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FEMINISTIC AND SOCIALISTIC APPROACHES IN NEW LITERATURE
Dr. K. A. AGALYA
Foreword Prof. V.SIVAKUMAR Director, Sri Vasavi Institutions
FEMINISTIC AND SOCIALISTIC APPROACHES IN NEW LITERATURE Editor
Dr. K. A. AGALYA Total Pages: 200 First Published, February 2019 Price Rs. 300/- © Jupiter Publications Consortium. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
Jupiter Publications Consortium No.22/102, Second Street, Virugambakkam Chennai – 600 092. Phone: 044 – 23765181, 97909 11374 E-mail: [email protected]
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SRI VASAVI COLLEGE (Affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore) Accredited by NAAC with ‘ B’ Grade
(SELF-FINANCE WING) Prof.V.SIVAKUMAR, M.Com.,M.Phil., DIRECTOR
FOREWORD The term New English Literatures (NEL) alludes to the Anglophone written works of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, and Canada. The field has coordinated and covered with English Studies, that incorporates Black and Asian British literary works just as movement composing by means of Canadian writings. It is likewise firmly connected to the field of North American investigations. In both research and teaching one foregrounds transnational and transcultural exchange procedures and improvements as opposed to explicit national writings. Accordingly, issues of social majority and hybridity, just as imaginative communication of colonization and decolonization, relocation, diaspora, and social imbalance are focal lines of request and research. Giving importance to this idea, the Department of English has put a step further in carrying out the derived resource to illuminate the current development in the field of New Literature. The collective research papers are the outcome of the hard work of the present researchers, which is left to posterity and prosperity of acquaintance. These papers are published as an enriching source that would absolutely be an appealing book to interpret in particular for researchers, for it is an assemblage of new subject matter providing gratification on contemporary authors of this era. It is in this context, the faculty of English, under the leadership of Dr. K.A.Agalya has implemented a wonderful and remarkable task of preparing this book and my appreciation goes to the faculty.
DIRECTOR
Editor Message The brand name ‘New Literatures’ incorporates the artistic preparations of a geologically and socially immense and non-adjacent zone that incorporates the previous British settlements (i.e.) from Canada to Australia, from Singapore to Pakistan and India. A few critics banter regardless of whether to incorporate the USA into it prevails to be in doubt still. Around ten years back the inquiry on what is writing and what are legislative issues were on focus in the talk of proletarian literature. Today those equivalent issues are being talked about regarding writing and majority rules system and writing and the war. In current situation the dialect is not the same as what it was ten years prior, yet the individuals who were the supporters of proletarian literature and the individuals who today do mind that writing be politicalized for the sake of majority rules system guard basically a similar frame of mind. In both occurrences the goal is to implement a similar mentality and a similar sort of basic and political enactment upon the author. The new literature is a boon to the writers of the range that had not been covered in the past century. Lingering in to British and American for more than 500 years, the new literature is a welcoming note to the emerging authors of all genres Today, scholarly men are endeavoring to sneak belief system into writing. They look to consider, to examine and to teach individuals in a circuitous, diagonal, indeed, even easygoing, way concerning the most significant issues which humankind faces. Rather than examining questions, such as communism and socialism, democracy and fascism, they need to pirate an exchange of such issues into novels, verse, dramas, book reviews, banquet speeches and books named as artistic analysis. Therefore it has become an essential part on the new researchers and scholars to take new literature in positive direction which paves way to realism. This resource material on Feministic and Socialistic Approaches in New Literature commemorates with the papers contributed by research scholars from almost many new writers and the highlight of social feminism issues are in more specific ways. Lack of knowledge, illiteracy, starvation, scarcity, suffering and shame are brought out as major areas in New Literature covering a wide gamut of genres. These writers verbalize with a positive tone which is no longer clichéd of the British replica or repentant about writing in English. Their writings remap ethnicity, reclaim the past, hybridize verbal communication, and propose difference to both the past as well as present, thereby providing a voice to the new age.
EDITOR
SRI VASAVI COLLEGE (Affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore) Accredited by NAAC with ‘ B’ Grade
(SELF-FINANCE WING) Thiru V.ATHIKESAVAN, SECRETARY
MESSAGE I am pleased to know that an abridged volume of research papers to be released under the title ‘Feministic and Socialistic Approaches in New Literature’. The comparisons and variations in the writer’s insight of the selfhood of men and women have given a different socio-cultural environment, signifying a stability of diverse potential reactions. Taking into consideration on the involvement of research scholars in trending New Literature, I also welcome the efforts taken in bringing out this work. I am certain that this will be of use to researchers and students of literature discipline and help them in their prospective outlook.
Best Wishes
SECRETARY
SRI VASAVI COLLEGE (Affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore) Accredited by NAAC with ‘ B’ Grade
(SELF-FINANCE WING) Thiru N.SUDHAKAR, PRESIDENT
MESSAGE The term New Literature is concerned with colonial and postcolonial writing which emerged in parts of Africa, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, islands in the South Pacific, and Sri Lanka. Other literatures in English are indeed new, sometimes incredibly so: as different literary fields. Compared to traditional English literature, the New Literature is unsuitably covered on the World Wide Web. Taking up a research on new literature depends entirely on the perception of the individuals. The researchers of this modern world explore deep into the choice of aspects on all form of literature and come out with enhanced proposition for the potential era. Hope this research source under the title ‘Feministic and Socialistic Approaches in New Literature’ would be of great advantage to the scholars.
PRESIDENT
SRI VASAVI COLLEGE (Affiliated to Bharathiar University, Coimbatore) Accredited by NAAC with ‘ B’ Grade
(SELF-FINANCE WING) Dr.N. JAYAKUMAR, M.Sc.,M.Phil.,Ph.D., PRINCIPAL
MESSAGE
The women’s movement and the body of work which has emerged from it – feminist analysis – have provided a coherent politics and theory which made women as a social group, and women’s activities, more socially visible. The changes women have experienced within the last forty years have shifted the parameters of their lives, shifted women’s geography, political vision and political priorities. It is with this conception that the collecting and publishing of the research papers of the academic stream were offered as a good resource. I wish the team all success in all their measures.
PRINCIPAL
S.No
CONTENTS
Page No
1
RESUSCITATION OF RELATIONSHIP IN ANITA NAIR‟S LESSONS IN FORGETTING - Dr. K.A.Agalya
4
2
THE QUEST UPON A DALIT‟S LIFE: BASED ON DOWNTRODDEN LIVES IN OM PRAKASH VALMIKI‟S JOOTHAN - Hildegard Anne Maria
8
3
THE CHANGING FACES OF THE SUBALTERN HERO AND SHERO: A CASE STUDY OF THE MOVIES PARIYERUM PERUMAL AND ARUVI - Chitra V R
12
4
PATRIARCHY IN NAGAMANDALA - Esther Jayakumar
17
5
DARK AND LIGHT SIDES IN ARAVIND ADIGA‟S THE WHITE TIGER M.Indupriya, S.Kasturi K.Dayanithi
23
6
REDEFINING IDEOLOGIES: A STUDY BASED ON ALIGARH - Jenita Elizabeth George
28
7
IDENTIFYING THE MARGINALIZED: A GAZE IN TO AN EXCEPTIONAL TEMPLE FESTIVAL IN KERALA - Maria John Paul
32
8
SUFFERINGS AND SECRET LONGINGS IN GIRISH KARNAD‟S NAGAMANDALA - S.Meenachi
37
9
RESIGNATION FROM PRESENT AND HOPE FOR FUTURE: SOCIAL REDEMPTION THEMES IN KAJAL AHMAD‟S SELECT POEMS Priyadharsini R
39
10
ORDER AND DISABILITY OF SURVIVAL IN V.S.NAIPAUL‟S
44
A BEND IN THE RIVER - S.Kalpana 11
FEM INISTIC APPROACH IN ANITA NAIR‟S LADIES COUPE - T. M ythili
47
12
INCIDENTAL TRAUMA INTRUDES LOSS IN RELATIONSHIP – A SOCIAL IN MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT - B.Ubaneshwaren, Dr. J.Deenathayalan,
51
13
SALIENT PARTICIPATION OF TRANSLATION IN MODERN INDIA P.Rajkumar
55
14
A STUDY ON NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN CHETAN BHAGAT‟S SELECTED NOVELS
58
J.Prince Sam Paul 15
THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN BHARATHI MUKHERJEE‟S JASMINE P.Sujatha
62
16
SOCIAL, ECONOMICAL AND CULTURAL OBSTACLES PORTRAYED IN CHETAN BHAGAT‟S THE THREE MISTAKES OF MY LIFE -B.Madhuri
66
17
THE EXPEDITION OF SELF DETECTION IN ANCIENT PROMISES S.Prabhakaran
70
18
SUBJUGATION OF THE SUBALTERNS IN ARUNDATHI ROY‟S THE GOD
73
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OF SMALL THINGS -Ms. Selvi 19
THEME OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN VIKRAM SETH‟S SUITABLE BOY Sathish Kumar
77
20
ENVIRO REALIZATION IN RUSKIN BOND‟S SHORT STORIES - S.Jothi
81
21
SUBALTERN STUDIES AND PARTITION IN THE NOVEL TRAIN TO PAKISTAN BY KHUSHWANT SINGH. R. Logapriya
84
22
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI‟S THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS - N.Nandhini ESSENCE OF MARGINALITY IN THE NOVEL GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING BY TRACY CHEVALIER Ann Mariya Jose ECO-FEMINISM IN THE NOVELS OF ANITA NAIR R. Deepika REPRESENTATION OFGENDER IDENTITY IN BOOK AND MEDIA:ANALYSIS ON LILLI: THE PORTRAIT OF THE FIRST SEX CHANGE AND THE DANISH GIRL. Karthika S H DIASPORIC INSCRIPTION IN ROHINTON MISTRY‟S NOVEL A FINE BALANCE Madesh TARA‟S FUTILE SEARCH OF INDIAN DREAM IN BHARATHI MULKARJI‟S NOVEL THE TIGER‟S DAUGHTER - Dr. S.Leela PLIGHT OF INDIAN WOMEN IN RAJAM KRISHNAN‟S LAMPS IN THE WHIRLPOOL P. Sumithra MARGINALIZATION OF WOMAN CHARACTER THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS - R. Janani WOMEN‟S RESIST FOR UNIQUENESS IN CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY R.Gayathri FAITH, VALUES AND THE SECULAR STATE IN R. K. NARAYAN‟S FICTION C.Jayanthi LITERARY COMBINATION IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE‟S DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS S.Annie Cutie REVISIONIST SAGA CREATION IN GITHA HARIHARAN‟S THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT - B.Vijayan
88
23
24 25
26
27 28 29 30 31 32
33
93 96 100
104 106 109 113 117 120 124 129
34
FEMINISTIC APPROACHES IN JHUMPA LAHIRI‟S “THE LOW LAND” J.Vijeswaran
134
35
CONDITIONS OF WOMEN IN PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO SHASHI DESHPANDE‟S ROOTS AND SHADOWS S.Vanitha
140
36
DIASPORIC IDENTITY OFINDIAN‟S IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA‟S THE NOWHERE MAN AND AMITAGOSH‟STHE CIRCLE OF REASON - P.Divya
144
37
A DISCOURSE ON ECOFEMINISM IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA‟S NECTER
149
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IN THE SIEVE: DEPICTS THE RELATION BETWEEN WOMEN AND NATURE - MS. Lidiya 38
IDEOLOGIES AND EXPRESSIONS OF JOHN ROWLING - R.Akalya
154
39
FEMINISM IN AMITHAV GHOSH‟S THE GLASS PALACE - P.PRIYA
156
40
SHELTERING THE PERSONALITY – A INTRICATE MISSION FOR WOMEN - S.Dhesika
161
41
CULTURAL EXPLUSION AND DILEMMA IN AMULYA MALLADI'S THE MANGO SEASON - V.Sandhiya
166
42
ECCENTRICITYOF ECOFEMINISM IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND ANITA DESA - R.Govindaraj
169
43
CULTURAL CHANGE IN GITHA HARIHARAN‟S THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT - R.Shanmathi TRAIN TO PAKISTAN: A CULTURAL ASSORTMENT, AN DISCOVERING DISTINCTIVENESS WITH DEFINING DEALINGS A.S.Benazir
174
44 45
REPROACHMENT ON ENVIRONMENT IN CRY, THE PEACOCK AND FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN - S. Balakrishnan
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181 188
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RESUSCITATION OF RELATIONSHIP IN ANITA NAIR‟S LESSONS IN FORGETTING Dr. K.A.Agalya, Asst Professor of English, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
INTRODUCTION The Hindu Society has denied woman the possibility of being a ‗SHE‘, a person capable of achieving individualization. Man‘s relationship with woman is most often the bond that exists between a master and a slave. Woman is an object and she is essential to man because ―it is in seeking to be made whole through her, that man hopes to attain self-realization.‖ It is in such a culture, in recent times, that voices of dissent are heard. Women novelists have played a crucial and momentous role in enhancing the quality and quantity of the Indian English fiction. Their rich contribution has widened the spectrum of issues deliberated in the novel. Many Indian women novelists have explored female subjectivity in order to establish an identity that is not imposed by a patriarchal society. Thus, the theme of growing up from childhood to womanhood, that is, the Bildungsroman, is a recurrent strategy. Relationship plays a vital role in human encounter. It is the music of life. Without it no physical or mental aspect can be given a name. It moves around the world to keep the lives enriched with feelings. Anita Nair has presented in her novels, modern Indian women‘s search for revival of relationships that are central to women. Her own struggle as a writer is equally symptomatic of the resistance to feminist expression that prevails in India in the middle of the twentieth century. As a women writer her dilemma was either to give voice to women‘s concern and be branded as a ‗women writer: removed from the mainstream of literary scene: or, to deny her feminist and write like a man either with male name or male narrative voice. Anita Nair reveals that her concern is with the exploration of human psyche. She explores the emotional ecology of her protagonists. Family plays a vital task in our Indian society. Habitually nuptial and family are measured to be its most sanctified institutions. They are the main source of console and raise the members living inside it. As a wonderful bridge between nature and civilization, biology and culture, sex and virtue or righteousness, private rivalry and public order, the society of marriage marks a unique development in the evolutionary history of humanity. Social roles and social constructs influence family relationships in multiple ways. From the very ancient times, marriage is rooted in the basic need of the family and at the same time it is an essential element for maintaining it. According to the Hindu tradition, marriage is regarded as a ‗Sanskara‘ which initially transformed every man into a ‗husband‘ and every woman a ‗wife‘; thus giving each a social role and finally uniting them into an eternal ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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bond of love, procreation and self realization. Marriage seems to be a bridge for husband and wife. No doubt, love and marriage are complementary to each other and without love married life is not supposed to be happy. Thus marriage is a social recognition of love between two persons. Marriage is something more serious than the pleasure of two people in each other‘s company. Love leads one to many directions, to nobler deeds and occasionally heinous crimes also. There are so many problems created in marriage and married life. Generally love-marriages are not accepted by the Indian Society. They are taken as crime. This is the reason that dangerous steps like- suicide, divorce are taken by man and woman or they are forced to do so. Sometimes disappointment in love makes some men and women to remain unmarried throughout their life. Some have taken an ascetic life through failure in love. Even the great painters and philosophers, great conquerors, great writers, great actors may be disappointed in their love before and after the marriage. Love before marriage is totally different from love after marriage because before marriage, there is only love but after marriage, duties, responsibilities, ego-all become the parts of human life and love is changed into anger, irritation, hatred, etc. Even loving friends, when they fall out hate each other. Hence, reconciliation between husband and wife is more difficult than a treaty alliance between two warring nations. Perhaps the best way to be happy in married life lies in following the advice, don‘t be too exacting, don‘t expect too much and take life as it comes. The novel, Lessons in Forgetting is an odyssey of emancipation and rejuvenation. The story puts forth a strong statement that the act of recovering and recreation is not an act of betrayal. In fact, Nair crafts life not as a cage of inevitable burden but as an act of resurrection and metamorphosis. One has to sever the ties of the past and acquire a new sensitivity towards life. Life, like cyclone, triggers despair and uncertainty and all human beings have one thing in common, nothing but troubled souls. The bulwark strength of human beings lies not in accepting the devastation of life but in renewing themselves from the shackles of burden and bars. The novelist teaches a lesson to expect joy as the birthright and a power of denial towards despair. The murky canopy of life may gift dismay and demolish, all of a sudden, the hopes which are carried. Again the same life teaches to refashion the decree of redemption and renewal with forgiveness. Life is not an encumbrance of affliction and anxiety but it educates to look at the twists and turns of life with courage and strength. Nair‘s Lessons in Forgetting offers an intimate perspective into the lives of two individuals, who are trapped in sullen situations. Both the characters are captured in familial ties, cultural expectations, marital betrayals and sexual discovery. The plot moves on with men and
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women abandoning their marital relationships. Narrated in the backdrop of the Greek mythology of Hera and Zeus adds colour to the novel. Anita Nair has discussed two different images in the novel, which raises a question about the relationship of a husband and wife. She compares the husband and wife to a pair of bullocks yoked together which means the two have to go together in the same direction, violation of which would result into pain. Then, the two bullock‘s inspite of sharing the burden do not know whether one loves the other or not. The pair of bullock‘s goes together under compulsion whereas the marital relationship should be based on love and affection. This is the type of comparison pictured about a husband-wife relationship. Too much of importance of a man‘s existence in a woman‘s life makes it vulnerable to their whims and compliance which makes them a total dependence on man. In this novel the husband, Giri expects everything from the wife and never bothers about to think of his wife‘s feelings. Many such pairs co-exist in the societies today, who are emotionally aloof from each other. The characters in the novel, in one way or other, become the inheritors of loss. Loss becomes an inevitable fate in their lives. Giri, Meera‘s husband, relishes becoming a fashionable man in his corporate society. His efforts to attain vogue is obstructed by the members of the Lilac House. Kala Chithi spends the rest of her life with JAK only after disowning her husband just for a tuft of hair. The cultural matrix in which she lives provokes the end to her marital knot. The good old granny Lily is also in search of renewal. Lily is stabbed by the sorrow of Saro‘s death. Lily, a national award winning actress takes a brave decision by leaving the Lilac House to act in a television serial. Nikhil and Nayantara, the children of Meera and Giri, also long for an alteration. Their childhood is robbed because of Giri‘s irresponsible fatherhood. These children have to suffer the sins of their parents. The vortex of fear grips everyone and it seems no escaping for a moment. Vinnie, a friend of Meera, breaks the norms of the civilized society by becoming a secret Mistress to live a sophisticated life. The tale of loss, for every individual in this novel, is wrought by social and cultural matrix. Meera, a post – graduate in English Literature is happily submerged in the role of a corporate wife. She is also a well to do writer of cook books and guide manuals to corporate wives. Giri, her husband, a corporate materialistic man, finds fault with his stagnant life and ageing wife. After the marriage, Giri lives with Meera in her home, the Lilac House. The Lilac, a traditional house of Meera‘s family, plays a vital role in her life. The house which united the hearts of Giri and Meera fractures their marital life too. On a fine September day, Giri departs from Meera‘s life without any intimation. Trajectory surrounds Meera and she has to play the role of a protectress and masquerader. She is trapped in a watertight position where she has to take care of three women of three generations and a young boy.
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JAK or J.A.Krishnamurthy, a cyclone study expert, returns to India after a freak accident to his daughter Smriti. He comes to stay in Bangalore only because of his distorted daughter. Smriti, the nineteen year old meets her disaster when she was on a trip to discover the reasons of foeticide in Tamilnadu. She becomes an ugly twisted doll, the handiwork of society‘s evilness. With a scientist‘s instinct, Jak wants to discover the knowledge of his daughter‘s deformed stance. CONCLUSION Lessons in Forgetting is a world of divorcees. The concept of marriage is questioned and it has become a perverted institution. Marriage leads to dishonesty, conflict and meanness between married couples instead of goodwill on the part of individuals. Fulfilling relationships inside marriage become impossible only because of individual autonomy and freedom. The subject of ideal happiness in marriage is changed and it provides a biting bitterness. Marriage is done only for the purpose of reproducing species and ultimate happiness remains a question throughout the journey. Relationships are born when a vision is shared. The seeds of redemption and renewal are sown when Jak and Meera confront one another. The lives of these two individuals find solace when they meet. Meera and Jak find a sense of redemption and renewal when they begin to share a space. Jak appoints Meera as his assistant and a comforting zone begins to grow between these two souls. Both begin to accept each other.
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THE QUEST UPON A DALIT‟S LIFE: BASED ON DOWNTRODDEN LIVES IN OM PRAKASH VALMIKI‟S JOOTHAN Hildegard Anne Maria, Ma English, St.Alosyius College, Mangalore
Becoming ―Dalit‖ is the process through which the caste subaltern enters into circuits of political commensuration and into the value regime of ―the human.‖ (Rao 2009, 264). For India, the 1950‘s was an epoch of permutation. The nation had to face casteism, terrorism and religious violence despite of being a Republic. OmprakashValmiki‘s autobiographical account ‗Joothan‘ narrates the plight of the untouchables in a small village of Uttarpradesh in 1950‘s. There are numerous genres in Literature to represent the experiences of a person or a community, even to understand the functioning and dynamics of society. But this particular literary genre was a conscious choice in order to paint the exact living conditions and to portray the raw emotions that he and his community had to endure in their whole life. Valmiki, acknowledged as a great writer was born in Chuhra family at Barla in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh in 1950.He is a postgraduate in Hindi Literature. His published works includes ‗SadiyonKaSantap‟,‟Salam‟ and ‗Dalit SahityaKaSaundaryaShastra‟ and ‗Joothan‘ (1997), his autobiography translated from Hindi to English by ArunPrabha Mukherjee as ‗Joothan: A Dalit‟s life‟ (2003) is accepted as one of the major works in Dalit Literature. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, such as Dr.Ambedkar National Award in 1993 and PariveshSamman in 1995.He was the President of the ‗First Dalit Writers Conference‘ in Nagpur in 1993. Valmiki starts to prod our consciousness with the title of the work ‗Joothan‘ which means left-over or residual of food that is inappropriate for consumption. The life of the Dalits can be read from the title alone. The predicament of Dalits, considered as untouchables, belonging to the lowest strata of societal pyramid and their suppression on the account of caste and the concern of subalternity is reflected in the work which essentially highlights the exploitations on the marginalized there by redressing the imbalance created in academic work considering peculiar focus on elites and elite culture in the South Asian historiography. Gramsci calls their subaltern lived experience as ―common sense‖, their understanding of reality or, their ―philosophy‖. In order to accomplish a translation into theoretical language, and to understand these ―conditions and relations of the past‖, Gramsci appeals to ―integral history‖ as a versatile workshop which takes into account political, socio-economic, cultural and religious dynamics, in which the ―integral historian‖ is able to perceive ―the totality and complexity of the historical process, from the tendencies of the economic structure to the forms of popular culture that shape . . . the consciousness of the masses (Morera 1990, 61; in Green 2002, 9).‖ ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Valmiki‘s own caste Chuhras had to live across the pond, which acted as a natural barrier between the upper caste quarters and the untouchables which is the evidence for their sub-human living conditions. It delimits not just the physical space occupied by the upper and the lower castes, but the two different worlds of existence. The Chuhras exist among filth and deprivation. The description of the basti gives us a sense of the destitution faced by the untouchable community. There is an all pervading stink and one could see pigs, dogs and children roaming around in the narrow streets of this basti. In short the Chuhras lived in a space devoid of human dignity, obviously as a consequence of the caste system. Thus Valmiki‘s early childhood is marked by this utter deprivation and lack of dignity. The social and psychological dispossession is associated by economic destitution as well. Though each family member of the household worked hardly it was difficult for them to attain even two decent meals in a day. Due to the caste order that prevailed, they were exploited by the Tyagas to work for free.The government schools, which according to law of the nation after eight years of independence, should be accessible for the untouchables, declines admission to them.Gramsci writes: Every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern groups should be of incalculable value for the integral historian. Consequently, this kind of history can only be dealt with monographically, and each monograph requires an immense quantity of material which is often hard to collect. In the autobiography valmiki struggles a lot to attain education, It was Sevak Ram Masihi, a Christian, who took Valmiki into his open air school. But after an altercation with Sevak Ram, Valmiki‘s father tookintiative to enroll him to the Basic Primary school. After a protracted period of pleading, Master HarPhool Singh allows Valmiki into the school. The practice of untouchability is conspicuous of this school. Valmiki along with other two untouchables, were made to sit away from the other students, however the trio had formed a strong alliance. Amidst the legal abolishment of untouchability and increasing access of education for the untouchables at least in paper, caste oppression and violence became a living reality for the recently ‗independent‘ generation of lower castes. Om Prakash‘s critique of the education system revolves around the impotence of constitutional provisions and the Gandhian mission in uplifting the lives of lower castes. He recalls a traumatic experience he faced while growing up in the entire village which was segregated among the Chuhra and Tyagaon grounds of untouchability. He received the basic primary education from a government school after being humiliated and bullied for being enrolled. The government granted the lower communities the right to educate themselves, through government schools, however the children from the Chuhra caste were the primary targets of the wrath of upper caste Tyagas. In addition to spatial segregation, Tyagas were the leading figures at all the major institutions in the village including the government ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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school Om Prakash attended. He recalls the traumatic experience that reminded of his chuhra identity while he was forced to sweep the entire school premises instead of attending his regular school. ―The taunts of my teachers and fellow students pierced me deeply. ―Look at this Chuhreka, pretending to be a brahmin.‖ (Joothan,5) Dalit experiences did not manage to find room in literary creations back then. We have grown up in a social order that is extremely cruel, inhuman and antipathetic towards Dalits.Valmiki describes how his entire community depended on the leftover food thrown out by the upper castes in return for their hard but unpaid work. Valmiki, gives a detailed description of collecting, preserving and eating ‗joothan‘. He was assigned the work to guard the drying joothan from crows and chickens. They used to relish the dried and reprocessed joothan. These memories of the past burn him with renewed pain and humiliation in the present. Throughout the novel, Valmiki repeatedly narrates his experiences of pain as exclusion due to the continued practice of untouchability. He writes, ―I was kept out of extracurricular activities. On such occasions, I stood on the margins like a spectator. During the annual functions of the school, when rehearsals were on for the play, I too wished for a role. But I always had to stand outside the door. The so-called descendants of the gods cannot understand the anguish of standing outside the door.‖(Joothan, 16) In another instance, he states how he was continually kept out ‗on some pretext or the other‘. He tried to talk and complain . But no action was taken against anyone in. He writes, ―I had to sit away from the others in the class, and that too on the floor. The mat ran out before door….sometimes they would beat me without any reason‖ (Joothan, 2). Though despite of facing such atrocities, Valmiki was fortunate enough to have a family that supported him to study and get rid of the life that the others in the community were leading. The novel is dedicated to his mother and father, both portrayed as heroic figures, parents who desired something better for their child and fought for his safety and growth with tremendous courage. Even his mother was an epitome of courage for him;she confronted the upper class leaders like a ―lioness‖ when they pounced on to hit her. This act of defiance by Valmiki‘s mother sows the seeds of rebellion in the child Valmiki. While describing the events in Bombay much later in his life, Valmiki highlights the fact that education is not the solution to the ills of the caste system. On having been mistaken for a Brahmin because of his adopted last name, ―Valmiki‖ (used to denote a community of untouchables in Uttar Pradesh) he found out that just the revelation of his real caste to well-educated middle class people was received by shock and a sudden change of attitude towards him. Even his own relatives were hesitant to invite him for a wedding as he refused to let go of his last name because it would reveal their caste. OmprakashValmiki constantly stresses on the differences between the Dalits and the caste Hindus, the Savarnas, with
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respect to their various religious beliefs and customs, he subtly contests the belief that the oppression of the Dalits by the Savarnas is justified as per the Hindu religious laws; a clear subjugation on the grounds of caste.If, on the one hand, the choice of those who do not share a caste ideology seems commendable, on the other, given that they disregard this ideology, it represents a blind choice from the point of view of ―integral history‖, that castes do not disappear simply by being ignored, and the subjugation of Dalits and others still persists. Inspired by the works of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar for the socioeconomic development of the Dalits and the abolition of untouchability, OmprakashValmiki made an immense contribution to Dalit literature by highlighting the plight of Dalits in the post-independence era which isn‘t quite different from that of the pre-independence era, Joothan being one of the first contributions to Dalit literature. Valmiki also participated in plays, being actively supported by wife, Chanda. The text, Joothan, reveals to the reader the rigidity and narrow-mindedness of casteist India, which is as relevant today as it was in the early part of the last century. The author‘s objective doesn‘t stop at evoking compassion towards the oppressed Dalits in the mind of the reader but also he raises questions that had deprived the whole community from opportunities,and also how one‘s caste becomes his only identity?. Valmiki`s use of autobiography helps him to occupy a vantage subject position from which he presents a Dalit‘s lived experience. The ‗true to life‘ format of the autobiography helps him to lay bare the brutality inherent in the caste system, which consequently becomes a powerful argument in favor of dismantling this undesirable form of social organization. At the same time, Valmiki‘s own struggles and success, acts as motivation for others to struggle and achieve their goals. Thus, Joothan symbolizes the struggle for dignity and human rights and demonstrates that a revolutionary transformation of society is not just desirable but possible as well. Thus, OmprakashValmiki by narrating the bitter experiences, of his life as a Dalit, wants to make one thing clear caste is not the only sole primordial reason to understand one‘s own identity. Though the constitution by law had eliminated untouchablity and caste discrimination. Yet it is to be found everywhere in the attitude, relations and interactions. The identity crisis of Om PrakashValmiki begins with this very first instance of being a Dalit similarly every suppressed and oppressed class in India.this very existential crisis of being equally human before others is a challenging one . Hence joothan is the very exploration of this existential crisis towards one‘s own identity.Joothan is a searching memoir of the life of a sensitive and intelligent Dalit youth in independent India. It tells us how he overcomes contempt, humiliation and violence to gain education and existence from a socially deprived community. As Green summarises the Gramscian position thus it is possible to produce a history of the subalterns ; these groups evolve according to phases or degrees of political organization. The hegemonic context in which subalterns find themselves (the political, social, economic and cultural milieu) promotes and strives to maintain the situation of subalternity; and despite these difficulties, subaltern groups are able to transform their social subordination (Green 2002, 15). ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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THE CHANGING FACES OF THE SUBALTERN HERO AND SHERO: A CASE STUDY OF THE MOVIES PARIYERUM PERUMAL AND ARUVI Chitra V R, II MA English, Pondicherry University
Movies have become an inevitable part of the artistic consciousness of a society and the process of analysing the depth and the different facets of characters and themes in movies as part of the academic discourse has gained momentum with the advent of movies that handle sensitive issues with fine craft and balance. The mainstream movie culture of the Tamil film industry has evaded critical acclaim for its highly commercial, over the top action, song and dance filled narratives. But the winds of change while creating new waves of cinematic expression has also heralded the success of refreshingly real, original and raw, content based films. Their box office success indicates the shift in the attitudes of the society. This paper aims to analyse and bring out the difference in portrayal of the subaltern hero and shero in the chosen films, as opposed to the general stereotype of the ‗victim‘. In doing so, the researcher has also tried to point out the subversion of the ideal and claiming of centre stage by those in the periphery. Key Words: Subaltern, movies, culture, media Introduction The term 'subaltern' as used by Antonio Gramsci refers to the group of people who are subjugated and kept outside the hegemonic power centers, which essentially means that they do not get much of a say in the mainstream discourse. This particular conundrum was further discussed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay Can the Subaltern Speak?A highly contested and much debated question which was also interpreted in several ways. One of those interpretations is that the mainstream discourse does not offer a fertile ground for the subaltern to voice, debate and discuss his or her views, thoughts and experiences. Here if the 'speak' in Spivak's essay refers to a discourse, certainly her question reverberates within the walls of the celebrated academia as well as popular culture. This is also where the difference between noise and voice appears paramount. The Subaltern does not achieve the dialogic level of utterance. An analysis on how successful is a subaltern in getting his or her tale to be discussed as part of an academic discourse as well as reaching the mainstream majority reveals that it is not a path easily trodden, definitely not by many. And yet, this paper discusses two such subaltern narratives that have achieved both critical acclaim as well as popular support. The film as a narrative text has not been granted the same regard as that of books. Yet it is an immensely powerful medium that reaches people belonging to almost all strata of the society. Cinema, being a visual medium, has the advantage of conveying more with the bare minimum of
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words, and sometimes the very best of ideas are often revealed in frames frozen in silence. This, added to several other elements that conjoin to form a film, also makes it a rich site to explore and dig for deeper meanings.And as Kellner puts it,media and popular culture can be analyzed as dynamic discourses that reproduce dominant ideologies as well as entertain, educate, and offer the possibilities for counter-hegemonic alternatives. Considering the wide reach of movies and the impact that they have on the audience, it is necessary to look closer and decode even the subtlest of messages that are transmitted through them, either verbally through dialogues and songs or non verbally through visuals. If one were to take a look at the portrayal of women and the dalits in Tamil cinema, which happens to be the focus of this paper, it so happens that the idea of the 'hapless victim‘s is the common thread that connects these two categories of the subaltern populace. The ideal heroine is the one who always gets kidnapped or gets into some sort of trouble or the other, only to be heroically rescued by her knight in shining armour, the hero. No matter who the hero is or what his social or economic conditions are, he would always be vested with the powers necessary to save his lady love. The heroine has to be weak and powerless, has to seek the hero's protection and invariably has to fall in love with him, whatever be his credentials, even if he happens to be a goon or a good for nothing fellow. This is the most popular trope of Tamil movies regarding heroines, which is also why the researcher has used the term 'shero' to address the protagonist of the movie Aruvi, as she does not fall a victim to this trope and therefore does not constitute the ‗ideal heroine'. In the case of dalits, they are often portrayed as the suffering masses whose cause is taken up by the hero, who ideally does not belong with them but is a high born sympathetic to their cause, pitying their plight and fighting against his own kind, because the prospect of a dalit being a hero and voicing against the oppression meted out to him does not seem like the proper material for a blockbuster film. So in movies they still stand with folded hands and salute the high caste hero, hoping that he would offer them redemption which they still cannot seek on their own and this is the picture that mainstream movies offer to the masses about the subalternas those who do not have the voice or the words to rebel against the oppressive system. This in itself is a means of subjugating them, as it sends a message of weakness and helplessness as their essential characteristics. Amidst such demeaning and disturbing portrayals have arrived the two movies that the paper discusses- Aruvi and Pariyerum Perumal. The movies have successfully done away with the stereotypes regarding women and dalits to a certain extent and they also have successfully broken the ‗victimised helpless protagonist' principle. And so we have a woman diagnosed with a deadly disease and a rural dalit youth as the lead characters and both the directors have proved their mettle in finely crafting the characters, attributing them with their own flaws and vanities and rendering them as real flesh and blood beings as opposed to the superheroes that the
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commercial flicks supply the audience with. They have turned the limitations of their protagonists as the pivotal point of the narrative and spun riveting tales that have made the public sit up and take notice. The protagonists of both the movies are educated, promising youngsters belonging to the middle and lower rungs of the economic ladder. Both emerge from rural backgrounds and find the city life baffling, for reasons of their own. The narrative in Aruvi shuffles back and forth, displaying only short snippets showcasing the growth of the little girl Aruvi and her bond with her family and friends. The opening sequences of both the movies set the tension that lasts until the end. While Aruvi opens with a sequence of a police interrogation and animated activity amidst speculations about the terrorist links of the lead character, Pariyerum Perumal shocks the viewers by showing the killing of the dog Karuppi right at the beginning of the movie. The film is loaded with symbols and Karuppi is one such symbol that carries forward the narrative and appears throughout the movie as the ghost of all those who were killed in the name of caste and honour. In Aruvi, the viewers are not informed of Aruvi's disease until the intermission and the story until then progresses through the narratives of those associated with her. And then Aruvi reveals in a television reality show that she is diagnosed with HIV AIDS and while everyone else is shell shocked, we see Aruvi walking out with a casual smile. No tearful accounts and no dramatic frames or zoom ins. The movie does break away from the regular commercial potboilers in many such small but significant instances. For instance, when her brother refuses to accept the money that she brought for her father‘s treatment, instead of wailing over the misfortune Aruvi goes on a tour with her transgender friend Emily. When the host of the reality show rages at her, accusing her of ‗spreading‘ the dreadful disease and degrades her character, she neither loses her cool nor cries out, but honestly remarks that she did what she could, as a woman without money or support from anyone in the society. That was a slap in the face of victim blamers, who bare their teeth snarling at the chastity of women which is nothing but a feeble attempt at undermining their sexuality. Aruvi coolly dismisses this obsession with 'patthini' (holy virgin) saying she does not believe in such a holy virtue. And thus we have a heroine who is shown smoking, who is a victim of sexual harassment, who has AIDS but most of all who is not afraid of her sexuality and does not cower into silence when her morality or character is questioned. Pariyerum Perumal is also a challenge to the concept of hero in the mind of an average moviegoer. He does not get an intro song or fight sequence. Instead he is seen mourning the death of his dog and soon becomes the object of everyone‘s ridicule because of his naiveté and lack of knowledge in English. By intermission he is beaten up and insulted in the vilest of ways and does not really transform into an action hero later in the narrative. His is the portrayal of the subjugated as is experienced in reality by the actual subaltern. For instance, the fact that
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Pariyan's grandfather wants him to become a lawyer is reflective of the lines in Waman Kardak's poem Send My Boy to School, where the mother says, ―My boy is going to learn/ He'll be a lawyer; nobody‘s fool‖. Pariyan wants to become like B.R Ambedkar, the flag bearer of dalits. He sees education as the means to end the oppression against his community but in the scene where he gets beaten up, he is asked by the father of his friend whether he would become equal to them just because he studies in the same class as her. In another instance, a professor abuses him saying he does not deserve a seat in the college and got in just because of quota, meaning reservation. All these incidents serve in conveying the vicious roots of oppression and subjugation lying dormant in the society, even in educational institutions. Both the films have used the medium to convey important messages in an engaging manner be it Aruvi's rant on the consumerist culture or the sinister murders committed by the old man in Pariyerum Perumal highlighting the increasing number of honour killings in the state. The protagonists of the movies do not crumble and succumb to the horrors that they undergo. They rebel against the abusive system in their own subtle ways and when faced with the choice of turning to violence, they are shown to falter but eventually walk away from it. Aruvi states that if only conformity to the societal norms and consumerism could bring happiness, she‘d rather die peacefully. Despite all the insults that he is forced to endure at the college, Pariyan keeps going back there because he is determined to get his rightful education. The resilience of these characters is remarkable. Yet, they are not models of perfection and have their own flaws. Aruvi is shown to be selfish and she herself says that though Emily took good care of her and always asked after her, has never asked Emily what she wanted. She is not tough and powerful but an ailing patient who fears death and tries to run away from it. But she is a fighter. She wants to live longer even if it means ensuring a lot of pain. She wants to marry and beget children. She fears that she would die in confinement, within the shabby walls of a hospital and so escapes to embrace a free life. She craves for love and attention, just like any human would and instead of exploiting her trauma for the sake of sentimentality, the director ends the movie with a shot of a smiling Aruvi- a symbol of hope and resilience, surrounded by her family and friends. Pariyan is ashamed of bringing his father to the college, because he is a dancer who dons the role of women. The humiliation that his father faces in the college is a blow to his own hypocrisy. At the final scene, Pariyan says that he doesn‘t believe there would be any change as long as the dominant wants to treat them as inferiors, as 'dogs'. There he is, a man battered and traumatized for no fault of his, whose survival itself seems like a victory yet he makes no mistake in spreading an aura of fake optimism. Things are not going to change overnight and the director does not attempt to make us believe they would, for the sake of a grand applause at the ending. We get a shot of two empty glasses placed side by side as the final shot, which is open to the viewer‘s interpretation.
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Every aspect of the movies from the posters to the songs and cinematography carries special significance and deserves deeper analysis. The songs in particular add more meaning to the narrative and are closely linked to the main line of thought furthered by the scripts. The ‗Karuppi‘ and ‗Naan Yaar' songs from Pariyerum Perumal are full of symbolic meanings conveyed through visuals as well as lyrics. Spivak was of the view that instead of assigning a space of difference to the subaltern and trying to give voice to the subaltern, one should work against subalternity. This is precisely carried out by the chosen movies. Instead of showing the subaltern as weak and voiceless, they have portrayed the injustices that are committed against them and instead of banking on sympathy, they have shown that the subaltern can fight his or her own battles. Such honest narratives, combined with fine cinematic craft are the need of the hour and this is a welcome change in the portrayal of the subaltern in the mainstream media. Works Cited 1. Aruvi.Directed by Arun Prabhu Purushottaman, Dream Warrior Pictures, 14 June 2016. 2. Kardak, Waman. ―Send My Boy to School.” Marathi Dalit Poetry in English Translation, 1 Jan. 1970, marathidalitpoetry.blogspot.com/2014/07/send-my-boy-toschool-waman-kardak.html?m=1 3. Kellner, Douglas, and Jeff Share. ―Critical Media Literacy Is Not an Option.‖ SpringerLink, Springer, 7 Apr. 2007, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11519-0070004-2. 4. Morrell, Ernest. ―Popular Culture and Critical Media Pedagogy In Secondary Literacy Classrooms.‖ Academia.edu – Share Research, www.academia.edu/315042/PopularCultureandCriticalMediaPedagogyInSecon daryLiteracyClassrooms. 5. Pariyerum Perumal. Directed by Mari Selvraj, Neelam Productions, 28 Sept.2018. 6. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. ―Can the Subaltern Speak?‖ Find a Library in WorldCat, 11 Nov. 2018, www.worldcat.org/title/can-the-subaltern-speak/oclc/614821484.
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PATRIARCHY IN NAGAMANDALA Esther Jayakumar, MA- English Literature, Kristu Jayanti College
INTRODUCTION Nagamandala, a play written by Girish Karnad a renowned Indian playwright beautifully pictures the marginalization of women community through folk play by simply showing a relationship of a married couple. The prologue that portrays the creativity of the writer where group of flames start a conversation among themselves each having a story to tell as they have gathered from different places at night once their masters put off the light at home, they talk about the relationships that each one sees when they were at their master‘s house. This play clearly shows how typical Indian families are and the belief system of villagers. Also shows how men are kept at a pedestal and are given a white labeled robe that keeps them hidden inside a shell that is called Mr. Perfect, no matter what they do? how they are? they are perfect and they do things right, no one questions them, that‘s the argument that is being brought out through the play. In order to abolish such high regards given to men even when they have flaws in them, the writer in the play clearly brings about the scene where the lead woman character is given a goddess like attribute after she passes her chastity test unlike the lead male character who actually needs to undergo a chastity test, while he is the one who is swindling around. About being pure / chaste, the play indicates how careful a woman has to be in her everyday life. Also shows how Indians wanted their girls to be. Though things have changed now but earlier an Indian girl right from the time of her birth she is controlled and is taken care of by her father, who gives her ultimate instructions and makes decisions for her, leaving no room for choices of her own and curbing her freedom of train of thoughts, her desires, upbringing her in way where she is shaped into a homemaker for her future and also indirectly snatching away her right to take decisions for herself with the label called ―father‖. A father/parents use all means and exploit their authority over her and also do not give their daughter enough freedom, fearing, liberty would make her impure, this fear pushed every parent of a girl to marry her off at a very young age. Even in the play the same issue is being illustrated, where Rani is married off to a man by her parents without enquiring about the man the girl was going to marry. This shows how girls were brought up by parents only to finally marry them off to any man who came by depicting the carelessness of the parents towards their daughter, or it can be argued by saying that they were blinded by the belief that a man is always perfect unlike a woman. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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This paper it explores about patriarchal society, and how women are marginalized in this society because of patriarchal control, further prospects the statutory to question a man‘s chastity as well. IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN A PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY Nagamandala, in this play the narrator is a story, this story is in the form of a woman who wants to tell a story to an active listener as the attire that she is wearing is a sari which is a song. This happens in the prologue when one of the flame that was put off by a lady early because its master‘s wife saw a woman coming out of her husband‘s room and she had to chase the woman away and have her husband all for herself, not noticing that the story she narrated in the sleep and the song she sang took a form. Hence, when the story runs away from that place is asked to follow the flame that was travelling to a temple after being put off by the lady of the house, and finally encounters the flames gathered together at a very remote location and there she finds a man being stung by a snake, and he is being asked to stay awake, as people advised him that if he stayed awake he‘ll live otherwise he‘ll die. In order to live she impels the story to tell him a story so he can stay awake. This story starts with a narration of the play which is Nagamandala, now we know who the narrator is. She is being called as queen of the whole wide world and her name being Rani. With the way the girl is being introduced we can notice how much of feminism is being brought out in the play. It gives us an idea to understand that this play will somehow focus on the life of the girl, and it does. With an exquisite introduction of the lead woman character, Karnad wins the heart of female reading by putting a smile on the face. The lead male character is simply called as ―Appanna‖ a Kannada word meaning a man or man, completely letting the reader know that it is a play giving importance to the female character as a whole empowerment of the woman. It can also be viewed as pointing out the metaphor of man in general, a man‘s chauvinistic stance and elevating the dominance to such an extent, suppressing the woman‘s individuality. Though Nagamandala is a folk tale transformed into the metaphor of the married woman, an elegant blend of two folktales with myth and superstition, fact and fantasy, instinct and reason, also giving a general standpoint with universal evocations. The choice of words that the writer has used in the play in order to portray a character, especially to make the audience under of the problems of the woman in a patriarchal society matters the most and it enlightens how much of a terrorized mental and physical trauma it is for a woman to face such unjust situations like Rani faces in the play. Krishnamayi quotes ―In the dramatic world of Karnad, women, within and without wedlock, are subjected to various forms of deprivation, humiliation, violence and torture in
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almost every walk of life in one way or the other. The playwright not only exposes the arbitrariness of the system where women are considered as ―second sex‖, ―other‖, ―non-persona‖ but also questions the way women are socialized to internalize the reining hegemonic ideology and degrade their own position to perpetuate the on-going subordination and subjugation. Man who is ruled by the mastery-motive has imposed his limits on her. She accepts it because of biosocial reasons‖. With such an introductory act that is act one which mainly focuses on the everyday life of the married woman ‗Rani‘, with which the writer earnestly presents the seriousness of giving importance to the everyday life of a woman, that should majorly have love, respect, individuality, freedom and a space to reason and think which Rani is deprived of in the play. Right after she is married to Appanna, he brings her to his house only to lock her inside it and leaves her all alone giving her no details of where was he off to? What was that important than being with his wife? This is what he says ―well, then, I‘ll be back tomorrow at noon. Keep my lunch ready. I shall eat and go.‖ And the narration makes it clearer where it says ―Rani looks at him nonplussed. He pays no attention…‖ by the time Rani says something he‘s gone. Appanna in the play rushes out in such a hurry as he has an illicit relation with a concubine. Rani doesn‘t question him even after his return rather she expresses how lonely and scared she feels. But Appanna having no regard to the woman who requires his attention leaves her alone every single night. Appanna is a part of the heterosexual society where male sex instincts are supported and justified. This marriage doesn‘t have any depth or meaning both Rani and Appanna are ignorant of that. Appanna treats Rani with contempt, hatred and mistrust leaving her lonely and dejected. To him the concubine mattered and Rani didn‘t. Rani being a traditional Indian girl doesn‘t question her husband or reasons with him or asks for explanation as to why he comes only during the day and eats and leaves? In Indian patriarchal society, the female sexuality is marked as naturally passive and cold whereas a male sexuality is hyped to be active and aggressive. The old lady Kurudava and Kappanna bring a light of hope in her life. The two try to help Rani, by giving her magical roots that would keep Appanna at home with Rani, but when Rani mixes the roots in the curry for Appanna, it turns into poisonous red in colour, afraid of being scolded by her husband she runs and pours it inside an anthill where a king cobra lived. The magical spell abiding in the roots transforms the snake into her ardent lover also giving it form of a human and physical resemblance to Appanna. Naga, the snake enters into the life of Rani at night times while Appanna is gone. Naga embraces Rani with love and affection, responds to her emotions and sees her. Her yearning for love, care and security is fulfilled by Naga, Naga being in love with Rani won her heart and they delve into physical intimacy that binds them stronger in love. Though Rani doesn‘t know its Naga and not her husband but to her Naga is Appanna.
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Rani gets confused with the behavior of her husband in the morning and in the night, the difference in affection between the lover and the husband is first known to the reader. Her experiences with Naga and her experiences with her husband is discrete, which apparently makes the play or the folktale tell the experiences of a woman in a patriarchal society, where the importance is given to a man‘s experiences, as a man‘s experiences are benchmarked for an expected patriarchal hegemony even through tales, ultimately making it sound as though only a man can explore, which is very much prevalent in a patriarchal society. Rani being a traditional Hindu Indian girl, brought up under patriarchal doctrines, to respect her husband no matter what, to serve her husband, not to be disrespectful at any instance, fears to give the roots-liquid which turns into blood red in colour the curry though her husband was a dishonest man. The psyche of a woman in a patriarchal hegemony is manipulated by the norms put in front of her, to follow and abide with which made a woman vulnerable and blinded by immense respect towards her male partner. That made a woman invisible of her attributes as an individual. This play shows the vulnerability, the ignorance of Rani about the cruel world, as she is very naïve, initially she isn‘t noticed by her husband at all. She‘s left off guard when she doesn‘t know how to deal with her loneliness or even raise her voice at least to tell her husband to not to lock her inside. She isn‘t aware of her individuality or the importance of it or her rights, she is seen spending time missing her parents which is seeking for a comfortable shell in which she can again go and hide a safer shell or affectionate shell unlike the present one, so are women when patriarchal hegemony is the order of the day, women do not recognize their worth nor do the male in that society. CHASTITY ―Aren‘t you ashamed to admit it, you harlot? I locked you in, and yet you managed to find a lover! Tell me who it is. Who did you go to with your sari off?‖ Appanna tells this to Rani after finding out about his wedded wife pregnant with a baby. For Rani, she is pregnant with her husband‘s child but since Appanna knows that he never had any kind of physical intimacy with Rani calls her a whore after finding about her pregnancy. He is shocked about how his wife could find someone even after locking her inside the house. Again he accuses and remarks that he is ashamed of her and that this act of hers shames him in front of the whole village. What should actually shame him is that he is incapable of running a married life. The words by which he accuses and yells at Rani should actually be done by Rani to Appanna, as he is the dishonest person in the relationship and his actions were deceitful. He isn‘t accountable to his wife, doesn‘t consider her as his wife, doesn‘t look at her. He is the one carrying artifice in
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his every move from the beginning of the play and there‘s no one to question him just because he is in a patriarchal society. Rani is questioned of her chastity, whereas Appanna isn‘t. Appanna decides to bring her in front of the village elders to judge her of her actions. After saying all of this Appanna again leaves her alone and goes. The Naga comes in and instructs her about what is supposed to be done, he asks Rani to tell the village elders that she‘d take the snake ordeal to prove her innocence. Rani, shocked at the instruction that is given by Naga refuses to comply with it initially, but later she agrees to what he says. Naga tells Rani to tell only the truth when she‘d hold the snake in her hand and swear on it. As Appanna decided he brings his wife in front of the village elders and accuses her and calls her a harlot again. Amidst the crowd not one man questioned Appanna as equally as he was accusing Rani. The crowd went haywire in hearing about Rani but there wasn‘t a small whisper about Appanna‘s illicit relation with a prostitute. Rani goes ahead and takes the snake ordeal, and puts her hand in the ant-hill and she confesses in front of the village elders and the villagers saying she has touched only her husband and the snake and hasn‘t let any man touch her nor has she touched any man, holding the cobra in her hand, the cobra slowly slides on her shoulder and spreads its hood over her head, enthralled by the sight the villagers call her goddess. The elders of the village tell Appanna that his wife wasn‘t an ordinary woman but a chosen holy woman. Appanna is asked to serve her for rest of his life and the concubine to be Rani‘s maid. Though the writer brings about a poetic justice by making the end fair and just, yet in a patriarchal society how men exercise their complete freedom is seen in the play. In patriarchal society ‗masculinity‘ is associated with superiority whereas ‗feminity‘ is linked with inferiority, ‗masculinity‘ as strong, powerful and active but ‗feminity‘ as weak, naïve and passive. The womesn have no identity or future, their identity is derived from their male counterpart and their future is to look forward to this. A girl when she grows up yearning for a love from a man, which she experiences after marriage but even that is ruined when she is not given the same place as the man in a marriage institution. In patriarchal society, heterosexuality is relationship that has inequality of power, decision making and status of an individual especially that of a woman‘s. Here the woman is supposed to be chaste, pure keep herself from all temptations and desires until she gets married and after getting married she has to remain faithful to her husband till death. Whereas the man has the liberty to live his life as he pleases before getting married there‘s no questioning (keeping the play as the context) even after getting married man may still do as he pleases. This leads to a woman‘s identity and feelings to be ignored and her voice to be unheard by the masculine community and ultimately marginalizing a woman in a patriarchal society. CONCLUSION ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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The play Nagamandala, explicitly illustrates a solid stance for women folk. The transformation of Rani from an ignored housemaid to an empowered goddess is unbelievable yet expresses the need of the hour in a patriarchal society. The subjugation of women community is very much prevalent in such a society. Keeping Indian culture into account, though modernity has influenced to a greater extent, some or the other way women willingly want to be part of this subjugation, because of the blind beliefs that are still binding the free thinking in women, women tend to respect abusive husband, and keep mum about the issue in the name of respect and not to bring shame over the family. This is a very manipulative feeling a woman can ever bind herself in. Once a woman starts suppressing her feelings and oppresses her voice, she opens door to patriarchal hegemony. A woman marginalizes herself, and submits herself to a very conjugal life, this scenario is common in Indian patriarchal culture. Rather when a woman breaks free of the manipulative ideologies and doctrines of the patriarchal rules and standards, she understands her value and embraces her individuality, finds herself to be worth something. She‘d start treasuring her life and wouldn‘t depend on a male‘s approval for everything in her life. Here respecting a father and a husband is different from staying quite about an abusive father or brother and a dishonest husband. In a patriarchal society a woman‘s experiences and thoughts and ideas are marginalized and are not considered to be an essential part of socio-political struggle. The importance a woman gets in a patriarchal society cannot be equated to a mustard seed. As seen in the play where the husband doesn‘t give her enough importance or considers her to be a significant part of his life. He deliberately questions on her chastity without an iota of guilt in him for his own deeds. He is able to get away with his actions, the way in which he treats his wife not paying attention to her not caring for her or loving her, marginalizing her as a whole being. As long as patriarchy prevails women may not be able to exercise complete freedom unless they empower themselves with education, as Mary Wolfstonecraft mentions in her book ―The Vindication Of women rights‖ the importance of education, that every girl needs to be educated, and very well aware that she is a human as equally as a man is, and education will free a woman from malicious hegemony of patriarchy. WORKS CITIED 1. Krishanamayi. “Redefining the Insurgent Female Psyche in an Androcentric Milieu,” The Indian Journal of English Studies. Vol. XLI, 2003-04. 2. Beauvoir, Simon de. “The Second Sexed Trans.”, H. M. Parshley. 1949; rpt New York: Vintage Books, 1997. 3. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the privileges of Women.London: Joseph Johnson, 1792. Print. Optional sources 4. Karnad, Girish. ―Naga-Mandala:A Play with a Cobra‖, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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DARK AND LIGHT SIDES IN ARAVIND ADIGA‟S THE WHITE TIGER M.Indupriya, III BA English Literature Muthayammal College of Arts and Science, Rasipuram S.Kasturi III BA English Literature Muthayammal College of Arts and Science, Rasipuram. K.Dayanithi III BA English Literature Muthayammal College of Arts and Science, Rasipuram
ABSTRACT The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a debut novel which throws light on man‘s quest for freedom, social discrimination, corruption and politics in Indian society. The novel interprets that how the protagonist Balram Halwai absconds from the Rooster Coop in the search for freedom and individualism to flatter as an entrepreneur. This paper attempts to explore how Balram Halwai indulges in murdering his owner Ashok Sharma in thirst for escaping from ―Darkness‖ and desires to lead his life in ―Light‖. Aravind Adiga portrays the controversy between the dark and light which made Balram Halwai in quest for freedom, anger, protest and involving in criminal acts, prostitution, drinking, chasing and grabbing all the opportunities to a successful entrepreneur. Key words: White Tiger, poverty, disease, corruption, injustice, bribe, politics. INTRODUCTION Indian English Literature is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. The contemporary writers of Aravind Adiga are Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Arundhathi Roy and Kushwanth Singh etc. Aravind Adiga is a diaspora writer as he is anIndian born Australian writer who offers his work to homeland India. He was born on October 23rd 1974 in India at madras and brought up in Mangalore in south India. He was also called as indo-Australian writer. He was graduated from Columbia University in New York and Magdalene College. The novel ―The White Tiger‖ is first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the corresponding year itself. In this novel The White Tiger Adiga also depicts about the darkness in Indian villages. The novel, ‗The White Tiger‘ is about the life of the protagonist, Balram Halwai, a poor Indian from sweet maker family. He has suffered a lot in the Indian society in search for his own identity. The novel appears in the form of letter from Balram Halwai, a self-made entrepreneur to china premier Wen Jiabo, who planned to visit Bangalore to become aware of self-made entrepreneur. In the letter he described that how he has tasted hid wine of freedom by absconding from the rooster coop. He narrates himself as ‗half-baked‘ because he was pulled out from his basic schooling. In school he was given no name and simply called as ―Munna‖ which means boy is explained in the following lines
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BALRAM HALWAI ALIAS MUNNA… See, my first day in school, the teacher made all the boys line up And come to his desk so he could put our names down in his register. When I told him what my name was, he gaped at me: „Munna? That‟s not a real name.‟ He was right; it just means „boy‟. „That‟s all I‟ve got, sir,‟ I said. It was true. I‟d never been given a name. (13) Later, he was dupped as ―Balram‖ by his school master Mr.Krishna. He robbed the money allocated for education, which manifested the corruption in Indian society. He lives in Laxmangargh which Balram explores it as a part of darkness. There are four landlords in the village nicknamed as buffalo, the stork, the wild boar and the raven. The four landlords are considered to be the ‗Light‘ who dominates the ‗darkness‘. Balram‘s visualization on Vijay, son of a pig herder had come out from the rooster coop of darkness and shined as a politician. Balram was admired by Vijay which tempt him to get into the life of freedom. Balram‘s father was demised due to tuberculosis as they had no hospital in Laxmangargh. So, Balram started to work in a tea shop along with his cousin and eavesdropped the conversation between two customers that drivers make good salaries. Balram was hired as a driver by stork named Thakur Ramdev. Mr.Ashok Sharma and Mukesh Sir are the sons of stork. Mr.Ashok is kind but Mukesh is hard and indulges in bribing coal industry along with his family. These characters implement the corruption that is taking place in India. Pinky Madame, wife of Mr.Ashok is very harsh towards Balram because he is from low caste. It shows the social discrimination among Indians. Balram drove Mr.Ashok and Pinky Madame to Laxmangargh as they are in need to meet a great socialist who controls the whole village Laxmangargh which represents the corrupt politician dominance over darkness. Balram says that people from darkness must be familiar with all the struggles. Aravind Adiga implied the reality of Indian politics in the novel. Balram remembers the incident happened during election that one day a poor man tried to vote, suddenly he was hit by the police and killed the man while rich people had their rights to vote. Adiga beautifully explores the sufferings of the darkness which tempt Balram to taste the wine of freedom. The people of darkness are treated as slaves in our Indian society. Later, Pinky Madame and Ashok Sharma decided to move Delhi as she loves to live in American culture. Balram made a clever attempt and drove Pinky and Ashok to New Delhi. In New Delhi they lived in an apartment. The drivers are given a small room at the ground floor. Balram was mocked by all his companions in the room which made him furious and rapidly his eagerness for freedom stirred up.
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Pinky Madame and Ashok Sharma used to go for shopping. While they are shopping inside the mall he waited outside and watched a poor man struggling to enter the shopping mall as he wears sandals, a mark of low class. Adiga expresses his concept of slavery in various scopes and characters. Balram considers ―Rooster coop‖ as a symbol of India‘s low class people. Now, a thinking man like you, Mr.Premier, must ask two questions. Why does the rooster coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively? secondly, can a man break out of the coop? what if one day, for instance , a driver took his employer‟s money and ran? what would his life be like? I will answer both of you, sir. the answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family , is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop. The answer to the second question is that only the man who is prepared to see his family destroyed – hunted , beaten, and burned alive by the masters – canbreak out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.(176) Balram believes that all the people are sailing in the same boat as they are being member in the Rooster Coop. But, Balram don‘t want to be in the Rooster Coop and his quest for freedom increased. Balram‘s thirst to glow as an entrepreneur displays the oppression of the low caste system and the superiority of the upper caste. This novel ―The White Tiger‖ conveys the fact that India is still blinded with caste system and economic corruption. One night Pinky Madame drives the car by herself and hits a child. Balram was forced to accept the crime and asked to sign the statement as follows TO WHOMEVER IT MAY CONCERN, I, Balram Halwai, son of Vikram Halwai, of Laxmangargh village in the district of Gaya, do make the following statement of my own free will and intention: That I drove the car that hit an unidentified person, or persons, or objects, on the night on January 23rdthis year.
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That I then panicked and refused to fulfil my obligations to make the injured party or parties by taking them to the nearest hospital emergency ward. That there were no other occupants of the car at the time of the accident. That I was alone in the car, and alone responsible for all that happened. I swear my almighty God that I make this Statement under no duress and under instruction from no one.(167) But luckily they are informed that no one has registered a complaint. So, Balram is set free. Pinky Madame feels bore in Delhi and she leaves for New York to attain new atmosphere and to acquire her own identity and status in society. After this incident Ashok Sharma started to drink, corrupt and have illegal relationship with his former lover Ms.Uma. Throughout their time in Delhi, Balram is exposed to the extensive corruption of India‘s society. Balram takes care of Mr.Ashok like her wife. Also, Balram along with other drivers started to study together the ―Weekly Murder‖ as follows MURDER WEEKLY RUPEES 4.50 EXCLUSIVE TRUE STORY: „HE WANTED HIS MASTER‟S WIFE‟ LOVE – RAPE – REVENGE!(201) The weekly murder magazine poisoned the mind of Balram. He noticed the politicians receiving bribe from Mr.Ashok to escape from the taxes of coal mines. Balram recognizes the corruption of Ashok and become furious. Balram decided that he don‘t want to die as a servant. So, he wants to become free and wants to attain a new identity. Balram started to visit prostitutes like his master and has a strong mind to get rid of the darkness. He planned to murder Mr.Ashok in order to abscond from the cage to become a White Tiger. Finally, Balram took revenge on Mr.Ashok and killed him with a whisky liquor bottle by stabbing in the neck to set his life free from darkness and in search for new identity. Balram along with his cousin travelled to Bangalore via a unintended way. He bribes the police and started a new driving service. He has 16 drivers and 26 vehicles now. He has adopted a new name Ashok Sharma from his former master. At last Balram has achieved his freedom and become a self-made entrepreneur. So, innocent boy from Laxmangargh village moves to Delhi and works as a driver; humiliated by his masters, started to corrupt and bribes money to satisfy politicians and policemen to kill and steal the money of 7 lakhs and became an entrepreneur. Balram‘s thirst for freedom made him to do so. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Thus, Balram Halwai‘s quest for freedom made him to encounter dreadful situations that demands murder, cheating, bribery and stealing is the significant factor of the novel ‗The White Tiger‘. The title refers to the freedom, power and identity. Balram is the one who break out from ―Darkness‖ and taste his wine of freedom in ―Light‖. This paper presents not only the circumstances of Balram but also his appeasement in criminal acts, prostitution, drinking etc. to become a successful entrepreneur. Aravind Adiga also explains the injustice, inequality and corruption that are spreading in our Indian society. The main theme of the novel ‗The White Tiger‘ is about the people in power like policemen, politicians and people in light are relishing their lives by using the people in darkness as slavery under crushing poverty. To conclude that the paper is about man‘s quest for freedom to escape from darkness and lead his life in bright who is a protagonist named Balram Halwai from a low caste worked his way best to become a successful entrepreneur by overcoming his social obstacles. To achieve his mission he murders his master. He also educates the masses about the criminals who are born due to inequality, corruption and injustice in the society. WORKS CITED 1. Adiga, Aravind, ―The White Tiger‖, New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2008. 2. Adiga Aravind. ―A Conversation with Aravind Adiga.‖ The White Tiger : A Novel. New York : Free, 2008.
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REDEFINING IDEOLOGIES: A STUDY BASED ON ALIGARH Jenita Elizabeth George, II M.A. English, Pondicherry University
ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the attempt made by the movieAligarh to question our morals and the situation of homosexuals in India. Homosexuality is constitutionally illegal whereas the same constitution offers Right to Life and Personal Liberty. This movie was released six years after the death of Dr. Srinivas Ramchandra Siras who was suspended from Aligarh University because of his sexual preference. A crew from a local channel had filmed the professor having sex with a rickshaw puller and aired it resulting in his suspension. The society questioned the professor‘s sexual preference but nobody raised a finger at the illegal intrusion into his privacy. This paper tries to analyse how morality and jingoism are obstructing the ideas of individualism. The question still remains that why the ‗morals‘ of the society trumps one‘s individual rights. Keywords: homosexuality, constitution, morality, victimization Aligarh is an Indian biographical drama directed by Hansal Mehta. The movie revolves around Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, a Marathi professor in Aligarh Muslim University who was suspended from the University because of his sexual preference. The film is a realistic representation of the plight of homosexuals in our society.―This is an important movie because it depicted not just the fundamental issues associated with criminalization of homosexuality but the everyday discrimination faced by a gay man‖ (Bhatia). Dr. Siras was suspended from his post as a Professor in a Central University and he was also denied of his basic rights, he was compelled to vacate the staff quarters before the noticed seven days. They also cut down the power supply to his home before the time period in the notice ends.Dr. Siras fought for his rights and his suspension was revoked. But he was found dead in his rented home a week after the verdict came. The postmortem reports showed traces of poison in his body. His death was not a suicide but a societal murder. The whole event unfolds when a crew from a local TV station forcefully entered into his home and shoots the private moments of Dr. Siras with his partner, a rickshaw puller. The video was aired and it led to public condemnation of Dr. Siras and served to prove him ‗guilty‘, resulting in his suspension. But no one questioned the illegal intrusion into his privacy.The Article 21 of Indian Constitution clearly states that every citizen is entitled to Right to Privacy and Dignity. His constitutional right was violated but still everyone was eager to point finger at him, instead of supporting him. This movie initially talks about marginalization faced by a gay, but it also tries to enlighten us on the human right violation. The film is about ―human rights, equality, right to privacy and the idea of democracy for all, obviously including homosexuals‖ (Kaushal). The Constitution of India offers equal rights to everyone. But when it comes to a homosexual the society blames them, upholding the notion of ‗collective morality‘. Their choices
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are always questioned on the basis of pre-constructed ideologies and they are usually victimized using media as a tool. In the movie the prosecutor appeals before the court that Dr. Siras is not guilty as he haven‘t broken any rules. When the question of morality is raised he says hum kiske naitikatha ke bare mein baath kar rahe hain, my lordship. Kyon ki naithikatha ki paribhasha har ek keliye alag hota hai….. naithikatha ki seema kya hai, koi kisi ki naithikatha ke bahar chala jaaye toh use saza milni chahiye. (and whose morality are we talking about, my lordship. Because the definition of morality is open to interpretation. What is the boundary of morality? If someone deviates from ones moral boundaries should he be punished.) (1.30:34-49) The movie questions the definition of morality and the construction of it. Collective morality of an institution or society is desirable. But the notion of collective morality has no right to intrude into a man‘s personal space. The conservatives have tried to assault homosexuality upholding our countries cultural history and moral background. But they usually turn a blind eye to the fact that our culture had always given a special place to those who are different. A large number of Hindu mythologies and edifices, especially temples have supported homosexuality indirectly. They consider homosexuality as a joyful experience rather than something unusual or immoral. Siras is an example of how difficult it is to survive when one‘s individual choices are questioned. This also questions the conscious blind eye of the society to the constitutional violation of a ‗gay man‘. When Dr. Siras tried to express that he felt ‗angry‘, ‗upset‘ and ‗insulted‘ as they encroached his privacy the media was attacking him telling that he has defamed the sanctity of a teacher. The film also shows how Siras was slammed by people, in a chat show. Society requires a punishment when there is an offense. Nobody should be allowed to devalue our system. This is not a case about gay or anything. This is purely moral. Teacher kifarzbanthahaikiwo students kopadaikesaathsaath moral values bhisiganye. Tohhamara hi koi teacher is values kaullanghankaretohyeh acceptable nahihai (it is the duty of the teacher community to teach moral values along with academics to the students. If one of our own teachers is breaking these values, it is not acceptable) (58:26-45) Dr. Shirinivas Ramchandra Siras was suspended by AMU on 9 February 2010. On 2nd July 2009 the Section 377 of Indian Penal Code, which made the sex with the persons of same sex a punishable law, was decriminalized by the Delhi High Court. As per the Constitution of India, if any High Court in India revokes a rule it is applied to the whole country unless it is challenged by some other High Court and recriminalizes it. But when Dr. Siras was suspended homosexuality was not an offense. But still he was suspended accusing his act to be morally unacceptable to a professor. Who decides the morality and immorality? It varies per person, but the society has created some norms as collective morality which is enforced up everyone. If one deviates from these ideologies he/she has to suffer.
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Dr. Siras was accused that he had ―violated the moral code of his employees‖ (Hansal, 55:04-06). He was also accused that he had tarnished the image of the teaching community with his obscene behavior. Aligarh University was claiming the status of the victim making Dr. Siras as guilty as the image of the university was defamed because of Dr. Siras. Aligarh University tried to defend its action by claiming that they have only followed the rules of the University. But when something is legal according to the constitution how can the University take action. Even more important is that the decriminalization of Section 377 happened on 11th December 2013. A bench of the Supreme Court revoked the Section and recriminalized it again. But Supreme Court has finally taken decision in favour of the LGBT community and Section 377 is again decriminalized. The director Hansal Mehta has taken special attention to avoid the hefty dialogues and stardom. There are no such dialogues to show the injustice faced by Dr. Siras. But the silence around him speaks a lot. He says ―kavithashabdom ke beech kikhamoshimeinhotihai, har koi umaraurparisthitikehisaab se uskamatlabnikalta hain (The poetry is in the silence between words; their meaning depends on the age and the situation one is in)‖ (40:16-29). This dialogue is a representation of Dr. Siras‘ state of mind. Like poetry, the essence of his life can be identified only in the silence around him. He is discussing his life to Deepu in a row boat in the middle of the river. The whole imagery is a symbolic representation of his estranged life. He was a divorcee and was staying alone. There was no one to support him or offer him a supporting shoulder when he was in need. After a week he was asked to leave his rented home as he didn‘t have his wife with him. The movie tries to present the despairing kind of society that has no concern for the people who are different and turn out from the narrow lanes of classification. The movie also tried to present how this incident had changed the life of the poor rickshaw puller. He was forced to leave his home and move to some other place because of the continuous taunting and insults that he had to face daily. The poor and the powerless people always have to suffer even though they are not at fault. On an interview taken after the demise of Dr. Siras he had opened up his mind. Abdul still lives in constant fear of losing his livelihood, being recognized on the streets or even killed for being the professor's gay partner.The ―horrible‖ incident has stayed
with him ever since and he misses his ―partner‖. ―He loved me,‖ says the father of five daughters, adding that ―a bit of greed‖ may have guided his relationship with the professor. ―Had he been alive, my children would be studying in good schools. I would be running a business.‖(Why a gay Indian professor‘s death inspired a film) This movie also focuses on the idea of labelling in todays world. The society tries to classifies everything into binaries- male-female, husband-wife, son- daughter etc. when something doesn‘t fit into these labels the society denies to accept its existence. The tries to uproot the very existence of someone‘s individuality in order to mould them in the existing
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structure. It seems like society is not ready to accept deviations. Dr. Siras says that he cannot accept this idea of the society. When Deepu asks him whether he is a gay he replies that how can someone define his feelings in three letters. He describes his feelings as ―ek kavitha ke tarah, bhaavathmak, ek theevr icha, jo aapke kaabo se bahar hain. An uncontrollable urge. (It‘s like poetry that is deep within, a burning desire that cannot be controlled)‖ (39:22- 40:01) The society tries to label things but Siras wanted the emotions to be respected and valued. Not the labels t hat they carry. The society had many visions and ideas installed in them. People are expected to follow these ideologies. The movie tries to question why we have to follow these ideologies. Why everything is labelled. The word gay and lesbians are used in a way that the emotion of love they have feels derogatory. The word ‗love‘ is said to be pious but the way it is used in current world, it feels derogatory. The emotions are not valued but morals are. The movie is an attempt to prove once again that morality is for the people not vice versa. The individual and his emotions should be always kept in a high pedestal rather than the rules and restrictions of the society in terms of morality. After a long battle for 158-year-old Article 377 was decriminalized. This proves that the Constitution and the country accepted homosexuals. Now its time for the society to accept them open heartedly, so that they don‘t have to go to America in order to live a life with dignity. WORKS CITED 1. Bhatia, Saachi. ―What is the Norm? A study of heteronormative representations in Bollywood.‖LSE Media and Communications, vol. 19, no. 1, 2015, pp 17 www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/mscdissertations/2017/Saachi-Bhatia.pdf.Accessed 19 Sept. 2018. 2. Kaushal, Sweta. ― Aligarh review: ManojBajpayee touches your heart, changes perceptions.‖ Hindustan Times, 25 Feb. 2016 www.hindustantimes.com/moviereviews/aligarh-review-a-subtle-strong-film-on-human-rights-and-democracy/storyonV213G1c1Iky2Y8xVeG9J.html.Accessed 16 Sept. 2018. 3. Mehta, Hansal (Director). (2016). Aligarh.Motion picture. Mumbai: Eros Entertainment 4. ―Why a gay Indian professor's death inspired a film,‖ BBC NEWS, 26 Feb. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35638215. Accessed 16 Sept. 2018
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IDENTIFYING THE MARGINALIZED: A GAZE IN TO AN EXCEPTIONAL TEMPLE FESTIVAL IN KERALA Maria John Paul, II M.A English, Pondicherry University
ABSTRACT The paper attempts to redefine the Religious festival in Kerala Kottankulangara Chamayavilakku which accommodates the transgender community to the mainstream resulting in the erasure of the division as others who earlier was neglected, a tradition which have similarity with idea of femminielli at the same time demarcating them as someone who needs to be segregated from the society as accepting them to the mainstream would question the established gender constructs. In the festival, along with ‗normal‘ men who dress up like women the Transgender hide their identity. It also poses the problem that it identifies only a single section of the community. The legend upholds the masculinity and the feminine is neglected in the society and are thrice removed. The tradition shares it‘s similarities with` femminielli‘, who were considered to bring luck and faced no stigmatized identity. Now the same are demarcated from the mainstream and are viewed in a separate lens. The festivals only act as a transparent layer which covers them from the harsh stare of society. It is notable that even though the festival provides them an ‗opportunity ‗to reveal their true identity, after which they have to withdraw to the margins, it has provided them with an opportunity to meet similar people and over the years the involvement of third gender has increased which is a sign of their elevation . Keywords: Transgender, masculinity, femminielli, identity, marginalized, margins. INTRODUCTION India as a land of rich old traditions and customs, festivals forms a major part in every community, bound close to the beliefs and tradition of each of them. They have a strong religious and structural background inculcated with thoughts and morals of the period along with constructed biased beliefs .The construction of identities and gender have taken its twists and turns, arrived in its present identity. One‘s identity is a marker for others, to identify based on different factors like creed, caste, sex etc, which also helps in providing a sense of belonging and inclusiveness to the society provided that one must accept as well as follow the set principles. The religious and social constructions evolve from the ancient age. The third gender was not alien to the society but were very much part of it. They were much more inclusive. As the ages passed, it gathered a different meaning. According to Judith Butler , gender is what, we act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman, is actually an internal reality or something ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start (qtd.in Nair 84).Thus it is a flexible entity which remains changing and shedding its identity . During the dominance of Delhi sultanate the Hijra community took the prestigious position of guarding the palace and led a prestigious livelihood but with the advent of the British Empire which resulted in their downfall. This ignorance has resulted in pushing them to the margins, forcing them to undertake menial jobs, later demarcated and separated them based on what they did, thus gaining the identity that they are the immoral half or the one part women. The assigned job is considered as the parameter for determining ones position and thus pushing them to the periphery. The community enjoyed a considerable position in the society still; there were ‗others ‗within the other who was facing the conflict of self realization who struggled to place them forcibly and deliberately gathering themselves under the umbrella of sex workers. It is true that ―Hijra cultures are India‘s answer to support systems for sexual minorities. Long before the West gave birth to gay lib, India‘s homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals and kothis found refuge under this umbrella(United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) India 2010)‖ (qtd in Shawkat).Religion being old and closely tied to the Indians , has a larger influence in uniting people as well as segregating; religion is a space which enables them to reveal their identity which they refuse to disclose in public as they fear of being taunted by the others. Albeit religious identities are flexible, the rituals and practices forms the thread to the tapestry of religion so they are less tampered. While considering the third gender they are separated from the mainstream. Even the God they by worship is a different god. It act as a hope and help for those who are suppressed, mainly to reveal themselves with dignity under the banner of ‗god‘. Gender has been part of the mankind from ancient years determined by the society how to view a person based on their caste, creed, sex etc. Humans were segregated based on the way they appear. Linda Gordon opinions that focus on gender as difference in itself as "a kind of paradigm for all other divides" which "gender as a system of domination" and replaced with "multiple differences" for the study of "power differentials‖. It supports one and suppresses the other; men are the privileged and all others like women, homosexuals remain the unbenefited. Transgender trust themselves to their own gods whose is little known outside other than their own respective states. There are Gods in the centre and those who forms a part of the peripherals. There are local gods for locals; privileged prefer gods matching their own temper and nature. In the case of third gender they rely on the gods like Tari Penu, Anna kuari (tribal goddesses) and other gods like Shakti. Their territory is much smaller but inclusive.The less popularity and acceptance is a proof that like them their Gods is also in a way marginalized or fails to find themselves a place among the mainstream Gods or Goddesses. Among the large ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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numbers of temples spread across the states there are a few which is known to the outside world of the binary but are known to those of third gender. Most of these follow feminine principle and are limited to a particular locality, while the mainstream temples follow masculine or brahminical system of worship. These former are mostly ‗ Swayambhu‘ or self originated possessing the power of turning men in to women mostly attended by the ‗Hijras‘ or cross dressed men. The worshippers will be from the non brahminical communities. Only because they doesn‘t confirm themselves to the assigned gender they are considered to be less civilized and less logical. These practices are similar for Gods and Goddesses across India who is silenced by the society .They mostly share similar practices and legends, even though they differ in their names. If it is Bahucharamata in Gujarat, it is Kottankulangara Devi in Kerala. The Kottankulangara temple was built during the time of king Sankhal Raj in 1152 CE .The legend and manner of worship, the symbols associated with Bahucharamata and Kottankulangara Devi much similar like other similar ‗peripheral‘ Gods. According to Gadhavi Samarthadan Mahiya, the charan author ‗it was historically true‘ that a charan virgin was worshipped as Bahucharaji and he explains of the origin of the shrine. In his circumstantially detailed account: Bahuchara was born in Ujala village of Marvad in the Detha branch of the Maru Charans. Her parents were Bapal and Deval. Deval was an avatar of Jagadamba (World-Mother). She lived c. 1309 (CE). Bapal had three daughters: Butay, Balal and Bahuchara, apart from sons. As Bapal was learned, he obtained a jagir (landholding) in Kathiavad. While he was there, his wife died. He called his children over. On the way, they reached Chunval and camped near Sankhalpur for the night when a bandit named Bapaiya attacked them. Seeing this, the youngest daughter Bahucharacut off her breasts and did tragu.Her sisters did the same. Then she cursed the bandit: ―You will become a eunuch (Pavaiyo).Hearing this, the bandit begged for mercy, which she granted, ordering him to build a shrine (sthanak) for her at the spot. He would then be blessed, and if a naturally emasculated man arrived at her shrine and lived in women‘s clothing and sang her praises, he would certainly reached favor. She [Bahuchara] then died (Sheikh). The goddess is worshipped. Like Bahucharamata in Gujarat, who is seemingly wild and demands animal sacrifice. She also possess the capability of turning men into women. It is also interesting that the goddess has similar origins to that of Kottankulangara Devi.They are associated by similar symbols and manner of worship even though they are separated by boundaries. In Kerala ,Kottankulangara Devi Temple at Kollam district is known for Chamayavilakku where men dress like women and seeks the blessing of Devi by carrying a special lighted lamp ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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and belief is that whoever participates would get their wish fulfilled. It is a festival conducted prolonging to sixteen days during the Malayalam month of Kumbham and Meenam.The legend is that : Once when some cowboys tried to remove the husk of a coconut by hitting it on a rock as to eat the place where the temple now stands, they were taken aback to see drops of blood dripping from the stone. It was then astrologically revealed that the stone possessed the supernatural powers of Vanadurga and that Poojas must be started immediately after constructing a temple .A temporary temple sing poles, leaves and tender leaves of coconut palm was built .It was a customary in ancient days for young girls to prepare flower garlands and light lamps in small and familial places of worship.Accepting this tradition,the cowboys wearing the dresses of women and girls, offered pooja s in the temple. The milky liquid prepared from coconut kernel was boiled, the medicinal oil (Urukku Velichenna) extracted and solid substance taken (Kottan) was offered to the goddess as Naivedyam(―Kottankulangara Chamayavilakku‖). Every year the marginalized from across the state comes to attend and according to the temple officials are increasing year by year These gods are much more receptive and secular in their nature they place no barrier based on ones creed, religion or gender and all are inclusive. They are neither demarcated nor segregated from the rest. The colonial idea of binary is so much immersed that the privileged take it for granted and satisfied. They try to make people confirm to it. As a result the unprivileged are sidelined and find themselves very much out of the system.The reasons for their less popularity are less ‗brahminical‘ and don‘t adhere to the constraints of the society. They tend to grow up in a social condition in which they find themselves neglected and suppressed. The kith and kin als consider it as a shame, tries prevent them from revealing themselves. They are mostly pushed to the darkness of the rooms branding them as ‗pycho‘. Through these festivals there is normalization of the third gender where they would find themselves being part of the society, by bringing up the marginalized deities; one would be bringing the periphery to the centre. The prolonged misconception regarding the abnormality about the transgender is cemented in the psyche of the mass, resulting in ignoring the acceptance God.It has deeply embedded in the society and a complete uprooting is impossible to an extent.It isalso really problematic that there is another face to the same religion. Even though the Gods are inclusive one considers God and human separately .People tend to place God over humanity failing to address the fellow being who is near him. More ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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attention and studies must be brought up about temples and rituals in order to acknowledge, create the sense, to uproot the misconceptions about Transgender. We are living in a society where even the educated fails to identify the real meaning of a transgender rather considering it as a defect .
REFERENCES 1. ―KottankulanagarapChamayavilakku.‖Kottankulangaradevi, www.Kottankulangaradevi.org. 2. Krishna,Gayathri.―Transgender in Kerala-Realisation of their Identity.‖Journal of Social Work EducationoandoPractice,Vol.3,No.1,pp.26o42.https://www.jswep.in/uploads/3/1/7/2/317 29069/030105_transgenders_in_kerala.pdf. 3. Michelraj,M .―Historical Evolution of Transgender community in India.‖ Asian Review of SocialSciences,Vol.4,No.1,2015,pp.1719.Thellresearchhhpublication,http://www.trp.org.i n/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ARSS-Vol.4-No.1-Jan-June-2015-pp.17-19.pdf. 4. Nair,Sonya J.―Transgendering celebrations:The Politics of Sexuality IN Koovagam and KottankulangaraChamayavilakku.”Samyukta:AooJournaloofoWomen‟soStudies,Vol.9,N o.2,Jul.2009,pp.83oo96.http://www.samyukta.info/wpcontent/uploads/July%202009/6%2 0SONYA%20J.%20NAIR.pdf. 5. Ramlet, Sabrina Petra. ―Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives.‖London:Routledge,2004,http://ebooks.bharathuniv.ac.in/gdlc1/gdlc4/Arts_ and_Science_Books/arts/sociology/Anthropology%20Sociology%20and%20Culture/Boo ks/Gender%20Reversals%20and%20Gender%20Cultures.pdf. 6. Shawkat,Syeda S.―Construction of the Hijra Identity.‖Dissertation,BRAC University ,2006. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10361/7804/16217005_ESS.pdf?sequen ce=1&isAllowed=y. 7. Sheikh,Samira.―The Lives of Bahuchara Mata.”The Idea of Gujarat,2010,pp. 84-99. http://www.asimrafiqui.com/tsh/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/sheikh-lives-of-bahucharamata-in-idea-of-gujarat-2010.pdf.
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SUFFERINGS AND SECRET LONGINGS IN GIRISH KARNAD‟S NAGA-MANDALA S.Meenachi, M.Phil Scholar, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
The play Naga-Mandala definitely reflects upon the contemporary Indian cultural and social life with the use of myths and folktales. Naga-Mandala can be treated as an all encompassing portrayal and through going critique of the male dominated society. Even in this modern and materialistic world, in some parts of India we can witness several women ill-treated by the male community. This play is certainly a realistic picture of such a drastic condition in existence. It not only portrays the situation vividly but also tries to bring out awarness in the midst of both the educated and illiterate to eradicate such evils from the society forever. It can also be recognized as a feminist play, not because it is a pathetic story of Rani, but because it brilliantly captures the insanity of violence aagainst an innocent woman in the background of a consevative patriarchal society of which Rani is no doubt a victim. Truly, Girish Karnad has made a solid attempt and contribution to bring out an awarness regarding the emancipation of women from the clutches of ego centered male community. The appearance of love filling the emptiness of Rani‘s life with love and care is explained through the myth of ‗Naga‘, a folk tale and local culture of kerala where it represents prosperity, happiness and fertility. A man does not need to explain his reason for gratification of his sensual pleasures but a wonam‘s instinctual need is ignored, and their desire is considered a transgression of moral codes requiring supernatural justificaton. The Naga in the guise of Appanna presents a choice for Rani, a choice to live a fuller and happier life. It is her expression of desire and also the fulfillment of her wish for love, her desire to live life fully and with satisfation. If Appanna is the demon the Naga is the Price in Rani‘s life. A source of energy, the Naga represents the positive element, the cultural leader, and harbinger of a social change, generating a transformation not only in the character of Rani but also in the society at large. A representation of the true life force, Naga is the souce as well as the preservation and regeneration of life. Considered from a realistic point of view, Naga represents the modern, new woman‘s right to choice, the right to choose a life overcoming all abstacles to her happiness. It symbolizes the breaking of barriers, crossing of the lines that intend to imprison a woman and distance her from her surroundings as well as her own ‗self‘. More an initiator than a leader, Naga actually initiates Rani on the path of transformation. The embodiment of Rani‘s happy married life, Naga‘s love is the life support for Rani. In her dream like state, a result of her long moments of isolation and yearning, Rani is blissfully intoxicated with Naga‘s love and throws all caution to the winds regarding her husband‘s contrasting behavior. Stranger by day and lover by night, Appanna reflects the typical male,
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insensitive and selfish. Still a pinch of suspicion remains in Rani‘s mind, which is finally removed when she finds out that she is pregnant. The transformation of Rani and her emerging identity is a direct outcome of the emotional support and succor she receives from Naga. In the Indian society as per the dictates of Man, a woman‘s identity is defined in relation to the other members of her family or to be more precise in relation to a man. She is a daughter, a wife or a mother. The incompleteness experienced every woman forms an integral part of her psyche contributing to her fractured and ill formed ‗self‘ identity. The glorified status that is associated with motherhood in the social and cultural ethos if India is the only way that a woman achieves identification and a significant position. By the end of the play, Ranis has travelled a long route from innocence to experience. And this long route to experience does not reach its ulitimate destination without a final ordeal for Rani. Hypocrisy underlines the dictates of a patriarchal society that is partial towards men and unduly harsh and cruel to the women. Rani‘s transformation, her shift from suppression to emancipation requires a final show of resilence of spirit of courage. A victim of gender discrimination, a woman has to undergo trial for an offence she is not guilty of, while the men go scot-free even after committing a dozen crimes openly. Appanna can beat his wife, lock her up and accuse her of adultery while his own character and adulterous relations are not to be put up for questioning by society. Society can never accept or come to terms with a woman strong enough to be assertive and independent, and even if it does accept a woman as the leader it does so grudgingly and after much ado. A woman can either be a slave or a Goddes but never an equal. This extremes in attitude of a patriarchal society towards a woman reveals an inherent fear of feminity whichis the ultimate authority in the Indian psyche as represented through the glorification of the ‗mother‘. Rani as the new bride is docile and mute, as the lover, shy and submissive and as the mother assertive and confident.
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RESIGNATION FROM PRESENT AND HOPE FOR FUTURE: SOCIAL REDEMPTION THEMES IN KAJAL AHMAD‟S SELECT POEMS Priyadharsini R., II MA English Literature,Dept of English and Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University
ABSTRACT Middle East literature in English has been given significance in the recent years after the impact of the war that has been document in their Literature. Though the Literature of Kurdish has began in the 8th century the English translation was made only in the previous decade. Poems were first translated. Kajal Ahmad is one of the famous writers writing in Kurdish. If commonwealth nations always had the impact of colonial role, it is war and disillusionment that has the impact on the Middle East Literature. The translation of Kurdish writing to English has gained momentum. This paper makes an analysis of select poems by Ahmad all centered upon the Longingness to slide from lawlessness and to move towards flawlessness. The law that exists gives no room for the peaceful working of the public and hence a change from that to a future that is flawless and once that asserts freedom and independence. The poems through their emptiness wait for the changes with hopes and anticipation for their upcoming days. The society that is struck by the mistakes of the past holds the dream of redemption. Key Words: Kurdish literature, Disillusionment, Social redemption, Nothingness, Humanity, INTRODUCTION Kajal Ahmad is a renowned poet writing in Kurdish was born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967. She has so far published four books and the first of them at the age of 21. Her poems have become remarkable in Kurdish literature and have earned great reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish speaking world. She has her poems translated into Arabic, Turkish, Swedish, German, French, Persian and Norwegian and lately in English...She was featured in PTC‘s second World Poet‘s Tour along with other poets of international acclaim in October 2018 at United Kingdom. As a preface to the poets visiting United Kingdom for World Poet‘s Tour there was a workshop in the month of April. Ahmad was a part of it attending the workshop on Kurdish Poetry. She was supported by her translator Choman Hardi and her Co-translator both who are poets. They provide an insight to the historical, political and literary background of her works written in Kurdish and supplying every smallest details with significance. Professionally she was a journalist and all the essay‘s she centered upon the issues of women had been collected into a book titled, ‗The Book of Woman‘ published in the year 1999. It is unfair that none of her choice she made were private. Abdulla Pashew, a renowned Kurdish poet, says, ―The poet is more than a poet in Kurdistan.‖ She married a Jordian for which she was criticized by her nation as betrayer however her husband a life-long resident of Jordan descends from Diyarbakir, the heartland of the Kurdish ethnicity. When she started covering her she was also targeted as caved to the pressures of a male-driven society and added that she could no ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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longer claim herself to be a feminist. Yet it makes her more a feminist, to cover and talk of things. Ahmad's country, Kurdistan a country that isn't a country, has known many terrors. She speaks of women however her works are centered much on redeeming the society from the conflicts and the necessity to have freedom. These three poems showcase the same setup of mind through different words. Her willingness to move from the lawlessness of the society to flawlessness is emphasized in the poems. The desire to move to flawlessness is expressed in her poem ‗I love the Streets more than men.‘ There are laws followed in their nation yet they are not concerned of all the citizens. There are flaws and errs that disturb the freedom of them. ―I want no flowers I want no kisses‖ Want is used to say the requirement but here she uses want just to say she doesn‘t want anything. She emphasizes that in each line adding want. There is a sort of happiness she holds despite the disillusionment and so believes herself to be as lovely as a flower. However they are only superficial. Humans are not as short lived as flowers but they face untimely death owing to the turmoil and conflict that their nations meet. "I want no." At the end of four of the last six lines, "nothing" tolls like a bell. She wants nothing as opposed to those who have piled up desires only to have something.What Ahmad wants is to be a moment of nothing in this crowd of competing desires. ―I want no tears over the coffin or me, a corpse. I want no cherry tree of sympathy dragged to the walls of my grave, no flowers or kisses, no tears or miseries.‖ She has employed this poem to redefine the concept of Martyrdom. When death comes to her she would reject all that incentives that combos the death. Martyr is often a term used to those that are involved in activities that concerns religion and they for the belief they held regarding the religion are praised and revered. All the sins they did are forgiven for their affiliation. The families of those people are assisted in every possible way. They death they meet is considered noble of all the deaths. She puts forward herself as a martyr with a hypothetical ‗If‘. She had not been direct in calling herself a martyr. It is not just she never wants the flowers or cherry trees also anything that is traditional to be used in funeral to condole the death of the deceased. In the other poem she adds they have been manipulated in the name of love to fight for uncertain causes and war stands as an unseen foe. “In the country of terror I love the streets more than men” This poem shows herself as a misanthropist. Her comparison is so much contrasting. She brings a lifeless thing called road to men. Ironically roads are something laid by men. Her other poem ‗stone is better‘ also is based on similar idea. These poems clearly show how she has
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started humanity for their attitude and behavior. Streets are something common to people, everyone have the equal right to pass on them. Nobody can be restricted and that is the reason she chose to compare the dominance the men put on them and the independence the streets can provide them. The streets are more like mosaic cultured nation where there is no restriction to follow any culture they want and hold any belief they like. ―The street isn't unjust and commanding. It doesn't know terror.‖ These lines tell us why she calls streets better than men. They do not command the girls to do and not to do things as men do. They do not constantly posit questions to them. There is a clear note of how they are treated submissive, not having permission to go wherever they want. Girls are obliged to answer them. It is not just matter of question, but matters of independence and freedom. She thinks it a torture making her feel the streets better for they do not do the same. ‗Grow up: Love‘ is what the streets say according to her. She finds a kind of encouragement in them. If not at least they do not control her from doing things they like. She finds the fullest independence a street can provide. ―The wings of women who fly wilt When they pass through the neighborhood of loving An arrogant man of darkness, an ignorant boy.‖ These women are forbidden from loving a man. When they attempt doing such a thing they end up having a tragic life, which she says, ‗The jar of life breaks without a doubt in the hands of its own heart‘ in her words.Talking of girls in general she moves to story of herself. The story remains incomplete and provides no insight about the result of it. It is explicit that something has happened that had stopped them getting close. The fear which expresses in the following lines ―Fate forbid us from loving each other. My heart flew when I ran with that someone.‖ However it is followed by positive lines that they guy had let her shine and succeed and let run ahead of him in life. She says that the abode of independence and freedom is just a street ahead. When people pass by not taking care of every single person moving there everyone can have their freedom. It is the happiness of crossing over that provide an escape to people of different entities. ―Just one street is enough For freedom to celebrate and cross over.‖ When the street is crossed that can bring changes in the life of children to go to school, for boys to look at girls and for girls to laugh.The feminist in her comes in these lines when she says the streets shall not bear the name of men who were famous once upon a time making the street distant from them but they could bear her name. A Street with a woman‘s name can be a wonder. She wants the street of independence broad.
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―A street that carries my name Should have no sculpture of famous men along its length. Let it be broad, let it be broad, broad As my heart.‖ These lines reveal that the emancipation given to them is narrow and wants it to be broad to which she brings heart as metaphor. Her heart carries so many wishes and desires but it is all restricted hence she wishes the street was broad that can accommodate all her fancies and that can be a place where she can do that entire she had planned. The silence and noise both she wants interchangeably. The contrast she provides to the streets shows the extremes she likes to have. ―Let it be flawless, let it be flawless, flawless Like the sex of these girls that are killed unjustly. Let it be long, let it be long, long Like their agony.‖ The words like bloodstains and terror imply the harshness of the reality. The place of her living is known for the combats and wars. It reflected in the lives of the people. By street she means the nation that has so far seen many deaths be without bloodstains. There is a move between the reality and the desired one. The comparison that she makes to the street is the life of the girls who had been killed unjustly. They are flawless for they did not commit anything wrong. The poems shows the Longingness the poet has for a peaceful life that is without tortures and a way of life that asserts independence and freedom t everyone. ―Empty of bloodstains, A street that has never seen Or known terror.‖ The information about the streets of Sulaimani where Ahmad grew up is provided by her translator Mewan Nahro that the, men use the street as one long café. Handcarts sell hot tea, sandwiches, and nuts roasted by blowtorch in steel tumblers. Men congregate for meals, standing in clusters around the carts or squatting curbside. Some build improvised shelters from scraps around the road. There, on worn and dusty couches or folding chairs or woven mats, they sit in the shade and smoke. In Saholaka, a district in the city named for a long-shuttered ice factory, men spill into the streets, blocking traffic as they wander past the carts and pop-up music shops. Women when they are on the road are in motion. The street is a line of transit to them, not a community.Space is something universal and common to anyone living, so is the freedom and free choice. When the people are deprived of these they long for it. The poem is representative of one such group of people that waits for change with hopes for future.The words ‗Lips within lips‘ tell us that there is something the poet is constantly engaged in thoughts and her rehearsal of words she like to say. She wants to talk out all that she wishes to convey to her fellow people without any inhibitions and restrictions. There is an inside self that is veiled which she wants to express.Power shifts have happened in Iraq after the emergence of ISIS as power. Though this
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poem was written earlier, there are reflects upon the earlier wars of the periods. The conflict of the place had reduced the trust that people have each other. They do not express or reveal about them and do not have a possible harmony existing between them. The mistrust that prevails amidst the public is visible in the lines ―The quatrains of Nishapur Will not suddenly trust themselves‖ She puts the blame on the history of her nation which has struggled to become autonomous. The struggle of the people is because of the past events. Their dreams are not passionate and enjoyable, they are only full of blood stained massacres. ―Our history is rocky which is why our dreams are rife with massacre. I want a new era and a new people‖ As in the other poems she awaits for a dawn, the birth of new era with new people who are poets and era being that of poetry. She uses poetry to denote the flawlessness. Having completely lost hope in love she wants to get rid of love and adds that ‗Stone is better than humanity.‘ It is because she says that they are killed only in the name of love. ―It's only because of all the lies, wars, and oppression, that I say this.‖ She justifies her disillusionment talking of the wars that the nation has faced and oppression the people undergo in the hands of power. The courage they have to against the law, wars and lies is insufficient as they disappear with emergence of little fear saying that it gets lost in great pockets of fear. Her disillusionment grows to an extent that at last is ready to leave her life as she is fed up with love and humanity and ends her poem stating that Stone is better than humanity. ―We are killed only in the name of love, deceived in the name of struggle.‖ Works Cited 1. Ahmad, Kajal. Chapbook. Trans. Mimi Khalvati, Choman Hardi. United Kingdom: The Poetry Translation centre. Oct. 2008. 2. Ahmad, Kajal. Handful of Salt. Trans. Alana Marie Levinson-Labrosse, Darya Abdul-Karim Ali Najam, Mewan Nahro Said Sofi, Barbara Goldberg. Word Works. May 2016. 3. Khalvati, Mimi. Translating Kajal Ahmad. The Poetry Translation. Dec. 2008. Web 4. Levinson, Alana Marie _ Labrosse. Four Poems by Kajal Ahmad, Translated from the Kurdish Poetry. Poetry Society of America. Web.
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ORDER AND DISABILITY OF SURVIVAL IN V.S.NAIPAUL‟S A BEND IN THE RIVER S.Kalpana, Assistant Professor of English, Sri Vasavi College(Self Finance Wing) Erode
ABSTRACT The community of migrants that V.S. Naipaul focuses on in A Bend in the River constitutes an element of post-colonial society that requires close examination. It occupies a highly unstable position in the colonial situation described in the book, torn as it is in so many competing directions: its Indian ancestry; its present location in East and Central Africa.It is a relatively powerful economic status; its political weaknesses due to its numerical inferiority in Africa.V. S. Naipaul‘s A Bend in the River charts the picture of decolonization and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Though the place remains anonymous in the novel, the events that the novel refers to, make it obvious to the readers that the novel is set in postindependent Congo. The novel portrays characters from different strata of society struck in the newly decolonized world of Congo. The novel is narrated by Salim, an Indian Muslim shopkeeper, living in a small city. The story revolves around some of the important events in Salim‘s life projecting his identity crisis and inner conflicts due to the rapid changes that are taking place in his ―homeland‖, Congo. Along with Salim and other characters‘ lives, the novel deals with the national issues in Congo and shows how the individual lives are affected by the economic and political changes in the country. Keywords: post-colonial, democratic, conflict, economic, political INTRODUCTION The Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul begins to write of emigrants‘ dilemma, problems and plights in a fast changing world.This paper deals with the picture of a man‘s expatriation and its sufferings. Salim is a protagonist of this novel.Salim, the other protagonist moves from outside to an interior place in the newly independent Africa. First he has been treated in a friendly manner, but later on he also is blamed by a servant. At the end of the novel he has been helpless. But hehasto survive without his own family members.The word ‗Expatriate‘ isa person who voluntarily absent from home town.A Bend in the River, the fiction, visualizes Salim‘s life. He likes to move from East coast to an unnamed town of Africa. It is situated on a bend of a river bank. The plot begins and ends with the river. So the novel is entitled as A Bend in the River. A Bend in the River is another notable fiction of Naipaul. The fiction is considered as his satirical novel because Naipaul has brought in pictures about the severe changes of the unnamed town of Africa. Naipaul has stayed in Africa to observe the condition of the place after colonial domination.
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There is a group of people who occupied a small town at the bend ofthe river like people who settled in Trinidad. There are a few Belgians, some Greeks, Italians, and Indians living there. Naipaul describes his narrator Salim in relation to the different people he encounters. There are two sets of characters: Metty, Zabeth, Ferdinand and Father Huismans who represent the African History and civilization; and the other set consisting of Nazruddin, Mahesh and Indar who teach Salim how to live on the island.The novel is divided into four parts: The Second Rebellion (the Big Man‘s accession to power), The New Domain (the cultural innovations in the European style introduced by the President), The Big Man (the progressive reduction of the exercise of power to absurd tyranny), Battle (the assault on the steamer on which Salim is leaving Africa probably carried out by people in flight from the country). A Bend in the River embodies the same concerns, but underlying the story is an interest in the process through which people lose their sense of place. However, in A Bend in the River there is a more complex elaboration of idea and image than in the other works. The sense of place in this novel relates to differing views of reality, one associated with the darkness and vitality of old Africa predetermined by an old and natural bond between man and the land; the one imported from Europe with a superficial bond between man and things. These relationships are explored through the inversion of traditional associations surrounding the image of darkness and light. This particular use of imagery is consistent throughout the novel as the focus shifts from the land to the town to the city. Naipaul exploits the description of the landscape to prove a point about man‘s alienation from the land and from society. He achieves this by closest contrasting descriptions of the same or similar scenes, one designed to undercut the other. It is the history of the independent Africa. The social identity of people is rooted in their culture, while at the individual level; it is determined by personal achievements. In order to experience ‗wholeness‘, it is necessary to fuse the individual and the social consciousness. In fact, the difference between European and colonial culture becomes the latter's defect, its almost incurable disease. Such an approach to analysis or interpretation, perforce, naturalizes the concept of culture and vulgarizes ideology. Needless to say, Naipaul takes pain to reproduce the image of European society for every part of the world that he tries to interpret. This tendency becomes more apparent as he lost touch with his own society. The place was filled with lust and corruption at every level, hopeless and inefficient Africans assuming crucial positions and jobs in the Domain. One of the finest instances of such a ridiculous state of affairs is seen when citizen the time is made to run Salim's shop. The time, unable to fit into the role and out of frustration begins to develop an attitude of malicious hate towards Salim.
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Salim ultimately realizes theineffectuality of the traditions and cultures however ancient they might be, inremoving the feeling of insecurity in a person like himself, whom the notions ofrootlessness and lack of cultural background and historical sense have alwaysTortured.A In fact, in the end, it is the feeling of insecurity, the result of his detachmentfrom the familiar scene which gives him the essential freedom to make the finalflight to England before the nationalist uprisings bring to an end the security ofArab and Indian minorities on the east coast. Thenovels amplify the horror of the jail scene in which Salim has at last recognized the extent of human vulnerability. In this horrific denouement, the terror of the provincial jail and its casual violence both as Naipaul imagined it in central Africa and as he experienced it in Argentina is amplified as Salim witnesses the slaughter of an entire bargeful of fellow human beings who are attempting to escape the violence just as he is. After the barge carrying hundreds of passengers caged ―behind bars and wire-guards‖ separates from the steamer, gunshots ring out. Detached from the barge, the steamer carries Salim to safety but not before its searchlights reveal myriad numbers of insects—―moths and flying insects . . . white in the white light‖ (278).A Bend in the River is not merely an indictment of African dictators and the corruption of Western intellectuals who enable and excuse their misrule but also a cautionary tale for those who would willfully reject the advantages of their own civilization. It is an evocation of the fragility of all human life and a plea for the recovery of the higher forms of civilization that comfort and console, and also restrain, men in the face of their own weakness. In A Bend in the River, Naipaul achieves a brutally honest and insightful work of fiction and one of particular relevance for our time. REFERENCE 1. 'V. S. Naipaul, ―Argentina and the Ghost of Eva Perón, 1972–1991,‖ The Writer and the World: Essays(New York: Knopf, 2002), 403. 2. Clemens, Walter C. Jr. "The Third World in V.S. Naipaul." Worldview 25 Sept 3. (1982): 12-14. 4. Joshi, Chandra B. V.S. Naipaul: The Voice of Exile. New Delhi: Sterling, 1994. 5. Naipaul, V.S. A Bend in the River. London: André Deutsch; NY: Knopf, 1979.
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FEMINISTIC APPROACH IN ANITA NAIR‟S LADIES COUPE T. M ythili, Assista nt Prof essor of English, Sri Va sav i Co llege(Sfw),Ero de.
ABSTRACT Anita Nair is a living author in Indian Writing in English. Anita as being an author, she goes into the inner heart of the psychologically affected women. It brings out the virtues of the same gender‘s sensibility and psychological insight towards their issues, which brings out Indian women‘s physical and mentaltroubles in themasculine society.Anita Nair‘s ―Ladies Coupe‖ has received a great success in the society. It is the story of a women‘s search towards freedom and women‘s pathetic life in the male dominated society. It is a most pathetic condition that every woman should live under the hands of men either as a daughter nor a wife nor a mother. This novel shows that women is equal to men and every man should treat their opposite sex as equal and to know that all the woman in this world needs their own freedom of life. INTRODUCTION Feminism raised in the western world as a movement todevelop the rights and opportunities for ladies. Almost Feminism has been handled in the huge work of English novels of India. Feminism is known as a cultural, economic and political movement that is focused towards giving the highly safest protection and entire equality for women. In Indian writing in English, feminism is used as a gentle attempt for assessment of real social cause as far as women are concerned. It is considered to be as fashion towards authorsin Indian writing in English for the majority writers are using the theme of ‗feminism‘, which not only attracts the readers but also upsets their mindsets. All over the world, feminism has provoked interest among the readers. ABOUT ANITA NAIR Most of the Indian novelists are interested feministicapproaches of the women characters and their enrichment of one‘s own inner self in a male dominated society. Writers like Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, ShasiDesphande, Shobha De, Bharathi Mukherjee and some others writers have renouncedmany feministsbelief in their writings enquiry proves a strong feminist intense, for women‘s issues be the chief concern of their plot. Among these writers, Anita Nair is one of the most important women writers in Indian Writing in English. She refused to be labeled as a feminist writer. She had balanced the view of life from the woman‘s point of view by bringing in all the feminine sensibilities from masculine domination.Anita Nair has written six novels so far. They are ―The better man‖, ―Ladies Coupe‖, ―Mistress,‖ ―Lessons in Forgetting,‖ ―Cut Like Wound,‖ and ―Idris: keeper of the light‖. Among the other novels of Anita Nair, ―Ladies Coupe‖ received great appreciation and it has been translated into 21 languages. The ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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main focus of this research paper is to focus the feministic point of view of Anita Nair. The portrayal of her memorable women characters and the feminist tone in her novel make Anita Nair one of the most outstanding female Indian novelists in English. FEMINISTIC APPROACH Anita Nair narrates the life of six women travelling together to Kanyakumari in the ladies compartment (coupe) in a train. Almost it reflects the crisis of society and plead for freedom. Akhilandeshwari known as Akhila(45) is a single and working woman, has been brought up in aorthodox family of Tamil Brahmins. Sheplays the main role of her family after her father‘s death. Her siblings get married and they rarely think about Akhila‘sneeds and intensions. She can‘t able to live herown. ‗She was always an extension of someone‘s identity;daughter,sister,aunt….Akhila wished for once someone should see her as a whole being‘ (201).On her travel,Akhila meets the other five different characters of women – JanakiPrabhakar , Prabha Devi, Margaret Paulraj, SheelaVasudevan and Marikolunthu. Although, they met for the first time, they started sharing about their life and experience with each other. Even though they are different in age, education and cultural, they have faced a common thing- ‗the tragic complications of women in India‘. Janaki, the oldest lady of the six women in the compartment, got up in the traditional family of being shaped into a good daughter, an obedient wife and a devoted mother. She got up by masculine society. ―First there was my father and brother; then my husband. When my husband is gone, there will be my son, waiting, to take off from where his father left off. A woman like me ends up being fragile. Our men treat as like princess‖(22). She is an example whom she always had a man to safeguard her. Some who first protected by her father or by brother then by her husband and later it would be her son. She realized the emptiness of being an obedient wife and a caring mother and the need to proclaim her self-identity and freedom to live in one‘s own life. Sheela (14 years), the youngest of the six ladies who talks about the child abuse by men. She felt ashamed of Hasina‘s father Nazar‘s touch on her, ―one Sunday afternoon when Sheela went to their house, rushing in from the heat with a line of sweat beading her upper lip. Nazar had reached forward and wiped it with his forefinger. The touch of his finger tingled on her skin for a long time‖ (66).Once Nazar knotted the bows in Sheelasleeves, ―She saw the hurt in Hasina and her mother‘s eyes‖ (66). After that Sheela took the right decision that ―She would never go to Hasina‘s house again‖ (66). This shows that she decided of her self-safety. Through this character, Anita Nair has brought out the abuse towards feminine by masculine. Margaret Shanti, another woman in the Ladies Coupe, is a chemistry teacher, ivolved in an unsatisfied marriage with Ebenezer Paulraj, the principal of the school where she works. He is vigorous, self-indulgent and indifferent even to his wife. Margaret wants to divorce him, but she ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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is afraid of society and thinking of her life status after divorce. She took revenge on him byproviding oily foods and made him fat and dull person. Prabha Devi is a talented woman whose embroidery was done with stitches so fine that you could barely see them, whose ‗Ideas were light and soft‘, and who ‗walked with small mincing steps, her head forever bowed, suppliant; womanly‘ (170). After her marriage, her life stylewent into blur of insignificant days till one day a week after her fortieth birthday. Prabhaforgets herself and how to live and to balance her life in this society. The most pitiablestory is that of Marikolunthu(31 years), an unwed mother who is a martyr of man‘s lust: her poverty pushing her to violate the tradition and morality. Now, she is a mother to an illicit child. She experienced poverty, rape, lesbianism and physical torture. ―I was a restless spirit warped and bitter. Sometimes I would think of the past and I would feel a quickening in the vacuum that existed within me now‖ (266). The interactions for a whole night with the five women‘s, helped Akhila to realize that she had given the society to unwantedfeel of ruling her life. These women and their life stories helped Akhila find answer to her biggest question- ‗Can a woman stay single and be happy, or does a woman need a man to feel complete?‘. Hence, she comes to the conclusion that she gets back with the gay whom she felt in love, someone who she won‘t accept for the fear of the society. CONCLUSION Ladies Coupe questions the status of women in a traditional oriented social order that every woman stays exclusive role of an obedient daughter, a loyal wife and a mother. They want to be the bounded statue for both their basic physical and emotional needs and to satisfy themselves of living in this world. The train journey in fact symbolizes a journey away from family, responsibilities and permanent relaxation as freedom. It is a journey towards selfdiscovery of freedom,Akhila travels with the question that has been haunting her. She meets five women characters in the train who travel with the same question in their life. This shows the pleasure of life amongwith relationships like husband, mothers, friends, employees and children that every women should accept the nature of living with bond in this society.Anita Nair‘s ―Ladies Coupe‖ brings into focus the issue of self-realization. Though Anita Nair is not a feminist, her works portrays the sensibilities of a woman, how a woman looks at herself and her problems along with her relationships and society. REFERENCES [1] Nair, Anita. Ladies Coupe, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001. [2] Sinha, Sunitha. Post-colonial women writers New Perspectives, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2008. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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[3] Myles, Anita. Feminism and the postmodern Indian women Novelists in English, New Delhi: Prabhat Publishers, 2006. [4] Bhuvaneswari, K. Feministic Perspective in Anita Nair‘s Ladies Coupe, Ashvamegh publications, Vol.II, Issue. XIX, Aug 16,2016.
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INCIDENTAL TRAUMA INTRUDES LOSS IN RELATIONSHIP – A SOCIAL IN MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT B.Ubaneshwaren, II M.A. Mass Communication and Journalism, Jain University, Bangalore Dr. J.Deenathayalan, Principal, Gandhi Arts and Science College, Sathyamangalam.
INTRODUCTION Modern media entertainments bring new ideas in today‘s youth. Indian culture has bid good bye and has left through backyard due to the domination of the western culture. The movies taken for the study has inflicted trauma in the protroganists and they charge the society for it.The movie Ek Villain begins with Aisha Verma calling her better half and leaving a message for him. A strange man in a hood breaks into her home, kills her with a screwdriver, and tosses her out of the window. At her memorial service, CBI officer Aditya Rathore indicates out the police that it is essential to find the killer or else Guru, Aisha's better half, would go on a slaughtering binge. Here Guru's experience is appeared in flashbacks, alongside how he meets Aisha. Master, before, was a heartless executioner working for hoodlum Caeser, in Goa, after he joined Caesar's gathering following Caesar's daringness to allow Guru to kill the goons who murdered his folks. He gets captured for slaughtering a young fellow, at the end of the day gets safeguarded, as the man's mom, an observer, declines to affirm against Guru. She, in any case, cautions Guru that one day God would make him pay for his violations and he will likewise finish up losing a friend or family member. Master meets Aisha, a free-energetic young lady in affection with life, who demands him to assist her with rejoining two matured darlings. They before long moved toward becoming companions and Aisha uncovers to him that she has a terminal sickness, and enlightens him regarding her can list. Master encourages her satisfy the vast majority of those desires yet her wellbeing decays. They experience passionate feelings for and get hitched. He attempts each mean to spare her. She gets treatment in Mumbai and wonderfully recoups. Scarcely any days after the fact she finds she is pregnant however the specialist reveals to her that she may kick the bucket while conveying the child. She covers this reality from Guru. In a parallel story, Rakesh Mahadkar is an unsuccessful and henpecked man who is continually annoyed and scorned by his better half Sulochana for being pointless and poor. He vents out his disappointment by killing ladies who talk impolitely to him, and Aisha ends up being one of them. In present day, Guru intends to find Aisha's executioner. Subsequent to discovering that it was not Caeser behind the homicide, he at long last tracks down Rakesh, while he is ambushing another unfortunate casualty. Master beats Rakesh severely yet later concedes him to an emergency clinic and pays for the costs, proposing to return. While at the clinic, Guru discovers that Aisha was pregnant which makes him angrier. While attacking a medical attendant who had ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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before spoken discourteously to him, Rakesh is again blocked by Guru who nearly slaughters him, yet resuscitates him again in the wake of conveying an adrenaline shot and sets him free. In the mean time, the police discovers reality about Rakesh and takes his significant other for addressing. Rakesh understands that Guru is Aisha's better half as she had beseeched him not to execute her by saying that she is pregnant and Guru is delivering retribution. Rakesh, who currently knows Guru's character, insults him via telephone before murdering Aisha's dad, and afterward surrenders to Aditya. Rakesh anticipates that Guru should murder him so he would turn into a "legend" according to his significant other and every other person, while Guru would turn into a reprobate. In any case, Caesar calls Guru right then and there and says that he has executed Rakesh's significant other and requests that Guru complete off his child. Irritated, Rakesh harms Guru and is going to slaughter him when he is kept running over by a vehicle and kicks the bucket on the spot. Master later embraces Rakesh's child as opposed to murdering him, and finishes the rest of the desires on Aisha's pail list. There is another movie Badlapur similar to the trauma of a protoganist. The film starts with Misha and Robin crossing the street on a standard day yet the two move toward becoming casualties of a shocking bank burglary. Liak and his companion Harman are on the pursued a bank theft and utilize Misha's vehicle to escape. An unsettled Misha opposes them and Liak in an attack of displeasure tosses the tyke out the vehicle and shoots Misha dead. Permitting Harman to escape with the plunder cash, he surrenders himself to the police. Liak is currently in police care and he keeps up one story that he wasn't the killer. He was only the driver who was caught into this since he needed an occupation in the Gulf. He guarantees the name of the killer is Jayu. Misha is taken to the medical clinic yet when her better half Raghu comes to see her, she is basic. She kicks the bucket infront of him. Raghu then goes to the funeral home just to discover his child Robin lying cold on the posthumous table. Raghu is crushed and continues playing in his mind the last minutes with his better half. Broken with the loss of the two individuals who meant everything to him, he inundates himself in looking for reprisal. Raghu goes to meet the cop responsible for the case and requests to meet Liak, who again hands out a similar story to him. Raghu gets into a fight with Liak. Losing confidence in the police examination, Raghu approaches private criminologist Joshi to get some answers concerning Liak's experience. She gets to know his mom on an outing once more from prison and gets some answers concerning Liak's affection intrigue Jhimli, a hooker. Raghu goes to Jhimli for help and Jhimli, given her affection for Liak, winds up educating him concerning Raghu's visit. Raghu acknowledges Jhimli has let out the mystery and he doesn't extra her either. He winds up debasing her. The court orders 20 years' detainment for Liak. Raghu is never going to budge on harming Jhimli yet before long understands that his retribution won't be finished till
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he gets even with Liak. Raghu moves out of Pune to Badlapur and hangs tight for Liak to get discharged. After 15 years, Shobha, a social laborer, lands at his doorstep looking for help for Liak, who is then a stomach malignancy patient and kicking the bucket. His last wish is to pass on outside prison. The main individual who can get him out is Raghu, in the event that he concurs on loosening up his prison term. Raghu straight won't however on misgivings he chooses to visit him in prison. He is no disposition to pardon him however makes Liak feel much progressively hopeless. Liak's mom visits Raghu and she uncovers to him that Liak considered him and disclosed to her the name and address of his accomplice. Harman, the accomplice, has a lot of cash from the plunder. Raghu concurs on loosening up his prison term with the goal that he can turn out and meet his accomplice. Liak goes to meet Jhimli subsequent to being discharged. She presently lives in a level given by her goon-government official darling. The two offer a warm minute reasoning of bygone eras and Liak obtains some cash from her. In the interim, Raghu finds Harman. At the point when his better half Kanchan is stranded on a desolate street during the evening, Raghu even volunteers to drop her home. With his eyes fastened on Harman, he even visits their eatery. He reveals to Harman that he knows about his contribution in his significant other's homicide. Raghu self-welcomes himself to their place for lunch where both Harman and Kanchan attempt to pay off his quietness. Raghu says the main way he will be tranquil is if Kanchan lays down with him. Raghu and Kanchan go to the room where he makes her set up a deride appear. He requests that the couple advise him when Liak connects with them. Then again, Liak is being trailed by a covert cop. Liak goes to the house of ill-repute, he pursues. Liak goes to the theater he pursues. The cop examining the homicide needs to get some answers concerning his accomplice. Liak escapes a sex specialist's telephone and calls Harman from that point. He needs to get his visa and a lot of the cash and the two choose to meet at the transport represent it. Kanchan powers Harman to advise Raghu about it. Raghu comes to Pune the following day and it is concluded that he will meet Liak with the international ID and cash, rather than Harman. He first visits Harman's place where Kanchan is distant from everyone else. He is sorry to her with a container of wine. Pushing her to lay down with him, he gives her a negligee and request that her wash up and wear it. Kanchan calls Harman from the washroom and requests that he come soon. She scrubs down however when he turns out the room, there is plastic spread everywhere throughout the room. He hits her with a sledge and she tumbles down harmed. At the point when Harman returns home, he executes Harman too with a mallet. Raghu then goes for a get-together with Shobha and the two play scrabble and end up engaging in sexual relations with one another. That day, he takes the bodies to Khadakwasla and
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covers them. Liak meets Raghu at where he should meet Harman and Liak understands that Raghu thinks about Harman. Raghu reveals to Liak that he will never get the chance to experience the most recent couple of months of his life joyfully. Liak joins the specks and understands that his mom had informed Raghu concerning Harman. His mom admits to it and he plots another method for getting to Raghu. Liak breaks into Raghu's place searching for the cash at his place. He endeavors to strangulate Raghu and Raghu punches him down. Liak ends up oblivious. At the point when Liak awakens, Raghu discloses to him that he needs Liak to endure. He likewise discloses to Liak that he will never get the cash since he stole the cash from Harman and afterward executed both him and his significant other. In that unmistakable minute, Liak understands that torment has changed Raghu. He discloses to Raghu how he inadvertently shot Misha in light of the fact that she was shouting and his child tumbled from the vehicle. It was an incident that he hadn't moved toward doing. Liak goes to meet Jhimli and he reveals to her that he has malignancy. Liak has a go head to head with Jhimli's sweetheart. Afterward, when she reveals to her sweetheart about how sick Liak is, he enables her to help him financially. She comes down to see him, the two discuss how things could have been extraordinary and go separate ways. Taking the story of the two movies it easily reveals that the personal trauma that have happened incidentally in the protagonists‘, make them take revenge on the antagonists with strong reference with the society. Sriram Raghavan is at his best. He nails it right from the word go. In complete command and frequently showcasing his love for noir charm, wicked humour, underlining significance of the supporting cast with the lead, technical wizardry and acceptable cinematic liberty, Raghavan‘s ‗Badlapur‘ makes a cracking new noise in its genre that is bound to be heard amongst the lovers of this genre and patrons of good cinema. Assuming the cruelty and revenge that takes place in the society bring a heavy blow in someone‘s life. One may not be spiritual but the wound created takes it‘s time to heal. Relationships are the roots and veins in the society to live happily. Acceptance of the situation and firm belief on the people of one‘s choice takes a better lead.
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SALIENT PARTICIPATION OF TRANSLATION IN MODERN INDIA P.Rajkumar, BT Teacher in Kongu Kalvi Nilayam Matric. Hr.Sec.School,Rangampalayam,Erode.
e-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT Translation is the process of changing the written text from one language into another. Though the terms of translation and interpretation are often used alternatively, it is a tough thing to create the source language text‘s exact meaning and effect to the target language. Translation should take into account of pressure that consists of context, grammar rules of the two languages, their writing delegations, and their idioms. The role of translation is hardly be enhanced in a multilingual country like India, European countries and more. In India 22 languages are authorized in the eighth schedule of the constitution, 15 different writing scripts, hundreds of mother-tongues and thousands of dialects are mentioned. There are eight types of translations:technical translation, scientific translation, financial translation, legal translation, judicial translation, juridical translation, certified translation and literary translation. Key words: source language, target language, written scripts, etc. INTRODUCTION Translation is the process of changing the written text from one language into another. Our ancient writers were the first translators. Indian literature is founded on the free translations and adaptations of epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. Till now, literature is consisted only of translations, adaptations, interpretations and retellings. Translations of literary works as well as knowledge-texts on all the fields to create awareness of the world for long. Most of our ancient writers are almost multilingual: Kalidasa‘s Shakuntala has Sanskrit; poets like Vidyapati, Kabir, Meerabai, Guru Nanak, Namdev and others each composed their songs and poems in multi- languages. Translation in India helped various states of India joins together as a nation throughout. It still brings languages and cultures closer to one another. It introduces to one language to another in diverse modes of imagination, perception and various regional cultures and communities in one hand. Plans and concepts like ‗Indian literature‘, ‗Indian culture‘, ‗Indian philosophy‘ and ‗Indian knowledge systems‘ would have been futile in the absence of translations with their natural assimilations. PARTICIPATION OF TRANSLATION Translation also plays vital role in extending the confines of language and reframing the boundaries ofliable. New terms and new dialects are necessitated by translation to create new vocabularies and gives rise togreatestreach. One thus learns not only to understand foreign
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language, literature and philosophy through their own mother-tongue, but can also to speak about modern knowledge, from quantum physics to nano-technology and computer-science to molecular biology in the parochial language. Translation strengthens democracy by inaugurating equality among different languages and questioning the leader of some over the others as it proves that all plans and experiences can be expressed in all languages and they are exchangeable in spite of their uniqueness. It also enables the lower sections of the society to be heard as they can speak and write in their own dialects or languages and then should get translated into other languages that are more widely spoken and understand translated work should reach world wide in range. Thus translation contributes to the empowerment of the magnetized sections like the poor, women, dalits, tribes, minorities, the disabled and others. Translation also helps fight for colonial prejudices. For example, by translating our works of literature and knowledge into English, we give solutions to the world that the colonizer is in nothigher than to us as we too have a very long history of great writing and research in literatures. By translating masterpieces from other Indian languages as also from foreign ones, we enrich our own literatures. Thus we also develop our writing standards through translating great masters of world literature like Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Vyasa, Valmiki, Kalidasa and Bhasa or more contemporary writers from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Beckett, Lorca, Eliot and Thomas Mann to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk, J. M. Coetzee, Octavio Paz and others. These exchanges also create new movements and trends. We are living in an age of translation and the outlets for translators are constantly developing in India and as well as in the world. Some of these areas and vocations are indicated below: Literary translation: Translating foreign literature into Indian languages, Indian literature into foreign languages and Indian literature in one language into other Indian languages are known to be Literary Translation in India . Knowledge Translation: The National Translation Mission, a brain-child of the National Knowledge Commission intends to translate textbooks and classical works in areas like sociology, history, geography, geology, medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, linguistics and political science into the Indian languages in order to raise the standard of education done in mother tongues. Media Translation:There is a plenty of needs for this translation. The print, electronic, visual and auditory media- newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema etc- need plenty of translators from one language into another. Dubbing and subtitling are other areas of translations in media. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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CONCLUSION Translation is the process of changing the written text from one language into another. No doubt translation also promotes the growth of indigenous literature and knowledge by bringing into our languages the great wealth of other literatures and cultures. Translation gives a new pathway for the development of society through knowledge and technology. Thus from 347 AD the need for translation shows that people are showing their own interest in knowing various languages and considers that as modern style of speaking and writing. Thus there will be a great impact in upcoming ages. REFERENCES [1] ‗8 Different Types of Translation Services‘, https://culturesconnection.com/differenttypes-of-translation-services/, Accessed on 29 Jan, 2019. [2] Translation its Role and Scope in India, ‗Digital Library‟, https://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2011/03/translation-its-role-and-scope-inindia/, Accessed on29 Jan, 2019.
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A STUDY ON NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN CHETAN BHAGAT‟S SELECTED NOVELS J.Prince Sam Paul, BT Assistant, CSI Boys Hr.Sec.School, Coimbatore
Chetan Bhagat is an emerging author an Indian English Literature. His arrival in the world of Indian English Fiction coincided with a time when the presence of a vibrant media culture and the growth of a corporate structure in the urban and semi-urban Indian society was effecting changes in the reading tastes, especially for the younger generation whose incorporation into the corporate design were only increasing. He is a far cry from the typical author image that lies in the mind of the common man. He is dealing with the harsh realities of life and problems faced by the young generation in his work. He holds a mirror to society and presents the reflection of the society of our own country. The secret success for Chetan Bhagat is selection of topics which are common. He selects subjects which the readers can associate with his novel with a mix of sentiment, romance, relationship, religions and politics.His strong narration has people relating to situations, incidents and characters in a natural way. His novel talks about dreams and aspirations of all characters and character seemed more real and simple genuine reservations. His narratives often lean towards the dramatic. The dramatic element is prominent, as Bhagat chose to begin his tales with ‗prologues‘ which either contains the dramatic tell- alls as in‘2 States-The story of my marriage’ or compose the most dramatic episode of the book as in ‘One Night @ the Call Center’. His ‗acknowledgements‘ are no less dramatic, which often betrays his anxious attempt of highlighting his ‗product‘ as a innovative and better brand,such as his claims in the ―Acknowledgements‖ to ‗Three Mistakes of my Life’ that he does not ―want to be Indian‘s most admired writer‖, he ―wants to be India‘s most loved writer‖, or his providing the readers with a questionnaire in One Night @ the Call Center.Again his novels are called ―Acts‖ and his endings ―Epilogues‖. Not only the dramatic, but he plentifully draws his techniques from the cinematic form as well. His narrative swings naturally back and forth using the ‗flash-back‘ technique and his language is very lucid and easy to understand too that is largely in sync with fast narrative is full of what is called ‗chutnified‘ expressions, inter-language code-switching which is common on the Internet circuit. Besides this deliberate patterning of the narrative and the diction approach towards the issues, he addresses is part of his wonderful arrangement skill. As for the narrative, Bhagat resorts to the thriller and the fantastic form and also his novel deals with a very serious theme in a light way. In the viewpoint of the novelist, a Libertarian is always straight forward in his approach to life and listens to the voice of his soul which he strongly believes in, is ever true. He may suffer a big loss but finally emerges out victorious. In his novels, Chetan Bhagat exhibits uncurbed spirits of the young people of his nation. In his first novel, ‗Five Point someone’, Ryan, Alok and Hari fight against the patriarchal education system, run by the old ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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educationists. The education system of IIT Delhi depicted in his book is adhered to the same patriarchal norms and codes of education. The student‘s life could be shared if he was liberated to choose the study of his own choice. The novelist advises the youths not to make race with others but with themselves if they want to succeed in life. In the second novel ‘One Night @ the Call Center’, the novelist introduces characters with five advocates of individual liberty viz. Shyam, Vroom, Priyanka, Esha and Radhika. They are living with family marginalization. They want live liberty: A Libertarian follows and asks others to follow the four things to success: ―One a medium amount of Intelligence and Two, a bit of imagination… the Third thing you need for success is self-confidence… The fourth part is most painful one‖. And it is something all of them still need to learn. In the third novel „The 3 Mistakes of my Life‟ the novelist introduce characters with three libertarians‘ viz., Govind, Ishan and Omi. Ishan strongly believes in the virtues of humanity and loves the people of all community equally. The author believes ―Humanity wouldn‘t have progressed if people listened to their parents all the time‖. (103) and suggests the youths to act upon the call of their self. The author criticizes politics and religion too. He evokes youth to keep religion far away from politics if they are truly religious. Chetan Bhagat ignites the qualities of liberty in the youths. He calls them up to prefer human values to all other routine things. They should develop libertarian out-look to judge values of the human beings. This is the libertarian outlook of Chetan Bhagat which follows not only through all his novels but also through his blood vessels. He thinks freely, writes freely and believes in the freedom of self and that of others. He writes against the corrupt system and suggests how to eliminate its impurities. Chetan Bhagat in ‘2 States: The story of my Marriage‟ deals with a very serious theme in a high way. This novel definitely gives us cultural shocks. Chetan Bhagat has touched some of the sensitive issues of cultural differences, father-son relationship and corporate exploitation. He is of the view that love knows no boundaries, whether it be of caste, creed, religion, states or countries. To some extent, this story seems to be of Chetan Bhagat, but he never claimed it. It‘s definitely love that triumphs against all chances. It‘s a story of inter-state marriage in India, a love story of a Punjabi boy Krish, and a Tamil Brahmin girl Ananya. Many families go through his condition in India. This novel is about love marriage and the obstacles between protagonist and his wife faced coming from different regions of India. The interpretation of novel is interpreted in different perspective. The novel is explored and explained with understanding different perspectives of love marriage and its problems in Indian context with other social problems. Chetan Bhagat has explored youth culture and their issues in his novels. His novels depicted youth‘s world, their culture, challenges, problems, addictions, parties, fast foods, fashions, tastes, interests, attitudes, relationships, love, expectations, responsibilities, nationalism, disloyalty, stress and their various complexes. In addition is found college-lifeISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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culture, sick education system, demanding exams and canteen-chats, movie goings, ragging and fresher-senior classification. His two novels have autobiographical elements. The author has keen interest in ‗yoga‘, which reflected as a unique and spiritual theme. The biblical concept ‗Believe in thyself‟ is there in the first novel. It questions whether high grades are important than other aspects of life. ‗One Night @ the Call Center’ also made us to meditate on concept like „Inner Call‟ and links it with phone call majestically. Chetan Bhagat is representing nothing about remote India, the rural youth and their issues in this novel, though having different social background, have equal opportunities to them in education jobs friendship for example: the youth of former novel study in IIT and youth in later novel work in call center and games etc. The youth from Indian remote places have no much awareness of all these transformations. Corporate culture is a term, used to describe beliefs and a value system that provides its unique essence and attitude to a company. In Cosmo-culture, the condition of youth is very pathetic. Everywhere, he finds exploitation, frustration, rejection and like this. In this world, of Cosmo-culture, everybody is involved in an extra marital relationship. Today in India, youngster may keep unsocial hours, neglects his family obligations, drink excessive cocktails and date each other with a casualness that horrifies parents. Everybody wants high salary, fashionable life style; they are our country‘s most productive generation. Chetan Bhagat has succeeded to revel nothing but the youth culture of India and some of their issues, who considers it his responsibility to appeal the young generation in Indian by writing a novel based on the Call Center etc. Which is a gift of globalization? Although Call Center is considered as a boon for India which is facing the problem of unemployment, Chetan Bhagat‘s highlights the influence of call center, which is a globalization on the personal social, moral, intellectual and cultural relations of the Call Center employees. In India, normally Call Center employees have to work throughout the night to deal with the western customers. One of the bright sides of globalization is that Indian youth are getting good job opportunities in Western Countries. His novel also focuses on how the young people while running after their career, are forgetting their duty towards parents. Through the example of the military uncle,Chetan Bhagat touches the clash between the ‗old and modern‟ with the changing atmosphere. The youth population is enormous and is growing at a fast rate. Everyyear, more people are educated and more Indians have got good opportunity to compete globally. This locked up potential can be given free expression only if the youth have someone to act as their role-model: a person who can organize and guide the masses towards a common goal; someone who can inspire and motivate them for their success. Chetan Bhagat is a far cry from the typical author image that lies in the mind of the common man. He is dealing with the harsh realities of life and problems faced by the young generation in his work. He holds a mirror to society and presents the reflection of the society of our own
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country. He writes for common people. His language is very lucid and easy to understand and on dark topics, still hold some humour in it. Chetan Bhagat‘s books are light and breezy and the language is simple. The author uses a lot of can‘t words that Indians use every day. The narrative of the story stays fresh though, the ending of the story is expected, still find characters rooting for the lead characters to get together at the end. Bhagat is narrative do „reflect and deals‟ neither “technically nor thematically‖ form. His strong narration has people relating to situations, incidents and characters in a natural way. His novel talks about dreams and aspirations of all characters and character seemed more real with simple genuine fears. In his narrative capability he is looked upon as a pioneer of the new form which is perfectly fit to bring about the issues of the multilingual generation. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bhagat, chetan. ‗Five Point someone‟ published by Rupa.co, New Delhi, 2004. 2. --- ‗One Night @the call center‟ published by Rupa.co, NewDelhi, 2005. 3. --- ‗The 3 mistakes of my life‟ published by Rupa.co, Newdelhi, 2008. 4. ---- ‗2 states-the story of my marriage‟ published by Rupa.co, Newdelhi, 2009. 5. Ankita, patel. “Youth Sensibility and Spiritualism in One Night @ the Call Center”.International online e-journal, vol-II, Issue-3,February 2010. 6. Prasun, Banerjee. “The Choreographed Narrative: Recontextualising the Narrative Strategies in Chetan Bhagat‟s Fiction ―An International Journal in English, VolIII, Issue-I, March 2012. 7. R,A.Vats and Rakhi Sharma.“Chetan Bhagat: A Libertarian”. An International Journal in English, Vol-II, Issue-II, June 2011. 8. Jadhav Arvind Tukaram. “Representing Metropolitan Youth Culture: An assessment of Chetan Bhagat‟s Five Point someone and One Night @ the Call Center”. An International Journal in English Vol-III, Issue-II, 5th June2012.
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THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN BHARATHI MUKHERJEE‟S JASMINE P.Sujatha, Asst Prof of English, Mahendra Arts and Science College, Namakkal
In Indian English Literature there are 3 main themes, man in relation to nature, man in relation to men and man in relation to God. Novels played a very important role in the 20th century. The Women Writers are Antia Desai, Antia Nair, Shashi Deshapande, Manju Kapur, Bharathi Mukherjee and Jhuma Lahiri Bharathi Mukherjee was born on July 27,1940 in Calcutta, India. In 1947 she moved to Britain with her family at the age of eight and lived in Europe for about three and a half years before returning to India. After getting her B.A from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and her M.A in English and Ancient Indian culture from the university of Baroda in 1961. She came to the united state she got awarded a scholarship from the university of Iowa, she earned her M.F.A (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing in 1963 and her PhD in English and Comparative Literature in 1969. While studying at the university of Iowa, she met and married a Canadian student from Harvard, Clark Blaise. She has produced two books with her husband, as well as numerous books, essays and short stories of her own. In 1988 She won the National Book Critics Award for The Middleman and other stories, Mukherjee‘s career as a professor and her marriage to Blaise clark has given her opportunities to teach all over the United States and Canada. Currently she is a professor at the university of California, Berkeley. Her novels are The Tiger Daughter(1971), Wife(1975, Jasmine(1989), The Holder of the World(1993), Leave It to Me(1997), Desirable Daughters(2002) and The Tree Bride(2004), Her Short Story collections are Darkness(1985), The Middleman and other stories(1988) and A Father. Her Non-Fictions are The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987, with Clark Blaise), Political Culture and Leadership in India (1991), Regionalism in India Perspective (1992). Bharathi Mukherjee deals with the Phenomenon of Quest for Identity, her emphasis being an her female characters, their Psychological trauma and their final emergence as self assertive individuals free from the bondage imposed by relationships of the past. Mukherjee excels in depicting cross cultural and psychic consequences of search for self identity. Her heroines endeavor for self realization and finally take control over their destinies. In this novel, Jasmine is the female protagonist of Mukherjee , pass through tortuous physical, mental and emotional agony, which effects their entire personality largely turning them into a whole new being. In a patriarchal society, women find themselves in shackles of oppression and suppression women can only dream of liberation of their male counterparts consider them importance in uplifting the
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society. Mukherjee in her novel Jamine deals with her aspect of liberating an woman from the feudal society who owing to her immense strength forges her identity in the American soil. Jasmine a primarily a story of evolution, a growth which can be termed as Darwins code of survival. The widow‘s successful attempt to reshape her destiny in order ti achieve happiness .Jasmine is a fighter, a survivor and an adapter. Her Journey through life leads her through many transformations are Jyoti, Jasmine, Jazzy, Jase and Jane was divergent geographical locates like Punjab, Florida, New York, Lowa and finally California. Jasmine is a rebel from the very childhood. At every step she revolts against her fate, the life dawn for her. In this novel, Mukherjee has presented a conflict between tradition and modernity. Jasmine rejects the constrains and traditional values of the patriarchal society in which s he is born for the liberal American values. Jyoti hails from a feudalistic society where girls are considered a ‗curse‘, as proved through these lines, the bruise around her throat was to spare her the agony of a dowry-less marriage(J 35) and also ―All over our distract, bad luck dogged dowry wives. They burnt to death heating milk or kerosene stoves‖ (J 41) According to Usha Ananad Statue, ―The new woman the novel jasmine rejects the maribund traditional values. The scales are heavily loaded in favour of new,western values.‖(Hermit 5) Joyti is the fifth daughter of her parents since childhood she is bold and intelligent and has the desire to became educated. In the eyes of Masterji, she is his finest every likely student fit for English education. She revolts against the prophesies of the village astrologer in hash terms, ―you‘re a crazy old man. You don‘t now what my future holds!‖(J 3). A disbeliever in the prevalent conviction that village girls are like cattle whichever way they are in their life. She refuses to marry the widower selected by her grandmother and marries Prakash Vijh in a court of law. Prakash sows the seed for liberation in Jyoti. He christens her as jasmine and says, ―:you‘ll quicken the whole word with your perfume(J 77). Prakash instills modern values in her which makes her bold enough to fight wrong. Through her transformation she learns a lesson to make empowers her voice with speech. Jasmine odyssey begins with the murder of her husband by Khalsa Lions her husband‘s death does not deter her courage and she decides to fulfill the dreams of her husband by visiting the institute where he was supported to get admitted. She is brave enough to leave the country on forged papers. Her first encounter with America is in the words if Malashrilal ―a regeneration through violence‖ (Hermit 6). After her arrival in Florida, she is seduced by Half-Face, the captain of the ship in which she has travelled instantly. She realizes, ‖I could not let my personal dishonor disrupt my mission‖(J 118). Goddess Laxmi now assumes the aviator of Goddess kali by shirring her tongue and kills the demon that has violated her chastity- This act of Jasmine is a kind of self –assertion and reflects a self-affronting transformation ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Post this incident, She begins a new life and reinvents her identity by adapting the American way of life. She gets a support system in the form Lillian Gordon who names her Jazzy and teaches her the American way of life Jasmine spends five months in a state of frustration with Prof. Vadhera and his family. Jasmine decides to leave his house. When she realize that her stay in that house would be an impediment in the path of herself –discover as their artificially maintained Indianans forces her to lead the life of a widow. In the next stage of her life, a human physics professor called Taylor enters her life who rechustens her as ‗Jase‘ she gets independence and becomes self-reliant through her work as day-mummy to Duff the adopted child of Taylor and kytie. She becames completely Americanized and also falls in love with Taylor and Wylie. She becomes completely Americanized and also falls in love with Taylor. She seems to be contained with her life but there comes about a drastic shift her life. When she sees the murder of her husband in New York, she escapes to Iowa where she gets a job of a teller girl in Bud Ripple Mayer‘s bank. She adopts a new identity as Jane Ripple Mayer as she becomes a live in companion to Bud and step mother to Bud‘s adopted son Du. Violence again creeps in her life when Harlan Kroener shoots Bud for having denied a bank loan to her. She nurses him back to health and in order to please and comfort him, even carries his child in her womb. She is completely alienated and more so when Du leaves the house to revive his identity. At this juncture, Taylor come to California to later her back. Her love for Taylor and responsibility to Bud are at logger leads with each other. She finally chooses to leave with Taylor without any moral scruples or feeling of guilt. The woman who walks out with Taylor ―greedy with want and reckless from hope‖ (J 241). The entirely different from the woman we had encountered in the beginning of the novel. Here is a woman who is ready to explore the best that future has in store of her. It is‘nt guilt that I feel it‘s relief. I realize. I have already stopped thinking of myself as June. Adventure, Risk transformation: the frontier is pushing. indoors through uncaulked widows. Watch me reposition the stars. I whisper to the astrologer who floats crosslogged above my kitchen stove.(J 240) Jasmine defies estrangement in the society and rejects cultural stereotypes. In an interview to Jouvert; A Journal of postcolonial studies Bharathi Mukherjee said, ― she is still open to many more self –inventions‖(Hermit 6). She not only transports us from one place to the other but also from one identity to the other to realize that transformation in inherent in her personality. At last, from her struggling of journey she got self realization and she got her self identity in her life.
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Work Citied Primary Source Mukherjee, Bharathi.Jasmine,London: Perseus Distribution,1999. Print. Secondary Source 1. Hermit,Tabita Jyoti, ―New woman in Bharathi Mukherjee‘s Wife, Jasmine and The Tree Bride‖ 2. The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol iii issues.1,2012., 3. www.the-critertion.com,the –critertion.com, 10th march 2012. Web 21Oct 2012. 4. http:// www.the-Critrion.com/v3/n1/Jyoti:pdf
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SOCIAL, ECONOMICAL AND CULTURAL OBSTACLES PORTRAYED IN CHETAN BHAGAT‟S THE THREE MISTAKES OF MY LIFE B.Madhuri,I M.A.English, Vivekanandha College for Women, Unjanai
Social Reflection in literature is manner and method of picturing life as it really is in society untouched by idealism or romanticism. As a manner of writing, Social Reflection relies on the use of specific details to interpret the life faithfully and objectively. Theme of Social Reflection in modern Indian literature is an outcome of the creation of a reading public which was trying to construct an identity in the context of the anti-colonial struggles and nationbuilding. This attempt combined liberal-reformist ideology with an affirmation of an `Indian` cultural specificity. Chetan Bhagat has written four novels Five Point Someone, What Not To Do at IIT, and The 3 Mistakes Of My Life. Each of his novels has the basic character set. The Protagonist is a representative of the present young generation, a boy whom any Indian teenager can easily relate to. He is moderate in terms of thoughts and views and is not to assertive. However the agnostic stance of the Lead character in The 3 Mistakes Of My Life is an exception. Besides, a special importance to sex is given in each of his books. The friends of the Protagonist are also of very common nature. The girls in the novels are shown in virtual bondage by their respective families. Yet the girls can be easily compared to an average Indian girl. Thus, the novel has no weird characters and is really set in a typical Indian setting. The characters are all typical neighbourhood characters and this is what makes the novels a success. Chetan Bhagat is one of the leading contemporary Indian English novelists; he has his own unique ways of presenting views by avoiding acerbic remarks. So, he has become naturally an acclaimed novelist. He is a novelist who highlights the attitude of the Indian city youth. His novel portrays the urban life of middle class Indian family. His novels are filled with the excitements, perversions, sophistications, and violent alternations between affluence and poverty, splendor and squalor of Indian urban life. Chetan Bhagat was born and brought up in cities which inspired him to write the typical life style of Indian youth of cities. His first novel Five Point Some One reveals the struggle of the youth in overcoming the excessive academic burden. To make his intention clear to the readers about the book, the novelist has mentioned the following words through the narrator of the novel: ―Before I really begin this book, let me first tell you what this book is not‖. In this novel he narrates the suffering of the students who suffer due to the curriculum which leads them to undergo mental depression for the sake of grades. The novelist has reflected the repercussions of academic stress in the students who are turning into marks scoring machines. When the students are burdened to face the uphill task without any trace of flexibility and freedom, their mental status reaches disgusting level which makes them exhausted of the exhaustive thrust. Three ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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hostel mates- Alok, Hari and Ryan place themselves in predicament to overcome the educational system in Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His second novel One Night @ the Call Center is a perfect example of the exploitation of the highly knowledgeable and talented youth by the less talented and knowledgeable superiors. The youngsters who work in a call center are in a compulsion to dance to the whims and fancies of their superior, for the former are the employees who are expected to yield. When the employees understand the hypocrisy of their employer, the former have to retaliate inevitably with a decisive act. Vroom is intelligent enough to give his boss Bakshi novel ideas. But Bakshi, instead of being appreciative of Vroom‘s ideas, he tries to illegalize Vroom‘s ideas. Finally, the manager decides to terminate Vroom and Shyam from their service which ends in failure. This glorifies the fact lucidly that instead of being gloomy during a difficult situation, strengthening the thoughts and deeds to become courageous to counter attack the assailants is a laudable act of Vroom and the narrator who are the mouthpiece of many Indian youth. Having attained a little maturity in writing novels to suit to the taste of Indian youth, Chetan Bhagat moved to another set of youngsters who are brought up in Ahmedabad. These youngsters have their major role in the novel the 3 Mistakes of My Life. In addition to the narrators‘ three important mistakes, there are three important characters- Ishaan, Govind and Omni, and three important themes such as religion, cricket and love which make the novel an inspiring read. In late-2000, a young boy in Ahmadabad called Govind dreamt of having a business. To accomodate his friends Ishaan and Omi‘s passion, they open a cricket shop. Govind wants to make money and thinks big. Ishaan is all about nurturing Ali, the batsman with a rare gift. Omi knows his limited capabilities and just wants to be with his friends. However, nothing comes easy in a turbulent city. To realize their goals, they will have to face it all – religious politics, earthquakes, riots, unacceptable love and above all, their own mistakes. Bhagat‘s The Three Mistakes of My Life is largely about the Indian youth brigade and their sentiments. Their thoughts, their actions and attitudes are what largely gets reflected through the book. The secular and broadmindedness of Indian youth gets reflected through Ishaan‘s character. Similarly, the flavor of the entrepreneurial spirit among the Indian youth gets reflected through Govind‘s character. Lastly, it is Omi‘s character that paints the picture of those Indian youth who often get seduced by trivial temptations but then at the end of the day, they continue to possess a heart of gold and flings to action without worrying about their own lives, without remaining in the territory of selfishness. Although Omi is found to endorse his Mama‘s religious and political sentiments, when it came to the life of an innocent adolescent, he erased all trivial issues off his mind and went on to make the supreme sacrifice as a human being.
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Chetan Bhagat‘s The Three Mistakes of My Life has dollops of various elements that make for a meaningful read. There is emotion, there is die-hard friendship, there is romance, there is humor, there is ecstasy and so is agony. The patriotic sentiments echoed in the book especially by the little Ali is something that deserves kudos especially now when the country is going through a bad phase. Chetan Bhagat has become one the most popular novelist in India. He has appreciated the greatness of the Indian youth in his novels. His novels focus on the thoughts and deeds of the modern Indian urban youth in different circumstances. The Three Mistakes of My Life is a novel, as the title suggests, about the narrator‘s strong desire to invest more money to broaden his business affair which has been shattered by a natural calamity. The second mistake is his tryst with his ladylove who is his bosom friend‘s sister. The third mistake is his split second hesitation while rescuing Ali from the angry mob. The major characters- Ishaan, Govind and Omni play a vital role in the development of the plot. Govind wants to be a wealthy businessman. His thoughts and deeds centre on business. As his father has deserted his family, Govind is under pressure to uplift his economic as well as social status. He is very good in mathematics but his inner desire is to be a great businessman. He fails control himself when he teaches Vidya, for which he feels guilty of his clandestine love affair with her. ―I normally never cried, but with so many reasons at the same time, it was impossible not to‖ (12). There is regression in Govind, for he tries to behave in a less matured way. In fact, he is victim of circumstance and is forced to betray his bosom friend by his conjugal pleasure with Ishaan‘s sister-Vidhya. His endeavour to portray his sadness has ended in a failure. This action of his forces him to commit suicide as the only choice. One important aspect in The Three Mistakes of My Life is that the author himself plays an important role as himself. He plays Chetan Bhagat and his role is to trigger reconciliation, trigger the dormant friendship between Ishaan and Govind, rekindle the love between Govind and Vidya and above all make Govind love his own life once again and instill in him the desire to stay alive. Vidhya is the only young girl in the novel. She is a symbol of a few Indian girls who are lured by the western life-style and thoughts. Generally, in Indian cultural context, the girls are expected to be modest. They are brought up in such a way that they remain indoors. Their preserving of virginity is most expected and respected. In the novel, Vidya is not allowed to go out of her home. She spends her youth with the happiness of her family and is never let free to do what she wants to do. Like many traditional parents, Vidya‘s parents are meticulous in rearing up Vidya. It is common to find a few Indian girls dressed up in modern dress which naturally makes the girls understand little about the glory of the nation‘s culture. Besides, the youngsters ape the foreign culture which is very evident in the casual dating between a bachelor and an unmarried
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girl. Infatuation forces Vidya and Govind to have physical relationship, they misuse to tuition class for satiating their sexual appetite. This action affects both of them physically and mentally. The novelist, through Vidya, has depicted the typical attitude of a few modern Indian girls. Many factors such as rampant spread of the evil thoughts, misuse of modern gadgets, attraction to less moral values, etc are responsible for the social degradation but self control with staunch disciplined thoughts is the primary solution for any evil in the society. The three friends in the novel never worry and complain about society. They think about their progress. They have a healthy discussion to arrive at a consensus. They want to make their life meaningful by their combined views and actions. The novel is an intensely praise of Indian youth. As one reads, one is able to feel and identify oneself with them, and share their victorious efforts in overcoming a lot of social, economical and cultural obstacles through iron will. WORKS CITED 1. 2. 3. 4.
Bhagat, Chetan. The 3 mistakes of my life. New Delhi, Rupa & Co, 2008. Bhagat, Chetan. One night @ the call center. New Delhi, Rupa & Co, 2008. Bhagat, Chetan. Five point someone. New Delhi, Rupa & Co, 2009. Iyengar Srinivasa, K.R. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi, Sterling Publishers, 2004.
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THE EXPEDITION OF SELF DETECTION IN ANCIENT PROMISES S.Prabhakaran, M.Phil Scholar, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
Jaishree Misra is an Indian author. She was born in 1961 and grew up in India, Moving to England in 1963. Her first book Ancient Promises was published by penguin UK and enjoyed good publicity over magazines and newspaper. As a radio journalist at the BBC, She has written and presented column pieces for radio 4 programmes such as home truths and word of mouth. For the past six years she has worked as a film classifies at the British Board of film classification in Soho. Her subsequent books includes Afterwards, Accidents like love and marriage, Secrets and lies, The little book of romance and Rani. Janmandara vagdanangal is the Malayalam version of Ancient Promises, translated by Priya. A.S. In Ancient Promises, Misra has made an earnest attempt to describe the concept of woman constantly in search of an identity, awomen persuing her rightful share of happiness. It‘s is fascinating story of protagonist Janaki‘s long journey traced through a happy childhood, an unexpected arranged match, a traumatic marriage ending in strife finally culminating, with the finding of an everlasting love in true fairy tale fashion. Ancient promises is Misra‘s first novel. The protagonist of the novel Janaki atypical Delhi girl of Malayali origin gets torn between the cultures of New Delhi and Kerala. She falls in love with Arjun, her senior at school. Arjun leaves for England for his higher studies, and Janu‘s life turns up side down, when she is hastily married off to Suresh Marar, a business magnate from her native town Valapadu in Alleppey. Though she tries hard to belong to the new family of wealthy and pompous Marars, her married life turns out to be a disaster. She and her husband lived together with big joint family for ten years. Where she is often subjected to tolerate the vicious comments of her mother in law. Happiness is totally detached as she gives birth to a baby girl Riya, who unfortunately grows to be mentally retarded child. For the betterment of the daughter, Janu gets into a British university with scholarship for a course in special education. Unexpectedly, she meets Arjun, her love, which marks a turning point in her life. She undergoes a serious of bitter experiences and manages to quit her martial life for good. The novel centers on the relationship between Janu and her daughter which arouses pity in the reader. The biggest surprise comes when the authors note reveals that her novel is semi-autobiographical. The Ancient Promises is the story of a young woman who is held by ancient promises. The book highlights the bond of family, Janaki the protagonist of the novel, delineates the transformation of the character form eighteen year old young innocent bride, to a strong, warm determined person, a woman as a mother, sister, wife and daughter, all rolled into one. Ironically, in spite of the importance attached to her personality, a woman is least respected in society. Women‘s battle for justice received fresh momentum in India after the country‘s Independence. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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It is believed that the progress of any nation is inevitably linked to the social status of women in that society. As Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam puts it ―women‘s rights are the edifice on which human rights stand‖. After marriage, an educated woman expects an intellectual companion from her husband. She expects love, mutual trust and understanding in her married life. But, in a family where there is no love and understanding, but only hatred and resentment. She is cornered. This is what happens to Janaki, who is a shadow of the author herself. Misra beautifully describes Janaki‘s heart rendering journey of self discovery, going through marriage, divorce and motherhood. Janu finds in her husband only a proud and overbearing man, who regards her as a fortunate woman to be allowed the honour of sharing his bed and board. Janu no longer accepts the ― Ancient Promises‖ of race and culture. The richness of Indian culture lies in the legacy of the Veda‘s. The Upanishads, the Puranas and the Ithihasas, woman hold a respectable position in all these works. In ancient times women were worshipped as mothers goddesses. To Indians, India is mother India, Nature is Mother Nature and the Ganges is Mother Ganga. Indian women writers have discussed the conceptualization of what constitutes the New Indian Women. The contemporary writing highlight social norms where in changes are expected to be seen, but surprisingly either have not or else have simply assumed a new disguise. The novelist gives a vivid description of life in Kerala and the pitiable status of widows even in a matrilineal society. Apart from this, the novel can be viewed from a feminist perspective she paints a vivid picture of the subordinate status of women in society. This novel explores the double edged position of women negotiating her societal roles and places, fulfilling within the bondage of a family. Ancient promises is a feminist novel. ―Feminist literature‖ is a value loaded label and comes with its own baggage. But fortunately Misra does not inflict this burden on her story. If at all Janu can be considered as a feminist heroine it is only a by product of her actions, and not central to her character. In Indian culture, once they are married by the observances of the prescribed rites and ritual nothing can part them and they are husband and wife for life time. The marriage takes place in the presence of Agni, the god of fire and various other Deva‘s whose presence is supported to the involved at the time of marriage. The marriage ceremony takes place in the bride‘s house and not in the house of bridegroom. At her adolescent age, Janu sacrifices her love for Arjun because she says she is tired of fighting with her family, Even she believes that adolescent love, however strong and deep, will ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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not be able to survive the onslaught of family and society ―He was the wrong age (too young), wrong community (not malayali), and came at the wrong time (I was too young)‖ (26). She looks upon her marriage to Suresh as compensation. The whole novel is narrated in the first person, after her marriage Janu expects love and understanding from Suresh and his people. But he never has any time for her and their mentally retarded child. He immense himself in business, Here is an instance. ―He had not been unkind, but had not deemed to want much time to spend alone with me. The couple of hours before breakfast he spent discussing business with his father on the verandah‖ (87). She wants him to spend some time with her, she expects him to discuss business matter with her. Her in laws try to disgrace her and she is very much irritated by their activities. After reading this novel one feels the protagonist struggle hard to achieve fulfillment in life. But this fulfillment comes at a heavy price. She faces innumerable hard things leading to a broken relationship and eventually a divorce. Ancient promises had some strong criticism against the system of arranged marriages. It explains how well the system of arranged marriages worked for most people in Janu‘s immediate circle in her parents, grandparents, uncles, women especially. Indian women are deeply bound to the tradition and culture of a society that is notoriously male dominated and patriarchal and it takes a Herculean task for a lop off the binding bonds, of course there are few women who are happy, but unfortunately this is, not a common sight in India. Women in India are bound by the age old customs and traditions of a society. But this novel gives that the women makes a courageous attempt to stand up, against all the odds and cut off the binding ropes. Here in this novel, Janaki the protagonist of the novel, who undergoes a painful journey of self-discovery.‖ Ancient promises” is about a marriage, a divorce and motherhood. It deals about Why we love and lose, sometimes seeming to have little control over destinies WORKS CITED 1. Misra, Jaishree. Ancient Promises.New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000. 2. Dominic,k.v,ed. Critical studies on contemporary Indian English Women writers, New Delhi: Sarup,2010. Print.
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SUBJUGATION OF THE SUBALTERNS IN ARUNDATHI ROY‟S THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS Ms. Selvi, M.Phil Scholar, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
Subaltern is the term that commonly refers to persons who are socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure. The term was popularized by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist in the 1920s and 1930s as a surrogate for the term "proletarian class" in order to counter Fascism.Power structure whether sexual, economic, religious or regional pervades in The God of Small Things by Arundathi Roy. Issues based on the role of women, caste and family heirarchy are prevelant within Roy‘s novel. The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy‘s first and only novel to date. It is semiautobiographical in that it incorporates, embellishes, and greatly supplements events from her family‘s history. This novel makes a point to address various universal themes that range from history to religion. Throughout this novel, Arundhati Roy stresses the importance of things that are both big and small, themes that are somehow interconnected as well as many historical events along with many details that are far-reaching throughout the country as well as the specific community. The novel extraordinarily address and comment on so many universally abstract themes as well as an array of ideas that regard the personal family history of each member of the Kochamma family along with even more broad concerns about the region of Kerala in India.In a society that is so concerned and focused on ‗Big Things‘ such as political affiliations and marriage, the author attempts to direct the reader‘s focus upon the ‗Small Things‘ in life. Clearly the novel deals with the troubled history of females and the untouchables, Arundhati Roy‘s The God of Small Things has already received high critical acclaims. The novel fetched her the valued Booker Prize in year 1997. In this paper, the term "subaltern" is applied to two groups- the woman (Ammu) and the untouchable (Velutha). The third chapter of the novel entitled ―Big Man the Laltain, Small Man the Mombatti‖artistically symbolizes their subalternity. Ammu and Velutha represent the Mombatti whereas those opposing their unorthodox love affair represent the Laltain. The other characters- Kochamma, Mammachi, Chacko, Estha, Rahel,Vellya, and Inspector Mathew- are caught up in a complex web of actions and reactions in their daily affairs with one another and with the outer world. Physical and moral corruption is linked with the social and political corruption of Ayemenem. In the novel, conflict exists at individual and societal levels. The novel graphically shows that how people are helpless to resolve these levels of friction. Velutha, the outcast , can never co ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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exist peacefully with the ―touchable‖ communities as long as the stigma of untouchability attached to him and countless others like him. Velutha is ―highly intelligent‖, an excellent carpenter with an engineer‘s mind, but he is also ―The God of loss‖, and ―The God of Small Things‖ Untouchability, the worst form of social rigidity is still prevalent in India. It is in this historical perspective that Roy treats the inter-caste love affairs of Ammu and Velutha and of Chacko and Kochamma. The intense anxiety of Vellya Paapen regarding Velutha's unorthodox affair with Ammu should be noted in this context. Paapen is an old Paravan and therefore does not dare to disturb the social hierarchy as he is fully cognisant of the harsh treatment meted out to persons who attempt to transgress the rigid social order. The dizygotic twins of Ammu, Raphel and Estha are told by Mammachi that Paravans are expected "to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping away the footprints, so that Brahmins or Syrians Christians would not defile themselves by accidentally stepping into a Paravan's footprints"4 (pp. 73-74). She still remembers the demonic treatment of the untouchables, who are not allowed to walk on public roads, who cannot cover their upper bodies and who are forbidden to carry umbrella so that they are sun burnt. These untouchables are required to cover their mouth with hands while speaking so that their polluted breath does not contact the high caste persons. Velutha, on the other hand, is a young man who fails to understand all these nonsensical rules and regulations for untouchables. He is adept in his mechanisms of carpentry and unsuccessfully tries to represent the changing face of India – an India which is marching on the road of progress, but all the same the India where untouchability is still practised. Velutha does not sanction this social discrimination. The subaltern in this novel wants to speak, but he is beaten to death. It is a real pity to see how inferior class and sex have been mistreated both in the precolonial as well as the postcolonial era. Velutha offers what is denied to Ammu, Estha and Rahel in society and family. In the daylight, he is the best companion of the children, who feels suffocated in Aymenm because of their divorced mother. Ammu meets him in darkness, along the river bank – a symbol of division between the two classes. He offers a release from the deterministic world of Aymenm. For a short while he provides an opportunity to live in consonance with one‘s own self. But the release is illusory. The system regards every effort for the personal fulfillment as a direct threat to its established code of values. The present era is marked with rapid changes and progression. It is an era where the entire world has become a global village and where multiculturalism is being bred and encouraged. Such is the paradoxical nature of this present era that on the one hand we encourage the functioning of multicultural societies, and on the other, we practice all these atrocities which forcefully put women and untouchables on an enervating track.
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In contrast to Velutha, Chacko can get away with his debauchery – or his ―man‘s needs‖ as his terms it – because he is a ―touchable‖. Ammu‘s mother, who endured her husband‘s abusive attitude, ignores Chacko‘s sexual exploitation of the female workers, but she cannot tolerate her daughter‘s love affair with a parvan. The ‗Small Things‘ may include the lives of socially suppressed class, promises, sins, secrets or many other emotional factors that people never wish to acknowledge. ‗Small Things‘ are shunned by people such as Baby Kochama and Comrade Pillai who strive toward ideals that are significantly cultural like a noble life of politics and a family of honour. Because of this, the socially deprived people seek refuge in places that are equally dark and secretive such as the History House and the river, and also within the hearts of people who choose to protect and nurture them. Social caste is one of the important deteminants of elitism. While Mammachi is elite to Velutha, she is very much subaltern to her husband. All the times she is denied assistance from husband, the supreme patriarch in the family. She is not only a passive victim but is also the target of the jealousy of her entomologust husband. Mammatchi is used to the patriarchial domination levied upon her as she has no outlet. Her strategy of utilizing patriarchial authority herself does not help her in the end in delaing with her son Chacko. He takes away her pickle factory from her. Mother of Ammu and Chacko, Mammachi is also a physically and psychologically abused wife alike so many women in different societies who undergo torture and trauma and never speak out. Kochu Maria also exemplifies a subaltern voice struggling to stay up in the hierarchy by putting another down. She works under the family, in the kitchen, but sees her Christianity as an elevating force when she claims that someday Sophie Mol will be the superior to Maria and Raphel. Even Ammu, abused by her father and insulted by Margaret, is elite(and sometimes unjust to her children) to her children. Ammu‘s daring love affair with Velutha undoubtedly incited a sexual desire in Baby Kochamma to some extent. She cannot digest this affair as she herself is denied the carnal pleasure. Baby Kochamma's sexual jealousy rises to such a height that she obliterates her niece and indirectly contributes to Velutha's castration and death by the police officers. Ammu could not tolerate this loss and consequently she also meets a tragic end. The shifting nature of subalternity vs power is evident in Ammu‘s reflection on the past. Ammu is the most important female character in The God of Small Things. A divorcee with two children, Ammu is not welcome on her return to her father‘s house. She is cornered by the family structure and inheritance laws customarily prevalent among the syrian Christian community in Kerela. Her transgression of the caste, class and religious boundaries mounts a rebellion of a kind against her marginalization as a woman. Ammu is a victim of a marriage that does not work ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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out. Her being treated as an outcast in her family clearly defines her position in the society. When Mammachi succumbs to the patriarchial domination, Ammu resists patriarchy and caste system in public and pays it with her life. To conclude, we can say that Arundhati Roy‘s treatment of the subaltern in her novel, triggers the mnemonic of a colonial India. By her treatment of the subaltern, she raises a moot question about their pitiable position in Indian society, but fails in her effort to give them their voice. Nevertheless, she urges them to shatter all conventions of the traditional society in order to fetch an identity for themselves.
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THEME OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN VIKRAM SETH‟S SUITABLE BOY Sathish Kumar M.Phil Scholar, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
Vikram Seth is one of the most well-known and successful names in Indian English Writing today. He has been able to span geographical and national barriers and played a major role in bring the Indian English Writing onto the stage of world literature. In all its myriad manifestations Seth‘s subject matter is almost invariably love. His characters are chiefly involved in getting on with their lives, and as an artist his primary concern is to portray them indulging in activities common to all humanity. The unifying theme that runs through his work is the plea for human camaraderie, spanning political, national and cultural barriers. The novel A Suitable Boy follows the story of four families the Mehras, the Chatterjis, the Kapoors and the Khans. This novel centers on Mrs. RupaMehra‘s efforts to arrange the marriage of her younger daughter Lata with a suitable boy. At the heart of the novel it is a love story, set in a young newly independent India. Her story involves around the choice she is forced to make between her suitors, Kabir Durrani, Haresh Khanna and Amit Chatterji. Matrimony existing or intended constitutes the main situation in his novel. Seth recognizes the importance of material gains in matrimonial alliances. However, he favors love marriage and studies the pre-requisites of a happy marriage of matrimony. If matrimony is a social as well as a family affair, mutual understanding old acquaintances, identical tastes, friends, fortune and reconciled parents are by no means insignificant considerations. For Seth an ideal marriage is the union of manly traits of man and womanly traits of woman. The theme of love is well integrated in the novel A Suitable Boy. Generally, nobody can direct or manage another person‘s love or romance. It is the subject herself or himself one has to progress from realization to fulfillment. Similar to theme of love and marriage the novel A Suitable Boy begins and ends with the marriage of Lata, the protagonist of the novel. Many of the main concerns of the novel are presented in Lata‘s story, relationship between the Hindu and Muslim communities, the importance of caste, love and marriage and the family. These concerns are echoed and developed in the lives of four families. The Mehras, the Chatterjis and the Kapoors are related by marriage. Unlike this, there is a Muslim family the Khans who are friends of the Kapoors. This plot is driven by a puzzle that whom Lata will marry. Lata has three main suitors. Her first suitor is Kabir, a fellow student a cricketer and a Muslim. Though a non-Khatri Hindu, Lata falls in love with him. Agarwalla opines: […] the sight of the chief and most powerful of the senses; that beauty, which represents in general. Correspondence virtue, is a great attractive force, and that the will of man naturally abhors what is evil and is attracted to what is good. When, as commonly it is said of lovers. (16) ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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It is true because when Lata first meet Kabir in the Imperial Book Depot they have changed eyes. Simultaneously they started to love each other. When Lata comes to know that Kabir is a Muslim, she worries a lot and his insistence on marrying after two years clinches the issue. He certainly blames her confusion on her family with him. But her position as a daughter means that she has little power to resist decisions made on her behalf. Lata starts dreaming of Kabir but it is disturbed by her mother Rupa Mehra. Bacause Rupa comes to know Lata‘s love affair with Kabir and she wants to send her to Calcutta to her brother Arun‘s house. So that only, Lata breaks off her love with Kabir. But in her heart she always thinks about him only. The love for Kabir begins slowly but soon it ends. In Calcutta, Lata finds her second suitor AmitChatterji, who is a poet, brother – in – law of her brother. Rupa wants to change the mood of Lata. As a mother she is doing her duty correctly because she is very much scared about the status and the society where she is living. Lata has also started moving easily with Chatterji‘s family. As a poet Amit expressed his love through poetry. The advances made byAmit are abruptly stopped by Rupa. Because she comes to know that Amit has some interest in Lata which she doesn‘t know it. So Rupa with the help of Kalpana Gaur finds some seven prospects for her daughter. Like all Indian mother she wants to force her wish and in a hurry to finish the marriage of her daughter. Finally, Rupa has selected Haresh Khanna for Lata who is her third suitor. But he already has a love affair with a girl Simran which later ends in tragedy because, ―[…] I know that that door is closed to me. I cannot tear her away from her family, and for her family the fact that I am not a sikh is all that matters‖ (SB 622). But now Haresh has a feeling that he wants someone with whom he can live a happy life. He thinks that it may be with Lata. Both of them have their own feelings about each other. Through Meenakshi, Seth voiced the Indian society. She was commented that the conflict between individual desire and family duty is a Pan-Indian concern and individual desire is given less importance in India than it is in the west. If it is felt that Lata had no option but to marry the man her mother choses, Lata‘s character becomes less important than the determining conditions of society. The novel A Suitable Boy presents passion gone awry because Lata‘s balancing act between her own desires and her place in society which makes her to choose Haresh as a suitable boy for her. Both Amit and Kabir are impractical lovers for Lata and she rejects them infavour of the inner life of personal relations, actualities of material life represented by Haresh. She likes Haresh because she visualizes the life with him. Gupta rightly puts it: The choices each one makes are difficult but they must be made and there is no use moping about what could have been. This is the world of love that Seth creates – a world not clouded by unrealistic dreams and firmly entrenched in the reality of life. (66)
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There are other love marriages in this novel, A Suitable Boy chiefly that of Lata‘s elder brother‘s Arun and Meenakshi. However, the two cases – Lata-Kabir and Arun- Meenakshi – are not similar. Because Arun is a man from Hindu family and Meenakshithough Bengali, of a different caste than Arun is accepted, but Lata‘s is a question mark. Though Arun talks about his own marriage as a happy one based on mutual affection it is notso on the part of Meenakshi because she is unfaithful to Arun as she has illicit relationship with Bily Irani. Lata has recognized at an earlier point that love does not necessarily rest on the choice of one individual for another individual. She also realizes that Savita, her elder sister who has obeyed the wish of her mother and married Pran, would never have fallen in love with any man. As Lata‘s sister has changed in status, Lata also has altered her view and accepted Haresh in the end. Gupta observes: In her [Lata‘s] somewhat dramatic renunciation of love, Lata firmly turns her back on romance, having come to the realization that romance is all very well, but a good marriage requires a stability that comes from shared customs and beliefs. (65) For Lata marriage entails stability and prosperity which she accepts and she even recognizes this attachment is little more than a romantic vision. She is not even fallen in love with Haresh, she does love him and can cite the qualities in him. After finding Haresh as a suitable boy in every aspect, particularly, Rupa hears from Kalpana that ―a dowry [continued Kalpana in her curvaceously looped script] he isn‘t the kind of man to ask for it, and there is no one to ask for it on his behalf‖ (SB 609). Thus Seth shows a typical Indian arranged marriage system in this novel. Because the novel is set in post – independence, post – partition India. Gupta has said, A Suitable Boy thus explores many aspects of Indian life arranged marriage, independence, love, family, prostitution, politics, poverty, culture and individualism – all under the garb of a gently – paced tale of social manners‖ (62). Thus Seth shares Austen‘s level headed approach towards marriage and reiterating that plain common sense which governs one‘s actions rather than romantic visions, although the fusion of this two may be an ideal one. He has adapted the western novel form to an Indian subject and narrative pattern. Unlike his predecessors in India Seth admits that his novels is linear partly because its linear partly because it is multi linear. Mala Pandurang observes: ―Seth‘s thematic preoccupation is not restricted to that of finding a suitable bridegroom for Lata, but rather to define what is ‗suitable‘ and ‗balanced‘ in the context of a new truncated independent India‖ (113).
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Works Cited Primary Sources 1. Seth, Vikram. A Suitable Boy: A Novel. New york : Harper Collins, 1994. Secondary Sources 1. Agarwall, S.Shyam. Vikram Seth‘s A Suitable Boy: Search for an Indian Identity. New Delhi: Prestige, 1995. 2. Atkias, Angela. Vikram Seth‘s A Suitable Boy: a Readers Guide. NewYork: the Continuum International, 2002. 3. Gupta, Rooali. Vikram Seth‘s Art: An Appraisal. Delhi: Atlantic, 2005. 4. Pandurang, Mala. VikramSeth : Multiple Locations, Multiple Affiliations. Jaipur: Rawat, 2001.
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ENVIRO REALIZATION IN RUSKIN BOND‟S SHORT STORIES S.Jothi, English Interpreter, Sri Lanka
Ruskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist. In 1992 for his short stories collection, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra he received the Sahitya Akademi award. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. Eco criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment. In developing countries like India, it is very essential to bring the consciousness of environment through literature. Many of the Indian writers writings reflects their concerns but without any specific environmental name for it. It provides an eco-consciousness which divert our attention towards environmental problems. But Ruskin Bond shows his serious concern for depletion of the natural resources. The invariable setting of his works is the natural scenic hills of Dehradun and Missouri. His works reflect his fervent faith in the healing powers of nature. His major concern is his worry for the unthoughtful actions of man towards nature. Through his short stories for children he has tried to convey the importance of nature in our life. Ruskin Bond touches on a burning issue in a very light manner. In the last few decades, we have become seriously aware of the evils of deforestation and other environmental imbalances and the havoc these changes are playing in our lives. This story forwards a contemporary relevant theme that concerns us all. In An Island of Trees, the grandmother reveals to her granddaughter, Koki, the deep bond that grows between humans and nonhumans if only there is love and compassion. He shares a dialogue between Koki and her grandmother. The grandmother discusses her father and his great love for trees and flowers. She informs Koki that she was convinced that plants and trees loved her father with as much tenderness as he loved them. She reminds herself of how sometimes when she sat alone under a tree she would feel a little lonely or lost. But the moment her father joined her, the garden became a happy place, the tree itself friendlier. Koki's great-grandfather had blind passion for planting trees. He would walk into the scrubland and beyond the river bed even during the monsoons for planting the saplings with a hope to create a future forest. He told his daughter that he plants for the earth, for food and shelter and for the birds and animals that live on it. He also informed her that plants prevent the banks of rivers from being washed away. But unfortunately everywhere people are cutting down and destroying trees indiscriminately sans planting fresh ones. The thought of a world without trees is simply impossible and nightmarish. This is the main message that Koki's grandmother puts forward for us all. In Copperfield in the Jungle he shows abhorrence towards hunting for pleasure which can never be justified. The Tree Lover, The Cherry Tree, All Creatures Great and Small and many other stories are all about the chain which binds man and nature, as in the chain of ecosystem, ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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showing interdependence. He has always emphasized on the friendly relationship between man and nature and has brought before us our need for each other. That is why we notice his pity for the unsympathetic and cruel actions of human beings towards nature. The Children‟s Omnibus is a superbly illustrated collection of short stories with an enchanting collection of evergreen stories like Grandfather‟s Private Zoo, Angry River, The Blue Umbrella, Ghost Trouble and Cricket for the Crocodile remain enduring children‘s favourites. Each story is skillfully crafted and painted with vibrant hues of nature and love. Most of the tales are set against the serene backdrop of the hills and reflect rustic life, while stories like Road to the Bazaar portray small-town India to perfection. This master storyteller does not resort to the supernatural or fantastical narrative to entice his young audience; rather, he bewitches them with sheer simplicity and portrayal with the environmental ideas. He conveyed the conflicts between traditional and modern, urban life versus rural values. Personal beliefs, man‘s relationship with nature and conservation of the environment and wildlife are the recurring themes. The stories gently persuade readers to connect with their natural surroundings and create a deep awareness of the environment. The two human states describe the children‘s thoughts and the adults‘ reactions them. Children love naturally birds and animals. This action unconsciously printed in their mind. They never harm the animals or exploit them for their personal use, gain or profit. Only the adults are driven by monetary considerations. If a leopard's skin fetches good price, it would be killed. Compassion, kindness, pity, trust, and love mean nothing to them. This cruel selfish attitude of humans shatters the idyllic natural world causing worry and disturbance for other creatures on the earth. Dust on the Mountain focuses on Bisnu, a boy, whose search for job enabled him to learn the importance of trees. That year the winter was dry sans snowfall. Bisnu's mother could not recollect when the last time weather was like that. Previously Deforestation affects precipitation and if it continues the Himalayan peaks would appear ugly without their white mantle. This affects badly the monsoon rain also and Bisnu's place is shown as such to receive no rainfall. This is again the outcome of ruthless deforestation. Other than deforestation, trees have perished and are perishing due to our carelessness, too. The campers make a fire and forget to extinguish it which sometimes becomes the cause of huge fire. Thus, thousands of Himalayan trees perished in the flames. Oaks, Deodars, Maples, pine trees that had taken centuries to grow were ruthlessly damaged and destroyed in the fire. There was no one to extinguish it. It took days to die down by itself. Due to this carelessness on people's part, many valuable trees are lost. Though such incidents are common on the Himalayas yet people have not learnt the lesson and fail to do their duty without realising that it is they who are to be affected by such acts.
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On the whole, Ruskin‘s stories breathe his great love and sincere concern for nature which takes care of us like our mothers. Hence, we need to be sincere, selfless, honest and loyal towards it. Ruskin Bond has voiced through his works a true sense of environmental ethics and ecology whish are vital for any Eco critical study. WORKS CONSULTED 1. Bond, Ruskin. Collected Fiction. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1996. 2. Qazi, Khursheed Ahmad. Ecological Ethics and Environmental Consciousness in Bond‟s Selected Short Stories. International journal for English and Education. Volume:1, Issue:2, October 2012.
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SUBALTERN STUDIES AND PARTITION IN THE NOVEL TRAIN TO PAKISTAN BY KHUSHWANT SINGH R. Logapriya
INTRODUCTION: Train to Pakistan is a prominent novel by khushwant singh presents the pre-andPost partition situations in Mano majra. It is a small village situated near to border in Punjab. In this novel talks about the religious aspects, partition atrocities, and the representation of women in the novel. Before going to look in the novel first we should aware of subaltern studies.. WHO COINED THE TERMSUBALTERN? In marxist theory the civil sense of the term subaltern was first used by theitalian communist intellectual "ANTONIO GRAMSCI"(1891-1937). SUBALTERN STUDIES AND PARTITION : The partition In perhaps the saddest event in modern India.It has attracted the attention of a host of creative writers and poets have tried to present the themes of partition in the lights of their own perspective with train to Pakistan. khushwant singh has established himself as a distinguished Indian writer. "with an individual status in modern Indo-Anglian literature". He acquired this individuality on account of his anger of disenchantment with the "long cherished human values in the wake of human bestial horrors and insane savage killings on both sides during the partition of the subcontinent between India and Pakistan in August 1947. In this novel singh brings four phases like DECOITY,KALYUGA,MANO MAJRA, KARMA.In the First section DECOITY the novelist introduces the central theme subtly hinting at the catastrophic circumstances both natural and social which prelude the tragic events that follow the central event of partition. In the second section of KALIYUGA he points out how every code of life is disturbed and how everything becomes topsy-turvy. Kaliyuga becomes kaliyuga the age of Kali. The mother of death and destruction. In the third section MANO MAJRA a small village at the border of India and Pakistan becomes the seat of communal suspicion, tension, hatred, and violence. In the last section KARMA the writer invokes the law of karma, which is central to the Indian view of life, to explain the mysterious ways of human destiny in the back drop of the crescendo of the action and feelings that rise and fall in the disturbed world of the novel. The novel begins with a dark and grim note of violence and butchery.It has something of the kind of shakespearen tragedy about it. Mr. Singh mentions that summer of 1947was a unusual summer with a different feel. "It was drier and dustier "as well as"Longer "with a late monsoon which brings only the shadows of "sparse clouds"without rain.He invests his ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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description with symbolic overtones to suggest the suffering that was to follow in the wake of partition.The unprecedented weather foreboded something ill and made the people of the village a little uneasy. So, they began "to say that god was punishing themfor their sins". Some of these people believed that they had sinned". After mentioning the unusual weather Mr. Singh went to give a brief description of the communal situation of the country, especially the riots of Calcutta and Noakahli,attemptsof the communal frenzy in the west, and the evacuation and migration of millions of people uprooted from their land. The violence that started in Calcutta swept the country and tortured people. Khuswant Singh vividly describes the tragic sense:- " hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who had lived for centuries... And they travelled on foot... by the summer of 1947...ten million people . Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of North India were in arms in terror, or in hiding. However, in the desert of communal destruction, there were some oasis of communal peace and harmony and seats of composite culture. One of these places were the tiny border village of Manhattan situated about a mile south of a railroad bridge on the Summer. In the village of seventy families belonged to Sikhs and Muslims about equal in member. There were also a few families of sweepers whose religion was uncertain. Although these communities had their separate places of worship. There was an object of worship a three foot slab of sandstone that stood up right a kekar tree beside the pond, it was the local diety, the deo to which all the villagers. Hindu,Sikh,Muslim or pseudo-christian repaired secretly whenever they were in special need of blessing. It was a symbol of communal harmony in the village. The inhabitants of manomajra lived in an idyllic atmosphere in the lap of bountiful nature. They are hardly aware of the meaning of partition. They did know even when the British partitioned their country and left India for ever. Theydidn't even realize the impact of such things on the tenor of their life, till a train carrying dead bodies arrives from Pakistan. In the pre-partition days the Mano majrians enjoyed the best of the two worlds of nature and machine. The movement of train across the sutlej bridge situated nearby the Railway Station atMano majra regulate the rhythm of life of the village is lulled to sleep and with the arrival of the mail train the life of the village starts stirring. In addition the morning and evenings of the village regularly reverberate with the echoes of mullah's cries "Allah o Akbar”and those of the Sikh priests prayers. The regularity and punctuality of the passenger trains and goods train through Mano majra indicate the regular and smooth rhythm of the village life. However the atmosphere of a perfect life was disturbed by the encroachment of evil. Which became instrumental in breaking the moral code of their social life. On one heavy night of August. Malli the gangster came along with a four companions to loot lala ram lal who was eventually stabbed by one of the robbers. Even though it was not a communal murder. It ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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precluded what was in the offering. It heralded the end in manomajra was symbolic of not only breach of social code but also a master playwright, the novelist goes on to introduce idyllic love scene between Sikh - criminal jugga or juggut singh and his Muslim beloved nooran, the daughter of the local Muslim priest,as an interlude of comic relief in order to prepare readers to endure the tragic experience of the following days. The love between the two persons of differentreligious is symbolic in the sense that it is love division and that triumph over violence and that through it one can overcome the evil of communalism. At this stage khuswant singh also adds another dimension to the communal theme by introducing Iqbal singh a western educated immature communist,deputed by the party create political awareness among the ignorent peasants of the village. Eventually both jugga and Iqbal singh were arrested by the police.Jugga for the murder of lala ram lal and Iqbal for being a Muslim leagurers generating communal frenzy. Meanwhile the news of atrocities committed by the Muslims in Pakistan on Hindu and Sikh communities began to pour in disturbing people in India. Especially Punjab. Even thepoliceman appeared concerned with what was happening on the other side of the border as one of the policeman remarked the actions. In the second section kaliyuga the late running trains suddenly changed the peaceful rhythm of life of Mano majrans which in turn became instrumental in disturbing the life of the village. This disturbance was further enhanced by the arrival of the ghost trains. The people of the village were dumb founded the bloody scene of the train load copses was too horrible to even people like hukum Chand the people official. It unnerved him. Khushwant singh speaks of the monsoon which "increases the tempo of life and death "with the arrival of monsoon rains. "these days one should be grateful for being alive. There is no peace anywhere one trouble after another ".the tragic mood of the villagers was regulated through the vagaries of the monsoon the late arrival of which left them high and dry since it did not bring relief but more disasters. In the third section "mano majra "which was the original title of the novel khushwant singh goes on to portrays the village which was once a symbol of peace and harmony as a place of horror hate,suspicion and cowardice(ie)the village of goddess of Kali. Mean while the mental condition of the Muslims of the village was also precarious. The muslims because all the more fearful as they heard exaggerated accounts of violence against their community.The division between the two communities became so complete that the emotional appeal ofImam baksh, the Muslim priest could not bridge it, a lot of arguments followed but Imam baksh returned empty handed. So did his daughter nooran as she could not move jugga's mother to accept her as her daughter in law Even though she was going to be the mother of her son's child. The Muslims had to leave. Eventhough the Sikhs felt helpless. In the fourth section "karma"khushwant singh invokes the theory of karma. Central to Indian view life to interpret the communal situation. In order to build up his argument Mr.singh ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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goes on to show how the situation further worsened with the arrival of the ghost trains. Such a tensed situation which prevailed in Mano majra was an ideal situation for the communal elements to operate. Communalism with the help of criminals like malli and jugga and the immature and ineffected politicians like Iqbal singh was a wild goose chase. Singh while blaming the Sikhs and Muslims and the government officials for the communal frenzy. In his own case, hukum Chand had to endure the ghostly sights train - loads of massacred people and the corpse of butchered men, women, and children. He could not provide shelter even to his sweet heart haseena. Hukum chand was reduced from powerful magistrate to pathetic figure. However khushwant singh ends his naturalistic novel with the heroic note of a romantic sacrifice. The communal situation demanded courage and the spirit of self-sacrifice of the highest order. The Sikh sacrificed his life for the safety of his Muslim beloved nooran. He slashed the rope which was tied to stop the train which was carrying her to Pakistan.ostensibly through train to Pakistan. Khushwant singh expressed his anger, disenchantment and disillusionment with the prevalent social, religious, and political days. He was so upset by the harrowing events of 1947that he lost faith in the values of peace and non-violence. CONCLUSION : "TRAIN TO PAKISTAN is a tragedy written mock-comic tone,criticising the Celebration of freedom with mass murder and bestiality and ingeniously delineating the pity and horror of the two- nation theory ".It is "Nightmare with an exciting finish, one closes the novel with the sense of relief and realisation "
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FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI‟S THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS N.Nandhini M.Phil Scholar Sri Vasavi College, Erode
ABSTRACT Feminist criticism began as a kind of revolution against the traditional literary criticism. It was male centered considered women‘s writing as inferior . Men‘s roles in literature has evolved throughout history and had lead women to develop into strong in independent roles. Modern literature has served as an outlet board for women‘s rights and feminist pioneers. Female writers have come to the fore front and provided today‘s readers with vast array of ethnic and cultural perspective. Divakaruni‘s interpretation of the epic provides a complete narrative, sometimes missing from the original epic, giving a stronger role to women of the story, and portraying them as equals in society. The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni where we hear the story from Draupadi‘s angle. This book is a study of heroic femininity as it appears in the epic Mahabharata, and focuses particularly on the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother, on how these women speak . The present paper critically analyses how women is treated by male in the palace of illusions by Chitra Baneerje Divakaruni from feminist perspective. KEY WORDS-- Feminism, Mahabharata, Heroic femininity, equality, draupadi(paanchali) INTRODUCTION Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‘s The palace of illusions is a retelling of the timeless Indian epic, the Mahabharata ,with a modern twist. In the novel, Divakaruni portrays the Mahabharata from the female point of view of Draupadi. All the characters in this story have taken from the great epic the Mahabharata. Draupadi is a significant character in the Mahabharata . divakaruni has given us a rare feminist interpretation of an epic story. Divakaruni retells the epic from the point of view of one of its heroines, Draupadi, thus reclaiming female agency in the famous tale of war between two families, hypermasculine heroes and their devoted wives. Draupadi is the first feminist of Indian Mythology. She is the ideal woman to follow how a modern woman should be. The virtuous Draupadi is considered the real and sole heroine of the epic. She is strong not because of her birth but because of her destiny. She is the first woman to have a platonic relationship with Lord, Krishna. It has been proved that it would be possible to hold a friendship with male relationship. The relationship that she had with an opposite gender is today considered as a perfect example of true friendship. Draupadi is still recognized as one of the most fashionable feminist of her own times. She paved a way to the opposite gender relationship to the modern generation. Shashi Deshpande and ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Manju Kapur and Gita Harharan are much inspired by the notion of the opposite gender relationship. The novel is written in the first person narrative expressing the own thoughts of Panchali on her own life. Though her name is popularly known as Draupadi literally meaning the daughter of Drupad, she quickly reasserted and renamed herself Panchali, the princess of Panchaal. She rejected the egocentric name that her father gave her. She wanted to be a woman with certain identity which should identify her destiny among all the women of the world. So, her name identifies her heroic identity as Draupadi deserve the attention of the modern women. It is symbolic of the fact that it indicates what the temperament of Draupadi has in the modern era. She never was a passive woman. She never tolerated the injustice afflicted to her gender. As a first feminist heroine, she gave her rebellious voice against the injustice not only for her but also for her society. She is the woman of fire. If anyone touches her with ulterior motives, they will be burnt. She always has a notion of refusing to believe that her identity has to be bounded by the men. It is the modern women there are many who believe that it was her headstrong actions brought about the destruction to the Third Age of Man. She is commonly known as Kritya, one who brings a great doom to her own existing clan. Chitra Banerjee moves away from such interpretations to state a new outlook on Panchaali in this novel to establish her feminity. The Palace of Illusions is the modern interpretation of the epic that provides a complete narrative, sometimes missing from the original version giving a stronger role to the women of the story. The novel is the feminist interpretation of the Mahabharata in the evaluation of literature. It is an attempt to describe women‘s experience as depicted in the Transmission of the Mahabharata Tradition as C.R. Deshpande comments on the role women in the epic. The grade of women in the epic on the whole is a pitiable like Satyavati, Kunti, Gandhari, Draupadi, holding influence in their family circles. The women like Savitri with scholarly pursuits changed destinies of their husbands. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‘s The Palace of Illusions is the retelling of the eipc, Mahabharata from Draupadi‘s point of view with the feminine approch. All the characters of the tale have taken from the great epic, the Mahabharata. Draupadi is an epical character to illustrate the significant incidents in The Palace of Illusions. Draupadi speaks for herself and also for her feminine community against the patriarchal society. So, Draupadi is focused as a central figure in this story who explores the search of the women to perform herself due to a human being, independent of her methodical role as daughter, wife, daughter- in-law and mother.
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Divakaruni has singled out Panchali as a narrator in the novel for two main reasons. The first one is that she was the root cause behind the great war of the Mahabharata. The other one is that all the earlier versions are to spotlight only on the male heroes of the epic while the female characters are positioned in the back stage. They are discussed only when they affect the lives of the male heroes. For instance, Kunti, mother of Pandavas, dedicated her life for her five sons to become the kings. There was Gandhari, wife of the sightless king, who preferred to blindfold herself at her marriage for her husband and she gave up her power as queen. Draupadi is a first feminist figure who stands on the volcanic of vengeance. As the granddaughter of Prushata, she was known as Parsati. Draupadi is born of fire so often she is referred to as Yagnyanseni. She is called Krishnaa because she was dark skinned, fiery eyed and long and black hair. She was gifted with blue lotus fragrance wafting for a full krosha and hence was called Yojanagandha. She alone enjoyed the relationship of shakhi, female friend with her sakha, male friend Krishna. Draupadi was an extremely beautiful, intelligent with virtues. Her body smelled like a freshly bloomed lotus. At the time of her birth, a celestial voice proclaimed, ―this unparalleled beauty has taken birth to uproot the Kauravas and establish the rule of the religion.‖ Indian mythology is a new medium for expressing the feminist narratives. It is the feminist tale of reimagining women from the myths as empowered. Neither feminism nor myth is a modern construct because feminist characters of modern era have been a hallmark of Indian mythology. Traditionally, Indian mythology has tended to afford the purpose of patriarchy keeping the woman as an element at the bottom of the social ladder. The modern century has subaltern as a tool which is used to justify female oppression for the ages but it is a genre used as a means of empowerment with feminine sensibility. Many writers of modern mythological fiction have taken the feminist cudgels to view a clear trajectory of emboldening feminist voices against the oppression made by the male dominating society. Pratibha Ray‘s Yagnaseni: the Story of Draupadi, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‘s The Palace of Illusions are the retelling of the hyper-masculine from the point of view of Draupadi, In his work, Yagnaseni: the Story of Draupadi, Ray has pointed Draupadi as a centric woman who played a devoted wife rather than a queen. She was a fearless endowed with a singleminded determination as a piercing jet of flame. She lived with a fire of revenge burning in her soul. She is the sole responsible for the individual destiny of heroism. rr Draupadi has no favor on the names given by her father. She told Dai Ma that if she was Dri‘s parent, she might have picked a name like celestial victor or the lif of the universe. She disliked her name Draupadi so renamed it as Panchali. Draupadi was too dark as the deep night. It is considered that the color dar is unfortunate to a woman but she didn‘t consider her colour as a drawback. She thought herself that the dark color which captivated the six thousand hearts of the maidens in the Virndava. When Draupadi was fourteen years old, she asked Krishna whether he thought that a princess afflicted with a sink so dark that people named it as darkened blue ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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which could be the capable of changing the history. Krishna answered with enigmatic smile, ―A problem becomes a problem only if you belive it to be so. And others see you as you see yourself.‖ Draupadi is far from an absolute representation of the Ideal Indian women, always torn between devoted wife and independent women this is an outcome of this research has shown clearly. Divakaruni‘s narrative has highlighted this perception of heroic femininity. Moreover, the multi roles of women like wife, mother, queen etc., within the story be capable of explaining itself the shifts in Druapadi‘s character. That has been exemplified once more by Panchaali‘s decision to follow her huabands‘ on their final journey. Again she is proven both loyal wife and rebellious women, when her strength starts to desert her as she reflects: Perhaps that has always been my problem, to rebel against the boundaries society has prescribed for women. But what was the alternative? To sit among bent grandmothers, gossiping and complaining, chewing on mashed betel leaves with toothless gums as I waited for death? Intolerable! I would rather perish on the mountain. […], my last victory over the other wives […]. How could I resist it? (PI, 343-44) The quote exposed the complicated of emotions of Panchaali‘s character in the novel. Divakaruni‘s The Palace of Illusion portrays Draupadi as a model of female empowerment and courage but casted a clear critical-humorous glimpse on her vanity and longing for admiration. Even her death was staged contradictory in that regard. When she jumped from the pathway it appears to signify an acknowledgment of having reached the end of her powers. But the arrival in heaven brought a surprising relief for Panchaali who notes: The air is full of men – but not men exactly, nor women, for their bodies are sleek and sexless and glowing. Their faces are unlined and calm, devoid of the various passions that distinguished them in life with some effort I recognize each one. … their faces evincing the satisfaction of actors who have successfully concluded their roles in a great drama.(PI- 358). Finally, emotions are singled out in marking character and gender differences. Panchaali‘s death appears as liberation and resolve of the contradictions of her destiny: ―I am beyond name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I‘m truly Panchaali‖ (PI- 360).So, The Palace of Illusions starts with the birth of Draupadi and ends with her death. It remains for the reader to decide whether this ending appears spiritually consoling as the reconciliation of her distressed female destiny and recognition of herself is denied her on the earth. Divakaruni‘s novel has conveyed the ―great psychological depth‖ of the Mahabharata and reflected on the various illusions on the characters about romantic love, heroism, war, and vengeance. Feminist movement can succeed provided women like Draupadi feel the irresistible quest to discover their identity.
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CONCLUSION In feminist literature ,female character occupies a prominent place. She is the narrator and we see the world through her eyes. The palace of illusions lends to feminist interpretation as entire novel is narrated by Draupadi .Being a prominent character in Mahabharata,it is not simply the account of her personal life but the novel gives her take on many of the prominent events in Mahabharata which are associated with her life as a daughter,sister,wife,and mother Divakaruni has raised new questions about the old text of Mahabharata.she has made an attempt to understand the crises of Mahabharata from female perspective by chosing draupadi to be the narrator of the novel. The major events of Mahabharata from female perspective makes this novel an important feminist text. REFERENCES 1. Banerjee Divakaruni, chitra. The Palace of Illusions. Picador House, Delhi. 2008 Print. 2. Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Mistress of Spices. United Sates Doubleday. 1997. Print. 3. Rathnam, Priya. ‗Book Review: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‘s The Pallace of Illusions‘, 2014. Print. 4. Warren Barbara. The Feminine Image in Literature . New Jersey: Hayden Book Company, 1987. Print.
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ESSENCE OF MARGINALITY IN THE NOVEL GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING BY TRACY CHEVALIER Ann Mariya Jose M. A. English St. Aloysius College Mangalore
ABSTRACT Social exclusion or marginalization is the result of inequality in the society. Social exclusion means people who are excluded from their rights, opportunities and resources that which are normally available to the people in the hierarchy. Marginalisation can be based on several reasons like issues related to class conflicts, skin colour, feminism, patriarchy, LGBTQ, stereotypes and unequal power distribution. In this novel the society is structured in an uneven manner. And it is marginalised due to the patriarchal structure of the society. An imbalance between rich and poor is the fatal reason for marginality. It has got different connotations. Being marginalised means excluded from rest of the society and forced to occupy the fringes and not in the centre. They do not have their complete control over their life, identity is shattered. Therefore, the concept of marginalisation in every novel is an approach to study literature and giving voice to the marginal people in the society. Keywords: - Marginalisation, Identity, Class conflicts, Patriarchy, Stereotypes, Feminism, Unequal Power and Poverty. Tracy Chevalier‘s historical novel, Girl with a pearl Earring is fictionalised from apainting done by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. And novel later inspired to movie in 2003. The novel set in 17th century, and it‘s a story of a maid who became the element of marginalisation. Griet is from lower class who experiences class conflicts from the society. The story contains the problems like stereotypes, patriarchy, class conflicts, inequal power structure and marginalization. In this novel, research mainly focuses on marginalisation. Marginalisation is defined by Ghana S Gurung and Michael Kallmair as: ―The concept of marginality is generally, used to analysis socio-economic, political and cultural spheres, where disadvantaged people struggle to gain access to resources and full participation in social life. In other words marginalized people might be socially, economically, politically and legally ignored, excluded or neglected and therefore vulnerable to live hood change.‖ The idea of Marginalisation deals with the socio cultural and human problems of people belonging to various sections of society like lower class people, caste, colour, and unequal power distribution. This story is about a girl named who is 16-year-old. She was forced to work as a maid due to her poor circumstances and her father‘s sudden accident that made him blind. Parents send her to the house of an artist Johannes Vermeer‘s as a maid. Poverty is one of the major issues which cause marginality. Based on economy, upper class, lower class power got distributed among society unequally which result in marginality.In this novel division of class is ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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clearly evident. Griet was treated badly because she is from lower class. During 17th century class discrimination was very common. In this novel, the author speaks about three main classes, upper class, middle class and lower class. Griet is from lower class and Vermeer is from middle class. ―I looked up at the house. It was certainly grander than ours, but not as grand as I had feared. It had two storeys, plus an attic, whereas ours had only the one, with a tiny attic.‖ (Chevalier 16) This line explains about the differences between their houses based on their class. Van Ruijven is the Patron of Vermeer and he is from upper class. ―He grabbed my chin in his hand, his other hand pulling the candle up to light my face. I did not liked the way he looked at me.‖ (Chevalier 88) This lines from the novel which shows the power of upper class over lower class. She could not even utter a word against to him. Even Vermeer kept silent to this incident even though he try talk but he could not. The societies are structured in hierarchical terms. This evokes a dominant position for certainpeople while other groups are marginalized. The documentary Afro Punk as a case study can be used to examine the unequal power distributions. Johannes Vermeer is very strict about his painting studio. He does not allow anyone to enter his studio other than his mother in law. Mr. Vermeer could see that Griet had a passion and ability in painting, that made them to become close and create jealousy in his wife‘s mind Catharina. Catharina made Griet experiencing difficulties in the family. Griet was slandered twice. Firstly, ―few minutes later Catharina came to the doorway separating the washing and cooking kitchens and announced, ‗one of my comb is missing. Has either of u seen it? Although she was speaking to both Tanneke and me, she was staring hard at me.‖ (Chevalier154) Griet was treated badly for no reason. She had a beautiful comb which looks luxurious, gifted by her grandmother. It was a stereotype that a maid cannot use luxurious things. During those time people were very conscious about their dressing, ornaments, and appearance. Only upper class and middle-class people only used beautiful and luxurious things also they hold complete power over the lower class. Lower class people were considered as low ranked and kept always in the margins.There was a stereotype thinking that a maid was not suitable for wearing jewels and a maid used to make affair with her master. Believing this stereotypical thoughts Catharina behaved very rudely to the Griet. While painting Griet, Johannes Vermeer asked her to wear a pearl earring which belonged to Catharina. Griet t refuse to wear but it doesn‘t workout because she did not have any power. She obeyed her master‘s words quietly that result for second slander for stealing Catharina‘s pearl earring and using it to seduce Mr. Vermeer. This incident occurred due to a powerful man who also had an authority on Vermeer‘s family, named Van Ruijven. He was attracted to Griet and
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Van Ruijven asked Johannes Vermeer to paint Griet. Though Vermeer and Griet are powerless than Van Ruijven, they silently obeyed his commands. ―it seems Van Ruijven wanted one of his kitchen maids to sit for painting with him. They dressed her in one of his wife‘s gown, a red one, and Van Ruijven made sure there was wine in the painting so he could get her to drink every time they sat together. Sure enough, before the painting was finished she was carrying Van Ruijven‘s child.‖ (Chevalier135) Van Ruijven is a member of upper class so nobody questions him or go against him. Everyone obeyed his words. Even Vermeer doesn‘t like Van Ruijven still he obeys his words for the sake social status. Van Ruijven is an admirer of beauty. He loves paintings very much, so he made Vermeer to paint Griet. He got attracted to Griet. Griet became voiceless because she is female who doesn‘t have any power. Here in the novel she considers herself as inferior. There are many instances in the novel which she became speechless without reacting to anything. For others Griet was an object to make money, to do all the work and to obey others. Her identity got lost when she moves out from her house to outside world. It was very tough to survive outside the family. When she moves out she felts like: ―My things thudded on to the dirt floor. I felt like an apple tree losing its fruit.‖ (Chevalier19) Also she managed to survive in that house because of her poor circumstances. She is well behaved to others―She frowned and I realised I should have let her speak first. I would have to take more care with her.‖(Chevalier 25) Marginalization is the powerlessness. This statement is very meaningful to this novel. Griet and Vermeer are the two main character who found as powerless. Vermeer was not happy with his marriage life because he is an artist and his wife Catharina doesn‘t have any kind of taste in painting. He found that Griet has got interest in painting and he teaches her how to mix colours and they became closer than anyone else in that house. ―From him I learned too how to wash substances to rid them of impurities and bring out the true colours. It was long and tedious work, but very satisfying to see the colour grow cleaner with each wash, and closer to what was needed.‖ (Chevalier115) Her interest in painting made her to learn new things from him and for her helping him was a satisfying job even though it is tough. The novel ends differently, that she runs back to her home to save her honour and pride and she never returns. woman is marginalized due to the patriarchal structure of society and that can be considers as feminism. Everyone has their own status and identity in the society. Power should be distributed equally inorder to remove marginality. REFERENCES 1. Chevalier, Tracy. Girl with a Pearl Earring. Harper Collins, 1999. 2. Gurung, Ghana S, and Michael Kollmair. Marginality: Concepts and Their Limitations. Dialogue, 2005.
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ECO-FEMINISM IN THE NOVELS OF ANITA NAIR R. Deepika, Assistant professor, Dept. of English, Sri Vasavi College (SFW) Erode
Anita Nair is particularly good on the domestic details such as lazy Sunday lunches, a family row, the sights, sounds and smells of a busy railway station, which make up her characters‘, live. To acknowledge the fact, she has signaled that, her books are a novel in parts and indeed, she seems more adept at stringing together a collection of short stories than in going for the long haul. Feminism is by no means a monolithic term. If one seeks a common strand in a number of its varieties, it is the critique of the patriarchal modes of thinking which aims at the domination of the male and the subordination of the female. This patriarchal ideology teaches women to internalize this concept in the process of their socialization. It brings to front the concepts of gender, which are manufactured. On reading Simone de Beauvoir there came a thought view that the history of humanity is a history of systematic attempts to silence the female which gave a clear view that it is not by birth, a woman becomes. It is a whole of this civilization that produces such a creature which can be described as feminine. Her first novel The Better Man (1999) is about the story that is set in the little, imaginary village of Kaikurussi, in Kerala, and the state where Nair was born and that saturated her poetic and reminiscent writing. In the past, Kerala was part of a region known as Malabar. Malabar is no more but, to Anita Nair; it was still a state of mind, a powerful feeling, arising from a longing for the past, a denial of the future, but also from a silent sense of despondency. Kaikurussi is a village in the middle of nowhere, where nothing remarkable is to be found, where no great man was ever born, where even the road comes to an end, leading to nowhere. Just it is filled with fields, hills and souls. The story starts with Bhasi, the housepainter, speaking in the first person. He is the only character in the novel, which one can connect with immediately, as a direct link to the heart of the narrative, and if one is able to do so, thanks to this intimate relationship that is being set right from the start. In fact, Bhasi is the very heart of the plot that will set off many changes. So, he is, right from the start, an off-screen voice, the voice of the village conscience. Yet, he is inside the story, partaking of this double nature: a character and the motive; part of the village and an outsider and this will be very clear at the end. Bhasi has taken refuge in this far away place, running away from his past as a University lecturer and from a secret hiding his very self from the world. Nobody knows about his past; to the village he is ‗One-screw-loose- Bhasi‘. But he is a healer too. He heals crumbling walls and sore souls, aching bodies and rotting plasters. He knows herbs and techniques, he has his own bizarre methods, mixing therapy, psychology, magic and homeopathy. And his desperate need to be needed, to be loved, to be accepted. This is why, in his obscure life, he feels that something
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great will happen one day, something that will give him ‗a reason to exist‘. He‘s waiting for it and destiny will bring that reason to him (i.e.) Mukundan. Mukundan Nair is a man with folded wings, like the handkerchief he is meticulously fold into eight parts. A man oppressed by endless fears and doubts, not well certain of who is, crushed by a vicious, dictatorial father since he was a child. He is a retired government official and is back to Kaikurussi because he has no other place to go. And the meeting of these two men, so different from each other, so necessary to each other, is an extraordinary meeting. The story of a deep healing and of a rebirth, of a spiritual healing and deep transformation, will go through a terrible betrayal: that of Mukundan, who will discover, in the end, that he is not better man than his father. In order to gain his place among the leading people of the small village, he deceives his friend and benefactor; he forces Bhasi to sell his house for almost nothing, so that the pompous and bossy Power House Ramakrishnan will build a useless Community Hall. The fictious village of Kaikurussi, with its exraordinary characters, with the ghostly presences, where all the clash between the old and the new India creates subterranean currents of discontent and uneasiness, with its undercurrent of myths, magic and mystery, is actually all the world. And, the end of the novel is no less suprising, impressive and unexpected than the novel itself. The loosing of that knot, heavier than a boulder, requires a blast. Her second novel which brought her immediate success as a writer was Ladies Coupe (2001). Ladies Coupe was published in May 2001 in India, again by Penguin and already had publishers in UK, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Italy. The novel talks about forty-five year old, income tax clerk, Akila a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life-always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider. Akila was from a humble family where she grew up amongst her parents and other siblings. She being the eldest, she was most looked upon. Her father was a humble man who did not get into office politics and diplomacy, hence did not grow in terms of financial standing perhaps. But, that is why Akila Appa could sleep peacefully even on cemented floors, instead of other bureaucrats who were wolfish in their wants in office and also had cozy mattresses to throw their weights on Appa's death was what changed Akila's life and that is when she somehow lost her identity as a woman and started living as a daughter, sister, colleague and an aunt later on. She started working in an income tax office. Her siblings studied and got married at the age they were supposed to. But Akila's mother never bothered to mother her like her other daughter. Akila too, in her daily quest to earn a living forgot her womanhood, and just lived until she made friendship with herself and her never ending wants.
One day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari, gloriously alone for the first time in her life and determined to break free of all that her ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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conservative Tamil brahmin life has bound her to. She had been forced to live a life of a saint posed to be for the sake of her family. She is the one who listens to all other women and tries to apply their views and justifications in comparison to her own life. The beginning of the story is little slow, but as soon as all the ladies started speaking up, it‘s an utter shock to hear the true mentality of the ladies when they are left alone. In the compartment she heard stories of four different women of a variety of demographic and social backgrounds. Each one of them told their stories to Akila to help her decide if a woman has the right and courage to live alone or not. The third novel that brought sensation to the readers through the art of Kathakali is Mistress (2005) which is one of the most beautiful novel. The manner in which two stories unfold in the novel, show the masterful narrative technique of the novelist. The whole novel revolves around the four main characters. Radha and her husband Shyam, her lover, Chris, and her Uncle, Koman. The amount of intensive study that must have gone into the making of this novel is commendable. Within a perfect framework of the nine emotions that a heart can feel, the novel is divided into three books, each consisting of three emotions. Illuminating explanations from life, nature and dance go with the nine emotions - love, contempt, sorrow, fury, valour, fear, disgust, wonder and attachment. The story then is entangled in between these emotions and it is an interesting study of how the Kathakali dancer hides himself within a mask, and becomes a different personality altogether. Equally engaging is the lexicon of Kathakali dance that we come across scattered throughout the novel. With his knowledge of Kathakali, a dance form which is entirely based on the epics, Koman looks upon mankind with a wisdom drawn from the heroes, princes and villains of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He recognizes every nuance of emotion as one he has experienced, as part of a vesham, or a role in Kathakali. Anita Nair is a writer who, like most has chosen a single part of life to write about and unlike most, she does so exceptionally well. If anybody means that Anita Nair should write for middle of the road audiences, she is sorely mistaken. What makes Anita Nair's novels so interesting is that they are about a section of society that many have not and perhaps never will have contact with. It would make reading incredibly boring if every author wrote about the same kind of people in the same kind of setting. CONCLUSION It is variety that keeps the avid reader coming back for more. While nobody can deny Anita Nair's ability to write vivid novels with lively characters, or does deny Anita Nair's credit for anything else, and upon a re-read of the novel itself, one can see that it is not Anita Nair's bitterness that overwhelms the novel, but Blackburn's bitterness that influenced her reading. If Anita Nair's is known for nothing else, she is known for her ability to be completely nonjudgmental within her works, instead opting for a style that simply paints a picture.
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REFERENCES
1. Beauvoir,Simonede.TheSecondSex.Trans.ConstanceBorde.London;VintageBooks. Reprint 2010. Pp. 2. Daly,Mary.Gyn/ecology;TheMetaethicsofRadicalFeminism.Massachusetts;BeaconPress. 3. Re-print1990. 4. Gaard, Greta. ―Toward a QueerEcofeminism‖. Hypatia. Vol:12 Issue:1.1997. Print. 5. Haraway,Donna.―ACyborgManifesto‖.TheCyberculturesReader.Ed.DavidBellandBarbara 6. M. Kennedy. London; Routledge. 2000. Print. 7. Nair, Anita.The BetterMan. New Delhi;Penguin Books. 2000. Print. 8. LadiesCoupe. New Delhi;Penguin Books. 2001. Print. 9. Mistress. India:Penguin.2005. Print.. 10. Shiva,Vandana.StayingAlive;Women,EcologyandSurvivalinIndia.NewDelhi;Kalifor Women. 1989. Print.
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REPRESENTATION OFGENDER IDENTITY IN BOOK AND MEDIA:ANALYSIS ON LILLI: THE PORTRAIT OF THE FIRST SEX CHANGE AND THE DANISH GIRL Karthika S H, II M A English, Pondicherry University
ABSTRACT This paper traces the representation of gender identity in main stream media and books. It goes in detail on how this gender representation becomes a misrepresentation in most cases. The researcher has taken the semi-autobiography of one of the pioneering transsexual Lilli Elbe and it‘s on screen adaptation. The paper gives a brief description about how the preconceived notions of a small mob can affect the masses through the media and tries to clarify the common notions about transgender people. Key Words:Transgender, Transexual, Heteronormativity, sexuality, Queer theory INTRODUCTION The word transgender refers to people whose gender identity does not match with their biological sex. For example, a person born with male genitalia may feel that he is a female and therefore tries to act as one. Usually they might dress up as females, use feminine name, usage of feminine pronouns and engage in activities that are typically associated with women in that culture to assert the fact that they are female by gender. A trans- sexual person goes a step higher from transgender. They identify themselves as the opposite sex and take hormone treatments and surgeries to fully have their desired bodies. The term Queer has become a common term for those who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, transgender or by and for people who prefer to use the term as an alternative to LGBT labels.Recently, heterosexual individuals whose sexuality and gender does not conform to society‘s norms and expectations have used this term queer to explain their way of life. Queer theory is formulated by ideas that suggests the instability of identities or deterministic, in regard to an individual‘s sexual preference and gender. People who have intersex condition have anatomy that is not fully male or female. Mostly people with intersex conditions are noticed by parents and doctors since there is something unusual about their bodies. Most people confuse a transgender and an intersex person as the same but in truth they are different. In many cases an intersex person decides to stick on to any one of the sex and will undergo hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery as transsexuals do and some intersex people claim themselves to be transgender. Thus these terms do overlap at certain levels. Transgender has become an umbrella term for all these communities. There is another community of people called androgynous people,they does not fit ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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neatly into the typical masculine or feminine gender distinction. They mayidentify themselves as non-gender, gender neutral, agender, between genders, non- binary, gender queer or gender fluid. Among these terms, gender fluid is commonly used. The term Queer has become a common term for those who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, transgender or by and for people who prefer to use the term as an alternative to LGBT labels. Recently, heterosexual individuals whose sexuality and gender does not conform to society‘s norms and expectations have used this term queer to explain their way of life. Queer theory is formulated by ideas that suggests the instability of identities or deterministic, in regard to an individual‘s sexual preference and gender. When the protagonist was asked to cross dress as a female for a party triggered the instinct of himself as a female. That epiphanic moment started the journey of Einar in becoming Lilli. Movie explores the struggles and suffering and celebrates the brave journey of a transgender. The movie and the adapted texthave its sole focus on the transgender. All the other characters are sidelined. The identity of transgender is focussed pitied and made a larger issue in order to gain popularity among the readers and audiences. The Trans version of Einar, Lilli is portrayed as free, wild and enthusiastic. She is the model for Einar‘s wife‘s paintings. She is someone who is livelier than the rest of characters. In the movie there is scene where the couple Einar and Gerda is asked about their meeting and romance, and then they kept saying their memories and the audience get an idea that it was Gerda who took the initiative in their relationship. Gerda says ―When I kissed Einar it was like kissing myself, it was the strangest feeling ever‖ (17:34) throughout the conversation the audience gets an idea of a strange connection but it is not revealed till the end. Again throughout the movie we pick instances that are unusual and we could see there is something strange about their relationship. In another scene when Einar was sleeping Gerdadraws the picture of him as a female. She even encourages Einar to cross dress as female for a party. Thus through these parties and gatherings Lilli is born. Gerda happily accepts her husband‘s identity because she wanted to end his sufferings but at the same time she gets hurt because she is losing the man she loved. Thus the movie is capable of giving an account that would suffice the audience with pity but what the makers lacked was that they never explored other character‘s individuality and preferences. There will always be a question why Gerda tried to have sex after knowing that her husband is a transgender and why she let him be her. Here is the actual positioning of society as a heteronormative one because the person who is not normal or they would call as ‗special‘ is Lilli and the others should be straight. The only LGBT person who is addressed straight is a man that Lilli met at the party. He knew that it was Einar in female clothing but he himself says that he is gay.The film has made its setting in a heteronormative society to fit this story to stand out because the writer never wanted to steal the spotlight from theTrans person. He is positioning the ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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transgender in a place where the society will shower their strange feelings and would make the audience cry at the tragic end of Lilli. She was considered as a hero rather than a human being who finally found her true identity. The makers carefully drew the line for that societal acceptance which still exists throughout ages and there by trying to satisfy a heteronormative society which accepts transgender. People try to create a separate void in order to accommodate the different. The mind of the society never changes but they create an illusion of acceptance to incorporate people who think and act outside the box. Religion never accepts transgender as humane. The trans community had to go through a lot to get even the basic rights to live. In 1980‘s when the memoir was published, the situation of trans people was pathetic. They were either treated as sex maniacs or socially incapable, often stoned and assaulted. Now the trans people are allowed to enter the church but are not allowed to get married and take sacrament and be a pious Christian. The protagonist is shown desperate and she is submissive to the doctor who operates her. She says ―This is not my body Professor, please take this away‖ (01:28:50). He wants to be normal and to have a happy life as who he reallyis. His sexuality is described through an episode from childhood where she kisses a boy in her kitchen and her father beats the boy and chases him away. Even after getting married to Gerda, he remembers these instances and even blushes. These scenes give the idea of hidden femininity in protagonist and are revealed more about it dramatically through next scene. The movie creates a comfort zone for the audience, the director and writer has consciously made efforts to Create a fantasy that the journey seems simple on societal grounds but the physical suffering the victim has to go through while having a sex reassignment surgery is still the same.They use this monotonous way of describing the pain of the victim while avoiding all the circumstances and mental trauma of the people around her. The book is extremely raw and honest but has elements of a fictional work which makes the reader happy. The spontaneity of the character is actually lost when it comes to the movie. The book is actually the personal account of the trans sexual named Lilli and is edited by her close friend Neils Hoyer. The analysis of the text gives a clearer view about where the sexuality of the characters are hidden and it explains the obsessive compulsiveness of the ‗normal‘, ‗straight‘ people in constantly pushing themselves to create a perfect heteronormative society. The close reading of the text gives a surprising twist to this mainstream movie and the perception of the people who watches it. Critics has accused Tom Hooper‘s movie The Danish Girl lack of depth, seemingly trapped in clothing and fetishizing the experience rather than concerning itself with the complexities of Elbe‘s emotional journey after transitioning.The movie was made solely on reference to the adapted fictional work of Ebershoff of the same name and thus distancing itself ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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from the actual memoir of Lilli Elbe. The book portrayed the female lead to be American which was extremely foolish. The character of Lilli in the movie was not consistent with that of the book. First and foremost thing is that Einar‘s wife was a bisexual woman. The friend they mention as the model of Gerda‘s painting is actually a very close of friend of both Einar and Gerda and Gerda and this woman had a relationship. In the adapted book and movie, this fact is not acknowledged. The whole community around Einar was not actually heterosexual community. They were all different. Einar's painting on Vejile is associated with his childhood memories where he used to dress up as a girl and played in woods and enjoyed the landscape with his childhood friend. The transsexual lady never struggled herself to get out. In fact Gerda summoned her whenever she needed inspiration and a companion. They were best friends. They used to talk about Einar, as a third person and they made Lilli as Einar‘s cousin from Vejile. Lilli was also a woman at heart she flirted with man had wild dreams of becoming a full woman and was highly optimistic. On the other hand Gerda was a successful painter because of Lilli. Lilli actually became Gerda‘s muse. The story was smooth until Einar could control both his sides but later Lilli started gaining control and Einar‘s masculine side started to fade away slowly. The original characters are fearless to express their sexuality. The whole book is a journey from present to past connected by instances. At the beginning of the text Lilli has fully evolved, she became a woman at heart accepting who she really is. She decides to take the sex reassignment surgery under the supervision of professor. Gerda is her guardian and she even has as a steady income. The movie has covered the sexual preferences of the characters and tried to fit the characters in a specific desired space which made the whole movie distant from the actual memoir. The movie has manipulated the story for commercial success and did no justice to the actual trans woman. The actor tried his best to show justice to the character but lacked depth due to the flaws inthe screenplay. Works Cited Primary Source 1. Hoyer, Neils. Lilli: The Portrait of the First Sex Change.Cineol, December 17, 2015. 2. The Danish Girl. Directed by Tom Hooper,Universal Pictures, 31 December 2015. Secondary source 1. Epstein, Steven. ―Sexuality and Identity: The Contribution of Object Relations Theory to a Constructionist Sociology.‖ Theory and Society, vol. 20, no. 6, Dec. 1991, pp. 825– 873., doi:10.1007/bf00678098. 2. Pickett, Brent. ―Homosexuality.‖ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, July 2015,plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/ ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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DIASPORIC INSCRIPTION IN ROHINTON MISTRY‟S NOVEL A FINE BALANCE Madesh, Erode Arts and Sciene College, Erode
Rohinton Mistry is an Indian of Parsi origin residing in Canada. To survive he endorsed boring bank job, but to abscond from the customary life he studied English and philosophy in part time. His passion for literature spring up in his mind and started his literary career. His famous works are Tales from Firozsha Baag, Such a long journey, A Fine Balance and Family Matters. Diaspora is the movement, ―migration or scattering of people away from an established pre ancestral homeland or people away from an established or ancestral homeland or people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location or people settled far from their ancestral homelands‖. Mistry focuses in detail only on the Parsi community and realism is his preferred style. In A Fine Balance he focuses on the history of his homeland, his community and family and reveals diasporic consciousness tactfully. It is set during Indira Gandhi emergency period. Importance is not given for imaginations but it is given for original events, culture and cruelties which happen for human being. He is authentic in his portrayal, as he has distanced himself by emigrating to Canada and he produces the effect of insider as well as outsider in detail that was engraved in his memory. It reflects reality of India, the predatory politics of corruption, tyranny, exploitation, violence and bloodshed. All the characters are competent to face the tragic events. He portrays the bleak realities and horrifying implications of the anarchy and exploitation that could go on in the name of discipline, beautification and progress in a democratic country. Mistry‘s expatriate experiences made him contemplate of his own native land finds something very queer about his native land from disparate inclinations. As a creative writer his expatriate experiences leads him to weigh India and Canada. He finds something very peculiar about his native land when it is compared with a multi-cultural nation like Canada. The history of India (Bombay) happens to be the basis of the story in A Fine Balance. His novel narrates the story of four unlucky people- Dina Dalal, Om Prakash, Ishvar Darji, and Maneck Kohlal who lives together during a time of political turmoil. Om and Ishvar allied to chamaar caste and they were sent to Bombay by their father to improvise as tailors. Roopa and Dukhi Mochi is a poor couple belongs to chamaar caste; they are under the control of Thakurs in their village. They had two children Ishvar and Narayan. They are not sent to school. When Narayan and Ishvar entered the school which is meant for Thakurs‘ is punished by the teacher. Dukhi has taken this problem to Thakur but the proper solution is not given. He decides and uplifts his sons‘ status as tailors. So they have been sent as an apprentice to Ashraf chacha, tailor who is friend of Dukhi. They stayed in the shop and not treated well by Ashraf‘s ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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wife. At the time of partition there are some troubles given to the Muslims by the Hindus. This makes the chance for Narayan and Ishvar to help them in return. Narayan comes to the village as a tailor and leads a life. Later Narayan‘s family is destroyed by Thakurs because they fought for voting rights. Ishvar and Omprakash, son of Narayan who lives in Mumbai is escaped from death. They are forced to participate in political rally. During the ‗beautification‘ program, slum clearance and family planning is done. After clearing the poor people away from slum, the place is used for real estate purpose during Indira Gandhi period. Sympathetic description of the lives of the poor tailors and the Parsi world and each figure is tortured in Bombay. Chaotic situation is very clear. Om and Ishvar become representatives of the rural Indian with their move to the town and then to the city. Their track allows them to stumble upon the expelled of both rural and urban areas. They become friends with slum dwellers and illegal tenant, beggars, thieves and circus players. They faced the problems like the grudges of India‘s oppressive caste-system, homelessness and loneliness. The plans of the government are made very clear to the readers that lead to loss of homes and freedom of the poor. The tailor‘s next ordeal is the experience of being lifted from the streets and forceful brought to the quarry where they are forced into relentless, back breaking labour and treated little better than slaves. Dina Dalal is a widow at the age of forties struggles against the social conditions which happens in the society. She faces the problems without any support and she chooses the ―tailoring scheme‖ to attain independence. So Dina decides and gives the tailoring work for Om and Ishvar. Then later Maneck is the fourth person who comes in to Dina‘s life as a paying guest. Horrific experiences make the relationship very stronger between the four people. Horrific experiences make the relationship very stronger between the four people. When they were very happy, Ishvar planned to search bride for Om but his plan is scattered and they made as beggars. Mistry is residing in Canada, but the ideas which are portrayed by him in his novels are sufferings, political domination and the larger tapestry of India. Diasporic writing is clear in his novel A Fine Balance. WORKS CITED 1. Mistry, Rohinton, A Fine Balance, Faber and Faber limited, Bloomsbury house, 7477 Great Russel street, London, 1996. ISBN 978-0-571-23058-7 2. Morey, Peter, Rohinton Mistry, Manchester University press,108 -141
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TARA‟S FUTILE SEARCH OF INDIAN DREAM IN BHARATHI MULKARJI‟S NOVEL THE TIGER‟S DAUGHTER Dr. S.Leela, Former Controller of Examinations, Periyar University, Salem
Diaspora signifies Binary status of an Individual Disheveled In past present it dangles between the nationality and residency of the wondering travelers and alienated settelers. The tem Diaspora is used as a label for expatriates, exile and immigrant individuals writing their existentialist narratives in various forms. Diaspora conveys geological dislocation and the socio cultural bewilderment throw distancing. It depicts about the sufferings of psychological uprooting and the struggle for existence. Woman suffer the want of room of their own and initially find themselves in the gendertrap with Diaspora conscious issues like homelessness, wavering double inheritance, nonexistence of nativity, longing for belonging, hunt for identity, pangs of isolation, wilderness and rootless sense of displaced survival. Diaspora as a concept of people who step out of their happy homes and suffer the exile, pass life ever in motion or are pulled out of their native lands and made to struggle for their survival in foreign lands. Bharathi mukarji is an immigrant to Canada and than the U.S. she has personally experienced both negative hatred and positive welcome in the country of immigration. She is married to a Canadian. Her important works are ―Tigers Daughter‖ and ―wife‖. Mukarjee is an expatriate writer who says she is writing about the here and now of America though now of the novels is actually auto-biographical, the novelist experiences first in canada and then U.S. have colored the perceptions of her characters. She says I wonder if my reluctance to write straight or naked auto biographical fiction relates to my Indian background. She views that given quote ―I don‘t want them to know what I am really thinking‖. Here in this novel ―Tara main role, she suffers the Bharathi mukharjee one of the great writers. The female protagonist of Bharathe mukharjee‘s earlier novels is characterized by their rootlesness and realistic‖. Bharathi mukharjee has admitted that an issue very important to her is ―the finding of a new identity‖. The painful or exhilarating process of pulling your self out of the culture that you were born into and the replanting yourself in another culture. This story is about the women who suffer due to cultural identity. She can not adjust with alien culture with which she faces a lot oh problems for gaining the identity. She strangles for nostalgic feelings as an emigrant to Canada and then the U.S. Bharathi mukharjee has personally experienced both negative hearted and joined imaginative forces with anonymous driven under ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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class of semi assimilated Indians with sentimental attachments to a distant homeland but no real desire for permanent return. The Tiger‘s daughter of is a story of rich industrialist‘s pampered daughter. Tara who returns to calcutta. In search of the Indian dream. Tara is sent aboard for a degree by her father. Who assumes that Calcutta is no longer as safe as it once was because of it‘s gheraos and coke bottles, filled with urine and vulgar men leering at them. Now when she suddenly transported to vassar she finds everything unusual and un easy sensing discrimination. Being pushed to the periphery of her old world Tara continues to cling to her old loyalties. In her attempts to get acclimatized to the new surroundings and cultural Tara‘s attempts appear very superficial she lacks the capacity to prove into the differences between the two culturals. Hence she fails to feel at home inspite of her best intensions. A sense of rootlessness dogs Tara throughout the novel. She is shocked callous attitude of her American friends. And complained of homesickness in her letters written to her mother. She makes frantic attempts to feel at home in new York. She felt very distant from the passions that quickened or on trigged her class in calcutta. She was started at their tremondars capacity for surfaces. On her arrival at Calcutta she is met with great affection and existent. Ironically Tara accurse her friends of lacking depth which bis clearly. Abcent in her too. Tara thinks of her friends as being American experiences has isolated her from Indian life and culture. Tara wonders how dfoes foreignness spirit begin. She is totally out of touch with the real Calcutta. All through out her childhood. Tara has been exposed to the reality of Calcutta life. Tara realizes that she is miss fit with both places. She is always troubled by nostalgia for the life left behind her. Tara could not fit into that because to her it was impossible to be a bridge. For any one bridge‘s away of cluttering up the landscape tara fails a niche for herself. Even with in her own friends. To Tara new York and Calcutta are not very different from each other. Tara is certainly not one of the immigrant women of modern fiction. Tara was not been develop an individuality offer own different from the traditional roles of women as daughter. Tara is culture transplant is unimportant as she lacks the maturity to become rolled. hence she is equal rootless in both her native land of immigration. She is not seriously concerned about or interested in the problem of finding roots are beginning a process of assimilation or acculturation.
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Child bearing child raring restrict the freedom of women and an abortion is often seen as protest against gender relate rolls by modern feminist characters. To quote this trajectory actually has an earlier starting point in post colonoial India and the ―biculturisim‖ of mukharjee‘s first novel, the tigers daughter here the Mukharjee explores the post colonial dilemma of an English educated elite expatriate on visit to India. The central character Tara is something of an outcast in the society because of her ―mleccha‖ husband and she feels alienated from her friends. The world wariness and a giants of this novel culminates in the violent metaphor of rape. Tara is raped by a brutal. Needless to say the novel closes with Tara‘s passionate statement of attachment to her American husband and her disparate wish to het out of Calcutta. A term Mukharjee uses to describe author of the tiger‘s daughter and bi culturalism is an experience of detachment and irony. In the tiger‘s daughter she takes on myth of the immigrant in it‘s place. In Canada she was a psychological expatriate. The new world is figured as a place where any one can be a success, including immigrants. The immigrants Mukharjee writes about make their futures in ways they could not have done in the old world the new world is the world of the individual and all you need to make it is gumption. Mukharjee stresses the battler quality of her characters and romanticizes the struggle of the individual CONCLUSION In Mukharjee words…―I was bicultural when I wrote the tiger‘s daughter, Now I am no longer so and America is more real to me than India…I realized I was no longer expatriate but an immigrant that my life was more here…I need to belong. America matters to me. It‘s not that India failed me-rather.
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PLIGHT OF INDIAN WOMEN IN RAJAM KRISHNAN‟S LAMPS IN THE WHIRLPOOL P. Sumithra, M.Phil Scholar, Vellalar college for women, Thindal, Erode
ABSTRACT The novel ―Lamps in the whirlpool describes the struggles of the young Indian women in the Orthodox Brahmin family. This Novel was translated from the Tamil novel ―Suzhalil Mithakkum Dheepangal‖ in 1987. The word lamp describes the situation of the Brahmin woman in the Orthodox family and the ―Whirlpool‖ means the problems that faced by the woman in the family. Girija is the protagonist of this Novel. She is a typical middle-class Brahmin woman who was disturbed by the Brahmin‘s ritual practice called ―Madi‖ which was followed in orthodox Brahmin family. Then she comes out from the worthless routines of the Brahmin family without submitting to its patriarchal demands. Girija searches for the clarification on the bank of the Ganga and at the end Girija transforms into a new woman and become free from the all the ritual practices. This novel echoes the hearts of many inhibited women, across culture and language. It shows that how the women are treated in our society. Every woman is the linchpin in the family who expunge herself as a person so that she may be a wife, mother, daughter-in-law in most of all. This paper deals with the concept of Marginalization of women in Indian society as highlighted in the novel. Keywords Patriarchal, typical, clarification, Orthodox, whirlpool, submitting, linchpin, expunge, marginalization, inhibited. INTRODUCTION Rajam Krishnan was a famous feminist Tamil writer born on 1925. She was one of the famous feminist Tamil writer. She wrote many Tamil novels which portrays the theme of feminism. In the novel lamps in the whirlpool described the struggles of the Indian women in the society. She started to write many novels which usually depicts about the poor farmers, salt pan workers, small time criminals, Jungle dacoits, Under-trial prisoners and female labourers. She has written various number of books. Her works include forty novels, twenty plays and two biographies and several short stories. She was referred as translator of literature from Malayalamto Tamil. She was the recipient of the Sakitya Akademi award for the novel Verukku Neer in 1973. Her works were nationalized in 2009 by the Government of Tamil Nadu. In this novel ―Lamps in the whirlpool‖ the author Rajam Krishnan gave the reference about the protagonist Girija.
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According to Bernard Shaw, ―Man and wife do not, as a rule, live together; they only breakfast together, dine together and sleep in the same room. In most cases the women know nothing of the man‘s working life and he knows nothing of her working life.‖ She was searching for her identity. The novel highlights the way she worked for her family and how she sacrificed herself for her family. But she was treated as a draught animal by her mother-in-law and husband. Girija was a typical middle class girl who was well educated, she was a post-graduate woman, and she worked as a teacher in the school near the Chengalpattu in Tamil Nadu for eight years. After her marriage, she was forced to practice the rituals of Orthodox Brahmin community. Although Girija was an educated woman, she was married in the Orthodox Brahmin family. She gave birth to three children, Kavitha, Charu, and Barath. She was restricted by the Brahmin‘s ritual practice ―Madi‖ followed in the Brahmin families. Her mother-in-law believed in the ―Madi‖ and traditional Practices. Girija was stressed physically and mentally by these ritual practices. After Girija‘s marriage they migrated to Delhi during the time Kavitha and Charu were born. During her menstruation period, she was not allowed to be touched by her own children,if she was touched by her children she has to bath again, this is the rules of the Brahmin rituals which was followed by her mother-in-law. The children Kavitha and Charu were not even taken care by her because of this practices, and the children were looked like a slum children, wheneverthe visitors visit their home. These all show the attitude of Brahmin women and their beliefs in the Superstitious practices. Girija was not respected by her family members, she was not given proper priority in family affairs. She was treated as a slave due to this Madi customs. Girija faced inconvenience by her mother-in-law. In Indian Hindu law, the women in the Brahmin family must practice the ―Madi‖ rules, and she should take bath in the early morning before getting into the kitchen. Girija forced to follow madi for seventeen years. Girija has to work from the morning to night till going to bed. She was forced by her household duties. Even job going women have some resting time, but Girija didn‘t even had a proper resting time. She has to work for her family members from morning to the night without any rest. She was treated as a machine, there is no freedom for expressing her own thoughts and feelings. She has to follow the rules given by her family members. She has to sacrifice herself for them.These shows that how the women are restricted by these ritual practices. They are like caged birds. If they not follow the rules they are being blamed. Swaminathan (Samu) Girija‘s husband never ever take care of his wife. He was always busy with his business.Swaminathan always remained insensitive to his wife‘s state of mind, and at times he tend to lose his temper in wonted arrogance and with unleashing male egoistic anger. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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When he didn‘t like the food, he threw down the plates which made her feel hurt and she was unable to accept his behavior. Girija has decided to leave the home and she went out from that oppressive atmosphere of the house by spending time on the banks of the Ganga. Through these incidents, the author tends to highlight the fact that men and women should be treated equally in the society and also in the family setup. Girija met elderly pilgrim couple Gowriammal and her husband who was munsiff and spend time with them in the Haridhwar. At her young age, Gowriammal has been treated abdominantly by her husband. But in the old age, Gowriammal took care of her husband without any bitterness and her husband was totally dependent on her. Through this incident author states the caring nature and loving behavior of women. Even though she was treated badly by her own family members. Woman is of the one who will take care of them in the future without having any bitterness within themselves towards her families. Girija met another elder spiritual widow in Rishikeshwho recounted her life of misery as third wife to an elderly man and the tale of tyranny of her stepson, who was menace to her youth and she finally dared to defy society after her husband‘s death. She took care of the pilgrimage and chose to stay in the Ashram at Rishikesh helping a young Sannyasin in his medical rounds in the neighborhood as an Ayurveda healer. After four days of pilgrimage, Girija returned home but she was flabbergasted by her family members and neighbourhood.She was charged by her mother-in-law and husband, so Girija was horrified by their cruel assumptions. Then Girija went out in search of Ratna who was engaged in feminist research in Delhi University and then she was taken care by Ratna and her hostel friends as a wounded bird. In this novel,Lamps in the whirlpool,the author has portrayed the stories of different women and their day to day problems. The author hasdescribed a character named Runo, who was an ignored child. She lost her mother, and her father married another lady. So she was addicted to drugs and at last she committed suicide. From these incidents the author explains about how women get ignored by her family and society. Rajam Krishnan has explored the life of Indian women in the society through the protagonist named Girija. Indian women believed that the ―Mangal Sutra‖ is a holy one and they think that it is the holy bondage towards the men and women. But Girija rejected all these beliefs and she considered it as a ―Chain of Drudge‖. Then she overcame from all these past bad incidents which had happen in her life and she changed into a new woman. In this novel the author has tried to explore the different views of women and has portrayed many women character in the novel and also highlighted their sufferings which they faced in their family and society due to their cultural backgrounds. She also depicted how they
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were being dominated by the society and how they transformed themselves into a new self in a way which changed their life of living without any inference and domination. Till now in India there are many women in the society who are living under someone‘s pressure, but these women must break the barriers and must dare to live their life of their choice. REFERENCES 1. (Lamps in the Whirlpool Pdf - Google Search)Lamps in the Whirlpool Pdf - Google Search. https://www.google.com/search?q=lamps+in+the+whirlpool+pdf&oq=lamps+in+the+wh irlpool+pdf&aqs=chrome..69i57.8032j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. Accessed 27 Jan. 2019. 2. (Rajam Krishnan Novels Free Download - Tamil Desiyam) Rajam Krishnan Novels Free Download - Tamil Desiyam. https://tamil-desiyam.com/rajam-krishnan-novels-freedownload/. Accessed 28 Jan. 2019.
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MARGINALIZATION OF WOMAN CHARACTER THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS R. Janani Asst Prof of English Sri Vasavi College, Self Finance Wing
Shashi Deshpande, an Indian novelist, born in Dharwar, North Karnataka, India, educated at Bangalore University. Both her first collection of short stories, The Legacy (1978), and her highly praised novel, The Dark Holds no Terrors (1980), signalled the arrival of an important new feminist voice in Indian fiction; through a network of familial relationships, and above all men and women. Deshpande explores contemporary India and illustrates the complex adjustments and social changes of the 1980s. Her honest treatment of sexuality, gender, and generational conflicts is evident in Roots and Shadows (1983); its intelligent, mature narrator, the journalist Indu, is a more independent, less tortured example of the modern urbanized Indian woman than some of Deshpande's other protagonists. In Deshpande's vision, liberation for the Indian woman is circumscribed by boundaries of class, social position, and marital status. Arguably her most accomplished novel, That Long Silence (1988) combines acerbic realism with subjective exploration, political awareness with Hindu philosophy. Deshpande has also written fiction for children, and two detective novels, If I Die Today (1982) and Come Up and Be Dead (1983). Shashi Deshpande‘s Novel The Dark Holds no Terros (1980) shows how Sarita, the woman Protagonist suffers due to the marginalization of her gender and wants to be free from it. Sarita a humble, modest and middle class woman of Deshpande‘s Novel is presented simultaneously as an individual and as a female. Women – the second creature and the second sex not treated on a par with Men in all spheres of human Activity. They are confined to their homes, oppressed, suppressed and Marginalized in their life completely. They are not supposed to share their available opportunities for fulfillment of their lives. Sarita is also not an exception to this. Even though she got a Lucrative job as a reputed doctor in her surroundings, she suffered a lot. Fate – an inevitable trauma also plays a vital role in her life. The Novel begins with Sarita‘s visit to her parental home after fifteen years gap. The reason for her visit is her mother‘s recent death. She feels herself as a ―Stranger‖ in her parental home, because it is place where she is marginalized rather than common care, affection and attention of the children of her own age. She feels restless and reluctant in her parental home. Her father‘s attitude towards her also made her to feel as an unwanted visitor for her own home. Sarita, a marginalized figure even from her childhood, whereas her Younger brother Dhurva gets all the parental care and affection. As a result Sarita experienced the insecure childhood days. Dhurva, the overprotective child enjoys all the happiness of his age such as Pompous Birhtday Celebrations and bicycle ride etc., were Sarita had none because it was ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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restricted to her gender. Her father says ―daughters are their mother‘s business‖(p.105) Due to these things Sarita‘s childhood days remained an unhappy one. She feels jealous of her brother when he gets all the affection and attention, which is equal to her also but not in practice in our society because of the traditions of an orthodox Brahmin family. Sarita‗s mother‘s strong preference for her brother drives her to a sense of restlessness and alienation. The Partisan attitude of her parents had a devastating effect on Sarita. She feels frustrated and less important in each and every occasion. Thus Sarita becomes rebellious in nature and decided to badger her parents. Just as she was leaving her brother, Dhurva come and insist on his going with her. But unfortunately Dhurva drowned in the pond while trying to build fort with the wet mud. A worried sister as she was, cried and cried for him. But her shouting ends in vain. When she asked the whereabouts of Dhurva, they discovered that Dhurva had died. Sarita‘s mother said to her that she had killed him. She utterly said ―You killed him why didn‘t you die? Why are you alive, when he‘s dead ―(p.191) this incident makes Sarita a whole victim of fate. Even her mother finds her guilty ―You killed your brother‖ (p.146) Premila Paul says ―Dhurva‘s demise had always been her subconscious desire and there is very thin demarcation between her wish and its fulfillment‖ (Paul: 67) Sarita, decided to become a doctor after meeting a doctor in an assemblage of women. She silently go into her aim without revealing to anybody. When she desires to go medical college, her mother opposed her on various grounds such as gender, higher education for her. But her father permits her to do so. But her mother says violently, ―But she‘s girl….And don‘t forget, medicine or no medicine, doctor or no doctor, you still have to get her married, spend money on her wedding. Can you do both‖ ( p. 144) Her mother doesn‘t understand the importance of girl‘s education and she feels it is necessary for Sarita. Here Sarita is neglected for Higher Education. Sarita, a modern girl falls in love with Manohar at first sight. Sarita‘s confrontation with her mother reaches its peak when she decides to marry Manohar. As a marginalized being, Sarita choice of a boy from a lower caste is a sign of her rejecting the traditional ways and values her orthodox mother adheres to. She recalls the conversation with her mother when she comforts her with her intention of marrying Manohar. ―What Caste is he? I don,t know. A Brahmin? Of course not. Then, cruelly … His father keeps a cycle shop ―Oh,so they are low caste people , are they ?‖ Sarita starts fantasizing about Manohar. The one-dream that dominates her psyche is the ager-old femine dream of total submission to a conquering male. Manohar and Sarita‘s marital life becomes quite good. Manohar‘s love appears to her protective, condescending all encompassing and satisfying. It is from this moment that Sarita takes a vow never to see her parents. Sarita is happy with Manohar, though they live dingy one – room apartment. But soon this happiness turns to be an illusion. As long as Sarita is a student, Manohar has been the
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breadwinner. They had peace at house despite its filth and stench. But problem begin to slowly creep in the moment when Sarita becomes a career – Oriented woman as a doctor. Manohar feels thoroughly insecure and this casts a shadow on their married life. The seed of Manohar‘s jealous sown here and he too starts to marginalize his wife because of her profession .Sarita, young and quite women excited by her profession. Manohar‘s behaviour starts to change, but later realizes that ―the esteem with which I was surrounded made me inches taller. But perhaps, the same things that made me inches taller made him inches shorter.‖(p.42) Manohar‘s ego is hurt by her success, he feels inferior and this sense of inferiority makes him brutal in his behaviour. The world around her and his place in her life becomes so insignificant that Manohar‘s position and place in her life becomes relatively unimportant. When saru completely hates Manohar it is her father asked her to confront reality. He tells her that ―She can‘t run away this way‖ (216).He advises her to face the situation. ―Give him a chance, Sarita stay and meet him. Talk to him. Let him know from you what is wrong. Tell him all that you told me ―…..Don‘t turn your back on things again. Turn round and look at them. Meet him.‖ (216) Saru‘s father is very sure about how Saru should behave. He appeals to her not to go away without meeting her husband. She puts off the moment of confrontations, not only with her parents, but also with herself. With the advice of her father Sarita realizes, that one has to be sufficient within oneself because there is no other refuge elsewhere and saw needs to apply to her what she has cautioned Dhruva once. There is no need to escape from the darkness or curse the darkness. Even though she is marginalized as a ―guilty sister, undutiful daughter, the unloving wife‖ (220) understands that it is she, who is self-assertive and that she has been cruel to her people like her own brother Dhruva, to her mother and her husband, Manohar. She realizes that her ego is responsible for all the problems that crept in her life. At this moment of utter despair, it is the call of her profession that steadies her and gives her that courage to confront reality. Sarita is the representative of middle-class working women in modern India. She wants to rebel against traditions and gender discrimination and to compromise with the existing reality. Thus Sarita wants to confront the reality of women who must take care of her family even though she is marginalized by her family and husband, because she is a typical woman of Indian Society. Shashi Deshpande does not glorify Sarita‘s sufferings. Though she tries to enlist a sufficient amount of sympathy for her protagonist, Sarita desires to liberate herself from the shackles of tradition and exercise her right to reveal her individual capabilities and realise her feminine self through identity –assertion and self-affirmation even though she is marginalized in every walks of her life.In the words of S.P.Swain: ―Saru‘s journey is a journey from self-
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alienation to self-identification, from negation to assertion, from diffidence to confidence. She learns to trust her feminine self‖ (Swain: 39).
REFERENCES 1. Deshpande , Shashi. The Dark Holds No Terrors . New Delhi : Pengiun Books , 1980. 2. Paul , Prameela . ―The Dark Holds No Terrors : A Woman‘s search for Refugee ―. Indian Women Novelists. Set I, Vol.5,ed.R.K.Dhawan , New Delhi : Prestige Books , 1991.P.67. 3. Swain, S.P.‖ Shashi Deshpande‘s The Dark Holds No Terrors : Saru‘s Feminine Sensibility‖ Indian Women Novelists, ed.R.K.Dhawan , New Delhi : Prestige Books , 1991.P.67.
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WOMEN‟S RESIST FOR UNIQUENESS IN CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY R. Gayathri , Asst Prof of English Sri Vasavi College, Self Finance Wing, Erode
Bim, the protagonist in Clear Light of Day who decides to face Life‘s challenges alone and while doing this, even though she encounters an identity crisis, her strong will-power and determination come to her help. The novel is set in Old Delhi and it speaks of a period soon after India‘s Independence and the communal riots that followed and as Nabar says, the novel exhibits ―a neo-colonial attitude…a class consciousness which is sufficiently present in the Indian context‖ (Nabar, 16). The main characters in Clear Light of Day, Bimla, often referred to as Bim, Raja, Tara and Baba, as children, have gone through harrowing experiences at two levels, at personal level and at social level. At the personal level they have faced parental neglect and at the social level, they have witnessed the confusions following the Indian freedom struggle and the World War. Asha Kanwar, in her study of Clear Light of Day says that even though Anita Desai takes the 1947 partition as the central episode in the novel, she doesn‘t appropriate it thematically. (Kanwar, 27) Bim‘s parents are too preoccupied with maintaining their aristocratic image in the social circles and they spend most of their time in playing Bridge and socializing in the Roshnara Club in Old Delhi. The children watch the goings and comings of their parents with fear, apprehension and curiosity. The last of the siblings Baba, rather a late arrival in the family, is an autistic child. The parents bring a distant relation of the mother, Mira masi, to take care of the children. But the children learn to take care of themselves, at least the two elder ones, Bim and Raja and they in turn provide support to the younger two, Tara and Baba. As children they used to play their favourite game of what they want to be in life and Raja and Bim always want to be hero and heroine while Tara wants to be a mother knitting for her children. Aunt Mira becomes their surrogate mother and takes good care of the children. They too huddle to her in moments of fear. After the death of their parents Bim becomes their mother figure, looking after Baba and taking care of Raja when he is down with tuberculosis. As she grows up into a young woman, the leadership qualities in her help Bim to face the hard realities in life. Early in life, Bim has decided to be independent in life by pursuing education and by deciding not to marry. When Tara does not find anything unusual or wrong about the Misra sisters (young college students) getting married while they are still studying in college, Bim reacts vehemently. ―I don‘t know why they‘re in such a hurry to get married, she said.‖ Why don‘t they go to college instead? (220) She further reinstates her priorities in life. ―I won‘t, repeated Bim, adding, „I shall never leave Baba and Raja and Mira-masi‖… (221)
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Bim is a woman with strong beliefs. She is not the kind of person to be bogged down by the conventional society. Anita Ghosh in her study on the modern Indian women novelists makes this observation: Desai points to a kind of feminist emancipation that lies in not limiting women to their traditional roles but in expanding and awakening them to several other possibilities. This kind of life, apart from being invigorating, also frees them from dependence on men.‖(Ghosh, 252) Bim is quite clear about what she wants to do with her life. She never tries to retain anybody with her for giving her company, neither her sister Tara who goes away with her husband Bakul nor her brother Raja who chases his ambition to build his future and fortune with the Hyder Alis in Hyderabad. Sudhakar Ratnakar Jamkhandi thinks that Bim‟s realistic and practical temperament has helped her to escape from her dreary world. (Jamkhandi, 12) Bim accepts her responsibilities in her life gracefully even though her hands are full with her mentally challenged brother Baba, and treads the long and tiring journey of life alone. But her long years of loneliness and struggle have taken their toll on her life. When Tara visits her sister after a lapse of several years, she finds her a changed person. In place of the confident and dominating personality, Tara finds a tyrant and at times a highly strung up individual who doesn‘t hesitate to be impolite to her brother-in-law, Bakul. The changed personality of Bim is averse to any changes. Bim‘s refusal to make changes in the household can be viewed in the light of her changed perception. Her subconscious is trying to cling on to the joyful moments of her childhood when she was always in the company of her siblings. Bim doesn‘t seem to realize the fact that she is living on a myth by refusing to make any changes in the house even as her personality changes, her perception changes and also her physical appearance changes. Bim compares the old house in Old Delhi to a tomb in a great cemetery. ―Old Delhi does not change. It only decays. My students tell me it is a great cemetery, every house a tomb. Nothing but sleeping graves…‖ (13) Bim feels ancient like Old Delhi and she thinks only of death and decay. It is as though years of toil and loneliness have taught her to take up a negative attitude. Preferring Pets over Brother-in-Law Bim‘s insensitivity is further manifested in her showing lack of hospitality to Bakul. She shows more care for her pets than to her brother-in-law Bakul, when she is pouring out milk in her cat‘s saucer, when she is conscious that there isn‘t enough milk left for his morning tea. Bim makes sarcastic remarks on herself as belonging to the group of ―old spinsters‖ and ―love- starved spinsters‖ and these make Tara filled with a sense of guilt. Virtually living alone with only her autistic brother Baba as her companion, Bim loses her trust in Tara and Raja. She wants to belong to the secluded world created by her. She shuns Tara and Raja from her world. Life has taught her to be tough. Bim accuses Tara of leaving their old ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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home for something brighter. The only person who knows her burden very well is Raja and he not only deserts her but he also betrays her. His letter allowing her to stay in their house by paying the same rent, wounds her ego. Bim‘s world shrinks into her college and her home with her dependent brother and her pets. No one else matters to her. She no longer believes in relationships. Even though Bim is relieved of the fact that the disturbing period of her youth has passed – because, for her, post-Independence India and the communal unrest meant more than external disturbance, it has seeped into her inner world like the ―first terrible flood of life‖ (72) – a part of her self weeps at the loss of her youth, the irrevocable loss. When Bim tells Tara that she would never want to be young again, ―An invisible cricket by her feet at that moment began to weep inconsolably.‖ (72). Bim cannot accept the changes in Raja and Tara. She observes with disbelief and irritation the new-found strength in Tara. Similarly, she cannot take in the changed physical appearance and the lifestyle of Raja. Bim is conscious of her identity confusion even though she is pretending to take things lightly. She becomes impatient with Tara when she leaves half of an orange uneaten. When Tara tries to justify her act by saying she has left only the rotten parts, Bim retorts, ―I do hate waste.‖(229) Her hands shake with anger. Bim‘s depression takes her to the brink of neurosis. Bim, with her dominating nature, has unconsciously added anger to her trait to overcome her anxiety and the feeling of insecurity caused by loneliness. Bim finally realizes the seriousness of her situation and she now wants to get herself out of this unfortunate situation. This realization is a good sign in Bim and it gives the answers to the questions that have been haunting her for many years. They were really all parts of her, inseparable, so many aspects of her, as she was of them, so that the anger or the disappointment she felt at them was only the anger and the disappointment she felt at herself. Whatever hurt they felt, she felt. Whatever diminished them, diminished her. Whatever attacked them, attacked her. (257) Even in her near-neurotic state, her strong will power and unfailing strength have only come to her rescue. She wants to forgive Raja for his unforgivable letter. It dawns on her that Raja has always been emulating his heroes in his life and in his poetry and that he has his limitations. Bim‘s realization that she is part of the world of her brother and her sister, that they were all part of her, helps her to come through her identity crisis. Probably Anita Desai is trying to project her thinking through Bim, the strong-willed woman who has learned to accept the reality of her life that she cannot always expect the companionship of her siblings who have their own priorities. Time has at last freed Bim from the grip of fear of loneliness and she is the independent self again ready to continue her journey through life. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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FAITH, VALUES AND THE SECULAR STATE IN R. K. NARAYAN‟S FICTION C. Jayanthi, BT Assistant, Kongu Matric.Hr. Sec. School, Erode
In this paper, I attempt to highlight R. K. Narayan‟s views on religion, philosophy and the secular state in the Indian context, with reference to his fiction. Religion and philosophy play a very prominent role in India. There is lot of diversity in the matter of religion and it plays quite a dominant role in India. India is not only one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world but it is also one of the most deeply religious societies and cultures. Religion occupies a central place in the life of Indian people and Indians enjoy perfect freedom to follow their religion and behave in the way it moves their soul. Religious worship is a part and parcel of Indian culture. Especially Indian women are deeply religious and orthodox. In all orthodox homes a separate place is set apart for worshipping God. It is designated as the puja room and we find R. K. Narayan mentioning about this special place of worship in most of his novels. Krishna in The English Teacher, talks about his wife Susila as she converts the corner of the dining room as the place for her puja. In The Financial Expert, Margayya asks his wife to clean up a little space for his puja as he wants to perform Lakshmi puja in the house for the next forty days. Decorating the floor with colourful rangoli designs is customary while performing puja. That is the reason for R. K. Narayan to mention that Margayya commands his wife to put rangoli, a decoration necessary for all auspicious occasions. Certain rituals are customary in performing the puja whether it is in the temple or in the house. For example, lighting oil lamps with cotton wicks, incense sticks, sitting on deer skin, decorating the idols with flowers like jasmine, lotus, rose etc, breaking coconuts, telling the beads, waving of camphor flames, sounding cymbals and bells, preparation of offerings like sweet rice, milk pudding, coconut and banana pieces and distributing to the devotees. Chandran‘s mother in The Bachelor of Arts performs puja with religious fervour, before she takes her meal. In the novel The Dark Room, Savitri too follows this schedule everyday with all faith and devotion. She does not eat her food without offering prayers to God. God protects if we offer anything in cash or in kind. This Indian belief is presented by R. K. Narayan in his novels. In The Painter of Signs, Raman‘s aunt, while leaving for Kasi, tells him to drop a ten-paisa coin into the money –chest at the temple as it has been her habit for years. We find a sea change of attitude in the younger generation in the matter of belief in God‘s worship and in following the rituals attached thereof. They laugh away at these rigid formalities which were practiced by the elders and do not take them quite seriously. We find a generation gap in this regard as R. K. Narayan presents this very strikingly in his novels.
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In The Guide, Raju‘s mother, while leaving the house after Rosie‘s entry, tells Raju not to forget lighting the lamp in God‘s niche. Raju‘s mother knows very well that Rosie will not keep up the religious and spiritual traditions of her house. So she takes her small prayer books with her which she used to read every day of her life. Raman‘s aunt too faces the same kind of situation as Daisy enters the house. She makes the little room beside the dining-room as her puja room. It is hardly ten feet wide and now it has to be allotted to Daisy. His aunt, who belongs to the older generation, decides to leave for Benares so that she can make way for Daisy‘s entry into the house. As she leaves the house, her puja room is converted into a living-room for Daisy. These incidents in Narayan‘s fiction mirror the clashing ideas between generations in the modern times. The new generation women, who are educated, do not subscribe to the views of their elders. These changes that occurred in the aspect of religious beliefs in India are very well presented by Narayan quite systematically by using his women characters as a link of the past and the present. Throughout the ages, Indian philosophy has shown a great influence on the world thought. The great Indian sages were the first ones to propound Indian philosophy through the eternal Upanishads. Their deep passion for realizing the ultimate Truth, coupled with a humane interest has resulted in developing a vedantic and social philosophy. This Vedanta is both philosophy and religion for India. When many other civilizations in the world collapsed, the Indian civilization has survived because its most important component is the central thought or dominant philosophy .It is the three-dimensional principle i.e. enjoyment, non-attachment and renunciation . There are some cultures which recommend a life of enjoyment. There are yet others which endorse renunciation. But Indian culture is a golden mean shaping a compromise between the two extremes–enjoyment and renunciation. Life can be enjoyed but one should not be attached to the things that give enjoyment. Indian philosophy lays stress on the principle of attached detachment. In other words, one should know that one day or other these sources of enjoyment like money, power and relatives will disappear. Renunciation does mot mean rejection or running away from life, but unselfishness. It is neither unworldliness nor other worldliness but better worldliness. Striking a beautiful balance between the two extremes of enjoyment and renunciation, which is an essential feature of Indian culture, men and women in India pursued this better worldliness. They sought spiritualism and renunciation, the twin ideals of Indian culture. Women, after fulfilling all their responsibilities, wish to spend a retired life peacefully in the presence of God. It is a kind of spiritual journey for them and they desire to spend their last days in sacred places like Benares, Haridwar, Hrishikesh, Prayag and Nasik. Especially this desire of spending the last days in Kasi is more prevalent among widows. Undertaking pilgrimage to Kasi by elderly women is a common feature in orthodox households in India. In The Painter of Signs,
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we find Raman‘s aunt expressing her desire to visit Kasi along with some more people, who will be her co-pilgrims. Ever since the Vedic times, Indians realized that renunciation leads to everlasting bliss and thus it is much favoured by elderly women in India .Yet another striking feature in Narayan‘s women characters is their belief in God and performing puja is a daily activity for them. We find a tulasi plant in their backyard. They also visit the temple in the evenings and join the bhajans that are held in temples in the evening times especially on Tuesdays and Fridays. Even in the houses, a place is designated to keep the idols for daily worship. All customs and austerities are observed very strictly by the orthodox women folk in R. K. Narayan‘s novels. The Preamble to the Indian Constitution, which was amended in 1976, summarizes the aim and objective of the Constitution as having solemnly resolved to Constitute India into a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic. Every citizen of India has the liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship. Indian Constitution has given to every individual the liberty to profess, practice and propagate religion so long as he/she does not injure the conviction of other people. Indian culture which is like an invincible fortress, is supported by very strong pillars and of all those mighty pillars, the most significant one is secularism. Secularism is not being irreligious. It is respecting the faith and beliefs of other people. This secular aspect is not new to India. It has its roots in ancient Indian culture and is significantly found in the ancient texts too. R. K. Narayan has taken the secular aspect of Indian culture even in selecting the names of his women characters. In his most celebrated novel, The Guide, he chooses a woman, here Rosie, as Indian ambassador for cultural preservation and also for propagation of culture and art. Narayan could have given any other known, common household name to her. He did not name her Rosie just because he was falling short of names. It shows the extent of Indian culture being accepted and adopted by fellow Indians belonging to different castes, creeds and cultural backgrounds. Rosie, which sounds to be a different name, is generally used by either Westerners or by that sect of people who profess Christianity .It is surprising to see that such a name is given to the daughter of a traditional family. It reflects on the national understanding and tolerance of each other. The other outstanding trend is that, this national integration, acceptance and synthesis are the basis of India‘s rich culture. The author intelligently brings out the change in name from Rosie to Nalini as it looks Western, and at the same time Rosie performs ‗Dance‘ which is essentially Indian. Indianness is not the monopoly and property of Indians alone. A Western name can also satisfy such requirement striking that thinking is to be Indian, doing is to be Indian and it is not in the ‗Name‘. It reflects on tradition and openness to accept and accommodate other people‘s faith and belief. Narayan knew the secular aspect of India. He understood well the strength of India‘s diversity .He celebrates that as and when he gets an opportunity. Yet again, in ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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the novel The Painter of Signs Narayan names the heroine Daisy. Narayan, time and again, displays his secular view in his fiction. This secular aspect of Indian culture is portrayed by Narayan even in his other novel The Vendor of Sweets, where he names the heroine Grace. Grace is half-Korean and half-American and she suddenly descends on the sleepy town of Malgudi. Her arrival creates a flutter in the otherwise conventional Malgudi town. Here again Narayan wants to show symbolically the most significant aspect of Indian secularism regarding acceptance, assimilation and synthesis of various cultures. Grace, a foreigner, comes as a bride of Mali, the son of Jagan, who is highly orthodox .Yet, Jagan accepts Grace as his daughter-in-law. Inter-religious and inter-caste marriages are not new to Indian culture. Right from the days of Mughal rule, marital ties between Indians and foreigners have been in vogue. Catholic outlook has been the hallmark of Indian culture, so Narayan has taken this aspect and depicted the arrival of Grace to show that he himself accepts and subscribes to this important feature of Indian culture. Hence in the aspects of Religion, Philosophy and the Secular State, Narayan subscribes to the most important features of Indian culture and he celebrates Indian culture in all its myriad forms and flavours in his fiction.
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LITERARY COMBINATION IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE‟S DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS S.Annie Cutie, Asst Prof of English, Sarah Tucker College, Tirunelveli
Diasporic writings explores the interaction of the culture of their birth with the culture of an adopted alien land which brings about multiple transformations in the immigrants life.Bharati Mukherjee, a diasporic writer of Indian origin, tries to reveal the fractured psyche of the immigrants settled in various countries in terms of ethnicity,language,class and socio- economic level. Indian immigrant writers carry their Indian sensibility with them and this constant pressure creates an alien environment abroad. This is reflected as diasporic feelings in their writings. Expatriate writing adopts a variety of approaches within a multicultural tradition. The usual thematic core of expatriate writing is the conflict between the native and the alien, ‘the self‘ and ‗the other‘. The term ‗diasporic‘ denotes exile, voluntary or compulsory exile. sometimes expatriates straddle two cultures while at other times, they fall between two stools. This kind of diasporic feelings end with the dilemmas of identity, cultural conflicts, frustration and a sense of rootlessness. Culture is an integral part of a nation and an individual. Culture is generally understood as a means of constituting the way of life of an entire society and includes codes of manners, dress, language, rituals, social customs and folklore of a nation. Every nation has a distinct culture of its own. Every nation has a distinct culture of its own. But when an independent country becomes a colony, the native culture undergoes a radical change. Every culture has its own peculiarities and predilections, which evoke a mixed response when a person immigrates and settles down in a different cultural milieu. People quite often try their best to forge a workable synthesis between their native culture and that of the new set-up. This process is not an easy one, and more often, it results in psychological traumas and the immigrant finds himself alien to both the cultures. Multiculturalism has come to be termed as ―mosaic madness‖. The immigrants are like plants that are uprooted from their native soil and planted on an alien ground. They need nourishments such as love, warmth, friendship, identity, acknowledgement, recognition, cordiality and congeniality. If these are denied, like the plant that wilts and withers in a climate that is not conducive to its growth, the personality of these people gets disintegrated. Here the survival instinct operates and those who have the zest for life would overcome the hurdles and surface up and others would succumb to the pressure. The survivors of this inevitable phenomenon of acculturation emerge with new personality, new identity and a new being as though they are re-born or reincarnated. In the ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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collision of cultures, the less forceful culture yields to the strong. The immigrants lose their cultural mooring and struggle initially. Then they look for a strong hold elsewhere. They may either totally disown their culture and embrace the new one or strike a via media combining the best of both cultures, and bring forth entirely new culture. These immigrants simultaneously cherish a nostalgic attitude towards their native culture, thus glorifying their home land. Owing to this kind of conflict among the immigrants, cultural assimilation or dislocation is never total. They are dislocated and, at the same time, assimilated. Desirable Daughters narrates the lives of three sisters Padma, Parvati and Tara who belong to a Bengali – Brahmin family. Tara Chatterjee is the narrator of the novel. She is a divorced school teacher living with her teenage son and a Hungarian boy friend, Andy. Tara is married to a Millionaire, Bishwapriya Chatterjee, called as Bish. The author contrast the life of Tara to her two sisters Padma and Parvati. Padma is married to Harish Mehta a non-Bengali businessman who is a television celebrity in the USA. Parvati lives with her husband, Aurobindo Banerji and with her two sons Bhupesh and Dinesh in Mumbai. The opening of the novel describes the marriage that took place in India during the 19th century. The author reveals with every details of traditional occurrence. Though the father of the bride is a lawyer, educated in English is also a traditionalist. The groom dies of snake bite and his family blames the bride as she was unlucky. The father of the bride groom demands for the return of dowry, but her father takes the bride who was only five year old to a forest and marries her to a tree. She becomes a noted woman for her courage and generosity and patriotism. Her American great grand-daughter Tara Chatterjee, visits her country, tracing her lineage. She was Tara Lata who was her great maternal aunt ―I cannot imagine the loneliness of this child. A Bengali girls happiest night is about to become her lifetime imprisonment. It seems all the sorrow of history, all that is unjust in society and in religion has settled on her‖ (DD, 4).she is headed deep into the forest to marry a tree. Her family tree is just that large hardwood. The groom has died of snake bite in the dark, and Tara Lata, the bride has been transformed into an unmarriageable girl, who brings ill fortune. In order to save her and allow her to occupy the respected position of married woman, within the family.her father marries her to a proxyhusband, a tree. This is a Hindu custom. Tara Lata becomes famous for acts of rebellion and she becomes a freedom fighter and martyr. After the night of her marriage, Tara Lata returned to Mishtigunji and, atleast by legend, never left her father‘s house. Unburdened by a time- consuming, emotion- draining marriage and children, never having to please a soul, she grew old in a single house in an impoverished village in the poorest place of earth, and in that house, the world came to her. She lived there seventy years and gradually changed her world. (DD, 17) Tara Chatterjee feels a mysterious connection to the Tree-Bride, whose story she had heard from her mother. Tara had been married, borne a son, and had travelled all over the world, yet as she asserts that she remains an Indian. As is evident from Tara Lata's history, she had
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accepted her marriage to a tree and then unburdened by the demands of husband and family, she had fashioned a redemptive role for herself. A lifelong virgin, she had opened her house to the beggars, the sick, and then to the young soldiers fighting the Raj. She had transformed herself from the unfortunate Tree-Bride to "Tara Ma", saint and freedom fighter. The sign post near the Gangooly property at Mistijung read as follows: The Home of Tara Lata Gangooly (1874-1944?), known to the world as "Tara Ma" Behind the walls lived an Untrained Nurse, Spiritual Healer, and Inspiration to Generations of Peace-loving and Peace – seeking Individuals from Around the world. During the Bengali Famine of 1942 she fed the Town and the Outlying Villages. She rallied the cause of an Independent India and United Bengal and protected Young Freedom Fighters from British arrest. She herself was dragged from her home on the Night of October 12, 1944, by Colonial authorities and Never Heard from Again. Her death was announced on October 18, 1944, and Attributed to a heart attack. (DD, 20) By narrating the tree bride‘s story at the beginning of the novel, Bharati Mukherjee impresses the readers with Indian cultural norm of marrying an unmarriageable girl to a tree. In contrast, Tara Chatterjee, the diasporic Indian, is shown to be exploring her freedoms after her traditional arranged marriage ended in divorce. Tara‘s connection to the Tree Bride is not therefore a connection back to a secure, primordial identity, but to rebel. Tara‘s own story is that of an entirely untraditional Bengali – American who has rebelled against the life of an Indian wife, and set up home with a lover in a multi- ethnic neighborhood. Her‘s is emphatically a broadband world. As a student her husband Bish discovered a process for allowing computers to create their own time, instantaneously routing information to the least congested lines. Bish is part of the process of globalization, the process by which people become increasingly interconnected across natural borders and continents. His mobile phone routing devices connect the whole world. Bish‘s discovery was prompted by a football game in which the player exploited the ―West coast offense‖, a tactic in which short passing‘s plays replace the running game, to control the ball. The lateral throws have the effect of stopping the clock and buying time. The bandwidth systems, called CHATTY is ―about width, using the whole field, connecting in the flat, no interference, a billion short passes linked together (DD 24) . As Tara was living in America with her lover Andy and her son. She is shocked by the arrival of ―Chris Dey‖. When ―Christopher Dey‖ reaches adulthood, his father reveals the truth of his parentage, and Dey decides to travel to the United States to meet his mother Padma. Dey somehow gets his aunt Tara‘s address in San Francisco, he had come to the Bay Area. Where there, he ran into a conman Abbas Sattar Hai, who murdered him and assumed his identity. Now in guise of Dey approached Tara and gained entry into her house, and presented her with a letter ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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purposely from Ron Dey, explaining the circumstances of his birth. This incident precipitates a crisis in Tara‘s life, leading to a questioning of their family traditions and cultural mores. When confronted by Tara, Padma refuse to confess her teenaged liaison and its consequences, prefers to immerse herself in the insular Bengali subculture of New Jersey, where she has evolved into a style icon. Didi has adopted even more traditional roles, staging Indian mythological evenings. She appears to have found an individual place on the stage which successfully unites family and nation. When she invites Tara to a party, she provides her with a new hair style, ―museum quality‖ designer sari and traditional gold jewellery. Failed rebellion gives way, apparently, to museumised tradition. As the star of a TV shopping channel Didi is an icon to the Indian community and her parties are ―a kind of home shopping service for upscale Indians‖ (HW, 231).Tara‘s hair was cut, the better to display the earrings to buyers; the sari is designed to expose sufficient cleavage to show off the necklace. It dawns on Tara that she is performing in an advertising stunt. She pretends to be most traditional in order to exploit tradition to consumerist ends. Padma Mehta is a television personality. She is an icon among the Bengali‘s of the tristate area. What she wears and what she recommends are taken as fashion statements in the community. They are high rollers, but their wives don‘t get out that much, and the men don‘t like to waste time coming into the city of Sundays. So Padma thought of these parties as a kind of home shopping service for upscale Indians. There‘s an economic benefit for participating merchants, but the social values far outweight it. And so, from time to time, we throw these parties so that the community can sample these styles in saris and jewellery that they might be missing by being out of Bengal. (DD 231) When her own phone rings, Tara is reconnected to Bish (in a hot tub in Brisbane). Bish appears omnipotent, better- protected than half the world heads of state with ―no end to the technical and human networks he commanded‖ (DD 256). He has an assembly plant in Bangalore, a marketing arm in Bombay, and start-up in Bangladesh. His connections create an Empire which overrides national boundaries. Indeed he is able to evade the limits of time. Flying to San Francisco, he will be ―back some time before we leave‖ (DD, 256). Tara, the narrator feels that she not reading her life according to Indian culture who is at present in San Francisco. Neither Parvati writes letter to Tara as before nor Padma calls her through telephone nowadays. Tara writes a letter to Ronald Dey for inquiry about Chris Dey. But Ronald reply is curious. So Tara doubts that he is not Chris Dey, but it is very clear to her that , there is a chris Dey and Padma is her mother. When Tara visits Jack Singh, to get police help, she is infuriated to realise that he sees her use of her maiden name as an attempt to conceal her real identity. She visits Rabi school and receives confronting report about Rabi. She discovers ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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that Rabi is a gay. Tara identifies the man posing as Chris Dey. He is a criminal, member of Indian mob and a murderer. Jacks inform Tara that Rabi and her ex-husband Bish are in danger. At the close of the novel Bish is seriously injured by a bomb, triggered by a reconfigured cellphone. The reader ends the novel convinced that the target was Bish, that the bomber was part of an international globalised criminal network, and that the aim was financial. Thus, In Desirable Daughters, Tara is deeply traumatized by the terrorist attack and returns to India so as to revaluate the Hindu customs that had shaped her and her family. Mukherjee's works focus on the status of immigrants, and the feeling of alienation often experienced by expatriates as well as on Indian women and their struggle. Her own struggle with identity first as an exile from India, then as an Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally as a immigrant in the United States has lead to her current contentment of being an immigrant in a country of immigrants. The real pain of immigrants who tries to adopt them to the new life style is brought out through cultural difference in this novel.
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REVISIONIST SAGA CREATION IN GITHA HARIHARAN‟S THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT B.Vijayan, Asst Prof of English, VSA Group of Institutions, Salem
It is Adrienne Rich who described women‘s writings as re-vision. Re-vision, as defined by Adrienne Rich, is an act of looking back, of entering into an old text from a new critical tradition. She observed ―this is for us [women] more a chapter in critical history; it is an act of survival‖ (Rich 18). This is true of women‘s writing of last decade – social, political, cultural, economic and religious matters – all have come in for a critical re-vision in women‘s writing. In this programme, re-vision no longer remained a simple looking back but has evolved into a revisionist remaking of the past and thereby a reinvention of a new tradition. As part of this re-making and revisionist myth-making programme, old stories are told in different ways from gyro-centric perspectives. Traditional Hindu myths and tales also have depicted women to be meek, submissive, servile, feminine and inferior to men. Epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana have set standards directly or indirectly by which our culture has been operating all along. These Hindu myths and lore which speak about women‘s roles and models have a greater impact upon female psyche and women have been trained to internalize their cultural image through these myths. These myths are used as tools by patriarchal society in a subtle manner to enslave women and make them play male-scripted subordinate roles. Such revisionist myth making has been one of the strategies for emancipation employed in the cause of women‘s liberation. Subversion, parody, pastiche are preferred techniques in feminist re-writing of the old texts. As women play with the old texts, the burden of the tradition is lightened and shifted; it has the potential of being remade with the possibility of cultural renewal. Githa Hariharan‘s novel The Thousand Faces of Night deals with what it means to be a woman in modern India and it raises question of female space. The novel presents stories of 3 women – Sita, Devi and Mayamma who engage in a lonely but difficult battle against the restrictive rules of patriarchy. All of them, each in her own way have been both a victim and survivor – their lives scarred by suffering, sacrifice, injustice and disappointment meted out by the patriarchal society. Yet in the end, they emerge undefeated and strong by using their own survival strategies. Their survival strategies lie in deconstructing the age-old Hindu myths and stories, rewriting them and subverting the male discourse. Hence, Githa Hariharan‘s The Thousand Faces of Night can also be read as part of the revisionist myth-making programme one finds in women‘s texts.
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The novel The Thousand Faces of Night shows with exceptional fictional skill, the subtle way in which women are bludgeoned to play male-scripted subordinate roles. The novel explores how middle class Hindu society prescribes gender relations and male script roles by means of myths that women are told and how women rework them in their lives and also in the lives of other. The paternalistic laws of Manu, the ancient Hindu sage runs like a thread throughout the text. These laws are articulated by Devi the protagonist‘s father-in-law. This male discourse is subverted by female discourse of Devi‘s grandmother. If Manu speaks of female subordination, the grandmother‘s discourse glorifies strong, rebellious angry women – Draupadi and Amba from Mahabharatha – whose just wrath wreaks havoc and destroys entire lines of male controlled dynasties. If history is male, myth is female. In fact, the male discourse of Manu is subverted by grandmother‘s revisionist myth-making. ―There is no remedy to sexual politics in marriage‖ (Millet 147). This statement is explored by Githa Hariharan in her novel The Thousand Faces of Night. The author‘s narrative technique of framing texts within the text and her intertextual weaving of tales from Mahabharatha and folk stories with lives of real women. From her childhood to adolescence and during her summer visits, Devi grew up listening to her grandmother‘s stories. Grand mother‘s narration is a kind of revisionist myth making in its own right. By her clever improvisation of texts and revisionist myth-making talent, the grandmother seems to impart a secret knowledge through her purposeful retelling of the tales. She did not dwell on the prominent figures of Hindu mythology – like Sita, Savitri or Anasuya – celebrated paragons of female virtue. She retrieves marginal figures like Gandhari, Amba and Ganga who are almost forgotten and rendered invisible in patriarchal versions of myth. All these women contain greater fury in them and they have protested against their exploitation. Gandhari‘s anger is hid behind the bandage covering her eyes, Amba is a female avenger and Ganga who walks out of marriage when the terms of marriage are broken, represents female determination. For the grandmother, the link between her stories and the lives of real women whom she has come across is a vital one. She tries to make subtle connections between the profound, awe inspiring lives of mythical heroines with the sordid stories of real women and men. For instance, once Devi was surprised to see the photograph of her mother with a veena. She had never seen her mother playing a veena. Devi‘s grandmother narrates the story of Gandhari as an answer to her question. Gandhari of Mahabharatha is usually portrayed as an icon of selfsacrifice, a pathivrata. But in grandmother‘s story, she becomes a symbol of pride and self denial. Saddled with a blind husband, she desires to share his blindness than to be his vision. Her blind folding is definitely an act of protest.
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Githa Hariharan draws a parallel between Sita‘s repressed desires and Gandhari‘s suppressed anger. As a young bride Sita brought a veena because she is a veena player and she nurtured youthful dreams of artistic genius and fame. But when her father-in-law objected to her playing the veena in the house, ―she pulled the strings of veena out of the wooden box and she never touched the veena again‖ (TFN 30). Now she focused on one goal in life, i.e., to be a good wife and good mother. After Devi‘s marriage, Sita dared not look back at her life lest she would encounter only emptiness that will reveal to her ―a soiled ground of life devoted to being the ideal woman‖ (TFN 107). In fact, she has to pay a heavy price in her life. Sita‘s decision to discard her veena is an act of both vengeance and self-denial. In her self-destructive anger, Sita is the mythical Gandhari and for Sita as for Gandhari, their self punishment only fuelled their inner anger and remained an ever present reproach in their hearts. Devi realized later that Gandhari‘s pride and fury that was her life-fire was no piece of fiction. It burnt in Devi‘s heart also when she was cheated out of her expectations of marriage. Thus grandmother could make a revisionist myth of Gandhari‘s life and connect it with the real women‘s life also. All such stories of mythological women become Devi‘s cultural and psychological survival kit. In fact, grandmother‘s stories were a prelude to her womanhood, an imitation into its subterranean possibilities (TFN 51). Devi fed on the stories of mythical figures becomes a dreamer. Her artistic and creative yearnings are unleashed and nurtured. They mark a female rite of passage into female creativity. In her fantasy, she becomes a woman warrior, a heroine. She is Devi, the goddess. She ―rides a tiger and cuts off evil, magical demon‘s heads‖ (TFN 41) for the redemption of the world. Soon marriage traps Devi in man-made enclosures. Grandmother‘s stories are replaced by her father-in-law‘s discourse on Manu‘s laws for women. ―His [stories] define the limit for the women … their centre point an exacting touch stone, a wife‖ (TFN 51). Devi‘s married life proves to be hollow. Mahesh, her husband‘s matter-of-fact approach to marriage does not favour the blossoming of the fragile flower marriage. After years of married life, Devi‘s heart remains untouched and not even sought for. Mahesh remains a shadowy figure in her life. Devi in her loneliness is drawn to the solitary figure Mayamma, the old maid who has stoically endured the sufferings inflicted by her husband, mother-in-law and son whose tales of suffering sounded stranger than any tale. In addition to her loneliness, their childlessness aggravates their separation. One day Mahesh said, ―Let‘s have a baby‖. ―I want you to have my
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baby‖ and after a night of purposeful love making he left on a long business tour. Devi could not conceive. They drift apart. Alone, alone in the house with Mayamma and Baba‘s orphaned books, Devi with rebellion taking root in her heart, reads a book about ―Kritya, a ferocious woman who haunts and destroys the house in which women are insulted. She burns with anger. She spites fire. She sets the world ablaze like Kali …‖ (TFN 70). In this passage, Hariharan comes very close to radical feminism. Devi curses herself for swallowing her hard earned education and following his footsteps. She is gradually drawn to the music of Gopal, a karanatic music celebrity and decides to …. But soon disenchantment sets in. She walks out on Gopal. Along with her disenchantment, realization dawns on Devi that all through her life, she was running away from her trails – America, the house on Jarcand Road, Mahesh and Gopal. She could not offer help to her father‘s helplessness nor could she understand her mother Sita‘s loneliness behind her grim perseverance. She gets a revelation of herself in an epiphany. All along she had been living as a weak willed woman and she had allowed others to treat her as a puppet and they pulled her strings. She realizes that she has made very few choices in her life. Devi knew the time was right now to make choices in her life to write off the male scripts. She has to find her authentic self now. She knew if she did not act now, she would be forever condemned ―to drift between worlds … a floating island detached from the solidity of mainland‖ (TFN 138). She boards the train for Madras. She wants to return to her mother from whom earlier she tried to escape through fantasy and through her identification with the male world. ―She had felt bold and carefree when she left Mahesh‘s house, a little like a heroine. But she felt like a fugitive now [after leaving Gopal], though she was, for the first time no longer on the run‖ (TFN 138). She has to meet her mother to offer her her love. Devi saw the long stretches of sand, the road that led towards the house by the sea. She straightened her back as she saw the house come into view. She rehearsed in her mind the words, the unflinching look she had to meet Sita with to offer her her love. ―To stay and fight, to make sense of it all, she would have to start from the beginning‖ (TFN 139). ―Suitcase in hand, Devi opened the gate and looked wonderingly at the garden, wild and over-grown, but lush in spite of its sand-choked roots. Then she quickened her footsteps as she heard the faint sounds of a veena, hesitant and child like, inviting her into the house‖ (TFN 139). While Devi returns to offer her love, Sita is also reborn through her daughter‘s adventures in life. She retrieves her lost self by returning to her music and to her veena. Sita has been the ideal daughter-in-law, wife and mother. When her ideal becomes void and futile, she is ready for self-examination. ―She sat before the relic from her past, the broken veena, freshly ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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dusted, and waited for Devi to come back to her‖ (TFN 109). The inviting call of veena to Devi suggests a renewal of new positive relationship with her mother, herself and the renewal of life itself. Through revisionist myth making, Devi has learnt survival. Devi has listened to the strategies of women survival from her grandmother‘s stories. Devi rewrites these stories in her own life. Her strategy for survival is different. She learns from Amba‘s story ―A woman fights her battles alone‖ and applies this survival strategy for herself. Both Sita and Devi have liberated themselves from the pressures of feminine role-play to attain a free creative individuality. The novel reveals the truth that though the female get educated, how so ever the society may get modernized, the females will be exploited in all the ages and their condition will remain as same as it was years ago during the mythical age. REFERENCES 1. Hariharan, Githa. The Thousand Faces of Night. New Delhi : Viking. 1992. 2. Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics, London : Rupert Hart Davis, 1971, 140. 3. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken : Writing as Revision”. College English 34.1.1972. 18–30. 4. Ostriker, Alicia Suskin. “The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking” in The New Feminist Criticism. Ed. Elaine Showalter, New York: Random House, 1985, 317 – 330.
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FEMINISTIC APPROACHES IN JHUMPA LAHIRI‟S “THE LOW LAND” J.Vijeswaran,II B.A English Sri Vasavi College, SFW, Erode
Jhumpa Lahirri, by name of Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri (Born July 11, 1967, London, England), English – born American novelist and short story writer the immigrant experience, in particular that of East Indians who is fond of writing the themes of feminism. In her novel ―THE LOW LAND‖ she depicts the portrait of the story of iconoclastic female character Gauri and the post-independence of Naxalite Movement. Through this work Lahiri touches the hearts of women who have a thirst of being independent to find their identity. Feminism literally ‗the advocacy of women‘s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes‘.Lahiri used it magnificiently through out his literary career. She shows feminism as mother-hood ,women-hood through her unforgettable characters like Gauri, Bela and Ashima Ganguli. The story of the low land opens in part one with Subhash and Udayan, brothers raised in Tollygunge, Calcutta. Their hobbies include fixing radios and learning Morse Code. They‘re inseparable. As they grew older and leave for university, what they know and think about the world changes. Subhash goes to Rhode Island in the United States to focus on his graduate studies. There, he learns about the consequences of the Naxalite Movement—bloodshed. Yet media focus on is on the Vietnam War. Udayan joins the Naxalite Movement and marries a woman named Gauri. In part two, readers learn that Gauri and Udayan met through Gauri‘s brother—and initially, Gauri didn‘t care one way or the other for Udayan. But they grow close over discussing philosophy, and Udayan proves his feelings are serious when he waits outside of a movie theater for Gauri. In Rhode Island, Subhash meets Holly and her son Joshua. Holly is separated from her husband, Keith. One night, when Joshua is with Keith, Holly and Subhash sleep together. Despite this, Holly and Keith end up back together. At the end of this part of the novel, Subhash receives a letter from home informing him that Udayan was killed.
When Subhash returns to Calcutta in part three, he finds that Gauri is living with his parents. They don‘t treat her nicely and she‘s pregnant with Udayan‘s child. Subhash‘s parents want to take the child when it‘s born and cast Gauri out. Subhash can‘t find out from his parents what happened to Udayan, but Gauri ultimately tells him: The police were after Udayan, and threatened to kill his and Subhash‘s parents, as well as Gauri, if he didn‘t surrender. Udayan
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surrendered, at which point he was executed. To protect Gauri, Subhash asks her to marry him and return to Rhode Island with him. Gauri agrees in part four of The Lowland. In Rhode Island, she sits in on philosophy classes. When she gives birth to her baby, she chooses the name Bela. When she‘s healed from childbirth, she and Subhash have sex for the first time, but both are unfulfilled. Subhash is a kind parent. Four years later, Subhash encounters Holly and Keith, but they only exchange brief greetings. Subhash wants Gauri to have another baby, so Bela will have a sibling, but Gauri is uncertain. When Gauri decides to go to graduate school, Subhash plans to look after Bela. In her studies, Gauri meets Professor Otto Weiss, who presses Gauri to go for her PhD; she does so. Gauri and Subhash agree to one day tell Bela about her real father, Udayan.. Subhash and Gauri‘s relationship suffers when Subhash learns that Gauri has been neglecting Bela. Subhash‘s father dies, so he and Bela travel to Calcutta in part five, where Subhash‘s mother, Bijoli, nearly reveals that Udayan is Bela‘s father. Bela asks about Udayan, so Subhash tells her that Udayan is her late uncle. When they return to Rhode Island, they learn that Gauri has left them and gone to California; she wants Subhash to raise Bela alone. Bela grows up, goes to college, and then travels all over the United States to advocate for the environment. In part six, the story returns to Gauri. She‘s teaching in California and becomes notable in her field. When a UCLA graduate student named Lorna asks for her help with her dissertation, the two begin a romantic relationship that lasts for years. Now in his sixties, Subhash begins a relationship with Elise, one of Bela‘s teachers. Bela visits them sometimes. Bela married Drew and soon she became pregnant. In her thirties, Bela tells Subhash that she‘s pregnant but doesn‘t know who the father is—and she doesn‘t want to know. Subhash becomes angry and tells Bela that Udayan is really her father. She gets upset and walks out. After they‘ve cooled down, Bela forgives Subhash and they live together in Rhode Island. Bela names her daughter Meghna.
In part seven, Subhash asks Gauri for a divorce and she agrees. When Gauri comes to visit, Bela tells Meghna that Gauri is her great aunt, not her grandmother. Bela can‘t forgive Gauri. Gauri returns to Calcutta, where she slips into despair and almost kills herself. Instead, she returns to California to find a letter from Bela. Meghna asks about Gauri, and Bela promises to tell her the truth about Gauri someday. The letter ends with a suggestion that perhaps the three of them can try meeting again.
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murder. He feels regret for such an act, and his final thought was that if he met Gauri sooner, perhaps his life would have gone in a different direction The Lowland dealt with a number of subjects that resonated with me, both things I‘ve long had an interest in (Indian culture) and subjects that have weighed heavier on my mind in the last year or two (family, death, love, estrangement — forced and optional — and long-term relationships of any sort). Like Subhash, I‘ve also lost my only sibling to a gunshot (though in my brother‘s case, it was self-inflicted). Lahiri‘s prose was deceptively simple — straightforward through most of the book, then dipping into eloquent, stirring language at pivotal scenes. One of my frustrations with audiobooks is that it‘s harder for me to capture quotes to share examples of this. Here‘s a line that made me flinch, though: ―She had started sleeping with him because it was more effort not to.‖
Gauri was a fascinating character. My sympathy was with her at the start, even through her early struggles with motherhood. I‘m keen on depictions of women who are not naturally maternal — it‘s incredibly important when, even in today‘s world, that‘s considered the measure of a woman‘s character and a failsafe token for redemption. I‘ll point to the movie Maleficent, even though I haven‘t seen it, but I‘ve read enough detailed reviews and summaries to know how they made Maleficent a sympathetic character (spoilers ahead): by making her genuinely care about Aurora, take a large role in raising her, and actually giving her kiss the ―true love‖ quality to wake Aurora from her sleep.
But for me as a feminist, the notion of sprinkling a villainess with a large heaping of ~Maternity~ in order to humanize her is tiresomely old-fashioned and harmfully gender-role restrictive. So Gauri is quite the opposite study. First she lives the nightmare that many women hoping to be mothers fear (myself included, even though motherhood anytime soon is the very last thing I want): that after her child is born, she does not feel the overpowering, allencompassing love that mothers are supposed to feel. That is not a sin, of course. It‘s not something she can help at all. But, twelve years after the birth of her daughter, she chooses to act on it — and it is, as she admits later in her narration, the worst thing she could possibly do. While her daughter and husband are on a trip to India, she packs up for California, only leaving a letter behind to her ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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husband. Nothing to her daughter. No communication between them for the next twenty-five years. The Lowland there‘s no nanny installed who already fulfills most of a mother‘s daily duties. Here, we see the effect on Bela up close and gritty, over all the years to come. And I can imagine few things worse happening to a child than your mother abandoning you, without a goodbye or even a note, because she does not love you. That is an awful, awful weight to carry for the rest of your life. The perceived irony is that Gauri has a doctorate in philosophy and that‘s what she goes on to teach for decades. I only had one philosophy class in college, and I don‘t think that qualifies me to say whether Gauri was a hypocrite or fraud to make a career of teaching philosophy after abandoning her child. I know that many people would say yes, but my instinct is to say no. Understanding and teaching a range of philosophies (including, I‘m sure, many that support her decision) has nothing to do with personal decisions. Hannibal Lecter could have been a perfectly adequate philosophy professor instead of a psychiatrist. But I‘m not suggesting that Gauri is any type of sociopath. The scene that decisively settles that question is after her meeting with Bela later in life, when Bela tells her that Gauri is dead to her, and Gauri returns to India for the first time in decades to contemplate suicide from a balcony. It‘s an understated but effective scene that recovers a little of the reader‘s sympathy for her. Gauri lacked maternalism, but hearing those words from her daughter‘s lips is enough to devastate her, to make her literally want to die. Even as a feminist, I approve of this; that seems to me the way it should be, at least in order to assure me that Gauri is not a sociopath. And yes, by that point my sympathy is firmly with Bela and her lifetime of suffering — of feeling inadequate and unloved; of pushing away every type of long-term relationship because of Gauri‘s selfish decision. So I was relieved when Bela did not forgive her, even after that meeting. The letter she later wrote Gauri, for Megna‘s sake, was just right in my mind with its lack of salutation, but for Bela‘s own peace and closure, I was glad she felt able to suggest one day holding a truce, for her daughter‘s sake. Back to placing a moral judgment on Gauri‘s action, including from a feminist perspective — I will, after all, briefly refer to something I learned in that one college philosophy class. It was an overview class, of course, a general education requiement, but it did spend some time focusing on Utilitarianism and Kantianism. Utilitarianism appealed to me, and I‘ll apply it here now: ―the proper course of action is the one that maximizes utility, usually defined as maximizing total benefit and reducing suffering or the negatives.‖ As its founders Jeremy
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Bentham and John Stuart Mill elaborated, it is ―a hedonistic approach only if the results of an action do not directly cause a negative impact on others.‖ From that view, I cannot condone Gauri‘s actions, even if her marriage was loveless and she had no attachment to her child. The harm her actions incurred on another human being — even if it had been someone not biologically related to her — outweighed the benefits to herself. If I ever found myself in a similar situation — well, even if seeking a divorce, even if the best start for me seemed to be thousands of miles away, I‘d want to take into consideration my child‘s well-being. I‘d consider that I have a maternal obligation, at least until they‘re eighteen. And if I must move away, I‘d sit down and talk to them before going.
The Lowland is a sweeping, ambitious story that examines in intimate detail the intersection of the political and the personal, encompassing nearly 50 years of Indian and American history through the lives of one family. The novel ripples out from the beginnings of the Naxalite uprising in West Bengal in 1967. Two brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra, are attracted by the radical communist movement while at university in Calcutta. But Subhash, the more cautious and sensible of the two, quickly perceives the danger involved and withdraws, leaving to study in the US. Udayan, left behind, becomes more entrenched in militant politics, believing that violence against the state is justified in the name of revolution. It's not much of a spoiler to reveal that, early on, he is arrested and executed by the police on the lowland behind their parents' suburban house, supposedly for his part in a violent crime.
"Udayan had given his life to a movement that had been misguided, that had caused only damage, that had already been dismantled. The only thing he had altered was what their family had been." The novel pivots on this moment of Udayan's death. He leaves behind a young widow, Gauri, a fellow student already in the early stages of pregnancy. Out of a sense of duty to his brother, and to save her from a life of drudgery in Calcutta, Subhash marries Gauri and takes her back to Rhode Island. There, for the sake of propriety, they maintain the fiction that he is her daughter's father, though the lie slowly corrodes their fragile marriage.
Lahiri's writing is notable for its restraint and understatement. She resists lyricism, just as she avoids obvious drama. Until the very end of the book, every major upheaval – death, betrayal, violence – happens offstage and is recounted, second-hand. Instead, she concentrates on the minutiae of relationships – between brothers, between husband and wife, and between parents and children – and on the deep reverberations these dramatic moments create in ordinary lives. But she also – quietly, without sensationalism – draws attention to the post-independence India in which the Naxalite movement was born: the desperate poverty that led many young ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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idealists to see revolutionary violence and self-sacrifice as the only solution. It's a chapter of history overlooked by the west, as Gauri learns when she comes to Rhode Island: "There was nothing about Calcutta. What had consumed the city, what had altered the course of her life and shattered it, was not reported here." Lahiri structures the novel with exquisite precision, building atmosphere through cumulative detail, parsing out the backstory as Gauri and Subhash allow themselves to revisit memories from their youth, so that it is only towards the end that we learn the full truth about Udayan's death – a truth that asks us to revise our opinions of the characters and their actions.
This is especially true of Gauri, the book's most vivid character. A woman born ahead of her time, unsuited both by temperament and intellect to the conventions demanded by her culture, she reinvents herself most fully in the more liberated climate of the States, but this forging of a new self comes at a terrible cost to her family. Subhash calls her cold-hearted, but Lahiri's insight into the inner conflict of a woman who chooses her intellectual life over the demands of motherhood is unsparing and beautifully rendered.
Perhaps Lahiri spreads her net a little too wide at times; there are sudden excursions into the viewpoint of Subhash's mother or Udayan, characters who have previously existed through the eyes of others, while Bela, the daughter, feels a little indistinct, her crucial formative years somewhat glossed over until she returns as an adult. But there is no doubt that The Lowland confirms Lahiri as a writer of formidable powers and great depth of feeling, who makes the business of conjuring a story from the chaos of human lives seem quite effortless.
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CONDITIONS OF WOMEN IN PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO SHASHI DESHPANDE‟S ROOTS AND SHADOWS S.Vanitha, HOD of English, Sri Vasavi College (Self-Finance Wing), Erode
ABSTRACT Shashi Deshpande, the Sahitya Academy Award winning Indian woman novelist, in English, started her literary career with the publication of her first short story in 1970. She became popular as an Indian women novelist in English with the publication of her first novel, The Dark Holds No Terrors, published in 1980. She has written eleven novels including her latest novel, strangers to ourselves published in 2015. Deshpande an Indian Feminist whose novels are rooted in Indian soil and context, is not happy with a pathetic and tragedy lot of Middle Class Indian women. Roots and Shadows is an Indian novel, written by Shashi Deshpande in 1983. The novel focuses on Indu‘s interactions with others in her large family and the manner in which this helps to resolve their future and her own personal crisis. The work has been widely analysed and criticized for its feminist orientation. Deshpande depicts Indu as a female revolutionary protoganist. In this work Shashi Deshpande has raised a voice of protest against a patriarchal attitude to women in a contemporary male-centric Indian society. Key words: Gender discrimination, patriarchy, self-identity, Independent, victimized, virginity. Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority social privilege and control of property.Some patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, meaning that property and title are inherited by the male lineage. Patriarchy is associated with a set of ideas, a patriarchal ideology that acts to explain and justify this dominance and attributes it to inherent natural difference between men and women. Shashi Deshpande‘s novel ROOTS AND SHADOWS deals with the theme of subjugation. It depicts the way how Indu sets out on her journey of self-realisation and eventually sheds her inhibitions. Thus she moves on to the path of liberation. The novel entails the journey of Indu who attains her feminist identity by crossing over the impediments posited before her by the patriarchy. In her novels she has tried to project a realistic picture of the middle-class educated women who are financially independent who represent a larger part of the contemporary Indian Society. Her novels deal with the problems of the adjustments and conflicts in the minds of female protagonists who ultimately submit to the traditional roles , in the transitional society. In an interesting interview, she reveals that all her characters are concerned with themselves and they learn to be honest to themselves. The women Roots and Shadows and The Dark Holds No Terrors present themselves as the women who want to go in self-quest and are free from the restrictions imposed by society, culture, nature and are also free from their own fear and guilt. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Roots and Shadows(1983) is a multi-layered novel. Like the other novels of Deshpande, it tells the story of intricate relationships within a traditional joint family. In addressing the specific issue of the protagonist Indu‘s quest for self-identity, it also subjects to close critical scrutiny the question of the position of women in traditional Indian society . Narrated from the perspective of Indu, the story moves back and forth in time. When the novel begins Indu is back in her ancestral home where preparations are in full swing for her cousin Mini‘s marriage that is to takes place later that day. With her is her husband Jayant, who is visiting her house for the first time in the three years of their marriage. Indu‘s and Jayant‘s have been a love marriage and since Jayant belongs to a different caste and spoke a different language, Akka has refused to acknowledge the alliance. Akka who comes to the house long ago as a childless widow literally presides over the destiny of her brother‘s children, ruling over them, their children and their grandchildren with an iron hand. Indu‘s uncle and wife, Kaka and Kaki, along with their four children, Hemant, Sumant, Mini and Sharad also live in the ancestral home. So do Atya, Indu‘s widowed aunt and Akka‘s cousin old uncle and his grandson Naren. Deshpande explores the inner struggle of Indu, who is the protagonist of the novel and represents a set of modern women who are educated and are very much in contact with society ,dealing with the critical problems like love,marriage,sex,settlement and individuality. She also concentrates on career women and the problems they face outside the threshold of their homes in a basically male dominated social set-up. She portrays women of different age groups and gives an insight into their psyche. The woman as a young girl tries to shed off shackles of paternal control as a daughter leading to her marriage, where she finds that her role as wife or as mother enslaves her in another framework. Then she ventures out of the house to pursue a career, perhaps to become emotionally independent and here again she is subjected to gender discrimination. In Indian social life, woman is conditioned to survive with the support of male desires only. The story revolves around Indu, an educated middle-class woman,in a male dominated tradition bound society. Indu symbolizes the New Woman, who is educated and who lives in close association with society brushing aside all its narrow conventions. The novel also deals with the unfulfilled desires and unhappy marriages of women in a large Brahmin household. It is apparently the story of the triumph and tragedy of a family that is bound up in its conditioned patriarchal self. It deals the story not of an individual but of the institution of marriage, which is threatened by the forces of change and faces dissolution. Deshpande depicts the anxiety of the educated, independent middle class indian woman searching for a balance between her traditional role as daughter, wife and mother in a patriarchal
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society. The important female characters in the novel are, Indu, Akka and Mini. Indu is brought up in an orthodox Brahmin family headed by Akka.She lives in joint family.The four generations of the family lived together in the ancestral house built years ago by Indu‘s great grand-father. It is an ancient family over which Akka rules like an inconsiderate tyrant, ruthless and dominating. Akka, a surrogate mother, dominates Indu as a child and young lady. From her childhood Indu has an urge to develop her personality self respect and confidence, which she considers greater than the traditions. Indu, from her teenage,has always hated Akka for her narrow mindedness. As a girl child in their joint family, Indu is always restricted to be obedient, submissive, meek and unquestioning. Indu rebels against the suffocating authority of Akka and the oppressive atmosphere of the family where women have no choice but to submit and accept their lot. Akka represents old generation , tradition and authority ,while Indu new generation ,modernity and freedom. Except Indu all other people in the family admire Akka, because she is always a symbol of leadership who assures happiness to everybody. But Indu,a rebel, often wishes to be free and unrestrained. Thus, she is presented as a model against the women belonging to the older generation. Indu reveals to Akka about her love affair and inter-caste marriage with Jayant. But she does not approve of Indu‘s marriage with Jayant. Thus, she rebels against Akka‘s authority and marries Jayant and enters another house to be independent and complete.This is the first step in her self autonomy. After her love marriage suppresses her feminity and her human demands. It is both physically and spiritually dissatisfying. Indu‘s idea of being complete,independent and selfcontained vanishes after her marriage. She left her job in the woman‘s magazine for obvious reasons. She wants to go for creative writing and to achieve more in life. Indhu feels that there is no space for her personal desires, neither in parental home, nor in the home of her husband. In both conditions Indu finds herself lonely and isolated. When Indu looks back at her life, she realizes that her marriage is unhappy because she lost her identity.She develops a habit of self-deception. She is guided only by his wishes. The paradox is she is not happy with jayanth but at the same time, she cannot live without him. She thinks that she has achieved independence and completeness, but soon she realizes that her independence is not complete and total she is content; she wants something more than marriage to achieve in life. The submission of women to the male dominated society is clearly shown through this character. As Kate Miller rightly points out that, patriarchy always subordinates the female to the male or treats the female as an inferior male.
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REFERENCES 1. Swain, S.(1998). Roots and shadows: A Feminist Study,The Fiction of Shashi
Deshpande. ( R.Pathak,Ed.) New Delhi: Creative.86 2. Deshpande, Shashi. Roots and Shadows. New Delhi: Orient Longmans,1983. Print. 3. Meital, M.Mani. ―Subverting Phallocentricism, Feminine Discourse in Roots and Shadows‖ in Fiction of Shashi Deshpande. New Delhi: creative books,1998. Print 4. Reddy,Madhurima. ―Shashi Deshpande‘s Roots and Shadows‖: Articulation of Feminine Voice. Galaxy: International multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol. I. Issue III. Print.
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DIASPORIC IDENTITY OFINDIAN‟S IN KAMALA ARKANDAYA‟S THE NOWHERE MAN AND AMITAGOSH‟STHE CIRCLE OF REASON Ms. P.Divya, Assistant Professor of English, Sri Vasavi Vollege (self finance wing) Erode
ABSTRACT Diaspora is a journey towards self-realization, self- recognition, and self-knowledge and self- definition. ―Diasporic Sensibilities‖ is chosen with special reference to novels of an independent writer. Kamala Markandaya is a prominent and leading figure on the horizon of Indian English literature.Migration was the fate of human life but in the world of globalisation. downtrodden impact the life of srinivas. Srinivas remember earlier racial incident from his past, when he was still a student and experienced similar slights under British colonialism. During the colonial period migration was a employment of changing many causes but racial problems of domination never been changed. Amita gosh the circle of reason also diasporic identity. The paper focusing on the difficultytoraising a voice for development of women society. Keyword: colonialism, migration, diaspora, self identity, racial, downtrodden. Kamala Markandaya is a prominent and leading figure on the horizon of Indian English literature. She was an expatriate writer of connecting her homeland in the writings. She was one of the most outstanding novelists. She has first- hand knowledge of India as well as England. She was well acquainted with the east and west. She dealt with some of the problems like poverty, marriage, iliterarcy etc. In her novels she faces some customs to make a mockery of the development of Indian women in the society. ―The Nowhere Man‖ is a tale of socialistic approach and wounded of diasporic humanity in the western civilization known for democracy and equality across the world. She has depicted every aspects of life with humanism and compassion on the grass root level. She has taken effort to delineate most empathetic character ‗Srinivas‘ in the novel. She depicted the women character with significant and realistic attribute of life. Most of the women characters are burly personalities with unique aspect of life and the potential to trackle the problem. Markandaya‘s was the writer of the first generation of Indian women novelists. She was born in Mysore at 1924 by the Hindu Brahmin family. And brought up in India. Specially her childhood spent in south Indian environment and customs. She was educated at madras university. He worked as a journalist and written a short fiction, stories. She moved to London there she has an opportunity to travel throughout India and Europe. She had a experience of working in village and involvement of doing a social work. She used feminine consciousness and their emotion in the male dominated society.
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Srinvas was an elderly brahmin has lived most of his adult life nearly thirty years in London with outliving his wife and one of his sons. In 1968, both of his son fought for the British in the war but only one returned. Ironically the surviving son also lives in London but Srinivas was never close to him. The communication between the two is virtually non- existent. Britian was changing color because of all the immigrants who have arrived from its colonies. Suddenly the whole neighbourhood looks differently. Western countries are threatened, fearing, that their job will disappear and the foreigners will soon get rich. Here Srinivas considers returning to India but finally concludes that he had no notion of where to go to in India and what to do when he got there. He knows that the country has changed. Srinivas thinks to himself that some ways he has become more English than the English around him. Later he realizes that if he left, he had nowhere to go he‘s a nowhere man. The incident of downtrodden impact upon his life. Srinivas remember earlier racial incident from his past, when he was still a student and experienced similar slights under British colonialism. He fled India as a youngman because of a number of humiliations he had experienced of victim. The worst act of violence inflicted on him from the loutish youngman who lives in the next door. He was un employment hardly more than a punk though married with several children and living under the roof with his mother who consider Srinivas one of her friend. Migration was the fate of human life but in the world of globalisation. During the colonial period migration was an employment of changing many causes but racial problems of domination never been changed. White society thinks they are the superior on each and every ground as nature has gifted their land with natural resources. The idea of diasporic Canadian literature is something of an oxymoron: diasporic literature often demonstrates the instability of national categories. Indian Diaspora has its independent space and identity in Indian writing in English. Its unique characteristics determine its separate status and reflect Indiannessin true sense. Indian Diaspora fiction in English comes out of writers settled in different countries focusing on their native land and their writings also expose their feeling in their works. The idea of an Indian Diaspora as a transnational social community/group is based on the intimate psychological feeling of being Indian and possessing the social values of Indian heritage is the basic requirement. Diasporic space is the point at whichonly the nostalgic reminiscing of place but also of time. Time leads to the development of groups and sub-groups within the Diaspora. Diaspora is a journey towards self-realization, self- recognition, and self-knowledge and self- definition. ―Diasporic Sensibilities‖ is chosen with special reference to novels of an independent writer, Amitav Ghosh, who won a prestigious place in Diasporic literature. Ghosh looks at Diasporic literature in a new perspective. Ghosh is one of the Trinity after V.S. Naipaul ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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and Salman Rushdie who popularized the Diaspora in Indian writing in English. He is an anthropologist, sociologist, journalist, novelist, essayist, travel-writer and teacher. Both his fictional and non- fictional narratives, move restlessly across countries, continents and oceans. Diaspora is a notion regarding belongings to the homeland, identity quest and search for roots captured through the migrant‘s experience of displacement. The displacement from one country to another and acquisition of the ethnic culture as well as the native culturebrings gradual dilemma and a sense of rootlessness in the migrant community. Due to migration, Diaspora is ajourney of identity and culture through time and space. Ghosh‘s novels are a relevant study in this concern because his characters float from place to place and experience Diaspora while revisiting the past, exploring new ethnicities and experimenting language. Identity for them is not a fixed essence. They are compelled to search for identities. They achieve new identity with their own abilities. They are very skilful to balance relations with the adopted country. They appear practical, melt into adopted culture and do remain grateful and honest to the adopted homeland. Their transplantation in the new soil is successful. Ghosh‘s first novel is The Circle of Reason, published in 1986. He was awarded France‟s Prix Medicis Award for this novel in 1990. It is a picaresque novel which concerns the adventures of Alu, a weaver from a small village near Calcutta, who leaves home to travel across the Indian Ocean to the oil town of al-Ghazira on the Persian Gulf and to African Sahara then back to India. This novel has a Diasporic theme of sense of displacement, self- identity, migration, alienation, quest for home, rootlessness etc... The Circle of Reason is the first novel of Amitav Ghosh. The Circle of Reason is remarkable for many reasons. Its theme is different from traditional concerns of Indian English fiction. It challenges a direct and simple appreciation. In fact, it needs a different type of approach to be grasped fully. The book itself is sort of a paradox. It exuberates restlessness with extreme control and poise. The new thrust and lift that came to Indian English fiction duing late eighteenth and nineteenth century is partly due to this path breaking work. It is daring in its experimentation with form, content and language of the novel. Though novel not strictly organized. It is episodic in nature or we may call it picaresque. The novel is a journey in irregular. Traditionally the protagonist Alu should have gone from ‗tama‘ (darkness) to ‗satwa‘ (purity). Ghosh freely mixes a chain of thoughts. He superbly mixes past, present and future of his book. He describes one incident and if the incident links itself to any past happening and he immediately goes to that past incident. In the whole novel he used of playing by changing of consciousness. So, the whole fabric of the novel keeps floating, going backward and forward. In any case present is born out of past. So why should one not go to the great reservoir of memories, dreams and desires i.e past. The novel is crowded with characters. Alu is the only constant factor who lives by trial and error method, falls at times, stand up again ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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and finally moves on to realize his potential, if he has any. The novel, without becoming a melancholic case history, underlines the troubled times, through which all of us are living. Like a typical ended novel, it ends without providing readymade solution. There is a soothing effect at the end. Different threads seen to draw together yet there is no effort at preaching. In a typical picaresque fashion, Alu moves from Lalpukur in India to Al- Ghazira in Egypt and then to a small town in north eastern edge of the Algerian Sahara. The first section of the book contains many instances of migration. One of the instances from the book is that of Balaram‘s birth year 1924, which forces author to think about the mass Indian migration to West. The People of Lalpukur, for example, had seen‖ vomited out of their native soil‖ (p 59) in the massacre connected with the partition of Indian. Within the novel people witnessed one more time that the spectacle of people being thrown miles away because of the civil war that led to the emergence of Bangladesh. The journey of Alu, although, does not bring any kind of satisfaction or success. It celebrates the sense of unquiet wanderings. It goes on and on searching a vision suitable for present timer. It is like chasing a phantom that ultimately vanishes into the thin air. The Circle of Reason has both historical as well as mythological elements. Mythical references have been moulded to reflect contemporary condition in a true new historicist fashion. Here ghosh nicely weaves ideas, characters and metaphors through magic and irony and develop his fictional motifs. Characters in the novel are not far from metaphors, they become metaphors. The charcters as well as different situation of the novel stand for rootlessness. Sometimes, I also wonder of our fascination about the idea of rootlessness. The present piece of work seems obsessed with his idea of migration. Migration, diasporic feeling, rootlessness and a new kind of sensibility born out of these factors – what is new, typical and unique of our age is loneliness and sense of vacuum that comes with the individual migration or migration of comparatively smaller groups. In real sense everyone is away from the roots- where have all the roots gone. There is nothing in this novel that can ordinarily be called a ―home‖. Sometimes novel seems confused and one is not sure about the city or village. It goes back and forth from Bangladesh to Calcutta, then Middle East to Kerala. The story moves in very uncertain atmosphere. The novel can be called an eternal chronicle of restlessness, uncertainty and change. The novel basically tells three stories. The first part deals with the story of Balaram. He is rationalist and is very much influenced by Louis Pasteur. He has no involvement with people and he is equally cynical. Alu (Nachiketa), the protagonist, is a nephew of Balaram. He is a only one who survives in the family. The second part of the novel tells another tale. An earthly, zestful trader tries to bring together the communities of India and Middle East. But those efforts remain unrealistic. The third part in the story of Mrs. Verma, who, outrightly rejects the rational thinking. At the end of the novel, these three are in the search of newer horizon, unformed hopes and ideas. On an allegorical plane Alu is someone rooted in identity. But as we will see by his torturous wandering, Alu seems only to satirize his name. Ghosh divide man as mechanical man and other type of man can be easily assumed, thinking man. In this thinking, Ghosh, is talking
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about the Man on the loom or even further the idea behind on loom and not just the instrument. It is also the idea behind history. Loom united human race at times, it divides at other. It brought victories to some, subjugation to others. This passage is significant in its historical perspective, simply because the author here goes not to mere events or states of being but to themes that run then. The anticolonial note against the monopoly of hand shine cloth in obvious. There the relation of loom to computer, the most advanced achievement of Man at machine, is beautifully and factually established. Through this book Amitav Ghosh portrayed his diasporic feelings, loss of homeland and rootlessness which were clearly understandable and warmly felt. As a research of the paper to conclude the paper that both writer of kamala Markandaya and Amita gosh both are women searching for their own identity in dominated society. Now a day‘s society was changed as dominating the others or mockery, it was a behavior of the people. The only reason was the culture had changed in between Indian society. So the people like ―Srinivas‖ and ―Alu‖ they were searching for their own identity to move into western countries. REFERENCES 1. Rangan v. The nowhere Man analysis in preparetion on kamala Markandaya. Gaziab.Vimal publication, 1984.Print. 2. Sajaritha.s. ―Transformation od Diasporic Studies: from Discrimination to Identity Formation. ―Lapis Lazuli: an international Literary Journal.2014. Print. 3. Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada. Waterloo: Wifrid Laurier UP, 2009, Print. 4. Ghosh, Amitav. The Circle of Reason. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1986. Print
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A DISCOURSE ON ECOFEMINISM IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA‟S NECTER IN THE SIEVE: DEPICTS THE RELATION BETWEEN WOMEN AND NATURE. Ms. Lidiya, Assistant Professor of English, Sri Vasavi College of Education, Erode
ABSTRACT The discourse on ecofeminism is an attempt to show how the nature and directly connected to each other. Similarly the novel Necter in the sieve written Markandaya depicts the relationship between women and nature. When the Rukmani is crushed and dominated by the society simultaneously the nature is also the tanneries. From the beginning we can notice the changes that how nature and praised and latter how the beauty is destroyed in due course.
women are by Kamala protagonist polluted by women are
ECOFEMINISM The term Ecofeminism is used to describe feminist approach to understanding ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to theorize on the relationship between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974).Today, there are many interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought, including: ecofeminist art, ecofeminist theory, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism and poetry. As there are several different types of feminism and different beliefs held by feminists, there are different versions of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is widely referred to as the third wave of feminism, it adds to the former feminist theory that an environmental perspective is a necessary part of feminism. Ecofeminism uses the parallels between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women as a way to highlight the idea that both must be understood in order to properly recognize how they are connected. These parallels include but are not limited to seeing women and nature as property, seeing men as the curators of culture and women as the curators of nature, and how men dominate women and humans dominate nature Charlene Spretnak has offered one way of categorizing ecofeminist work: 1) through the study of political theory as well as history; 2) through the belief and study of nature-based religions; 3) through environmentalism ACCORDING TO CHARLENE SPRETNAK “Ecofeminism grew out of radical or cultural feminism, which holds that identifying the dynamics behind the dominance of male over female is the key to comprehending every ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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expression of patriarchal culture with its hierarchical, militaristic, mechanistic and industrialist forms”. ABOUT THE NOVEL Rukmani the protagonist succinctly touches on themes and motifs of significance throughout the novel. Nature and its beauty appear in the sun and the green fields as the first source of her well-being. Rukmani expresses her appreciation for Nathan, who has discovered a beauty in her that she did not know she possessed. At the same time, Rukmani conveys Nathan‘s appreciation for her and for a beauty that is more than skin-deep. The all-important grain represents life itself. A good store of grain means more than sustenance—it means freedom from fear and doubt about survival. Her mention of the shelter of a roof foreshadows a time when the roof is threatened by monsoon floods, but it also acknowledges that the hut Nathan built for her with his own hands is sufficient for her needs. Initially, she felt diminished by the mud hut with its thatched roof, but she has grown in understanding since her first days as a bride. Since fertility is such an important concern for Rukmani, the sweet stirring of pregnancy to which she refers completes her catalog of happiness. Procreation is the critical role for a woman in Rukmani‘s society, and a woman who fails to conceive early in her marriage may be renounced by her husband, as Ira is. After Ira‘s birth, Rukmani‘s failure to produce a son for Nathan nearly destroys her happiness. When she first meets Kenny, the signs of grief in her face reveal her desperation to conceive. Fertility and procreation celebrate the precious quality of life for Rukmani. Her ―sweet stirring‖ is linked to her awakening sexuality and the bond of desire and love she and Nathan share. Rukmani bears five sons. With each birth, however, the family has a little less to eat. When a tannery is built nearby, unpleasant changes come to village life. Rukmani‘s two oldest sons eventually go to work there. They help the family a great deal with their wages but are eventually dismissed for being ringleaders in a labor strike. The year they arrange a good marriage for Ira, monsoon rains destroy all their crops. Rukmani sacrifices her savings to buy food for the family. Ira‘s husband returns Ira to her parents‘ home because she is barren. Again Rukmani turns to Kenny without her husband‘s knowledge, this time to help Ira conceive. His treatments are too late, however, since Ira‘s husband has taken another woman. Rukmani becomes pregnant again and bears her last son, Kuti. Caring for Kuti lifts Ira out of her depression and despair until the crops fail from drought and the family once again goes hungry. They sell most of their possessions just to pay half of what they owe the landowner for their lease. Reduced to foraging for roots and leaves, the family begins to weaken and starve. Kenny secures a servant‘s position in the city for Rukmani‘s third son. Rukmani‘s fourth son is killed stealing a calfskin from the tannery. Kuti suffers the most from hunger, and Ira prostitutes herself to feed him. Despite her efforts, he dies. A good rice harvest arrives too late to save Rukmani‘s sons.
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Kenny returns from one of his long absences with money raised to build a hospital in the village. He offers to train Rukmani‘s remaining son, Selvam, as his assistant. Some villagers speculate that Kenny is kind to Rukmani because they have an illicit relationship. Kunthi, a neighborhood wife who became a prostitute, spreads this rumor out of spite. When they were both young, Nathan fathered Kunthi‘s two sons. Kunthi uses this as leverage over them until Rukmani learns the truth and forgives Nathan. Now, as Nathan nears fifty, he has no sons left to work the land. He suffers from rheumatism and debilitating fevers. Rukmani and Ira try to help, but they are not strong enough. Ira has a baby to care for, an albino boy conceived in prostitution but loved nonetheless. The family experiences its greatest loss when the land agent tells Nathan and Rukmani their land has been sold to the despised tannery. No one else will lease land to a man as old and ill as Nathan, and Rukmani and Nathan must leave their home of thirty years to go to their son Murugan in the city. They leave Ira and their grandchild under Selvam‘s care. Their possessions reduced to the few bundles they carry, Nathan and Rukmani try to find Murugan in the city. They rest one night at a temple, where thieves steal their bundles and all their money. A leprous street urchin named Puli helps them find the home of Kenny‘s doctor friend. They learn that Murugan has not worked there for the past two years and that he left the position for better wages at the Collector‘s house. At the Collector‘s, Murugan‘s wife informs them that Murugan has deserted her. Her older boy, their grandson, is thin with hunger. Her starving baby is too little to be Murugan‘s son. Rukmani sees that she and Nathan cannot impose upon their daughter-in-law. They return to the temple, where food is distributed each night to the destitute. Rukmani and Nathan dream of home but have no means to make the trip. Rukmani tries to get work as a letter reader but earns only enough to buy rice cakes. Puli takes them to a stone quarry where there is better-paying work. He helps them learn to break stones, and they come to rely on him. They entrust him with their earnings, and, as they save, they begin to hope. One evening, Rukmani splurges on extra food and toys for Puli and her grandson. When she returns to Nathan at the temple, she expects him to be angry, but instead he is violently ill. During a week of monsoon rains, Nathan continues to work in the quarry despite his fevers and chills. One evening, after she gets paid, Rukmani begins to plan for a cart to take them home. Hurrying to catch up with Nathan, she finds him collapsed in the mud in the street. Kind strangers help carry him to the temple, where he dies in her arms after reminding her of their happiness together. After his death, Rukmani rashly promises Puli his health if he returns to the country with her, a promise Kenny and Selvam will help her keep. She introduces Puli to Selvam and Ira as the son she and Nathan adopted while they were away. Demonstrating both hope and compassion, Ira hastens to prepare a meal for Puli, and Selvam promises his mother they will manage. Rukmani‘s reaction to the introduction of the tannery in the village is noteworthy. She regrets that the tannery has invaded the village and the maiden land where children used to play.
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Bazaar prices have gone up too high and are out of reach of the common people. For instance, she expresses her dissatisfaction over the impact of the tannery on an aged woman‘s business of selling vegetables. Earlier, Rukmani used to sell vegetables to granny, but as the bazaar prices soared high she starts selling vegetables to the shopkeeper, Biswas, in order to make more profit. Markandaya has given a starkly contrasting picture of the village before and after the introduction of the tannery, which brings a paradigmatic shift in the villagers‘ lives: ―But we never went hungry as some families were doing. We grew our own plantains and coconuts, the harvests were good and there was always food in the house—at least a bagful of rice, a little dhal, if no more‖. The end result of the tannery is that the small farmers generally lose their livelihood because their sons are lured off the land by paid work. Rukmani and her husband can no longer pay their dues, leading the landowner to sell the land to the tannery. Rukmani‘s phobia of modernization is clearly visible in the following passage: ―the tannery would eventually be our undoing. Since then it had spread like weeds in an untended garden, strangling whatever life grew in its way‖ In the novel, Rukmani is strongly associated with nature; she nurtures and cares the field like her own child. The tannery, in her experience, is a catastrophe that falls upon the village, not only disturbing the simple, primitive, traditional, agrarian oriented families, but also the pastoral land of the village. Rukmani‘s character can be studied at two levels: first, her association with nature and, second, her reaction to the introduction of the tannery on the pastoral land and its effect on the lives of villagers, both of which reflect ecofeminist concerns. After marrying Nathan, Rukmani starts her journey in the bullock cart to her husband‘s village. Her concern for animals is narrated in the following manner, ―Poor beasts, they seemed glad of the water, for already their hides were dusty‖ We are told that she likes the song of mynahs, as well as that of many other birds, such as the cry of the eagle, which makes her warm and drowsy. Rukmani takes praise and pride in planting seeds and nurturing plants in the garden. She plants a few pumpkin seeds in the garden behind the hut and soon the seeds sprout with delicate green shoots. She frequently visits the nearby well to fetch water for the plants and, sometime later, a pumpkin begins to ripen into yellow and red. She has a lot of admiration for it, ―One would have thought you had never seen a pumpkin before‖ The growth of this pumpkin boosts her energy and she starts planting beans, sweet potatoes, brinjals, and chillies. She is certain that all these plants grow well in her hand. Rukmani‘s intimate and intricate relationship with nature is portrayed through her labor in the fields, which represents her affection for nature. The entire novel is the epitome of an ecofeminist stance. Indeed, Rukmani prays continuously for the betterment of her land and crops, fruits and harvest; she shows divine integrity between herself and nature upon recounting, ―I was
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young and fanciful then and it seemed to me not that they grew as I did, unconsciously, but that each of the dry, hard pellets I held in my palm had within it the very secret of life itself, curled tightly within, under leaf after protective leaf‖ Vandana Shiva thinks that the exploitation of women and nature is due to a developmental attitude in the form of the scientific revolution and a reductionist paradigm which she equates with maldevelopment: ―Development has meant the ecological and cultural rupture of bonds with nature, and within society, it has meant the transformation of organic communities into groups of uprooted and alienated individuals searching for abstract identities‖ Through this article we come to know the connectivity between women and nature and also that make us aware on how to treat women and the impact it has on the nature. Both have to treat with atmost care for a healthy environmemt. WORKS CITED 1. Markandaya, K. (1954). Nectar in a sieve. New Delhi: Penguin Books. 2. Warren, J. K. (Ed.). (1997). Ecological feminism. London: Routledge. 3. Patil Sangeta sharnappa.(2016).Reconstructing ecofeminism: A study of Kamala Markandaya‘s nectar in a sieve.http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.80/23311886.2016.124377. 4. Ecofeminism. https://www.google.co.in/search?q=articles+related+to+ecofeminism&rlz=1C1HLD Y_enIN820IN820&oq=articles+related+to+ecofeminism&aqs=chrome..69i57.37296j 0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 5. Ecofeminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism
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IDEOLOGIES AND EXPRESSIONS OF JOHN ROWLING R.Akalya, II B.A.English Vivekanandha College for Women
JOANNE ROWLING was born July 31, 1965 in GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND. Her parents , Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling met during a train ride from King‟s Cross station to Scotland, where they both intended to join the Royal Navy. When Anne had complained of being cold on the train, Peter had offered to share his coat with her, and the couple was married a little more than a year later. After their marriage, Peter and Anne left the navy and moved to the outskirts of Bristol, where Anne gave birth to Joanne Rowling and, less than two years later, a second daughter, named Dianne. When Rowling was four years old, the family moved to Winterbourne, a nearby village. Although the two sisters frequently fought, they were extremely close, and Rowling would amuse Dianne by telling hert imaginative stories, many of which she would write down. These stories would write down. These stories would inspire long, dramatic scenarios that were enacted during their playtime, with the girls playing all of the parts. During their time in Winterbourne, Rowling also became friendly with a brother and sister who lived across the street and had the last name of Potter, a name which Rowling admitted she liked much more than her own. In 1974, when Rowling was nine yearsold, the family moved again, this time to the country village of Tutshill in Wales. Almost at the same time as the family‘s move Rowling suffered the loss of her favourite grandmother Kathleen (whose name she would eventually add to her own to come up with the pen name, J.K.Rowling). She finished her primary school studies at, St.Michael‟s Primary school, whose benevolent headmaster, Alfred Dunn, would supposedly serve as the inspiration for Proffesor Dumbledore. At the age of eleven, Rowling began studying at Wyedan comprehensive school and college. Lacking any natural athletic ability and with few friends, the lonely Rowling dedicated herself to her studies and her love of literature. Her interest in literature and writing was fueled when her aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitsford‟s biography, ―Hons and Rebels‖ Rowling promptly read all of Mitsford‘s other books and became a huge fan of the author. Interestingly, Rowling has commented on her studious adolescence, saying ―Hermione is loosely based on me. She‟s a caricature of me when I was 11, which I‟m not particularly proud of‖. Rowling also supposedly based another Harry Potter character on an individual from Wyedean: John Nettleship, the head of science during her time at the school, has acknowledged himself as the inspiration for the malignant Professor Snape. Despite her problems at Wyedean, Rowling continued to foster a secret hope to become a writer throughout her adolescence. This hope was encouraged by her close school ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Rowling finished the book in 1995, she sent the first three chapters off to agents and began the course of study needed for the PGCE. The second agent that she contacted decided to take on the project and spent almost a year trying to find a publisher. The small Bloomsbury children‘s Books finally accepted the manuscript and published the book under the name Harry Potter and the Philosopher‟s Stone in June 1997. Soon after its publication, Rowling‘s book began to win numerous awards, including the British Book Award, the Nestle Smarties Book prize, and the children‟s Book Award. Scholastic press bought the American rights to the book (giving it the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer‘s Stone) and paid Rowling enough money to quit teaching and support herself solely by writing the next books in the Harry Potter Series. The sequel, was published in England in July 1999, and the third book of the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published in England in July 1999 ad in America in September 1999. These first three Harry Potter books took the three top spots o the New York Times Bestseller list and earned Rowling $400 million, promptly making her the richest author in the world. In 1998, Rowling sold the film rights to the Harry Potter series, and the first film in the franchise was released in 2001. Rowling completed the remaining four books I the Harry Potter series between 2000 and 2007, wi6th the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, selling 15 million copes within the first twenty-four hours of is release. In 2001, Rowling marred Neil Michael Murray, British anaesthetist, and gave birth to their so, David, in 2003, and their daughter, Mackenzie, in 2005. Since her completion of the Harry Potter series, Rowling has received honorary degrees from Exeter, and Harvard University St. Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Aberdeen, the University of, as well as the Legion d‘ honneur fro French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She is also an avid philanthropist and has donated much of her tie and wealth to the Volant charitable Trust, the charity one parent families, the children‘s High Level Group, and the centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University. Rowling has stated that she has no intention of continuing the Harry Potter series, but she has written The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book of fairy tales mentioned n Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and has mentioned writing a definitive encyclopedia of Harry Potter‘s world. friend, Sean Harris, to whom she dedicated the second book of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”. Rowling‘s teenage years were also made more difficult when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, In 1983, Rowling graduated from Wyedean and began attending Exter University for her BA in French.
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FEMINISM IN AMITHAV GHOSH‟S THE GLASS PALACE P.Priya, II-BA English Literature, Sri Vasavi College (Self-Finance Wing), Erode
ABSTRACT Repressed feelings and desires were forged into a lofty passion to facilitate escape cum associate She unborn child is dispelled after marriage with Raj Kumar. Initial disinclination to Raj Kumar is overridden by Mohan Bhai‘s counsel enlightening her about the impossibility of their union. Marriage with Raj Kumar arises out of Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict where avoidance of one of the two undesirable goals involves approaching other (Nevid, 2009:448). Dolly appreciates Mohan Bhai‘s desperate acceptance of the Princess‘ advancements along with the intolerably ponderous memories of love inevitable in Ratnagiri, but on contrary, she refuses Raj Kumar stating her association with Ratnagiri. Marriage leads to relocation and a new undesirable identity in Burma. Initial refusal on being persuaded by Raj Kumar, Mohan Bhai and Uma converts to Approach-Avoidance Conflict – a choice of goal that is negative and positive at once (ibid). Positively, marriage could relieve her from crisis. Keywords: Burmese Royalty, Masculine Resilence, Femine Docility, Post-Structuralism. INTRODUCTION As an anthropologist and journalist, Ghosh‘s non-fictional work, Dancing in Cambodia, At large in Burma manifests itself as The Glass Palace later with richly imagined characters from India and Burma against the backdrop of the heterogeneous South-East Asia. Contemplating on the process that history can call unsuspecting people into roles of prominence, Ghosh reflects upon how Aung San Suu Kyi, an ordinary house wife, not a super-human in any sense, could forge Democracy movement in Burma. Similarly Dolly‘s physical and interior growth throughout the narrative, symbolizes the invasion of Burma itself. When many deserted the adversity struck Burmese royalty, Dolly joined the exile and served them until her marriage with Raj Kumar. David Glover and Cora Kaplan‘s (Genders, 2009:18) fluidity in gender is conspicuous in Dolly‘s character. Her behavior matured with time, situation and place blending masculine resilience and feminine docility. Dolly forgoes Mohan Bhai to the Princess and her confidant Uma, impressed with Dolly‘s adherence and alacrity, facilitates her marriage with Raj Kumar. Loyalty technically alienated Mohan Bhai, but her persistent emotional lure towards him conflicts with Raj Kumar‘s proposal only to accept it. Dolly forms part of power systems i.e. in Ratnagiri, the King and Queen, the Princess and finally Raj Kumar. Dolly‘s acceptance of the power system is evident in opting to stay back as her co-attendants departed. Her inclination towards Raj Kumar on Uma‘s counseling and her return to Burma was out of her free will. But Weedon (Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, 1987:2-3) and some feminist perspectives subordinate her apparent free will to patriarchy. While her diligence during ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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contingency accorded her primacy (Ghosh, 2000: 82) her expectations of goodwill from the royal couple on her wedding proved futile (Ghosh, 2000:170-171). Insensitive in presuming her bound, the royal couple revealed their bitterness to her aspirations. A forensic rationalization in psychological and feminist perspectives possibly counters the allegations of eccentricity, evasion, resignation and opportunism suppositious in Dolly‘s character. Ghosh‘s Feminism Civilization reverberated with slogans of woman suffragists and the virgin and witch portrayal is obsolete. Amitav Ghosh‘s feminist perspective in The Glass Palace asserts the male authors‘ perspicacity with an omniscient narration of feminist facets with transition of Dolly, Uma Dey and Queen Supalayat consistent with constructed reality. Modernity is conspicuous in the skillful blend of third wave feminist perspectives in womanhood of 1940-50s sans anachronism. The resolute women bear striking resemblance with Piya, Moyana and Deeti from other narratives. Perseverance of Ghosh‘s women subverts the binary constructs and Ghosh works out subtle marital incompatibility on a sensitive esoteric plane sans vulgar premises of discord. Story Outline The Glass Palace is a Bildungsroman, post modern and post colonial collage of politicohistoric events all through. Realism and fictional liberty with history effortlessly evoke reader‘s credulousness and drama. The narrative‘s possible impossibilities precipitate different possibilities by constructing reality. Ghosh narrates teak harvest in Burma, eclipsed Burmese royalty, Indian freedom movement, disposition of colonial Indian officers and the gruesome exodus of Indians from Burma. Colonialism is poignantly subverted through characters like Uma, Dey, Dolly and Supalayat. The fading regency heralding changes and intertexture of South Asian socio, political and economic formats reveals the crisis of old and new world order. Spanning two generations, the older one with Raj Kumar, Dolly, Uma while younger with Neel, Dinu and Alison whose shifting fortunes and interpersonal relations sustain the surprise element. The dramatized lives of migrant and the displaced are distinct threads on the looms of contemporary history and political developments.. However, this article works towards an objective interpretation of Dolly‘s decisions and actions as if done by a behavior psychologist or feminist with findings of psychology, psychoanalysis and feminism bearing their relevance. Her psyche vividly reveals with a rational-empathetic appreciation of a feminist and clinical precision of psychologist. DISCUSSIONS Dolly avoids wrath of the Princess losing Mohan Bhai however, harbors notions about the child in Princess‘ womb (Ghosh, 2000: 118, 163) and accepts Raj Kumar on Mohan Bhai‘s counsel. An emotional Dolly contrasts with the ruthless Queen Supalayat. Feminist theory explains her emotion in Freidan‘s (Feminine Mystique, 1965:91-92) ‗feminine mystique‘ suggesting Dolly‘s possible envy for a man. Dolly saw the royal duo asserting high esteem but time eroded dignity and their subdued stature was perspicuous with subjection and displacement. In the palace as caretaker to sovereign‘s progeny, Dolly‘s reaction was restrictively guarded
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(Ghosh, 2000:33). Her response suggests estrangement to outsiders with palatial restrictive poise that changed in the rural locale where the erstwhile royalty were venerated and sympathized at once. Drawn into the social vortex of Ratnagiri and Mohan Bhai was pivotal to her in serving Outram House. Mohan Bhai is comparable with Raj Kumar in status. 40 P. Sasi Ratnaker & N. Usha Her stifled response to Raj Kumar eased as her relation with Mohan Bhai was conditioned by occasional contingencies. The kingly grandeur decayed relegating Dolly‘s status from a royal attendant to a manager melting the inhibitions. Rejection of King‘s plea to visit Burma necessitated her acculturation and consequential attraction towards Mohan Bhai. Jyoth Puri (Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India, 1999:115) asserts Indian cultural identity in premarital chastity supposed imperative for Indian middle-class women but Dolly‘s commitment to Mohan Bhai inviolates this normative prescription. Manifest complex to mother Mohan Bhai‘s child to be delivered by Princess happens with sublimated internalization of their informal relation frustrated by the coveting Princessand the negative end i.e. conflict of allegiance to Mohan Bhai resolves with Mohan Bhai‘s persuasion. Dolly narrates her dream with Uma, ―He woke up and looked at me and touched my face. And then he said: Shall we go? We went outside, and when we were in the moonlight I saw that it was not Mohan Bhai […] It was him [Raj Kumar]‖ (Ghosh, 2000:162). Laing (The Self and Others, 1961:251) wrote about the mutuality in social realities Psycho-Feminist Study of Dolly in the Glass Palace 41 mediated to a woman and her experience of world i.e. ‗the transference of a pattern of relations from one modality of experience to others: namely from perception to imagination, memory, dreams, phantasies, etc‘. ‗Family‘ has 3 frames of reference for Dolly one being Outram house, second one with Raj Kumar and the third is Burma that turned irreversibly hostile. Conflict is unresolved in these three places: with loyalty humiliated at Outram House; Raj Kumar‘s adulterous affairs and the xenophobic contempt brewing in Burma. Raj Kumar lacks conjugal fidelity which she sympathizes with love. Raj Kumar entrusted to Uma her while renunciation reiterates her unperceived love. Her sustenance was assured Raj Kumar while departing to exile: ―Yes, of course, this was what one must do; Dolly was doing exactly what has to be done. What purpose would it serve for these girls to make a futile show of resentment? How could they succeed in defiance when the very army of the realm has succumbed? No better by far to wait, and in the meanwhile to smile. This way Dolly would live‖ (Ghosh, 2000:46) Her persistence culminated in renunciation intense religious fervor - a solace for her unacknowledged loyalty. Though no marital disharmony is accentuated, the narrative is non committal on Dolly‘s heartfelt contentment. Dolly‘s passivity mismatches with Raj Kumar‘s exuberance. An unceremonious departure from Outram House, her conflict laden condition prior to marriage, and return to long forgotten Burma contributes to the passivity (ibid). Dinu with persistent illness recalled the times she nursed the princess. The couple lacked the fine cordiality belying Uma expectations. Dolly‘s renunciation results out extinction, a decline in frequency of response due to poor reinforcing stimuli (Leslie, 2002:85). Initial vibrancy in marriage flags making her reclusive as Uma‘s
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reflections predicts extinction in Dolly‘s life (Ghosh, 2000:186). Her aloofness intrigues Raj Kumar and the dialogue with Dolly brews discontentment (Ghosh, 2000:208).
CONCLUSION The sight of a corpse of Dinu‘s age precipitates the philosophic-spiritual perspectives in her. Dolly confides in Uma about the void engulfing her love for Raj Kumar (Ghosh, 2000:23940). Bitter reminiscences of Ratnagiri lingering in her mind, discordance with husband, ordeal of failed motherly aspirations and embittered Burmese maligned her peace denying reinforcement of her efforts and hopes. Dinu‘s reclusiveness over weighed her guilt about his impairment Dolly‘s response to Raj Kumar‘s proposal informs her decisiveness against his audacity (Ghosh, 2000:164-65) but contrarily her post marital expression is perceivably constricted and hysterical. Defensive of her aloofness, she justifies her commitment to Dinu: ―She flinched. She knew it was true that she‘d neglected her elder son lately. But Neel was filled with energy, boisterousness and loud-voiced goodwill and Raj Kumar doted on him. With Dinu on the other hand, he was nervous and tentative; frailty and weakness worried him, puzzled him: he had never expected to encounter these in his own progeny‖ (Ghosh, 2000:209). Raj Kumar‘s initial impression was that of what a migrant Indian Kaala can affect upon a royal attendant. Later, affluent Raj Kumar‘s proposal invites Dolly‘s antagonism towards the pallbearers of colonialism sharing the spoils of imperialism precipitated by her sympathy for the deposed King and colonized Burmese. Ratnagiri‘s Collector, a colonial symbol and Raj Kumar who share the spoils of Burma‘s subjugation lack rapport in contrast to her intimacy with Uma. With repressed antagonism, she travels to Burma as Raj Kumar‘s spouse. Dolly hesitates about her identity on migration to Burma: ―they would call me a Kaala like they do Indians – a trespasser, an outsider from across the sea‖ (Ghosh, 2000:113). Dolly‘s alienation in her native land problematize displacement and alienation irrespective of her deficiencies or choice. She is identified as a Kaala‘s wife after her marriage. Dolly‘s double consciousness one as imperial staff of puissant Burmese monarch and the other as an attendant of an exiled monarch places Raj Kumar in the crisis of these contrasting planes keeping her mask intact. Her uprightness is incompatible with the Raj Kumar‘s shrewd business acumen. Split in opinions, Dolly droops into a resigned despair (Ghosh, 2000:316). The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavior Science (2004:373) characterizes High extroverts by social interaction, high activity levels, and positive emotions while Low extroverts favor solitude and a reserved, quiet, and independent interpersonal style with a happy and friendly nature‘.
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REFERENCES 1. Assiter, A. (1996). Enlightened Women: Modernist Feminism in a Post Modern Age. London: Routledge. 2. Bersani, L. (1978). A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature. London: Marion Boyars. 3. Bowden, B. T. (2007). 50 Psychology Classics. Finland: WS Bookwell. 4. Colman, M. C. (Ed.). (2003). Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. 5. Craighead, W. E & Nemeroff, C. B. (Ed.). (2004). the Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavior Science. 6. Das, Kamala. (1988). My Story. New Delhi: Sterling. 7. Felski, R. (1989). Beyond Feminist Aesthetics. London: Hutchinson Radius. 8. Friedan, B. (1965). The Feminine Mystique. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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SHELTERING THE PERSONALITY – A INTRICATE MISSION FOR WOMEN S.Dhesika, Asst Professor, Vivekanandha College of Arts and Sciences, (Autonomous) Tiruchengode
The time after colonialism is post-colonialism era which exists around middle of the 20th century. The aspect of post-colonialism can be seen in many fields like history, science, literature, politics and economics, etc. This post-colonialism aspect can be seen lucidly in all the writings of Mahasweta Devi. Mahasweta Devi is one of the most popular contemporary writers of Bengali literature. She was born in 1926 at Dacca to literary family. She did her schoolings in Dhaka and later joined in the Visvabharati university in Santiniketan and completed B.A.(Hons) in English. She was married at the age of 20 to actor Bijon Bhattacharya. Her husband was a member of Communist Party of India (CPI). In order to support her family financially she did many odd jobs like selling dye powder, supplying monkeys for the research to U.S. and teaching at school. Later she began her teaching career at Bijoygarh College. She also worked as a journalist and dedicated herself to the struggle of tribal people against authoritarian upper caste landlords and government officers. She has won Ramon Magsaysay award in 1997, Padma Vibhushan the second largest civilian award from the Government of India in 2006 and Jnanpith award the highest literary award from the Sahitya Academy in 1996. She has contributed many great works to literary and cultural studies in the country. Her powerful, haunting tales of exploitation and struggle have been seen as rich sites of feminist discourse of leading scholars. Her use of language has broken down the conventional borders of Bengali literature. She is a significant figure in the field of socially committed literature. She also speaks about the exploitation of womanhood in the hands of male-chauvinism. Another major aspect that she deals is on the stupid rituals followed by the people which also sometimes draw back from their progress and which is a major factor for women to lose their identity. ―Identity‖ – each person wants to have his/her own personal identity. To say, identity is just another name for one‘s own self-respect. Unfortunately many will lose their own identity in their chaotic life. In particular women face this problem higher comparatively to men. Mahasweta Devi dealt this theme beautifully in some of her works. ―Bedanabala‖ is a beautiful story about a woman who was cornered by her people because of her profession. Even when the main character named Bedanabala wants to have her own identity, a segment of her society condemned her in the name of decency and social acceptance. ―Rudali‖ is a piece of short fiction which neatly portrays the feminist position that continuously shed their identity in the country today. ―In the name of mother – four stories‖ is a volume which represents a range of responses to the concept of the material exposing how the
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motherhood in India often conceals a collective exploitation. ―Outcast – four stories‖ brings the life stories of four women who always encounter a relentless struggle for survival. ―Till Death Do Us Part‖ is one of the fictional works of Mahasweta Devi. It is a volume of five short stories spanning over three decades of writing, showing an unusual tenderness on the side of the author who is wildly known for her satiric prose and biting indictment of social inequalities. In this manuscript, three of her works are discussed. These fictions deal with the stories of elderly women and the men in their lives: husbands, lovers, sons and friends. These touching tales, with their humor, delicacy and warmth, are each centered on a woman character. In ―The Divorce, Talaq‖, Kuli finds herself unexpectedly divorced in the heat of a quarrel, but decides to defy societal taboos with her ex-husband who had been her companion of many years. In ―The Saga of Kagaboga‖, Mohini becomes lonely after her sons leave home and because her husband objects her verbosity, vows that she will henceforth talk only to crows and cranes. Finally, in ―The Poet‘s Wife‖, Kamal discovers how harsh the indifference of today‘s world can be. The first story in the collection ―Till Death Do Us Part‖ is ―The Divorce, Talaq‖. As the title suggest this story deals with the divorce between Kuli and Arshad. Kuli is the younger daughter of her father, Gonu. When the story begins, Kuli is speaking in an agitated tone to her father regarding her marriage. But later she realizes the character of her husband, Arshad and starts to lead a peaceful life with him. Kuli settles down herself properly with her son equipped in a school and finding out a job in a shipping company, getting married and living happily in Khidirpur. ―People said Kuli was lucky. She stored the money her son sent her in a brass container buried underground. The money she earned by selling eggs was what she used for their daily expenses. Kuli planned to build a new house and move into it before the next monsoon, but suddenly, all her dreams were shattered…Shattered the day Arshad uttered the three talaqs before their entire neighbourhood‖. [Till Death Do Us Part - The Divorce, Talaq] Kuli feels herself lucky to lead such a happy and peaceful life until her husband Arshad utters talaq to her for three times. When the grandson of Kuli falls ill, Arshad asks her to take him to the doctor. But Kuli who is not ready to spend the money saved out to buy a cow involves in an argument with Arshad. Blind with rage, Arshad shouts talaq to her wife. It is accepted in the caste of muslims that it will be considered a divorce between them if they utter talaq thrice. The readers are shocked by the rituals followed by the people. That too at an age of sixty, after getting a grandson, the men has power to do as they wish. Women are totally exploited here. It is clearly evident through the story of Kuli, who after her thirty five years of marriage life gets divorced because of a small argument – it is a high price to pay for asserting her individuality.
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Kuli worries a lot after she gets divorced from Arshad, but she feels a strange sense of joy when she comes to know that her husband also feels the same way. So they both decide to unite again. Kuli‘s son finds out a solution for this problem through his father-in-law, that the woman after divorce has to marry another person, should live with him for a while and only after divorcing the other person she will be made free to live with her divorced husband again. Kuli was shocked to hear the customs and cultures followed by the people. She says that she is ready to drink poison instead of following these rituals. She meets her husband and reveals the plan that they can go and live a life in Kolkata, not as husband and wife but as companions, and like to stay together because they are used to it. The plight of women suffering in the hands of customs adopted and followed is clearly portrayed through the character of Kuli. Even at the end, she is not ready to lead a separate life, hiding her individual identity. ―The Saga of Kagaboga‖ is the second story in the collection, which shows a bit of development in the cultural features. This story speaks about the life story of Sadananda and Mohini. The conversation between husband and wife take place through the invisible Kagaboga. Their sons leave them and because of the unhappiness Mohini started talking to herself. It went to such a great extent that Sadananda thinks that she might have gone mad. The two sons of the couple settle down in a job even before they finish their schooling. The younger son was Mohini‘s life. The younger son gets impressed by the new way of adoring himself and also with the recent development of science. Sadananda comes to know that his son has chosen a wrong path, when he elopes from the house taking the watch and golden earrings. So he decides to forget his son for his behavior. Mohini, who gets affected by the behavior of her son, becomes mentally ill and deliriously speaks round the clock. So the couple migrated to a new location. When her mental illness gets serious, Sadananda insists on taking her to a doctor, she shouts at the top of her voice: ―Am I responsible for Hindustan-Pakistan? Did I tell you to leave our homeland? Why did you leave everything to your nephew and come away? Even if you did, how come everyone else‘s life has improved while I‘m still in this condition? A marriage made in heaven indeed! When we came we left behind all our precious belongings, and now you call me mad! Is it mad to talk a lot?‖ [Till Death Do Us Part - The Saga of Kagaboga] From that day onwards Mohini used to call herself as Kagaboga, because he is annoyed by her speech and calls her mad. ‗Kak‘ represents the crow and ‗Bok‘ represents the crane. Through this she literally refers that she is not speaking to Sadananda but to the crows and cranes. These words clearly depict the mental torment that women undergo. But she soon recovers from her mental stress very soon and starts to dream of building a new house. The ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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ability to construct the house inspires Mohini with an almost unreal sense of self-confidence. She also installs a new Chouki for the Goddess Lakshmi with great joy. Suddenly she hears a moaning sound of Sadananda who dies because of a msssive heart attack. Happiness comes and drifts away as a blooming flower which remains fresh only for a short duration. As soon as she recovers from the mental agony caused by her son, she quarrels with her husband, but soon recovers herself and involves in the work of constructing the house. When she sits down happily after placing Goddess Lakshmi in the Chouki, a great thunder storm strikes her, by the death of Sadananda. Thus, throughout the life, she faces struggle in various forms. It is not that she alone faces the struggles, but she stands and represents the whole of the womanhood who suffer at one instance and the other. The next story, ―The Poet‘s Wife‖, speaks about an unrecognized old and blind poet and his wife Prafullakamal, referred as Kamal. In this short story, the poet tries to get honor which goes in vain. This gives more pain to the poet. The poet‘s wife, Kamal, acts as a support to the poet in his every issue. A local businessman wants to organize a supportive programme to honor famous people in order to gain a recognizable place for him in the society. Since all the famous people refuse to attend the programme and moreover more money has to be spent by the businessman to invite the people of higher rank, he decides to unwillingly invite the poet and honor him. Owing to his illness the poet promises the businessman to send his wife Kamal for the programme on his behalf. Understanding the poet‘s enthusiasm, she helps him in preparing a good speech so that he can get some recognition and make a livelihood by asking for poet‘s pension. The poet insists his wife that the tone of the speech should appear as if he is delivering it. In spite of poverty, for the sake of gaining recognition for her husband, Kamal borrows a saree from the dry cleaners and brass jewellery. The moment she enters the programme hall she realizes her position. All the other dignitaries are paid importance but she was just made to sit like a dumb doll on the dias. When she was offered a chance to deliver the speech on her husband‘s behalf, she trembles with fear because she should convey all the words as it is and at the same time she should make her husband‘s presence to be felt there through her speech. But everything changes upside down because of another woman named Pamela, a singer. When Kamal starts to deliver her speech she gets interrupted by one of the organizer who asks her to make the speech short. ―The young people of today will need a short introduction to the poet ….‖ Suddenly there was a great excitement outside the dias. She‘s here! She‘s here! Some people hurriedly left the room.―In his poems one found simplicity, a love for nature, a passion for life….‖
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―Cut it short‖, interrupted the organizer. ―Pamela has arrived‖. [[Till Death Do Us Part – The Poet‘s Wife] Just to stop the poet‘s wife Kamal from her speech, the people on the dias gave her the memento in the name of the poet. As soon as she receives it, she gets down from the dias and reaches home. Heartbroken the poet‘s wife takes her husband into the house and shuts the door against the whole cast of humanity. Soon the poet realizes that she is crying. Kamal, who doesn‘t want to break her husband‘s heart, says that it is the tears of joy. She doesn‘t want to spoil their happiness for this mere issue and lies to her husband. In spite of her identity getting spoilt she makes her husband happy by giving false details. Kamal hides out all the ill-treatment paid to her in the programme. The hing that should be praised here is her attitude and the way she carries herself and her husband beyond all these odd situations. Thus from the above mentioned short stories, Mahasweta Devi draws an excellent portrayal of the character of women, way they are exploited and their struggle in the hands of the menfolk, at the mercy of the cultures and rituals followed blindly by the people, which leads to their dooms in the end. Thus the theme highlighted is the continuous struggle of women for their identity.
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CULTURAL EXPLUSION AND DILEMMA IN AMULYA MALLADI'S THE MANGO SEASON V.Sandhiya, M.A.English Lit, Bharathiar University PG Extension, Erode
ABSTRACT Thispaper focuses on cultural expulsionand dilemma in world‘s phenomenon today. Amulya Malladi‘s The Mango Season it‘s explicts the common knowledge about the protagonist of this novel, Priya facing with the cultural crashes. While Priya conflicting against her culture is also seen in the living style in America and in India. Whereas, she belongs to well stricted family, but she clashes against them and explored the cultural conflicts in her own native land. It is very essential to learn about these cultural diversity on the newly adapted culture. But, it illustrate various misunderstanding can occur not only on cross culture; also ok their own itself. It is an attempt to view Priya's prospects and dilemma with diverse cultural practices that she received in her adopted land in America. Indian Diasporic writings help in many ways and is a powerful network connecting the entire globe. Diasporic literature helps in the circulation of information and in solving many problems too. India is a country noted for its unity in diversity. The rich cultural heritage, tradition, rites, rituals, customs, languages, dress and food stands us apart. Further, all this is made accessible to the world at large through the medium of literature. To justify the same, it is best to quote the example of Buddhism and the spread of the same. It was not through conquests or forceful means but through peace and peaceful means that Buddhism spread all through South East Asia and other parts of Asia. The noble ideals and ideologies of the Vedas which were enriched by Buddhism have helped in enhancing the culture and civilization of many countries and today they share the same great Indian thoughts. Now this could not have been possible if not for the medium of literature. This novel set in India at the height of the mango season–in which a young woman must decide to follow her heart or tradition. Priya Rao left India when she was twenty to study in the U.S., and she‘s never been back. Now, seven years later, she has to return and give her family the news: she‘s engaged to Nick Collins, a kind, loving American man. It‘s going to break their hearts. Returning to India is an overwhelming experience for Priya. When she was growing up, summer was all about mangoes—ripe, sweet mangoes, redolent with juices that dripped down your mouth, hands, and neck. But after years away, she sweats as if she‘s never been through an Indian summer before. But Priya‘s relatives remain the same. Her mother and father insist that it‘s time they arranged her marriage to a ―nice Indian boy.‖ Just as Priya begins to feel she can‘t possibly tell her family that she‘s engaged to an American, a secret is revealed that leaves her ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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stunned and off-balance. Now she is forced to choose between the love of her family (and all that they represent) and Nick, the love of her life. As sharp and intoxicating as sugarcane juice bought fresh from a market cart, The Mango Season is a delightful trip into the heart and soul of both contemporary India and a woman on the edge of a profound life change. Malladi's novels mostly focus on the themes like, family tension, the changingprospects of recollection, the subtle nature of mind, the understanding between twogenerations, the clash between modernity and traditional values, and the changingposition of women from traditional roles to contradictory characters due to the effectof acquiring diasporic space. The main issues revealed in her works are related towomen, their self-actualization, emotional transformation, problem of identity anissues of gender and culture. The cultural clash between belonging and loss ofbelonging is the type in which diasporic writers form unlike homelands. The MangoSeason is not only about the conflicts between the East and West that are prominent,but also the conflicts within our own family and our own traditions. Malladirevealsthe cultural conflicts that Priya experiences once she returns to her native place withdifferent principles and prospects. The Mango Season, Malladi describes thepsychosomatic push and pull of the cultural clashes and predicaments faced by theforeignreturned Priya. Amulya Malladi's The Mango Season"" rightlypresents Priya's twofold-living. Priya is required to either fall or rise. If she wants towin the faith of her extended family, she will lose her golden future with Nick; but ifshe exposes herself courageously and opens the gates, then she will go up and triumphover the heart of Nick. Lastly, she by opening her heart gets her father's permissionfollowed by everybody. Malladi craftily places Priya in circumstances between twoconflicting worlds. Priya fights her own combat and comes out successfully. Thenovel is a journey into a composite cultural process of Indian girls of present-dayIndia, who go away in large numbers to study abroad. ―I remembered staling mangos from the neighbor's tree and biting into themwith the relish of a theft well done. I remembered sneaking into the kitchenat night to eat the mangos Ma was saving for something or other. Iremembered sitting with Nate and eating raw mangoes with salt and chilipowder, our lips burning and our tongues smacking because of the tartness‖. Nostalgia is remembering the things of the past and the novel The MangoSeason is surcharged with the feature of nostalgia. For Priya getting a feel for mangosis harder after being absent for seven years. As a child, she loved and appreciated thisseason finest but, after being away for years, Priya finds the heat of an Indian summerintolerable and the whole thing about India seems different, dirtier, and moredisorganized than she retains in her memory. The novel is also about the age-old taleof whether one should follow one's heart or walk on the true trail of custom. Malladidescribes the psychological push and pull of anxieties and conflicts. Her ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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charactersare well drawn and the clashes of cultures portrayed are not only genuine, but alsoPriya knows how her mother does bargaining whenever she goes for shopping. WhenPriya goes with her to buy mangoes, She gets the experience of her bargaining culture but hereshe finds herself fortunate due to not having the culture of bargaining in America. As she says toherself ―Thanks to happy memories like that I never, ever, bargained. It was a relief that in theUnited States. I didn‘t have to do it for groceries and clothes; everything came with a fixed price Tag. Priya belongs to a kind of family where marriage is supposed to be arranged by thefamily elders, and love doesn't have the place in it. Priya‘s mother wants her daughter to get married soon. As she says, If they have a good U.S. boy in mind and he is in India on leave likeyou, we can probably arrange something. If it works out, you will be married and happy. It willbe a load off my chest. An unmarried daughter…what must be neighbors think?Priya‘s mother does not like the appearance and behavior patterns of her daughter. As she saysto herYou go to America and you want to look like those Christian girls. Why,what is wrong with our way? Doesn‘t a girl look nice with long, oiledhair with flowers in it? Even when you were here, you didn‘t want thenice mallipulu, fresh jasmine, I would string. Always wanted to look like those…short hair and nonsense. It means she firmly believe on Indian culture and does not like the way in which Priyakeeps her appearance. As she knows that Priya‘s friends Manju and Nilesh got married happilyin India but they divorced once they shifted to the United States. As she says, ―same caste, and pitiful. Priya tries to convince her family that the quality of a person does not lie in his caste,wealth and University degree but lies deeply in his character and treatment towards his partner.The novel invokes the culture gap between the East and the West where cultural differences areseen in every form of the life. In the context of Priya we can clearly see lots of changes in her interms of lifestyle and how she perceives things in her everyday life when she is back in Indiaafter 7 years living in The United States. At the same time, we can see that she has a differentmindset now as she is much liberalized and modernized. She thinks going through chupulu(bride-seeing ceremony) is just a waste of time. Change is permanent, and one cannot say no toit. America and India are way apart. America is a developed country while India is still adeveloping country. , It is a very hard attempt to compare a country which is so different in everysingle thing. REFERENCE 1. Malladi, Amulya. The Mango Season. Ballantine Books, New York,2003. 2. Ramraj,V.‖Diaspora and Multiculturalism‖. National and Postcolonial Literatures, ed. Bruce King. Oxford; Clarendon Press,1998.
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ECCENTRICITYOF ECOFEMINISM IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND ANITA DESA R.Govindaraj, Assistant Professor in English Education, Sri Vasavi College Of Education, Erode
ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on a short biography of two indefatigable eco feminists Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai and introduces the core subject. These authors are influenced by the green fuse and eco feminism perception. Their novels are not only providing us great pleasure in evoking all our five senses, but also induce our spirit to safeguard the nature of our forthcoming generations. Centering the viewer‘s attention on the green philosophy of life, they lead their audience to believe that nature as the relieving tool to resolve all the wounds and capture all the things in a sort of good old memories. Their novels are portraits of nature with minute observance. INTRODUCTION Nature is the man‘s paramount companion. It provides priceless comfort to the society. Women are associated with the nature of primordial classical mythology. They have actively taken steps to control the full blown impact of climatic change over nature. Nature is feminized because it possesses the qualities of women. The crusade of Ecofeminism links the philosophy of feminism with ecology. The term coined by the French writer Francoise d‘Eaubonne in the year 1974. This philosophy intertwines the abuse and dominance of women with that of the environment. Ecofeminism finds its voice fairly in this universe as early as a species. In ancient times we accept nature with cooperation without any competition. Early archaeological discoveries found out that Mesopotamian civilization has an array of proof that ancient people who follow egalitarian lifestyle who are always united with nature. In early 1970‘s environmentalists are not paying much attention to feminism, women, animals and ecology. Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai are two contemporary writers who explore these ecofeminist traits in their works ingeniously. Though they belong to different ages and countries their thoughts have unique features. Their affirmation of the feminine subjective in both narratives is in constant opposition to the oppressive nature of the dominant patriarchy, on all levels of the treatise. Their novels‘ epilogues influence over relation to the narrative and the establishment of the ecofeminine subjective. The women‘s position and the state of the environment are epitomized on several levels, and the women seem to draw strength from their natural surroundings. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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The present study is an attempt to examine the indispensable role of Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai in the field of socioeconomic Ecofeminism. Many writers depict the splendour of the nature as it is, but Woolf and Anita situate lofty in revealing the magnificence and the manifestation of women over nature through their characters like Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Ramsay, Sita, Raka and Nanda Kaul respectively. In Anita‘s Where shall we go this summer, Sita‘s daughter Menaga unknowingly plucked the buds, this incident cause greatly infuses on Sita and expresses that unknown destruction of the nature is the greatest threat to the society. Virginia and Anita did not find feminism aesthetically acceptable and their concern is not with any movement but with womanhood as a whole. They vividly depict the landscape of their respective country. Virginia has a deep root in the classics of the country. The English novel cannot be separated from its geographical context. In Mrs. Dalloway,Virginia glorified London as ―glittering many pointed and many domed London‖ a splendid way. Virginia Woolf followed non-linear free form prose style which impressed many of her cohorts. Her mood smacks style and striking of dejection pictured in her novel. She committed suicide at the age of 59 in the year 1941. Her stream of consciousness and her urge to escape from the monotonous mundane world is expressed vividly in her novel. She wrote thirteen nonfiction books, four volumes of collected essays, she published three biographies, six short story collections, one drama, one translation, seven autobiographical writings and diaries, three bulk collections of her letters and best nine novels of hers. Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai share some common features in their select novels. I took Anita Desai‘s Fire on the Mountain and Where shall we go this summer, Virginia Woolf‘s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse for analysis. In all the four novels, the impact of nature and its effect on their women characters are revealed meritoriously. Their heroines are loved to be with nature and they tried to escape from the current busy schedule. They want to get solace from the nature. These novelists moved away from the noises, crowds, humdrum and traffic of cities towards solitude, silence, Nature of small Islands and landscapes of less- frequented hills and mountains. Virginia‘s most of the novels reveal herself as Eco Woolf. She dealt deeply with the Eco oriented atmosphere and she never left any minute details of the nature. Woolf reveals ecofeminism avowals through her characters. She powerfully used camera eye technique to sort out to visualise the naturalistic depiction prevailed in all the characters. She precedes the minuscule of depicting a domestic existence and universal implications of handling the problem. Anita Desai, another invincible ecofeminist writer in this study is the omniscient narrator characters. Her novels also never employ a story with an opening, middle and a close. She usually initiates her story in the centre and crafts disorder by striking out boldly up and down. She deals with the sensational and momentous, but with the ordinary experience of life. What she proceeds in her novels are juncture in the lives of their characters, united to each other by
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memories. Anita penned eighteen novels, within that more than eleven novels achieved different awards. Her novel Clear light of the day and Fasting, Feasting areshortlist for the Booker prize. In 1983 she won the Guardian Children‘s Fiction Prize for the novel The village by the Sea: an Indian family story. In 1993 she received Neil Gunn Prize, in the year 2000 she acquired Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy) and she recently received her Padma Bhushan award in the year 2014. Her literary works proves her supreme attitude and deliberation to solve things in the midst of nature. Anita Desai rides her novel as a jockey by having eco feminist persona in her hands and rides our mind like a horse who always obeys its master. We grasp the novel through her eyes. All our five senses arouse aesthetic by her vivid pictorial representation. We feel the nature and its presence right through her novel, we smell the sweet fragrance of the ripening fruits and honey crammed flowers, we hear the musical note of Bulbul in the forest lawn, we literally visualize the fire on the mountain and symbolically notice the fire in the eyes and minds of Ila Das, Nanda Kaul and even Raka, we also taste the delicious nectar overflowed from the ripen fruits and jam. The novel Fire on the Mountain is the visual packed treat for the readers who enjoy themselves in the midst of nature. Anita Desai as an Indian luminary establishes her character Sita in different dimensions in the Where Shall we go this summer (1975). It is her fourth novel, which depicts the inner – outer world and fatigue for life. The novel narrates the story of the middle- aged Sita, who is fed up with the mundane routine of a meaningless existence. She feels suffocated in her wellordered, posh flat in Mumbai and struggle hard to break away from it all. She wants to go back to island Manori where she had spent her golden days of childhood with her father to seek peace , pleasure and a great pause in her life. This novel is shorter in size, but deeper in meaning. This elusive quality is a hallmark of Woolf‘s fiction, whose focus is on the inner experience of life. But this does not lead her to sacrifice the truth of life in favour of fantasy. She expresses the relationship of the mind with external facts. The works of Woof, we find a mosaic of moments sewn together by memory the capricious seamstress. Woolf did not find feminism aesthetically acceptable and her concern is not with any movement, but with womanhood as a whole. Woolf vividly depicts the landscape of her respective country. She has a deep root in the classics of her country. Nature and women are always devouring unique familiarities and they are juxtapositional. Desai explains women, nature and their inner self are inseparable and she reveals in her novel women is the manifestation of nature. She depicts how nature is whittled and organized by culture and carnivals the culture of different people in different environments
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which are entirely different from each other. Desai illustrations Nanda Kaul, who is an Indian woman, believes and feels proud of her environmental culture with feminine sensibility. She demonstrates her character having strong hold over nature and compassion with culture. Anita Desai as an Indian luminary establishes her character Sita in different dimensions in the Where Shall we go this summer(1975). It is her fourth novel, which depicts the inner – outer world and fatigue for life. The novel narrates the story of the middle- aged Sita, who is fed up with the mundane routine of a meaningless existence. She feels suffocated in her wellordered, posh flat in Mumbai and struggle hard to break away from it all. She wants to go back to island Manori where she had spent her golden days of childhood with her father to seek peace , pleasure and a great pause in her life. This novel is shorter in size, but deeper in meaning. The structural pattern of the novel is strikingly similar to that of Virginia Woolf‘s To the Lighthouse. The concrete form, the befitting style and economy detail make the work more curious. Similar to Woolf‘s novel, it has three parts Part one, Monsoon ‘67; Part two, Winter ‘47; Part three, Monsoon‘67; each section of the novel is concerned with a particular season, time and space. The beginning section assimilates us on the island Manori and Manifests the present time life of Sita. The second section connects with the events of her past life and the last section evinces what she has accepted as her fortune of future life. I have indented to overarching the theme of this paper to be the way if we close with nature automatically it solves all our mental problems. It reduces our stress and dilemma and enables us to live in a comfort zone. Nature has all its power to cure all our physiological and psychological pain and make us to live peaceful stress free life. Being with nature is not the only solution to our present problem but if we, be with nature can save our earth and it protects us to suffocate from any outward and inward hazardous we are facing in life. In Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa‘s character and Nanda Kaul‘s character in Fire on the Mountain shares more unique features. Both the characters have deep feelings towards nature and they find comfort in the midst of nature. They enjoy life in the company of nature and they feel nature is the best healer. It has the power to solve all our problems and rectify it with all its bounds. Without knowing its power we are playing with it. If we treated in a tender way nature behaves to us a nice mother ad provide all comfort to us. But if we ill-treat it, its retaliation is more ferocious like a tsunami, earth quake and all kinds of natural disasters. I will close by stating that the works of Desai and Woolf, we find a mosaic of moments sewn together by memory the capricious seamstress. Both the writers did not find feminism aesthetically acceptable and their concern, it is not with any movement but with womanhood as a whole. These authors vividly depict their landscape of their respective country. They have a deep ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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root in the classics of their country. Thus, their novel echoes the nature of man and Nature itself disappearing in a Wordsworthian communion.
REFERENCES 1. Woolf Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway, London: The Hogarth Press, 1963. 2. Sarvepalli Gopal, ed. Jawaharlal Nehru. An Anthology, (Delhi: OUP, 1983) 194. 3. Judith Plant, Ecofeminism.Ed. Philadelphia, USA: New Society Publishers, 1989.
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CULTURAL CHANGE IN GITHA HARIHARAN‟S THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT R.Shanmathi, Asst Prof of English, Vivekanandha College of Arts and Sciences for Women (Autonomous), Tiruchengode
Indian writing in English, has received unstinted admiration in both home and abroad. It has carved out a new track, a new vision a vision that is replete with an unswerving faith and hope, myths and traditions, custom and rites that, our great country has enshrined in her bosoms from the time immemorial. Indian writing in English came into existence after the collision of a vigorous and enterprising Britan and a stagnant and chaotic India. Indian women novelists in English and in other vernacular try their best to deal with apart from many other things, the pathetic plight of forsaken women who are fated to suffer from birth to death. In Hindu religion the social structure of woman is such that it always degrades women. Fiction is one of the most powerful and characteristic expression of life. It is the latest of literary forms to be evolved and the most dominant in the twentieth century. A good number of novels published between 1930 and 1965 reveal lthe influence of the western tradition of the long prose narrative. Writers like Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabwala, Anita Desai, Gita Mehta, Gita Hariharan, Namita Gokhale, Bharati mukherjee, Nina Sobal, Shashi Deshpande, Uma Vasudevan, Shobha De, Arundhati Roy and Manju Kapoor through their writings very successfully and skillfully capture the Indian ethos. These women writers portray life in all its depth and complexity in their novels. They aim at catching the Indian woman alive in terms of feelings, intellect and emotions. These Indian women novelists have successfully projected the usages, dreams and desire of Indian woman in particular the middle class housewife who refuses to be suffocated by her environment. They also depict a wider cultural scene and the problems and difficulties, joys and sorrows of human beings which have universal significance. Githa Hariharan was born in Coimbatore, India, and she grew up in Bombay and Manila. She was educated in these two cities and later in the United States. She completed Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Psychology, Bombay University, 1974. Master of Arts in Communications, Graduate School of Corporate and Political Communication, Fairfield University Connectiut 1977. She worked as a staff writer in WNET channel thirteen in New York, and from 1979 to 1984, she worked as an editor in the Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi offices of Orient Longman. Since 1985, she has undertaken professional editing on a freelance basis. Presently she lives in New Delhi. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1993) won the 1993 Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book. Her work also includes a collection of short stories, The Art of Dying (1993); the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003), and Fugitive Histories (2009); and a children‘s book, The Winning Team (2004). She has edited A Southern Harvest a volume
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of stories in English translation form four major South Indian languages and with co-editor Shama Futehally, a collection of stories of children, Sorry, Best Friend!. Githa Hariharan‘s The Thousand Faces of Night mainly concerns with how women deal with the sanction of space in the India society. The novel presents the effects of patriarchy on women of different social classes and ages and particularly the varied responses to the restrictive institution of marriage. Women are confined to their homes, oppressed and opportunities for fulfillment of their lives are bleak. Even in the modern changed ambience their position is still debatable as she stands on the threshold of social change. Women form their identity in relation to others. The socio-cultural set-up of patriarchy intensifies her traits and finally she emerges not as an individual but as a person with collective identity constantly aware of the society‘s prescription for her female self. Even in myth woman has to suffer her fate and accept her suffering. The Thousand Faces of Night portrays thousand faces of Indian women who are caught in the two hundred year-old customs and traditions. Novel clearly outlines the different struggles and facets faced by our own generation from the beginning of traditional history. Githa Hariharan, while delivering the keynote address at an international conference on ―Women‘s Studies and Contemporary Literatures in English‖, organized at the center for women studies of Mysore University and World Association in Literature in English, said: Women‘s contribution to literature needs to be defined and redefined, its spaces filled with new information and more nuance, precisely … relatively new in terms. (Kumar 126) The novel The Thousand Faces of Night begins when Devi returns from America to Madras after completing her degree. After returning she adapts herself to follow the old order of things. Devi coms back to her home land after leaving her unsuitable lover Dan. She is directed and controlled by the demanding love of her mother. Her mother Sita arranged marriage with Mahesh whom she considers to be suitable for her daughter but the marriage turns out to be a failure. Sita who has been an ideal daughter-in-law, wife and mother proves to be a woman of self-respectable image. Sita has arranged a grand marriage for her only daughter. Sita considers her daughter‘s marriage to be her life‘s ambition and dream. She shapes and directs her daughterand her whole family skillfully towards progress. Githa Hariharan has introduced Mayamma as an old family retainer, bending herself to the myriad ways in which fate changes the course of her life. Mayamma is a battered wife, daughter-in-law and a mother. Mayamma suffered in the hands of domineering mother-in-law. She sticks on to the identity of Brahmin widow. Her character is moulded according to the Hindu codes of conduct and she is clear about the role of women in society. She lived within the strong hold of cultural norms and beliefs and her life revolves around the domain or boundary created by society.
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The role women play is determined by her a strong hold on culture. Mayamma proves to surrender herself to be the victim of culture. Mayamma herself narrates her story which seems to be very painful. Her life was full of tears and traumatic experiences. Mayamma through her dreadful experiences she learns to live a life balanced by different strategies of survival and she says, ―I have learnt to wait, when to bend by back, when to wipe the rebellious eye dry‖ (TFN126). Through Parvathiamma Githa Hariharan shows other side of, Indian womanhood. She was kind, soft spoken person. She also modeled herself as an ideal wife and mother. But she gets inclined towards the religious side of life in her paradigm that life‘s purpose, is to get mukthi. Because of her strong religious faith she left her home under the control of Mayamma and left to Khasi to get salvation, and to be delivered from this worldly life. Mayamma finds Parvathiamma to be crushed within the cultural bondings of her time. Mayamma says; ―her face reminded me of a gentle humming bird with a broken wing. Her eyes wet with unshed tears‖ (TFN 124). Her religious faith, gave her strength to break the bondage of marriage and family. Parvathiamma‘s husband Bhaba was a Sanskrit scholar who supports his wifes decision, of relinquishing worldly life. He was considered to be a misfit in society because he found to be more philosophical than too practical. The stories that he tells his daughter-in-law proves that he expects perfection in everything especially among women. ―women‘, said Baba‘, have always been the instruments of the saint‘s initiation into bhakti‖ (TFN 65). He is proud about himself of being born as a Brahmin and a scholar. He is always immersed in his studies. He also accepts his wife‘s ambition but he actually received a blow in Parvathi‘s sudden choice. According to Baba‘s self-satisfied statement is that a devoted wife should die before her husband which is found to be ironic since Parvathi left her home to seek for fulfillment and selfrealization. Parvathi states a fact that the quest for spiritual realization is not a gender specific and leaving the household for that particular purpose is not the prerogative of men only. Devi considered her mother-in-law as an unseen mother and real guardian for her. She exits from her regular life to gain entry into heaven. Devi‘s grandmother plays an eminent role in this novel. She presents an idyllic world to her granddaughter. Most of her topics were concerned about the avenging goddesses and princess who were the central focus of the mythological stories. Stories were mainly drawn from the epic Ramayana and Mahabharata. Grandmother‘s stories centralize on women‘s and selfsacrifical roles. And also her stories seek to establish and link past lively experience with resolutions of a perplexing reality. Devi‘s grandmother is optimistic; she controls the whole huge house hold individually. Her views about traditional myths and legends were modern which shows the necessity and importance of individuality of women. Throughout the novel Sita remains as a self-contained woman, she never engaged herself with her close relatives or with her friends. She remains engaged in the household works and is ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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clear about all her duties. Sita puts forward an impact of cultural tradition and her own individuality. She is portrayed as a victim of culture. Sita is compared to mythical figures like Savitri and Draupadi, as the feminine prototype for the chaste, patient, self-denying and as a long suffering wife. Sita provide a framework for woman who response in accordance with the strict cultural laws. Catherine Simpson says: Cultural laws of gender demand that feminine and masculine must play off against each other in the great drama of binary opposition. … In patriarchal culture, the struggle must end in the victory of the masculine complimentary must arrange itself hierarchically: androgyny must be a mythic fiction. (qtd. in Sathupathi 110-111) Both Sita and her daughter Devi struggle to survive in a world of shattered dreams. The life of the protagonist Devi in a North-American University has been completed and she returns to Madras. Devi returns back to India, unchanged by the American influence. She now does not have any future ideas but waits passively for others to arrange her life. She grows up with a sense of individuality and strives to maintain it. Devi herself has been aware of her escapism during all her life and realizes the importance to define her presence through her union with her mother. Her childhood is found to be a idyllic period where she forms her notions of womanhood with reference to the mythological characters which she reflects perfectly in later half of her life. The unspoilt happiness was lost when Devi‘s when she starts her married life which confined her freedom to the cultural norms. Traditionally Indian women play a responsible role. The girl child is socialized in accordance with the traditional codes of conduct. This socialization is carried out by Devi‘s grandmother and it becomes the central importance of the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter. These stories became the transmission of culture and tradition. Devi points out: My grandmother‘s stories were no ordinary bedtime stories. She chose each for a particular occasion, a story in reply to each of my childish questions. … Ideal moulds, impossibly ambitious, that challenged the puny listener to stretch her frame and fit into the vast spaces, live up to her illustrious ancestors. (TFN 27) The protagonist‘s search starts when she finds herself caught in her unexpected experience in an American University and her return back to her native place. Devi moves towards the contradiction of subjects like tradition and modernity. After her return from America her time in Madras is found to be highly constrained by Brahmanical culture and so outsides reality intrudes rarely. The protagonist, Devi tries to link the oppressive aspect in our tradition with liberated modernity. Because of her contradictory affinity she leads herself into the extramarital alliances with Gopal. ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Devi posse‘s contradictory sympathy and fails to follow the indigenous culture. Devi is a liberated woman who knows her traditional cultural roots but fails to associate herself with it. Devi fails to bridge the gap between the cultural traditions and her own individuality. Devi fails in her attempts to gain the balance between tradition and modernity. Devi fails to fill the void created after marriage by taking up a profession. She decides to create an identity of her own after undergoing painful persona. Devi is caught in between the forces of modernity and the regressive pulls of tradition. Devi felt her education left her unprepared for life. Devi easily realizes that in the name of marriage she had strayed herself into an empty, hollow relationship. She expects gender equality in marital relationship but finds to inequitable power relationship operating between them. Devi was not interested in the typical marriage, traditional role as wife, considering marital status a form of dignity. Though she is not hardcore feminist, she belongs to the bandwagon of awakened woman who strive hard for greater emancipation. Both Mahesh and Devi had their own opinion about love. According to Devi their marriage is genuine love, but for Mahesh it differs; he considers it to be a practical relationship. Her frustration starts because he refuses to considered her emotional longings seriously. Devi painfully and accurately sketches out her life: ―This then is marriage, the end of ends, two or three brief encounters a month when bodies stutter together in lazy, inarticulate lust. … My education has left me unprepared for the vast, yawing middle chapter of my womanhood‖. (TFN54) Devi felt that she had lost all excitement that she had expected. She whiled away her time in loneliness, wandering the huge mansion, talking to Baba and hearing the tragical life story of Mayamma. There developed a monotony and moroseness in their marital relationship which even went to the extent of anger and hatred for each other more than love and feeling. Devi wants dialogue in her relation, not dictatorship and ultimately decides to protest and asserts her individuality. The three women in the novel Mayamma, Sita and Devi highlight the negative aspect of our culture. They were oppressed by women who were supposed to be the custodians of this indigenous culture. Devi wants to be liberated from traditional cultural roots and she wants to take her own decision but she was unable to make her life meaningful. She finally seeks redemption only by identifying herself with her mother. The novel The Thousand Faces of Night clearly presents the realistic effects of patriarchy on women of different social classes and different ages. The story focuses on the varied responses to the restrictive institution of marriage. Many mythologies are used to show the suppression of female gender by masculine power of authority. Indian women have started to question the prescriptive domain on which the social constructs like marriage, motherhood; wifehood and widowhood have been promulgated for ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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centuries together. Hariharan mainly focus on the life of women in the Brahminical world. She shows female order of the Hindu laws and their lives of scarifice. Hariharan has delineated a clear picture of the ideal womanhood that was followed throughout the ages and how it has changed in the present day. Despite the individual‘s strong holds on cultural roots the present day woman‘s ideal of womanhood is altered by her education. Religious rituals and norms are altered to suit her busy schedule. The Thousand Faces of Night mainly focuses on the male chauvinism, cultural roots, religious norms, mythological facts based upon ancient work like Ramayana and Mahabharata. The epics idealize womanhood by upholding their sacrifices that, she has done for the betterment of her household and family by juxtaposing, the multifaceted Indian women and their lives of three generations have clearly pointed out the changing scenario in the Indian society. Women were ready to accept their archetypal female role in ancient generation. They had definite role fixed by the society they were ready to play the role of a wife and mother, and endured their frustration and kept their pain mute.They were found to be a victim of both mental and physical frustration but modern women have started to rebel against the social conventions. Among the women belonging to three generations the unfulfilled dream of love remains to be in constant conflict with the emotional urges. Hariharan is concern is to bring out the irrationalities and injustices of domestic and social life. Women are the most oppressed and marginalized section of any society, Mayamma all through her life has undergone traumatic experiences and she learns to survive by considering her very existence to be a penance. Hariharan uses many mythological stories and matches it with the events in the protagonists life and there by brings out the of the irony that lurks behind the ideal of womenhood in the mythologies and that is followed in day to day life. Troughout the novel Hariharan points out that women had to subdue their wishes for family and their husband. Cultural values were found to be remaining same throught the generations. Women were always expected to be a submissive, sacrificing and should not posses self-dignity. Mayamma proves to be an example for a mulititude of unfortunate women in the society. She was forced into a loveless marriage and all through her life she strives hard to adjust to the whims of her husband. She stands to prove the strength of their womanhood in their struggle for survival. Hariharan clearly outlined that all her characters travels a long distance from subjugation to independence through their assertion of their will to struggle. They were very clear about their notion to gain freedom against their, male counterparts. Women, instead of sitting idle and being stifled, started to struggle with will power to win and establish their identity. The Thousand Faces of Night portrays the tormenting saga of womens is struggle to bring together their world shattered by dreams. The protagonist, Devi is caught between tradition and modernity and ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Hariharan skillfully brought out the different generation of women and their struggle for independence over patriarchial power structure and their need for self - identy in society: Hariharan‘s The Thousand Faces of Night is symbolic of the new beginning and liberation from the male-dominance. Culture idealizes the position, for a woman in a society but the protagonist breaks it. Many questions and criticisms are raised in the novel to show the importance of traditional value that infiltrates modern attitudes. The protagonist Devi challenges the old order of myth, marriage, wifehood and love, throughout her life. Devi is the quest for self identity. Betrayal, rejection, oppression, sufferings and pains were the hallmark of the three generation women in the Indian society. The novel portrays the life of different generation women but their sufferings are similar and their life is centered in the search for female selfhood within a Brahminical Tamil Community. Hariharan wants to seek a change and gain the power of self expression for women in India. Sita, Devi, Parvathiama, Mayamma finally move towards the journey of individual identity and self –realization. Hariharan persistent concern with social change is the complex relation between tradition and modernity, and the changing status of women in India. Hariharan was successfully able to bring the cultural values through different characters and gender relations that existed unchanged throughout many generations in Indian society. Language has the potential to stage revolutionary struggle and become a site of contestation precisely because it is also the means of social control and cultural domination. WORKS CITED Primary Source Hariharan, Githa. The Thousand Faces of Night. New Delhi: Penguin, 1992. Print. Secondary Sources 1. Kumar, Saloni. "Githa Hariharan: An Astute Observer of Cultural Issues." Postcolonial Imaginings Fissions and Fussions. Ed. Sunitha Sinha. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2009. 87186. Print. 2. Sathupati, Dr.Prasanna Sree, and Amarnath Prasad.,eds. "Fractured Selves: A glimpse into the Lives of Mayamma in Geetha Hariharan's Novel The Thousand Faces of Night and Mira in Shashi Despande's Novel The Binding Vine." New Lights on Indian Women Novelists in English. New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2003.107-112. Print.
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TRAIN TO PAKISTAN: A CULTURAL ASSORTMENT, AN DISCOVERING DISTINCTIVENESS WITH DEFINING DEALINGS A.S.Benazir, Asst Prof of English, Sri Vasavi College, Erode
Introduction The summer of the Partition of India in 1947 marked a season of bloodshed that stunned and horrified those living through the nightmare. Entire families were forced to abandon their land for resettlement to Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Once that fateful line was drawn in the sand, the threat of destruction became a reality of stunning proportions. Travelers clogged the roads on carts, on foot, but mostly on trains, where they perched precariously on the roofs, clung to the sides, wherever grasping fingers could find purchase. Muslim turned against Hindu, Hindu against Muslim, in their frantic effort to escape the encroaching massacre. But the violence followed the refugees. The farther from the cities they ran, the more the indiscriminate killing infected the countryside, only to collide again and again in a futile attempt to reach safety. A particular brutality overtook the frenzied mobs, driven frantic by rage and fear by the end of this bloody chapter. Women were raped before the anguished eyes of their husbands, entire families robbed, dismembered, murdered and thrown aside like garbage until the streets were cluttered with human carnage. The division was based on two nation theory with the argument that the Hindus and the Muslims cannot live together as one nation since both have distinct social, cultural and religious identities. Muslims moved into Pakistan, and Sikhs and Hindus moved into India with the prospects of peaceful and better living, with their own religious as well as ethnic identities. Describing the monstrosity of the situation, Urvashi Butalia says that the partition left one million dead, 75000 women abducted and raped, and turning twelve million displaced into refugees status. Unfortunately, the split between Pakistan and India served to heighten each other‗s hostilities instead of bringing peace in the region. Civil tension continued mounting for months: thousands of families were split apart, homes burnt down and villages abandoned. Some women were so embarrassed of the sexual humiliation that they refused to return home and opted for suicide. Train to Pakistan portrays the darkness of humanity. The novel takes place in Mano Majra, a fictional village on the border of India and Pakistan. Sikh and Muslims live together peacefully until India‘s successfully struggle for independence results in bloody violence between the two groups. Singh‘s novel pieces together the intensity and sufferings faced by the people during these tragic times. Khushwant Singh's eye for detail and his love of the people shine through in his descriptions: ―the District Magistrate's style of smoking betrayed his lower middle-class origin. He sucked noisily, his mouth glued to his clenched fist" (Singh 4 - 5). Roli ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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Books in New Delhi published a new edition (2006) of the novel together with 66 of Margaret Bourke-White's photographs of the violence. Train to Pakistan has also translated into the Tamil language as same titled by Raman Raja. Character Development When it comes to Singh‘s characters, there is a variety of differences among them. The class differences between citizens allow for discrimination and prejudice. The population within Mano Majra is divided by social class and education. Education is praised among the community because people believe that those with knowledge have an advantage in life. A prime example of class distinction is found between Iqbal and Jugga. Iqbal, a government social worker arrives in Mano Majra to reform and support the socialist party of India. His presence and interference with the growingly violent conflict causes suspicion and results in his arrest. Jugga, on the other hand, is Sikh peasant farmer who is also known as the village troublemaker. The treatment of the two men in prison reflects their difference in class. Jugga was given no furniture and his food was flung at him while Iqbal‘s treatment was much more respectable and less harsh. It is obvious how open discrimination is in the Indian village. Illiterate peasants were treated lowly while the educated were highly admired. When Iqbal was speaking to a villager about freedom, the villager explained, ―Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis‖ (Singh 48). In addition to class distinction, Train to Pakistan heavily emphasizes on government corruption. The citizens are at the mercy of corrupt officials who take the law into their own hands. One of the deputy commissioners, Hukum Chand sends out an arrest to Jugga and Iqbal Singh for the murder of a villager. His orders are not backed by sound evidence; Iqbal arrived after the murder and Jugga was too easily recognized to be the crook. Jugga is aware of the abuse of the law by authority figures. ―They always arrest me when anything goes wrong in Mano Majra. You see, I am a budmash…the police are the kings of the country‖ (Singh 106). Hukum, like the other officials, take advantage of their power and uses it for personal gain. They did just enough in terms of dealing with the dispute so that nobody could say that they did not do anything. The law enforcement was completely at the whim of the local government, meaning that in practice, there was no law. The words of the government officials are final; the citizens of the village do not challenge the authorities in fear of being imprisoned. ―Hukum Chand felt as if he had touched the lizards and they had made his hands dirty. He rubbed his hands on the hem of his shirt. It was not the sort of dirt which could be wiped off or washed clean‖ (Singh 24). Throughout the novel, the fear among the villagers and the disturbing events are a mere umbrella of the horrors and violence of humanity. The novel has an ominous beginning; a trainload of mass carnage arrives to the Mano Majra and creates uneasiness within the village. The community cannot come to an understanding of this tragedy; even a seemingly immoral man like Chand is emotionally affected. From that point on, trains from Pakistan return daily with corpses of the dead and Chand finds relief by resorting to drinking whisky and sleeping with a ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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young prostitute. The villagers and Chand are scarred by the image of the corpses; this tragedy portrays how the horrors and brutality of the human nature can have a devastating effect on one‘s mentality. Alcoholism is another tool Hukum Chand uses in attempt to clean his conscience. He feels the guilt of his actions by day and relieved of them by night, when his alcohol is able to justify visits with a teenage prostitute the same age as his deceased daughter. In all his conflictions, he is able to acknowledge that what he is doing is bad, but is still unable to promote good. (Din, et.al.) Communal Violence Once it was decided to divide Punjab between India and Pakistan, rioting starts. Things just fell apart, and Muslims and Sikhs and their Hindu supporters became vengeful towards one another. Friends became foes. They killed and looted indiscriminately. Both sides were in the vice-like grip of frenzy beyond control. Passages describing bloodshed and murder highlight the brute in human beings. ―The terror the mob generates is palpable – like an evil, paralyzing spell. The terrible procession, like a sluggish river, flows beneath us. Every short while a group of men, like a whirling eddy, stalls – and like the widening circles of a treacherous eddy dissolving in the main stream, leaves in its centre the pulpy and red flotsam of a mangled body‖ (Singh 135). ―The whole world is burning. The air on my face is so hot. I think my flesh and clothes will catch fire. I start screaming: hysterically sobbing – how long does Lahore burn? Weeks? Months?‖ (Singh 139). The Sikh leader in Mano Majra is shown invoking the Sikhs: I‘ll tell you what to do. He paused, looked around and started again. He spoke slowly, emphasizing each sentence by stabbing the air with his forefinger, ―for each Hindu and Sikh they kill, kill two Mussulmans. For each woman they abduct or rape, abduct two…For each trainload of dead, send across two… That will stop the killing on the other side. It will teach them that we can also play this game of killing and looting (Singh 162). It is after these instigations, the Sikhs conspire to derail a train heading to Pakistan and tasking revenge upon the Muslims. Thus, the novel gives a good account of what followed in the wake of post-partition trauma. Victimization of Women The partition narratives are testimony to the fact that the women of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims were among ―the greatest victims of religious and cultural persecution (Pennebaker). On both sides of the newly created border, women were kidnapped, abducted, raped and brutally killed. Defilement of a woman‗s body was considered to be the greatest dishonor that a family ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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had to endure. And the violence inflicted upon women was equivalent to a sacrilege against one‗s religion, country, and family. It has become the norm of the victors that they tend to celebrate their triumphs on the bodies of women while crossing all the limits of humanism (Sengupta, E1, E7). In Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh gives a similar account of atrocities being inflicted upon women of other religions. He tells the tale of a young girl - Sundari. She was going to Gujranwala with her husband on the fourth day of her marriage. Her arms still covered with red lacquer bangles and her palms bright with henna (mehndi), she is happily day-dreaming on her way to her new home when the bus on which they are riding is attacked by Muslims. Her husband is stripped naked and dismembered before her eyes; she is gang-raped. The mob made love to her. She did not have to take off any one of her bangles. They were all smashed as she lay in the road, being taken by one man and another and another. That should have brought her a lot of good luck (Singh 147). Apart from such horrible accounts the ghost trains carrying the dead bodies also carry sacks of women‗s breasts. The amputation of breasts of women is one of the most gruesome injuries faced by the women. Many women died trying to avoid sexual violation, preserve their chastity, and protect their religious and family honor. Some women set themselves ablaze and sometimes all the women in family committed mass suicide (Hassan). Romance Singh wants to give a coloring of imagination to the realistic depiction of the history of partition. The novelist develops the love story between the individuals of diverse religious and ethnic identities. The narrative of Train to Pakistan is woven around the love affair of the Sikh gangster Juggat Singh and his beloved Nooran – the daughter of the village priest. Juggat Singh averts mass destruction being inflicted upon the Muslim passengers aboard the train to Pakistan just because his beloved is also amongst the passengers fleeing to Pakistan. Commenting upon this heroic role played by Juggat Singh, Sisir Das says: ―The revenge plan of the Hindus to blow up the train is aborted by the notorious gangster Jugga, whose beloved Nooran, the daughter of a Muslim weaver, also was aboard the train. Love triumphs over hatred: it is the love of an individual for another individual that saves the train. The train went over him and went to Pakistan‖ (Das 374). Goodness of Human Character Juggat Singh and Iqbal in Train to Pakistan are socially marginalized individuals but they represent the sunny side of life. Iqbal is against the exploitation of the poor by the rich. He is against the partition of India. He believes that no good to the people of India and Pakistan will ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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come out of this partition, violence and the transfer of population. He is the man who requests repeatedly Meet Singh, the priest in the Guruddwara at Mano Majra, to stop the violence and killings. He comes to know that near the bridge at Mano Majra, the Sikhs and the Hindus are planning to attack the train that will carry Muslims of Chundun Nager and Mano Majra to Pakistan. This plan of mass-destruction will take place under the aegis of the militant boy leader. Iqbal passionately requests Meet Singh: ―You cannot let this sort of things happen! Can‗t you tell them that the people on the train are the very same people they were addressing as uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters?‖ (Singh 159-60) His vision of life registers the ultimate triumph of man‗s human values over the menacing lunacy overtaking the country during partition (Roy). Juggat Singh, a social marginal at Mano Majra, who lives at the outskirt of the village, is a diehard daredevil. He is involved in several train robberies, car hold-ups, dacoities and murders. The police arrest him for being suspect in killing Ram Lal - the Hindu money lender. He is put behind the bars. When the communal tension reaches the point of outburst at Mono Majra, i.e., when the Sikh and Hindu fundamentalist forces plan to attack the train near the bridge carrying the Muslim migrants to Pakistan, the local police inspector on the instruction of Hukum Chand, releases Juggat Singh from the police custody. Juggat Singh after his release comes to know the blueprint of the train attack by the boy leader. He also comes to know that Muslims along with Imam Baksh and his daughter Nooran will be travelling to Pakistan by that train. The social marginal, Juggat Singh, rises to the occasion and decides that he should save those Muslims travelling by that train. Khushwant Singh concludes his novel thus: The engine was only a few yards off, throwing embers high up in the sky with each blast of the whistle. Somebody fired another shot. The man‗s body slid off the rope, but he clung to it with his hands and chin. … The rope had been cut in shreds…. The engine was almost on him. There was a volley of shots. The man shivered and collapsed. The rope snapped in the centre as he fell. The train went over him, and went on to Pakistan (Singh 172). The Film Train to Pakistan is a 1998 Hindi film adapted from Khushwant Singh's 1956 historical novel by the same name set in the Partition of India of 1947 and directed by Pamela Rooks (―Fifty Summers After‖). The film stars Nirmal Pandey, Rajit Kapur, Mohan Agashe, Smriti Mishra, Mangal Dhillon and Divya Dutta. According to Singh several people in past has attempted to make the film, including Shashi Kapoor and Shabana Azmi, who even developed a screenplay, but owing to sensitivity of the subject, abandoned the project ("Films & Partition Train of History"). The film was produced by Channel Four Films and National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC), and Production Company was Kaleidoscope Entertainment ("No Malice Towards Rooks: Khushwant"). Though many villages ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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of Punjab resembled, the Punjab of fifty years prior, Muslim pockets were missing now, hence a couple of villages on the fringes of Punjab were used to give a combined look of Mano Majra, the village near the Indo-Pak border, where the novel was set. Pamela used her background in documentary film making to shoot certain parts of the film live, in scenes like that of religious ceremony at a temple, the feel couldn't have been recreated through retakes were shot live. The shooting was finally completed by July 1997, when the film went into post-production work in Mumbai, ahead of its August 15, television premiere on STAR Plus ("Pamela Rooks"). Critical Reception Initially the film was to have its premiere on STAR Plus channel on August 15, 1997, India's Independence Day, but it ran into trouble with Indian Censor Board, thus its theatrical release was also cancelled twice, and with director not agreeing to the cuts demanded by the board, the film went to a tribunal, which caused further delays. Eventually it was passed in December 1997 with a few cuts, mostly audio. Subsequently, the film was released in the United States, Sri Lanka and on Channel Four in the UK, and also shown in several international film festivals including Zanzibar International Film Festival, 1998, World Film Festival National Films from South Festival Denmark, 1998, Beirut International Film Festival, 1998, Fiminale International Film Festival, Konl Germany, 1998, Soria Mora Film Festival, Oslo, 1998, and Indian Film Week in Hong Kong, 2000. Besides critical acclaim, it was also nominated for Best Feature Film at the 1999 Cinequest Film Festival ("Pamela Rooks"). Conclusion It is appropriate to say that Khushwant Singh has successfully created a discourse to bring the turbulent past to the forefront of society. The novel encompass the issues of independence and partition, using it as a means to explore other issues which then emerge as the larger picture of the devastation, bloody birth of nations and continued problems. The novelist has astutely reproduced the racial, religious, socio-economic and political biases which led to the historic bloodshed, plundering, defiling and disintegration of the society. He agrees on the point that if the educated people have taken a right step at right time, then there would not have been such a massive bloodshed in the subcontinent. (Din, et.al.) Train to Pakistan gives an adult‗s faithful account of the treacherous world and its complexities that surround the characters. Instead of depicting the Partition in terms of only the political events surrounding it, Mr. Singh digs into a deep local focus, providing a human dimension which brings to the event a sense of reality, horror, and believability. Truth meets fiction in this very well written episode of one of the most violent times in our history. The book cries out against the losses of civility, tolerance, and life itself. Indeed, the book has been scripted in blood.
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WORKS CITED 1. Butalia, U. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Print. 2. Din, Umar ud. Khan, M. Kamal and Mahmood, Shahzad. ―Reflections on Partition Literature - A Comparative Analysis of Ice Candy Man and Train to Pakistan.‖ Language in India 196 10: 7 (2010), n.pag. Web. 3. "Fifty Summers After". Indian Express. July 25, 1997: Print. 4. "Films & Partition Train of History". The Tribune. August 5, 2007: Print. 5. Hassan, M. India‟s Partition: Process, Strategy, Mobilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Print. 6. "No Malice Towards Rooks: Khushwant". Indian Express. January 10, 1999: Print. 7. "Pamela Rooks". Outlook. Jan 19, 1998: Print. 8. Pennebaker, M. K. ―The Will of Men: Victimization of Women During India‗s Partition‖. Agora 1 (1), 2000. Web. June 8, 2010. 9. Roy, P. ―Partition's Other Avatars‖. Postcolonial Studies, 12: 3, 2009. Web. May 5, 2010. 10. Sengupta, Somini, "Bearing Steady Witness to Partition's Wounds". The New York Times, September 21, 2006. E1, E7: Print. 11. Singh, K. Train to Pakistan. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Penguin Books, 1956. Print.
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REPROACHMENT ON ENVIRONMENT IN CRY, THE PEACOCK AND FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN S. Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of English, The Central Law College, Salem
The study of the relationship between literature and the environment has fostered human attitudes toward the environment as expressed in natural wriring. In the essay ―literature and ecology: An experiment in ecocriticism,‖ Rueckert defines ecocriticism as ‗The application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature because ecology (as a science, as a discipline , as a bases for human vision) has the greatest relevance to the present and the future of the world‘ (102). Ecological criticism shares the obvious concern that human culture is inextricably linked to the physical world. The connection between nature and man is pivotal in cry, The peacock and fire on the mountain. An eco- critical approach brings out the importance of the environment to the major themes in her works. Nature imagery in her fiction allows the reader to perceive the unexplored realms of the female psyche. Heise believes that ecocriticism ‗investigates how nature is used literally or metaphorically in certain literary or anthentic genres and tropes, and what assumptions about nature underlie genres that may not address this trope directly‘ (4). Desai‘s images- zoological, botanical, Meterological and colored represent actions, approaches, feelings and states of mind of particular characters or situations. Through the evocation of images, desai transcribes the human condition and predicament. Born in mussoric on june 24, 1937, anita desai, the daughter of a Bengali father and a german mother came under varied influences which shaped her creative imagination and fictional craftsmanship. She had early education in delhi- first at queen mary‘s school, and then at Miranda house, delhi university. Where she took her bachelor‘s degree in English literature in 1957. She worked for a year in max bhavan, Calcutta, and then, was married to ashvin desai. She has lived in various cities- Calcutta, Bombay, Chandigarh, delhi and poona, which are well describe in her novels. Anita desai‘s famous novels are cry, the peacock, (1963), voices in the city (1965), bye-bye blackbird (1971), where shall we go this summer (1975), fire on the mountain(1977),Clear Light of Day(1980),and The Village By the Sea(1983). Nature images in cry, The peacock explore the emotional world of maya the protagonist, and travel down her psychology to unravel her distorted world. The images are poignant expressions of an extremely sencitive personality that borders between neurosis and insanity.The first zoological imagery of toto, maya‘s pet dog is used ‗as a structural device that is not only integral to the novelist but also to the theme‘ (Prasad 363). This animal image introduces the theme of alienation and the death motif as the primary indicators of maya‘s psychic disorder: ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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All day the body lay rotting in the sun. It could not be moved on to the veranda for, in that april heat, the reek of death flesh was over powering and would soon have penetrated the rooms. Crows ast in a circle around the corpse, and the crows will eat anything – entrails, eyes, anything.(cry 7) Maya is so obessed with the death of her pet dog that she fails to realize that death is a natural phenomenon one has to accept. Later, she claims ‗childless women do develop fanatic attachments to their pets…‘ (cry 15). Maya is a victum of alienation and loneliness. Gautama, her husband is cold to her desires. ‗Gautama,‘ she says, ‗Giving me an opal ring to wear on my finger, did not notice the translucent skin beneath, the blue flashing veins that run under…‘(14). As tension mounts, her erractic moods create creatures that appear to gnaw at her. She feels: it was that something else, that indefineable unease at the back of my mind, the grain of sand that it irked, itched, and remained meaningless… the giant shadows cast by trees… with horrifying swiftness… I leapt from my chair in terror, overcome by a sensation of snakes coiling and uncoiling their moist limbs about me, of evil descending… heralded by deafening drum beats.(17) She engages in comparing her rather insipid life to nature that provides a temporary relief the tension mountain up in her. Maya is so shocked at the unpleasantness of the slimy creatures that she detests any animal, even her pet cat for a moment. Yet, her mind continuously churns up revolting images that provide testimony to her sordid state. Maya realize that her quest for a fruitful life would not materialize. Both of them are poles apart in sensibilities. She is like ‗the beds of petunias…sentimental irresolute flowers,‘ while Gautama resembles ‗the blossoms of the lemon tree …stronger, crisper character‘ (21-22). Maya identifies herself with the peacocks that keep ‗pacing the rocks at night- peacocks searching for mates, peacocks tearing themselves to bleeding shreds in the act of love, peacocks screaming with- agony at the death on love‘(146). Gautama is unresponsive to her desperate calls for intimacy. She recalls how lonely she had felt even in her own home. She recalls, ‗I was caged in this room that I had hated –severe, without even the grace of symmetry‘ (85-86). The albino astrologer‘s prediction of the imminent death of either Gautama or herself draws Maya into the quagmire of the need to live or die. While she contemplates death, she ironically decides to murder Gautama, the root cause of her unfulfilled life. The astrologer‘s warning works on her imbalanced mind and she constantly engages in deciding how to execute the crime, justifying the need to act at the first opportunity. The fissure generated by the emotional and intellectual alienation between partners need culmination and the sapless existence of the couple is finally resolved:
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He had no contact with the world, on with me. What would it matter to him if he died and lost even the possibility of contact? What would it matter to him? It was I, I who screamed with the peacocks, screamed at the sight of the rain clouds, screamed at their disappearance, screamed in mute horror. (149) Desai exploits the ravages of nature and the botanical images to heighten the malicious influence of Maya on Gautama. She finally decides to kill Gautama without further delay. She says: Storms I had known before. Rain storms, thunder-storms, dust-storms….But this waiting with not a rumble of thunder, not a whirl of wind to mark the beginning of the end. And it was the end that I waited for. The beginning had begun long ago, was even forgotten…. I had waited too long – another day would be one too many. (154) When the dust-storm finally approaches, Maya believes ‗the time came for annihilation‘ (156). She knows that the time for ‗release and liberty‘ (158) has arrived: Ah, storm, storm, wonderful, infidel storm, blow, blow! I cried and ran and ran on and on from room to room, laughing as maniac laugh once the world gives them up and surrenders them to their freedom…. Frightened? No! I ran from the thought, laughing. Oh no, what need for fright…. It is only relief I promise you, you shall see – I swear – survive…. (158) As the evening approaches, Maya asks Gautama to accompany her to the roof instead of walking down the garden. As they keep talking, Maya realizes that it is ‗Poor Gautama, poor dear Gautama who was so intense and yet had never lived, and never would‘ (173). She makes him pause at the parapet edge and when Gautama makes a casual gesture in front of her as they talk, she pushes him ‗to the very bottom‘ screaming ‗Gautama!‘ in fury (173). The death of Gautama is a rude shock to the families. When asked about the reason for the act, Maya justifies by saying that ‗it was an accident‘ (180). She feels no remorse and moves about with merriment. She has avenged the wrong done to her. Maya‘s unpredictable behavior is watched suspiciously by Nila. A month after Gautama‘s death, the three move into Maya‘s home. One day, Nila and her mother hear ‗the patter of a child‘s laughter cascading up and down the scales of some new delight – a brilliant peacock‘s feather perhaps? Then it stopped, suddenly they heard a different voice calling…calling out in great dread‘ (184). Maya‘s mother-in-law rushes to the balcony, and in an effort to stop Maya from any untoward action disappears with her ‗into the dark quiet‘ (184). Nila is dumb-struck! Maya has escaped pain as peacocks do. ―Pia, pia‘ they cry. ‗Lover, lover. Mio, mio, - I die, I die‖ (82). Just as peacocks fight before they ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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mate, Maya has killed her husband and dies in love with life. Fire on the Mountain Desai‘s sixth novel, centers on Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das. According to Choudary, ‗Fire on the Mountain displays skilful dramatization of the experiences of certain women embroiled by the crossway of life‘ (77). The characters respond to certain situations in their lives and the imagery employed in the novel abounds in the externalization of the inner consciousness of the three women. Nature images have been employed to examine human relationships and their significations. Swain acknowledges that ―There is in her a persistent search for the most appropriate symbols and images in the expression of the subterranean and the subconscious‖ (131). The aged Nanda Kaul decides to spend the rest of her life at Carignano, in Kasauli all alone. She believes she has completed her duties in life and has decided to ‗be left to the pines and cicadas alone. She hoped she would not stop‘ (Fire 3). At this stage in her life, Nanda ‗wanted no one and nothing else. Whatever else came, or happened here, would be an unwelcome intrusion and distraction‘ (3). She is grey, tall and thin and she fancies ‗she could merge with the pine trees and could be mistaken for one. To be a tree, no more and no less, was all she was prepared to undertake‘ (4). Critic Indira says, ‗Nanda‘s sense of identification with the pine trees suggests her desire for absolute stillness and withdrawal from life‘ (97). Nanda is attracted to Carignano for ‗its barrenness.‘ (Fire 4). Nanda is like Carignano, stark, alone and barren. The lonely house is symbolic of the solitary life of Nanda. The barrenness and starkness associated with it symbolizes an essential human condition- alienation. The sight of an eagle or a bright hoopoe served to delight her otherwise solitary existence. The postman early morning is an unwelcome sight. She understands that her great-grand daughter, Raka would be staying with her for some days. Ram Lal the cook and caretaker is the only person who she maintains contact with. Raka, as Nanda understands, has suffered from typhoid and the fever has made her weak. She is being sent to Carignano to convalesce. Raka has been asked to stay in Carignano as part of her medication. Desai describes Nanda‘s anger and reluctance in welcoming her great-grand daughter thus: One long finger moved like a searching insect over the letter on her lap, moved involuntarily as she struggled to suppress her anger, her disappointment and her total loathing of her daughter‘s meddling, busybody ways, her granddaughter‘s abject helplessness, and her great granddaughter‘s impending arrival here at Carignano. (Fire18) Nanda has no option but to receive her great-grand daughter. As she sits alone, she sees an eagle, ‗its wings outspread, gliding on currents of air without once moving its great muscular wings which remained in repose, in control. She had wished it occurred to her, to imitate that eagle – gliding, with eyes closed‘ (21). Nanda is desperate for a life without worries. She is forced to accept Raka into her house. Her mind is filled with thoughts about freedom. Nanda feels she is ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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being persecuted like the worm in her desperate attempt to escape Ila. ‗Still starting at the hen which was greedily gulping down bits of worm, she thought of her husband‘s face and the way he would plait his fingers across his stomach…‘( 24). This prey-predator image of hen pecking at a worm is a cruel reminder of her past suffering at the hands of the adulterous husband and her present awareness about the harsh realities of life. Her husband had an extra- marital affair with Miss David, the Mathematics teacher. Now, Nanda is helpless as she has to welcome Ila, which means disturbing her tranquility. ―Though Nanda is determined to remain unaffected by the happenings outside, she cannot help but listen to the quarrel of the monkeys and the shrill voices of the parrots. a Desai‘s skill is incomparable‖ (135-136). The arrival of Raka, though unwelcome is looked up by Nanda as a responsibility. To Nanda ‗Raka meant the moon, but this child was not round faced, calm or radiant‘ (Fire 43). Nanda thinks the girl ‗looked like one of those dark crickets that leap up in fright but do not sing, or a mosquito, minute and fine, on thin precarious legs‘(43). Ecological criticism envelops not only ecological concerns, but also those landscapes that employ images that contribute to a meaningful link between the various aspects of animate and inanimate relationships. Howarth mentions: A future sense of cultural history may be landscape ecology which avoids distinction between natural and disturbed regions and uses a new spatial language to describe land by shape, junction, and change. They also provides metaphors for land – such as mosaic, patch, corridor…. (76) The sudden arrival of a dust-storm, yellow and fierce, engulfs Kasauli, blotting out the view, the sky and the air in a gritty mask. ‗The sun … lighting them up in a great conflagration - splendid bonfire that burned in the heart of the yellow clouds. The whole world was livid, inflamed‘ The symbolic implication of the forest fire is reinforced by the title of the novel, Fire on the Mountain and is highly significant from the thematic point of view. The mountain symbolizes Nanda Kaul and the fire is symbolic of Raka‘s wild nature. ―Nanda is the ‗rocky belt‘, dry, hardened by time and age. Raka is silent, swift and threatening like the forest fire. The novel may be considered as a story of inabilities of human beings to ignore the world, to place oneself in another‘s position‖ . Forest fire is one of the major concerns in the mountainous regions. It could be accidental or intentional and results in loss of lives, property and the depletion of forest resources. Hill stations have been pleasure spots for tourists and passer- by who often ‗scratched their names into their succulent blades and there they remained – names and dates, incongruous and obtrusive as the barbed wire‘ (Fire 63). Ila is aware that all forms of exploitation take place at Kasauli. She is a person who fights for justice. Ila recalls the incident where Maya-devi‘s son dies of tetanus. Superstitious beliefs in Kasauli are so rooted that the priest-man is revered and the doctor is shunned. Ila is involved with the lives of the people in Kasauli as she has recently joined in the capacity of the welfare ISBN: "978-93-86388-10-0"
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officer by the government. She is against child marriage that prevails in Kasauli and prevents the marriage of Preet Singh‘s seven year-old daughter to an old man in a neighboring village. Hence she has incurred the wrath of the priest and Preet Singh, who has decided to take revenge on Ila for interfering in his affairs. Though she is aware of the dire consequences of her deeds, she is committed to the welfare of Kasauli. One day, when Ila is out visiting Kasauli, she finds that the work would take too much time. Though alone, she is determined to walk the long distance down the desolate hill side to reach home and is interrupted by ‗a black shape‘ (155). She recognizes Preet Singh who has attacked her. Defenseless against the powerful assailant, she is raped and brutally killed. The news is a rude shock to Nanda. To Nanda, Ila‘s death is like the fire that has been set. The young girl sees Nanda ‗on the stool with her head hanging, the black telephone hanging, the long wire dangling‘ (159). She does not realize that her great-grandmother is dead. In this novel, ‗the story element is very thin and there is practically no action except for the tragic end‘ (Indira 96). Vassanji opines: ―Anita Desai‘s novels do not deal with the large movements of history but with the struggles of human soul; not with the exuberance, the contradictions, the fascinations of India, its thrillingness and rawness that so easily fascinate the non-Indian reader; rather she looks at the invisible and private, and shall we say darker world of the self‘. (Introduction xiii) Anita Desai has the power to express sensibilities in her canvas using images from nature. Since most of her novels are explorations into fundamental conditions and hapless situations, the use of imagery from nature has contributed to the themes in her novels in a substantial manner. She is an artist who has the ability to carve such deep emotions within her dexterous use of imagery that they announce the introduction of the explorations of the selves within the ecological framework. REFERENCE 1. Desai Anita. Cry, The Peacock .New Delhi: orient, 1980. 2. Fire on the Mountain, Noida: Random House 2008, Print. 3. Maya D.‖Anita Desai.‖A companion to Indian Fiction in English .Ed.Pier Paolo Piciucco.New Delhi: Atlantic ,2004 .Print. 4. Rueckert, William ―Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism:‖ The Ecocriticism Reader :Landmarks in Literary Ecology ,Ed. Chery II Glottelty and Harold Fromm.Georgfia :U of Georgia P,,1996,Print.
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