti Lal Saqi. The contribution of all these poets of the new age, as Raina points out, was to emich the content of Kashmiri poetry "with the inclusion of an intense national consciousness and social awareness" (Anthology, 28), and to introduce a wide variety of forms and meters that would only simplify the poetic language and make it more akin to the spoken language. Thus, if during the initial years, mysticism dominated the poetic environment in Kashmir, romanticism gradually gained the dominant strain, and held its sway until the 1970s. It was Agha Shahid Ali who shattered this romantic mirage. If the traditional poets presented a panoramic view of the valley of Kashinir in their poetry, Agha Shahid Ali directly zoomed in on the homes and streets of the valley to foreground the contemporary situation of Kashmir. The following section will analyse how Agha Shahid Ali ushered in a new poetic journey in the valley ofKashinir.

46

Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

II

For a long time, as I pointed out in the earlier section, the topographic beauty of Kashmir has been celebrated to the neglect of its situational reality. But in Agha Shahid Ali, the situational reality of Kashmir found its voice. With the change of the geo-political scenario of Kashmir came socio-cultural changes. Ali poignantly captures the painful transition of his homeland in many of his poems. In most of the poems in his collected volumes, entitled Bone Sculpture: Poems (1972), The Half-Inch Himalayas (1993), and The Country Without A Post Office: Poems 19911995 (1997), the changed, desolate, picture is revealed. The poems represent both its happy past and its present decadence. They speak of both the absence and the presence - the absence of freedom and the presence of vigilant confmement. Kashmir now presents a map of massacre. Its streets do not count the footfall of the living, rather it counts the number of dead bodies strewn after attacks, either by the militant or by the army. It is a ghost-city, an 'unreal city' (Jain, 51), a city of the dead. Names are erased from the ledgers of life; there is erasure of identity. Massacres pollute the serenity of the landscape and create cartographies of violence. New political maps redefine new realities of the nation state. In the poem A Wrong Tum, Ali, for instance, presents a nightmarish vision of Kashmir. Kashmir resembles the Eliotian 'Wasteland' : ' In my dream I'm always in a massacred town, its name erased from maps, no road signs to it. Only a \\'Tong twn brings me here where only the noon SlUl lives. I'm alone, walking among the atrocities, guillotines blood-scorched, gods stabbed at their altars, dry wells piled up with bones, a curfew on ghosts (Ali, HalfInch Himalayas, 37).

Thus, Kashmir is the city of ghosts, where curfew is the nOlm and freedom an exception. Perpetual atrocities have dried up all fountains of life; thus Ali writes of scorching 'noon sun' and 'dry wells piled up with bones.' This image of 'gods stabbed at their altars' and piles of bones, also reminds one of Calvary, the Biblical skull-shaped mountain top full of bones, where Jesus was crucified. Kashmir, it seems, has crucified its God, and thus the land is devoid of water and purgation, like Eliot's 'Wasteland': "Here is no water, but only rockIRock and no water [ . .]" .

Mousim Mondal

47

(Eliot, 56). This image of Calvary features in yet another poem of Ali's, After the August Wedding in Lahore, Fakistan,9 where 'Kashmir' is presented as an alternative name for Calvary: "Where Thou art that is Horne ICashmere or Calvary the same'! In the Casmir and Poison and Brut air, my rare Cashmere thrown off [ . . . ] (Ali, The Country Without aFast Office, 65-65).

Kashmir has become a veritable prison, but, strangely enough, no-one seems eager to record this transfOlmation, nor does anyone try to come out of the cocoon of the romantic legacy of the past. Agha Shahid Ali's poems foreground this experiential reality for the first time. Taking a 'disguise' would only amount to having recourse to lies that Kashmir is a free state, a 'disguise' that creates an illusion of beauty, serenity, and security. In his poem, Fragments IX, he thus pertinently asks: "How can anytliing change with our permanent disguises?" (Bone-Sculpture, 30). Neither the 'stars' of the constellation nor the 'stars' of our fortune will guide our journey out of this hell. We need to take initiatives to set things right: How can anything change with our permanent disguises? There is no help, not even in the stars. The stars are breaking, they do not guide om destiny. Destiny is another matter: I whore myselfto the escapes ofthe times. The times hide my permanent wounds: my feet depict sorrow, they twist like a beggar's. Yom smile eats into my flesh, it breaks my bones. I do not have cmes nor do I protest (Ali, Bone-Sculpture, 30).

Thus Ali lays emphasis on the need to expose the fact that the Kashmiris have been suffering in the hands of both the militants and the army, and consequently live in perpetual fear. But instead of revealing the intimidating reality, the poets in general celebrate the lost past by humming the songs of the poets of the past like Habba Khatun, 10 and do not try to write songs of the present. It seems that the prevalent attitude is one of indifference that borders on 'whoring'. To emphasise this, Ali, in a tone of self-castigation, writes: "Vwhore myself to the escapes of times". What Ali wants to suggest is, that if they are in love with their homeland Kashmir, if they want to prove their fidelity to Kashmir, then they should

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Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

not allow 'time'-the eternal concealer1 1 - to conceal the wounds of Kashmir. They must depict its sorrow. He thus asserts that it is high time we protested and wrote the true story of the land. Agha Shahid Ali's protest is loud and clear: "Let me cry out in that void, say it as I can. I write on that void" (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 3). Kashmir is thus depicted as a 'void', and that it is so, needs to be written do\Vll. Agha Shahid Ali refrained from projecting any overt political stance in his literary creations. It is, however, clear that the disturbances of Kashmir did affect him deeply. Thus, Kashmir and its memory are present in many of his poems. For example, in the poem Leaving Your City, Ali personifies Kashmir as an enchantress, whose magical spell never allows the poet to walk out of its memory; its memory is like a maze where one keeps loitering aimlessly without escape: Now I loiter in and out on your memory, speaking to you wherever I go. [ . . . ] And your city follows me (Ali, HaiflnchHimalayas, 42-43).

Thus, Kashmir, and its memory, never leave him; they follow him everywhere. Even when he used to stay away in America, he was reminded of Kashmir. Those reminiscences were, however, not of a diasporic individual missing his 'imaginary homeland', a homeland that is not an actual city or village, but an invisible one, a homeland of the mind (Rushdie, 10). For Ali, Kashmir is a reality and not only a figment of imagination. But being a master craftsman, Ali uses imagination as a background only to foreground the reality with a contrastive effect; the contrast between the romantic past and the traumatic present. Ali compares his 0\Vll imaginary 'reinvention' of Kashmir with that of Osip Mandelstam's imaginary recreation of Petersburg; 12 they are the sole creators of their 0\Vll 'imaginary homelands'. Imagination creates utopia, which seems beautiful but is necessarily meaningless, because it is so detached from reality. In the 'imaginary homeland' flowers never die, roses never wilt, no-one suffers from trauma, nights are not 'curfewed', and no-one needs a pass to move freely in their 0\Vll homeland: He reinvents Petersbmg (I, Srinagar), an imaginary homeland, filling it, closing it, shutting himself (myself) in it. For there is the blessed word with no meaning, there are flowers that will never die, roses that will never fall, a night in which Mandelstarn is not afraid and needs no pass [ . . . ]

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A patrol is stationed on the bridge and a car hoots like a cuckoo. [ . . . ] Srinagar was lUlder curfew. The identity pass may or may not have helped in the crackdmvll. Son after son never to return from the night of torture was taken away (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 3-4).

Thus Ali strategically conjures up a romantic picture of an 'imaginary homeland', only to make the violent reality of the present all the more vivid. Ali pungently critiques the military atrocities that the common people of Kashmir now witness everyday, and shows how they are made the victims of suspicion. The authorities, who are supposed to be the flag bearers of peace and prosperity, are so cynical in their urge to uphold the image of Kashmir as a land of beauty, that they are indifferent to the inhuman sufferings the common people have to go through. Different organs of the authorities play their part in perpetrating the torture on the Kashmiri people in the name of enforcing security and peace in the valley: "They make a desolation and call it peace" (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 7; emphasis original). The barbarity of the routine search operations, the untimely calls for crackdown, the fusillade of questions that one faces for each human movement one undertakes have really paralyzed the life of this valley. "Today Kashmir is the most densely militarized zone in the world" (Roy). 13 Thus, even when travelling, as he was, between two nations, India and the United States, he was never away from his homeland. Interestingly, "the idea of a cultural divide or conflict had no purchase in his mind: America and India were the two poles of his life, and he was at home in both, in a way that was utterly easeful and unproblematic" (Ghosh, 7): "Where Thou art - that - is Home" (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 63). Ali sometimes remarked that he was 'a universe', and when he was saying that, he was not actually boasting, but simply indicating that he was the product of unique historical circumstances, influenced by three cultures, Islamic, Hindu, and Western, and four literatures; Kashmiri, Persian, Urdu, and English (Needham, 10). And indeed, his poems bear testimony to this rich legacy. The feeling of being 'rootless' never bothered him, because he never rooted himself in specific geographies. His specific occupation, the 'excellent trade' of being a poet, gave him the unique opportunity of dealing specifically with words. Through words he creates his home. In words he fmds his home. 'Word' knows no boundary, and, thus, Ali's home is beyond the confines of any boundary; psychic, geographic, or political. He thus enjoys being rootless, he enjoys mixing culture, because that gives him the sense of liberation:

50

Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry i am a dealer in words that mix cultures and leave me rootless: this is an excellent trade (Ali, Bone-Sculpture, 12).

Cultural differences, therefore, never bothered him, because Ali was not someone who would recognize the cultural difference as a 'difference'. Living in different cultures did not give him a sense of fractured identity, but rather they all amalgamated into a whole. In this sense, he became a poet of the world, not confined to one single land or culture. III

Agha Shahid Ali is one of the progenitors who represent the devastatingly painful narrative of Kashmir, but he is not the only one to record the narratives of Kashmir caught in the barbed reality. The emergence of poets like Lalita Pandit and K. L. Chowdhury, and of novelists like Basharat Peer, Rahul Pandita, and many others of Kashmiri origin, prove the point. Lalita Pandit in her collected volume of poems, Sukeshi Has A Dream and Other Poems of Kashmir (1998), presents the tragedy of Kashmir in general, and of the Kashmiri Pandits in particular. In her poem Azadi: 1989-1995, she presents the emotional turbulence that a Kashmiri Pandit undergoes when he/she 'visits', and does not 'return to', their homeland, their ancestral homes, from which they were driven out by Muslim extremists during the armed insurgency of 1989. That particular historical incident, which forced the Kashmiri Pandit into exile, is a traumatic memory. For them, "Exile is permanent. Homelessness is pelTIlanent. [They are] uprooted in [their] mind" (pandita, 224). The Kashmiri Pandits failed to realize why the Muslim extremists of Kashmir treated the Pandits as outsiders, why they excluded the Pandits when they were dreaming of Azad Kashmir: "Who are these men? r would like to ask you. r would like to know why their dream ofAzadi excludes me, and my people. Those who were born here, but were not entirely free (pandita, 7).

It is ironic indeed that the very cry of 'Azadi'- freedom - of the Kashmiri Muslim extremists took away the 'Azadi' of the Kashmiri Pandits. K. L. Chowdhury is another contemporary Kashmiri poet, writing

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in English. He also records the traumatic experience of the Kashmiri Pandits in his collected volume of poems, Of Gods, Men & Militants (2000). This volume is divided into three sections which respectively refer to the three distinctive phases of history that the Kashmiri Pandits witnessed. The fIrst section is entitled "The Gathering StOlm", and the poems in this section deal with that historic time when Kashmir was free from insurgency and the moments when the storm of insurgency was gathering strength. The second section is entitled "Exodus and Exile", which evocatively suggests that the poems in this section deal with the experiences of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. The last section bears the title "Call of the Roots", thereby foregrounding the sensibilities that the exiles experience being away from their 0\Vll homeland. The other contemporary Kashmiri English poets, like Mohannnad Zahid and Shubhas Kak, do not specifically address the issue of Kashmir in their literary creations. Jan Mudasir Gul, in an article on Muhammad Zahid, notes that it is difficult to categorize or label Muhammad Zahid as a poet belonging to any specific school of poetry, because his poems deal with various subjects, like the ill effects of drug addiction, the plight of lovers, the creative pangs that artists undergo, the eternal philosophical questions that have eluded artists through the ages, and also about the conflict position of his motherland, Kashmir. But Shubhas Kak is not a poet who is writing from within the ruins of Kashmir. Being a diasporic poet, he is writing away from the ruins, and is focussing only on the scenic beauty of the landscapes of Kashmir, concentrating mostly on foreign locations. Interestingly, by contrast, a budding freelance poet like Arif Reshi, in his poem K-ash-mir's Mother's Day, explores the ground reality of Kashmir. The poem is dedicated to, "the mothers of martyred and disappeared people in Kashmir" (Reshi, 396), a dedication which at once drives home the pathos and trauma of the land. And that he is a disciple of Agha Shahid Ali, is evident from his use of Ali's famous lines as an epigraph: "Let me cry out in that void, say it as I can. I \Vfite on that void: !Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, Qashmir, Cashmir, Cashmire!Kashmere, Cachemire, Cushmeer, Cachmiere, Calimir" (Reshi, 396). Thus, as it can be seen, now perhaps is the time when members of the new generation, who are witness to the murder of humanity, want to write back and re-present the sordid reality from new perspectives. Young novelists like Basharat Peer, Rahul Pandita, Mirza Waheed, Siddharth Gigoo, Shabnaz Bashir, Urvashi Butalia, Malik Sajad, and many other authors of Kashmiri origin, are now detelTIlined to record the 'other story' of Kashmir: "[ ... J I have made it my mission to talk about the 'other story' of Kashmir" (pandita, 220). All these authors, the insiders of Kashmir,

52

Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

became, "determined [ ... ] that [their] memory must come in the way of this untrue history"14 (pandita, 220). Like Salman Rushdie, they also believe that, "literature can, and perhaps must, give the lie to official facts" (Rushdie, 14). Rushdie further observes: [ . . . ] redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it. And particularly at times when the State takes reality into its own hands, and sets about distorting it, altering the past to fit its present needs, then the making of alternative realities of art, including novel of memory, becomes politicized [ ... ] Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their 0\Vll images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way to denying the official, politician's version of truth (Rushdie, 14; emphasis original).

Thus, what Rushdie thought of doing with the novelistic genre, Ali did in the genre of poetry. Ali presented to the world a poetic version of this realistic truth. It was his poetry that initiated a journey. Later writers have taken cues from him. Basharat Peer records, in his debut novel Cuifewed Night (2008), 15 his indebtedness to Agha Sahid Ali and his poetry: I twned often to Agha Shahid Ali's poetry. Except for his poems there were few literary responses from Kashmir that evoked the fear, the tension, the anger and the hopelessness of our experience. Shahid had died of cancer in 2001 in New York. Yet he spoke from the black lettering [ . . . ] (95).

The very title of Peer's novel, Curfewed Night, is taken from Ali's poem, I See Kashmirfrom New Delhi at Midnight: The city from where no news can corne is now so visible in its curfewed night (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 10; emphasis added).

Another part of this very poem by Ali has also been used by Mirza Waheed in his debut novel The Collaborator (201 1), as one of its epigraphs: I won't tell your father you have died, Rizwan, but where has your shadow fallen, like cloth on the tomb of which saint, or the body of which unbmied boy in the mOlUltains, bullet-tom, like you, his blood sheer rubies on Himalayan snow? (Waheed, viii).

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Ali's influence upon the present generations of Kashmiri \¥fiters is indelible. Kashmir had a rebirth in his writings. His works, for all effective reasons, gave birth to Kashmiri literature in English. Agha Shahid Ali gave Kashmir the postal stamp and brought it out of invisibility. His 'letters' which started their journey from 'a country without a post­ , office 16 have reached the world, and delivered their messages which are loud and clear. Budding poets and authors are now reinforcing the messages initiated by Ali. Kashmir is waiting for a reply from the world of humanity. Notes 1 . I have used the word 'contested' in order to emphasize the geo-political reality of the Indian state called Kashmir. If we look into the cartographic reality of the state we will find that the north-western and western parts of Kashmir have been under the control of Pakistan since 1947 and are called 'Pakistan-occupied Kashmir' (poK). And the north-eastern part of Kashrnir has been under the control of China since 1 962, and is called Aksai Chin. 2. Gulam Nabi Firaq was born in Srinagar in1922 and started "Writing in Urdu in 1 947. His first Kashrniri poem, Kasheer, appeared in the bi-monthly Urdu journal Kwong Posh. TIrroughout his life he worked enthusiastically to popularize Kashmiri as the cultural medilUll . He has translated numerous English and Persian poems into Kashrniri, and has also "Written many critical essays. He became an intimate friend of Abdul Rahman Rahi. They published their poems jointly, lUlder the title Yim saany aalav (Our Calls). In 2004, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Kashmiri Literature, for his poetic collection Sada Te Samandar. 3 . Vatsun is "a highly musical short poem of 6-10 lines, with refrain, assonance, and alliteration, end and medial rhyme, liquid consonants and flexible rhythms" (Raina, Anth% gy, 1). 4. The literary tradition of "the gazal, the masnavi, the naat, the marsiya and the naama all Persian in fonn, metre and language" were imported from Persian literature (Raina, Anthology, 2). 5. The verse compositions of Lal Ded, or Lalla Yogeshwari (1320 1392), the most famous Kashrniri saint poetess of the fourteenth century, are known as Lalla Vaakh. Considered to be one of the earliest compositions in Kashmiri language, Vaakh was transferred from one generation to another orally. Until 1 920, no manuscript was available. Impressed by its high philosophical content and linguistic richness, in 1 9 1 4, George Grierson had "assigned to Pt. Mukand Ram Shastri the task of noting down the entire Lalla Vaakh. Pt. Mukand Ram located a saint, Dharam Dass Darvesh of Guccchgam, who had learnt Lalla Vaakh by heart. Pt. Mukand Ram Shastri recorded the Vaakh from Darvesh and handed it over to Grierson" (Chitkara, 20). 6. Abdul Ahad Azad, Abdul Sataar Aasee, Mirza Ghulam Hasan Beg Arif, Zinda Kaul, Dina Nath Nadim, and all the other major poets of the modem age, were all influenced by his use of the Kashmiri language.

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Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

7. Sumran (1955), a slender volume of thirty-five Kashmiri poems, earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956. 8. Akhil Katyal in his article "i swear . .i have my hopes: Agha Shahid Ali's Delhi Years" notes: Shahid was overdosed on Shelley and Keats till he had found Eliot, who was to be cited in his style and content for years after, before the American poet James 1. Merrill took over by the 1990s. In his second collection, published while he was finishing his 0\Vll PhD on T. S. Eliot as an editor, he recOlUlted his Delhi classroom at the Faculty of Arts: "A PhD from Leeds/mentioned discipline, casuallylbrought the waste-land". Thus, the influence of Eliot can be traced in many poems of Ali. While reading Ali's poem, A Wrong Turn, one cannot help but be reminded of some passages from Eliot's The Wasteland. In the first section of The Wasteland, 'The Burial of the Dead, Eliot -writes: Umeal City, Under the brown fog of a winter da\Vll, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many (45). Through these lines, Manju Jain notes: "Eliot refers the reader to Les SeptsVieillards (The Seven Old Men) by Charles Baudelaire (1821 67), quoting the opening lines of the poem in French, 'swarming city, city full of dreamslWhere in broad daylight the spectre stops the passer-by"'. Ali, in his poem, -writes: "In my dream I'm always/in a massacred to\Vll [ . . . ] /where only the noon sun lives". 9. It is to be noted that, in this poem, the poet uses different spelling for 'Kashmir', and, ironically, the Slavic origin of the name 'Casmir' means 'famous destroyer (of peace)'. And the other variation, 'Cashmere', is the archaic spelling of Kashmir. 10. In the fourth section of the poem The Blessed Word: A Prologue, Ali captures the tradition of continued evasion of the present by camouflaging it in the glory of the past: . . ] Each fall they gather chinar leaves, singing what the hills have re-echoed for four hlUldred years, the songs of Habba Khatun, [ . . . ] Each fall, they sing her songs [ . . ] But the reports are true, and without song: mass rapes in the Villages, to\VllS left in cinders, neighbourhoods torched. [ . . . ] The rubble of downtown Srinagar stares at me from The Times (Ali, Country Without a Post Office, 4).

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1 1 . 'Time heals all wounds' is a cornmon adage, and 'time' heals because time makes one forgetful, time erases memory, and at the same time, it is with 'time' that new memories are created. Time thus heals by concealing. 12. OsipYemilyevich Mandelstam (1891-1938) is a Russian poet and essayist. A critic of Joseph Stalin, he was arrested in 1 934, and is believed to have died in a labour camp. 1 3 .Anmdhati Roy, in a conversation with Amy Goodman, makes the following observation on the issue of Kashmir: It's such a morally reprehensible thing to be living in a cOlmtry that is doing this to a people and everyone is keeping quiet about it . . . "What they are doing to people is terrible [ . . . ] And today Kashmir is the most densely militarized zone in the world. India has something like 7,000,000 security forces there. And in the '90s, early '90s, the fight became turned into an anned struggle, and since then, something like 68,000 people have died, maybe 1 00,000 tortured, 1 0,000 disappeared [ . . . ] I mean, we all talk a lot about Chile, Pinochet. These munbers are far greater [ . . . ] Can you imagine living in a place where there are so many soldiers, you can't you go out of yom door, you corne out, corne to a barrier. Every aspect of life, whether it's joyous or otherwise, is sort of diverted through the military (democracynow.org). 14. This line is inspired by Ali's poem Farewell, where the line "Your history gets in the way of my memory" (8-9) runs almost like a refrain. 15. Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer is the winner of the Vodafone Crossword Non-fiction Award, and has been praised by many acclaimed critics like Khuswant Singh, Pankaj Mishra and others. The book is dedicated thus: "In memory of the boys who couldn't corne horne". This poignant dedication captures the agony of Kashmir; the agony oflosing so many of its yOlmg male population to the category of 'disappeared persons'. 16. Due to the persistent disturbances in Kashmir, millions of Kashmiris left their land of birth and embraced the fate of either being internally displaced, or becoming diasporic entities, in order to have a life of dignity and secmity. Thus Kashmir became a land of lost addresses. The doors are locked there. There is no one to receive the letters, and none to respond. Thus the post offices are dead in this land, hence the title of the vohune: The Country Without aPost Office.

Works Cited

Ali, Agha Shahid. Bone-Sculpture: Poems. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1972. Print. -. The Country Without a Post Office: Poems 1991-1995. New Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 2000. Print. -. The HalfInch Himalayas. Delhi: OUP, 1993. Print.

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Agha Shahid Ali and the Thematic Transition in Kashmiri Poetry

Bro'Wll, Percy. Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921. Web. 7 Nov. 2015. . Chitkara, M.G. Kashmir Shaivism: Under Siege. New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 2002. Print. Chowdhury, K. L. Of Gods, Men & Militants. New Delhi: Minerva Press, 2000. Web. 1 Nov. 2015. . Cook, Nilla Cram. Trans. The Way of the Swan: Poems of Kashmir. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958. Print. Jain, Manju. ed. r. s. Eliot: Selected Poems. New Delhi: OUP, 1992. Print. Ghosh, Amitav. "'The Ghat of the Only World': Agha Sahid Ali in Brooklyn." Web. 22 July. 2015. . Gul, Jan Mudasir. "Muhammad Zahid: An English Poet in the Making from Kashmir." Greater Kashmir 23 April 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. . Katyal, Akhil. '''i swear ... i have my hopes' : Agha Shahid Ali's Delhi Years." 20 Jan. 201 1 . Web. 22 July. 2015. . Muqeem, Badrudin, trans. Kashmir Bliss: Selected Poetry of Nund Reshi. Kashmir: Gulshan Books, 2008. Print. Needham, Lawrence. "Agha Sahid Ali." South Asian Writers in English. Ed. Falaul Alam. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006. Print. Pandit, Lalita. Sukeshi Has a Dream: and Other Poems ofKashmir. 1998. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. Pandita, Rahul. Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pondits. Noida: Random House, 2013. Print. Peer, Basharat. Curfewed Night. 2009. Noida: Random House, 2013. Print. Raina, Trilokinath, trans. An Anthology ofModem Kashmiri Verse (I 9301960). Poona: Suresh Raina, 1972. Print. -. Makers of Indian Literature: Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008. Print. Reshi, Arif. "K-ash-mir's Mother's Day." The Criterion: An International Journal in English 5.6 (2014): 396-402. Web. 2 Nov. 2015. . Roy, Arundhati. Interview by Amy Goodman. "A New Intifada in Kashmir? Arundhati Roy & Sanjay Kak on the World's Most Densely Militarized Area." democracynow. org. Chicago. 1 8 Mar. 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

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Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 19811991. London: GrantaBooks, 1991. Print. Waheed, Mirza. The Collaborator. London: Penguin Books, 201 1 . Print.

EARLY SIKH IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA: A STUDY OF CHITRA BANERJEE DNAKARUNI'S "YUBA CITY POEMS" GARGI DUTTA

The focus of much critical discussion on diaspora literature, particularly in the Indian context, is usually on the migration of educated men and women to industrially advanced countries. In the post-colonial period, mainly after the 1960s, these people left their countries in search of better prospects. This particular paper will discuss some poems written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, which take us back to the early decades of the twentieth century. At that time, migrants from India mainly consisted of labourers from economically backward classes, belonging mostly to the kangani 1 and the passage2 diasporas, who sailed abroad in search of jobs. This paper purports to trace the history of the Sikh farmers to the United States of America, which was unfriendly and hostile to them. Emphasis has also been given to the exploration of the various areas of tension which appeared as a consequence of this relocation. The work in focus is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's anthology of poems, titled Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems (1997). This anthology contains a cluster of poems entitled "Yuba City Poems". This is actually a section of five connected verse pieces: The Founding a/ Yuba City, Yuba City Weddings, The Brides Come to Yuba City, Yuba City School, and Leaving Yuba City. These five poems deftly discuss the five major aspects in the entire process of migration to a foreign land, and the resultant process of acculturation or lack of it. The five poems deal with five important aspects, namely the arrival, growth of a community (which has been dealt with from two aspects - weddings and fresh immigration of brides earlier left behind in the ancestral land), attempts at acculturation through schooling, and leaving the secure confines of the familyJhome to adjust to the culture of the mainstream. Apart from the historical reconstruction of this immigrant community, Divakaruni also has, in some subtle nuances, explored the tension-ridden relationship between the individuals in the diaspora.

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Early Sikh Immigrants in America

The first poem in the sequence is The Founding a/ Yuba City. This, as the title indicates, deals with the founding aspect of a community in the diaspora. The earliest settlements by the lndian-Punjabi farmers took place in Yuba City in Western California from the 1910s onwards. The opening lines encapsulate the bright prospects and the promise of a new land as it appears in the eyes of the fatmers: "Let us suppose it is a California daylbright as the blinding sea" (95). The arrival of the peasants with a thousand hopes in so distant a land, their dreams and ambitions, and their hearts tuned positively to the future, are aptly reflected in the remark, "fallow and gold", pertaining to the land. Hopeful of prosperity, they desire to put the vast arable land to proper use: . . . they planned their crops. Under the sickled moon the fields Shone with their planting: "Wheat, spinach, the dark oval wait Ofpotatoes beneath the ground, cauliflowers pushing up white fists toward the light (96).

Soon, however, their hopes were dashed. The Alien Land Law of 1913 proclaimed any alien or non-American as ineligible for citizenship, O\vnership of land, agricultural or otherwise, or for possessing long-telTIl leases over it. Consequently, most of the Punjabi immigrants were forced to earn their livelihoods either as railroad workers, or as hired cultivators on white men's fatms. They were not afraid of hard work, but they were not accustomed to work of a non-agricultural nature. Their fanner's hands, "callused from pounding metal into earth . . . ached to plunge into its moisture" (95). They had dreamt of saving enough through their labour as railroad workers, dreamt of buying land, of cultivating and growing crops. Now that they could not buy land, could not take land for lease, their expectations received a rude shock. They remained perpetual aliens in the new land which had lured them with hopes of economic prosperity. Nostalgic for their home, they could sometimes sense a wind, "carrying the forgotten green smells of the Punjab plains". Memories of their womenfolk also haunted them in their new lives abroad, the care and love of which they are hungry for, in this new land: In their dreams their wives' red skirts flamed

in the Punjab noon. Slender necked women who carried on their heads rotis and a/u,

Gargi Dutta

61

jars of buttermilk for the farmers' hmch. \¥hen they bent to whisper love (or was it farewell) their hibiscus-scented hair fell like tears on the faces of the husbands they would not see again (96).

Some of the peasants were not fortunate enough to see their wives again, as the immigration restrictions then in force in the United States prevented their families from joining them. The second poem in the sequence, Yuba City Weddings, poeticizes a rather prosaic historical-political fact that proved to be a major hindrance to the growth of a proper diasporic community. Restrictions, in the form of immigration laws, prohibited Sikh peasants from bringing their wives into the host land until the 1940s. To complicate matters further, anti­ miscegenation laws were in practice in the United States, leading many Sikh fatmers to marry Mexican women, which appeared to be the only alternative to circumvent the Alien Land Law Act of 1913. Divakaruni, in her second poem of the sequence, reconstructs one such incident. Surdeep is a young railroad worker in Yuba City who contemplates his marriage, which is supposed to take place the next day. He is deeply disturbed, and this is very well captured by the opening lines: "I want to be asleep, like othersibut someone is driving a nail, a huge iron one like we used to use on the/railroad ties, into the top of my skull. That, and the coming wedding" (98). Clearly, this is not the mindset of a young man going to marry the next day. He is in a state of utter anxiety. Even the coffee in his mug appears to be, " . . . thick and muddy. Like my mind" (98). Strangely enough, he tries to picture his bride, but she too, will not come to his mind. Divakaruni gradually lets the readers know the real reason for his distress, confusion and anxiety. He is to marry Manuela, a Mexican woman, with whom he has been going out for some time. To marry a woman from outside his community is a conscious decision on Surdeep's part. Divakaruni deftly employs the analogy between a tequila-shot and rice-toddy, which implicitly compares an Indian bride and a Mexican one: Its taken me a long time to like tequila, bmn-bitter and choking in the throat, so unlike the rice-toddy we made back home with its sweet, ripe smell. But now I can drink it with the best of them, throwing back my bead, then sucking the salt offmy fist (98).

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The line "I should have been happy" (99) highlights, ironically, the poignant fact that he is not. In addition to his own mental agony, he is very much affected by the fact that there is a lot of tension and resistance from within his O\Vll community. The older generation, more orthodox, and holding sacred their religious attachments, vehemently opposed the union of two different communities. According to their own beliefs and customs, they have attached a fixed notion to the woman. They see her as: "A Christian, a woman who speaks a different language, who eats/pig's flesh and cow 's and isn 't even white-skinned Unclean How can she bring your children/up as good Sikhs? She will leave you/or another man, one a/her own kind They always do" (99) (emphasis original). These terms, which are used by the elders from the Sikh community, focus on the markers of difference between the Mexican community and their own. Himadri Lahiri in his article, "Dislocation and After: Indian Women Poets in America", analyses the true reason behind the stereotyping of the Mexican woman: "Through this stereotyping, the elders try to establish not only the inferiority of the 'other', but also simultaneously prioritise their 0\Vll community and its socio-cultural norms which place women within the periphery of domesticity and put them under direct glare of patriarchy" (1 14). The difference between Manuela's and Surdeep's community often rests primarily on these signifiers - food, language, skin-colour, and other factors, which render the woman as 'unclean', or polluted to them. Religion plays a pivotal role, as Sikhism prevents consuming flesh of animals such as cows and pigs. Thus to the Sikhs, Manuela is an 'other'. She is stereotyped. The terms used by the elders try to defnie her, ignoring the culinary habits of her community and side-stepping her human qualities. Stuart Hall talks about this reduction in his work, The Spectacle a/the 'Other': "Stereotypes get hold of the few 'simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized' characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or development to eternity . . stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes andfixes 'difference' (258) (emphasis original). The younger generation, however, viewed things differently, and even more rationally. They did not see any harm in Surdeep's getting married to a woman from a different community with a different religious background. He too, had a completely different picture of a bride in his mind: "I lay in bed and picture her, my bride, in a shiny goldlsalwar-kameez, eyes that were black and bright and deep enough to dive ni. I1smelled her jasmine hair-oil. Her skin was soft as lotus-petals". Thus, even while deciding to get married to Manuela, Suedeep still carmot . .

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completely get over the image of a traditional bride that his culture and societal mores have instilled in him. The fact that Manuela does not wear a salwaar-kameez brings the fact that he is being held back by the cultural norms and ethos of his own community, in spite of his attempts at acculturating, to the fore. Divakaruni thus captures the split in his mind. However, he wakes up to the reality that those who, within the community, had waited for the laws to change, which would enable them to marry and bring their wives from India to join them in Yuba City, had grown old. Their hopes were yet to materialize. He did not find in him strength enough to spend an entire lifetime waiting for things to happen, spending a whole life in perpetual, endless wait: "So I filled my lungs with the smell of Manuela's cinnamon breath/the ripple of laughter deep in her throat, her fingers flying like wings/over my body, and in the morning I told them". Surdeep's friends hope to follow in his footsteps, instead of waiting for the laws to change. On his part, Surdeep is tormented by the fact that he has to let go of his 0\Vll religion, which he was born into, and will have to embrace Christianity. His anxiety at the impending loss of his 0\Vll identity, and his religion, causes nothing short of a tumultuous stOlm within. He chants a passage from the Granth Sahib to keep himself steady. "Ek Omkar Satnam . Each syllable is a knife turning in my chest" (101). His anxiety is eased up a little by the name that Padie Francisco had chosen for him - Ysidro, which sounds a little similar to Surdeep. Reconciliation to his new identity and existence comes only through the remembrance of the fact that Manuela is carrying his child, and that she has felt it move. He tries to imagine how the child would perceive his surroundings: "I open my/eyes in water and imagine what he sees, the dark swirl and flow, his tiny hands/opening and closing. I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Ready, I lift my/face and breathe in the bright 'waiting air'. The way for the coming of the new 'hybrid' generation is therefore paved through miscegenation. The possible advent of the child will compensate his loss of identity. . .

In The Brides Come to Yuba City, Divakaruni weds yet another political landmark with the lives of the Yuba City immigrants. The setting of this particular poem is the 1940s, around which time immigration laws were relaxed so as to allow the immigrants to marry and to bring back their wives. Interestingly, immigration strictures previously in practice had given rise to a strange phenomenon, that of the picture-brides, in which many girls back in India were married to pictures of their husbands who lived in Yuba City. The political decision in the 1940s which entitled the families of the Sikli farmers to entry into the United States, played a

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pivotal role in reuniting estranged wives with their husbands, which was, until then, impossible. Divakaruni deliberately uses the perspective of these brides in the poem. The group comprises women who have last seen their husbands in Punjab, before they left for Yuba City, as well as the picture-brides. Tension and anxiety grips the psyche of these women as they reach their destination: "Red-veiled, we lean into each other/press damp palms, tryJbroken smiles" (102). This tremendous anxiety can be ascribed to various causes. Coming to an unknO\vn land, entering into a new space where everything, including their husbands, appears alien, they have none to tum to for comfort in distress. Sceptical as they are about the conjugal life they are about to enter, the women can only hope for the best: Behind us, the black wedding tnmks, sharp-edged, shiny, stenciled with strange men-names our bodies do not fit into:

Yet, in spite of all the tension, they are fully aware of the wifely duties they are supposed to perform. They have brought with them everything that is required for their menfolk, as well as for the household: For the men, Kurtas and thin white gauze to -wrap their long hair. Laddus from Julhmdlnrr, sugar-crusted, six kinds oflentils, a small bag ofbajra flom. Labeled in our rnothers'hesitant hands, packets of seeds methi, karela, saaf5 to burst from this new soil like green stars (103).

Apart from the material needs and care that their husbands are deprived of, which the wives will now have to provide, they are also aware of the fact that they have to satiate the hitherto deprived and unfulfilled physical desires of their husbands. Even the picture-bride within the group, aged sixteen, is not an exception to this rule: . . . Harvinder, married last year at Hoshiarpur to her husband's photo, which she clutches tight to her to stop the shaking. He is fifty-two, she sixteen. Tonight like us all

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she will open her legs to him.

Here, interestingly, the gender aspect within the structure of a matrimonial alliance comes to the fore. The wife is treated merely as an object of pleasure. Divakaruni re-imagines a real-life situation where the sense of deprivation is overpowering, and the sense of women's submission is supposed to be nOlmal. No resistance is offered by the woman, who does not even know that refusal is quite within her rights. As the train draws into the platfOlm, they see their husbands, who are on the lookout for their wives. The wives, on their part, totally fail to recognize them due to the number of years that have passed between their last meeting and now. They embark on the platform with renewed hope of starting life afresh. The school space is a site for contact between children belonging to the indigenous commlUlity and those of the immigrants. It is the public space where one learns how to pick up the norms of the society. It is a micro­ world reflecting the macro-world; the society. Unfortunately, the immigrant child becomes a victim of racism. The different skin-colour, ethnicity, background, long-hair, and even a turbaned head, make a Sikh school boy all the more different. It is an indication that in the larger arena of society, the same discrimination on racial grounds takes place. In such a scenario of racial hatred and intolerance, the person belonging to an ethnic community is seen as an aberration, an 'other'.

Yuba City School foregrounds this problem. The poem discusses the racial discrimination, harassment and constant bullying that Jagjit, the son of a Sikh immigrant, is subjected to. It is narrated by the anxious mother. Discrimination on racial grounds comes not only from the fellow pupils at school, but from the teacher herself: Again today Jagjit carne crying from school. All week the teacher has made him sit in the last row, next to the boy who drools and mmnbles, picks at the spotted milk-blue skin of his face, but knows to pinch, sudden-sharp, when she is not looking (104).

The boy who sits beside Jagjit might not be as smart as the rest of the class but does not prove to be lacking in his abilities to trouble and tonnent the

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racially different child, and is intelligent enough to pinch the child when the teacher is not noticing. To the hapless mother, the text-books of her son, written in English, a language which she does not understand, seem like 'black curves' . From the last-bench, where the teacher has made him sit, the words spoken by the teacher appear to assume different colours. 'Whatever she says, to the tonnented child, it is to him nothing but word-sounds which are unfamiliar and unknO\vn: "They float/from her mouth-cave, he says/in discs, each a different color". Both the mother and the child are intimidated by those words-words that belong to a language still alien to them, and hence they feel the fear associated with those words. That the words are nothing more than word-sounds to them, indicates fIrstly that they are not yet acculturated, and secondly, the fear is associated with the language of the 'other', the very language which has the power to subdue them, subvert them and render them speechless, taking away even their voice. The child Jagjit is bullied and harassed, even by the Mexicans, another marginalised community: Behind them the Mexicans, whose older brothers, he tells me, carry knives, whose catcalls and whizzing rubber bands clash, mid-air, with the teacher's voice, its sharp purple-edge.

Jagjit's maladjustment with his surroundings in his school, his inability to cope up with his studies earns him the name of 'idiot', which appears to him as 'muddy red' .To the indigenous white children, his school mates, he appears to be different, but not only that, also to be a source of fantasy, a spectacle: "In the playground, Jagjit says, invisible hands/snatch at his turban, exposelhis uncut hair . . . " (105). Jagjit's hair, which his religion forbids him to cut off, is a source of spectacle and fantasy to them. To the Indians abroad, the Mexican community in the United States is the 'other '. In Yuba City Weddings, we have already seen how Manuela was stereotyped. In this poem we see the reverse; how the Mexican school children see Jagjit as an 'other'. The narrator - Jagjit's mother - also conceives the Mexicans as fearsome, carrying, as they do, 'knives'. The terrified mother gathers up enough courage and decides to meet the class teacher, in order to discuss the problems faced by her child in school. Shaken thoroughly from within at the very prospect of talking to the teacher in English, and intimidated at the thought of facing her, she

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decides not to wear her traditional Indian-Punjabi attire, opting instead for an American one, so that the chances of her being ridiculed and laughed at are reduced, thus becoming subject to forced acculturation. However, the fear of conversing in a foreign language, in which she is not proficient, gets the better of her: Tomorrow in my blue skirt I will go to see the teacher, my tongue a stiff embarrassment in my mouth, my few English phrases. She will pluck them from me, nail shut my lips (106).

She is aware of the power that the indigenous woman, Jagjit's teacher, will exert on her, that she will snatch away the few English words from her, is also pretty clear to the mother: "My son will keep sitting/in the last row/among the red words that drink his voice" (106). In the family space as well, as opposed to the social space, we find a completely different set of forces and equations at work. The power struggle which, in the social scenario, pitted the native against the diaspora community, we find is quintessentially gendered in the family space. In Leaving Yuba City, we are presented with the picture of one such family, which follows the patriarchal Indian Punjabi values, even in the United States. The change in geographical space might have dislocated the family from its original roots, forcing it to settle in an alien land, but the power relations within the family, and the equations that govern the family, have hardly evolved or undergone any change due to this geographical 'de­ rooting'. However, a major problem arises, due to this apparent attempt at preserving the purity of the ethnic norms in the family space. The patriarchal forces assume that the role of the law-maker does not usually face any protesting or contesting voice in the native land, but it fails miserably in the new geographical space, the reason being the heterogeneity of the social positioning and situation. In comparison, the society in the home country is completely homogenous in structure. Due to the presence of the discordant elements in the changed social scenario, the patriarchal forces face vehement oppositions, and ultimately, as in Banerjee's poem, the rebellious forces win. Leaving Yuba City is a perfect case in point. Sushma, a young girl of twenty, lives in a joint family with her parents, brother, and other relatives. Interestingly, we find Sushma belongs to the second generation, born and brought up in the host land, educated in American schools and colleges, and quite at ease with the ways of life in American society. For her, a claustrophobic family space

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becomes a space of confinement; emotional, intellectual, and physical. Like any other young girl, she craves freedom to lead her life on her O\Vll terms. The fundamental clashes between her liberal ideals and tbose of her traditional family lead her to tbe decisive step of leaving her family. Leaving Yuba City is the last poem in the sequence, and has this conflict as its theme. A prose-poem, it talks about the young Punjabi girl, Sushma, as she decides to leave the safe confines of her joint family home in order to follow mainstream life in the US. She finds her patriarchal joint family system, and the outdated socio-cultural mores of her family, claustrophobic. In spite of living in America for many years, Sushma's family is still deep-rooted in Punjabi customs and family values, totally refusing to let the concepts of the American family-system percolate into their family-space. The way tbey lead their lives is almost a kind of deliberate fortification against foreign social and family systems; they live exactly as they would have done if they had been still living in Punjab. Theirs is a patriarchal family, and every nOlm and rule that governs the family is dictated by patriarchy: Father and mother in the big bedroom downstairs, he sharp and angular in his ironed night-pajamas, on the bed-lamp side be­ cause he reads the Punjabi newspaper before he sleeps. Her body like a corrugation, a dark apologetic crease on her side ofthe wide white bed, face turned away from the light, or is it from her husband . (1 07). ...

Images confirming the patriarchal strictures of the family are carelessly stre\Vll everywhere, even in the picture of the newly-wed Sushma's brother and his wife: "MUlTIlurS, laughter, bed-creaks, small cries, and once/a sound like a slap, followed by a sharp in-drawn breatb like the startled/start of a sob tbat never found its completion". Evidently, in her family rooted in patriarchal traditions, it is only natural for a newly wedded wife to be slapped by her husband, in case she does not carry out all his orders, or agree to whatever he says. As a girl brought up on liberal ideals, inculcated in her through her schooling, and mingling with the members of the mainstream indigenous society, Sushma finds these customs outdated, and desperately seeks a respite. Interestingly, Sushma is a second-generation diaspora individual, one who is much more acculturated with life in the mainstream, wanting to lead her life on her 0\Vll terms. She desires to be in control of her 0\Vll life, and cannot take tbe dictates of her parents, which seem to her to be grossly violating her 0\Vll individuality. Her parents' ways of living, and their

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notions regarding life and living, are completely opposed to her assertive nature: "Nice girls never cut their hair. They let it grow long. braided meekly down their backs/That's what father and mother had looked for when they arrangedlbrother's marriage" (109, emphasis original). Sushma on her part is tom between the filial bonds of her family and her affiliations to the society of which she too, is a part. There is a continuously ongoing strife inside her. During her brother's wedding, when everyone starts plarming about marrying her off, now that her brother's marriage is already accomplished, Sushma is chalking out plans to leave the family, in order to survive on her 0\Vll. Aware of the fact that, within her family, she will never be allowed to be the mistress of her 0\Vll life, she has already started saving money to start a new life on her 0\Vll: " . . . she had already with-/dra\Vll her savings, two years' salary from working at the Guru Govindlgrocery, money her mother thought she was keeping for her wedding/jewelry" (108). She has even secured an old suitcase for the purpose from the attic of her house one lonely afternoon. Still, when the time to go away finally arrives, she carmot make herself steady enough to write the letter, in order to infolTIl her family of her decision. Fragmented, yet decisive, she carmot ignore the pain she feels inside at her supposed betrayal. She is tOlTIlented inside, yet cannot stop herself from following the course of life she has chosen for herself. She knows what might happen, and is also aware of the accusations she might have to face from her family. She remembers Pimi, another girl from her commuinty, who attempted the same thing last year, but was caught. Sushma is confident of not having the sarne ill-luck as Pimi: No one to catch her and drag back to her room and keep her under lock and key like they did with Pimi last year until they married her off. No one to slap her or scream Cillses at her or, weeping, accuse her of having smeared mud on the family name (1 10).

Yet, in spite of everything, she is aware of the claims that her roots, blood, race, family and religion have on her, and has no intentions of casting them off: And sometime tomorrow, or next week, or next month, when she's far, far away where no one can ever find her, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, she'll pick up a phone and call them. Maybe the words will corne to her then, halting but clear, in the language of her parents, the language that she carries with herfor it is hers too, no matter where she goes (1 10, emphasis mine).

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Although Divakaruni primarily focuses on the imaginative reconstruction of the historical development of the Sikh peasant community in the United States, which commenced around the 1900s, and gradually evolved with the passage of time, as well as with the changing contours of politics, there are certain 'tension-areas' or 'conflict-zones', which are embedded in these poems. An encounter between the two communities occurs in these zones. This space which is the contact-zone is not a homogenous space; it is rather chequered, and is continually evolving, altering the ways the two communities perceive, and interact with, each other. It is this space which is mediated, affected, and governed by various factors, such as race, ethnicity, issues of identity, and even by generation. In Brah's words: " . . . diaspora space (as distinct from the concept of diaspora) is 'inhabited' not only by diasporic subjects, but equally by those who are constructed and represented as 'indigenous'. As such, the concept of diaspora space foregrounds the entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of 'staying put''' (16, emphasis original). Individuals such as Sushma ultimately develop hybrid identities. Her identity is neither in keeping with the traditional Punjabi nonns of a meek, docile, traditional woman, nor is it one of the indigenous community. Sushma's identity has traits of both, and that is the reason why, even after deciding ultimately to leave her family, she experiences a violent tumult within. Her upbringing as a second-generation diaspora individual makes her identity culturally 'hybrid', and she eventually emerges as an 'in­ between'. 'Hybrid' is a tenn denoting a loss of racial purity, either as a consequence of a colonial encounter or due to clash of cultures. The cultural hybrid is said to belong to the in-between space, one which is unstable and problematic. This space transcends the boundaries of both, goes 'beyond', as well as including both. As Stuart Hall points out in the essay "Cultural Identity and Diaspora": "Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think instead, of identity as a 'production', which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation (1). Sushma's existence as an 'in-between', due to the cultural hybridization, problematises her identity. She appropriates, and agrees completely to, the way of life in the United States, which has been inculcated in her since her childhood through her school, as well as society. Consequently, she carmot accept her patriarchal family traditions, and eventually lands up in the 'third space' which is inhabited by many more second-generation diaspora

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individuals like her, whose categorization is not at all possible within either of the two cultures, which are invariably pitted against each other. Their diaspora experience is necessarily different from that of their parents, who experienced the processes of 'de-rooting' and 're-rooting' . Hall captures the essence of this conflict: "The diaspora experience . . .is defmed, not by essence or purity but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew through transformation and difference" (14). Thus, for individuals such as Sushma, we surely carmot conceive of a stable, solid, unitary cultural identity as such. It is being produced and reproduced in a site which is always in a state of flux and is highly volatile, belonging to an in-between category, which involves both the roots, and yet dares to go beyond. Thus Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Yuba City poems capture and present to us an entire process of immigration into a host land, taking into account its multiple aspects, right from arrival to acculturation. Taking as her topic the pre-Independence settlement of the Sikh farmers in Yuba City, Divakaruni traces the whole history of migration of the community. Apart from historically presenting the events as they took place, with the arrival of the Sikh fanners in America, she also looks forward to the future, leaving the unforeseen configurations of future immigrant generations as an open-ended area for speculation. Notes 1 . 'Kangani diaspora' usually denotes the pre-Independence migration oflabomers from India to Sri Lanka and Malay. The term kangani has been derived from the Tamil 'kankani', which means 'a foreman/overseer'. 2. 'Passage diaspora' refers to those labomers who were not bmmd by any contract as such. They usually migrated to South Africa or East Africa.

Works Cited

Brah, AvtaI. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems. New York: Anchor Books, 1997. Print. Hall, Stuart. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. www.unipa.itl�michele. cometa/hall�culturalidentity.pdf. Web. 21 Aug. 2012.

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Hall, Stuart, Ed. Representation: Cultural representations and SignifYing practices. London: Sage Publications, 1997. Print. Lahiri, Himadri. "Dislocation and After: Indian Women Poets in America."' Indian English Women Poets. Ed. Anisur Raliman and Ameena Kazi Ansari.New Delhi: Creative Books, 2009. Print.

THE IN-BETWEEN WORLDS IN THE NARRATIVE CALLED NATION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE DEPICTION OF NATION IN INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY SWETHA ANTHONY

The perfOlmativity of language in the narratives of the nation, as explicated by Romi K Bhabha (Bhabha, 3) is a point of departure when it comes to Indian English poetry. As a genre dating back to the 1 830s, it did play a major role in articulating the changes that have come in the Indian psyche. In the beginning, it was monopolized by the elite, and they wrote to cater to the Western audience. The colonizers have long left the land, and it is now past the era of post- colonialism. Nationalism has even paved the way to sub-nationalism and transnationalism. But still, Indian English writing has a strong foothold in India. In fact, this aspect points to certain ambivalence at the core of India. For instance, Makarand Paranjape says, in the introduction of the anthology Indian Poetry in English: . . . Indian poetry in English is the only truly pan Indian poetry, the only poetry capable of expressing the totality of the Indian experience. It embodies the legacy of colonialism, the secret shame of our past made blatant. Likewise, it chronicles, albeit indirectly, our struggle against colonialism and oppression. It is also the site for the continuing Indo­ Western encOlUlter and the evolving culture of post-colonial India. . . . a literature which has access to a national consciousness . . . (paranjape, 6).

What are the issues that contribute to the popularity of the genre in India? Why has it still endured the test of time? What are the possibilities that it opens up? When we talk about a language like Indian English, the thought that comes up is, of course, the 'in-between words' - an inevitable ambivalence in the use of an alien language. But it is considered as our own tongue. Ironically, this is the only way in which to express the identity. Is it possible to situate a language like Indian English within the purview of a

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nation? Attached to these notions of an Indian are also questions regarding the use of a language, and the use of English in particular. It was never a language that could be linked to the geographical space of India. So is the notion of the discourse of identity not influenced by temporality or space? When English becomes a language of articulation, is it transcending the idea of nation or nationality? In a way, "the puzzle of a post- colonial hyphen" (Waugh, 341), as explicated by Elleke Boehmar, is a valid, one not just in the use of language but also in the creation of a discourse of identity in the same language. It is quite clear that the janus-faced ambivalence of language is poignant here. The paper attempts to look at how the dialects that come into play in creating this language also impact the notions of identity and nation. At the outset, it is important to look at the stalwarts of Indian English poetry. Based on the way the language is handled, we can classify them into three main categories. The first comprises poets who started writing in the 1830s and continued till after India's Independence. Henry Louis Vivian Defozio, Kasiprasad Bose, Micheal Madhusudhan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, etc., are the major poets. However they wrote poetry where the style and fOlTIl was a perfect replica of the British. They wrote just about India, but for a Western audience, and they were at the adoption stage in post colonial writing. They were not able to do much to question the notions of identity or nation. They were far removed from the realities around them. Their poems were focused on India - an ideal India. A time of change came in thel 950s, when Nissim Ezekiel launched the modem era in Indian English poetry. For poets like Shiv K. Kumar, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Kamala Das, Keki N Daruwalla, Gieve Patel, and Arun Kolatkar, Indian English poetry became " . . ... a negotiation with their Indiarmess and chosen language of expression (English)." (Shah and Nayar, 1 1). In all the poets of this era, we find this encounter with the notions of self, the language etc., as typical of the period that they wrote in, until the late 1980s, which was a time of uncertainty, with concepts of globalization coming in, shifting the terrain rapidly, and making huge impacts on the way identity was conceived. They believed they were alienated from their society, and irony was the only way of expressing their ambivalence towards themselves and their world. (paranjape, 20). They seemed to be asking the same questions that Homi K Bhabha was concerned about: "How do we conceive of the 'splitting' of the national subject? How do we articulate cultural differences within this vacillation of ideology in which the national

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discourse also participates, sliding ambivalently from one enunciatory position to another?" (Bhabha, 298). For instance, Kamala Das's poem, An Introduction, begins thus: I don't know politics, but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names ofmonths, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian, very bWWll, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't "Write in English, they said, English is not yom mother tongue (Das, 62).

In a way, she is equating the notion of Indianness with the notion of a nation that was built by those in power. Then she talks about her regional marker, hinting at the multiple identities one has to live with in India. Interestingly, her markers of identity are linked to language also. However, what shines through is uncertainity - an ambivalence which clearly states that 'I am this and that, but I am not sure what exactly I am'. She also looks at the use of English here. To quote Bhabha again, "What emerges, as an effect of such 'incomplete signification', is a turning of boundaries and limits into the in-between spaces, through which the meanings of cultural and political authority are negotiated" (4). The notion of identity is linked to many external factors at the wake of Nationalism, an evident outcome of colonialism. For the people who were new to the idea of a nation, or a homogenous identity, it was quite difficult to place themselves, especially where there were many differences in the fOlTIl of cultures, languages, etc. At this juncture, it is quite striking that English emerged as a language which could nullify, to some extent, these issues of difference. The discourse regarding the notions of nation is a direct impact of colonialism. So the use of English as a means of articulation has to be accounted for. As Elleke Boehmer says, in the essay Postcolonialism: "If natives or others were always seen as secondary figures, imperfect replicas of the colonizer, weavers of borrowed cultural rags; if native society was invariably represented as disorderly or ethnically degenerate; it was important that they remake themselves from scratch. It was essential that they reconstitute their identity on their 0\Vll telTIls, that they Indianize, Africanize or Caribbeanize themselves. They effectively needed to give birth to a new identity, to speak in a language that was chosen, not imposed (Waugh, 345). We can rest assured that a language was chosen. Nevertheless, the question remained whether we could communicate an idea about which we were not yet sure. What does

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The In-between Worlds in the Narrative Called Nation

'being an Indian' entail? Why am I trying to talk about this in a foreign tongue? These did pave way for more confusion, for instance, Jayanta Mahapatra's poem, The Twentyfifth Anniversary of a Republic: 1975: What is wrong with my country? The jungles have become gentle, the women restless. And history reposes between the college girl's breasts: the exploits of "Warrior-queens, the pride pieced together from a god's tainted amOillS. Is this where the advantage lay? Mina, my pretty neigbour, flashes round and round the gilded stage, hiding jungles in her pmse, holding on to her divorce, and a lonely PhD (paranjape, 192).

What, really, is the significance of the 25th atmiversary of our Republic? The poet is unsure about it. What we find here is ". . . . the janus-faced ambivalence of language itself in the construction of the janus-faced discourse of the nation. . . where meanings may be partial because they are in medias res, and history maybe half-made because it is in the process of being made . . . in the act of 'composing'" (Bhabha, 3). The national flag is something that powerfully communicates the notion of an identity. Kamala Das, in her poem titled, The Flag, says: The orange stands for fire, for fire that eats Us all in the end. The white stands for purity that we dream of and Never find The green stands for pastures of Paradise Where even the poor May have a place. The wheel in the centre, Stationary, stands For what else but time, arrested falsely By HlUllan hands? It is time to say good bye to yom charms Dear flag, to yom old, Meaningless pride, to your crude postures of Honom, to the lies Yom coloms tell, to the false hope you did Extend, to your old Macabre dance in the blueness of om sky.. (Das, 21).

Here we find an uncertainty which is communicated with irony and sarcasm. Also, as Homi K Bhabha says:

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a particular ambivalence that haunts the idea of the nation, the language of those who \VTite it and the lives of those who live it. It is an ambivalence that emergences from a growing awareness that, despite the certainty with which historians speak of the 'origins' of nation as a sign of the 'modernity' of society, the cultural temporality of the nation inscribes a much more transitional social reality (1).

Nissim Ezekiel's poem, Enterprise, also verges on the point of disillusionment: It started as a pilgrimage, Exalting minds and making all The bmdens light. when, finally, we reached the place We hardly knew why we were there. The trip had darkened every face, Om deeds were neither great nor rare. Horne is where we have to earn our grace (paranjape, 1 1 1).

From these few lines, we find that a generation was plagued by notions of identity within a nation. However, when we look at the poetry from the 1990s onwards, there is a marked shift in the articulation of self. \¥hat we fmd here is a lament for a past that is lost. The poets also question the notions of belonging, and the notion of home, as this is also a time when transnationalism came into prominence. Agha Shahid Ali and Sujata Bhatt lament the loss of cultural roots as a visible feature of diasporic poetry, which is also carried forward by Meena Alexander. This period also saw a fourth stage in post colonial writing; 'cross- cultural interactions', to borrow Peter Barry 's usage. We find encounters with colloquialism, as in the poems of Mamta Kalia, and prominence of regional myths, cultures, and traditions, through Melanie Silgardo and Eunice De Souza. For Imtiaz Dharker, the personal is on the verge of the political. Smita Agarwal held on to the metropolitan India of the 1990s. Poets like Kamala Das, Tara Patel, Silgardo, Eunice de Souza, Charmayne D'Souza, lmtiaz Dharkar, and Sujata Bhatt, echoed the locations of women within India. The poets from the northeast, such as Ngangom, Kharmawphlang, and Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih, bring in a sensibility rooted in their culture and social realities. A new notion of nation, or national identity, began to be circulated. Some even questioned, or critically engaged with, the notions of borders imaginary lines creating a new nation. This also points to the ambivalence plaguing the identity of those who were once part of India, and who had to

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The In-between Worlds in the Narrative Called Nation

drift apart due to the colonial policy of 'divide and rule'. The formation of Pakistan, and the resulting issues between the two nations, in a way, played a deep role in questioning the identity; where do I belong? Here it becomes a "curiously hybrid reahn" (Bhabha, 2). In such cases, 'nation' exists sometimes in the imagination, as, "Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and fully realize their horizons in the mind's eye" (Bhabha, 1); tracing, and trying to locate, the nation through narratives. 'When nation is a site of conflicting ideas and ideologies, literature also becomes a site of these dialectics - the dialectics between the idea of nation and imagination leading to a deconstruction of the canon called nation. When it comes to nationalism in a post-globalised or post-modern world, questions of the notion of homogeneity are lost in the many discourses. The question of a de-centered nation comes to the forefront. This can be traced in poets like Agha Shahid Ali. Situated in Kashmir, he deals with such issues of belonging through his poetry, as for instance, in Postcard from Kashmir: Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox, my horne a neat four by six inches . . . . . . . . Now I hold the half inch Himalayas in my hand. This is horne. And this the closest I'll ever be to horne (Paranjape, 207).

And in The Se asons of the Plains: In Kashmir, where the year has four, clear seasons, my mother spoke of her childhood in the plains ofLucknow, and of that season in itself, the monsoon, when Krishna's flute is heard on the shores of the Jarnuna. She only said: The monsoons never cross the mOlUltains into Kashmir (paranjape, 209).

We find in the lines of poets such as Imtiaz Dharker, Meena Alexander, and Agha Shahid Ali, an ambivalence rising out of a shift in their

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homelands. In the poem Battle Line, Imtiaz Dharker talks about the home left behind: because, leaving horne, you call YOillself free. Because, behind you, barbed wire grows where you once had planted a tree (Paranjape, 231).

These lines are poignant, as her ancestors were Indian and she lived in Pakistan, and later she shifts her base to England. Along the same lines is Meena Alexander's poem, The Travelers: Consider us crawling forward in thunder and rain, possessions stre\VIl through airports in dusty capitals, small stoppages in lUlknown places where the soul sleeps (Paranjape, 2 1 3).

We fmd that, with the change in time, there is a marked shift in the way the notion of nation is being treated. This shift arises, as Homi K Bhabha says, "from the problematic unity of the nation to the articulation of cultural difference in the construction of an international perspective" (Bhabha, 5). The chance of a closure on the discourse of nation is very dim. However, it does open up many worlds, through the in-between words. Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. New Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited, 2008. Print. Bhabha, Romi K. Ed: Nation and Narration. New Yark: Routledge, 1990. Print. Das, Kamala. Summer in Calcutta. New Delhi: Everest Press, 1965. Print. Paranjape, Makarand. India.n Poetry in English. India: Macmillan, 1993. Print. Shah, Nila, and Pramod K. Nayar. Modern Indian Poetry in English, Critical Studies. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2000. Print. Waugh, Patricia. Ed: Literary theory and Criticism. An Oxford Guide. New Yark: OUP, 2006. Print.

REPRESENTATION FROM THE NORTH EAST

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH FROM THE NORTHEAST: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF POETRY FROM THE IMAGINED PERIPHERY MRIDUL BORDOLOI

I

Literature in English from the northeast is catching up in a big way. A host of writers have emerged since Arup Kumar Dutta's The Kaziranga Trail (1979) became part of the mainstream imagination, spawning a number of subsequent novels by the same author, specialising in children's fiction, and with quite a few being translated into a number of foreign languages. Taking their cue from this encouraging trend, a number of promising writers, dabbling in both fiction and non-fiction, emerged from the region, notable among them being Sanjoy Hazarika, whose painstaking and meticulously researched documentations into the problematic of the insurgency movements, border crossings, among other festering issues of the northeast, in books such as Strangers of the Mist (1994), Rites of Passage (2000), and The State Strikes Back (co-autbored with Charles Chasie in 2009), have become both critically and commercially successful. Also notable are: Temsula Ao, an academic and creative writer from Nagaland, a recipient of Sahitya Akademi (2013) and the Padma Shri (2007), whose five collections of poems, starting with Songs that Tell (1988), and short stories, have enabled an entire ethnic, indigenous, community to find its voice; Robin S Nganbom and Kynpham Sing Nongkrihnih, both poets from Mizoram; Mamang Dai, a poet and novelist from Anmachal Pradesh; and Dhruba Hazarika, Mitra Phukan, Anjum Hasan, Siddhartha Deb, and so forth, whose works of fiction have been successful in addressing many of the burning issues confronting the northeast as a peripheral space in mainland India's imagination. Apart from these 'canonical' authors, whose works have begun to increasingly find pride of place in syllabuses, a new breed of writers has emerged, whose works have generated a great deal of buzz in the media, as well as

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Literature in English from the Northeast

in the distinguished academic circle, and which are finding a decent market in mainland Indian cities. The thrust that seems to be given to interdisciplinary 'area studies' nowadays could be one of the factors responsible for generating such an avid interest in this imagined 'remote' region. Perhaps, the growing phenomenon of being curious about what is happening in and around a particular space is part of the postmodem condition, in which there is a relentless attempt to wrest power through cultivation and dissemination of knowledge through the deployment of what Lyotard famously termed, in his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1984), 'language games'. "Knowledge in the form of an informational connnodity indispensible to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major, perhaps the major stake, in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory... " (Lyotard, 2). The thrust given to the accumulation of knowledge in tenns of spatiality is therefore part of an assemblage of (in/vested) 'interests' involved; knowledge, information, power relations, consumption, market forces, subaltern agency, and so forth. In this dynamic, highly-charged, epistemological arena, it also, in a way, enables hitherto-suppressed voices to assert their distinctive identity and culture, by means of 'writing back', as subject­ positions situated in the margins. Such a phenomenon seems also to be evident in the case of the northeast. The political economy of the mass media (and publishing houses) has been instrumental in fuelling the interest of readers towards the issues confronting this assumed remote hinterland. In order to address this growing demand, publishing houses have been trying their best to showcase the region by publishing a host of new titles, as well as identifying upcoming authors from the region, translating the canonical ones, and labelling all of these as 'Writings in English from the Northeast'. These writings include both non-fiction (books on history, politics, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, travel, and so forth), as well as fiction (novels, short-stories, poems), with the majority of the works emerging from Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Nagaland. It is not that the other states of Northeast India, besides the ones mentioned, have been lagging behind, or have not produced a substantial body of works to claim a place for themselves as part of this all-encompassing umbrella tenn, that is, Writings in English from the Northeast. The problem lies with the accessibility, as well as visibility, of the books in bookstores and on library shelves. To be honest, it is only when frontline publishing houses

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such as Orient Black Swan, Rupa, Zubaan, Oxford, Cambridge, Routledge, Tranquebar, and other such reputed publication houses publish books from this region that they manage to find a decent market, as well as mainstream visibility. In a way, it is also assumed that publications by reputed publishing houses accord legitimacy to the quality of the books released in the marketplace. While it is true that poetry as a genre finds few takers in mainstream publishing houses, and maybe even fewer readers nowadays, it is worth acknowledging that the most powerful, evocative, expressive, honest, and real representations of the northeast have been made through this powerful genre. A few anthologies of poetry in English from the region have been published, and, to a greater or smaller degree, created an impact, perhaps on account of their strong political tenor/intent, and their quest for identity in rhetorically impassioned terms. Of these, mention may be made of: Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast (2003), edited by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Robin Ngangom; Dancing Earth - An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India (2009), edited by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Robin Ngangom; and, The Oxford Anthology Of Writings From North- East India: Volume II: Poetry And Essays (201 1), by Tilo((oma Misra. This article intends to present a comprehensive survey of poetry written in English from India's northeast region. In the process of a rigorous analysis of select poems composed by a host of poets hailing from the region, classifications is done on the basis of the commonality of thematic concerns exhibited in their works. It is a matter of almost general consensus that many of the problems plaguing the seven (now eight) states are, to a large extent, similar in nature, and identified by the people across the region. For one, problems of insurgency that have beset the region find powerful evocation in the poems of almost all major poets of the region. Then, the search for roots, the conflict between tradition and modernity, the loss and/or quest for identity, the love of nature, the interrogation of nationalism, relieving/re-living the trauma of ethnic violence, the impact of colonialism, and gendered differences, among others, are important concerns which resonate in the works of the poets of this region. Given that the prime focus of this article would be to introduce (to uninitiated readers) a distinctive kind of poetry of an imagined peripheral location, efforts will also be made to understand the political economy and expediency of taking recourse to such labels as 'Writings from the Northeast' and subsuming them under such a convenient blanket telTIlinology. The poets whose works figure in this article include Robin Ngangom, Kynpam Sing Nongkynrih, Desmond Khannawphlang, Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai, Mona Zote, Paul Lyngdoh, Monalisa Changkija, and a few others. It is

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Literature in English from the Northeast

hoped that this article will be able to provide some insights into poetry in English emerging from India's northeast, and, by doing so, provide agency to sUbject-positions that are imagined as peripheral entities, outside the pale of the so-called dominant culture of the centre, which is mainland India. Yet, before delving into the heart of the matter, it would be instructive to underscore the problematic of using the particular appellation "northeast" as a blanket term for subsuming a location marked by racial, political socio-cultural heterogeneity into an imagined homogeneous commlUlity. Many scholars, including Temsula Ao, recipient of the prestigious Padma Shri in 2007 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2013 (for her short story collection, Laburnum/or My Head: Stories, published in 2009) from Nagaland, is not comfortable with the usage of this particular telTIl. Mitra Phukan, a creative writer and columnist, in her online article titled "Writing in English in India's northeast: Relevance, Importance, and Place", observes: When one comes across this term, people living and working with words here are taken aback. Is this yet another example of how people living beyond the 'chicken's neck' tend to hunp the entire region together? How is it that they are not aware of the vast diversity of this region, how is it that they can even imagine that the literature can be talked about in the same breath at all? Even if the language used in both cases is English, how can a writer living in a land of vast rivers, of Sattras and Borgeets, be lumped together with another, whose work is infused with the myths rooted in the rolling, misty hills of his native land? (phukan).

By the fact that British colonizers were responsible for giving that particular appellation to a designated space cartographically marked, it is assumed that retention of the term for a geographical entity that is marked by linguistic, racial, topographical, and cultural, among various other differences, amounts to perpetuation of the colonial hegemonylhangover. Even on the level of discourse, the telTIl 'northeast' could signify a peripheral space, away from the trappings of the privileged centre - that is mainland India. The implication of this could be that an ethnocentric gaze may be palpable here, with the centre exoticizing this geographical entity in a certain manner, which is more constructed than real. Such a gaze may influence the dominant culture, to misunderstand and misrepresent the northeast as an 'idea' that is again more imagined, than real. Prasanta Das, Professor, Department of English and Foreign Languages, Tezpur University, makes a few pertinent observations in his article, titled "Contemporary Indian English Writing from the Northeast":

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The northeast' continues to remain one of the most stereotyped parts of India. Media and other representations of the northeast perpetuate a particular discourse recognizable from the systematicity with which certain stock images of the region as an enchanted frontier inhabited by colourful, primitive tribes, a land of lUlspoiled natural beauty, a hotbed of insurgency, etc., are presented. Though there are seven states in the northeast eight, if we include Sikkim it is usually looked at as one. That this erases significant geographical, cultural, social and political differences is obvious. However, the discourse of the northeast is, like all discomses, self-confirming: newspapers, for instance, often report bomb blasts and other acts of terrorist violence in the region, and a visitor would notice at once there is indeed little or no industrial development in most of the states (Das 25).

Easterine !ralu, a writer from Nagaland who teaches at the University of Tromso, Norway, has something similar to say: "Let media stop defining the northeast by the conflicts going on there. Let media focus on ordinary people and their lives. Let exoticisation of the northeast stop" (Iralu). The reality of the northeast is that it is a space marked by irreconcilable heterogeneities, which cannot be subslUlled under a delimited tenninological marker - 'northeast' . Mitra Phukan raises a few valid queries: Corning as it does from this backgrolUld, the term 'English Writings from India's Northeast' appears, in some ways, to be yet another example of a sweeping generalisation with which we have to live, willy-nilly. There are about 420 languages and dialects of different language families to be found here, and the resultant complexities are mind-boggling, a complex and wide-ranging ethno- and socio-linguistic configmation. All seven states are different, so why exactly do we have to be referred to in one breath? Is it just a convenience, again? Not administrative, this time around of course, but more of a way of dealing with these seven states quickly, without having to spend too much time on any single state? A time saver, in a way? A symptom, yet again, of the way very few outside the area actually understand this region? (phukan).

However, the reasons which compel one to persist with this appellation could be manifold. Firstly, the northeast, as a region, has a great deal of geo-political importance, in the sense that it shares more than 4,500 kilometres of international border (about 90 percent of its entire border area) with China (southern Tibet) in the north, Myanmar in the east, Bangladesh in the southwest, and Bhutan to the northwest, with the region being, in its historical context, a theatre of war - ranging from BUlTIlese occupation, British colonisation, Chinese aggression, and an abortive Japanese attempt at imperialist expansion during World War II, among many other epoch-making events. For those pursuing studies in international

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Literature in English from the Northeast

relations, such a rich historical legacy provides ample scope for researchers to examine the significance of the geo-political circumstances of the region, thereby legitimizing the use of the telTIl, 'northeast'. Secondly, it is a convenient cartographical marker, with defined boundaries among seven (eight at present) states, as well as with foreign countries. Thirdly, area studies have huge market potential. The tag 'northeast' generates a great deal of curiosity among readers and researchers. In commercial telTIls, it can be unarguably stated tbat northeast 'sells'. So, tbere is a great deal of excitement in mainland India (and beyond) to know about tbis 'remote' region, and correspondingly, in Indian publishing circles to publish works centred on the northeast. This could also be a factor accounting for the telTIl 'northeast' being so much in vogue, especially where it concerns writings emerging from the region. However hard one tries to dissociate oneself from being pigeon-holed into such convenient categories (such as 'tbe northeast'), the claims of market forces to the perpetuation of tbe telTIl, carmot be overemphasized. II

As already indicated, the objective of this article is to explore poetry written in English from the northeast. It is true that translations into English from poets expressing themselves in their regional languages and dialects have come up in a big way recently, especially in the case of translations into English of the works of famous Assamese and Manipuri poets. However, in order to keep the article within the ambit of the prescribed word limit, translated works will not be the subject of this discussion. This is more so, because there is a large corpus of poetry written in English by poets hailing from the region, in which tbey have dealt with almost all of the major issues confronting it. One such issue which finds ample resonance in almost all of the states of the northeast is the phenomenon of insurgency. Whether it is Assam or Nagaland, Manipur or Tripura, Mizoram or Arunachal Pradesh, insurgency has gripped the collective imagination of the people of the entire region. Therefore, this problem becomes a common refrain in poetry in English emerging from the northeast. Violence engendered by separatist groups, and their contairunent by paramilitary forces of the Indian state tbrough counter­ insurgency measures powered by certain draconian laws, have been a common factor in ahnost all of the states of the northeast. This cult of violence has led to the loss of countless lives, including innocent women and children. Secret killings, abductions, true or fake encounters, and so forth, have become quotidian happenings tbat have got embedded into the

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collective consciousness of the people, triggering responses among writers in both the gemes of non-fiction and fiction. In poetry, the issue of insurgency finds ample voice in the works of all the poets belonging to the regIOn. In Robin S Ngangom's satirical poem My Invented Land, the problem of insurgency in Manipur, and its aftennath, is starkly delineated. The metaphor of 'home' as a 'gun' testifies to the growing cult of violence where counter-insurgency operations on the part of the Indian state have worsened the situation. The closing paragraph is chilling in its implication: "My home is a gun/pressed against both temples/a knock on a night that has not endedla torch lit long after the theft/a sonnet about body counts/undoubtedly rapedldefinitely abandonedlin a tryst with destiny". There seems to be a note of ambiguity about who the perpetrators are of the unholy cycle of violence that results in acts of genocide/ethnic cleansing and compromising the dignity of women. The allusion to Nehru's famous 'tryst with destiny' speech is ironic, insofar as it subtly hints at the peripheral condition of the northeast in mainstream imagination, as was reflected in Nehru's lamenting over the supposed occupation of the northeast by China during the Chinese aggression in 1962, leaving the region and its people to their unfortunate destinies. Again, it is not difficult to gauge that poetry emerging from the northeast, whether written in local languages or in English, bemoans the neo-colonial condition under which the subjects have remained situated, even after Independence, from foreign rule. In a way, the poetry tends be postcolonial in enunciation, with the binary of 'colonizer/colonized' replaced by 'centre/periphery'. The implication is that the prevalent power structure between the centre (mainland India) and the periphery (hinterland northeast) is nothing more than a mere replication of the erstwhile colonial power structure. In Nganbom's 15 August 2008, Northeast India, this political double-bind between the centre (the Indian state) and periphery (the northeast) is unambiguously expostulated. The ambivalence of sUbject-positions who are caught between celebrating their nation's independence (from foreign yoke) and despairing of their loss of autonomy (to the neo-colonial regime) is clearly spelled out. The resulting crisis of identity, and the increasing realisation of the statist centre exploiting the marginalized, eventually lead to the periphery striking/writing back. Such a striking back (through insurgency movements), and writing back (through postcolonial resistance literature/revenge historiography), have been the staple responses against what is claimed as the hegemonic rule of the Indian state apparatus. However, caught between the

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ideological clash between the hegemonic claims of the centre and the roots, the northeast subject-positions tend to suffer from an acute sense of identity crisis. Even though decolonising the mind from the vestiges of colonial ideology is desirable, it is perhaps not entirely possible. The trace of the former will impinge on the latter, thereby leading to ontological ambivalence. The following lines from Nganbom's poem clearly illustrates this identitarian paradox: "Having lost my independenceIHow could I celebrate it/Though I've sewn flags on cockeyed schooldays? !Margins are superfluous in the big centre's book!Although memory is not silent and speaks up at timesiNow the periphery (of which I'm also a guilty part)/Is scrawling a unique history on delusive marginslMischievous like a collage by brawling painters/Once lebensraum has sunk to pogroms/ The periphery can kill too ... ". Megan Kachari, a poet from Assam, takes this secessionist agenda to an anarchic extent. In her poem, A Dream, she makes an excoriating tirade against the exploitative and powerful juggernaut - the incumbent neo-colonial regime - in a symbolic marmer: "A wild fire, ... and the forest's at stakelTired birds will flap, in pain, into the air/...And the evil fire/will devour the creeperslNothing left green anymore". The spirit of resistance against the powerful centre finds militant expression in Kachari's poem Soon as Nixht Descends: "Don't you murder silence yelling for them/Instead let's join hands and dig a gravelFor all the gods". Such subversive poetry makes the task of inclusion into anthologies difficult, and Kachari therefore does not appear to figure prominently in 'apolitical' literary or academic circles. There is often a danger that this form of militant advocacy of the unresolved political imbroglio between the centre and the state could produce fissures within ethnic communities. The centre's divide-and-rule policy - a particular legacy bequeathed by the colonizers, may lead to ethnic violence under the separatist agenda. It has, in fact, \Vfeaked immense havoc among various ethnic groups of the northeast, perpetrating a history of violence, which has hampered assimilative tendencies among communities. The Shillong poet, Kynpam Sing Nongkymih's poem, Sundori, depicts this irreconcilable cycle of violence in the name of ethnic cleansing in this way: "yesterday one of my peoplelkilled one of your people/And one of your peoplelkilled one of my people. Today they have swom/To kill on sightlBut this is neither you nor I" (see Baishali Barua). However, one needs to add that the secessionist concerns of a few do not find favour among all poets. There are quite a few who vehemently oppose the effectiveness of such an extremist strategy and ideology. T. Bijoykumar Singh is among them. His poem Blood-smeared Dawn, is an instance where the perpetrators of violence are asked uncomfortable

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questions, such as, "Those who are smearing bloodlDid they bite in their mouths/A morsel of the meat of their guilt?" The uneasy relationship between the centre and the periphery also finds mention in Nongkynrih's poem, When the Prime Minister Visits Shillon,;, Bamboo Poles Watch in Silence. Like Nganbom, Nongkynrih's poem is laced with humour as well as satire. The lackadaisical attitude on the part of the mainstream Indians (including the Prime Minister) towards the northeast is unequivocally stated in this marmer: "But when he came, he was/only the strident sounds of sirensilike warnings in war-time bombings ... !He came with twin objectives/a mission for peace and progresslBut he was a rumbling in the c1ouds/a prattle in the air". In a way, feelings of alienation run rife in the works of almost all of the writers from the northeast. The secessionist movement, which was triggered in the entire region, was as a reaction against the feeling of neglect experienced by the people of the northeast, against what came to be looked on as the neo-colonial Indian state. The lines, which convey the feelings of resentment and a history of neglect, run as follows: "And some say he cameiboming in like a missile/and left flying like an arrowiln between?/Some say he dropped/like a falling star/and was sighted by a few/disgruntled leadersfHe came like a threat/and scam-stained ministers/were in a cold sweatiBut he left like a defused bomb". Such a note of contempt towards political representatives for indulging in duplicitous rhetoric and Machiavellian realpolitik finds mention in Chandrakanta Mura Singh's poem, Of a Minister: "The minister has neither inside nor outsidelNo air, no fertile soil on a sandbank/There are only words" (see Baishali Baruah). In a way, it can be said that ideologues espousing revolutionary praxis most often tend to emerge from the ranks and files of poets, teachers, and their ilk. The zeal to achieve one's ideological mission is strongest when one is young and filled with sincere idealism. However, with age, the revolutionary spark of one's youth wanes, and strenuous engagements of this sort becomes physically hazardous. Desmond L Kharmawphlang's poem, Symphony of Sorrow, poignantly charts this out in the fourth section, where the physical deterioration of the middle-aged poet­ ideologue is etched out. In a way, the poet perhaps intends to convey the bitter truth that idealism has to eventually submit to pragmatism, and the insurrectionist forces of separatism which work at destabilising salutary concepts/constructs such as nation, country, etc., most often fail to realise their aims. This is borne out by the pessimistic tone and tenor in the fourth section of the poem: "They rested at dawn/waiting for the fifty-four year old frame of their captive to revivellt was not easy with gout beginning to torch flames in my friend's jointslThey called him/teacher and urged him

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Literature in English from the Northeast

to lecture on the magic of myths/to make blood sing about unitylWe are one, they said, ami/our common history is inscribed in memory

of

stoneMy friend did his share of tutorials in the jungleslbut he confessed that the practicalslwere too exciting for his old bonesfWhen the month was over, tbey half carried him through tbe bamboo jungles". Apart from secessionist concerns, the complicity between neo-colonialism and capitalism has been espoused through Paul Lyngdoh's poetry. His poems bear testimony to the erosion of values of the tribal life in the wake of the indefatigable forces of globalization and consumerism entering into their collective unconscious, and diluting their identity and culture. The clash between tradition and modernity is clearly exhibited, with tbe poet seeming to advocate the former. In his poem

For Sale,

Lyngdoh laments

the crass materialism spawned by market forces which has uprooted indigenous culture and has put up for sale various ' exotic' items, such as: "this

battered,

autistic

land

with

its

lucre-laden

earth/our

precious

minerals, medicinal herb, rare orchids", 'young, nubile girls, beautiful like the land itself', "anachronistic tribal roots" and the "sense of shame, our collective conscience", among others. In Temsula Ao's poems, the quest for reclaiming roots functions as a dominant motif. The poet seems to be nostalgically yearning for tbe tribal past where the trappings of civilisation, especially the intervention of an alien culture, had not made their presence felt in the lives of the various Naga communities. The loss of roots on account of the cultural hegemony of the dominant is a common refrain that gets reflected in Ao's poems (as well as in her short stories). Ao's poem,

Stone-people from Lunxterok,

recounts the origin of the A o tribe of Nagaland, from the mythical six stones. The poem seems to validate the customary beliefs and practices of the Aos, and their indigenous system of knowledge, which, despite being grounded in primeval logic (compared with modernity's standards), is totally self-sufficient. Ao relates tbat the stone-people were "poetic and politiclBarbaric

and

balladic",

"Knowledgeable

in

bird's

language",

"Savage and sage/who sprang out of Lungterok", whose history has been silenced, due to tbe fact that it did not correspond to the template imposed by contemporary positivistic historiography. Ao tries to set the record straight by claiming the authenticity of her alternative history, which differs markedly from the 'public' version. A similar idea is reflected in Ao's

Prayer Qf a Monolith,

where a proud piece of stone decries the loss

of its originality: "I stand at tbe village gate/In mockery of my former state/Once I stood in a deep forestIProud and contentlMy beloved of the laughing dimple/Standing by my side". The brief, simple, laconic style of

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expression, which is bereft of verbosity as well as complexity, infOlTIls Ao's predilection for the simple, unadorned mode of expression. The poet seems to lament the loss of roots due to the intervention of a dominant culture masquerading as a 'civilised', refined one. Such ideological indoctrination into the claims of an alienating culture would lead to the loss of roots and identity, and this fact is wonderfully underscored in this poem: "Then one day some strangers/Came poking and prying/Stabbing at a mound here/And sizing up a boulder there...lThey dislodged me from my mooringslThey tore me from her sidelThey chipped and chiselledlThey gave me altered proportions/They pulled me to the village/Strapped to a make-shift carriage/And planted the 'made-over' me/As their new-found trophy". Such a valorisation of animistic impulse also fmds expression in Robin S Ngangom's Hill, where the mythical origin of the hill is recounted through the personification of the same. The myth of origin is based on folk wisdom and cultural memory, where metaphysics appears to dominate over reason. It is the ideological indoctrination into the claims of rationality that has been responsible for such myths of origin being dismissed as tall tales, thereby making way for anthropocentric humans to exploit nature in the name of serving their materialistic agenda. Nganbom's poem appears to echo this change of mindset in the erstwhile pagan creeds, whose animistic beliefs were replaced by anthropocentric concerns, thereby resulting in the rupture of the symbiotic bond they shared with nature in the pre-colonial past. A few lines from the poem will illustrate this fact clearly: "Hill, you and I have seen/only upheaval since our birthlWhen I was torn from the universal womb/I echoed your silent cryNou have been carved by time as I amlFrom your forests grow flutes/oracular dnuns and nymphslThe ancient ones still speak of the time/when the gods, tired of the heavens/descended to earth, and with sensual fingers/and primeval clay, moulded your torso and breastslThey also scooped the clouds/and poured them over cliffs/to fashion your silver hair". Such a symbiotic bond with nature finds eloquent expression in poet (and novelist) Adi Mamang Dai's poems. Nostalgia for the loss of identity, on account of the intrusion of an alien culture, appears as a dominant motif in almost all of her poems. In the poem, This Summer - The Cicada 's SonK, Dai recalls the glorious days of the past, when nature was suffused with a verdant, pristine aspect, and humans, birds, and beasts frolicked with gay abandon. However, such a state of bliss had been subsequently ravaged by humans' covetous attitude and increasing materialistic trappings, engendered

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by the changed ideological configurations. The poem, in that sense, appears to be a lament, for "the beauty that we destroyed in our hunt for life". The nostalgia for the loss of the unfettered state of the past blissful days is a recurring motif in Dai's poetry, as for instance, in this poem: "This summer I can sing/the songs of the caged warrior/singing to the rough anonymity of trees/and here, on these branchesil can leave the shell of my armourllike the shells of forgotten words/recalling everything we once knew/Time - what is it?Ilt is the symbol of a man who loved cloud and mist/distributing songs . . ./Now I can sing the bright, crackling words/in the memory of songslbegging forgiveness of butterflies/and beauty that we destroyed in our hunt for life". In An

Obscure Place,

Mamang Dai recounts an alternative history of her

race which is not documented in history's grand narratives, and proceeds only through oral rendition. Here, the intervention of strangers into their lives led not merely to the decimation of their race, but also to their cultural mores and practices. Therefore, remembering their sacred history of striving, and being inspired by it to quest for victory, does not seem appropriate in the present state of adversity. The loss of identity and ethnicity is incommensurate with the acquisition of newer sets of beliefs and practices, and therefore the feeling of fulfilment is nothing more than false consciousness.

In

the poem, this idea seems to be subtly hinted at:

"Yesterday we gave shelter to men/who climbed over our hills/for glory of a homeland, they said/those who know what knowing is/and now the sleeping houses, the men and the villages/have turned to stone/If there is no death the news is silent/If there is only silence, we should be disturbed. . . See! They have slain the wild cat/and buried the hornbill in her maternal sleeplThe words of strangers have led us into a mist/deeper than the one we left behind-/weeping, like the waving grassland/where the bones of our fathers are buried/surrounded by thoughts of beauty". In Dai' s

The Wind and The Rain, the notion of loss

of roots and identity is

accentuated further by the devastating blow wrecked by the phenomenon of insurgency. The utopian dream of constituting a simulacrum of an ideal republic is violently seized by forces of attrition, causing anarchy and chaos. The following lines are brutal in their imagery and implication: "There is a war and directly nowlit must be about guns, metal, dust/and the fear that climbs the trees every night/when our names are written/without will or favour in the present/watching the frailty of our lives/spilled in the blood of these hills/right before our disbelieving eyesfYes, the rain is pouring down on my homeland/The old men are saying they can see/fields

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of darkness and fields of light/One day, they say, the wind will sing songs of slaughter, and tenderness". Mizo poet Mona Zote' s poems are characterised by startling and wry imageries, and a shift of register, from the fOlTIlal to the colloquial and convoluted rendering. This remarkable style is evident in the poem Gunrunning, where she gives an insight into tribal insurgency, without plumbing into the depths of the emotional core. There is a sense of macabre understatement, a stoic, studied nonchalance that evokes a disquieting menace. The poem documents in brief the complex history of Mizoram and its cycle of insurgency-induced violence, which could at times be creative, having the potential to achieve goals when words fail. In The Whores ofAugust, Zote's concern is directed towards the underscoring of the sensitive subject of prostitution. She finds the idea of the existence of 'fallen' women in a rigid Christian society as ironic. She seems to romanticise their existence, describing their immaculate personal habits and wondering why society judges these women as stigmatised. Zote, in her poem, gives these women ample agency to speak out in the language of subversion. She perhaps intends to convey the idea that these 'whores' are women, and human, after all is said and done. Zote challenges the established patriarchal order for sustaining these stereotyped women, because her identity as a 'Mizo' and a 'woman' are inseparable in the process of her writing poetry. 'What is evident in most of Mona Zote's poems is her criticism of society or religion. She compares the 'fallen' women's embraces to be as pure as those of the Madonna, and critiques the construction of the 'perfect daughters' of society, who are left with no individuality. Mona Zote proclaims that these 'whores' have "Sweetness in all their ways"; they might be on the borders of society but they have escaped the molding plastics that society would ensnare them in. There is a distinctive modernist sensibility and feel in her poems that seem to be inspired by T.S. Eliot to a significant extent. There is a brutal candour in expression, the use of violent or disturbing imagery, pared­ dO\vn sentences shorn of ornaments, with an air of nonchalant chutzpah implicit throughout. The immediacy of tone and register generates an element of shock value, which seems deliberate as well. Her poems are characterised by an element of menace, spiritual vacuity, and lack of purpose or determination. The source of the menace is difficult to guage. However, it would not be wrong to assume that the complex history of the northeast is the implication here - the violence and neglect, the cultural genocide, the attempting to erase tribal heritage, the ravages of insurgency, the authoritarian reign of the church, and so forth. The above is evident in

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her poem What Poetry means to Emestina in Peril, in which an implication of foreboding menace looms large. A couple of lines from the poem will clearly illustrate this fact: "Poetry must be raw like a side of beeflshould drip blood, remind you of sweat/and dusty slaughter and the epidermal crunch/and the sudden bullet to the head". In Anti-Love Poem, Zote seems to be inspired by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's style of descriptive 'free verse'. In terms of the content, the poem busts all myths related to romantic love, pastoral idyll, those aspiring towards the common brotherhood of humanity, and poems on unrealizable ideals, which this geme thrives on. The poet wants to represent the truth in her poem, however hard and bitter it is. She wants to represent the monochromatic truth which does not have a hi-definition pixellated fonn. The self-reflexive mode of interrogating the status of its O\Vll artefact, the peculiar versification, the negative assertions followed by positive ones, the ambivalent nature of love and longing etc., are rendered with such clarity, honesty and immediacy that they mark a triumph on the poet's part: This is not a poem to be stuffed in the tinfoil of an aborted ideology, stuffed into zippered bags and manhandled at airports and international bOlUldaries like a potential terrorist, stuffed in a fat tapioca leaf and digested along -with television spume and academic chins .. It is not a poem that heroically claims to revive the dead, convert the tattooed, feed the pigs, do the lalUlClry, waiting at the start of day and search for the perfect button with a scholar's perseverance. Thread and needle at the ready .. Nor will it take its stand with those who protest at the oiled glUlS of democracy and those who think they park in a free speech zone and those who denounce the stockpile of mass ethics polished in antiseptic factories of faith; because only birds are democratic, free and possess faith. . It is a poem celebrating the impossibility of arrival and the necessity of violence, because these too are constants of the whole sad untelevised truth. It is a poem that has agreed to conspire against itself For to "Write a poem against love you must first have "Written a poem about love .

Monalisa Changkija, a poet and journalist from Nagaland, has been at the receiving end of threats, from both insurgent groups and the anned forces, for her strong journalistic ethics, as well as her unflinching courage in

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speaking her mind. She has been a vocal spokesperson on Naga issues, women's status, human rights, and freedom of expression. Changkija's writings are mostly political, focussing on the plight of marginalised groups, especially oppressed women. Her poems articulate the woes of women who are often victimised by patriarchal norms. However, there can also be felt in her poetry an implicit hope for women to be liberated from being trapped victims, to sUbject-positions acquiring the agency to speak collectively, and working in solidarity to realise the fOlmation of a gender­ equitable society. She aspires for the women of today to believe in themselves and celebrate their self/womanhood. Her poems are marked by a brutal candour which can be unsettling at times, but mostly cathartic in an empowering marmer. For instance, in a short four-lined untitled poem, she states: "I see it nowhere written/That your unironed shirtslDeserve my attention! More tban my flying lessons". The poem challenges tbe norms imposed upon women by conventional patriarchal society, and, in a spirit of defiance, maintains that the notion of women being expected to supervise mundane household chores is a fOlTIl of women's subjugation as well. This poem gives a clear indication of her stance on women's issues. The poems are short, yet overwhelming in their voice which shouts out 'for tbe women'. In the poem, Of a People Unanswered, Changkija is ambivalent in her response regarding the space from where the agency was emerging: "Don't waste your time/Laying out diktats/And guidelines/On how to conduct my life/On matters personal and political". She could be, first, talking about herself, second, of the women's status, or, third, the identity as a 'tribal' of her community. There is tbe possibility tbat she could have spoken on behalf of all three, insofar as they all represent marginalised sUbject-positions. Like Mona Zote, Changkija reaches out to appeal to the humanity in readers. She gives an insight into individuality, and the status of being human, not tbat of one who is defined by social norms or identity (see Liz Ralte). The language of contemporary women writing from the northeast is thus multi-faceted. Apart from tbese, a host of poets, who are churning out plenty of interesting fare, have emerged from across the region. Of such, mention may be made of Uddipana Goswami, Nitoo Das, Janice Pariat, Arnab Jan Deka, Srutimala Duara, and many more. It is also interesting to note that the majority of the poets and creative writers from the northeast happen to be either serious academicians serving in the capacity of faculty positions in the various northeastern universities and colleges, or top-notch bureaucrats. Margaret C. Zama, Esther Syiem, Desmond L. Kharmawplilang, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Robin Ngangom, Temsula Ao, Anmi Kashyap, Srutimala Duara, Partha Pratim Borah, Easterine Iralu, etc., are all noted academicians in

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Literature in English from the Northeast

the field. Dhruba Hazarika, Mamang Dai, Mona Zote, etc., are influential bureaucrats. The majority of the \Vfiters have an elitist educational background, mostly hailing from Shillong's missionary institutions, such as, St. Edmund's and St. Antony's. Therefore, there is a tendency to label these poets and novelists, who may not be too much aware of the actual grOlUld scenario, as 'elitist'. There is also the imputation of these writers giving wings to their overactive imagination, while handling sensitive subject-matter such as insurgency and subaltemity - subjects from which they are too far distanced, being part of the creme de la creme of society. It is believed tliat quite a few of these writers follow a set template - the defmitive northeast template - that provides them with the ready-made framework in which to insert the 'signs' (content/words). There are doubts raised in a few quarters that works that are written from such metropolitan subject-positions, with a superior elitist gaze, will not be able to represent the plight of tlie northeast subaltern sUbject-positions. Again, as can be seen in the works of Anjum Hasan, Siddhartha Deb, etc., the issues pertaining to the region are not easily reduced into a postcolonial, discursive, reading of the sel£!other dichotomy. In the case of the natives' equation with the Indian state's political apparatus, we can easily perceive where the northeastern subject is placed. But when the native is placed in juxtaposition with a dkhar (the Khasi term for 'outsider'), what happens to the buiary constitution? If the dkhar is assumed to be the other, how can so-called dkhars, like Anjum Hasan, be classified as 'writers of the nortlieast'? Will Temsula Ao Hasan be comfortable with being pigeon­ holed as part of a homogeneous entity, when these issues and concerns are found to be parallel lines that perhaps can never meet? Only time will tell. Note Quotations have been sourced from Kynpham S. Nongkymih and Robin S. Ngangom's edited Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast and Dancing Earth An Anthology ofPoetry from North-East India.

Works Cited

Ao, Temsula Songs that Tell. Calcutta: Writer's Workshop, 1988. Print. . Laburnum for My Head: Stories. New Delhi: Penguui Books, 2009. Pruit. Baruah, Baishali. "Nortli-east Poetry". In Muse India. Issue 33, 2010 [Online]. -

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Web. July 3 1 , 2015. Chasie, Charles and Sanjoy Hazarika The State Strikes Back: India and the Naga Insurgency (Volume 52 ofPolicy Studies). Washington: East­ West Center Washington, 2009. Print. Das, Prasanta, "Contemporary Indian English Writing from the Northeast" in DUJES 1 6, ed. by P. Goswarni and NF Akhtar, 2007, pp.23-48. Print. Dutta, Amp K. The Kaziranga Trail. New Dellii: Children's Book Trust, 1979. Print. Hazarika, Sanjoy. Strangers of the Mist. New Dellii: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. -. Rites ofPassage. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000. Print. Iralu, Easterine. "The Conflict of Nagaland: Through A Poet's Eyes." Skarven Magazine Tromso, Norway, Sept. 2004. n. p. Web. 24 June 2012 [Online]. Web. July 3 1 , 2015. Lyotard, Jean- Franyois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. New York: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Print. Misra, Tilottoma. The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North- East India: Volume II: Poetry andEssays. New Dellii: OUP, 201 1 . Print. Nongkynrih, Kynpham S. and Robin Ngangom, ed Antholol,Y of Contemporary Poetry from the Northeast. Shillong: NEHU, 2003. Print. -. Dancinr; Earth - An Antholol,Y of Poetry from North-East India. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009. Print. Phukan, Mitra. "Writing in English in the North East: Relevance, Importance, and Place". In Muse India. Issue 62: July-August 2015 [Online].

Web. July 30, 2015. Ralle, Liz. "Critique of Poems by Mona Zote and Monalisa Changkija". Available at . Web. July 30, 2015.

STONES AND AO-NAGA CULTURE: A GEOGRAPHICAL READING OF TEMSULA Ao 's STONE-POEMS SAYANTAN CHAKRABORTY

Temsula Ao has depicted the cultural relationship of the Ao-Naga community with the stones, in her poems. Some of her poems are on the theme of stones, and I call these poems stone-poems: Stone-People from Lungterok, included in the collection Songs that Try to Say (1992); Illusion, included in the collection Songs ofMany Moods (1995); Prayer of a Monolith, included in the collection Songs from Here and There (2003); and When a Stone Wept, from Songs from the Other Life (2007). These stone-poems draw inspiration from the origin myth of the Ao-Naga oral tradition. The origin myth says that the first progenitors of the Ao-Nagas emerged from 'Lungterok' in the village of Chungliyimti (Aier and Jamir, 5--D). 'Lungterok' means 'six stones', where 'lung' means stone, and 'terok' means six (Ao, The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition, 79). These six stones represent three men-Longpok, Tongpok, Longjakrep-and three women -Longkapokla, Yongmenala, Elongse-out of whom the entire Ao-Naga community is born. The Ao-Nagas therefore consider themselves the children of stones. They worship the stones that are still said to be found in Chungliyimti, and they are very sensitive to the stones that are found in abundance in their region. It is, "on account of this myth in the Ao tradition, a lot of importance is attached to big stones and there is a belief that these stones are 'alive' and can move by themselves" (Ao, The Ao­ Naga Oral Tradition, 80). The Ao-Nagas have a traditional relationship with the stones. The Ao-Nagas' traditional relationship with the stones has been disturbed in recent years when state-sponsored development projects have radically changed the physical distribution of the region (Hussain, 19, Bhaumik, 64). In Ethnic Life-Worlds in North-East India, Prasenjit Biswas and Chandan Suklabaidya observe that the physical environment is integral in

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traditional livelihood practices and cultural life of the tribes (18). They further observe that tbe destruction of the environment by development projects has terminally threatened traditional tribal cultures and tbeir means of livelihood (18). Development has brought about a set of values which opposes the traditional ones. This shift from traditional to industrial lifeways has disturbed the tribal belief system. The industrial system conceives of nature as a raw material for consumption, whereas traditionally, the tribes consider nature as sacrosanct. The present sociocultural conflict between traditional systems and industrial systems has generated acute anxiety for the tribes. They apprehend tbat witb tbe rapid proliferation of industrialization, their culture will become extinct. To preserve their culture, they have demanded the restoration of their place of habitation, a territory exclusive to Ao-Naga cultural practices. In her stone-poems, Ao engages with the motifs of traditional Ao-Naga beliefs, the disturbance of tradition after the advent of industrialization, and a consequent demand for a territory. This essay argues that, taking instances from Ao's stone-poems, the traditional relationship of the Ao­ Nagas witb the stones has undergone changes with tbe advent of industrialization, and the restoration of the territory can be a way out, to retrieve the tradition. Geographies of Culture

The theme of stones in Ao's stone-poems explicates Ao's rootedness in her etlmic tradition. The Ao-Nagas' traditional relationship with the stones exemplifies the relationship of Ao-Naga culture witb the material world. Until lately, historical-materialist and Marxist theories of detennination animated tbe debates within cultural geography (Cosgrove 1-3, Mitchell, Historical Materialism and Marxism, 51), but Peter Jackson's Maps of Meaning (1989) redefined and diversified the geographies of culture. Thereby, after the recent materialist turns in cultural analysis, geographers have proposed the rematerialization of cultural studies (Jackson, Rematerializing Social and Cultural Geography, 9-10, Kirsch, 433-35, Whatmore, 600-02). A new form of cultural geography has emerged, where attempts have been made to understand the geographical relationship of culture from a sociological and political perspective (Duncan, Johnson, and Schein, 1). Since culture has been defined and understood from various perspectives, such as symbolic production, landscape, memory, identity, gender, relations between nature and culture, development, and so on, cultural geography is a diverse field of study within human geography

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(Atkinson vii; Wylie 215). Taking into consideration tlie diversity of cultural geography, James S. Duncan, Nuala C. Johnson, and Richard H. Schein insightfully observe tliat cultural geographers emphasise "tlie symbolic dimension of human activities, the relevance of historical understanding of societal processes, and a commitment to an interpretative epistemology" (1). The materialist approach to culture has emphasised tlie understanding of the symbolic dimensions of place. In the Ao-Naga context, by place I mean the region where the Ao-Nagas are born of 'Lungterok', and the region that they have inherited traditionally. In tliis essay, I understand place as a distinctive location involving lived experiences of people who ascribe specific meaning to, and hold certain sociocultural expectations of, the location. In this way, place becomes an ideological construct, and hence we need to take into consideration the distinctive meanings ascribed to a place, and the power relations that make those meanings possible. For the concept of power, we shall not tum to Foucauldian analysis of power relations between social structures and institutions and the individuals, but to Tim Cresswell's analysis of "the relationships between place and sociocultural power" (8). Cresswell, in the Introduction to In Place/Out of Place, explains tlie relationship between place and ideology. He observes, "Place can play a role in the maintenance of all ideologies and the power relations they support" (Cresswell, In Place/Out ofPlace, 15). Place is not just a spatial referent or geographical matter, he argues, rather it intersects with sociocultural expectations, and these expectations are, "the components in the construction, maintenance, and evolution of ideological values" (3-4). Hence, there is invariably an existence of what is nOlmative in a place, which is taken for granted and considered as natural and commonsensical. People consider any deviation from the commonsensical assumptions, or pre-defined meaning, as bad, and thereby tum toward the traditional sets of ideas, beliefs, opinions, and values to strengthen the ideological position. According to Cresswell, maintenance of the ideological position follows a process: first, a place exists with a particular set of meanings; then, deviation from the particular, which people consider or judge as clash of cultural values, takes place; [mally, a dominant social group attempts to strengthen the ideological position (8). He uses the term 'transgression' to designate this process. In other words, as he argues, transgression "serves to foreground the mapping of ideology onto space and place", and this foregrounding of ideological mapping is the politics of place (In Place/Out of Place, 9). After tlie Ao-Nagas encountered

1 04

Stones and Ao-Naga Culture

development, they have attempted to strengthen their traditional sociocultural expectations of the place. Ao's stone-poems represent this ideological position of the Ao-Nagas. The representation of place exercises ideological power. W. J. T. Mitchell in Landscape and Power (2002) attempts to study the representational aspects of place in contemporary cultural studies. He considers the representation of place as landscape. His aim at changing the concept of landscape from a noun to a verb (Imperial Landscape, 1), as he proposes in the introduction to this book, expresses his intention of bringing dynamism and action to the passive nominal usage of the word. He observes that, "landscape exerts a subtle power over people, eliciting a broad range of emotions and meanings that may be difficult to specify", and also that, "the background within which a figure, fOlTIl, or narrative act emerges, landscape exerts the passive force of setting, scene, and sight" (vii). Besides active participation, he has also pointed out that landscape influences both affect and emotions. He further observes that landscape is a culturally constructed image of a place held by the people, that is, such Images are not neutral, but loaded with political functions and power relations: Landscape as a cultural medimn thus has a double role with respect to something like ideology: it naturalizes a cultural and social construction, representing an artificial world as if it were simply given and inevitable, and it also makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in some more or less determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site (2).

Landscape is the culturally constructed representation of a specific place. The relationship between place and culture makes it evident that a particular community lays cultural claim on a particular place. The community demarcates the boundary of the place, and defends it from external aggression. A community having claim on a particular place, demarcating boundaries and defending it from external aggression, are distinctive features of territoriality (Delaney 36-37, Gold, 44). Pedro Garcia Hierro observes that territoriality is, "an essential existential dimension" for indigenous peoples, and the most important part of social organization (248). Ao's stone-poems express the materiality of Ao-Naga culture, and we shall look into Ao's stone-poems through the geographical concepts of place, landscape and territory.

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The Stone-Poems: Place and Culture

As we have seen, the Ao-Nagas believe that the entire community is born out of six stones. In Ao's stone-poems, the representation of stones is animated through a unique representation of the landscape where the stones are located. In the third stanza of When a Stone Wept, Ao briefly describes the landscape: the stones are born on 'a mossy bank' (12) of a river, flowing through the 'hill' (11). The description of the landscape is idyllic, and thereafter in the seventh stanza of the poem, she alludes to the myth of the Lungterok: Little stones of various sizes issued From her huge expanse making her 'Mother' not only to man but the little stones too (26-28).

In these lines, Ao refers to the process of birth of stones, and in line 28, she speaks of the maternity of the stones. In Stone-Peoplefrom Lunr;terok, like When a Stone Wept, Ao alludes to the myth of the Lungterok: Lungterok, The six stones "Where the progenitors And forebears Of the stone-people Were born Out of the womb Of the earth (1-8).

In Stone-People from Lungterok, although Ao does not describe the landscape, she describes in detail the origin of the Ao-Nagas from the six stones. In Ao-Naga language, 'poktet' means 'emerge out', 'burst out', 'give birth', or 'issue forth'. In both the poems, Ao emphasizes the phenomenon of 'pokte!'. In Stone-People from Lungterok, she uses the word 'born' and in When a Stone Wept, she uses 'issued from', By employing the phenomenon of 'pokte!' she emphasizes the communal attachment of the Ao-Nagas with the stones. She describes the origin myth in detail to attest the traditional meaning ascribed to the place. Following Cresswell, this ascription of traditional meaning to a place refers to the first step in the maintenance of the ideological position. In Prayer of a Monolith, Ao describes the transition from the traditional image of stones and natural distribution of the region to the destruction of the stones and the transformation of the landscape. This poem represents

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the fate of the single stone, the 'monolith' of the title, and the stone symbolizes the general fate of the stones of the region. The narration is in first person, that is, the monolith narrates its O\Vll experience: I stand at the village gate In mockery of my former state. Once I stood in a deep forest Proud and content My beloved of the laughing dimple Standing by my side (1-6).

The first two lines describe the present location of the stone, and the next four lines describe the past forest landscape and the mutual relationship between different objects of nature. In line 3, Ao describes the relationship between the stone and the forest, and in line 5, the relationship between the stone and the lightning: "It is only a dimple/Left by a passing lightning" (21-22). From these lines, we come to know that the 'laughing dimple' is a crack developed due to lightning. All these relationships express an image of a hatmonious landscape. Ao next describes the agents of change which have altered the past landscape into its present form. She describes the violence involved in changing the traditional landscape. One day some strangers Carne poking and prying Stabbing at a mmmd here And sizing up a boulder there (7-10).

The word 'strangers' is important, because it identifies these newcomers as outsiders; external forces. The word 'poking' conveys a sense of jabbing and prodding, and 'prying' conveys a sense of meddling with the subjectivity of the stone. Through this image, Ao describes the technological aggression on the Ao-Naga region, and the consequent loss of peace and harmony that is found in lines 3 to 6. This shift from tradition to modernity is finther brought out through 'stabbing', which is an image of extreme violence and gory attack. The phrase 'sizing up', and the prepositions 'here' and 'there', bring out the forced uprootment of stones from their innate natural location. This image of dislocation becomes further explicit in the following lines: They dislodged me from my moorings They tore me from her side They chipped and chiseled

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They gave me altered dimensions (25-28).

Ao's anaphoric paradigmatic arrangement-pronoun (third person plural) 'they' + past form of verbs ('dislodged', 'tore', 'chipped and chiseled', and 'gave') + personal pronoun 'me'-emphasizes the relationship between 'they' and 'me'. While 'dislodged' and 'tore' refer to the process of dislocation from the 'moorings', the words 'chipped' and 'chiseled' imply the use of mechanization inflicting disfigurement, or the loss of natural form. Ao emphasises the relationship between 'they' and 'me' in all the lines, except in the third, where 'me' is only implied. Through this pronominal usage, Ao establishes the communal identity of the Ao-Nagas, and identifies the intruding forces as threats to identity. All the verbs imply a caustic acrimonious sense. In this poem, Ao refers to the transition from the living procreative stones of the creation myth to the destruction of the stones. The poem Illusion, included in the collection Songs of Many Moods (1995), describes the destruction of stones after the adoption of development. In Illusion, the dung-beetle, the snail, and the stone, interact with each other, and they discuss their intense observations of the activities of other neighbouring members. The interaction symbolizes the closeness among the insects and members of nature, and makes explicit their knowledge of mutual sustenance. Ao eventually describes the fate of the dung-beetle, the snail, and the stone, after the advent of industrialization: Then the road-builders came And slapped sticks of dynamite To his underbelly . . . . . . . . . . . . (60-62).

Ao uses 'road-builders' as a symbol of the agents of development, and 'dynamite' as a symbol of the destructive power of modem technology. Through the twelve ellipses, Ao tries to convey that while development demands improvement of road communication, it does so at the cost of the loss of communication in the natural world. The destruction of the stones means denial of the 'poktet' of Lungterok, and rejection of the significance of Along Tsungrem among the Ao-Nagas. In Prayer of a Monolith and Illusion, Ao describes the deviation from socio-cultural expectation and clash of cultural values. Cresswell considers this deviation from the socio­ cultural expectations of the people as the second stage of transgression.

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After the second stage of transgression, at the third stage, a dominant social group attempts to retrieve the socio-cultural expectations of the people. Ao describes the attempt of the Ao-Nagas to retrieve the socio­ cultural expectations of the Ao-Nagas. The last two stanzas of the poem When a Stone Wept powerfully express the demand for a territory where the Ao-Nagas can live peacefully: Turning it into a graveyard of the earth "Where an abandoned stone-mother And her dismvned children still conspire To create a shroud of stones Where no elements can ever encroach To rejuvenate life nor re-furbish This barren patch ofusmped land "Where a stone-mother and her children Have absolute domination (1 19-27).

Although in the third stanza, as we have seen earlier, the landscape is peaceful and hatmonious, the landscape described in the last two stanzas of the poem is extremely bleak and gloomy. After the infliction of technological violence and destruction on the traditional landscape, the present landscape looks like 'a graveyard' and a 'barren land'. Ao uses the word 'encroach' to highlight the externality of the aggression. Nevertheless, the 'stone-mother' and her 'stone-children' (96) work together to defend the region from external aggression. Interestingly, the italicized last line of the poem emphasizes the demand of the Ao-Nagas, the children of stone, for a territory. The demand for territory expresses the existential anxiety of the Ao-Nagas, and an attempt to strengthen the ideological position of the place. Through territorial claim, Ao engages in a complex negotiation with the place which has undergone physical transformation. The traditional place symbolises the cultural strength of the community. The politics of place in the Ao-Naga social context is a discursive attempt to resist transgression to maintain the nOlmative. Since "the very history of the Naga people, their religion and entire social life is shaped by their oral tradition" (Longkumer, 1 1), the dominant discourse of the Ao-Naga oral tradition is instrumental in interpreting and lUlderstanding the place. In the Ao-Naga context, the stories of the oral tradition enliven the place. The myth of the Lungterok is inextricably attached to the region and the emotions of the Ao-Nagas. Ao in Prayer of a Monolith and When a Stone Wept represents the traditional image of the cultural landscape, and Stone People from Lungterok and When a Stone Wept symbolize the emotional

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relationality and cultural engagement of the Ao-Nagas with the traditional landscape. The Ao-Nagas' maternal bond with tbe stones constitutes tbe particularity of meaning attached to the place. However, in Prayer Qf a Monolith and Illusion, Ao represents tbe impact of development which has radically transformed the place; that is, the fonner traditional landscape is transfonned to an industrialized landscape. Development, triggered by global economic forces, is inattentive to the social meanings and cultural specificities; it promotes consumer culture to the effect that it commodifies nature (de Rivero, 19, Escobar, 44). In Prayer of a Monolith, the word 'strangers' connotes tbe lack of knowledge of the strangers about the cultural significance of stones to tbe Ao-Nagas. As Ao shows in Illusion, the blowing up of the stones, through destructive technology such as 'dynamite' for tbe purpose of 'road-building', explicates the commodification of nature and promotion of consumerism. Moreover, the blowing up of the stones is a deviation from the maternity of the stones; hence, the act of blowing up the stones is a clash of cultural values. In the final stage of transgression, as argued by Cresswell, a dominant social group intervenes to strengthen the ideological position. To strengtben tbe ideology of tbe place, Ao has turned to the indigenous significance of the origin myth. The selection of the origin myth explicates Ao's concern for the future of Ao-Naga culture. I. Sentinaro and N. D. R. Chandra, in their essay A Discourse on Ao -Naxa Folktales, review the significance of traditional mytbs and folktales among the Ao-Nagas at tbe present time, when their culture is undergoing violent changes. They observe that in recent times, "there has been a revival of these folklores . . . to retrieve tbe lost past and identity of the people as folklore is the most intrinsic part of that life connecting the past witb the present and going into the future" (235-36). This attempt at moulding the future is a significant concern among the Ao-Nagas, and this attempt is actualized through tbe revival of the traditional mytbs and folktales. Ao has selected the origin myth, tbe most significant aspect of the Ao-Naga ethnohistory. The selection of the historic subject to be represented requires serious deliberation and concern. Since history is considered to be a veritable document for the justification of the politics of place, the selection of the historic subjects for representation involves democratization and communal accountability. For indigenous peoples like the Ao-Nagas, who generally do not possess a written historical document, ethnohistory or oral history constitutes the most significant document. Ethnohistory, or oral history, is passed on orally from one generation to the other, and the community members retain the history in their memory. This retention of

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Stones and Ao-Naga Culture

the common history of a community in memory is called collective memory. Avishai Margalit observes that collective memory has, "a great deal to do with retaining the sensibility of the past", and by sensibility, he means, "the systematic way by which emotions were, and are, tied to the events remembered" (62). In his seminal book On Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs, who coined the telTIl 'collective memory', considers collective memory as a part of the social framework for memory, and an individual, being a part of the framework, participates in the social processes of recollection (38). Social process refers to, "the ongoing process whereby social groups 'map' their myths of self onto, and through, a place and time" (Till, 290). Social groups contest for the social mapping of memories in a place because the meanings of places are 'not stable in time or space', and in the process of social mapping, the politics of memory involve, "the ways and reasons groups attempt to 'fix' time and identity through the material and symbolic qualities of place" (Till, 290). Through the stone-poems, Ao foregrounds the culture-specific attributes of the place, and attempts to retrieve the traditional meaning of the place as a measure to resolve the changes in meaning, since the place has undergone material transfOlmation through development. The traditional place described in the origin myth has changed, but the content of the origin myth has not changed. In When a Stone Wept, Ao demands a territory as a solution to the present problem of cultural existence, since territory is a space of exclusiveness. Since place is crucial to the construction to identity formation, Ao considers preservation of the place as the only means to preserve identity. This intention for preservation of place is central to the demand for territory. John Gold argues that territory is a conservative process of socialization, which is inextricably related to identity (48). Moreover, as Gold further argues, territory conveys a sense of cultural continuity of the present with the past (55). The desire for continuation of culture through the consolidation of the territory is explicit in the last line of When a Stone Wept. Through the reclamation of the territory, she has tried to retrieve and re-establish her traditional cultural identity. In the last line of When a Stone Wept Ao uses the word 'domination' to signify a restricted space where her community can claim O\vnership and control of the place for traditional practices and social interactions. The Ao-Nagas are dispossessed of their tradition due to the rapid spread of industrialization and urbanization, and consequently they have demanded the reinstatement of their 0\Vll territory, where they can continue their traditional means of survival. The roots of Ao-Naga identity are

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intrinsically attached to the place, but the transformation of the place has generated a sense of emotional and physical dislocation. Through the reclamation of the territory, Ao is attempting to integrate the past with the present, in order to reconcile her community's mythical sense of place with the contemporary sense of place. Works Cited

Aier, Anungla, and Tiatoshi Jamir. "Re-interpreting the Myth of Longterok." Indian Folklife 33 (2009): 5-9. Print. Ao, Temsula. Songs that Try to Say. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1992. Print. Ao, Temsula. Songs of Many Moods. Kohima: Kohima Sahitya Sabha, 1995. Print. Ao, Temsula. Songsfrom Here and There. Shillong: NEHU Publications, 2003. Print. Ao, Temsula. Songs from the Other Life: Poems. Pune: Grasswork Books, 2007. Print. Ao, Temsula. The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. Baroda: Bhasha Publications, 1999. Print. Atkinson, David, et al. "On Cultural and Critical Geographies." Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts. Ed. David Atkinson et al. London and New York: LB. Tauris, 2005. vii-xviii. Print. Bhaumik, Subir. Troubled Periphery: Crisis of India 's North East. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2009. Print. Biswas, Prasenjit, and Chandan Suklabaidya. Ethnic Life-Worlds in North­ East India: An Analysis. Los Angeles: Sage, 2008. Print. Cosgrove, Denis E. "Towards a Radical Cultural Geography: Problems of Theory." Antipode 15.1 (1983): 1-1 1 . Print. Cresswell, Tim. In Place/Out Of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Print. de Rivero, Oswaldo. The Myth of Development: The Non-viable Economies of the 21st Century. London: Zed Books, 2001. Print. Delaney, David. Territory: A Short Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print. Duncan, James S., Nuala C. Johnson and Richard H. Schein. "Introduction." A Companion to Cultural Geography. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004. Print. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1995. Print.

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Gold, John R. "Territoriality and Human Spatial Behaviour." Progress in Human Geography 6.1(1982): 44-67. Print. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. [1952]. Trans. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1992. Print. Hierro, Pedro Garcia. "Indigenous Territories: Knocking at the Gates of Law." The Land Within: Indigenous Territory and Perception 0/ Environment. Ed. Alexandre Surralles and Pedro Garcia Hierro. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2005. 248-76. Print. Hussain, Monirul. Interrogating Development: State, Displacement and Popular Resistance in North EastIndia. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008. Print. Jackson, Peter. Maps o/Meaning: An Introduction to Cultural Geography. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Print. Jackson, Peter. "Rematerializing Social and Cultural Geography." Social and Cultural Geography 1 . 1 (2000): 9-14. Print. Kirsch, Scott. "Cultural Geography I: Materialist Turns." Progress in Human Geography 37.3 (2012): 433-41. Print. Longkumer, Lanusashi. "Oral Tradition in Contemporary Conflict Resolution: A Naga Perspective." Indian Folklife 33 (2009): 1 1-13. Print. Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics o/Memory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. Print. Mitchell, Don. "Historical Materialism and Marxism." A Companion to Cultural Geography. Ed. James S. Duncan, Nuala C. Johnson and Richard H. Schein. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 5 1-65. Print. Mitchell, W. J. T. "Imperial Landscape." Landscape and Power. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago and London: The U of Chicago P, 2002. 1-34. Print. Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. Landscape and Power. Chicago and London: The U of Chicago P, 2002. Print. Sentinaro, I., and N. D. R. Chandra. "A Discourse on Ao-Naga Folktales." Journal 0/ Literature, Culture and Media Studies 2.3(2010): 227-36. Inflibnet. Web. 27 Dec. 2012. Till, Karen E. "Places of Memory." A Companion to Political Geography. Ed. John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell and Gerard Toal. Maiden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 289-301. Print. Whatmore, Sarah. "Materialist Returns: Practising Cultural Geography in and for a more-than-human World." Cultural Geographies 13 (2006): 600-09. Print. Wylie, John. "Cultural Geographies of the Future, or Looking Rosy and Feeling Blue." Cultural Geographies 17.2 (2010): 21 1-17. Print.

GENDER PERSPECTIVES

NEGOTIATING THE OTHERS AS/IN THE SELVES: LIMINAL SUBJECTIVITIES IN POST-INDEPENDENCE INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY BY WOMEN ARNAB BHATTACHARYA

What actually constitutes the subjectivity of a subject? The subject's consciousness of the self is never rigidly defined, but is a process which evolves through several currents and cross-currents. Ontologically, in order to understand itself, Of, in order to be, a subject has to transcend hisJher state of innnanence, which is a state in which sJhe remains in a non-relational sphere of self-identification. It is an a priori state, a state of givenness, which is insular to knowledge. But knowledge is fundamentally the knowledge of objectivity which constitutes the relational field for the subject to emerge. Phenomenology critiques knowledge itself, exploring the possibility of knowledge to go beyond itself and connect with the object concerned. This possibility is a play of transcendence and correspondence with an inbuilt sense of ambiguity, as Edmund Husserl explains in Idea ofPhenomenology " . . . the possibility of knowledge, with regard to its ability to make contact with objectivity, is a riddle". (Husser! 1910, 25) The subject who is the knower is caught up in this riddle as hislher attempts to know are plagued with the problems of knowledge itself, and, as such, hisJher subjectivity is an arena of several knowing selves, forever trying to come to telTIlS with each other. HisJher identity is thus a function of differences, both ontological and epistemological, which converge and diverge alternately. What Martin Heidegger defines as 'onto­ theology' in his Identity and Difference is a way of perceiving how Being, with a capital B, is given over all beings which "appear by virtue of their differences" (Heidigger 1969, 64), which come over to the originary Being in transparency, and yet preserving their distinctiveness. Heidegger calls this 'coming over' 'arrival' which, in Heideggerian telTIls, means, "to keep concealed in unconcealedness-to abide present in this keeping- to be a being" (ibid., 64).

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Language acts out this dilemma of the knowing subject; in fact, it is language which projects the subjects' knowing selves onto the speaking selves, making the subjective identity articulable in telTIlS of differences, and also mapping out the areas of possible and impossible negotiations. This will be understood if we follow Jaques Lacan's conceptualisation of the Freudian unconscious. Sigmund Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams, takes note of two main ways in which images work in a dream: by condensation which occurs when a symbol represents one or more things; and by displacement which occurs when the symbol takes the place of something else. Roman Jakobson, the Russian formalist, interprets these in two linguistic telTIls: metaphor, which substitutes one telTIl for another, and metonymy, which connects one telTIl with another associated with it. Lacan builds on the Freudian unconscious by proclaiming that. "the unconscious is structured like a language" (Lacan 1981, 20) and works not exactly in the way that Freud charted out. In Lacanian algorithm, the 'dynamics' of the language ensure a constant traffic between the subjective sel£!selves and its/their potential others, problematising the very identifying machinery based on the principle of distinction. In Lacan's words, "The 'other' is the locus in which is situated the chain of the signifier that governs whatever may be made present of the subject-it is the field of that living being in which the subject has to appear" (ibid., 203). And this radically revolutionised the concept of the unconscious for Lacan. 'Whatever impulses and drives Freud believed were locked in the unconscious, getting only qualified and accidental accesses to the conscious, were, according to Lacan, pelTIlanent residents on the borderline of the consciousness itself. In his Eerits, Lacan explains that a child encounters his self for the first time when sJhe sees hisJher reflection in the mirror. This stage of the child's consciousness Lacan calls 'the mirror stage' or 'imaginary', which is a pre-verbal, undifferentiated stage in which the child has a unified sense of subjectivity with only an inchoate sense of others. In Eerits, Lacan describes this stage as the fOlTIlative one, whose function is to "establish a relation between an organism and its reality-. or, as they say, between the 'Innenwelt' and 'Umwelt'" (Lacan 1989, 3). When the child comes to use the language, s!he, according to Lacan, enters the 'symbolic order', where sJhe gets a precise sense of others, and also ofhisJher self in relation, and in contradistinction, to those others. Apart from these two, there is another realm of individual consciousness, which Lacan calls 'the real', which is a pre-given, is always already there, a sort of hold-all from which the symbolic makes selective use of material. Thus, Lacan's 'symbolic order' is the sphere in which the knowing selves of a subject 'arrive' at the speaking selves in the

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Heideggerian sense, in which the fOlmer identify themselves in the latter, but not quite. Julia Kristeva, in Revolution in Poetic Language, makes for a Lacanian interpretation of the signifying process which links the knowing selves to the speaking selves. In Kristeva's telTIlinology, the signifying process operates in two realms, one of which is the semiotic, which is a non-metric space with a whirling pool of energy; in Kristeva's words, a "rhythmic space with no thesis and no position" (Kristeva 1984, 26) which roughly corresponds to the Platonic concept of chara in his dialogue Timaeus, and the other being the symbolic, which is the linguistic realm of orderly communication. In Kristeva's analysis, these two realms are linked by a phase called 'thetic' which, in her words, exists as "the precondition of signification, i.e., the precondition for the positing of language" (ibid., 48). The liminality of subjectivity is a thetic membrane between the knowing selves (here knowledge implies immanent knowledge trying to transcend itself) and the speaking selves, one arriving at the other. With this theoretical premise in place I will now proceed to study how, in post-Independence Indian English poetry by women, the feminine subjectivity is 'theticised', with cross-overs taking place between knowing/perceiving selves and the speaking selves, precipitating what Kristeva calls "Ie sujet en proces" translated as "subject in process/on trial". In poems selected for my study, I will attempt to show this trial as an interplay and contestation of putative, mutative and substitutive elements of feminine subjectivity which, while negotiating with potential others, come to view them as and in the selves. To begin with, I will consider a poem titled Introduction, by Kamala Das. In the poem, the poetic persona presents the apparently incoherent traits of her subjectivity. Her self-identifying machinery functions with several operating systems through which the knowing selves are theticised into her speaking self as some identified others are introjected into corresponding immanent selves. Let us examine the concluding lines: Who are you, I ask each and everyone, The answer is, it is 1. Anywhere and, Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I in this world, he is tightly packed like the Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the

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Negotiating the Others as/in the Selves Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I (P-l 1).

This is a brilliant manifestation of the semiotic leaking into the symbolic, of the knowing selves of the poetic persona, the subjective Being with a capital B giving over, rather overwhelming, the speaking self to which the 'others' as objects appear in transparency of differences. The knowing selves expand the speaking self, which is the Freudian ego, to the effect that it encompasses and accepts the conventionally perceived others as and in themselves. The poetic logic is simple---if all the knowing selves are called I's by their corresponding speaking selves, if the symbolic order pertaining to speaking selves preserves no distinction among these ubiquitous I's, why should the symbolic order and speaking selves not accept that all I's are fundamentally isomorphic as the knowing selves and the semiotic would have us believe? The liminal subjectivity of the poetic persona here unscabbards the self which is tightly packed 'like a sword in its sheath', playing, even collapsing, the personal pronouns like 'he', 'you', and '!', one into the other, making the putative elements of subjectivity give way to the mutative. In a celebrated article "Women's Time", which was later included in her book, New Maladies of the Soul (1993), with certain modifications, Kristeva conceptualises women's subjectivity as a vector of two times: one cyclical, related to the idea of motherhood, and the other monumental, related to that of reproduction. Kristeva contrasts these with the linear time which is related to the idea of teleology, project and progression, and which is a function of the symbolic order whose surface structure is language, which is nothing if not, as Toril Moi explains, "an enunciation of a sequence of words". (Moi 1986, 187, emphasis author's) It follows qinte logically that only women's time is capable of generating a multiplicity for subjecthood, of enabling the self/selves to refract into its/their others, and eventually to assimilate them. This is subjectivity whose liminality can comfortably accommodate conceptual antinomies by way of upturning the power relations characterizing the symbolic order. Writing about Louis-Ferdinand Celine, the controversial French author of the twentieth century, Kristeva writes, in Powers of Horror (1982), that his uinverse was one "of fragile and mingled identities", existing "at the turning point of social and asocial, familial and delinquent" (Kristeva 1982, 135). When the speaking self of Kamala Das' poem says, "I am sinneril am saint. I am the beloved and thelBetrayed", it touches on that turning point. Now I will turn to another poem by Kamala Das: The Doubt. The opening lines run thus:

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\¥hen a man is dead, or a woman, We call the corpse not he Or she, but it. Does it Not mean that we believe That only the sollis have sex and that Sex is invisible (Das, 12).

Here the poetic persona is driven by what the existentialists love to call 'body-consciousness' which in neurological sense IS telTIled as 'propriocepsis', something which is associated with a subject's feeling of 'being' a body rather than of 'having' a body. When the body is without that consciousness it is virtually desexed, because, as Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble, contrary to the thinking of the Second Wave feminists, "gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which 'sexed nature' or 'a natural sex' is produced and established as 'prediscursive', prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts" (Butler 1990, 11, emphasis author's). Since gender which 'produces' sex discursively is itself produced by consciousness, it follows that when the body is without consciousness, like the corpse, it is desexed, and therefore becomes an 'it'. This being the case, the subjective gendered identity emerging out of the symbolic order becomes a fragile, volatile and disintegrative construct, putative subjectivity turns substitutive, and the speaking self of the poetic subject upturns language itself: . . . . . . Is she A male who with frail hands Clasps me to her breast, while The silence in her sickroom, turning Eloquent, accuses Me of ingratitude? And, is he female who After love, srnoothes out the bed sheets with Finicky hands and plucks From pillows strands of hair? (13).

This substitutive subjectivity has a ring of subversion carrying along the Butlerian notion of 'performativity' which, according to Butler, is a political act, "destabilizing substantive identity, and depriving the naturalizing narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: 'man' and 'woman' (ibid., 187). The result is a mixture of self-pity and self-parody of the speaking self of the subject who surrenders to its knowing selves in the concluding lines:

120

Negotiating the Others as/in the Selves . . . . . . what am I in sex who shuttles Obsessively from his Stabs to recovery In her small silent room? (13).

The two poems of Kamala Das that I have studied here thus demonstrate two types of liminal subjectivity in which others partake of the self; one mutative, born out of the circularity of the 'women's time', and the other substitutive, emerging out of a perceived perfOlmativity of the 'gender' act. The next poem which I will examine is Mamta Kalia's Anonymous. I no longer feel I'm Mamta Kalia. I'm Kamla or Virnla or Kanta or Shanta. I cook, I wash, I bear, I rear, I nag, I wag, I sulk, I sag. I see worthless movies at reduced rates And feel happy at reduced rates (26).

Here again, we come across substitutive subjectivity, and here again, the mixture of self-pity and self-parody of the speaking self of the subject becomes evident. The names 'Kamla', 'Vimla', 'Kanta', 'Shanta' with parodic rhymes in two pairs, are polynomials of the subject which has presumably been deflected from herself. The subject's sense of anonymity is consequent upon the dissolution of what she recognises as her essential '1' in her substitutive polynomials, who undertake gender performances in parodic repetitions which are not 'disruptive' but "domesticated and circulated as instruments of cultural hegemony" (Das 1990, 177). In another poem of hers, titled Compulsion, Manlta Kalia gives vent to just the opposite type of parody, which is disruptive and subversive. I want to pick my nose in a public place I want to sit in my office chair with my feet up I want to slap the boy who makes love in a cafe I want to throw away all my cosmetics I want to reveal my real age (Kalia, 21).

Amab Bhattacharya

This poem,

significantly enough,

is unpunctuated,

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underscoring the

poem's subj ect-in-process who, in the first part of the poem, commits herself to a socially affronting gender performance, parodying the power structure which makes such phallocentric gestures such as picking the nose in public and sitting in the office chair with feet up, a male prerogative, and also acting out the feminine desire to gain access to that phallus (1) in the Lacanian sense of the telTIl. The last four lines represent more a revolt than a parody, and that against the phallocentric construction of feminity with the twin props of youth and beauty. The unpunctuated breathlessness of the speaking self suggests an onrush of the semiotic into the symbolic, and a virtual invasion of the speaking self by the others so as to be parts of it. Now, let me consider a poem by Imtiaz Dharker which underscores the fupturist/distinctive function of the language, so characteristic of the symbolic. Her point is that it is the language, language mouthed, i.e., language beyond the Kristevan 'thetic' intermediary, which spells doom to the pervasivelintegrative sensibility which can accommodate everything as the manifestation of the same self, and dissolve the conflict between knowing seWselves and its/their corresponding speaking seW selves. I am quoting the poem

Words Find Mouths in full.

Things were meant to flow one from another. They were meant to grow into one another; to know the taste and feel of being part of one vast whole. All that stopped when words fmmd mouths, when tongues wagged their way into minds, and each object shrank, suddenly, to fit its own precise outline. You could say that was when the trouble started: \¥hen things stepped into the cage of a pillpose I must have had somewhere in my mind (Dharker, 54). This is an unsparing, virulent incrimination of words/language for its defilement of the conjunctive space of living, for its shrinkage of the

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accommodative existence. Being a woman of the Muslim community, and an immigrant as well, Dharker was a victim of both gender and racial discrimination, and had to reconcile herself to an 'otherised' existence in a number of ways. And she traces the root of this to the use of language, which, going by Saussurean structuralism, constructs meaning only through a process of differentiation. When somebody says 'Muslim', for this word to mean something, it has to differentiate itself from words like 'Hindu', 'Christian' or 'non-Muslim'. Similarly, a word like 'woman' can only have sense if it successfully distinguishes itself from words like 'man' or 'eunuch' . Very often, words with their unmitigated thrust of meaning crush all other possibilities of signification which stand apart from their very specific agendas of meaning-manufacturing. In the second chapter of his magisterial Identity and Violence, entitled Making Sense of Identity, Amartya Sen has cautioned against such identitarian politics which with violence executes its twin malevolent functions of 'identity disregard' (2) and 'singular affiliations'(3) (Sen 2006, 1 8-39). This politics is subsumed under an inescapably overarching, ovemmnoevring politics of language, which imposes such a relentlessly inviolable dogma on things, that they, which were originally, i.e., in their pre-discursive/pre-linguistic existence, meant to 'flow one from another' and 'grow into one another', came to be rigidly defined, stultifyingly qualified, made to fit into 'precise outline(s)'. And this conspiracy is hatched within that 'cage of a purpose' inherent in the mind which seeks specifications of identity, quantifications of attributes, graphics of relationships, all of which are self-defeating and self-deluding enterprises. For every specification of a thing, or an attribute worth its name, is, on principle, a notorious de-specification of some other things or some other attributes---we highlight certain things only to undermine/obfuscate certain other things, we call somebody a 'woman' if only to ensconce her subjectivity within that reductionist/over-simplistic 'cage of a purpose' with the effect of ignoring things she has in common with a 'man' from whom she is differentiated; we call somebody a 'Muslim' which can have validity only within that 'cage of a purpose' which invalidates his commonality with a 'Hindu' or a 'Christian'. Dharker, in this poem, shows what exactly thwarts the mutation or substitution of sUbjectivity. In another poem of hers titled Minority, Dharker probes the possibility of recapturing this socially aborted 'taste or feel of being a part of one vast whole' in a desperately agonised tone of soul-searching. She writes: And so I scratch, scratch through the night, at this growing scab of black and white.

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Everyone has the right to infiltrate a piece of paper. A page doesn't fight back. And, who knows, these lines may scratch their way into your head--through all the chatter of community .. lUltil, one day, you meet the stranger sidling do"Wll yom street, realize you know the face simplified to bone, look into its outcast eyes and recognize it as your O\Vll (Dharker, 58-59).

This represents a personal revolt of a poet, revolt of the scratched paper against community's habit of inventing strangers, of constructing others. Even as 'sex' is not a 'politically neutral surface' according to Butler, Dharker fmds such an unreal, asocial surface in a scrap of paper into which some socially arcane meanings can be scratched, and which will endure these grotesque acts of personal revolt without 'fighting back'. ' Scratching' is the key word here, for tbat is the only thing that an individual can do in hisiher own capacity, the only possible political act by which sJhe can exist as himseWherself, the only possible means to destabilise parameters that calcify subjectivity within 'precise outlines', and to discredit the barrier preventing the knowing selves from 'arriving' at their potential others. Helene Cixous' project ecriture feminine is built on this principle of dismantling the intralinguistic power structure through a kind of writing which Cixous calls 'feminine', which obviously does not refer to texts written exclusively by women, or to any specific style of their writing, but to a philosophy or an economy of texts which makes the subjective selves exist in closest proximity of their potential others without the latter having to sacrifice/surrender their differences. In fact, the recognition of differences prevents neither the subjects, nor the others, from feeling themselves as parts of a 'vast whole', it arouses a sense of wonder in both parties rather than pity or horror, or, for that matter, revulsion. This is realizable only in a poetic language which sabotages the deep-seated and far-reaching intralinguistic power structure, short-circuits its differentiating appliances tbrough its magic of metaphor-. a language which Dharker scribbles in, rather 'scratches' into, the non-combative, non-complaining white paper, a language whose potency overwhelms Cixous in Coming to Writing: "There is a language tbat I speak and that speaks (to) me in all tongues. A language unique and universal that

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resounds in each national tongue when a poet speaks it. In each tongue, there flows milk and honey. And this language I know, I don't need to enter it, it surges from me, it flows, it is the milk of my love, the honey of my unconscious. The language that women speak when no one is there to correct them" (Cixous 1991, 21). A little later in the same essay, Cixous elaborates on her 'milk and honey language': "Languages pass into my tongue, understand one another, call to one another, touch and alter one another, tenderly, timidly, sensually; blend their personal pronouns together, in the effervescence of differences" (ibid., 21). The adjectives Cixous uses here set up her case clearly against the aggressive, imperceptive, confrontational interaction between cultures. And the antidote to this, in Cixous's prescription, is the anodyne of the very feminine 'milk and honey' language which can make the knowing selves of a subjecct really 'arrive' at their potential others. The 'effervescence of differences' will then, surely, not be the obliteration of differences, but of the sentiments/perceptions which make these appear threatening or despicable. This is what Cixous calls 'singular feminine unconscious' which makes the selves 'open up' to their others in such a way that they become embodied in a 'vast whole'. In her essay, "Clarice Lispector: The Approach", she writes, "So woman is: the woman-and-the-other. Living ensemble, impersonal, that carmot be summarized" (ibid., 71). In fact, the lived experiences of Imtiaz Dharker and Helene Cixous have something strikingly similar; both have been 'subaltemized', not only sexually, but also linguistically and culturally. Both have had to live through identities thrust on them by agencies beyond their control, and, by continuous shuttling through these identities, they came to know the shallowness, the callowness, the crassness, and the brutalities these stood for, and sought to perpetuate. And each in her own way traced the root of this identitarian politics to language, not only the language we speak and are spoken to in, but the language in which we perceive, we understand, we rationalise, we explain things to others and to ourselves; in short, the language of reason which nips in the bud the possibilities of mutation and substitution within the subject and its knowing selves. This language was fostered in, and by, the Enlightenment rationality, and was foisted on human perception, which pigeonholed identities in the manner described by John Locke in the chapter "Identity and Difference", in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2004): "When we see anything to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects: and in this consists IDENTITY". The arrogant assertion that identity consists in "that

Amab Bhattacharya

125

very thing, and not another", the unwavering confidence in

the

identity

which makes for the corralling of subj ecthood, because the continuous swapping and sweeping, swaying, and swamping of the 'selves' by their 'others' run counter to the ambitious and 'rationalistic' Enlightenment project. Patriarchy and nationalism are its twin products which need 'rationally' constricted fOlmations of identity in order to survive, and to keep their oppressive machinery rolling forever.

A

little later in the same

chapter, Locke says, "That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse." (ibid.). Locke is much too keen here to point out which things are the 'same' and which are 'diverse', paying absolutely no attention to what the elements of diversity exactly are, to whether or not these conceal a fundamental unity of purpose at a deeper layer

of meaning-making.

This

is

the

most

serious

flaw

of the

Enlightemnent project, from which the rot sets in; all other off-shoots of this project inherit this, and, as such, are being plagued by some serious limitations and self-contradictions from the very beginning. passage from Advancement

ofLearning by Francis Bacon (1605),

A

brief

another

high priest of the Enlightemnent, may be worth considering:

Let us consider again the false appearances imposed upon us by every man's 0\Vll individual nature and custom in that feigned supposition that Plato maketh of the cave; for certainly if a child were continued in a grot or cave lUlder the earth until maturity of age, and came suddenly abroad, he would have strange and absmd imaginations. So, in like manner, although om persons live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits are included in the caves of om 0\Vll complexions and customs, which minister lUltO us infinite errors and vain opinions if they be not recalled to examination. But hereof we have given many examples in one of the errors, or peccant humoms, which we ran briefly over in om first book (Bacon 2004, 209). Bacon does not hesitate in equating 'every man's individual nature and custom' with the Platonian cave why should 'our

0\Vll

(4)

and calling it 'feigned supposition'. But

complexions and customs ' be treated as our respective

'caves', why should they always 'minister unto us infinite errors and vain opinions ' as Bacon would have us believe? And why should there be only

one

heaven, and not many which are distinct, and yet capable of 'arriving'

at one another?

I am not advocating here an absolute cultural relativism, but

opposing the rigid framework of cultural evaluation according to a universal standard, or, in Clifford Geertz' s words, a 'unifOlmativist' structure.

Interpretation of Cultures (1973),

In

Geertz makes culture out to be the most

primordial constituent of human subjectivity, defIning culture

as

"accumulated

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Negotiating the Others as/in the Selves

fund of significant symbols". (Geertz 1973, 49) He defines man as a 'cultural artifact' because, "such symbols are thus not mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of our biological, psychological, and social existence; they are prerequisites of it. Without men, no culture. Certainly; but equally, and more significantly, witbout culture, no men" (ibid., 49). If culture is so deeply ingrained in man, then it follows naturally that the sets of symbols it represents and deploys will be different, and that is the reason why the title of Geertz's book contains the word 'cultures' instead of 'culture'. There can be, in fact there are, some underlying principles in these sets of symbols which have certain things in common, and it is in telTIlS of these principles (which he calls 'unconscious structure' in Structural Anthropology) tbat Claude Levi-Strauss compares cultural anthropology to linguistics. Somewhat akin to this 'unconscious structure' is Geertz's conceptulization of the 'life of feeling' in the chapter "The Growtb of Culture and tbe Evolution of Mind", in Interpretation of Cultures: "And it is tbe continuity of tbought that systematises our emotional reactions into attitudes with distinct feeling tones, and sets a certain scope for the individual's passions. In other words: by virtue of our thought and imagination we have not only feelings, but a life offeeling" (ibid., 81 , emphasis author's). Obviously, in Geertzian analysis, the journey of the mind is from 'tbought and imagination' towards 'a life of feeling', which is just tbe reverse route of that charted out in Cartesian philosophy. Rene Descartes writes, in Principles of Philosophy (1644), "By the word thought, I understand all tbat which so takes place in us that we of ourselves are immediately conscious of it; and, accordingly, not only to understand (INTELLIGERE, ENTENDRE), to will (VELLE), to imagine (IMAGINARl), but even to perceive (SENTIRE, SENTIR), are here tbe sarne as to think (COGITARE, PENSER)" (Descartes 2003, 48) It is this mode of 'rational' thinking, as an all-subsuming, all-subjugating mental condition which has scant regard for ' a life of feeling' and for that 'unconscious structure', which is propelled more or less by the same motive to produce different sets of symbols for different cultures that makes differences between 'selves' and their potential 'others' (which are merely differences at the superficial level of cultural manifestations) so monstrous, so appalling, so repressive, so irreconcilable. Perhaps, I have talked a lot more than I should have. Before I take leave with due apology, I beg to quote one more poem. This one is by Anmdliati Subramaniam, and is titled Home:

Amab Bhattacharya

1 27

Give me a horne that isn't mine, where I can slip in and out of rooms without a trace, never worrying about the phunbing, the coloill' of the cmtains, the cacophony of books by bedside. A horne that I can wear lightly, where the rooms aren't clogged with yesterday's conversations, where the self doesn't bloat to fill in the crevices. A horne, like this body, so alien when I try to belong, so hospitable when I decide I'rnjust visiting (Subramaniam 2008, 164).

This is a clever recipe for the knowing selves to 'arrive' at their potential others bypassing the linguistic chicanery/perversion of the speaking selves. As Subramaniam suggests, the selves need to devise identities for themselves which will fit them only loosely, will give them enough breathing space, to which they will not try to belong; for a speaking self it will be like that home where sJhe "can slip in and out rooms/without trace", and whose rooms themselves "aren't clogged/with yesterday's conversations". This will be a 'home' which sJhe will visit rather lovingly, but not inhabit; prize, but never possess. Only in such a space the selves will not 'bloat' to fill in 'crevices', can be accommodative of, and afford to be submerged aslin, the others contrary to that tightly-binlt and neatly­ fashioned, closeted and asphyxiating identitarian home-space which insists on the distantiation of the selves and their potential others, simply because it can hardly aspire to house more than a few enunciatory straggling­ struggling fragments of diversified knowing selves. It is this non­ identitarian, 'hospitable' home spirit which characterises ecriturefeminine and Kristeva's 'women's time', and this is what I have been trying to tease out of the poetic corpus of women writing in English in post-Independence India.

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Notes 1 . Phallus: In Lacanian algorithm this term, though literally meaning 'male genitalia', is used metaphorically to imply the SOlUTe and/or locus of power in a patriarchic set-up. Thus it is eminently possible that, like a man, a woman can have access to phallus to the extent she manages to internalise the patriarchic norms. 2. Identity disregard: A key term which Sen uses and expatiates on, in the said chapter, to lUlderpin the customary idiocy in making sense of identity. To quote Sen, "it takes the fonn of ignoring, or neglecting altogether, the influence of any sense of identity with others, on what we value and how we behave." (Sen, 20) This is what, to Sen's mind, is responsible for 'single-rnindedly self-seeking economic behavior' which is usually exalted not only in economic, but also in political, legal, and social theory. 3 . Singular affiliation: Another key concept, introduced and explained by Sen in the chapter. According to Sen, "it takes the fonn of assuming that any person preeminently belongs, for all practical purposes, to one collectivity only no more and no less" (Sen, 20). Sen rues that, despite the common knowledge that a 'real hurnan being' can belong to many groups at a time, the assurnption of 'singular affiliation' is immensely popular among social theorists. 4. Platonic cave: The concept of 'cave' occms in Book VII of Plato's The Republic, and arguably the most famous and most widely referred of Platonic analogies. Book VII begins with Socrates describing how the philosopher-king should be educated, and, all of a sudden, evokes the image of a cave to explain the state of mind of an average individual. He explains that man habitually inhabits the cave of ignorance in which he gets to see false and vague images of truth. To the extent he strives to acquire knowledge represented by the Sun and the Good (the former represents the world of senses while the latter that of reasoning), he moves upward towards the entrance of the cave, and gets rid of ignorance. In Book VII, Plato mentions two kinds of blindness: i) one caused by light when someone moves from darkness to light; and ii) the other caused by darkness when someone moves from light to darkness. Plato obviously prefers the first, and in fact prescribes it for man. Another important point about the acquisition of knowledge that Plato mentions here, is that imparting knowledge is not like giving eyes to the blind, but like turning the sight which one already had towards light, and thus it is only a matter of conversion or diversion, and not of im(trans)plantation. This concept of cave was immensely popular among Enlightenment thinkers, to which Bacon's passage bears ample testimony. But the problem is that neither Plato, nor his epistemological progenitors like Bacon, ever considered that, before being officially introduced to knowledge, man lives in a world of cultural set-up, having an unofficial/informal access to a system of knowledge represented by a specific set of symbols. This world certainly is not a 'cave' of darkness, but a 'heaven' of different light, and the issue here is not the jomney from darkness to light, but the mingling of different lights and the meeting of different heavens.

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Works Cited

Bacon, Francis, Advancement of Learning, an e-book (release date April, 2004 and number # 5500) retrieved from . Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. Cixous, Hel/me, "Coming to Writing " and Other Essays Ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman, tr. Sarah Cornell, Deborah Jenson, AIm Liddle and Susan Sellers. London: Harvard University Press, 1991. Print. Das, Kamala, "Introduction", Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology ed. Eunice De Souza.New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. -. "Doubt", Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology Ed. Eunice De Souza.New Delbi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. Descartes, Rene, Principles of Philosophy, an e-book (tL John Veitch, release date August, 2003 and number #4391) retrieved from . Dharker, Imtiaz, "Words Finf Mouths", Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology ed. Eunice De Souza. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. -. "Minority", Nine Indian Women Poets : An Anthology ed. Eunice De Souza. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. Geertz, Clifford, Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basil Books, 1973. Print. Heidegger, Martin. Identity and Difference (tL Joan Stambaugh). New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969. Print. Husser!, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology (tL Lee Hardy). London: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1910. Print. Kalia, Mamta, "Anonymous", Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology ed. Eunice De Souza. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. -. "Compulsion", Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology ed. Eunice De Souza.New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print. Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (tr. Leon S. Roudiez). New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Print. -. Revolution in Poetic Language (tr. Leon S. Roudiez). New York: Columbia University Press. 1984, Print. Lacan, Jacqes. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar ofJaques Lacan (Book XI) (ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, tr. Alan Sheridan. New York: W W Norton & Company, 1981. Print. -. Ecrits: A Selection (tr. Alan Sheridan). London: Routledge, 1989. Print.

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Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (Vol-I), an e­ book (release date: January 6, 2004 and number #10615) retrieved from Moi, Tori!. The Kristeva Reader (ed. Toril Moi). New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Print. Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin Books, 2006. Print. Subrarnaniarn, Arundbati. "Home", 60 Indian Poets Ed. by Jeet Thayi!. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008. Print.

PROBLEMATICS OF REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN JAYANTA MAHAPATRA'S POETRY SANDIPAN RAy CHOUDHURY

The uniqueness of Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry derives, above all, from his Indian sensibility, which itself is an outcome of his intimacy with his place and his preoccupation with the open earth he belongs to. It is for this reason that Syamsundar Padihari calls Mahapatra "a true poet of the soil" (Padihari, 168). While receiving his Sahitya Akademi Award, Mahapatra acknowledged his deep relationship with, and indebtedness to, Orissa: "To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past, and in which lies my beginning and my end.. .! acknowledge my debt and relationship" (quoted in Ganguly, 9). He speaks of his complete identification with his place in his poem Somewhere, My Man: A man does not mean anything But the place. Sitting on the river bank throwing pebbles into the muddy current a man becomes the place (MahapatraA Rain a/Rites, 42).

His poetry is replete with vivid portraits of the locale, the environ, and the landscapes of his birthplace. In this connection, E. V. Ramakrishnan's observation is worth notice: Among the Indian English poets -writing today, Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the few who speak of Indian landscapes -..vith the assurance of an insider. For him, the Indian landscape manifests the destiny of the Indians. His poems are seismograms recording the tremors of an ancient land, felt in the body of his private experience (quoted in Ganguly, 12).

But he brings the landscapes in close relation to the culture of the people living there: the geographical space becomes inalienable from the socio­ cultural background. However, despite his fIrm roots in the Indian culture, he objectively presents the incongruities and lacunas of this very culture.

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Problematics of Representation ofWomen in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry

An acute sense of reality has inspired the sensitive poet to unveil the contemporary reality of tlie Oriya landscape. Madliusudan Prasad observes: "Above all, his sensibility, absolutely uncontaminated, always remaining unsevered from his motherland. Consequently, his poetry is rooted deeply in Indian socio-cultural heritage [ ... ] But throughout his poetic career, Mahapatra's vision is sombre, verging on the tragic" (1 82). K. Ayyappa Paniker, in his article, "Peacocks Among Patriarchs", observes that in Mahapatra's poetry, "the dominant concern is the vision of grief, loss, dejection, rejection. The tragic consciousness does not seem to operate in the work of any other Indian English poet in English as disturbingly as in that of Jayanta Mahapatra" (qoted in Prasad, 182). John Oliver Perry says: "[ ... ] his poems brood darkly, coming to very uneasy tenns with the questions imposed by his world and his kannic sense of guilty involvement in it" ("Neither Alien", 61). Suparna Ganguly has significantly observed: "The burden of the poet's consciousness makes him handle the poems in such a way tliat the calm serenity of the landscape strips the society off the mask of civilization, laying bare the irreligiosity, inhumanity and corruption" (Ganguly, 28). Mahapatra has portrayed the priest, the shopkeeper, the whore, the leper, the sweeper, and countless other members of this society, as living proofs of starvation, destitution, hunger, disease, corruption, violence, and indiscipline. "The poet actually draws in the form of a landscape, the realistic humanscape symbolizing poverty and arid human ideas" (Ganguly, 26). And, among the suffering multitude, it is perhaps the women who have received the greatest share of tlie poet's sympatliy. In his interview witli Abraham, Mahapatra confesses: Perhaps, the status of the Indian women in om society today has gone do\Vll. It is pathetic indeed to read accounts of the degradation our women are subjected to in the daily newspapers. Cases of rape, mmder, mutilation continue to fill the pages, and one sits helplessly, feeling this pain one is not able to do anything about. [ ... ] I can see the pain in the eyes of women as they pass by the road every day; their eyes seem to say: we are the beasts of burden, like cattle. It is about this pain I would like to \Vfite because I can't do anything else [ ... ] I am interested as a poet who wants to show the pain and suffering he feels around him. I cannot close my eyes to what is happening in the cmmtry (Mahapatra, 1 55-6).

In this paper, I shall re-visit and re-examine the problematics of representation of women in Mahapatra's poetry. Indeed, pictures of the plight of women in the Indian society are all-pervasive in his poetry. Madliusudan Prasad justly observes:

Sandipan Ray Choudlnrry

133

Jayanta Mahapatra's poetic world is doubtless scattered singularly with various images of wives, beloveds, whores, seductresses, village women, city women and adolescent girls, having deeply significant metaphoric evocations and spotlighting his tragic vision of life to which he is essentially committed. Demonstrating his vital poetic strategy and dimensional zing, his deep hmnanism as well as his overriding thematic obsessions, Mahapatra's images of women indubitably form a tonal chord central to the mood of his poems (quoted in Sharma et aI., 394).

In the poem Dawn at Puri, Mahapatra delineates the pathetic plight of the widows who have been deprived of all rights and pleasures for no fault of their O\vn: "White-clad widowed women past the centers of their lives are waiting to enter the Great Temple. Their austere eyes stare like those caught in a net, hanging by the dawn's shining strands of faith.

Here, the phrase "'White-clad widowed women" refers to the widows' sad predicament, as well as to the rigidity of Hindu customs and rituals. Indeed, the colour white here ironically points to the injustice meted out to them. 'While a widower is allowed to wear colourful clothes, enjoy the pleasures of life, and is even allowed to re-marry, a widow is compelled to wear only white saris and is strictly prohibited to feel the bliss of life. The phrase "past the centers of their lives" suggests that these urrfortunate women have passed the middle years of their lives, and that the remaining halves of their lives will be spent in desolation and suffering. Further, the lines "Their austere eyes stareJlike those caught in a net" are highly evocative: their misery, resulting in utter despair, is quite palpable on their faces; their eyes are full of desires like the eyes of creatures caught in a net. Finally, the phrase "hanging by the dawn's shining strands of faith" suggests their stoic acceptance of their fate and their finn belief in religion in spite of their misery. In Shadow Space, too, Mahapatra portrays the loneliness and misery of the widows: Silent white walls of forbearance sit up And begin to climb the stairs Of her long inauspicious loneliness (quoted in Shanna et al., 396).

The eloquent phrases "Silent white walls of forbearance", and "long inauspicious loneliness", harp at the profound sense of desolation and the

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Problematics of Representation ofWomen in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry

reverberating silence reigning at the core of the widows' lives. Their lives become even more miserable due to lecherous men: Like jackals, malicious women around her, Sniffing the smell of the left over death

Again, in Indian Summer, Mahapatra presents the hapless condition of women within the prison of marriage: The good wife through the long afternoon; dreaming still, lUlexhausted by the deep roar of funeral pyres (Parthasarathy, 60).

Marital relationships in contemporary society no longer thrive on love, but only on burning passion. Here, the dutiful wife ("The good wife") mechanically perfOlTIlS her role of giving her husband sexual gratification, but there is no emotional attachment between the couple. The striking phrase "funeral pyres" symbolises the death of feelings and emotions in the marital relationship. In this context, Syamsunder Padihari's explication is quite illuminating: "The woman becomes the victim of the connnercial, passionate instinct of exploitation. Her freedom is affected... She maintains a mechanical life" (padihari, 173). She leads a fatigued, tired, exhausted life, devoid of emotion and pleasure, which results in her loss of identity. InA Missing Person, he tells: In the darkened room

a woman cannot find her reflection in the mirror. waiting as usual at the edge of sleep. In her hands she holds the oil lamp whose drlUlken yellow flames know where her lonely body hides (Parthasarathy, 60).

In conversation with author Neeru Tandon, Mahapatra clarifies: "Married woman doesn't see her image in the mirror, when she looks, she carmot find her features. Yes, it is a loss of identity" (quoted in Sharma, Sharma, and Mishra, 396). The poem Dawn delineates the bleak picture of women leading a futile life and searching for their identity: There is a da"Wll which travels alone, without the effort of creation, without puzzle.

Sandipan Ray Choudlnrry

135

It stands simply, framed in the door, white in the air: An Indian woman, piled up to her silences, waiting for what the world will only let her do (quoted in Prasad, 185).

The poem Logic presents a pungent critique of a male scholar engrossed in contemplation. Here, the woman is deeply pinned dO\vn by the use of logic by her husband: Recline in your upholstered chair lUlder the lemon-yellow logic, in the golden corner of the light clasping geometric hands together. Reviewing your cosy composed gesture troglodytes had to find out, you will not sleep with centuries any more as with yom women, no more than you would find me to be proof of you. My skin cups unblemished milk you shatter each lonely vein with, my devoted pads of flesh pave the ground for what you strove to accomplish. Make me small and edible, love. This scalp hmts not from the steep drag of your hands but from my 0"Wll practised drivel (parthasarathy, 62).

Here, the woman is robbed of her freedom and individuality, and is forced to sacrifice her life in service of her husband, but her sacrifice is greeted with cold indifference and ingratitude. Mahapatra's portrayal of the prostitutes - who, perhaps, constitute one of the most marginalised portions of the conservative society - is heart­ rending. Patriarchal Hindu society has always ostracized the prostitutes and kept them out of the ambit of civilized, decent society, even though it has used them to gratify the male sexual urge. Mahapatra takes the radical step of considering the prostitutes part of the civic society. His poem The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street delineates tlie pangs and throes that tliese concubines suffer in their daily lives. Though the conservative society demonizes them and treats them as outcasts, they, too, love their family and feel homesick, like any other human being. Here, the poet portrays how the "women left behind" while engaging in "false chatter", and selling their bodies, secretly remind themselves "of looked after children and of home/the shooting stars in the eager darkness of return"

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Problematics of Representation ofWomen in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry

(Parthasarathy, 61). The phrases, "Dream children, dark, superfluous", "the faint feeling deep at a woman's centre", and "her lonely breath", present moving pictures of their despair-ridden existence (parthasarathy, 6 l-2).The poem Slum is another vivid picture of the life of the prostitutes: The familiar old whore on the road Splits open in the sugary dusk Her tired breasts trailing me everywhere: "Where jackals find the rotting carcass (quoted in Shanna et aI., 397).

Thus, Mahapatra tries to point out that prostitution is not the manifestation of the inherent immorality of the women who have entered this profession, but rather a necessary evil in the lives of these destitute, helpless women; it is acute poverty that goads them into embracing this profession. The poem Hunger is perhaps the most disturbing portrait of prostitution, where a fishemmn acts as a pimp and prostitutes his 0\Vll young daughter to a stranger for money: The fisherman said: will you have her, carelessly Trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words Sanctified the pmpose with which he faced himself. I saw his white bone thrash his eyes. [. . .] I heard him say: my daughter, she's just turned fifteen . Feel her. I'll be back soon, yom bus leaves at nine. The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile. Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber. She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hlUlger there, the other one [ ... ] (quoted in Prasad, 191).

The father "carelessly" asks the prospective customer, "will you have her". But the striking phrase "trailing his nets and his nerves", and the line "his white bone thrash his eyes", hint at the intense mental struggle undergone by the father-pimp while giving the offer. The words "her years were cold as rubber" suggest that she has grown indifferent, and has stoically accepted this predicament. Hunger for food has compelled her to satisfy strangers' hunger for sensual pleasure. In several of his poems, Mahapatra has depicted the various manifestations of violence perpetrated on women. In Here and Elsewhere, the poet juxtaposes brutal rites to which women were subjected in the past, and violence that women still face in contemporary society:

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137

Elsewhere too a girl is set on fire for the do-..vry she did not bring. [ ... ] My father told me once about the old tribes who may have cut off bits offlesh from young girls alive and stre\Vll them across the raw furrows of dark hmnus in the Orissa mountains. Their 0\Vll reasons for this appeased them; the men of the tribe had one another to fall back upon.

Thus, here, the poet suggests a cyclic pattern of history, where time moves on, but the innate atavistic nature of the patriarchal society does not essentially change. Women suffered terribly due to this brutal masculine instinct in the past, and still continue to do so in the present. In Night, the poet provides a pitiful portrait of a young woman of a village, raped and murdered in the paddy fields: In the paddy fields beyond,

a daughter of the village lies mutilated and dead, looking lUlbearably lonely out there.

In another poem, the poet recalls how the rape of a young girl shocked him: Last year on the bend of the Devi river The rape ofyoung girl Shocked us like ripe mangoes Dropping from bare trees in winter (A Whiteness a/Bone, 60).

The poet compares the rape of the young girl with the slaughter of helpless animals in the slaughter house: Last year her murder and dismemberment Made us understand somewhat The trembling in the eyes of cows we see Being led meekly to the to\Vll'S slaughter house (A Whiteness a/Bone, 60).

P. Laxminarayan Bhatt justly observes in this context: "The fear, anguish, the helplessness, the shame, the agony and the pain of the rape victim are powerfully communicated in the analogy" (quoted in Sharma et aI., 398). In the poem The Lost Children of America, Mahapatra exposes the

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bestiality as a pervasive malady in the society, from which even the guardians of society are not immune: In the Hanmnan temple last night the priest's pomaded jean-clad son raped squint-eyed fourteen-year fisher girl on the cracked stone platform behind the shrine and this morning her father found her at the police station assaulted over and over again by four policemen dripping of darkness and of scarlet death (quoted in Sharma et aI., 398).

Here, the poet questions the efficiency of the government and the moral integrity of the police administration. Thus, in Mahapatra's poems, we come across an acutely sensitive poet, presenting touching portraits of various kinds of oppression and exploitation faced by women in conservative Hindu society. However, in this context, I would like to highlight one particular aspect of this issue. Though Mahapatra has, indeed, tried to use his poetry to make the society conscious of the injustice done to women, all the above-discussed poems project the image of women as weak, helpless, passive victims of a colossal tyrarmical social structure which they can neither challenge nor disobey. Dinesh Panwar observes that, in Mahapatra's poetry, "The word 'woman' is considered as a metaphor of sacrifice and suffering" (panwar, 25). Thus, while fighting in his own way for the cause of women's rights, Mahapatra is also - unwittingly perhaps - propagating the patriarchal discourse of woman as the weaker, inferior sex, which again plays a crucial role in justifying the subjugation and regimentation of women by the androcentric society. But, in this connection, one may point out that Mahapatra himself was at least partially conscious of this, and tried to compensate for this in his poem The Temple. In the interview with Abraham, he commented: "But my 'Temple' is entirely different. Through that poem I wished to draw the picture of woman as 'Shakti'" (Mahapatra, 155). This poem has a tripartite structure, consisting of three sections: 'The Hall of Dancing', 'The Hall of Offering' and 'Sanctum Sanctorum: The Shrine'. The poem revolves around the pivotal character of Chelammal, a deprived and distressed woman. Taking a report in a newspaper about the suicide of an octogenarian couple, in the opening section, Mahapatra delineates the hopeful coming of the girl into her sexual being, at age eleven and thirteen. The second section recounts the apparent rape of Chelammal, her

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rejection by her father and brothers, and her subsequent realisation that, "the scent of wet earth/is something that's only lent to her/like a family tie/and the fall of a hand on the shoulder/was seed of mere repayment/recompense that only brings pain" (quoted in Perry, Review, 362). She bends to her fate "to set her grief loose", apparently without "even religion's mean voice/circling like a stubborn fly around her rotting loss" (quoted in Perry, Review, 362-3). In the following part, she gradually "learns to chasten the vision of her own death/surrounded by the rough noose of O\vnership"; marriage, where, "She simply fuses into a pale, thick smile/a faceless shell on a beach" (quoted in Perry, Review, 363). However, a closer examination of this book also reveals Mahapatra's patriarchal bias. As Zinia Mitra has aptly pointed out, the three sections of the poem "correspond to the three stages of a woman's life - girlhood, marriage and motherhood" (Mitra, 144). This very attempt to define a woman's life in telTIlS of three roles approved by this androcentric society, hints at the fact that Mahapatra, at least subconsciously, harbours the conventional narrow definition of woman. Moreover, it is significant that, though the poem proposes to portray woman as 'Shakti', it begins, as well as ends, with the images of women helplessly suffering and surrendering to their fate. Moreover, even though Mahapatra has tried to hint at women's latent power, it is significant that, for this purpose, he has used the image of an evil ogress, Putana, instead of the myths of the Godesses Durga or Kali, the archetypes of feminine power. Ironically, the use of this negative image leads one to wonder whether Mahapatra has ended up implying that power, in the hands of women, is ultimately destructive, and hence, undesirable. Further, one must also take note of the fact that Putana, despite her immense/terrifying power, was ultimately defeated and killed by the male protagonist, Krishna, thus eliminating the threat to the well­ being of the society. Thus, the myth of Putana ultimately implies that feminine power, however threatening it may seem, is ultimately inferior to, and hence destined to be controlled by, the masculine power structure of the society. Thus, the form and structure of the poem belies its apparent purpose of glorifying the dormant power of women, and the poem ultimately ends up implying that women are hopelessly trapped ill a vicious cycle of impotent rage and helpless surrender. Further, there are some occasions where Mahapatra almost consciously endorses some of the conventional Indian patriarchal ideologies. He strongly disapproves of Indian women's blind emulation of the Western culture and their consequent moral degeneration. As Shamm et al. explain:

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Problematics of Representation of Women in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry The blind follow of the Western culture, the uncultured behaviom and moral depravity of Indian women leaves Mahapatra frustrated. School, college and office-going girls and women feel 'shame' and 'inferiority' in wearing traditional gannents and clothes, but they feel 'elated' and 'elevated' in making themselves naked and stripped to the extreme and, perhaps, this is one of the reasons of increasing incidents of eve teasing" (Sharma et al.,397).

In the poem, The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of a Republic, he asks, shocked tone:

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"What is "Wrong with my country? The JlUlgles have become gentle, the woman restless. And history reposes between the college girl's breasts: Mina, my pretty neighbour, flashes round and ROlUld the gilded stage Hiding jlUlgles in her pmse, holding on to her divorce, And a lonely PhD (quoted. in Sharma et aI., 397).

The images of women becoming "restless", flashing "round andJRound the gilded stage", and daring to forego personal relationships in favour of academic pursuits ("holding on to her divorce/And a lonely PhD") reflect the poet's frustration at/disapproval of women breaking out of the cocoon of the limited existence that the society has so long forced them to live. Even though Mahapatra genuinely sympathasizes with millions of women who have suffered dO\vn the ages due to the sexual politics prevalent in the androcentric Indian society, he carmot accept the contemporary reality of Indian women finally shaking off the shackles of patriarchal oppression and emerging as liberated beings with independent identities. He trenchantly criticizes women crossing the lines of decency and exposing their bodies ("Mina, my pretty neighbour, flashes round andIRound the gilded stage"), as a mark of the current fashionable trend. In this context, one must remember that patriarchal society has turned female sexuality into a taboo, chiefly because it considers the sexual independence of women as dangerous and destabilizing. It is for this reason that the icon of womanhood has been built round the virtues of sexual fidelity and sacrifice. Iconoclastic writers like Flaubert, Tolstoy and Vijay Tendulkar have exposed and challenged this politics behind the discursive construction of womanhood through their portrayal of rebellious women characters like Madame Bovary, Arum Karenina, and Leela Benare. However, unlike Flaubert, Tolstoy or Tendulkar, Mahapatra has ultimately

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failed to completely transcend the patriarchal bias of the socio-cultural milieu he grew up in. Thus, the act of representation, as always, has proved to be problematised. The ambiguity in Mahapatra's representation of women reflects his essentially ambivalent attitude towards the conservative Hindu society. Works Cited

Ganguly, Suparna. "The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapa1ra: A Critical Evaluation" PhD Thesis. University ofBurdwan. 2010. Print. Mahapatra, Jayanta. "Dawn at Puri." The Sewanee Review, Vol 84, No. 2 (Spring 1976). 294-5. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. -. "Here and Elsewhere." The Sewanee Review, Vol 1 17, No. 4, (Fall 2009.) 548-9. PROJECT MUSE. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. -. "Night." The Sewanee Review, Vol 1 17, Number 4, Fall 2009. 548-9. PROJECT MUSE. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Mahapatra, Jayanta and Abraham. "JayantaMahapatra: In Conversation with Abraham." Indian Literature, Vol. 40, No. 4 (180) (July-August 1997). 149-157. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Mitra, Zinia. "Jayanta Mahapatra." Studies in Indian Poetry in English. Eds. Benoy Kumar Banerjee, Kaustav Bakshi and Deblina Banerjee. Kolkota: Books Way, 2009. Print. Padihari, Syamsundar. "JayantaMahapatra: The Poet of the Soil." Indian Literature, Vol 5 1 , No 3 (239) (May-June 2007). 168-76. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov 2014. Panwar, Dinesh. "Women in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapa1ra." Research Spectrum, Vol 3, Issue 2. August 2012. Web. 19 Nov 2014. Parthasarathy, R, ed. Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets. New Delbi: OUP, 2012. Print. Perry, John Oliver. "Neither Alien nor Postmodem: Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry from India." The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol 8, No 4 (Autumn, 1986). 55-66. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. -. Rev. of Temple, by Jayanta Mahapatra. World Literature Today, Vol 64, No 2, The Letter: A Dying Art? (Spring, 1990). 362-3. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. Prasad, Madhusudan. "'Caught in the Currents of Time': A Study of the Poe1ry of Jayanta Mahapatra." Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol 19, No 2, The Lyric in India (Summer, Fall 1984).181-207. JSTOR. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

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Sharma, Mukul Kumar, Kapil Sharma and Sanjit Mislua. "The Marginalized Women in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry". International Journal of English and Education, Vol 2, Issue 3, July 2013. 394-99. Web. 1 8 Nov. 2014.

II CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ENGLISH DRAMA

CHANGING CANONS: SOME REFLECTIONS

RE-DRAWING BOUNDARIES OF THE CANON: INDIAN ENGLISH WOMEN DRAMATISTS ANITA SINGH

Theatre is a public space, and given the understanding of the way women have been isolated from many domains that fall into public space, the lack of presence of women in Indian English drama does not come as a surprise. Writing in English has its own snags, for not being the language of masses but tliat of tlie urban elite, for being the language of tlie colonizers, hence the concomitant reservations, and also for not being a commercially viable medium. And writing as women for the stage is also attended with a host of troubling issues. Even as actorsiperfOlmers, women were not a part of theatrical performances until around the nineteenth century. This paper is a partial documentation of the female dramatists writing in English in India. It proposes to examine the complex interplay of writing as women, and the impetuses behind choosing to write in a language not one's own. The dearth of adequate numbers of plays by women impedes their standing in the canon. A fraction of plays by women have been certified as standard works that are published, anthologized, taught and produced. The pedagogical interest in theatre practiced by women has not been well­ documented, or intentionally overlooked. An attempt at understanding this absence has been made by Sue-Ellen Case in her book, Feminism and Theatre (1988), which explores women's exclusion from theatre history as the chief cause for the unavailability of plays by women. Undoubtedly, tlie undercurrents of Indian English plays written by female dramatists are attentive to gender issues; they interrogate the relationship of women to nationalism, myths, sexuality, and modernity in the dramatic sphere. These dramatists, in their O\Vll ways, represent a variety of positions and perspectives. Helen Keyssar views that in 'women theatre', womanist scripts and productions are characterized by the projection of the 'consciousness' and the 'condition' of women, as women. Michelene Wandor finds that women have been more in evidence as playwrights at moments of social and cultural change. The preponderance of work on

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theatre was "written and produced by women with some degree of political intent, in the wake of the modem women's liberation movement" (Goodman, 22). The arrival of feminism in India in the late 1960s fortuitously combined with a liberalization of theatre practice, to pave the way for challenge and experiment. Doesn't My Narrative Have Just as Much Right to Truth as Yours? Myth and Innovation in Post-Independence Drama

For women dramatists to write for theatre has, in some ways, been to protest against the establishment and all conventional thinking. They have long recognized and exploited the fact that classical myths constantly reappear in different fonns, shaping the discourse of literature in highly distinctive ways. To face myth as a woman writer is to rehearse one's O\Vll colonization or 'iconization' through the materials one's culture considers powerful and primary. The refiguring of myth in this century by Snehalata Reddy, Vma Parameswaran, Mallika Sarabhai, and Gowri Ranmaryan, represents their participation in a historical process of identity formation, as well as their struggle to transform the asymmetry of gender hierarchy. Snehalata Reddy (1932-1977), the Kannada actress-activist, was the co­ founder of the amateur theatre group, The Madras Players, in 1960. She aimed to create a 'counter-culture', by renegotiating the boundary between the genders. In her play Sita, she focuses on the heroine of the Ramayana. Unlike the epical Sita, this Sita rejects Rama, his dhanna, and his order, for the test of her chastity through trial by fire. Reddy's Sita does not let this incident remain at a personal level, rather she gives it a universal significance: "History has never recorded the whole truth - it has always projected those in power - never the dO\vntrodden -always the powerful" (Reddy, 8). And finally, Reddy transforms her to a representative figure "fighting for her self- respect" (Reddy, 8). Rama wants her to perform this demeaning fire ordeal to save his kingship. Sita, overpowered with anger, indicted Rama: It's your pride that hurts you to take me back. Even if it's true that Ravana violated me, if you truly love me, don't I deserve yom love and comfort now more than ever? If you loved me, wouldn't your love be great enough to wipe away my hmniliation and pain? (Reddy, 4 5).

In a different vein, she even pleads with him:

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Corne away, Rama! Give up this kingship. Give up these narcissistic dreams of greatness. This vanity. Let's go back to the forest. I'll teach you to love again. I'll show you the wonders oflove (Reddy, 6).

Sita draws attention to the power politics inherent in every rung of life. Posterity will ignore the movements, which questions the pillars of injustice. And at times, injustices are meted out in mask of justice: But will they talk about my hmniliation and suffering? No, they won't. Because you scribes andValmikis will re\VTite history as you like it! The rest will be explUlged! (Reddy, 7).

And Reddy's Sita in her final decree casts offRama: It's I who reject you! I reject you as a husband, as a lover and I reject you above all as the father of my unborn children and I go to my doom gladly! with glory in my heart ! but not for you! but for Ravana! (Reddy, 8).

This Sita goes beyond social conventions and focuses on her life - her needs, necessities, wishes, fancies, desires, and her identity above all. Uma Parameswaran, a poet, playwright, and short-story writer, was born in Madras. She studied American Literature at Indiana University, completing her Masters in Creative Writing. She did her PhD in English at Michigan State University in 1972, and was a Professor of English at The Uinversity of Winnipeg. She is also the recipient of the Smith-Mundt Fulbright Scholarship. She is conversant with the experiences of South Asian Women in Canada, as she has been the two-time chair of the Status of Women Writers Committee of the Writers' Union of Canada, a member of the Margaret Laurence Chair of Women's Studies, and has sat on the board of the Innnigrant Women's Association of Manitoba. Her play Sons Must Die (1998) centers on the experiences of three women during the Partition of 1947. The play is inflected by her interest in Greek tragedies, containing a chorus, and stylized language of the verse. Other plays are: Meera in 1971; Sita's Promise in 1981; Dear Deedi, My Sister in 1989 (first prize in the Caribe playwriting contest, 1989); and Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees in 1998. They were collected into Sons Must Die and Other Plays, and published in 1998 as a part of the South Asian Canadian Literature Series (SACLIT), of which Pararneswaran is the general editor. Her volume of poetry, Trishanku and Other WritinJ;s (1987) is also included in the SACLIT series. She published a collection of

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essays written in the years 1982-1992 titled SACUT: An Introduction to South-Asian-Canadian Literature in 1996, centering on the South Asian diaspora in Canada. She founded Performing Arts and Literatures of India (PALl), for the purpose of introducing various aspects of Indian culture not only to the Indo-Canadian youth of Winnipeg, but also to the community at large. Her two dance dramas, Meera and Sita 's Promise, performed in Winnipeg, are sourced from the Puranas and the Mahabharata and Ramayana. At the same time, both these plays blend in a sense of modernity and the Canadian experience, through myth and dance, and use modem English prose. Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana, the main characters in the Ramayana, during their forest exile find an injured Arctic tern that has gone adrift in its northern migration. They decide to take it back to its home; they travel northwards through India to the Himalayas, where Jatayu, the holy eagle, brings them to the tern's home. The native children dance for Sita and ask her to stay with them. Sita says she must go, but promises them that she will come again, !tto this lovely land of lakes, blue skies, and snow. I, through my people, shall surely come again, and we shall build our temple and sing our songs with the children of all the different lands who make this their home" (pararneswaran, Sons Must Die and Other Plays, 62). In Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees, her subject matter is the new generation of Indo-Canadians, children of immigrants raised in Canada. By her writings, we are not only constantly conscious of the South Asian experience, but also of the melees in life that make us all human. Gowri Rarnnarayan is a playwright and theatre director in Chennai. She has a PhD in comparative aesthetics, researching the role of emotion in art. She worked as Deputy Editor with the national daily newspaper The Hindu (1989-2010), and served for over a decade as vocal accompanist to legendary Carnatic classical vocalist MS Subbulakshmi. In 2005, Rarnnarayan founded JustUs Theatre Repertory. JustUs Repertory includes: Dark Horse (2005); Rural Phantasy (2006); Flame of the Forest (2007); Water Lilies (2008); SivanaiPatrilSpeaking of Siva (2008); Peacock Blue (2009); One Day in Ashadha (2009); Mathemagician (2010); AvalumNokkinaVThrough Sita 's Eyes (2010); Sarpa Sutra (2010, 201 1); and Land of the Free(20l l). Both Dark Horse and her other play, Rural Phantasy, have won critical acclaim. Her play Dark Horse won two national awards (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards) in 2007, for Best Irmovative Music, and Special Commendation, Best Play. Mathemagician was nominated for the

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Edinburgh Evening News Award when staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2010. Her two new productions are Yashodhara and Nir;ht's End, both produced in 2012. Gowri's Yashodhara was first staged for The Epic Women Conference, curated by Anita Ratnam for the Kartik Fine Arts and the Arangham Trust. In Yashodhara, Gowri explores the nature of relationships. Prince Siddharta leaves his wife Yashodhara and his son, behind, and embarks on a spiritual quest. Bharata Natyam dancer Mythili Prakash offers a stirring portrayal of a grief-stricken Yashodhara, abandoned by her husband and searching for answers within the palace ramparts. Dark Horse, is based on ten poems of Arun Kolatkar; here the poet is in conversation with the journalist, and the poems are animated in perfOlmance to unravel several questions about the role of art as protest, prophecy, transcendence, and solace (Ramnarayan). Sarpa Sutra is a retelling of a lesser known legend from the Mahabaratha, it can be understood in several contexts and issues that plague us now: genocide, wars, social inequalities, gender issues, human greed, afforestation, and environmental questions of the survival of indigenous races.

Ni:;;ht's End, a play written, designed, and directed by Gowri, starts and ends with a 'sloka' from the Mahabharata. The story, woven around the protection of tigers, is also that of Krishnan Nair, born in a family of Kathakali artists in Kerala, now working as a forest guard in a tiger sanctuary in Rajasthan. Apart from Krishnan Nair, there is only one other character on stage, the tribal girl, Chandni. Soliloquies unfold as Nair speaks his mind to the nijured bird he is nursing, and Chandni speaks to the idol of her family goddess, and later to an ant. The playwright knits the trials faced by the forest department and life's sorrows seamlessly nito this storylnie. Mallika Sarabhai (1954) is an activist and performer from Gujarat. She is the daughter of classical danseuse Mrinalini Sarabhai and renO\vned space scientist Vikram Sarabhai. An accomplished Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyarn dancer, she is also knO\vn for her contributions in the fields of theatre, television, film, writing, and publishing. Mallika's role of Draupadi in Peter Brook's play The Mahabharata won her many accolades. Along with her mother, she manages the Darpana Academy of PerfOlming Arts, located at Ahmedabad. In 1989 she performed the solo theatrical work, Shakti: The Powe r of Women.

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In Search of the Goddess rewrites the myth of Draupadi and Savitri. The play looks at how women are stereotyped into Goddesses or minions, and pigeonholed in society. It combines classical dance, storytelling, and mime to explore the perception of Shakti. Draupadi in the Mahabharata is looked up to as a prototype of sacrifice. Sarabhai attempted to see Draupadi through a 'non-male prism' . In Sarabhai's text, this modern Draupadi finds expression for her anger. Her anger starts with the decision of her marriage taken by her father and brother, who arranged for a tournament: Not mine the decision, whom to Marry My heart was pledged to a bow and Arrow My life an offering to the shooter of The fish (Sarabhai, In Search ofthe Goddess, 379).

The winner gets Draupadi as the prize. Thus she is handed over to A.t:iuna as a prize, and enters into a polyandrous relationship of marriage. Besides giving a raw deal to Draupadi, mythologies deface the lives of other goddesses. A glaring example of such imaging is that of Sati Savitri. Savitri, the daughter of King Asvapati, tied her wedding knot with her self-arranged bridegroom, Satyavan, regardless of the warnings of Naradmuni that Satyavan's life would end on the completion of one year of their marriage. With the arrival of Yama on that ill-fated day, Savitri defies him and wins back her husband's life. Sarabhai's play reconsidered Savitri's long-accepted representation and redefines the notion of 'sati' . Her Savitri calls those men who worship her-and burn widows at their dead husband's funeral pyres-liars and manipulators. Goddesses were created to suit the necessity of the patriarchal politics. For women, Sarabhai advocates fostering the power of 'Shakti' within them, to thwart this dominant androcentric milieu, and thereby create a democratic world. Mallika Sarabhai's one-woman dance-drama, called Sita's Dauxhters, is a feminist reconstruction of the medieval Sita into a modem Sita. She incorporates the Brechtian-feminist outlook to connote herself not 'to-be­ looked-at-ness', but rather to 'looking-at-being-Iooked-at-ness', or more commonly, 'lookingness'. In introducing her perfOlmances she sets her aim, "I'm here to talk to you about women" (Sarabhai, 1). In this play, Sita describes Rama as: "the delicate prince who needed my support in coping with life in the forest; the weak man who had to gather an army to fight his battles; a chauvinist who needed proof of his wife's virtue; a king who fails

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in his duty as a husband" (Sarabhai, 2). Sarabhai's text makes use of feminist gestus During her performance, she traces the moments which "explain the play, but... also exceed the play" (Diamond, 53), to show how the text creates counter-histories in which the past and the present coexist side-by-side. In her reading, Rama's suspicion, and the seeking of proof of Sita's fidelity, becomes a 'paradigmatic instance of injustice' meted out to women. The play begins with a sharp injunction: "\\Tho was she, who was Sita?" (Sarabhai, 1). It is followed by another embargo: "Was she the one burnt by Rarna, was she the one rejected by Rama?" (Sarabhai, 1). The feminist politics and counter-historical poetics rampant in these play­ texts lend themselves to complicated analysis. These plays can further be read as instructive, analytical theatre, inviting the participatory play of the spectator, and the possibility for which Brecht most devoutly wished; that significance (the production of meaning) continues beyond play's end, congealing into choice and action after the spectator leaves the theatre. Situating these plays beyond the proscenium arch on to the social-cultural space, acknowledges, and works to make explicit, the feminist politics implicit in such playwrights' work, as well as offering a means for feminist critics to engage with these plays' complicated use and re-writing of history, memory and the politics of gendered/inscribed body. Body Blows: Social Plays ofthe 1990s

By the 1990s, urban English theatre staged social plays, experimental plays, and physical theatre, and the women dramatists' intervention in the scene enriches our understanding for reassessing patriarchal ideology and culture, and for articulating and defining an equitable gender relation. To do theatre, for these modem dramatists like Manjula Padmanabhan, Dina Mehta and Poile Sengupta, has been to protest against violence, injustice, and ignorance, to assert values that help survive on the terrestrial plane, and concomitantly, to transcend to higher levels of being. Manjula Padmanabhan (1953) is an artist, illustrator, cartoonist, playwright, novelist, journalist, and children's book author. She has illustrated twenty­ four books for children including her 0\Vll novels for children, Mouse Attack and Mouse Invaders (2003, 2004). Apart from writing newspaper columns, she also creates comic strips, and has had a long-running cartoon strip, Suki, featuring an Indian female comic character, which was serialized as a strip in the Sunday Observer (Bombay, 1982-86) and later

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the Pioneers (New Delhi, 1991-97). Her books include: Hot Death, Cold Soup (1996); Gettinr; There (1999), which is a semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman illustrator in Bombay; and This is Suki! (2000). She has also authored a collection of short stories, called Kleptomania (2004). Her most recent book, published in 2008, is titled Escape. Her much acclaimed play Lir;hts Out I (1984) was first performed in 1986 by the Sol Theatre Company, at Prithvi Theatre, Bombay. Lir;hts Outl displays the savagery of a gang rape of a slum woman while the upper­ middle-class people savor a voyeuristic pleasure from it. To their utter inhumanity, they even forget to make an attempt to stop it, instead, they make a tea-table discussion of it. The entire play passes through an ongoing debate, which bares the urban apathy towards rape and its ensuing dehumanization. The play makes no mention of the word 'rape'; it is only expressed through clues, and some bizarre sounds, like 'screaming', 'high­ pitched', 'hysterical', 'horrid and gurgly', 'rasping' . Throughout the first two scenes, the characters Leela, Bhaskar, and Mohan, all avoid the direct conversation of gang rape, and hence, their indecisiveness impedes them from taking any action. The conflicting dialogues and the rising anxiety build the crisis. The playwright succeeds in creating an ambiance of tension and dilemma which underlines the fear and the communal apathy upon which gang rape and violence thrive. Her next play is Hidden Fires (2003), a series of monologues which engage with the issue of communal violence and the ensuing loss of human life. Other plays are The Artist's Model (1995) and Sextet (1996), consisting of six short skits. Her play Harvest (2003), was selected from 1,470 entries in 76 countries for the Onassis Prize for Theatre in 1997. Harvest is a futuristic play based on the contractual business of body­ organs from third world donors to an American customer Ginni. It deals with a plethora of issues facing the un-developed world, such as poverty and disease. In her article, "ManjulaPadmanabhan's Harvest: Global Technoscapes and the International Trade in Human Body Organs", Gilbert asserts that the play focuses on "the global spread of late capitalist technology [and its] significant risks . . . Manjula Padmanabhan's Harvest locates these risks as intensely intimate, and yet thoroughly social, through a chilling drama about transnational flows in two distinct but related areas; biomedical technology and digital technology, including virtual reality" (Gilbert, 123-30). The play is about a young man, Om, who enters into a contract with the organ selling company, Interplanta, in order to make money for his impoverished family, only to discover that his, and his family's lives will change forever, being ruled and watched over by an all-

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American blonde called Ginni. The play follows Om and his family and their struggle to keep tbeir identity and sanity. In tbe futuristic techno­ setting of the play, there is much evidence of dehumanization, orientalism, capitalism, post-colonialism, and globalization, creating a dystopia III which human lives are under constant threat of robotic panopticism. Dina Mehta (born 1961) is a Parsi novelist and an award-winning dramatist. Her play Brides are not for Buminx received an international award from tbe BBC in 1979. Gettinr; Away with Murder (2000), and Brides Are Notfor Burninr; (1993) are full of complexities of modem life. Each of these plays consists of a well-organized plot, in which characters have convoluted lives due to abusive childhoods, and include gender hierarchy in the workplace, infertility, amniocentesis, female feticide, dowry deaths, and so on. Getting Away with Murder explores the tension and experiences of three women's lives. Central to the play is the looking back at the personal experiences of three friends, of which the most shocking one is the unspoken trauma of the juvenile sexual abuse of Sonali. The play begins with Sonali's pregnancy and her insistence on anmiocentesis to check the sex of the embryo. The play's denouement is revelation and resolution of the conflict in the lives of the women. Brides Are Not For Burninr; begins with tbe news of tbe death of Laxmi. The play showcases how women passively bear tortures and humiliation in the name of protecting the 'izzat' or 'samman' of the family, and after marriage, suffer the sneers and insults of their in-laws for not being able to gratify their demands. However, both these plays employ Deus ex Machina, in the fOlTIl of human intervention to find easy solutions by offering happy ending to their female protagonists, with their inequalities and troubles ironed out. Poile Sengupta was born in 1948 as Ambika Gopalakrishnan. She is one of the promising English playwrights in India today, and is also known as a writer for children. She completed her undergraduate studies and MA in English Literature from Delhi University, and later did a course in Children's Literature at Carleton University, Ottawa. She has taught at school and college levels; served as an educational, communications, market research, and language skills consultant, and is a well-knO\vn theatre person. She has her 0\Vll group, Theatre Club, in Bangalore, and has acted in plays and in the award-winning film, The Outhouse. She has written colunms for children in Deccan Herald and The Times ofIndia, in Bangalore, and in Midday, Mumbai. Work from tbe Deccan Herald was published in two volumes: Role Call (2003), which has been translated into Indonesian, and Role Call Again (2003). In 1968, she began A Letter

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to You, a humor colunm for the children's magazine Children 's, which ran for nearly three decades. Her children's stories have been included in important anthologies published by Puffin, Tulika, and Target. In 1991, Writers Workshop, Calcutta, published a collection of her poetry, A Woman Speaks, Keats was a Tuber (1996), CollaKes (1998), Samara 's SonK (1999), Alipha (2001), and Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni (2001). Her husband, Abhijit Sengupta, has directed most of her plays. Joy Michael has directed some of her plays, such as ManKalam, Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni, and Alipha, on the Delhi stage. In 2008, Samara's Song was shortlisted for the Hindu Metro Plus Playwright Award. As a playwright, her first full-length play, Mangalam, won the award for the most socially relevant theme in The Hindu-Madras Players play scripts competition, in 1993, and was later published by Seagull in Body Blows (2000). Special mention was made of Keats was a Tuber, at the 1996 British Council International New Playwriting Competition. She received a Senior Fellowship of the Department of Culture, Government of India, in 1999-2000, for writing children's plays. Her anthology of one-act plays for children, Good Heavens! was published by Puffin in 2006. She has also written a full-length children's musical Yavamajakkal (2000). (Yavarnajakka is the name of an imaginary village in a four-line Jataka story). She teaches drama, is a therapist, and believes that children should be introduced to theatre early. Her plays include ManKalam (1993), Inner Laws (1994), and A Pretty Business (1995).

ManKalam was first performed by Playpen at Guru Nanak Bhavan, Bangalore. Issues dealt with in the play were domestic violence and girlhood sexual abuse. Act I, with three scenes, is a play within a play, and the audience of the play becomes the characters we meet in Act II. The situation of the watchers of the play appears not to be very different from the play they were previously viewing. Mangalam, the character in Act I, was a victim of rape, and Sumati, the viewer in the first act, becomes the victim of molestation in Act II. The play showcases that violence against women cuts across economic, cultural, age, and class groups. The two modem, educated, families in the play, as the play within the play, are touched by abuse. The 'play within a play' technique is used to underscore a standpoint. Also, the idea of using the same characters in both the plays is to show how, from 1960 to the present, nothing seems to have changed for a modem cosmopolitan family. Structures of oppression are replicated.

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Sengupta's next work, Inner Laws, explores, lightheartedly, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law (a relationship tbat, in the Indian context, is often perceived as being fraught with hostility on both sides). The play is rife with symbolism of nomenclature, with its allusions to mythical characters from great Indian epics like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavata. The reference to the mythical characters may not be pivotal to tbe drama which is played out, but it does add certain pungency to the situations when connections are forged unconsciously. Keats Was a Tuber was directed by Bhaskar Ghose and, presented by Yatrik, premiered at tbe India International Centre. The play is a tirade against tbe present anglophile system of teaching English in India. Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni (hereafter, Thus Spake) is an ambitious play that treats characters from two different epics-the Ramayana (the demoness Shoorpanakha who falls in love with, and is rejected by, Rama) and the Mahabharata (Shakuni the uncle of tbe Pandava heroes who fights against them). The play elicits sympatby for the 'devils' of tbe epics which are humanized here, in depth and detail. The two characters from the different epics meet as travelers at an airport and are named simply 'Woman' and 'Man'. The woman identifies herself as modem day Shoorpanakha, narrating the events to the Man in modern idiom: WOMAN: Anyway there they are in the forest living in a pretty little cottage when this absolutely stunning woman comes along. The two brothers, especially the older one is bowled over. Totally bowled over. :MAN: That's not what I've heard. WOMAN: Were you there?

She goes on to reveal her desire for Lakshman: WO:MAN: He was alone, standing at the door of his cottage. He .... how do I describe him? He was the most desirable man I had ever seen and yet it was not his eyes or lips, or his fingers or his wide shoulders that took away . . .took away the breath in my throat. It was what happened to me in that instant.

She narrates the ill treatment she suffers at tbe hands of both brotbers: WO:MAN: You know what they did to me ... the two brothers . . .they laughed. Laughed at me. They teased me. Mocked me. The older one said, ask my brother...he might want you... the yOlmger one said. . . I can't marry without my brother's consent...ask him ... They tossed me this way and

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Women such as Shoorpanakha are often sho\Vll to threaten the male world. So they are described as dangerous 'rakshasis', who must be controlled /containedipunished before they can upset the patriarchal set up. When the two characters meet in a contemporary situation another crisis begins to threaten the world. Finally, it is Shoorpanakha who dissuades Shakuni from provoking another blood bath. Regarding her play, Samara's Song, directed by Ashish Sen and produced and performed by Theatre Club, a reviewer in The Hindu writes: . . . Powerful play on politics that addresses a gamut of contemporary issues. Above all, it explores the dangerous double face of politics, and the biased and prejudiced recording of history. The politics of language, that further accentuates the difference between the powerful and the powerless, is interwoven within the narrative. The names of the principal characters are of cities and towns in different parts of the world, such as Arrah, Mati, Samara, Ashti, and so on, that are tom apart by the politics of the colonizer-colonized, state and stateless, and horne and homeless (Datt, Politics at Play, in The Hindu, Dec 15, 2010).

Sengupta's plays are all distinctive, yet one can discern the overarching concern for women's issues-in family, society, political systems, and culture-that infolTIl her plays. Poile Sengupta as an actor understands the requirements of the stage and thereby creates very stage-worthy plays. The New Generation of Young Female Playwrights

Coming to the t\venty-first century, we witness the trend of a growing number of young dramatists who are trying to make theatre their full-time profession, and who are trying to bring immediacy and relevance to the kind of theatre they aspire to. In 2003, Rage Productions collaborated with Paul Smith, the then Director for West India at The British Council, with a proposal to build capacity for playwriting in India. They later banded with the Royal Court Theatre; this has occasioned a drastic change on the playwriting front in India. This unique theatre program discovers, trains, and presents exciting new playwrights, by putting the script at the center of the theatre-making process. Since 2002, the project has discovered 32 new playwrights, to produce 32 contemporary plays. The sourcing and training of the playwrights, and the theatre festivals that follow, is a collaborative effort between The British Council, the Royal Court Theatre,

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UK, and Rage Productions. An outcome of such, and many more, collaborative efforts, training programs, and the individual spark of the playwrights, has been that the playwriting platform has flourished with a host of mushrooming talents. Ninaz Khodajee, a prospective Parsi dramatist, has written three plays which have been produced, has directed eight professional ventures, and has also acted in 1 8 productions. She has a passion for theatre, with a graduate degree in English Literature from St Xavier's College, Mumbai, and a Masters in Theatre Directing from Middlesex University. She qualified as an actor at the Herbert Bergh of Studio and Lee Strasberg Institute, New York. Ninaz worked in advertising for over eight years, and was Associate Creative Director, at Publicis India. She is the founder of UnknO\vn Waters, a London-based arts company dedicated to the creation of international work. Brought up in Mumbai, she received her training with Pandit Satyadev Dubey and Pearl Padamsee, among others. Insomnia (first produced at Oval House Theatre, London in 2004), was her first play, developed by her through the Royal Court Theatre, and has been published by Samuel French. This play was not only performed in India, in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, but also in London, at the Nehru Centre in April 2004, and at the Oval in November 2005. The Arts Council, England and The Peggy Ramsay Foundation have supported her work. Insomnia, developed through the Royal Court Theatre, has four monologues from young theatre actors and a director. The play has as its backdrop the communal riots of Mumbai in 1993, when the city was ravaged by religious riots and bombings. It documents the loss and damage in terms of emotional and physical loss suffered by people at the riots. It attempts to capture the intangible loss these events brought to the emotional lives of the four individuals. Strangers was developed through a writing residency at Oval House Theatre, London, where she was Writer in Residence from July 2005 to March 2006. Khodajee's intention in this play was to create the sense of a journey which really goes nowhere, and attempts to push the boundaries of form. ACE, Peggy Ramsay Foundation, Richmix, and Visiting Arts, supported her third play, Damage (April 2013). Damage is a performance piece based on a true story. It focuses around an incident of a woman attacked on her doorstep in London. It raises questions as to how we can handle such violence, what this shows about who we are as humans in contemporary society, and about who - the system or the society - is to be imputed. Annie Zaidi (b. 1978) writes poetry, essays, fiction, and scripts for the stage and the screen. She writes in both English and Hindi. Before her

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foray into theatre, Zaidi worked as a journalist for over a decade, reporting from both urban and rural areas, and she continues to freelance for a range of magazines and newspapers, including Hindu, Femina, Forbes, and Deccan Herald, Caravan, Mid-Day, Frontline, Elle, Marie Claire, Verve, and Tehelka, aside from a weekly column for the DNA. Her essays, nonfiction, fiction, poems, and short stories, have appeared in several anthologies, including Dharavi: The City Within (Harper Collins India) Mwnbai Nair (Harper Collins India), Women Chanr;inr; India (Zubaan); Journeys throur;h Rajasthan (Rupa) First Proof" 2 (penguin India), 21 Under 40 (Zubaan), India Shining, India Changing (Tranquebar). More of her works have appeared in literary journals like The Little Magazine, Desilit, Pratilipi, The Raleigh Review, Mint Lounge, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi) and Asian Chao She won the first prize for poetry at the 201 1 Prakriti Festival. Her first full-length script in English, Name, Place, Animal, Thing was short-listed for The Hindu Metroplus Playwright Award, 2009. The story is situated in a typical middle-class household. Zaidi sensitively lifts the veil on the strange dynamic between domestic help and the families they work for. Nancy, the girl at the center of the story, has spent all her life working for the Maliks, but never truly belongs. Name, Place, Animal, ThinK asks those hard questions often ignored in middle-class homes; its very relevance may make many squilTIl. "I feel very strongly about the way we treat domestic workers in India," Zaidi says, "We do not think of them as people who perform such vital functions for us. There are a lot of people who prevent their domestic help from getting an education and prefer to keep them in their situations." Zaidi says Nancy's character is derived from three different women she knows, while the characters of her employers "have shades of people I know all over the country" (Zaidi "Name, Place, Animal, Thing" The Hindu, January 22, 2009). Her first Hindi play Jaal opened at Prithvi Theatre in 2012 as part of the Writers Bloc 3, a drama festival in Mumbai. It is about a policeman on a quest for a missing engineer. JaaZ touches on political gain and moral responsibility. A radio play, Jam, was the regional (South Asia) winner for the BBC's International Playwriting Competition in 201 1 . Another play, So Many Socks (English) opened at Prithvi Theatre in September 2012. It was nominated in several categories, including best script, for the prestigious META awards. So Many Socks tells the story of three generations of a Tibetan family in exile, and the difficulties faced by families forced to move from their homeland. The play is inspired by a

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book of poems, Kora, \Vfitten by Tibetan author-activist Tenzin Tsundue, which highlights the problems of Tibetans in exile and offers perspective on the problem of rootlessness faced by Tibetans. Ayeesha Menon is a frequent playwright for BBC Radio 4 she has twice been the recipient of Sony Radio Academy Awards, UK. Ayeesha is originally from Mumbai, but has recently moved to the UK She has won Sony Radio Awards for Best Drama for her adaptations of Q & A and The Cairo TrilofiY. Her other adaptations for Radio 4 include The Mumbai Chuzzlewits, My Name Is Red, and Six Suspects. Her original feature film, The White Elephant, was premiered in the UK at the London Indian Fihn Festival in 201 1 . Pereira 's Bakery at 76 Chapel Road debuted at the Writers' Bloc Festival as part of the Royal CourtJRage Theatre workshops in India from 2010-2011 .The script talks about the demise of a bakery in Bandra. It was inspired by a newspaper article about the tenants of a 100year-old chawl in Bandra that housed a bakery being threatened by land sharks, and is a story about ordinary people trying to preserve their heritage while the world around them is changing too fast. The bakeries in Bandra are perhaps the last vestiges of an age gone by, before Bandra transfOlmed into an upscale suburb visited by people from across the city. The demise of one such establishment led the playwright to write about the defining landmarks ofBandra. -

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Irawati Karnik, a playwright, theatre director, and actor, is a fine art graduate from the J. J. School of Arts. She provoked a moralistic debate with her research project, titled Sex, Morality and Sensorship. Today she is one of the four Marathi playwrights to have been invited to be a part of the Writer's Bloc workshops, co-organized by the Royal Court Theatre, UK Her current concern is her engagement with examining how the quality of life has transformed with the spurt of different media. She was the recipient of the 2008 Sangeet Natak Akademi youth award. Her first English play, Satellite City, is about an addiction group for television junkies. With the Writers' Bloc she got the initial platform. She also helped with the translation of Marathi plays into English in the Writers' Bloc. She presented her play, Mangutivar Mayasabha, at the Vinod Doshi Memorial Theater Festival. The play depicts aspects of contemporary life in different layers. The play represents inter-generational conflict. Karnik has perfOlmed in many plays, has directed more than a couple, and has written four. She has also worked with renowned playwrights like Chelan Datar and Satyadev Dubey. As an actor-director, she has even worked with Vijay Tendulkar. .

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Deepika Arwind (b. 1987) is a writer and theatre person and has acted in many English plays. She made her directorial debut with the play Nobody Sleeps Alone. Like so many other young playwrights, she has chosen to direct her work herself. Nobody Sleeps Alone has a small canvas. The play is about three gangsters - Godfrey, Sarayu, and Wazir - who run a small company together. The characters move through love, ambition and failure, betrayal and resolution. The play pays attention to lighting and sound design as well as props. She even has a live musician on stage, who responds improvisationally, sometimes leading, sometimes following the events and the emotions being played out before him. There is an attempt to give voice to as many theatrical languages as possible in this production. nWith this play, I wanted to create something inspired by the Hindi cinema of the '80s and '90s for the stage!! says Deepika (Rodrigue, "Q&A with Director-Writer Deepika Arwind", Blouin Arlin/o, June 5 2013). However, a unique element in the play is the incorporation of live music. The playwright Anupama Chandrashekliar is born and based in Chennai. Her plays have been staged in India, Europe, Canada, and the US. She has also worked as a journalist with the Hindu Business Line. Her play Free Outr;oinr;, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007. It was revived at the Royal Court's main theatre in sunnner 2008, and travelled to the Traverse Theatre for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the same year. Free OutKoinX was nominated for the Whiting Award in the UK, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in the US. This is the first play written by an Indian to be nominated for these awards. Free Outr;oinr; deals with the impact of Indian media on middle­ class society. The play foregrounds the plight of a widowed, middle-class mother, Malini, who is disturbed by the fact that her 15-year-old daughter, Deepa, has allowed herself to be photographed while having sex with a boy at her school. The pictures are circulated on the internet, and this leads to a situation when Malini, Deepa, and her brother, realise that they have becomes figures of public criticism. Media plays a big role in projecting the lack of morality in Malini's family, but this media fails to capture the impact of such public shaming on individual(s) (Hower, unpublished). In the play, a character refers to a psychologist who declares, "Indian teenagers are getting . . . active at a very young age . . .because they're switching over from thayirsaadam (curd rice) to pizza" (Chandrashekliar, Free Outr;oinr;, 2008, 1).

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Her next play Disconnect directed by Indhu Rubasingham, also premiered at the Royal Court Theatre. Disconnect has been translated and staged in GelTIlan and Czech languages, and had its American and West Coast premieres in 2013, at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre and the San Jose Repertory Theatre respectively. Disconnect is about a bunch of young call center workers who work nights, sleep days, and put on different personas and accents. It's about identity in a new India, globalization, and our interconnected lives and economies. The play mocks the Indians who mimick the Americans, while working at a call-center, where they often harrass the credit-card debtors. Her play for children, The Snow Queen, an Indian adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story, written under commission to the Unicorn Theatre in London, opened for Christmas in December 201 1 . The play, directed by Rosamunde Hutt, was a tremendous box office success. A remount of the production, produced by the Trestle Theatre, UK opened at the Chennai Metroplus Theatre Festival in 2012, and has toured several cities in India and the UK Her other plays include Acid, originally produced by QTP, Mumbai, and later by the Madras Players in 2007 (which she directed), and Closer Apart, produced by Theatre Nisha, Chennai. ,

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Her next play was called Bay-Sea-Ocean. Set in the southern-most tip of the country, where a bay, a sea, and an ocean meet, it deals with the abandonment of the elderly. The question she raises is: What happens when a culture that has historically elevated the status of parents to higher than that of God, is fast-tracked into a consumerist economy and the old family system crumbles? Whose responsibility is the care of the elderly then? At present, she is engaged in making a film version of the play Free Outgoing, in collaboration with Indhu Rubsingham, a director who hopes to develop it for The British Council. Kalki Koechlin is a graduate in Drama and Theatre Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She worked with a theatre company called Theatre of Relativity for two years, where she performed in David Hare's The Blue Room, Marivaux's The Dispute, and a devised play The Rise of the Wild Hunt. She has acted in Anurag Kashyap's film Dev D. She co-authored the play Skeleton Woman with Prashant Prakash, and this play won the MetroPlus Playwright Award 2009 instituted by The Hindu for the best original, unpublished, and unperfolTIled English script. It was chosen out of 74 valid entries received from around the country for the MetroPlus Playwright Award.

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It is based on an Inuit folktale; an allegorical story about death and love. In a citation, the panel described Skeleton Woman as, "an imaginatively crafted piece of theatre that intertwines stories in a resonant tale of loss and longing, anxiety and desire." It added: "Its strongly visual and simple yet oblique performance grammar is not over-determined, providing sufficient room for directors and actors to animate the text with their O\Vll creative impulses." Commending the 'deceptively simple ease' with which the play was written, the citation says: "For its skill in fashioning a complex tale at once common and extraordinary, in a marmer that is vitally theatrical, Skeleton Woman richly deserves to be the winner of this year's MetroPlus Playwright Award." This quick survey of the growing twenty-first century trend of writer­ directors clearly shows that the theatre is an art form in the present tense, a medium tailor-made to explore the world we live in now. Another very distinct characteristic of this playwriting trend is that, added to playwrights' strong theatrical sensibility, there is this prompting from dramaturgists, who are well versed in the theatrical arts, who dissect, pull apart, fill out, polish and refuel the plays before they are sent out into the world to find their destiny. These behind-the-scenes machinations extend to re-writing characters, re-structuring timelines, moving scenes around, and providing a cultural context. The flip side could be that there is hardly any state fimding for staging plays, and so fringe groups' playwrights have to scout for sponsors. There are a few subsidized theatres, like Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, which ensures that small groups can put up their plays at regular intervals at a small cost. Theatre continues, in the twenty-first century, to be mostly amateur in India. And in this emerging scheme of things, a woman playwright's job and skill-set are the same as a male playwright's. It is still a fact that fewer female playwrights are staged, as compared to men in India, and perhaps across the world. There are fewer women directors in India than men, and hardly any governmental support for the theatre. Both contribute to this unhealthy gender imbalance. But, at least in the major metro cities of India, there are signs of some change, and things are defmitely changing across the nation. In the last five years, we have seen more astonishing debuts by women than ever before. Their plays can be seen to symbolize the moment when young female writers recognize that the stages of Indian theatres were theirs for the taking.

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Works Cited

Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminism and Theatre. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Print. Chandrasekhar, Anupama. . -. . -. "Free Outgoing", The Royal Court's International Department, 2008. Deepika, Arwind. 'Nobody Sleeps Alone'

Diamond, Elin. Unmakinx Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater. London: Routledge, 1997. Print. Gilbert, Helen. "Manjula Padmanabhan's Harvest: Global Technoscapes and the International Trade in Human Body Organs." Contemporary Theatre Review 16.1(2006): 122-29. Print. Goodman, Lizbeth. Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own, London: Routledge, 1993. Print. Hower, Edward. "Blame game again", The Hindu, March 19, 201 1 .

Karnik, Irawati. "Artiste Profile." . Keyssar, Helene. Feminist Theatre: An Introduction to Plays ofContemporary British and American Women. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984. Print. Khodajee, Ninaz.

Koechlin, Kalki. "Prakash, Koechlin win MetroPlus Playwright Award." The Hindu. 1 1 Feb 2009. . Manjula, Padmanabhan. Body Blows: Women, Violence, and Survival. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000. Menon, Ayeesha.

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Parameswaran, Vma. "Sita's Promise: A Dance Drama".

-. Sons Must Die and Other Plays. New Delhi: Prestige, 1998. Print. Ramanarayan, Gowri. "Serpent Speak: Playing in Arun Kolatkar's Lane."

Reddy, Snehalata. "Sita". EnactMafiazine, Jan � Feb 1974. 1-8. Roy, Catherine Rhea. "Don and drama" The Hindu, May 2, 2013 Sarabhai, Mallika & J. Martin. "Sita's Daughters", Unpublished Performance Script. Sarabhai, Mallika. "In Search of Goddess." Gender, Space and Resistance: Women and Theatre in India. Ed. Anita Singh & Tarun Tapas Mukherjee. New Delhi: DK Printworld, 2013. 376-384. Print. Rodrigue, Virginia. "Q&A with Director-Writer Deepika Arwind", BLOUIN ARTINFO, June 5 2013. Wandor, Michelene. Look Back In Gender. New York: Methuen, 1987. Print. Zaidi, Annie. -. "Name, Place, Animal, Thing" The Hindu, January 22, 2009

CONTESTING ISSUES IN INDIAN ENGLISH DRAMA DIPENDU DAS

Manjula Nayak, the central figure in Girish Kamad's monologue Broken Images (2004), chooses to write a novel in English, instead of her first language Karmada, and achieves instant worldwide recognition, as the novel turns out to be a bestseller all over the world. In the process she is declared tlie 'Literary Phenomenon of the Decade' (Collected Plays, 263). It is significant that Manjula decides to write a novel in English and not a play, probably because Kamad was aware of tlie prospect and peril of writing drama in English in India. English fiction by Indian diaspora has a huge readership across the world today, whereas a play in English from India occupies a subservient position, even sometimes a secondary one, in comparison to drama in certain major Indian languages. The choice of Manjula to write a novel in English is thus significant, as it also underlines the state of Indian English drama. Though the importance of appreciating a drama through reading tlie text carmot be ignored, one has to accept the fact that the performative aspect remains integral to the dramatic form. Nevertheless, playwrights throughout tlie world went on writing dramas even though a large number of the plays they composed were never performed, and many of them perished with the passage of time, as the texts were not published. This is particularly applicable to Indian English drama, most of which was neither published nor staged. Hence, any survey of Indian English drama merely on the basis of its perfOlmance would make its presence appear quite insignificant, as the perfonnance of drama, written in English by Indian playwrights, even in the major Indian cities, is not a regular affair. Notwithstanding the fact that tlie scope of performing drama in India in English written by Indian playwrights is mostly disheartening, the state of Indian English drama does not present (in either widtli or wortli) a completely dismal show. It needs to be mentioned tliat there has rarely been unanimity in the defmition or in tlie inclusion of different categories of plays in the fold of

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Indian English drama. The inclusion of certain plays by Indian dramatists not originally written in English but subsequently translated into English, not even by the playwrights themselves but by other translators, has added to the ambiguity. That the issue has not been completely resolved, even after the assertion of M. K. Naik in his book Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey (2007), where, while referring to Girish Kamadhe, he mentions, "All the three plays (of Karnad) have been translated from the Kannada originals by the author himself, and hence they qualify for inclusion in Indian English literature, as against books translated into English by writers who have not authored them" (Naik 2007, 202).While throwing light on the state of Indian English drama, A. N. Dwivedi, in the Foreword to the book Perspective and Challenges in Indian English Drama (2012), observes: Though the present-day Indian dramatists in English, such as Asif Cmrirnbhoy, Girish Karnad, Badal Sarkar, Lakhan Deb, Gurcharan Das, Vijay Tendulkar, and Mahesh Dattani, enjoy a smmier climate and better prospects, it will be pretty difficult for them to rub shoulders with practitioners of other above-mentioned literary forms. These dramatists have however, introduced crisp dialogue and natural expression, new tones and techniques, to render their plays life-like, topical and stage oriented (Dwivedi 2012, v).

Though Badal Sarkar is undoubtedly one of India's greatest playwrights, who is highly acclaimed for introducing Third Theatre, and though several of his plays have been translated into English, the playwright carmot be included in the category of Indian English dramatists, as he has written his plays in Bengali and not in English. Similar is the case of Vijay Tendulkar, who composed his plays in Marathi. Many of them are available in English translations; but alinost all of them have been translated into English not by Vijay Tendulkar, but by various other translators. Though there are reservations in some quarters with regard to the inclusion of the translation of the Indian writers' own compositions into English in the category of Indian English writing, we may, without any hesitation, include the translations of their own plays into English by Indian playwrights in the fold of Indian English drama, as they may be considered as transcreations. That the translation of one's own composition may qualify the yardstick of originality is evident in the case of the works like Rabindranath Tagore's Song Offerings and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which were originally composed in Bengali and French respectively, and subsequently translated into English by the authors themselves. But a playwright like Badal Sarkar can in no way be called an

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Indian English dramatist, as he has not even translated his plays into English. Badal Sarkar's Evam Indrajit: Three-act Play was translated by Girish Karnad (1975); Three Plays: Procession, Bhoma, Stale News was a translation by Samik Bandyopadhyay (1983); Beyond the Land of Hattamala & Scandal in Fairyland, was translated by Suchanda Sarkar (2003); and the translation of Two Plays: Indian History Made Easy, Life ofBagala was done by Subhendu Sarkar (2009). Ahnost similar, is the case with regard to the inclusion of Vijay Tendulkar among the Indian English dramatists. All his important plays have been translated by different authors. The English translation of Silence / The Court Is in Session was done by Priya Adarkar (1979); Ghashiram Kotwal was translated by Jayant Karve and Eleanor Zelliot (2009); Priya Tendulkar, Kumud Mehta, and Shanta Gokhale translated Vijay Tendulkar's Five Plays, which included Kamala, Silence} The Court is in Session, Sakharam Binder, The Vultures & Encounter in Umbugland (1992); Gouri Ranmarayan translated Tendulkar's Mitriichi Goshta: A Friend's Story: A Play in Three Acts (2001), and Kanyiidiin (2002); The Cyclist and His Fifth Woman (2006) was translated by Balwant Bhaneja. It is to be noted that playwrights like Badal Sarkar and Vijay Tendulkar should not be awarded credit or criticized for something for which they are not responsible. Rather the credit for introducing "crisp dialogue and natural expression" (Dwivedi) of a translated text should go to the translator, but under no circumstances to the original author/playwright. The English syllabi of certain Indian universities are equally responsible for adding to the confusion. In the course "Indian English Literature", or "Indian Writing in English", some of the syllabi include certain texts which have been translated into English by writers who have not authored them. For example, Jyoti Nivas Degree College's (autonomous) syllabus for MA English (with effect from 2006) includes Rabindranath Tagore's Muktadhara, and Badal Sircar's Evam Indrajit in English translations, in the papers titled "Indian Writing in English" I and II, respectively. It is to be noted that the syllabus also contains two other courses, titled "Indian Literatures in Translation I and II", where several other texts translated from different Indian languages have been included. Similar is the case with the syllabi of some other universities. Mahashweta Devi's Rudali features in the paper titled "Indian Writing in English" in the MA English Degree Course under CBCS (with effect from 2012-13) of Thiruvalluvar University. Rabindranath Tagore's The Post Office is a prescribed text in Course VII, titled "Indian English Writing" of The Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University. Vijay Tendulkar's Ghasiram Kotval has

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been prescribed in the Core Course 5, of Mahatma Gandhi University, titled "Indian English Literature", which was restructured as a syllabus for the MA English programme in the affiliated Colleges Credit Semester System. The syllabus has been in operation since 2012. Vijay Tendu1kar's Silence, the Court is in Session is a prescribed text in the course "Indian Writing in English", Semester III, Paper III (a) of Devi Ahi1ya Vishwavidya1aya, Indore. The syllabus will be in effect from 2016·2017. Vijay Tendulkar's Kamala is a prescribed text in Semester II, Paper II, Code Core VII, of Periyar University, Periyar, Salem, titled, "Indian Writing in English". The course has been in effect from the academic year 2012·2013. None of the above-mentioned texts prescribed in the course of "Indian English Writing! Indian Writing in English" were written originally in English, or translated into English by the playwrights themselves. Hence, none of them qualify for inclusion in the course of "Indian English Writingilndian Writing in English". What is required is a clear demarcation between Indian English literature, and Indian literature in English translation, and hence, between Indian English drama and Indian drama in English translation. A vibrant living theatre is a precondition for the development of drama in any language and culture. Even though India inherits a very rich dramatic tradition, and boasts of an extremely vibrant living theatre in different Indian languages, there is a dearth of regular platforms for the staging of drama by Indian playwrights writing drama in English. Apart from a few metropolises in India, such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, and Delhi, there is no regular platform for performing drama in English in India. Among them, Mumbai has the largest number of theatre groups staging dramas in English, such as, Motley, Galaxy, The Phoenix Players, Out of Context, Fly on The Wall, Working Title, Work in Progress, The Company Theatre, Industrial Theatre Co., Attic Salt Theatre, Little Prithvi Players, Zero Theatre Company, etc. However, from their repertoire, it becomes evident that they stage mainly well·known plays by major dramatists from the West. Indian English dramas rarely find a place among their productions. Notwithstanding the fact that the dearth of quality plays by Indian English dramatists has often been suggested as the reason behind the absence of Indian English drama among the list of the productions by such English theatre groups in India, one should not overlook several other reasons which might also have played important roles in the lack of proper

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representation of Indian English plays on stage. One has to acknowledge the fact that most of the successful dramatists throughout the world were closely associated with at least one theatre group which played a very important role even in the dramatic compositions of that playwright. It is to be noted that the first productions of most of the plays of Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani, the two most successful of Indian English dramatists, have been made by the theatre troupes they are closely associated with. In fact, these two multi-talented dramatists directed most of their plays. As a result, they got enough scope for revising the text of the plays before they were published. In the absence of close and regular association with theatre groups, and hence the lack of the facility of production, some very good plays have not yet been perfOlmed. In this context, one of the most prolific Indian English dramatists, Asif Currirnbhoy, who has composed about thirty plays and has been acknowledged internationally as a very significant dramatic voice from the Indian subcontinent, is a glaring example. . . . Cmrimbhoy's is the first authentic voice in the theatre. He has \Vfitten that COlUltry'S [India] first plays of dissent. He presents life as it is, not as something it should be . . . Once again, art, that discredited wonder-box of illusions, finds itself telling the truth while politicians lie and people look the other way (Bowers, quoted in Currimbhoy, The Do/drummers, viii).

Even then, the plays of Currimbhoy were rarely performed in India. He wrote his first play in 1959, and the first stage performance of his play was held in the US, at the University of Michigan, in 1965. After four years of perfOlmances abroad, his play was performed in India for the first time, when The Doldrummers was staged by the Little Theatre Group in Delhi in 1969. Though his plays A Touch ofBrightness (1968), and The Professor Has a War Cry (1970), were staged abroad, Pratap Sharma's dramas were never staged in India. Similar was the fate of many other highly talented playwrights, many of whom gave up writing plays after a promising start, with some of them diverting their creative energy to other fOlms of literature and arts. Thus the loss to drama resulted in the gain for fictional and non-fictional prose writing in the case of Gurcharan Das, whose first significant creative outputs were three stage dramas, Larins Sahib, Mira, and 9 Jakhoo Hill, composed by the playwright while in his twenties. All these plays were subsequently published as Three English Plays (2001). Later on, Das shifted his creative energy to other forms of literature, and came up with novels like A Fine Family (2001) and non-fictional prose like The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change (2002), and The

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Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma (2009). In the Introduction to his Three English Plays (2001), Das mentions, "Writing a play takes a certain amount of audacity, which I seem to lack today. I wrote all my plays in my twenties. I had more courage then, and I would be very scared of writing a play now" (Das 2006). Sporadic attempts were made to encourage and promote the writing of drama in India. The Theatre Group, Mumbai, armounced the Sultan Padamsee Award for Indian plays in English in 1968. The award was won by Gurcharan Das's Larins Sahib, and the group produced the play in Bombay in 1969. Geive Patel's Princes and Dina Mehta's Myth-makers also competed for this award. Unfortunately, the competition went into hiatus for quite some time, and it was only after a long nine years, in 1978, that Cyrus Mistry's Doongaji House won the second Sultan Padamsee award. In spite of limited scope for performance on stage, Indian playwrights continued writing plays in English, and some of them even earned international acclaim. Dina Mehta's Brides Are Not For Burning received an international award from the BBC in 1979. Getting Away with Murder by the playwright was also shortlisted for the BBC World Playwriting competition in 1989. Her Sister Like You (1996) was also shortlisted for the British Council New International Playwriting awards. Poile Sengupta's Keats Was A Tuber was shortlisted in 1996 for the same award. Manjula Padmanabhan received a Greek Onassis Award for her play Harvest. She composed a few very powerful plays, such as Lights Outl (1984) and Hidden Fires (2003). Often, we perceive a tendency among a section of critics to discount the merit of Indian English without a thorough investigation into the subject. It may be acceptable when K. R. SrinivasaIyengar observes, "Modern Indian dramatic writing in English is neither rich in quantity nor, on the whole, of high quality" (SrinivasaIyengar, 226), because he mainly based his observation on the plays written up to the early part of the 1970s, which were, until then, not very substantial in quantity. But one has to acknowledge that Indian English drama since then made a significant stride forward, both in quality and quantity. Any verdict on the technical aspect of a drama made merely on the basis of the dramatic text, particularly by one who is not qualified to gauge the technical aspects of the text, is an injustice to the play and the playwright. We need to acknowledge that most of the initial observations about the celebrated dramas throughout the world were, in fact, based on the performance of

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the plays. Unfortunately, in the absence of adequate representation of Indian English drama on stage, most of the assessments of such dramas are based on the reading of the texts only. Drama is a perfOlmative art, and exploring the technical virtuosity ingrained in a dramatic text demands training in the craft. In this context, Indian English drama remains at the receiving end. Here one may be reminded of the fact that the plays of Rabindranath Tagore were considered as lUlsuitable for perfOlmance on stage until Shambhu Mitra successfully unveiled the immense potential of a play like Tagore's Raktakarabi in 1954. This performance provided a great boost to translating Tagore on stage for performance, and brought a significant change in the perception of Tagore's plays. Translating day-to-day experience in Indian society, in English, on stage, is a huge challenge encountered by dramatists in India writing in English. Though English today has penetrated much deeper, and spread wider, in Indian society, and a large number of people, particularly in cities and big to'WllS, are acquainted with English, it is not the lingua franca in most of the spaces, and still not the language of the masses in India. Hence, translating any experience that remains outside the domain of English­ speaking Indians through dialogues/speeches for the stage becomes very difficult for a dramatist writing drama in English for an Indian audience, because such figures do not speak in English in real life. Rather, they speak in Indian languages. An Indian English dramatist then encounters challenges at different levels - of translating into English the experience of a space that exists outside the domain of the English-speaking populace in India, and of conveying that experience in English translation to an Indian audience which is acquainted with the COlUltry'S multilingual context, and very sensitive to the loss and gain in translation from the source language to the target language. Two very perceptive and highly successful playwrights like Girish Karnad and Maliesh Dattani (both of whom are also actively engaged in acting, directing drama and film, writing screenplay and radio drama) were aware of all the challenges of writing drama in English, and tried to negotiate the issues through different means. In his Introductory Note to Tale-Danda, Girish Karnad observes: In Karnataka, as elsewhere in India, a man has only to open his mouth and his speech will give away his caste, his geographical origins, even his economic status. In the original Kannada version of Tale-Danda, the language of the play engages with the implications of this fact for a situation in which a group of people are trying to fight caste and social

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Contesting Issues in Indian English Drama inequality. For obvious reasons, this aspect of the problem is not explored in the English translation (Kamad, 2).

From the very choice of theme, to the use of language, and all other aspects of dramatic composition, a playwright writing in English in India has to remain careful, because here in India sJhe has to confront English­ knowing audiences from varied cultural contexts, many of whom may belong to, or may be closely associated with, that cultural context. Hence, a drama written in English is sure to invite deep scrutiny with regard to the aspects of loss and gain in translation. Moreover, it is also a huge challenge to express the experience of one culture into the language of another culture. Karnad mentions, in an interview in the Sunday Herald on 21 February 1999: . . . a language is something you need to develop over a whole lifetime. After having \Vfitten in Kannada for about 25-30 years, I feel I know how to \Vfite in Kannada now . . . I don't have time to go into a new adventure, looking at, and mastering, an entirely new subject, because to be able to speak is not enough. You have to go into the language; you have to go into its possibilities (quoted in Dharwadker, xx).

At that point in time, Kamad seemed to express dissatisfaction pertaining to his own English translations of his plays. It is interesting to note that Karnad's use of myth in dealing with contemporary issues in his plays provides him, as well his audience, with a distance necessary for responding to the issues, not with emotion, but reason. This distance acts as an aid to Kamad when he uses English as the medium of dramatic composition. That Kamad's plays are no less successful in his 0\Vll English translation becomes evident from the observation of M. K. Naik: "According those qualified to judge, the English versions (of Kamad's plays) are far superior to the Kannada ones" (Naik, 202). As has been mentioned earlier, both Kamad and Dattani have benefitted from their close association with theatre, as most of their plays undergo revision in the course of rehearsals. For example, "the play, titled Agni Mattu Male was written originally in Kannada, but rendered immediately into English (The Fire and the Rain) for a workshop with professional actors . . . and the entire process of change and revision took place in English" (Dharwadkar, xv).With The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (1997), begins a new phase in the career of Kamad as a dramatist, when he writes his plays first in English, and then translates them in Kannada.

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In the Preface to his Collected Plays (2000), Mahesh Dattani responds to the challenges faced by a playwright writing drama in English in the following words: I now realize that I am practising theatre in an extremely imperfect world where the politics of doing theatre in English looms large over anything else one does. "Where -writing about the middle-class is seen as unfashionable. Where -writing about working classes, I am told, I would gain international recognition. (But if I were, in fact, a working-class person, no middle-class critic or theatre practitioner would give me the time of day.) And also a world where there is no real professional theatre. That one has to rely on the passion and free time of the few practitioners that exist in the five cities of India. "Where I am met with open hostility in parochial universities. "Where in literary circles, I am seen as inferior because I am a play\Vfight (Dattani 2000, xv).

Aware of the perils of writing drama in English in India, Dattani takes the challenges head on. The very selection of the subjects of his plays is significant, and they shock, startle, and draw our attention from the beginning. "By pulling the 'invisible issues' and the taboo subjects out from under the rug and placing them on stage for public discussion, Dattani challenges the constructions of 'India' and 'Indian' as they have traditionally been defined in modem theatre" (Das, 269). Dattani is unapologetic about his unconventional themes. He dares to challenge his audience, and thus exposes himself to severe criticism, which in tum, has made him one of the most controversial, as well as most popular, playwrights from India. In the Preface to his Collected Plays Vol. 1 (2000), Mahesh Dattani records the prejudice with which his plays have been initially received: '''We are all liberal minded people', stated one of the citified English-speaking audiences, adding, 'But do we really have to go to the theatre to see gays on stage? '" (Dattani, xi). To this Dattani observed, "I have yet to meet a homosexual who says, 'I have nothing against heterosexuals, but do we have to watch them on stage? '" (Dattani, xi-xii). Dattani emerged on the horizon of Indian drama in the last decade of the twentieth century when, with the advent of globalization, English was gradually spreading itself into the private and public spheres of Indian urban life. Dattani provokes his audience, mainly in urban centers, with the issues ingrained in their lives, in a language which is the most important medium of communication in their daily living. He picks up the English spoken by average urban Indians in their day-to-day parley, and takes particular care in assaying the people of lower strata of life, who do

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not usually speak English. Themes and language used in Datlani's plays thus perfectly gel with each other, as English appears a natural medium in his dramas. "He belongs to a generation of writers who use the English language without either pride or guilt" (Gokhale, 337). Once, when asked by a journalist (with regard to his writing drama in English) why he did not write in his own language, Dattani replied, "I do" (349). In a post-globalised world, where English has begun rapidly creeping into, particularly urban, India, this unapologetic and humble approach to one's craft has become the hallmark of Indian playwrights writing in English; and in the process, in a fast-changing scenario, this conviction to one's O\Vll art has already begun to tranSfOlTIl the so-called 'Cinderella' existence of Indian English drama (Naik, 201). Works Cited

Bowers, Faubion. Quoted in Indrani Chakraborty, "Asif Currimbhoy: India's First Authentic Voice?" in Kautav Chakravorty, Indian Drama in English. New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Ltd., 201 1 . 351-59. Print. Das, Dipendu. "Social Exclusion of Sexual Minorities in Patriarchal Capitalist Society: A Critical Response to ' Seven Steps around the Fire.'" The Plays of Mahesh Datlani: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Ed. Tutun Mukherjee. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2012. 268-74. Print. Das, Gurucharan. Quoted in Hurnra Quraishi, "A peep into the recent past". The Tribune online Edition Monday, April 10, 2006, Chandigarh, India. Dattani, Mahesh. 'Preface' Collected Plays. Volume One. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000. xi-xv. Print. Dattani, Mahesh. Quoted in "The Dramatists." An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003 (Second impression 2008). 337-50. Print. Dharwadkar, Aparna Bhargava. 'Introduction'. Collected Plays [of Girish Karnad]. Volume Two. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005 (Tenth Impression 2013). vii-xxxix. Print. Dwivedi, A. N. 'Foreword.' Perspective and Challenges in Indian English Drama. Ed. Neeru Tandon. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2012. v-vi. Print. Gokhale, Shanta. "The Dramatists." An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003 (Second impression 2008). 337-350. Print.

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Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling, 1962 (Reprint 2012). Print. Kamad, Girish. Qtd in Dharwadkar, AparnaBhargava. 'Introduction'. Collected Plays [of Girish Karnad]. Volume Two. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005 (Tenth Impression 2013). vii-xxxix. Print. Kamad, Girish. 'Note.' Collected Plays. Volume Two. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005 (Tenth Impression 2013). 2-3. Print. Naik, M. K. Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007. Print. Naik, M. K. Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007. Print.

TOWARDS SYNCRETISM: RESISTING CRITICAL STEREOTYPES IN THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ENGLISH DRAMA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GIRISH KARNAD' S BROKEN IMAGES PARTHA SARATHI GUPTA

"The readiness is all", says Hamlet in Act V Sc II of Shakespeare's play. The remark may well motivate the postcolonial scholar of Indian theatre, sick and tired of telTIlS such as 'decolonisation' and 'roots movement', to embark upon a journey towards the quest of new terms. Questions may be posed as to whether the time is not ripe enough to investigate the theoretical relevance of telTIlS such as those quoted above, in the present century, when the world-wide-web is open to a single click of our fingertips. Are we not ready enough to fe-look at our models of reference? Has Indian theatre not grO\vn enough to deserve a new approach in theoretical scholarship? The objective of the present study is to resist tbe application of post-colonial theoretical models of analysising modern Indian drama, pertaining to strategies of 'decolonisation' of the stage through the 'roots movement', in favour of alternative tools of analyzing theatre that are more commensurate with perspectives pertinent to the new challenges of viewership in the globalised India of the twenty-first century. A random survey of the status of professional theatre in India at the present moment, as conducted by none other than Girish Karnad, would confirm the inevitability of a bleak future for modem theatre in India, relegated to only a few niche performance spaces in the urban metropolis, on account of the onslaught of film and television. It is impossible to understand, appreciate and even 'do' theatre without taking into consideration the potential 'threat' of the viewership of both the above media, rising by the day: The fact that theatre does not exist in isolation but is a link in a long chain of relationships connecting different entertainment media, and that each one of these forms defines itself in terms of or in relation to the form

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Towards Syncretism immediately next to it spatially or temporarily, may seem too obvious to require further insistence (Karnad, 338).

Karnad, moreover, reminds scholars dedicated to the preservation of traditional, fast-dying, endangered forms of art that are under the threat of extinction, that they "need to bear this principle of the substitution of fOlTIlS in mind" before devising efforts to preserve, encourage, and develop them. The status of theatre in post-modem India has remained 'amateur', as Kamad confesses, and it is in the hands of these practicing amateurs that post-Independence theatre is still searching for a defiintion of its Indianness. Most of these amateurs, as Karnad observes, "have to go into film and television, thus perpetuating the 'amateur' status of the theatre they have helped to keep alive" (Karnad, 348). Karnad, who plays a vital role in the recently-released Sahnan Khan blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger, has himself no qualms in confessing that, "I see myself as a playwright, but I make a living in fihn and television", and that, "There is a very high elasticity of substitution between the different perfonning media in India: the participant too, gets tossed about violently" (Karnad, 349). It is this "elasticity of substitution between the different performing media" that may provide us with clues for finding alternate tools of analyzing and understanding modem Indian theatre, that has long since been first 'colonised', 'decolonised', and then acculturated through inter-cultural practices. Born out of an inevitable union between British colonialism and commercialization, theatre in India soon turned into a commodity rather than a community event related to arumal harvests and religious occasions. Since modern theatre's first independent appearance in India in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta, cities that "were both creations of British maritime trade with no pre-British Indian history", the British elite sought for themselves an entertainment modeled on English theatre. Karnad observes: Two features of the new theatre borrowed from the West were to set it totally apart from anything that preceded it, and to qualify it for the adjective modem. The first feature was the proscenilUll stage, which radically altered the traditional player-audience relationship . . . The second innovation, far more important than in its impact, was the sale of tickets, which changed the relationship of the theatregoers to the theatre itself (Kamad, 335).

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Theatre-going, for the colonial British in the eighteenth century, became a means of engagement with nostalgia, through which the British colonial expatriate re-lived a cultural experience, left behind in the memories of London. Sudipto Chatterjee observes: Plays, and visiting theatres, were ways of 'bringing back'; re-living something of London life, despite the incongruous geographic differences. Professional actors from the homeland mixed with the arnatems and local English civilians living in Calcutta, to form acting companies modeled on London prototypes (Chatterjee, 19).

Evidence has been found to suggest tbat, on the solicitation of help from English theatre aficionados, David Garrick in London sent an actor named Bernad Messink "who brought witb him painted scenery backdrops to help the Calcutta amateurs set up their own theatre" (Chatterjee, 19). Gradually, sporadic attempts were made by both natives as well as Europeans, to create Western-style theatrical perfOlmances in the native language, the first attempt being made by a Russian linguist and musician, Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedeff, to produce a Western-style play in BangIa in 1795. Later, as the Bengal Renaissance patronized more hybridity, more and more Western-style theatre of tbe 'babus', practiced by the likes of Nabin Chandra Basu, Michael Madbusudan Dutta, and Girish Chandra Ghosh, came to be produced. After Independence, various attempts were made to shake off the hangover of the colonial influence in modem Indian drama, with playwrights and critics questioning the potency and validity of that view of 'modernity' hegeminosed by tbe British, through perpetuation of tbe English models of proscenium theatre and the concept of literary drama. Publications such as Baldoon Dhingra's A National Theatre for India (1944), and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay's Towards a National Theatre (1945) had already called for a theatre that would function as a national 'political forum'. Erin Mee observes: Given the colonial influence over the development of modern theatre, the separation between theatre and performance and between mban and rural culture, and the renewed interest in 'folk' theatre as representative of what was truly and authentically 'Indian', it is almost inevitable that the response to the call for a national theatre would take the form of the theatre of roots movement (Mee, 91).

Later, in 1959, Habib Tanvir founded tbe Naya Theatre, arguing for a blend of tbe urban and the folk techniques in search of a new idiom that would stand for 'Indianness'. Earlier, even Mulk Raj Anand in 1951

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attempted to define Indianness in theatre in terms of 'folk theatre', championing the cause of a "synthesis of urban theatre and rural performance" (Mee, 76). What emerges from a random sampling of such works is a theoretical ambiguity on what actually constitutes true 'Indianness' in modem Indian theatre. Girish Karnad, in his essay Theatre in India, provides a theoretical critique of this ambiguity, an inability on the part of critical scholarship to define what constitutes the truly 'Indian' in theatre, the playwright having to choose from either the ancient Sanskrit tradition, which had already been dead by 1000 AD, as Karnad confirms, or the indigenous folk perfOlmance traditions: By 1000 AD, Sanskrit theatres had long been dead, and regional languages mother tongues, unlike Sanskrit had begun to emerge as vehicles of artistic and philosophic expression. It is interesting that, while the new regional language literatures on the whole followed Sanskrit models, they did not produce -..vritten drama (Karnad, 345).

Among the indigenous performance traditions popular in the postclassical period, Karnad mentions the yakshagana and the kathakali, and other 'spirit cults' of neighbouring areas, and new ritual fOlms such as the raslila and ramlila, forged out of the bhakti movement. It must be mentioned here that umbrella terms such as 'indigenous performance traditions' and 'folk theatre', frequently and indiscriminately used for the sake of scholarship's convenience, must be read with caution, as "a wide variety of perfOlmance gemes from distinct regional cultures that respond to particular social circumstances" may have distinctly heterogeneous dramaturgical structures and performance practices (Mee,76). Erin Mee cautions that, sometimes, encyclopedic books on theatre display the tendency to "group these diverse gemes together under the same rubric", thereby contributing to "a conceptual erasure of the distinctions between them" (Mee, 77). Moreover, such scholarship also falls prey to the demands of anthropology that may ultimately slip into etbnographic studies with a dash of exotica. However, the journey back to the 'roots' in search of an alternate medium of expression as part of the 'decolonising' project, needed to be institutionalized, and out of that urgency were born three autonomous bodies, patronized by the government of India, "to draw on these various strands in the traditional theatre - some of which had lost contact with urban civilization during the course of the last 200 years, and many of which seemed deeply rooted in religious sensibility" (Kamad, 345). They were the Sahitya Akademi for literature, the Sangeet Natak Akademi for the perfOlming arts, and the Lalit Kala Akademi for fine arts, "whose main

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function was the discovery, retrieval, and rejuvenation of arts on the brink of extinction" (Karnad, 345). The aim of this paper is not to reiterate the salient features of the Roots Movement and critique its ideological motivation. Instead, this may be read as an attempt to assess the validity of the Movement in the new millennium, when we have come a long way through from our quest for 'roots' and traditions. We are living in a time when both the 'modernity' of the Bengal Renaissance as well as the 'post-modernity' of ,decoIonisation' have become redundant as tools of analyzing a contemporary Indian play. As Mahesh Dattani observes: It is not enough to say we are Indians and we shall see Indian theatre. We need to go beyond this very simplistic political identity for ourselves and our theatre to arrive at the true Indianness of our theatre and ultimately of ourselves. In a plural society as ours, which is culturally as diverse as the European continent, and a civilization that is as ancient as the world, it is very difficult to define what is quintessentially Indian. Obviously, a more pluralistic approach is required (Bhatia, 471).

As scholars of dramatic literatureiperfOlmance traditions, Dattani's 'pluralistic approach' may help us find alternate ways to assess and understand contemporary Indian theatre. It is in this connection that an intercultural approach may become handy. Theatre, as a medium of artistic expression, had always been a composite art fOlTIl drawing from a variety of sources beyond itself, and it is this flexibility of the form that makes it open to intercultural winds from time to time. Erika Fischer-Lichte observes: In Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa, the aesthetically most advanced contemporary theatres are significantly different from the traditional theatres of their respective cultures, in that they deliberately adopt theatrical elements from foreign cultures. In each case this results in an 'inter-cultural performance' which is constituted by the relationship between the continuation of the old traditions and the productive reception of elements of foreign theatre traditions (Fischer-Lichte (quoted. in Dalrnia, 282).

This phenomenon was rampant in European theatre since the end of the First World War, and became more and more pronounced in the post­ Second World War literary, artistic and theatrical climate. Antonin Artaud, in his manifestoes on the 'theatre of cruelty' of 1938, is highly receptive to Eastern perfolTIlance traditions when he speaks of forging anew a theatre

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that would be 'anti-literary', and 'spectacle based' . Artaud observes in his essay: By an altogether Oriental means of expression, this objective and concrete language of the theatre can fascinate and ensnare the organs. It flows into the sensibility. Abandoning Occidental useages of speech, it turns words into incantations (Bentley, 56).

Later, Polish director Jerzy Grotowski experiments with the concept of 'poor theatre', an artistic by-product of what he called the Laboratory Theatre. In his article, "Towards a Poor Theatre" (1965), Grotowski lays bare his sources of inspiration culled from major actor-training methods of Europe and beyond. Having listed his Western muses, he observes: "Also particularly stimulating to me are the training techniques of oriental theatre - especially the Peking Opera, Indian Kathakali, and Japanese No Theatre" (Grotowski, 16). However, he cautions that his objective is not limited merely to the borrowing of tecliniques culled from inter-cultural sources: Ours is not a deductive method of collecting skills. Here everything is concentrated on the 'ripening' of the actor, which is expressed by a tension towards the extreme, by a complete stripping do"Wll, by the laying bare of one's O"Wll intimity all this without the least trace of egotism or self enjoyment. The actor makes a total gift of himself. This is the technique of the 'trance', and of the integration of all the actor's psychic and bodily powers which emerge from the most intimate layers of his being and his instinct, springing forth in a sort of ,transhunination' (Grotowski, 16).

Subtle hints in Grotowski's register betray his familiarity with Abhinavagupta's theory of self-recognition, or pratyabhigyan, achievable through the art of theatre, as explained in his Abhinavabharati, a commentary on Bharatmuni's The Natyasastra, in the light of Kashmir Saivism. Abhinavagupta, in his commentary, explains the mechanics of the aesthetic enjoyment of the spectator in his analysis of the Santa rasa, as a source of all the other rasas, in the following way: "Santa rasa is to be knO\vn as that which arises from a desire to secure the liberarion of the self, which leads to a knowledge of the truth, and is connected with the property of highest happiness" (Devy, 66). Grotowski's use of phrases and words such as 'the technique of the trance' and 'translumination' become key signifiers of his familiarity of Abhinavagupta's spiritual basis of the argument on theatre. Moreover Grotowski, very much like Abhinavagupta, is primarily focused on the actor's craft: "The requisite state of mind is a passive readiness to realize an active role, a state in which one does not

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want to do that but rather resigns from not doing it (Grotowski, 17), through which the actor makes a total sacrifice of his 'material' self at the altar of theatre. Grotowski's proposal was aimed at a conscious espousal of 'plastic' elements of theatre, such as costume, lights, sound, props, etc., in favour of the actor's skill as the only means of eliciting effect: Elimination of plastic elements which have a life of their 0\Vll (i.e., represent something independent of the actor's activities) led to the creation by the actor of the most elementary and obvious objects. By his controlled use of gesture the actor transforms the floor into a sea, a table into a confessional, a piece of iron into an animate partner, etc. (Grotowski, 21).

In the 1960s, Grotowski, thus under the influence of his Eastern scholarship, had been insisting that, "an acceptance of poverty in theatre, stripped of all that is not essential to it, revealed to us not only the backbone of the medium, but also the deep riches which lie in the very nature of the art-form" (ibid.). Grotowski made extensive use of the technique of 'poor theatre' - the exclusive skill of the actor's craft, for a production of Kalidas' Abhigyan-Sakuntalam in 1960. Years before, Stanislavski had made a similar attempt to 'cut across' to traditional 'oriental' theatre techniques in his 1926 publication, An Actor Prepares. Throughout the course of Stanislavski's introspective study of the actor's techniques, he hints at a close familiarity with Indian belief systems on the subject. In his chapter, titled "Communion", quoting from a list of recommendations from the director Torstov during a training programme, Stanislavski observes: I have read what the Hindus say on this subject. They believe in the existence of a kind of vital energy called Prana, which gives life to our body. According to their calculation, the radiating centre of this Prana is the solar plexus. Consequently, in addition to Oill brain which is generally accepted as the nerve and psychic centre of Oill being, we have a similar source near the heart, in the solar plexus (Stanislavski, 1 84-85).

However, inter-cultural practices of the above order, as demonstrated by Western practitioners in the post-war era in Europe, must not be misunderstood or overestimated as assimilation of forms and influences. Even if directors such as Grotowski were close to realizing the ritual framework of ancient Indian drama, he consciously moved away from such experimentations. "He was aware of the absence of ritual framework in Western theatre" (Dalmia, 285). Dalmia further observes in her essay "Encountering the Other, Accosting the Self', how Western theatre

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practitioners have, "with remarkable consistency, restricted their interest in Indian theatre to what they have regarded as classical theatre . . . " venerating ancient Indian resources as repositories of ancient wisdom. The problem with such assumptions is that they tend to slip into essentialist oversimplifications. Dahnia further explains: Whereas in itself taking resort to these sources seems a legitimate enough undertaking, it has seldom been accompanied by any serious attempt to understand the historical, social, aesthetic, and most of all religious context of the performance tradition thus abstracted (Dalrnia, 284).

Thus, the orientalist's fascination with ritual theatre has only resulted in what Dalmia calls "a deliberate desacralization of context" (Dalmia, 284). The same essentialist and reductionist position has been maintained by Richard Schechner, who does not hesitate to subsume a variety of forms, such as the Indian, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and native-American, under the umbrella of a single performance theory. The reductionist tendencies of Western inter-culturalism, as found in Western theatre, can be contrasted with more genuine efforts on the boards of the Indian counterpart. As it has been observed at the outset, theatre, both in the West as well as in the East, has always been intercultural. But with the world and markets opening up all over, Indian theatre, particularly Indian English theatre, has become much more porous. Indian drama in English had never been in a position to adopt the post-colonial posturing of making an effort to go back to 'Indian roots' in any way. Undoubtedly, it was born and brought up under the strict vigil of neo-colonial parentage, under the influence of what was then known as 'modernity'. It has suffered the severest blows from scholars who refused to acknowledge that English could be used as a radical of theatrical communication. But over the years, English drama in India flowered into its natural self, paving the way for the next stage of interculturalism in world theatre, in which English theatre in India would not just accost the West, but naturalise it, irrespective of its niche viewership in urban India and abroad. Girish Kamad observes: Performed in mban, glitzy movie houses and on rmal well-worn ground, theatre in India is expansive and experimental. Theatre can simultaneously be entertainment, political commentary, and artistic statement, and can be composed in traditional, realistic, and postrnodem forms. Indian playwrights and directors have had years of changing influences. Theatre often gropes toward the past, looking for meaning, with the tools of the present: video, lighting, shifting audiences. But to have impact on the heart of society, drama must attempt honesty not merely by using a mythical

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Indian history, but by engaging actively with possibilities in the present.. (Kamad, 331).

The present study holds up for analysis a popular technique current in Great Britain and the US, which Indian-English playwrights like Mahesh Dattani and Girish Karnad are gradually assimilating as part and parcel of theatre in our country - the vertatim theatre mode. As a style of theatre­ making, the verbatim theatre as it is commonly knO\vn, or documentary theatre, instead of adapting or organizing experiences or observations within a conventional fictional dramatic situation, makes the spectacle look real by using real conversations that are edited to suit its purpose. Girish Kamad has used this technique in his monologue play Broken Images, and Mahesh Dattani, it seems, has been partly inspired by this technique in Thirty Days in September (2001), and in his radio play The Girl Who Touched the Stars (2007), inspired by the life of Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman in outer space. As Will Hammond and Dan Steward observe in their book on Verbatim Theatre: The term verbatim refers to the origins of the text spoken in the play. The words of real people are recorded or transcribed by a dramatist during an interview or research process, or are appropriated from existing records such as the transcripts of an official enquiry. They are then edited, arranged or recontextualised to form a dramatic presentation, in which actors take on the characters of the real individuals whose words are being used (Hammond and Steward, 9).

Contemporary dramatists such as Robin Soans, David Hare, Max Stafford­ Clark, Alecky Blythe, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Nicholas Kent, have exploited this technique to its fullest potentiaL The themes of their plays are all contemporary and hence easily identifiable to the spectator. Robin Soans' play Life After Scandal showcases the ordeals of characters who have been celebrities, but have suffered high-profile public disgrace, the playwright in the process providing a critique of the current obsession with 'manufactured celebrity'. Soans' other play Talking to Terrorists was made by interviewing people 'connected with the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing' . Soans acknowledges: After conducting separate interviews with Pat Magee, who planted the bomb in the Grand Hotel, and a woman who had been in the hotel at the time and was a victim of his actions, I intercut their monologues in the final script. As the characters' speeches alternated on stage, they acquired an irony and power neither would have had in isolation (Hammond and Steward, 27).

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Scripted as a monologue, Girish Karnad's play Broken Images is crafted in the form of a simulated meet-the-author show in a television studio. The celebrity-author Manjula Nayak is the protagonist of the play, who has suddenly shot to fame after the publication of her first Indian-English novel. All the props that Girish Karnad uses in this play, evoke a sense of the 'real', the 'here and the now'; in other words, live action seems to have been captured, or at least the illusion seems to have been in that direction to catch the action live, despite the willingness of the audience to suspend disbelief. The interior of the television studio forms the setting of the play. All the props of the action are exclusively intended towards heightening the 'spell' of reality, as if one is watching a 'reality television show'. Manjula Nayak, before her 'interview' commences, keeps on chatting with her interlocutor and the studio-attendants, from time to time adjusting her earpiece, while wearing the lapel mike until the actual play begins, and her announcer introduces the guest of that hour. A short extract of the setting has been quoted for reference: . . . the interior of a television studio. A big plasma screen hangs on one side, big enough for a close-up on it to be seen clearly by the audience . . . Manjula Nayak walks in. She is in her mid thirties/forties, and has a confident stride. She is wearing a lapel mike. It is immediately evident that she is at horne in broadcasting studios (Karnad, 261).

As she makes herself comfortable, having tested the mike and tapped it, the armouncer has already begun to introduce her on the big plasma screen. All the technical efforts at making the scene look real resemble that of the technique of a verbatim play. The entire action of Broken Images hinges upon this interview, during which the actor playing Majula delivers a long introspective monologue as part of her interaction with the audience, evoking nuances of a verbatim play. Robin Soans distinguishes between a conventional Western play and a verbatim play: In restoration comedy, approximately ninety percent of the actor's relationships are with other actors on stage, and ten percent are with the audience, in the fonn of asides. In verbatim theatre, the ratio is reversed . . . The quintessence of verbatim theatre is a group of actors sitting on chairs, or cardboard boxes or a sofa, talking to the audience, simply telling stories . . . (Hammond and Steward, 21).

As the monologue continues as a response to the interlocutor, Manjula Nayak's face is projected on the plasma screen, to give the impression that this is live action. But at a later stage in the action, the play shifts from the 'real' or 'hyperreal' plane onto the level of fiction, when the plasma image

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of Manjula continues talking even after she has been unplugged. What follows however, is Manjula's conversation with her alter-ego. But by this time the audience has already swallowed the 'reality' pill, and is convinced that a real Manjula Nayak, a contemporary Indian English novelist, is making a confessional statement about her personal and public life. We seem to share Robin Soans' assessment of his 0\Vll 1995 production of Waiting Room Germany, written by Klaus Paul, based on the events following the fall of the Berlin Wall: What intrigued me with Wailing Room Germany was that this layer of detachment had evaporated, and that the audience was lUlselfconsciously . . .involved with the stories and dilemmas of the characters telling it (Hammond and Steward, 23).

Hence, every member of the audience is likely to feel that Manjula Nayak, a real novelist, is sharing the intimate details of her life, her hopes and her dilemmas, with others, speaking off the record with a frankness that she could never show in her public life. Hannnond and Steward's final observations on verbatim theatre match the present study's assessment of Broken Images: Transferring a deep personal conversation onto the stage in this way confers a responsibility on the audience a responsibility which I think they enjoy and this partially accounts for the increased intensity of their listening . . . Once a -writer has convinced the audience that they're privy to an actual conversation, the audience will be more willing to embark on the emotional or philosophical journey of the play especially if they already feel that they're being addressed personally (Hammond and Steward, 24).

Thus, in Broken Images, as Manjula keeps speaking, she goes through a cathartic journey, culminating in a confession that releases her from the trap of guilt, of having kissed fame by being rewarded for her supposedly­ written novel in English, The River Has No Enemies. In truth, however, the novel has been written by her bed-ridden sister Malini, who is no more. Skeletons that ultimately nerve-wrack the author - the disclosure of plagiarism, extra-marital woes - keep on tumbling out of the closet one by one. The play, in a sense, turns out to be an exorcism of Manjula, who is forced by her guilt to confess her role as a usurper of fame. Girish Karnad's play Broken Images sets new global standards for Anglophone Indian drama, underscoring the need for the contemporary Indian playwright, not just the Indian English playwright, to adapt to global techniques that do not deserve to be simply called inter-cultural. 'Syncretic' may perhaps be the right adjective that may be used to replace

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'intercultural' . Christopher Balme, in his essay "Indian Drama in English: Transcreation and the Indigenous PerfOlmance Tradition", observes that syncretism had always been part of modem Indian drama: India has a long tradition of this practice, dating back at least to the beginning of the century, with Rabindranath Tagore's renderings of his plays into English. In the work of -writers such as Tagore and Girish Karnad. . it is only through the process of transcreation that a fonn of syncretic drama and theatre is realized that combines the English language with indigenous performance codes (Bhatia, 345).

Baime defines syncretic theatre as, "those theatrical products which result from the interplay between the Western theatro-dramatic tradition and the indigenous perfOlmance fOlTIlS of a postcolonial culture . . . often \Vfitten and performed in Europhone language but almost always manifesting varying degrees of bi- or multi-lingualism" (Bhatia, 345). Bahne's definition of syncretic theatre can be extended further to include fOlTIlS of expression in theatre that are drawn from other media as well, which may both challenge, as well as enrich, theatrical expressions. To come full circle again, we come back to Girish Karnad's proposition in his essay, Theatre in India, in which he argues for the acknowledgement of "a very high elasticity of substitution between the different perfonning media in India". He observes, " . . . 'What lies in store for the Indian theatre should be rephrased to include the four media - theatre, cinema, television and video - for their futures are inextricably intertwined (Kamad, 349). One may simply add one more to the list - digital multimedia, as Girish Kamad foresees: The media occupy a shifting landscape in which the next electronic gadget could turn a mass medimn into a traditional art form. Perhaps quite unrealistically, I dream of the day when a similar ripple will reestablish theatre flesh-and-blood actors enacting a well-"Wfitten text to a gathering of people who have corne to witness the performance where it belongs, at the centre of the daily life of the people (Karnad, 352).

We can only expect, and optimistically anticipate, that foresights such as Karnad's may enthuse the academic fraternity to believe in the new reality facing modem Indian theatre. It is only then that new tenns of reference, new theoretical insights, will be forged out of the vestiges of the old. It is only in the belief of the new, that a new readiness to take up a theoretical challenge may emerge. 'The readiness', after all, is all that matters.

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Works Cited

Artaud, Antonin. "The Theatre of Cruelty". Trans. Mary Caroline Richards. The Theory of the Modern Stage. Ed. Eric Bentley. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1968. Print. BaIme, Christopher. "Indian Drama in English: Transcreation and the Indigenous Performance Tradition". Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader. Ed. Nandi Bhatia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Chatterjee, Sudipto. The Colonial Staged: Theatre in Colonial Calcutta. London: Seagull Books, 2007. Print. Dalmia, Vasudha. Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print. Dattani, Mahesh. "Contemporary Indian Theatre and its Relevance". Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader. Ed. Nandi Bhatia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Devy, G.N (Ed). Indian Literary Criticism: Theory and Interpretation. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007. Print. Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Trans. T. K. Wiewiorowski. London: Methuen Drama, 1991. Print. Hannnond, Will and Dan Steward (Ed). Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre. London: Oberon Books, 2008. Print. Karnad, Girish. "Theatre in India". Daedalus, VoL l 1 8, No 4, Another India (Fall 1989): 330-352. JSTOR. Web. 1 1 August 201 1 . Mee, Erin. B . Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2008. Print.

STATE, SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUALS

TIME BOMBS IN A TIME MACHINE: MODERN MYTHOPOEIA IN POILE SENGUPTA' S

THUS SFAKE SHOORPANAKHA, So SAID SHAKUNI AMIT BHATTACHARYA

The twin truisms of 'literature reflects life' and 'history repeats itself may help us realize why reworking of myth in literature is as old as literature itself. On the one hand, it provides an author with an opportunity to review, and thereby recreate, incidents which have tremendous influence on public consciousness, in a new light. On the other hand, such reviewing and recreation of mythical and/or historical events often felicitates a strategic interrogation of the very historicity of those events, and thereby helps create an alternative version of what Emile Durkheim calls the 'collective consciousness' (Durkheim 1984, 38-39) which may or may not be similar to what has always been transmitted and accepted as mythihistory. Beneath the surface of a complex narrative structure, myths work through a matrix of embedded cultural and ideological codes, which often mediate between the sacred and the secular. Thus, any reworking of mythical codes necessarily involves a simultaneous abrogation and appropriation of its properties. Needless to say, such a process may help both the author and tbe reader in creating an agency for the silenced characters and discourses of the originary text(s) from the perspective of counter-discourses like Feminism, Marxism, Subaltern Studies, etc. In this context, 1.M. Coetzee asserts "In every story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word unspoken, I believe. Till we have spoken the unspoken we have not come to the heart of the story" (Coetzee 1987, 14). Like folk tales, fables and fairy tales, epics too, abound in, and account for, a plethora of myths. In the Indian context, epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are also associated with a lot of mythical stories, among which the mytbs of Shoorpanakha and Shakuni have at once fascinated and flummoxed generations of writers and readers. The present paper aims at re-reading Poile Sengupta's Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So

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Said Shakuni from the perspective of our complex attitude towards myth. In so doing, it seeks to elaborate on the playwright's reworking of two important myths from the Indian epic tradition, that not only questions some of the most important socio-historical givens, but also destabilizes the same. Attempts will also be made to bring to the fore the narrativistic strategies of the plaY\Vfight in giving voice to the two eponymous figures; for their tales have grO\vn with, and in spite of, time. Poile Sengupta's 2001 play, Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni has as its protagonists the modem-day avatars of two of the most reprehensible characters from the Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The play portrays one character from each of the epics, and presents their takes on the stories that have traditionally been accepted, popularized, and thereby emblematized, and raised to the stature of myth. The first story is of Shoorpanakha, the 'lustful' sister of the Rakshasa King Ravana from the Ramayana, while the second story is that of Shakuni, the defOlmed, manipulative and cynic uncle of the Kauravas from the Mahabharata. Both these characters have traditionally been viewed as downright malign forces, responsible for the rupture of familial ties, the separation of lovers, secret assassinations, abduction of women, war, mass destruction, and all other possible fOlTIlS of socio-cultural chaos. In the words of Shashi Deshpande: Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni is a very interesting play, not only because of the technique and theme, but also its treatment. Sengupta effortlessly brings together two villains from the two different epics: Shakuni from the Mahabharata, hated even today as the man who fanned the conflict that led to the war, and Shoorpanakha from the Ramayana, less a villain than an object of ridicule and contempt, not given the dignity even her villainous brother Ravana was granted in the epic (Deshpande, in Sengupta 2010, xiii).

In fact, Sengupta through her portrayal of these two figures tries to look beneath the facade of apparent ugliness and villainy. In the bargain, she reveals a woman who, in daring to desire a man, transgressed the traditionally defined boundaries of normative femininity, and was thus 'justly' punished by patriarchy. Similarly, she manages to depict a man who, in trying to avenge his betrayed motherland and family, was made to epitomize only loathsomeness and treachery in mythology.

Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni opens with the picture of a modem-day Shoorpanakha waiting for her flight in the airport lounge. Qinte interestingly, the playwright maintains a rigid anonymity about her

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female protagonist, for the persona endures, under the garb of a voluptuous urbanity, an anonymous existence. In fact, she is the ostracized one whose right to a proper name has already been forfeited, and she can only linger on as a living shame. This lady is soon followed into the airport lounge by the male protagonist - the Shakuni figure of the play. We find him as another unnamed, middle-aged, urban male, carrying a heavy briefcase. A quarrel ensues about the possession of a chair, and the conversation of these two characters soon descends into a primordial contextuality, the scars of which they still bear as their individual memory: Woman: Chairs are not meant for inanimate objects. Man: That's what I had thought too. Woman: (Ignoring his remark) Especially when there is not a vacant chair anywhere in sight. And the place is full of highly inflammable people waiting for delayed flights. . .indefinitely delayed flights (Thus Spake, 247).

Incidentally, Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni was premiered on 12 September 2001, just a day after the fateful 9111 attack that shook the foundations of Western capitalism. There is, however, something more to this than a mere reference to the backdrop of the play, i.e. an airport reminding the audience of the threats of aircraft hijacking and suicide bombing, and the destruction of the twin towers, with the consequent loss of lives. Significantly, the quarrel between the two characters about the 'possession of the chair' may cause us to recollect that this very issue sparked off the main conflicts of the epics from which these two character types are drawn. In fact, the will to possess something or somebody, and to keep that under perfect control, is a key theme of both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Kaikayee's extreme desire to possess the cro\Vll of Ayodhya, coupled with Manthara's evil biddings, made her impervious to the duties of not only a wife, but also a mother. Similarly, Rama's wish to attain the stature of the Maryada Purushottama, i.e., the onmi-perfect alpha male, made him sacrifice the lives and wellbeing of innocent women like UlTIlila, Tara, Shoorpanakha, Mandodari, Sulochana, Sarama, and his own wife, Sita. In a like manner, Satyabati's power hunger had its full manifestation in Duryodhana's unwillingness to give Yudhisthira even five villages. Pitahmaha Bhisma's over-eagerness to possess an heir for his bloodline, by hook or by crook, resulted in the unfruitful marriages of Ambika and Ambalika to Bichitrabiryya, and in the untimely death of Amba, as in both Gandhari's forceful marriage to the blind womanizer Dhritarashtra, and

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Kunti's unconsummated marriage to the putatively impotent Pandu. Instead of propagating a future generation, these marriages caused the ultimate destruction of the entire Kuru clan at the battleground of Kurukshetra, and of the Yadu clan beyond it. Coming back to the play in focus, we can see that notwithstanding their initial hostility about the possession of the seat, the protagonists gradually reach a tentative truce. Their mad grumblings at each other give way to some meaningful conversation that eventually throws some light on their tortured minds: Woman: You know something? I have a feeling you don't like people. Man: I don't. Woman: Don't what? Man: I don't like people. I hate people (Thus Spake, 249).

That the man 'does not like' people, is not because he does not but because he cannot; for the people he is almost always surrounded with are either manipulative rascals causing hann to the unwary ones, or masked lechers who are responsible for the unaccountable births of such rascals. The only responses that such association can generate in a man are ones of disgust, indifference, or hatred. But before the man can proceed to vent his anger, the very mention of the word 'hate' sparks off a stream of consciousness in the woman: Woman: Strange that you can hate people. I mean . . . look at me ... I hate the colour pmple. I really hate it. I never wear purple. The other day . ***

***

***

One of my brothers ... my stepbrother actually ... is rich enough to buy up all of the Middle East. Pause. And my 0\Vll brother, who will do anything for me, is as . . . as strong and . and as powerful as ten men . Silence. (Fiercely.) You don't believe me, is it? (Tlnis Spake, 249).

That the mere mention of the word 'hate' by the man wrecks havoc on the consciousness of the female protagonist, indicates that her 0\Vll experiences with that mental state, and by implication men who may cause it, have not been very savory. On the one hand, it reminds her of the rejection of her love by the divine brothers Rama and Laxmana as mere lust, then on the other hand, it also makes her relive the events that followed the incident the brutal assault on her by the self-righteous actants of patriarchy who

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neither expect nor accept women who dare to desire. Besides, such a re­ living of the past makes the woman all the more alive to the fact that all self-assertive women dO\vn the ages have encountered the same fate of rejection, repudiation and resentment. It is this same fate that connects the unnamed Shoorpanakha figure with, and turns her into, an Amba figure whose love was twice rebuffed, and who was only left with death to claim her. The play, therefore, becomes what Anita Singh calls 'Feminist Theatre', for it challenges 'representation of our dominant culture' (Singh 2009, 163). It is at this moment that the remembrance of her mighty brothers gives the woman a kind of relaxed poise. But all of a sudden, she becomes conscious of the response of her addressee. 'When her meditation about her brothers is coldly received by the man, she becomes fierce, and demands full and unreserved belief in her words, "You don't believe me, is it?" (Thus Spake, 249). That men may not believe her words means men may not find her believable. Much in the same manner, Amba in the Mahabharata was rejected from all quarters. In fact, she was neither able to convince Bhisma, her abductor, of her love for the king Shalya, nor her lover Shalya of her chastity when she returned from Hastinapur, nor Parashurama of her will to avenge herself, and not even the King, Drupada of her purity and sincerity when she approached him for the protection of her dignity. Shoorpanakha's sudden remembrance of her dismembered past makes her all the more aware of her disturbed present. The only thing that she can expect from a male is indifference and neglect. This reminds her of the brutal refusal to which her femininity had once been subjected. Unable to take the situation any longer, Shoorpanakha now flies into a mad rage: Woman: I better warn you. I have high connections. Silence One of my brothers . . . my stepbrother actually . . . is rich enough to buy up all of the Middle East. Pwse. And my 0\Vll brother, who will do anything for me, is as . . . as strong and . . . and powerful as ten men (TluJs Spake, 251).

That she has 'high connections' and extremely powerful and protective familial support, instead of making her feel reassured, lays bare their utter ineffectuality in moments of crisis. She can hardly forget that high connections could neither convince Rama of the sincerity of her love, nor could they stop Laxmana from assaulting her. In a similar fashion, her

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powerful brothers had failed miserably to avenge her. While one of them joined hands with her victimizer, the other one remained too engrossed in his O\Vll world of opulence and extravaganza. The step-brother on whom the female protagonist had banked so much did engage in war with the divine brothers, but the war was never fought for the honour of Shoorpanakha. Rather, it was a battle for the possession of Rama's beautiful wife Sita, for whom Ravana had fallen. Shoorpanakha's initial warning, with which this sequential show of strength began, becomes doubly significant here. That Shoorpanakha 'warns' the man, is not because she wants to warn a particular male, but because she wants to warn each and every member of the dominant gender from meddling with a female like her. The utter failure of her brothers to understand the full import of what Shoorpanakha had been subjected to, has made the female protagonist aware of the necessity of becoming self­ reliant. In her next set of proclamations, Shoorpanakha thus tries to distill in her addressee a sense of awe and wonder, not by showcasing her familial ties, but by highlighting her own feminine charms: Woman: Yes. I am not as innocent as I look. ***

***

***

I'm an enchantress. Pmtse Did you hear? I am an enchantress. Man: I heard you. And you enchant whom? Woman: Everybody. Every heterosexual man. Even . . . even married men. Especially married men (Thus Spake, 252).

That the female protagonist is not as 'innocent' as betrayed by her 'looks' may as well mean that she has not been pelTIlitted by the society to remain innocent. It also hints at the brutal molestation of her dignity by the divine brothers, who took every care to putrefy her innocent love with their practiced hatred. That Shoorpanakha claims herself to be an enchantress highlights her multiple attempts at, and subsequent failure in, enchanting both Rama and Laxmana, the man she wished to get, and the man she could console herself with getting. That Shoorpanakha enchants every man, especially married men, instead of hinting at her sexual perversion, lays bare her desperate attempts at paying back the judging, punishing, breed of male social categorizers, in their 0\Vll coins. Not only does she try to prove what she, as a woman, is capable of, by enchanting a man, but also to what extent she, a violated, maimed one, is capable of, doing it by breaking a married man away from the most sacred of social institutions. Moreover, enchanting a perfectly institutionalized married man will give

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the outcast in her an opportunity to re-enter the social bulwark, albeit as a disruptive force, and write her story of deviance and defiance into his story. That in spite of having 'high connections' and 'familial support', Shoorpanakha had been wiped out of history, now makes her review the life of a woman from the vantage point of lived experience: Woman: (Softly) Do you know what it's like . . . to be a woman . . . to want a man so much that . . . that the rest of the world disappears? Silence The rest of the world just disappears. (TluJs Spake, 252)

That 'what it is like to be a woman' means being a woman, may not quite be a likable experience especially as and when seen from the perspective of a woman. To want a man, for a woman, is not only to want him to like and love her, but also to want him to acknowledge and respect her, in which respect the female protagonist finds herself and her ilk at a loss. Loving a man so much that the rest of the world disappears may easily sum up the mood of a woman in love, but it may not really be a wise choice to make, or an appropriate state to be in for a second-class citizen like a woman. For, placing too high a stake on a male may make the woman draw a blank with her own world which she has willingly lost sight, and the male world, which she ill-thought she had gained access to. This bitter realization makes Shoorpanakha chronicle her own past: Woman: You know what they did to me . . .the two brothers . . .they laughed. Laughed at me. They teased me. Mocked me. The older one said, ask my brotheL.he might want you . . . the yOlmger one said . . . I can't marry without my brother's consent . . . ask him . . . They tossed me this way and that, as if. .. as if I did not deserve any more respect. As if I were a broken plaything (Thus Spake, 261).

It is at this juncture that the Shoorpanakha figure takes a breather and pays attention to her addressee - the Shakuni figure of the play: Woman: Tell me . . . what's in your briefcase. Man: Nothing. Woman: Nothing . . . looks pretty heavy. (Thus Spake, 253).

Recoiling from her remembered past, Shoorpanakha now questions Shakuni about the contents of his briefcase. Shakuni's monosyllabic answer 'Nothing' here becomes highly important. If on the one hand, 'nothing' may highlight Shakuni's attempts at keeping the inquisitive

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woman at bay by answering her query with an easily detectable lie, then on the other hand, it may also unwittingly reveal what the conscious Shakuni had always borne under his apparently innocent demeanor - the weapons of nothingness, weapons that can destroy lives and empires. Coming back to the conversation, we find that the more the man tries to evade Shoorpanakha, the more she becomes interested in his belongings: Woman: Gold? Silence Electronic goods? Or maybe . Man: Books. Woman: Ob! Fwse "What kind of books? Man: Not meant for you (Thus Spake, 253).

That the books are 'not meant' for Shoorpanakha not only means that the books Shakuni is carrying are not for Shoorpanakha, but that books in general, and by extension any field of knowledge, are denied to women. When he is interrogated further, Shakuni tries to get rid of Shoorpanakha by presenting his books as 'intellectual' ones, not meant for nOll­ intellectuals like children or women. At this, the woman sharply retorts: Woman: What do you mean? Man: Intellectual books. Poetry. Drama.The epics. Woman: Epics! Man: Yes. Indian epics. You wouldn't have heard of them. Woman: Of course I have. I went to a convent school. Oh, the Ramayana I just love the Ramayana, don't you? It's so (Pwse) cute so romantic. Pwse Like a Mills and Boon (Thus Spake, 253).

Interestingly, Shoorpanakha's 'what' in response to Shakuni's 'not meant for you' doesn't hint at the female protagonist's inability to understand Shakuni's response, but highlights a last opportunity given to the male to review and thereby correct his attitude towards women. That the Ramayana is no better than a Mills and Boon sort of romance deals a severe blow to the traditionally celebrated sacredness of the epic. Significantly, this chance reference to the Ramayana instigates in the Shoorpanakha figure the real story of her life, and, at a further remove, provokes the Shakuni figure to come up with his own life narrative:

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Woman: I was wailing. I was raging, I was sobbing. I wanted to hit him . I wanted to squeeze him. I wanted to lie under him and watch his face change. Man: You wanted revenge. Pmtse Revenge. Woman: I wanted love . . . just a little love . . . for a little while. Man: I wanted revenge too. Hot . . . bloody . . . fanged revenge (TluJs Spake, 262).

Shoorpanakha's frank admission of her ardent passion for Rama awakes in Shakuni a similar kind of deep-seated angst That all he wanted was revenge, and whatever he did was only to achieve this end, stands in sharp contrast to the traditionally accepted and popularized dossier of this crooked man. There exists a sharp contrast between Shoorpanakha's retelling of her personal history and Shakuni's remembrance ofthings past. If Shoorpanakha's version revolves round her unrequited love for Rama, which later on turned into inveterate hatred, then Shakuni's telling turns upon the pivots to justify whatever he did to his nephews: Man: (Speaking as he enters.) How was I to know? It all seemed absolutely fine . . . the wedding arrangements . . . the music . . . the pretty girls . . . all ceremony . . . all smiles. How the hell was I to know? ***

*** ***

It must have been the heat . . . the heat in the plains after the hills. The hills where I grew . . . cool . . . innocent hills. But the heat . . . it turned my head, made me weak . tried . otherwise I would have taken her away the moment I knew before they put that jeweled noose round her neck (Thus Spake, 263).

That Shakuni knew 'nothing', and that everything seemed 'absolutely fine' about the marriage of his sister Gandhari to the Kuru Prince Dhritarashtra, hints at possible foul play from the Kuru clan. Shakuni's regret at not being able to save his sister when the Kuru elders sacrificed her at the altar of royal dignity weighed on his consciousness to such an extent that even the passage of the intervening ages failed to assuage him. In fact, Gandhari's marriage with Dhritarashtra was far from being a fair affinal tie based on mutual respect and understanding. Much like Ambika and Ambalika's marriage to the impotent Bichitrabiryya, Gandhari's marriage was a successful outcome of Pitahmaha Bhisma's plottings. As a brother, Shakuni can hardly forget that for the King of Gandhar, the

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marriage proposal was nothing but a pure political compulsion to which he needed to yield, since the entire anny of Hastinapur stood ready at the doorsteps of Gandhar to annex the land and annihilate the royal bloodline. Similarly, Shakuni 's awareness of the fact that Gandhari's reluctant acceptance of the bed-rites with Dhritarashtra had nothing to do with her own wishes leaves him numb with pain and rage. The fact that if Gandhari didn't bring forth royal heirs, she too would have been pushed into unknO\vn anns, forcefully, in the name of Putreshti, just like her female predecessors Ambika and Ambalika, made Shakuni at once disgusted with his present, and apprehensive about the future. This gnawing sense of helplessness, coupled with Gandhari 's silent revolt of blindfolding herself, makes the brother in Shakuni vow revenge on the entire lineage of Pitahmaha Bhishma. It is highly interesting to note here that Shakuni's entire existence is synonymous with hatred and revenge. Shakuni is the poisoned frint of the entire Gandhar clan's will to revenge. When Gandhar was defeated by the royal alTIly of Hastinapur, years ago, and each of the members of the royal family was allowed to have only one grain of fice a day, everyone of them willingly sacrificed that meager ration in order to sustain Shakuni for the cause. They were not mistaken in their choice of the avenger in Shakuni, who was the brightest of all Gandhars, as well as the most resolute one.

In

fact, in the Mahabharata, Shakuni's cunning can only be paralleled by the subtle manipulations of the Puma Avatar Sri Krishna, who was also born to avenge deaths. Shakuni's will to revenge gains an impetus when he enters Hastinapur as Gandhari's sole companion. With this, a new chapter starts to be written in the history of treachery and betrayal. This chapter ends only in the destruction of everything that had come from forced marriages and the unlawful capture of cro\VllS. Coming back to the play, we find that it is at this point in his personal narrative that Shakuni reveals how he succeeded in his plan:

Man: (Lwghs) I was so clever . . . . You should have seen me. I pretended I was a friend of the Kurus . . . that I was on their side. My . . . my brother-in­ law was such a dummy, just an lUlcro-wned bloody king. His sons were not even in the direct line of succession. The rightful heir was actually his brother's eldest son Dharmaputra . . . . So I . . . (TluJs Spake, 269) That what force carmot achieve, manipulation does, and that crucial wars are never fought and won in the battlegrounds, become clear from Shakuni's words. Like an Indian Iago, Shakuni cold-bloodedly plots his revenge, makes provisions for it, and finally succeeds in destroying the

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entire Kuru clan which was responsible for the elimination of the Gandhar dynasty. Shakuni's identification of Dhritarashtra as a mere 'bloody king' and of Dharmaputra Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, as the legal heir to the Hastinapur cro\Vll, becomes highly important here, for, in the dismal condition of the Pandavas, what Shakuni sees is a shadow of his 0\Vll past. Shakuni' s revenge, thus, gives justice as much to the Gandhars as to the Pandavas. That the Kurus never did inform the Gandhar people about Dhritarashtra's blindness, and that they had actually compelled Gandhari to be with a man who didn't deserve her, made Shakuni ignore his duties to his nephews (the Kauravas): Man: When you want revenge, you should be completely focussed . . every part of you must plan the revenge. I pretended I was the friend of the Kmus . .that I was on their side. They were my nephews, yes . . . all of them. But when plotting revenge, nothing else is important . . . not my nephews . . . not me . . . . Finally . . . not even my sister . . . I wanted to turn everything to dust. Dust and ashes (TluJs Spake, 269).

That he left no stones untumed to avenge his country can be seen in the way he used the Pandava brothers as mere pa\VllS to destroy the Kauravas. Shakuni poisoned the minds of the Kaurava brothers from a very young age against the Pandavas, and made the Pandavas suffer at the hands of their cousins to such an extent that, when they grew up, they became sworn enemies of each other. Quite conscious of the fact that the presence of Krishna on the side of the Pandava brothers meant sure victory for them in every sphere of life, Shakuni took every care to aggravate their enmity and gradually incited Duryodhana to commit one dog-headed folly after another, which ultimately caused his dO\Vllfall: Man: It was all part of my plan anyway. The five brothers and the wife were exiled for thirteen years and they left city as the crowds wailed. . . But I did not let my bloody nephews forget their hate. I coaxed their hatred . . fed it I inflamed it and finally there was war (Thus Spake,

271).

Both the Kuru clan and Shakuni, through their statements and actions, seem to corroborate David Hare's notion that 'judgement' is 'at the heart of theatre' , for:

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Time Bombs in a Time Machine The most basic dramatic situation you can imagine; the gap between what he says he is, and what we see him to be, opens up, and in the gap, we see something that makes theatre lUlique; that it exposes the difference between what a man says and what he does (Hare 1978, 59).

Again, what the Shakuni figure 'says' and what he 'does' leave a big 'gap', because giving the 'lie' to his hostility towards the Shoorpanakha figure, the former is seen to fall for the coquettish charm of the latter. It is at this point that Shakuni's zeal to avenge his sister wrings out a deep sigh from Shoorpanakha whose own brothers had failed miserably to protect her honour, "You were the better brother" (Thus Spake, 271). With this, both these characters are seen to question the very basis of the myths on which these age-old texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are based: Man: I know. That's what I was told too. But when I began reading the Mahabharata ... I felt that Shaklmi hadn't been given his due. I realised that he was a victim. Woman: What was Shoorpanakha's crime? That she approached a man with sexual desire? Shoorpanakha merely wanted love. They assaulted a defenseless woman (Thus Spake, 277-278).

That both Shoorpanakha and Shakuni have been victimized by tradition, and have been inscribed into history as mere demonic figures, is highly significant. It is in this context that L.V. Padmarani Rao points out: The revenge motto brings both the characters together. While the WOMAN feels that Shoorpanakba merely wanted love, and she was not only disappointed but neglected by history, the :MAN feels that the second epic was only because of Aryan greed, their striking racial superiority, and their arrogance like a bloodthirsty sword where Shakuni played an important role but [sic.] not given due place in history (Rao 201 1 , 4).

But if, in Shoorpanakha's case, it has infused her with a deep-seated frustration and morbidity, then in Shaluni, it has ignited the desire for revenge on all and sundry. The question of the suitcase that the Shakuni figure had been seen to carry from the very beguniing of the play comes back in focus here: Woman: I know what there is in yom briefcase. Why? "Why is it there? Man: I have been planning it a long time (TluJs Spake, 279).

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That what Shakuni is actually carrying in his briefcase is a bomb, gives a serious shock to the woman in Shoorpanakha. That this bomb may take lives indiscriminately, destroying even innocent ones who may in no way be responsible for whatever happened to these scapegoats, becomes unbearable to her. In them, she starts to see a reflection of herself who was wronged years ago: Woman: Shakuni was killed. Fwse So were a whole lot of innocent people (TluJs Spake, 280).

It is this string of pity that forces the woman to try to dissuade the man from carrying the bomb-laden briefcase to the aircraft. So when the Shakuni figure protests, 'What I'm doing is not a crime', the Shoorpanakha figure is ready to retort 'Neither was Shoorpanakha a criminal. But they hacked off her breasts' (Thus Spake, 280). It is life-long victimization, coupled with age-old vilification that instigates Shoorpanakha to seduce men, and Shakuni to try to engineer an explosion. They are thereby made into 'time bombs in a time machine' . However, it is the same 'time' that allows them to desist from their acts of revenge, bringing to the fore the modem mythopoeic elements of the play. That the Shoorpanakha figure finally manages to dissuade, and that the Shakuni figure ultimately consents to be dissuaded, gives us not only a hope for humanity, but also a disclaimer of depravity. Thus, Poile Sengupta's play gives us a fresh look at, and a radical reinterpretation of, the two Indian epics, not only exonerating the two alleged wannongers, but also problematizing the grand receipts of 'order' , 'decorum' and 'benevolence' that supremacist discourses like patriarchy and ethnocentrism have perpetuated down the ages. Shashi Deshpande clearly points up the modern mythopoeic elements of the play: The myths have been upturned very casually, with no attempt at solenmity, yet very effectively. And both these villains show us another side of themselves, without shedding their mmky pasts. They are victims as well as vengeance-seekers. And, while seeming to replay the roles allotted to them by history, they struggle to redeem themselves, and do so in the end (Deshpande, in Sengupta 2010, xiii).

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Works Cited

Coetzee, I.M. Foe. New York: Penguin, 1987. Print. Deshpande, Shashi. "Introduction". In Sengupta, Poile. Women Centre Stage: The Dramatist and the Play. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010. ix­ xv. Print. Durkheim, Emile. The Division o/Labour in Society. New York: The Free Press, 1984. Print. Hare, David. "A Lecture Given at King's College, Cambridge, March 5, 1978". Lickinr; Hitler. London: Faber, 1978. Print. Rao, L.V. Padmarani. "Poile Sengupta's Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni as a Postmodern Text". The Criterion: An International Journal in English. Vol. II, Issue. 1, April, 201 1 . 1-5. Web. Sengupta, Poile. Thus SpakeShoorpanakha, So Said Sliakuni. (Abbr.To TSSJ. In Sengupta, Poile. Women Centre Stage: The Dramatist and the Play. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010. 242-282. Print. Singh, Anita. "Aesthetics of Indian Feminist Theatre". Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Vol.!, No. 2. Autumn 2009. 150-170. Web.

REPRESENTATION OF THE NATION

NARRATING 1 9 621 INTERROGATING PROGRESS: THE POSTCOLONIAL NATION IN GURCHARAN DAS ' S 9 JAKHOO HILL ANINDYA BHATTACHARYA

The photograph [. . .] depicts Gandhi as walking towards a distant horizon, leaning on the shoulder of a young man and a woman. Under an overcast sky, does Gandhi appear tired? Or, is there detennination in his posture and gait? Is Gandhi exhmtsted on account of shouldering the burden of freedom, worn down by the enonnous cost ofIndian Independence? Or, is he confidently walking towards a new beginning, the birth of an independent nation? (Ishita Banerjee-Dube reads a photograph ofM. K. Gandhi at Juhu Beach, Mumbai, May 1944, in the Prologue to her work A History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Uncertainty would be a suitable word to describe !be postcolonial Indian nation in the Nehruvian era. The picture of Gandhi's walk on the cover of Banerjee-Dube's book successfully recreates the ambiguous world of the period when India was picking up the broken shards of its economy after Partition, and mobilising its resources desperately. Such a reading of Gandbi's walk significantly interrogates the ideals of pragatilunnati (progress) and adhunikata (modernity) - two keywords of the Indian nationalist imaginary. They have shaped the narration of the nation's history for a considerably long time. In his 1994 lecture, "Our Modernity", Partha Chatterjee elaborates on the reception of the idea of progress/unnati in colonised Indian society. He argues !bat !be subjugated people sought to create an indigenous version of modernity by deviating from the West­ centric ideal of universal modernity that all nations were supposed to attain in the future. Development was the foundation from which an economic critique of the empire was possible. Development was the utopian promise that gave legitimacy to nationalism and countered the exploitative role of the colonial power. As Chatterjee contends elsewhere,

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development was, "a constituent part of the self-definition of the post­ colonial state" (Chatterjee 2010, 246). The state would exercise its power to create a sanctified, rational, scientific domain of economic analytics separate from the complex politics of class, caste, and myriad other interests. Development planning was supposed to take care of the image of the nation as modernising and progressing. Today, the media projects the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, as 'Vikas Purush', while he has scrapped the Planning Connnission. These show the hegemony of developmentalism and its (parochial) power, even if strategies get an overhaul. As Chakrabarti and Cullenberg observe, on the continued authority of these ideas: even if we proclaimed the death of economic developrnentalisrn, the hegemony of development as economic development is unquestionable. Development as progress still haunts the imaginary of a nation such as India, and in fact, the concerns over it have multiplied in recent years given the amOlUlt of literature on transition and development as well as the media coverage on [sic] the transition process. How can we ignore something that is so powerful in its deployment no matter how much we criticize or deny its presence?" (5, emphasis added).

The nationalist historiography of India has tended to produce a narrative of progress towards secular-liberal modernity through a struggle with colonial and connnunal forces. The title of Rizwan Qaiser's well-researched book, Resisting Colonialism and Communal Politics: Maulana Azad and the Making of the Indian Nation is an instance. Naturally, dark phases of history such as Partition riots and the Sino-Indian war, which do not hatmonize with the nationalist narrative of progress, are swept under the carpet. Banerjee-Dube's reading of Gandhi's walk is important, in that it accommodates polyphony in her historiography of the postcolonial nation, allowing myriad minor/subaltern histories, and an exploration of our modernity. The Neliruvian era, the period roughly from the 1950s to the 1960s, was a time marked by fickle ups and downs of popular nationalist euphoria and uncertainty about the future of the struggling postcolonial nation. The narration of the nation sometimes focused on the squalor and the misery of the refugee camps. However, the urban and semi-urban India of the 1960s has not enjoyed much cultural representation, apart from the stereotypes left by Bollywood filins and vernacular romance. These stock representations, as hideous as the images of black Hindustan Standard cars, are ignored and quickly forgotten. The struggles of the middle and lower classes to relocate to strange cities fOlUld little representation in Indian writing in

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English. Gurcharan Das, born i n Lahore, had accompanied his parents to India after Partition. Das's 9 Jakhoo Hill is an important document as it successfully narrates the affective history of the nation in the early 1960s, and in the process, presents a critique of progress. "The play is set in 1962", the narrator of the play, Karan, informs the audience as he introduces the characters. A conspicuous dot on the continuum of popular nationalism, the year is almost as significant as 1947. Nehru's India was busy recovering from the aftermath of Partition, and projecting herself as the messenger of peace in the UN. She suffered a severe blow as the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army crossed the McMahon line in Ladakh and the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) area. The defeat badly bruised popular sentiment; it resulted in the forced resignation of the Minister of Defense V. K. Krishna Menon, the most influential statesman after the Patel era. Karan uses these political coordinates to map the everyday and the affective: The Chinese have invaded India and every day the papers are full of sad, hmniliating news of Indian defeats. It is breaking Nehru's heart. The cmmtry hasn't yet realized that it is dangerous to put dreamers in power. It saddens me, as it does many of us because we once believed in the same, hopeless dreams (Das 9 Jakhoo Hill, 152)

Security is a major theme that connects the shocks and 'momentous events' and the minor history of everyday experience in 9 Jakhoo Hill. 1962 severely damaged the nation's image as teclinologically progressing, and commentators connected the looming insecurity to faulty planning and absence of foresight. The two families in the play also deal with security in different ways. Amrita's obsessive splurging of resources pushes her family towards bankruptcy, and Chitra's obsession with security shears her of any decency. The year is a convenient vantage point, one and a half decades away from Partition. From here one can explore the growth of a new episteme as the refugees relocated to small to\VllS and the squalid underbellies of metro cities, and the approach of a free market threatened Nehruvian development plarming. In India Unbound, Das chastises Nehruvian economy for its short-sightedness. As a practicing manager in the 1960s, he found himself, "caught in the thick jungle of Kafkaesque bureaucratic controls" of license raj, import controls, high customs duties and prohibitive tax rates and public sector monopolies (2002, x). The play's title evokes the territorial loss and uprooting brought about by India's Partition: a threat that was renewed by the Chinese aggression of 1962. 9 Jakhoo Hill is a prestigious summer address which is quietly

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slipping out of the hands of an old family from Lahore. Its owner has been murdered in the Partition riots. Amrita, the widow and her brother Karan can not manage the family business. They have already lost their property in Lahore, and later, they have to sell off the mills and the house they have in Delhi. The Iakhoo Hill residence is their last property, a summer home that stands for a warm and refined way of life lost with Partition. AMRITA: (pointing to the drapes) see those drapes, Ansu? Yom father brought them from England, and they were the talk of the to\Vll that season. Ob, the parties we used to have, Ansu! The servants were forever polishing the silver. Why, the whole of Nehru's first Cabinet must have dined here sometime or another (Das 9 Jakhoo Hill, 1 60).

Amrita complains that her brother Karan talks of Partition all the time. He replies that the coming generations will never know the rich heritage and multiculturalism of Lahore: "the poetry, the music, the intellectual discussions . . . Ah, it was heaven to be young in Lahore!" (9 Jakhoo Hill, 163). Amrita refuses to recognise the changed situation: she continues to splurge on costly sarees for evening parties, where she meets Simla's elite. Her desperate efforts to keep up the fayade fail, as her socialite friends get to know of her crumbling fortune and stop inviting her to parties. Amrita and her brother Karan pathetically cling to the past in a way strongly reminiscent of the anguished world of Tennessee Williams. They sit in an ageing house, before an increasingly empty background, as chandeliers and paintings are sold offto clear the debts. Das deftly captures a slice of the everyday life of the sixties, though the action never moves out of Amrita's house in the four-act play. He provides two different senses of time: the immediate, and a slow-moving, longer duration. The newspaper announces a date (24 October 1962) and the immediate happenings at the frontier: RAI SAHEB: . . . have you heard? Our troops have abandoned Tawang. Biji Kaul is lying sick in his bed in Delhi, and the Chinese are just going to walk right in. I told them that this was going to happen, but of COlise Mr Krishna Menon has to have his 0\Vll way (9 Jakhoo Hill, 157).

Rai Saheb refers to China's aggression and the widespread perception of the sole responsibility of Krishna Menon for the debacle. As information about the border issues has been classified top-secret, a popular narrative of bitter disillusionment about a 'naIve' India, being duped by the 'treacherous' Chinese was established. Articles published in the Economic Weekly, during and after the war, expose the contemporary perception of

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this defeat as incapacity and failure, o f not only the national leadership, but also of !be economy. Ramesh Thapar's article "Facts are Stubborn" (EW November 17 1962) for example, and the anonymous letter from Assam titled "Fool's Paradise" (EWDecember 8 1962) depict an ominous moment of uncertainty about the nation's survival. Partition seems to have made a comeback through an uncertainty about territory and the possibility of refugee camps becoming homes: Similarly in Gauhati, which has now become the seat of the Assam Government, there is still an atmosphere of fear and doubt about the future. Many of those who had gone away have not corne back, and the shopping centre is lUlUsually quiet. In contrast, the evacuee camps are alive and humming with refugees. The little tents have already the appearance of homes. Women are busy cooking or looking after the children; lines of clothes are hanging out to dry; children are flmning around or sleeping peacefully in the midday SlUl (1872).

The Western date that gives the nation an occasion to mourn, coincides with Diwali, an etlmic tithi of celebration. Ironically, a blackout is announced in the to'Wll, and the festival of lights can only have a furtive presence through the lighting of a small ear!ben lamp, and perhaps one or two sparklers. The sixties foxtrot dance music being played on !be gramophone at 9 Jakboo Hill is similarly counterpointed by the sound of bells coming from the ancient Jakboo Kali temple of Simla. The ringing bells draw attention to a substratum of a slow-moving time which puts the everyday into perspective and critiques the present order of things. Anasuya's depressed remark that they only possess old !bings, such as !be conspicuous old radio, indicates the existence of another time; that of bourgeois open market 'progress' associated with Deepak and his Malabar Hill address. Gurcharan Das deftly captures !be everyday life and the new episteme of the 1960s by deploying a grammar of unmistakably recognizable characters with their pronounced sartorial styles and ways of socializing. If Anasuya and her mother Amrita stand for the helpless, impoverished elite, Chitra represents the hideous survivor refugee; loud, self-assured, "street smart, calculating and unconcerned of her ways" (151). Chitra is obsessive about her son's success. She seems to be the embodiment of Karan's observation that Partition "reduced people to elemental, fearful creatures; desperate to survive, clinging to the vestiges of dignity" (151): AMRITA: (To ChUra) Chitra, How do you like living in Bombay?

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Narrating 1962/Interrogating Progress CHITRA: I like it very much, ji. There are so many parties. We've invited out a lot because Deepak is doing so well. His boss says that he is the smartest boy they have had in years. AMRITA: (Genuinely proud.) Deepak was always so intelligent! CHITRA: He makes one thousand, two hlUlCrred and eighty-six rupees per month, Didi! DEEPAK: (Glaring) Ma! CHITRA: Just look at him, getting embarrassed before his O"Wll family. And his name was in the papers the other day (166).

Deepak and his mother represent Das's 'unbound' India, coming up from the middle and lower middle classes and ruthlessly seeking success through a Gramscian passive revolution. As the new claimants demand a share in the development, Rai Saheb stands for the typical obstinacy of the Nehruvian economy that sought to hinder its progress. This Gramscian 'silent revolution' of the rise of the middle class is Das 's pet theme in his non-fiction work India Unbound: The story I will be telling is soft drama. It is taking place quietly and profoundly in the heart of Indian society. It unfolds every day, in small increments barely visible to the naked eye, and is more difficult to grasp than hard drama, which is more dramatic and captures the headlines. Most people instinctively grasp the spirituality and poverty of India. But the significance of this quiet social and economic revolution eludes them. The change is partially based on the rise of social democracy, but more importantly on the sustained 5 to 7 percent annual economic gmwth that India has experienced for the past two decades, which has tripled the size of the middle class. Although the middle class is still only 1 8 percent of India's one billion population, it is expected to become 50 percent within a generation. In the end, this 'silent revolution' is more significant historically than the constantly changing fortunes of political leaders and parties which so absorb Indians (2002, ix-x).

Rai Sahib, an exact copy of Rao Sahib in Das's novel A Fine Family, is the snobbish half-British in tweeds who "speaks Hindustani with an Oxford accent" (156). Rai Saheb belongs to a breed of successful Indian Civil Service cadre who stands for the authority of the license raj. 'Bunty' to his friends, Rai Saheb represents the decadent Simla way of life: RAI SAHEB. (Tempo increasing as he speaks.) But what is there to do in Simla, my dear except to go to the Mall every evening; find yom friends eating ice cream at Scandal Point; drag them to the green room for the

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latest gossip; rush to Rivoli for the new picture; plan picnics to Anandale and Mashobra; and throng to the Sunday morning for bingo and beer! (158).

The children of these influential people are fashionably named Dinky, Pinkie, and Chippy, who have the advantage of public-school education and the backing of their parents when they need prestigious government jobs. However, this comfortable world is challenged by a rising cosmopolitan India of energetic business executives from a middle-class or lower middle-class upbringing. Deepak, the child of refugee parents and now a cosmopolitan Bombayite executive, has a similar background. He comes to Simla with his garrulous and industrious mother, Chitrao After they migrated from Lahore, Deepak's father ran a petty shop in Ghatkopar, a slum area in Bombay. He revisits Simla after fifteen years, on a cold evening in October 1962, as the Indo-China war rages across the McMahon line, and Anasuya and her mother face bankiuptcy.

9 Jakhoo Hill is a reminder of the political orientation of the Nehruvian economy. As Chakiabarti and Cullenberg (2003) think, the influence of Gandhian Khadi economy made a demand of compromise between Gandhian 'benevolence' and profit-making capitalism from postcolonial economics (1-10). This hospitality shaped the 'Nehru-Mahalanobis model' of development that focused on the growth of indigenous heavy industry in a closed economy and a benevolent control of the state in industrialization. The model paved the road for nation's tum-of-the-millennium success in higher education, science and technology. However, it could achieve a very slow, 'Hindu' gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, of 3 to 3.5 percent, during 1950-1980. Central plarming was accompanied by bureaucratic red-tapism which resulted in massive corruption. As Bradford DeLong puts it: This 'license raj' strangled the private sector and led to rampant corruption and massive inefficiency. As a result, India stagnated lUltil bold neo-liberal economic reforms, triggered by the clllTency crisis of 1991, and implemented by the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, lUlleashed its current wave of rapid economic gmwth grmvth at a pace that promises to double average productivity levels and living standards in India every sixteen years (DeLong, 2).

India's economic growth accelerated in the nineties, and the arumal growth in GDP has reached 8 .1 percent. Commentators widely attribute this accelerated growth to the liberalization of the economy, or decontrol in

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1991 of restrictions on trade and investment imposed through the licensing policy of the Government of India. The Economic Weekly of 27 October 1962 published a letter titled "Licences for Whom?" which shows how important the question of decontrol was in 1962: . . . after more than ten years of licensing experience, Government still does not have adequate background data to judge the merits of licence applications on the basis of relative costs and the factor supplies other than power and transport predicated for each project. The moment Government looks beyond output targets and foreign exchange cost of projects and cuts do"Wll the nmnber of licences to be granted, it becomes much more than a licensing authority. In effect, it assumes all or most of the functions of a project evaluation authority as well as responsibility not merely for safeguarding the asset base of the project (as IFC and ICICI have) but also for its economic viability as a lUlit and as a component of the Plan . . Assmning that Government can evolve legal and administrative criteria to identify the 'excessively' large business houses in all their ramifications, why should their further gro-wth be stopped in principle? Will Government set a ceiling on the size of the present and future 'excessively' large business houses, and on what basis? Will these ceilings he revised as national income and capital formation go up and technology changes? And is Government prepared to select and lUldenvrite the success and growth of smaller houses? (1 680, emphasis added).

The crux of Das's play is the revelation that Deepak's visit is a business trip, and the Kafkaesque doorkeeper Rai Sahib holds the key to his career. If the government authorities feel that a private fann could become a potential threat to a slow-moving government enterprise, they will frequently reject the fann's expansion projects, citing the anti-monopoly clauses. Deepak's company needs a license, and Mr. P. N. Rai, the Secretary of the concerned department, will not give him an appointment in Delhi for weeks. The Governmental control of the private sector has the glamour of popular nationalism, but it has also created a class of influential bureaucrats, such as Rai Saheb, who will exploit the situation: CHITRA: ifRai Saheb says 'yes', Deepak's company will get the licence. Andhe's a friend of yoillS, Didi [ . . . ] will you also put in a word? (166).

Both Deepak and Rai Sahib feel uneasy when the retired professor Karan asks them bluntly if they give and take bribes for licenses. Deepak is evasive, but Rai Sahib gives a confident "No", as he has received sexual favours from Deepak's mother, instead ofa bribe. This ethical crisis shows how development plarming all along has been an "exercise in instrumental rationality" (Chatterjee 2010, 241). It was a purely scientific exercise

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based on enumerable data, but could not adjust to the strategic changes of big businesses and the ethical standards of people whose lives it seeks to address. After the Nehruvian era, popular feelings have increasingly associated progress with the open market, and not with inclusive development. The journey of India's economy from the Nehruvian license raj to globalization can be seen as the anxious waiting of the Indian bourgeoisie for a favourable playing field. Here the winning factors are enterprise and cultural capital (which includes Deepak's MBA degrees and a faux 'public school' way of speaking). In this version of the Indian Dream, it is possible to achieve prosperity without the mediation of the state and political demands from various classes and castes. Deepak's suggestion that Anasuya talk to hoteliers and rent out their home for a few months, as "Jakhoo hotel, managed by The Taj" (169) is a recommendation that intimate spaces be opened up for capitalism. Anasuya dreams of moving to the economic hub of Bombay; she keeps on singing "Cum-bal-la Hill! Ma­ la-bar Hill!". Her song repeats Partha Chatterjee's questioning of the ethos of the postcolonial nation in his paper "Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois at Last?" She expresses her need to leave behind the economically stagnating Simla, and move to the bustling beehive of the metropolis: ANASUYA. I want to go far, far away, to a place where no one knows me. I want to work . . . and . . . work where everyone is busy and no one asks questions (155). The metropolis did not acquire a space in the nationalist imaginary, even though whole generations were born and brought up in cities. After Partition, the middle class flooded to the outskirts of large cities and struggled to move to better neighbourhoods. Deepak hangs his head in shame to admit that his family is from Ghatkopar, as he rises to the upper­ class locality of Malabar Hill. By carefully cultivating the grace of the upper class, he struggles to become a 'proper' citizen of the civil society (as opposed to the political society of squatters or slum dwellers of Ghatkopar). It is the metropolis, and not the ideal village of the nationalist imagination, that offered the middle class the security and stability of home. Anasuya is unhappy with Deepak's drive to catch Rai Saheb: she requests Deepak to 'be himself and not hurry for promotion. Here Das deftly differentiates between ethically desirable progress as need (Chakrabarti and Cullenberg, 197-234) and progress as capital accumulation. Partition taught Deepak's mother to be an unscrupulous accumulator, and she will

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not relax her control over the economic security of her son. Replying to her son's protestations that he can make do with his modest income and will not marry for money, she replies: CHITRA: Oh-ho, we always need more money. There's never enough. Ob, tu kyajanta hai, what it is like to be poor. What do you know what it was like to be tenants of these people in Lahore? Kisi ke tukdon par paina, tu kya janta hail After Partition, what do you know what it was like to be a petty kiranawala' s wife in Ghatkopar? (Disgust in her voice) Ghatkopar! (199).

Chitra seduces Rai Sahib when he arrives at Amrita's place for a drink, and spends a couple of hours at his home. When she returns, she has successfully bagged not only the license for her son, but also a profitable marriage proposal for Deepak from his family. The circle of betrayal is complete as Deepak (literally, 'earthen lamp'), who made love to Anasuya in the evening of Diwali, succumbs to his mother's tantrums. Or rather, he can see a hard truth in what she has to say about security. As the mother­ son duo scandalously vanishes without saying goodbye to their hosts, the audience is reminded of Karan's instinctive disliking ofDeepak: :MAMU: I don't want to embarrass you. I'm fascinated by the methodology of yom mind by the pragmatic calculation which a successful business executive makes in taking a decision about another human being. It's pmely an intellectual interest, mind you, nothing personal...an interest in a certain type of human being, who is rational, self-interested and what's the word . . . optimising (175).

Karan tries to capture the emergent episteme of his time and understand the nature of progress the bourgeoisie was imagining. The retired professor is contemptuous about the cocksure Ricardian ethos of open market capitalism as it replaces community relations and ethics with the optimization of available resources and managerial skill. Deepak is puzzled at the uncle's instinctive aversion. His confident and suave capitalism cannot see the reality of the postcolonial economy where modernity, progress and development are in a dialectical relation to the demands of political societies. As Gandhi observes: I am always reminded of one thing which the well-knm.vn British economist Adam Smith said, in his famous treatise The Wealth ofNations. In it, he described some economic laws as universal and absolute. Then he described certain situations which may be an obstacle to the operation of

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these laws. These disturbing factors are human nature, the human temperament, or altruism inherent in it. Now, the economics of khadi is just the opposite of it. Benevolence, which is inherent in human nature, is the very fmmdation of the economics of khadi. What Adam Smith has described as pille economic activity based merely on profit or loss is a selfish attitude, it is an obstacle to the development of khadi, and it is the function of a champion of khadi to counteract this tendency (205-6).

Even at the tum of the millennium, the Indian economy is trying to find out a postmodem re-negotiation of the idea of progress. The sixties are iconic, in that the questions the decade asked are still being answered. The meaning of progress, the role of the state in development, its human and environmental costs, demands of emergent political society, and the responsibility of the educated middle class, are hotly debated areas, even today. To understand the present situation, one has to go back to the sixties and conceptualise it as an important historical node. 9 Jakhoo Hill is a remarkable human document, as it constructs the powerlknowledge configurations of the 1960s that required myriad positioning from a generation of Indians. Works Cited

Chakrabarti, Anjan, and Stephen Cullenberg. Transition and Development in India. New Yark: Routledge, 2003. Print. Chakravarty, Sukhamoy. Development Planning: The Indian Experience. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Print. Chatterjee, Partha. Our Modernity. Rotterdam and Dakar: SEPHISI CODESRIA, 1997. Print. -. "Development Plarming and the Indian State". Empire and Nation. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010. 241-266. Print. -. "Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?" Politics of the Governed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 131-148. Print. Das, Gurcharan. Tliree Plays. New Delhi: Penguin India, 201 1 . Print. -. India Unbound. New Delhi: Anchor Books, 2000. Print. -. A Fine Family. New Delhi: Penguin India, 1990. Print. DeLong, lB. "India since Independence: An Analytic Growth Narrative". Paper for the Analytical Narratives of Growth Project, Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University, 2001. Print. Gramsci, Antonio. Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooks. Tr. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971. Print.

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"Licenses for Whom?" Letter to the editor. The Economic Weekly. Oct 27, 1962. 1680-168 l . "Defence and Development". Editorial. The Economic Weekly. Nov. 10, 1962. 1707-1708. "Yesterday's Defence Minister". The Economic Weekly. Nov 17, 1962. 1755. Thapar, Romesh. "Facts are Stubborn". The Economic Weekly. Nov. 17, 1962. 1758-1759. "Fool's Paradise". Letter from Assam. The Economic Weekly. Dec. 8, 1962. 1872.

VIOLENCE, ETHICS AND REVOLUTION: A STUDY OF As IF CURRIMBHOY'S

BENGAL TRILOGY DEVAMITRA CHAKRABORTY

The Indian theatre tradition was faced with the problem of canon fOlmation in the post-Independence period. Cross-currents of the multiple traditions of performing arts in the country, along with the plurality of languages, made the task all the more intricate. One of the attempts to overcome the hurdle of diverse regional languages and help in the fOlmation of a national theatre, was the translation of popular regional plays into English and other regional languages. However, plays originally written in English did not get the favour of the audience. Dharwadkar observes: English language drama has not acquired a strong theatrical base or textual currency . . . plays -written in English, however, remain on the periphery of contemporary Indian theatre and are rarely translated into the indigenous languages of the subcontinent (82).

Asif Currimbhoy's plays were an exception to this trend. Currimbhoy received recognition in the West before he was acknowledged in India. His Bengal trilogy, a sequence of three plays - Inquilab (1971), The Refogee (1971) and Sonar Bangia (1972) - was originally written in English. Inquilab and The Refogee were translated into Bengali before their productions. The Refugee was also translated into Malayalam by the distinguished writer K. M. George. Inquilab was produced by a commercial theatre group (Introduction, vii). The Refogee was, however, performed on the top of a water-tank in the back-garden of Currimbhoy's residence in Calcutta by a local amateur group. The trilogy captures the turmoil and trauma of a very brief span of time in the cultural space of Bengal. The 'space of Bengal' here refers to the two Bengals which were formed after the partition of India -West Bengal, a space within the Indian national territory, and East Pakistan, the eastern wing of Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Both the Bengals witnessed students'

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uprising against the socio-political 'discrepancies' in the 1960s and 1970s. The movements are the Naxalite uprising in West Bengal and the Bhasa Andolan (Language Movement) in East Bengal, then East Pakistan. Both the movements later spread across all sections of the society. Bengal was tom apart by violence and bloodshed. This article tries to address two issues-first, whether the three plays can be called a 'Bengal Trilogy' as claimed by the playwright himself, and, secondly, how Currimbhoy represents the violence of the period in the three plays. I

In a lecture delivered to the faculty and students at the Graduate School of Drama and University in New York City on 4 November 1992, Asif Currimbhoy refers to the three plays as 'The Trilogy' (Introduction, ix). The action of the three plays presents the most traumatic period of the early 1970s, a theme that links them together. However, Chandrika B contests this proposition, and argues that, "these three plays do not have a common theme or common characters, so it is a disputable issue whether the three can be grouped together" (Refogee 49). She cites examples of the classical plays to prove her argument. A trilogy is generally a sequence of three pieces that have a link in the theme, or have at least a common character. In a nutshell, it is a story told in three phases. Sonia Rani justifies that, "Currimbhoy's The Refogee, Sonar Bangia and Inquilab may be called the Bengal Trilogy, as these plays deal with the problems of Bengal at different points of time" (41). However, the plays do not only highlight the problems at different points of time, but also trace the socio­ cultural history of Bengal during the period of 1965-1975, when three dominant events successively unsettled the Bengalis - the Naxalite uprising, the refugee rehabilitation and the Bhasa Andolan the last two having cross-border impact. -

Currimbhoy's first play, Inquilab, focuses on the Naxalite movement which invoked an anned retaliation against the State with the manifesto of socio-economic transfonnations. The movement had a deep impact on all sections of the society in West Bengal, particularly on the students and the peasants. The ideologues and the activists were dealt with severely by the State. At a time when the Naxalite movement made the law and order situation vulnerable, India had to deal with the issue of refugee rehabilitation in West Bengal that escalated in the wake of the Pakistani repression in Bengali-dominated East Bengal, and the resultant war for

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liberation tbere. Refugees who migrated to India at the time of partition in 1947 were mostly Hindus who were victims of communal riots. However, the immigrants during the second phase (at the time of Bhasha Andolan) were victims of both communal and ethnic hatred. They comprised both Hindus and Muslims. The Hindus were the victims of communal hatred, and the Bengali Muslims were tbe victims of ethnic hatred. The Refogee, the second play in the sequence of the trilogy, represents the crisis in socio-political and cultural life of tbe Bengalis resulting from the exodus of tbe displaced from East Pakistan to West Bengal in India at tbis point of time. The third play, Sonar BangIa, may be considered to be a continuation of the second. It focuses on the third issue - tbe cultural uprising of tbe Bengalis in East Pakistan against the imposition of the Urdu culture on them. The revolt validates the fact that, "neglect, can be reason enough for resentment, but a sense of encroachment, degradation, and humiliation can be even easier to mobilize for rebellion and revolt" (Sen, 144). All tbe three plays foreground the suffering and helplessness of human beings during the turbulent period in Bengal. The issues have their origin in the economic deprivation and exploitation of the Bengali-speaking people that began with the partition of India and continued twenty-three years after Independence. Nitish Sengupta observes: In spite of a common language of which every Bengali is proud, a shared

culture and lifestyle, and a common history for at least one thousand years, Bengal was irretrievably partitioned between two sovereign cOlllltries . . . . It was only the emergence of an independent Bangladesh in 1971 which partially restored the old historic pattern (167).

Sengupta highlights the violence upon the Bengali population at tbe time of partition. The central motif that runs through the plays is violence and terror. The plays thus constitute a trilogy tbat successfully presents tbe disillusionment of the people of Bengal regarding the existing order, and their resentment and revolt against it, with the partial restoration of order that is hinted at in Sengupta's comment. Currimbhoy himself notes that the reality of poverty, despair, hunger, and injustice was compelling for any true artist. He says, "by that time 'morality', in the political sense, had become an abused and hypocritical word" (Introduction, iii). The playwright's perspective of violence in regard to morality, however, keeps changing in tbe three plays. The following three sections of tbis article will study tbe three plays successively to understand the contours of tbe changing perspectives.

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II

Inquilab, the first play in our discussion, has the very seed of revolt in its title. 'Inquilab' is a loan Urdu word that has assimilated into the Bengali language and culture. The oft-heard leftist slogan 'inquilab zindabad' is a testimony to this. The Naxalite movement, an extremist off-shoot of the leftist movement, started in the northern districts of West Bengal in1967 and soon spread to other parts. It emphasized common man's loss of faith in the contemporary socio-economic structure which perpetuates the prevalent bourgeois hierarchy. The aim was to change, and: By asserting the need of armed retaliation and offensive against the state, in the political mainstream of post-independence India, the Naxalite leaders were the first to squarely place violence on the agenda as a justifiable means to fight the Indian state with the objective of a radical socio-economic transformation (Banerjee, 21 16).

The movement gained momentum to such an extent that the Indian state, on the one hand, was forced to look back into the failures of the system, and, on the other hand, it carne down heavily upon its own people. "[T]he anti-Naxalite semi-fascist terror was universalized as anti-left and anti­ opposition repression during the infamous Emergency" (Bhattacharya, 5191). However, Currimbhoy does not portray this fact that the extremist actions of the Naxalites posited challenge to "the state's monopoly of violence" or on the fact that the actions "set the tone for political discourse between the Indian state and the discontented segments of its population in large parts of the country during the next decades" (Banerjee, 2 1 1 6). He chooses that phase of the movement when, to use his 0\Vll words, "madness overcame the movement, with the goondas and opportunists entering into fray, and the moment of truth . . . vanished" (Introduction, iii). The play propagates a moralist point of view that violence should be shurmed. The overall attitude to violence is perceived in the attitude of Amar, the protagonist of the play. Amar is a student in one of the colleges in Calcutta and a member of revolutionary party. Amar's father is a professor of law and a believer in the traditional codes of law and order. Amar is engaged to Suprea, the daughter of Jain, the landlord, and a friend of Professor Dutta. Amar's ideological tussle is against both his father and his would­ be father-in-law. The 'opponents' of Amar, his father and the father of his betrothed, belong to the 'bourgeois' class but they are liberal and rational. Amar, the upholder of the cause of the proletariat and revolution, is, on the contrary, emotional and uncertain about his position. Amar's dilemma and

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hesitation undelTIlines the resolution of the student revolutionaries who have risked their lives for the cause of socio-economic change. The conflict in the play, the virulent opposition between the two classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat), does not develop adequately. The representation of the position of the Naxalites is biased. The two Naxalite leaders- Ahmed, Amar's mentor, and Shomik, the peasant leader, are presented as power mongers and masked personae who do not hesitate to resort to heinous and dubious means to settle their personal scores under the garb of revolution. Shomik kills Jain, the landlord, after a farcical trial, while Ahmad kills Amar's father in a Naxalite raid on the college. He, however, conceals the matter from Amar. Amar undergoes a psychological journey from the initial celebration of violent revolution to the final renunciation of violence at the end of the play. He has gone through the madness of violent politics. He resigns from the party as he is unable to agree on the means of achieving socialist revolution. He asserts: "I've found my way . . . and it will be the sarne as that of my father" (Inquilab, 81). Amar's view culminates from the inner party conflict which is one of the fundamental reasons for the setback of the movement. 1 However, his disillusionment results in the return to the fold as he moves his father's ideology. The prodigal son concludes his journey by embracing that traditional social discourse against which he had revolted. Currimbhoy's agenda is to drive home the point that violence is madness. It robs individuals from a sense of compassion, reason and justice. The two murder scenes- the first, presenting the trial of Jain followed by his execution, and the second, the Naxalite raid on the college in which Professor Dutta is killed-are included in the play to register this point. Jain is presented as a liberal and hardworking landlord, who is compassionate enough to look after his tenants. However, he is not liberal enough to agree to the telTIlS of land refolTIls. He begins to carry a revolver to resist any form of dispute on the part of the peasants led by Shomik. Jain befriends Devdas, a politician and, at present, a member of the government. Thus the conflict between two individuals -Jain and Shomik­ extends between two classes. One class comprises the poorly equipped peasants and the other is represented by the landO\vner Jain, who is backed by the state power. However, Jain is abducted by the Naxalites and put to trial in which the verdict of his execution is already determined. Amar, told to defend Jain's case, pleads for the liberal individual but is defeated. The trial underscores the fact that violence yields blindness where individual rights and choices are meaningless. The projection of two images-one of Jain's severed head hung on two poles, eyes dilated into death, hair dripping blood, and the other of the tenth arm of Durga

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carrying a bloody severed head of clay-along with Suprea's scream, create a sense of horror. Faubian Bowers is fascinated by CUTITimbhoy's use of the goddess image and he states: In the final scene a horrible unleashing of blood you begin to understand why the goddess of Bengal is Kali, as the deity of death, destruction, 1llmder, in whose name and worship assassins act, and from whose cult the word 'thug' entered the English language (Introduction, iv).

The image of Durga is to some extent misconstrued. Durga does not carry a severed head, but Kali does. The juxtaposition of the two - the severed head of Jain and the image of the goddess Durga - does not merely suggest the act of the assassins from the pagan perspective. It also validates the act of killing as a pagan ritual of sacrificing blood to propitiate the gods. Moreover, the Naxalites were disbelievers. Thus, the conclusion that Bowers draws is inappropriate. It is not a mere element of fetishism. Currimbhoy to some extent subverts the situation. A sacrifice is intended for common good in a pagan ritual. Here, the sacrifice was intended to satisfy the greed of an individual under the garb of class struggle. Failing to save Suprea's father, Amar begins to realize the farcical nature of justice under the Maoist regime. Amar receives the final blow at the death of his father in the Naxalite raid led by him. Like a hypnotized animal, he strikes down the statue of Sir Asutosh which his father so dearly revered. Prof. Dutta collapses into the hands of Ahmed, who stabs him in the back with the sickle. The sickle is a tool of the peasants, and it became the symbol of the peasant revolution. Here this symbol is employed in a subversive manner to suggest betrayal. Other minor episodes, like the bombing of the police-van, where few innocent passers-by get killed, also create an atmosphere of terror quite characteristic of the period. The second act is not divided into any scenes. Different groups are focused on, with the help of lights fading in and fading out. The dramatist refers to it as 'quick scenes' . These scenes are choric in nature conveying the general mood of frustration and helplessness among the students and the peasants. Currimbhoy is wise enough to foretell that violence committed on individuals on mere suspicion would alienate the people instead of winning their favour. A very brief scene is introduced where the police sanctify their own involvement in the violence. A policeman accuses a Naxalite activist of dragging them into the violence. An attack on the police necessarily presupposes retaliation. However, the fact that the attack on the police invited the state repression is a partial representation of the truth, because

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the attack on the police, who were looked upon as the symbol of institution and power, was itself an effect of the exploitation, and not the cause. In fact, the "decade of repression inaugurated a process of legitimization and institutionalization of state violation of human rights" (Banerjee, 21 15). The role of the politicians is presented with utmost sarcasm. Devdas, the elected leader of the people, joins hands with the landlords against the tenants. The state government, however, is removed from power as the infamous emergency of the 1970s is imposed. The environment of terror persists throughout the play. New illllovative theatre techniques, like quick shifting of scenes to different locales with the help of lights, are employed to prevent any gap in the feeling of this terror. However, the dramatist does not emphasise the fact that the collective acts of rebellion were directed at achieving greater social and economic freedom which the revolutionaries dreamed of. Their dreams, however, went wrong as they committed acts of excesses. Much later, in an interview, he speaks about the critical situation where it was difficult to take a moralist standpoint on violence during the Naxalite uprising in Bengal, as already referred to in section I of this article. His play does not portray this crisis. Rather, it represents a situation where, to put it in the words of the playwright, "indiscriminate killing followed, terrorists appeared under the guise of Maoist reform, and the law and learning lay shattered. . . " (Introduction, iii). It is no wonder that the Naxalite leadership closed the performance of Inquilab. The moral of the play emphasizes the renunciation of violence and adoption of peaceful methods to achieve socialist revolution. This pacifist viewpoint of the writer changes in the second play of the trilogy. Here Yassin, the protagonist, goes forward to participate in the revolution, which will be discussed in the next section. III

The Refugee puts forward the conflict, differences, and social discrimination between two generations of refugees in the backdrop of violence and economic and cultural crisis that originated during the Bangladesh war. Yassin, the protagonist and a student of Comilla University, has a narrow escape when his university campus is attacked by the Pakistani army. He crosses the border and takes refuge in the house of Prakash Sengupta. Sengupta was born in Comilla. He sought refuge in West Bengal during the communal riots, followed by the partition of India in 1947. Sengupta's childhood is a memory of communal harmony exemplified by his intimate relationship with his friend Rukaiya. This prompts the Sengupta family to

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receive Rukaiya's son, Yassin, gladly, not as a refugee but as a family member. However, Yassin does not feel at home. Yassin is a Pakistani Bengali Muslim 2 The play slowly unravels the diverse axes of human identity - religious, etlmic and linguistic. The prioritizing of one subordinates the others very injudiciously. Pakistan was created on the basis of religion. Again, the western wing of Pakistan tried to establish its cultural superiority over the eastern wing by imposing Urdu on them, forgetting the sameness of the religious identity which created the state of Pakistan. Religious identity could not keep the State from disintegrating, as differences in cultural identities became prominent. The State hegemony created intense discontent and vehement protests pervaded East Pakistan. The cradles of the revolt were the universities. Unable to accept this bondage on the freedom of expression, Yassin, like his fellow students at Comilla University, revolted against the state, to incur the state's wrath. The alTIly attacked the university students. One night, Yassin and his friends were dragged out of their hostels into the football ground, where they were told to dig their own graves. Then the alTIly fired at the unarmed students. Yassin believes that his escape was a miraculous one. Yassin interprets "the attack on students, teachers alike and in all forms of studies and research" in the following way: "Politics sees all people in shades of the same colour, and the military rulers considered it dangerous to give us the liberty of thought, and future leadership" (Refugee, 16). Yassin's interpretation speaks of the lack of multicultural and liberal attitudes in the practices of undemocratic politics. The trauma of the night, coupled with his displacement, robs Yassin of mental peace. He withdraws from life. Trauma born of the violence, is embedded in his mind and snaps his relationship with others. This also creates apathy towards politics. This apathy is indeed that of the playwright, who presents politics as an equivalent to tyranny in all the three plays. The play reaches a climax as the uneasy question regarding the ever­ increasing burden of refugees on West Bengal becomes evident. By the year 1971, new categories of identity emerged-edesi (one originally from West Bengal), and odeshi (Hindu and Muslim refugees). The edisis considered the odesi as a burden, living on their limited resource. And the odesi, the refugees who settled in India, pined for their roots in East Bengal. Prakash Sengupta is a perfect representative of the odesis. He loved to romanticize Comilla as his homeland. Hence, he was glad to give

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refuge to Yassin. He could not accept Yassin's nonchalant attitude to the freedom struggle in East Pakistan, which he considered to be the fight of the Bengalis. But his attitude changes with time. He wants Yassin to go back and fight for his country because he is a Muslim and it is his country. Ashok, Sengupta's son, shares his father's romanticism and decides to join the revolt on the other side of the border. But Sengupta is not ready to sacrifice his son, Ashok, for the liberty of his erstwhile 'homeland', which he fancied at the beginning of the play. However, Sengupta's 'schizophrenia' has its roots in the history of his origin and the culture he shared in the 'originary' moments of nostalgia. His initial euphoria can be attributed to his memory of happiness in pristine, pre-Pakistan, Comilla. His later opposition to the influx of refugees is not based on religious fanaticism. It is founded on economic grounds. At moments of distress and frustration he even suggests that the refugees should be pushed back. Acute economic crisis, which was created with the ever-increasing burden of the refugees, strained every relationship. The play projects both intercommunity and intra-community tensions. The Muslims have to adopt a strategy of selection and seclusion, for they were also looked upon with suspicion. Professor Mohsin helps Yassin by arranging a scholarship for him in the university when the latter first arrives in West Bengal. With the passage of time he does not feel at ease any longer. He narrates to Sengupta that Yassin may not hold on to his scholarship because there is resentment among other unemployed youths. Later he tells Yassin: "there is a difference between the Indian Muslims and the Pakistani Muslims" (Refugee, 42). He puts in: PROFESSOR MOHSIN: There is a natural . . delicate balance in society. The Indian Muslims as a minority has learnt to co-exist, sometimes precariously. Along corne the refugees, mostly persecuted Hindus, and throw offthe balance (Refogee, 42).

However, the attitude of the Indian state is never mentioned in the play directly. Mohsin's realisation and Sengupta's change in attitude make Yassin realize his position as a Pakistani living in India. The play ends with Yassin's decision to go back to his country, East Pakistan, and join the rebellion. However, Yassin's dilemma regarding violence does not end there. The play emphasizes the need for a non­ fanatic and rational vision of 'violence'. Yassin' s uncarmy feeling prompts him to adopt a passive attitude. But he realizes that the negation of politics defmitely undermines reality. His withdrawal from life and reality is temporary. Yassin realizes the necessity of participating in life. Sengupta's

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daughter Mita becomes his source of inspiration. In a private moment, she points out: MITA: Ob Yassin, touch me! Can't you see I'm a human being? Can't you see I'm real? Aren't you moved? (She touches his face tenderly). The refugees exist the same way. They're alive, and ob, only too real. They bring tears to my eyes, their suffering touches my heart. I can't bear to leave them alone. All of life draws me . . . the human condition. The need and recognition, if. . .if all of us were to . . . abstain the way you do, we'd be doing harm, don't you see, the kind of hann that is deliberately done through neglect. Do you understand, do you understand me, my dear? .. .Tell me! (Refogee, 29).

The play makes a significant departure from the earlier play, as far as the attitude towards violence is concerned. Here, the rejection of violence culminates in a rejection of life. In the very short canvas of this one-act play, Currimbhoy incorporates a subplot which presents an alternative vision of life of the refugees portrayed in the main plot. Ramul, the main persona in the subplot, is a foil to Yassin. He is a product of social discrimination and deprivation. In contrast to Yassin's passivity, Ramul chooses to disturb the balance in society. He provokes the refugees to occupy the vacant garage of Sengupta by force. He tries to foil attempts of refugee rehabilitation by the government, interpreting it as an act of violence upon refugees. In a kind of surreal environment, Ramul is seen setting up a court of his O\vn, handing dO\vn punishment to a Muslim 'infiltrator' supposed to be a Pakistani spy. The playwright creates an environment where reality and umeality merge. Ramul is perhaps recreating a situation where the nightmarish dream he suffered in East Pakistan is rehearsed, and a revenge attempt is made against a Muslim who is made a scapegoat. Yassin and Professor Mohsin witness the scene, and the fOlmer saves the poor man. The refugees are differentiated on religious grounds. Muslim refugees, in spite of their helplessness, are seen as oppressors. However, Ramul's words about the poor Muslim refugee ­ "leave him and he'll hang himself' - underscore the inhuman psychological condition and the existential crisis seen in an individual (Refugee, 39). Man may even commit suicide as a choice for freedom. However, Ramul ends up being antisociaL He fails to gain the sympathy of the audience, and the greater social issues of deprivation and exploitation which Ramul puts forth get relegated to the background. The overwhelming air of pathos which the play weaves regarding the human plight ends in the helplessness of individuals. The playwright appears to be a believer in 'consequentialism' 3

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This note of inevitability of the acceptance of violence, though not without moral compunctions, continues in the third play. IV

As already mentioned, Sonar Bangia is a proper history play. If Indian partition evokes a memory of violence on religious grounds, the partition of Pakistan evokes the pictures of the carnage of Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims. The 'struggle for liberation' has its origin in 'the identity division' that "was firmly linked to language and culture (and of course, to politics), rather than to any religious difference" (Sen, 172). The context of the movement can be traced to M. S. Iinnah's famous speech delivered on March 28 1948 on the occasion of Dacca University's Convocation: " . . .the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language and anyone who tries to mislead you is an enemy of Pakistan" (quoted in Sengupta, 174). This linguistic imposition was immediately protested by Sheikh Mujibur RaInnan, then a student leader, which led to his arrest. However, the resentment among the people against the imposition, deprivation, and exploitation by their western counterparts gathered momentum. The grievance was reflected in the 1970 General Election results, when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's party, Awami League, secured ninety-nine seats in East Pakistan and an overall majority in Pakistan. The real crisis began when Bhutto's party, and the martial law administrators, refused to accept the verdict of the people, as they considered the people of East Pakistan culturally inferior to them. Awarni League's non-cooperation, which ultimately led to civil war, was retaliated against, with severe violence. ClUTimbhoy is careful in documenting minute details of violence perpetrated upon the common people of Bangladesh. The popular movement incorporated members from all walks of life-state officers, teachers, students, and soldiers-all Bengali by birth. This aspect is well represented in the numerous short scenes in this four-act play. Few scenes also delineate the turbulent life of Sheikh Mujibur RaInnan, who was by that time hailed as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal). The attitude of the Pakistani administrators is sho\Vll through verbal and nonverbal scenes, like the ones which portray the succession ofYahaya Khan by Tikka Khan (Act 1, Sc. 4), the manipulation of the Bihari Muslims against the Bengali Muslims (Act 1, Sc. 6), the formation of Peace Committee and the Razakaars (Act 1, Sc. 6) and others. The first three acts of the play portray the sheer violence committed upon Bengalis in East Pakistan through

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diverse means. Some are enacted directly, like the mass killing of the intellectuals, the attack on the boys' hostels of Dhaka University, and the rape of women. Some are presented in flashback glimpses offered by the characters. The dramatist lays stress on oral and local presentations, recollections, and memories. Currimbhoy excludes the role of communism, which was responsible for the American antipathy to the cause of Bangladesh. Currimbhoy's documentation upholds a perspective of violence in Sonar Bangia which is quite contrary to that in Inquilab. In this backdrop, it appears ethical to resort to violent means to gain liberty from the tyranny of Pakistan. The main protagonist of the play, Anwar Hussain, is a historical character. Hussain is the first High Commissioner of independent Bangladesh, but formerly he was a Pakistani official. The play begins with a scene projecting the calm and serene atmosphere at Hussain's residence. With the failure of the talks between Yahya Khan and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hussain, like numerous other Bengali officials under the Pakistan Government, revolts against the state. In retaliation, the military ransacks his Dhaka residence, kills his servant Hari and breaks the tomb of his mother. The sacrilege of the tomb shocks him. Hussain pledges revenge, and his personal resentment becomes the nationalist cause. His nationalist spirit will lead him to his personal moments of love later in the play, which will be discussed later. However, the dramatist does not make Hussain's personal revenge appear cruel or treacherous. Although for Hussain it is painful to resort to violence, it becomes symbolic of a sacrifice necessary to earn liberation. He joins hands with the Bengali soldiers. While the soldiers fight in the field, Hussain travels abroad to win diplomatic favour for Bangladesh. India even gives military support to Bangladesh. The play presents both historical characters and imaginative ones. The imaginative and anonymous characters give the dramatist a little space to develop pathos, and convey incidents whose truths may not be contested. Two female characters-Sumita, the wife of Hussain's servant Hari, and Elizabeth, Chief of the Red Cross, with whom Hussain falls in love­ become the medium for spreading the dramatist's message of humanity. Elizabeth arrives in India to work among the refugees in West Bengal, where Hussain meets her. Hussain gets dra\Vll towards her, for her compassion for the Bengalis. Her love and passion stand in sharp contrast to the overall European indifference to the plight of the Bengalis. As already stated, the national and the personal overlap in Hussain's psyche.

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Even during private moments with Elizabeth, Hussain inquires about Sumita. Sumita leaves Bangladesh to become a refugee after she is rendered homeless and her husband is killed. Hussain presumes that Elizabeth may meet her among the refugees. Elizabeth misunderstands him in the beginning. In a moment of lovemaking with Hussain, she discovers that Sumita is indeed symbolic of the mother figure that Hussain is seeking. She is the representative of the suffering ' Sonar BangIa', who needs to be liberated. Both Hussain and Elizabeth dedicate their lives to find Sumita and her daughter. After the liberation of Bangladesh, Elizabeth leaves India and moves to Bangladesh to help the process of nation building. The subplot of the play pivots around the character of Sumita. She is a courageous woman whose endurance can be well matched by tragic heroines. She runs, with her daughter, to Khustia village, to find refuge after the army kills her husband and ravages her house. But the army has already devoured the entire village for giving shelter to a revolutionary. There she meets an old woman with a child. Sumita refuses to forsake the child and takes her along as she migrates to India. She becomes the emblem of universal motherhood. Her misery continues as she loses her own daughter in her passage to India, and the child dies too. Sumita is rescued from her perilous condition by Arun, another fellow refugee and his mother. Arun is a university student who becomes a refugee after suffering the brunt of state repression. Sumita joins the Mukti Fauj (Liberation Force) along with Arun after recovering from her illness. Sumita's vision of life is actually the vision of the dramatist, who tries to highlight humanity in the dominating atmosphere of violence. The dramatist builds a small love-triangle between Arun Sumita, and a mad Mulla. The pervasive mood of death and destruction gets a new hope of life in this relationship. The dialogue between Sumita and Mullah serves as a comic relief. Sumita baptizes Mulla to the solemn task of fighting for the liberation of Bangladesh. Although both Arun and Mulla fall in love with Sumita, her sole consciousness is directed towards the rescue of her daughter. She falls prey to a rapist, who entraps her with the promise that he will give her infonnation regarding her daughter. Even in the moment of intense torment after being raped, Sumita enquires of her daughter from the culprit, forgetting to punish him. Sumita stands for that supreme love, the symbol of 'Sonar BangIa', whose only concern is to protect her child from violence. ,

The play is almost exclusively built on sentiments and emotion, without presenting a true conflict, except when Sumita cries out to Mulla:

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Violence, Ethics and Revolution Sill,HTA: Is this what victory means? They . . . they've become beasts. All. Just like the man who . . . who . . . Mulla, ob, Mulla, won't we ever learn to

:MULLA: . . . forgive . . . ? . . . forget. . .? (shaking his head negatively) Sill,HTA: . . . become . . . become human once again . . (Sonar BangIa, 89, emphasis original).

Sumita's desperate cry upholds the realization that revenge does not generate any peace of mind. After the fall of the Pakistani reign, those who supported their cause were meted out with the same violence. Thus, the question of morality shifts back to pacifism at this point. The play ends with a happy union of Hussain with his motherland, and Sumita with her daughter, Maya. Thus, the three plays taken together give a glimpse of the socio-political and cultural milieu of Bengal in the decade of 1965-1975. The story of resentment, bloodshed, terror, and subsequent disillusionment of the Bengali speaking population, is narrated in these three plays. Besides the common theme of violence, the dominant presence of the motif of motherhood also weaves together the three texts. Mother appears in the texts both as a character and as a trope. Inquilab ends with the scene where Amar's mother is dispersing seeds on the field, an act which is highly symbolic. All through the text she is portrayed as a character who also worships Mother Goddess Durga. She becomes Amar's anchor of support. Shomik's mother, who supports her son's blind adherence to violence, is interestingly presented as a blind old woman. In The Refugee, Yassin decides to go back to his country and join the revolution there, because he realizes that he carmot betray his mother Rukaiya and his motherland. And the concepts of mother, mother tongue, and motherland, become equivalent to one another in the third play. This is seen in the character of Sumita, who becomes the epitome of all three. Thus, these can definitely be called a trilogy. However, Currimbhoy's presentation of violence in Bengal in the three plays is exclusive. He does not incorporate all dimensions. As already stated, Inquilab dramatises a moment when the Naxalite movement loses its control over the violence and Sonar BangIa does not include the reason for American apathy for the cause of Bangladesh. His choice of subjects is totally guided by his traditional moral ethos. The trilogy, in fact, traces the locus of his concept of morality regarding violence. In Inquilab, we find the pacifist playwright emphasisng the need to shun violence. The general message is to adopt peaceful means. In The Refugee, the consequentialist viewpoint of the

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dramatist is reflected in Yassin' s decision to go back and join the revolution in his country. However, Sonar BangIa re-emphasises the pacifist viewpoint of the playwright. Notes 1 . Many of the party workers resigned from the Naxalite party in the late 1960s and early 1 970s, being unable to agree to the methods and means of class struggle. 2. The Bengali Muslims considered their identity of Islam superior to other facets, and hence, many at the time of partition opted for Pakistan. Jaharul Haque, eminent \Vfiter and Professor, \Vfites in his memoir during the troublesome days of Bangladesh war: May 28: Baangali musalmaan pakistaan aanar janya kom koreni, kintu aaj baagali hoayi kemon ashanti aar aswasti kaaran hoye dariyachbe. Kintu edeshe kaari ba shanty, nischinti aachhe? (Bengali Muslims have contributed much in the formation of Pakistan. But, it is a matter of anxiety and lUlease to be a Bengali today. But who at all has peace and solace in this country today?" (23) (translation mine).

3 . I use the term 'consequentialism' in the ethical sense in which Hallgarth uses it. He observes, "Consequential theorists generally agree that right action is that which produces good results, but disagree on the details of what the nature of this good is, because they disagree on fundamental questions about hlUllan nature" (611). Works Cited

B, Chandrika. "The Refugee". The Refogee. Asif Currimbhoy. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. 47-60. Print. Banerjee, Sumanta. "Naxalbari: Between Past and Future." Economic and Political Weekly 37. 22 (June 1-7, 2002): 2115-1 16. http://www.jstoLorg/stable/4412182. Web. 14 Feb.2014. Bhattacharya, Dipankar. "Trail Blazed by Naxalbari Uprising." Economic and Political Weekly 4 1 . 50 (Dec. 16-22, 2006): 5191-4. Web. 14 Feb. 2014. . Bowers, Faubian. "Introduction: The Bengal Trilogy." Inquilab: a Play in Tliree Acts. Asif Currimbhoy. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. ii-ix. Print. Currimbhoy, Asif. Inquilab: a Play in Three Acts. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. Print. -. "Introduction: The Bengal Trilogy." Inquilab: a Play in Tliree Acts. Asif Currimbhoy. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. ii-ix. Print.

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-. The Refugee: a One-act Play. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. Print. -. Sonar Bangia. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1972. Print. Dharwadker, Aparna Bhargava. Theatres of Independence: Drama. Theory. and Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print. Hallgarth, Matthew W. "Consequentialism and Deoutology."' Encyclopedia of AppliedEthics. Ed. Ruth Chadwick. Vol.!. California: Academic Press, 1998. 609 - 621. Print. Haque. Jaharul. Nishidhha Nishwas. Dacca: BangIa Akademi, 1974. Print. Rani, Sonia. "Asif Currimbhoy: A Pillar of Modem Indian Drama"'. !JESS 3.6 (June 2013): 39-43. . Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin, 2006. Print. Sengupta, Nitish. Bengal Divided: The Unmaking of a Nation (I905 1971). New Delhi: Penguin, 2007. Print.

CONTRIBUTORS

is Assistant Professor of English at R. D.& D. J. College, Munger University, Munger. He has earned his MA, MPhil, and PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has taught Tool and Optional Courses to undergraduate students of foreign languages, and Remedial English to students of various programmes of study at JNU, New Delhi. He has also taught at Dyal Singh College and Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi.

Ajay Kumar

Amit Bhattacharya is Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Gour Banga, MaIda, India. He has published quite a number of research articles and book chapters in national and international journals and edited volumes. The areas of his research interest include Marginality Studies, Intersectionality Studies, New Literatures in English, Translation Studies and Diasporic Literature.

is Associate Professor of English at University BT & Evening College, North Bengal University. He has co-edited A Handbook of Rhetoric and Prosody (Orient Blackswan), Writing Difference: Nationalism, Identity and Literature (Atlantic), Unmasking Power: Subjectivity and Resistance in Indian Drama ni English (papyrus), and Understandnig Satire (Books Way). Anindya Bhattacharya

is a Professor ni the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She received Fulbright Fellowship ni the year 2013. Her recent book is Gender, Space andResistance: Women and Theatre in India (2013). She completed a project on "Staging Gender: Performnig Women in the Ramlila of Ramnagar" ni 2016. She has contributed four chapters ni Routledge Handbook ofAsian Theatre, 2016. She is the Guest Editor for the special issue of the Journal Gender Issues (Sprniger) 2018. She has been awarded Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study for the period 2018-2019. Anita Singh

is an internationally published translator, critic and creative writer, based in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, a professional editor and author of books, a senior resource person of the postgraduate translation studies course in Rabindra Bharati University, and a visiting

Arnab Bhattacharya

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Contributors

lecturer of CENTlL (Centre for Indian Literature in Translation), a department under the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur Uinversity. Bhattacharya has been a panelled book reviewer for The Telegraph for fifteen years, and has nearly 400 published book reviews to his credit. His edited volumes include: Nationalism: Theories, Formations and Future (ICFAI University Press, 2008); Understanding India: Studies in Indian English Fiction (Books Way, 2009); The Gendered India: Feminism and the Indian Gender Reality (Books Way, 2011); Writing the Body: Studies in the Self-images of Women in Indian English Poetry (Common Grounds, 2014); and The Politics and Reception ofRabindranath Tagore 's Drama: The Bard on the Stage (co-edited with Mala Renganathan, Routledge, 2015). An Introduction to Translation and Translation Studies: Transactions in Meaning (Books Way, 2015) is one of his recently authored books. His works of translation include: Of Ghosts and Other Perils: Stories of Troilokyonath Mukhopadhyay (Orient BlackSwan, 2013); Konkaboti: The Extraordinary Journey of a Village Girl (a novel by the same author, Orient BlackSwan, 2016); and Domoruchorit: Stunning Tales from Bengali Adda (also by the same author, published very recently by Oxford University Press, India). is Assistant Professor in the Department of English of The University of Burdwan, West Bengal. He has co-edited the book, Indian Fiction in English: Mapping the Contemporary Literary Landscape (2014). He has published articles in several journals and books, and also presented papers at many national and international conferences/seminars. His areas of interest include African literature, South Asian literature and postcolonial criticism. Arnab Kumar Sinha

Devamitra Chakraborty is Assistant Professor of English at Dr. B. N. Dutta Smriti Mahavidyalaya, Purba Bardhaman. She started her research work as a Junior Research Fellow in The University of Burdwan. Her doctoral thesis is on the plays of Girish Kamad. Her area of interest is Indian English drama and British drama. She has delivered lectures at national and international level seminars. She has also contributed to reputed journals. Dipendu Das is Professor in English at Assam University, Si1char. He did his PhD on the plays of Arthur Miller, and specializes in drama studies, literary theory, Indian English literature, migration studies and translation studies. He has presented papers and acted as chairperson in more than 50 national and international seminars/conferences in India and abroad. He has received several prestigious awards, including a UKEIRI grant for the

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UK-India Staff Exchange Programme. He was awarded Major UGC and ICSSR research projects. He has published extensively in national and international journals and books. He has jointly edited books titled: Brookside Musinfis (2008) Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd.; Ethnicity and Conflict: India and Canada (Social, Literary and Cultural Readinfis) (2010) Assam University; Barbed Wire Fence: Narratives of Displacementfrom Barak Valley ofAssam (2012) Niyogi Books; Drama: Theory, Text and Performance (2015) Jnanada Prakashan (P&D); and a theatre journal, Kushilav (2007). He is also a creative writer, and has published a Bengali short story collection, Britter Bairey (2008). A theatre activist, Dr. Das has written several plays and musicals for the stage, and radio and television film scripts, many of which have won awards and received wide acclaim. His forthcoming publications are: Macaulay 's Ghost: English Studies in a Post Globalized World (co-edited) Papyrus; Dalit Writings from Eastern India (co-edited) OUP; and Trajectory of Migration in India 's Northeast: Indigeneity, Territoriality, Identity (co­ edited). Gargi Dutta is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, S1. Joseph's College (Autonomous) Bengaluru. She has completed her MA (2008) and MPhil (2014) in English Literature from The University of Burdwan. Her areas of interest include LGBT and gender studies, popular culture, and Indian English literature. Himadri Lahiri is fonner Professor, Department of English, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. He has published Asians in America: Diasporic Perspectives in Literature (201 1), and edited the volume Literary Transactions in a Globalized Context: Multi-Ethnicity, Gender and the Market Place (2011). He has also co-edited Ethnic Literatures ofAmerica: Diaspora and Intercultural Studies (2005) and Violence and Its Representations (2012). His articles have been published in national and international journals and anthologies. He is now writing a book on diaspora studies, which will be published by Orient Blackswan. His areas of interest include diaspora studies, American literature, Indian English literature and twentieth century British poetry. Mousim Mondal is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Maharajadhiraj Uday Chand Women's College, Burdwan, and PhD Research Scholar, Department of English and Culture Studies, The University of Burdwan, West Bengal.

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Contributors

Mridul Bordoloi is Associate Professor and presently the Head, Department of English, Dibrugarh University, Assam. His areas of interest include critical theory, critical pedagogy, history and theory, cultural studies, popular culture, postmodem fiction, and writings in English from India's northeast. Presently, he is working on a book revolving around the rhetoric of lifestyle magazines from India. Partha Sarathi Gupta teaches in the Department of English, Tripura University. His areas of specialisation are Renaissance literature, Indian English drama, popular culture and literature, and critical theory. He has also been actively engaged in translating folk literatures of India's nortlieast under the patronage of the Sahitya Akademi Nortli East Centre for Oral Literature and Culture. His translations have been published by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Sajalkumar Bhattacharya is Professor and Head, Department of English, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal. He wrote his PhD thesis on "Family- Nation Interface in Indian English Fiction with Special Reference to Select Novels of Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh". He was awarded a UGC Fellowship for the research. He is a recipient of tlie prestigious Charles Wallace Fellowship. His areas of interest include nineteenth-century British literature, Indian and other new literatures in English, and Bhasa literature. He has autliored In Search of Some Blessed Hope - A Critical Inquiry into Hardy 's Meliorism, and has co-edited Indian Fiction in English: Mapping the Contemporary Literary Landscape and The Diasporic Dilemma: Exile, Alienation and Belonging. He has chaired sessions, presented and published papers extensively both at national and intemational levels. Sandipan Ray Choudhury is Doctoral Research Scholar, The Department of English and Culture Studies, The University of Burdwan. The title of his research is "Exploring the Interface between Young Adult Texts and tlieir Reception in Contemporary Urban Bengal, with Special Reference to Select Works of Satyajit Ray and J. K. Rowling". Sayantan Chakraborty

is a PhD student at Central University of Tamil

Nadu. is a generalist whose fingers are dipped in multiple fields of literature and humanities. She has a PhD in English Literature from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. Her doctoral research work on the poetry of Kamala Das is broadly oriented towards Swetha Antony

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postcolonial theory and literatures, with special focus on the language question and the theories of cosmopolitanism. The poetics of exile, as articulated by writers in the spectrum of new literatures in English, continues to fascinate her. She has forayed into the tantalizing area of food studies by co-editing, with Elizabeth M. Schmidt, the volume Beyond the Superficial: Makinf( Sense ofFood in a Globalized World (Oxford: Inter­ Disciplinary Press 2016). Her papers on Kamala Das and post colonial literatures have been published in various edited volumes and journals. She is currently exploring the notion of third culture/tbird space in contemporary literature and popular culture by foraying into film studies, sports studies, and environmental humanities. She works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi.