Vol 6 No 3 - Page 2

Politics of Abjection: Analysing the Debasement of Female Bodies in Cross-Border Conflicts

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Deblina Hazra, Jadavpur University

Abstract

Julia Kristeva in Powers Of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982) describes abjection as the ambivalent process of subject formation in which elements that the self cannot assimilate are expelled, disavowed and designated repugnant. Female bodies in cross-border feud have always been subjected to abjection for the greater religio-political need. The bodies of women have proved to be useful mediums to transfer symbolically messages of power, victory and supremacy. Violence perpetrated on these bodies not only metaphorically asserts male superiority, but also serves as an effective platform to terrorize people. Degrading the female bodies also signifies the extermination of a particular community, both by destroying the honour and impregnating them with the seeds of a foreign community. Reading Jean Franco’s account of debasement of female bodies in the war across USA-Mexico border and the partition narratives based on the Indo-Pakistan front, as well as taking into account the contemporary scenario of Islamic terrorism, this paper aims to look at the ways in which women’s bodies are violently debased, and analyse the symbolisms of such abjection against the backdrop of border-wars.

[Keywords: Border, partition narratives, Islamic terrorism, female bodies, abjection.]

Introduction

“…when the taboo against harming others is broken, there can be no limits, no social pact.” (Franco 1)

Franco in her 2013 book Cruel Modernity analyzes the various forms of cruelty that has begun to define modernity in Latin America. Though focused only on the discriminating atrocities committed across the USA-Mexico border, her reading is an echo of border politics all around the globe. Border exists, whether visible and physical or invisible and imaginary, because there is an ‘other’. It differentiates race, religion, ethnicity, community, nationality, language and even gender. Franco’s extensive research reveals that the only possible way modernity can negotiate with such varied borders is through an extreme form of violence which amounts to a complete dehumanization of both human body and psyche. The violence inflicted on human beings, in such cases, leads to a debasement of the human body and reduces it to an animalistic status. The human body, subjected to beatings, curses and other forms of humiliations, loses its subjectivity and becomes synonymous to a non-human existence. Franco examines the conditions under which extreme forms of cruelty become “the instrument of armies, governments, and rogue groups” and seeks to answer the question, “Why, in Latin America, did the pressures of modernization and the lure of modernity lead states to kill?” (Franco 2) This is not to say that Franco considers cruelty as a newly emerging phenomenon. She is not blind to the fact that neither cruelty nor its exploitation is new. However, it is the lifting of the taboo against harming others that concerns her thesis. She explores how “the acceptance and justification of cruelty and the rationale for cruel acts” (Franco 2) has become a major feature of modernity. The scenario that she paints is a universal one – be it across the USA-Mexico border or the India-Pakistan border. The root cause of such barbarism across multiple forms of borders can be pinned down to the internalization of border in human psyche. Border denotes difference and difference is a natural phenomenon, since the world as it was created was not a homogeneous one. However, the differences of race, religion, ethnicity, language has led to an utmost intolerance towards the other calling for its cruel annihilation. The hatred towards the other has been nurtured to such an extent that human conscience no longer recognizes cruelty as an act amounting to crime. The involvement of state apparatuses in further endorsing this hatred and its participation in the game of brutality deprives humans of their rights in such a manner that “no act committed against them could appear any longer a crime” (Agamben, qtd. Franco 4).

‘Cruel Modernity’ and the Female Body

Among other forms of brutality which constitute ‘cruel modernity’, the treatment of the female bodies in cross-border politics is the most grotesque and barbaric. The female body is a site of numerous conflicting and contesting claims. It is a site to assert male supremacy; it is simultaneously a site where the symbolic extermination of an entire community or race can be carried out; it is also a site which bears the burden of honour. This honour once again is not singularly of the woman’s. The honour of her family, the honour of the race and ethnicity to which she belongs are all manifested on her body. The female body, therefore, is a vulnerable site – a site whose violation can symbolically violate an entire community, and a site whose protection is mandatory to maintain the purity and integrity of the community, even if that protection comes at the cost of her life. This paper studies this complex reading of the female body and how it is used to manipulate cross-border politics. Through a comparative reading of instances of abjection of the female body from Franco’s Cruel Modernity and literary examples from the Indo-Pakistan border this paper attempts to show how two widely different border spectrums resort to a similar brutal treatment of the female body with an aim of turning it into an abject to assert various forms of male supremacy in their own individual ways. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines abject as “Brought low, miserable; craven, degraded, despicable, self abasing” and it describes abjection as a “state of misery or degradation.” While describing how abjection is expressed, Samantha Pentony in her article ‘How Kristeva’s theory of abjection works in relation to the fairy tale and post colonial novel: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and Keri Hulme’s The Bone People’ comments that

“[R]eligious abhorrence, incest, women’s bodies, human sacrifice, bodily waste, death, cannibalism, murder, decay, and perversion are aspects of humanity that society considers abject” (Pentony 1; italics are mine).

This paper traces how women’s bodies in being subjected to the politics of abjection become a means of proclaiming male supremacy in conflicts across all kinds of borders – whether geographical, political, racial, or most importantly, gender.

Julia Kristeva put forward her theory of abjection in Powers Of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982) where she identifies that we first experience abjection at the point of separation from the mother. This idea is drawn from Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory which underpins her theory of abjection. She identifies that abjection represents a revolt against that which gave us our own existence or state of being. For Kristeva, the corporeal link between mother and child is the most fundamental abjection of all, initiating the logic upon which all other forms of abjection are predicated and paving the way for the child’s entry into the symbolic. This, for Kristeva, is why language is a masculine preserve and why femininity – and particularly maternity – is tainted with the abject. According to her, abjection describes the ambivalent process of subject formation in which elements that the self cannot assimilate are expelled, disavowed and designated repugnant. Her model of the Abject outlines a conflict in gender between patriarchal signification and the female imaginary and explains female oppression as an inability to cast off the internalization of the mother. Taking her cue from Kristeva, Barbara Creed writes:

“The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self. (Creed 65; italics are mine)

Besides political, racial, communal, ethnic and linguistic borders, women have to confront what is probably the most unaccounted but the most diabolic border – the border of gender – where women are seen as men’s ‘other’ and, thus, are separated out in heinous ways of all kinds…Access Full Text of the Article

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Indian English Fiction – The Fruit Inevitable: A Review Indian Fiction in English: Mapping the Contemporary Literary Landscape

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Edited by
Sajalkumar Bhattacharya, Arnab Kumar Sinha & Himadri Lahiri

New Delhi: Creative, 2014
Page nos. 432
 ISBN 978-81-8043-108-1.

Review by
Partha Sarathi Gupta
Tripura University

Fiction is the rotund fruit which blossoms spontaneously and inevitably in the fast spreading, all encompassing, encroaching and evergreen tree of life, observed Tagore in the introductory paragraph of his essay Shesh Kotha (Final Words) in the fourth volume of Golpoguchho. Life spreads its ever expanding branches about its trunk, and the monotony of its accessions envelops existence, till one fine day, on one of its branches, a fruit blossoms. It is rotund, bright, being sweet, sour or intensely bitter in its pulp, and has an inevitability about itself. Fiction is the fruit of the tree of life and experience. Tagore made the above observations on the nature of the short story in particular. But the remarks are equally applicable to the art of fiction in general. If the content of fiction is life, like the huge expansive evergreen tree, the form is the fruit. The rotundity of the fruit suggests the shape and significance offered by the artist of fiction to the immense panorama of the chaotic variety of life and its experiences. Tagore’s observations fit smugly into the territory of English fiction in India. Amit Chaudhuri observes, “Indian life is plural, garrulous, rambling, lacking a fixed centre, and the Indian novel must be the same” (115). A relatively new genre in the matrix of Indian literature, the novel in India is a colonial child. The English novel in the Indian soil is more so, as the enterprise of writing fiction in the colonizer’s language ought to be fraught with and wrought in anxieties of influence. But it is the same influence that underscores the first colonial experience, and hence life, in those times of anxiety. Hence the cross-pollination of language, race and art gave birth to the fruit called Indian English novel.

The recently published anthology of essays titled Indian Fiction in English: Mapping the Contemporary Literary Landscape (New Delhi: Creative, 2014) edited by Sajalkumar Bhattacharya, Arnab Kumar Sinha and Himadri Lahiri makes fresh forays into the taken-for-granted literary landscape of Indian Fiction in English. The “Introduction” to the volume explains to the reader the inevitability of the genre in colonial and postcolonial India, rooting it back to 1835, the year of the publication of Macaulay’s Minutes on Education. Since then, the bogey of Indian English fiction chugs on, traversing the landscapes of colonial India, forging new narrative forms to articulate the Indian experience in the language of the colonizer. Amit Chaudhuri rightly points out that “since India is a huge baggy monster, the novels that accommodate it have to be baggy monsters as well” (Chaudhuri 114); “the largeness of the book allegorizes the largeness of the country it represents” (114-115). The bulky Booker of Bookers – Midnight’s Children – automatically comes to mind in this context. Chaudhuri draws a contrast between them and the novels written in the regional languages such as Bengali, “where the short story and novella have predominated at least as much as the novel, often in the hands of the major novelists of the first half of the century, such as Bibhutibhusan and Tarashankar Banerjee” (114). Moreover, Chaudhuri also refers to the writer and critic Buddhadev Bose who reminds the scholar that Tagore brought the modern short story into Bengal in the late nineteenth century, “some time before it was introduced to England” (114). Any attempt to map Indian English Fiction may refer to these valuable insights provided by none other than Amit Chaudhuri, to situate the contemporary Indian English novel in context. And there lies the value of the volume under review edited by Bhattacharya, Sinha and Lahiri. Although the book attempts to “map” “the contemporary literary landscape” of Indian English Fiction, the chapters in the first section initiate a discussion on the history of the evolution of the Indian novel in English.

The essays in this volume have been distributed across seven sections on the basis of their thrusts of argument, followed by an “Interview” with Tabish Khair presented by Sajalkumar Bhattacharya. However, the common linking paradigm of critical evaluation seems to be the question of the identity of the Indian English novel, inextricably connected with questions of nation, postcoloniality, history, ethnicity and representations of the diaspora. Almost all of these contentious issues have been addressed by Tabish Khair in his interview given to Sajalkumar Bhattacharya in the final section of the volume. Hence, instead of beginning from the beginning, one may begin from the end. Khair responds to a set of penetrating questions that naturally arises in any critical engagement with the genre in question – Indian English Fiction – covering almost all the above-mentioned areas of enquiry. With a critical detachment, he separates himself from the privileged metropolitan positioning of the Indian English novelist, despite having migrated to Denmark himself, and celebrates his root-status as the Indian in Gaya, which to him is different from the Indian in Goa. However, his celebration of his small-town roots must not be deemed as one that claims a false subaltern status, as he frankly cautions. As a critic, he vehemently resists West-centric stereotypes of assessing the Indian English novelist. One such stereotype that is commonly used in discourses of scholarship is the idea of mimicry. Khair vociferously declares that the contemporary novelist in India writing in English has nothing to mimic. Mimicry might have been a reality to the top-thin layer of highly anglicized ‘natives’ in the past. But today, it is important to realize that the Indian English novelist took from the English or the West what came naturally to them, “without realizing their source”, or acting under duress. The sensibility that comes to be portrayed in Indian English Fiction thus has been inevitable. Khair’s observations once again legitimize Tagore’s definition of fiction – the inevitable fruit of life. Khair maintains that writing is not a cultural activity for him, a mark of sophistication or education. “I do not write because it is the thing to do or because I have time to kill…I write because I need to, because I feel an urge to tell that story or those stories in that way.”

The first section “Parameters and Politics of Indian Fiction in English: Some Reflections” presents three valuable essays that historicize and problematize the much used category “Indian English Fiction”, critiqued, debated upon, and sometimes passionately vilified by both purists and globalists. The opening essay by Somdatta Mandal, true to its title “Past, Present and Future of the Indian English Language and Literature: Some Observations,” provides a bird’s-eye view of the history of Indian English Fiction with its antecedents in less known non-fictional narrative pieces such as Travels of Dean Mahomet in 1794 and the first drama scripted by an Indian in the English language, The Persecuted or Dramatic Scenes Illustrative of the Present State of Hindoo Society in Calcutta by Baboo Krishna Mohan Banerjea in 1831. Adopting a socio-historical approach to the rise of English writing in India, Mandal highlights less heard names such as Cavelly Venkata Boriah, Kylas Chunder Dutt and Reverend Lalbehari Day, Dhan Gopal Mukherjee and Sudhin N. Ghose, to name a few, among the well known stalwarts such as Khushwant Singh and Nirad C. Choudhuri, to show the narrative continuum of Indian Fiction in English. Besides, she also observes how writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan and G. V. Desani, in order to cater to the tastes of “dual readership” either chose to get their novels published from abroad or got veterans such as E. M. Forster, Graham Greene or Anthony Burgess, to pen prefaces or recommendations for themselves. Providing a plethora of interesting information for the scholar of Indian English Fiction, Mandal’s essay traverses the evolutionary path of both the Indian English novel and the Indian English idiom which happens to occupy a contentious position in the linguistic matrix of the country since the publications of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Rajmohan’s Wife in 1864 (printer’s devil dating it to 1964 in the volume) and Govinda Samanta by Reverend Lalbehari Day in 1874. The complexities involved in the state of affairs of the genre today are sensitively documented in the essay which exposes the unaddressed and unrepresented facets of contemporary Indian culture such as the overarching presence of the pan-Indian urban middle class, which today forms a major demographic component. Instead, English educated writers based abroad, represent heroes who hop, skip and jump continents as if the globe were their backyard, very frequently valorising exile.

Himadri Lahiri’s essay in the first section “Nation, Nation-based Category and Indian English Literature: A Belated View”, defying all narratives of post-theory scepticism, argues in support of the need for categories in critical scholarship, without the support of which Indian Fiction in English cannot be critiqued. Lahiri argues in support of the role of geopolitical spatiality in the act of forging fictions in postcolonial India that cries out naturally for a nation-based category. He calls the creation of such a category “an absolute practical necessity” However, he too provides a stark critique of the most commonly used category to brand fictional narratives composed by writers writing in English in India – “Indian English Fiction” or “Indian Fiction in English”, which incidentally happens to be the title of the volume reviewed at present. Lahiri’s critique poses uncomfortable questions for the academia of the Indian subcontinent that seemed to be complacently ensconced in the cushion of such categories as the Indian novel in English and the Pakistani novel in English, after the freedom at midnight when two nations were left bleeding with gaping and running sores that would never easily heal. Lahiri’s questions to the literary historiographer may be summed up in one line: can one partition history in the act of historicizing literature? Otherwise, what rigid posturing denies great storytellers of the Indian nationalist movement of the pre-partition period such as Ahmed Ali, Feroze Khan Noon, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz and Khwaja Ahmad Abbas a well-deserved space in the canon of Indian English Fiction? Lahiri rightly points out: “This is an area which has not been addressed in a critical way so far.” Confused and hopelessly communalised by the great divide, Islam has been equated with Pakistani identity when it came to labelling the above writers who could never imagine that they were heading for a partition of consciousness and even literary scholarship, a dilemma quite evident in Tariq Rahman’s book A History of Pakistani Literature in English (1991), from which Lahiri quotes in order to substantiate his argument.

Amidst the flood of articles sifted through critical anthologies and volumes on Indian English Fiction in the market of academic scholarship, rarely do we stumble upon one which opens up several potential areas for further research for the inspired scholar working on the subject. One may identify at least two potentially rich areas for further study in Lahiri’s essay – the one that may involve that group of marginalised Muslim writers from the Indian English canon, who, for no fault of theirs, do not find a place, as mentioned earlier. Among them, there is another sub-group represented by writers such as K. A. Abbas who never left India after partition, yet has been denied a place in the canon, both in India as well as Pakistan. Abbas, sadly has not found a secure place in the canon of Pakistani fiction in English too as he had never migrated. Tariq Rahman, as if in a magnanimous gesture of comradeship, allows a space to him in A History of Pakistani Literature in English on account of an audaciously parochial rationale, as referred to in Lahiri’s essay: “However, I have dealt with Abbas because he represents a neglected aspect of Muslim consciousness which found literary expression in English before the Partition”. The other potential area of inquiry for further research may be detected in the first and only work in English on the Indian Chinese community by an Indian Chinese author Kwai-yun Li who later migrated to Canada. Lahiri’s essay identifies similar narrative spaces on the peripheries of the contemporary fictional landscape in India, such as writings from India’s North-East and Kashmir, both insurgent infested locales which cry out for representation both in literature and literary historiography. Angshuman Kar’s essay “No War in Inter-War Indian English Fiction” addresses a few questions on the studied silence maintained by Indian authors writing in English as well as in the regional languages on the impact of the two great wars that left Europe bleeding. Despite their British and European counterparts actively engaged in representing war and world politics in their fiction, Indian novelists such as Anand and Narayan consciously avoid the war backdrop or war as subject in their fiction. Kar attempts to read into the silences and expose the politics beneath the blank spaces of fiction writing in Indian English literature.

Pradip Ranjan Sengupta’s essay “Word, Language and the Indian Idiom: A Study of Ghosh’s Use of Dialect” in the second section “Representation of the Postcolonial India” is a commendable study of Amitav Ghosh’s sincere attempt at providing a mature rendition of the modern English idiom in contemporary Indian English fictional space, particularly in his later novels such as The Hungry Tide in which he adopts the method of partial translation to effectively capture the spirit and essence of his milieu and tell his story in English. Rajarshi Mitra’s essay on Jim Corbett’s My India titled “Dear Native Sahib: India in Jim Corbett’s Autobiographical Writings” is a surprise entry in this anthology of critical essays on Indian Fiction in English. One might wonder how an autobiographical writing may fit into the schema of fiction. However, a closer reading would reveal an insightful critique of the autobiographical elements in Jim Corbett’s My India. An autobiographical account may naturally raise the expectation of credibility. But Mitra detects several fissures in Corbett’s representation of India, particularly during those moments when he bids farewell to the country in which he lived, breathed and wrote. A fondness of spirit coloured by nostalgia for the land makes Corbett’s My India too sweet and too nice, where “even the rogue Sultana is portrayed as a benevolent dacoit helping out the poor in need.” “The marked sense of sexual and political innocence that might at times seem too contrived” makes Jim Corbett’s My India fictional. Corbett’s convenient and quiet espousal of the colonizer’s anxiety leaves several political questions answered, which Mitra attempts to address in this essay. While Corbett chooses Kenya as his future home, we see the East-West encounter from the other side of the colonizer’s gaze.

The first essay of the third section “History and Ethnicity” titled “Making Little History Happen: An Evaluation of History in I. Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle” offers another fresh perspective of the East-West encounter from the gaze of the Anglo-Indian. The generic use of the “nama” as in Akbar Nama or Babar Nama, popular to traditional Indian chronicles and biographies, has been carefully chosen as a narrative device which allows the narrator Justin Trotoirre an informal entry into the official discourse of history in the annals of which the Anglo-Indians do not find adequate representation. Sudipta Chakraborty’s essay “Interpolating Renaissance: History and Allegory in Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence” busts the Eurocentric myth of the Renaissance, asserting Rushdie’s re-reading of the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance not as a Western monopoly, but as a movement that had its roots in Emperor Akbar’s world-view. Samrat Laskar’s essay on Kunal Basu’s The Yellow Emperor’s Cure underscores a new engagement, on the part of the Indian English novelist, with China, the rising neighbour in the East, with whom India has shared a complex relationship over the past few decades. Basu’s representation of China’s inhibitions in engaging in active cultural communications may go a long way in addressing future questions on some of the burning issues which have determined Indian ties with China.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions (2008) has garnered considerable critical attention in the fourth section of the volume “Women and Representation.” Two essays have been devoted to the novel in this anthology. Trayee Sinha’s essay addresses the identity question and its representational potential, and the one jointly written by Soumyajyoti Banerjee and Amrita Basu addresses questions on the body as text. Draupadi, addressed as Krishnaa, with a double ‘a’ by none other than Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata, has always intrigued novelists and critics alike. But what has evaded both these essays is Divakaruni’s engagement with this highly complex power centre of the Mahabharata – Draupadi – from a global/international/metropolitan perspective of the contemporary globalised Indian English writer, as Tabish Khair may have read it. The Sahitya-Akademi-Award-winning Marathi narrative Yuganta (1998) by Iravati Karvey and Prof Nrishinghaprasad Bhaduri’s Krishnaa, Kunti Ebong Kaunteya (1998) in Bangla are two highly reputed works on Draupadi, both of which are well researched interpretations of the myth of the lady in the centre of the Mahabharata in the respective regional languages. Moreover, both are non-fictional narratives. It would be an interesting exercise to examine Divakaruni’s global perspective as an Indian English novelist, on the silences in the epic when it came to act of narrating her in fiction. Divakaruni’s novel may be read as Draupadi’s narration of herself, which may become the focus of critical engagement for critics in future. In the same section of the volume, Pradipta Shyam Chowdhuri’s essay “Looking into the Arabian Nights: Reading Gita Hariharan’s When Dreams Travel” offers a fresh perspective to the woman as story-teller in Hariharan’s hypertext-novel on the Arabian Nights. The four essays in the fifth section Representation from the Diaspora effectively highlight the fluidity of identities and problems of fictional representations of the diasporas in Indian English Fiction. The complexities involved in categorization of these texts within the matrix of Indian English Literature have been appropriately approached by Tabish Khair in his interview to Sajalkumar Bhattacharya.

What is fresh about this anthology under review is its sensitive focus on fictional writings in English from the North-East and the newly emerging trend of churning up bazaar fictions in the market of the popular literature industry. In the former section dealing with the North-East, Rumpa Das’s essay “The Strength of the Weak: Power of Women Against Terror” appropriately contextualizes the hangover of logo-centric tendencies of colonial scholarship in the act of categorizing the North-East as a broad all-encompassing topos, a uniform whole for matters of political convenience. Such tendencies are hegemonic, running the risk of gross oversimplification, as Das rightly observes. Her readings of Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao and Mitra Phukan open up new vistas of critical scholarship by engaging with female points of view of North-East concerns – namely terror and violence – in the respective states popularly clubbed together as the Seven Sisters. Manas Pratim Borah’s essay, “Narratives of Violence and Northeastern Terror Lore: A Reading of Select Fictional Writings from Northeast India” engages with the fondness for lores in this part of the country, which have provided narratives of this region with energy and vigour to address the hardships of life and the adverse socio-political experiences which have become realities of the region over time. Borah is chiefly concerned with what he calls the “terror lore” typical to the diverse narratives of the region. However, despite Borah’s interest in lores, he has not engaged with the rich treasure troves of oral folklores of the region, particular to each of the innumerable ethnic communities across the Seven Sisters. Although they do not belong to the category of ‘Indian Fiction in English’, it goes without saying that their presence feeds the creative imagination of the North East with life blood and vitality.

The final section on popular Indian English Fiction titled “Pop-Lit” attempts to jolt multicultural/global award-winning Indian English fiction writers out of their complacency of publishing one novel at intervals of three to five years. Hoards of young writers of fiction from both cities and small-towns are making a beeline to offices of publishing companies everyday to get their stories published. The book-market of popular fiction respectfully bows down to the overarching presence of both prolific Indian writers of international repute such as Chetan Bhagat and Aravinda Adiga in academic forums and bookstores across India, and bestselling authors credited with one or two novels such as Parul Mittal. It seems, there is space for every writer of pop-lit in bookshelves across India. However, when it comes to critical engagement with such fictional narratives, a few suggestions may be necessary. It is important for the critic of such texts to investigate into the engineering of stories that thrill and charm readers cutting across age and class. Strategies adopted by the popular culture/literature industry to install thrill in narratives, through a certain amount of amnesia, may be explored through a detailed reading of such narratives in the light of Western theorists of popular literature such as Umberto Eco. Mahitosh Mandal attempts to engage with Chetan Bhagat’s reception and literariness, but falls short of providing a theoretical assessment of Bhagat’s literariness. Abhilash Dey’s essay on the “Desi Chick-lit novel” raises expectations on a more penetrating theoretical engagement. However, the sociology of the stories seems to dominate the focus of critical attention. Matters of execution in the domain of popular fiction have largely remained unaddressed.

To conclude, one must not forget to mention the importance given to the exhaustive notes at the end of some of the essays of this volume, particularly in the first section. They would go a great extent in providing vital cues for further research on areas unexplored so far within the domain of Indian English Fiction. Besides, the “List of Publications of Prose-Fiction in English Since 1980” at the end of the volume may be used as a valuable database for students, scholars and teachers.

WORKS CITED

Chaudhuri, Amit. (2008). Huge Baggy Monster’: Mimetic Theories of the Indian Novel after Rushdie. Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture. Ranikhet: Black Kite. Print.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Chhoto Golpo: Shesh Kotha. Golpoguchho. Vol. 4. Kolkata: Visva-Bharati. 751-768.

Karve, Iravati. (1998). Yuganta. Bengali translation by Arundhuti Bandopadhyay. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.

Bhadhuri, Nrishighaprasad. (1998). Krishnaa, Kunti Ebong Kaunteya. Kolkata: Ananda.

Partha Sarathi Gupta is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Tripura University. He completed his Ph.D on the Representation of Urban Reality in Indian English Drama. He has been actively engaged in translating oral folktales of the North-East under the auspices of the Sahitya Akademi.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol. VI, No. 3, 2014.
Ed. Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay &Tarun Tapas Mukherjee
URL of the Issue: http://rupkatha.com/v6n3.php
URL of the review: http://rupkatha.com/V6/n3/14_1_Review_Indian_Fiction_in_English.pdf                                   
Kolkata, India. Copyrighted material. www.rupkatha.com

 

The Curious Case of Shanthi: The Issue of Transgender in Indian Sports

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Sudeshna Mukherjee, Bangalore University          

Background of the study

Shanthi Soundarajan an Indian runner was born in 1981 in the village of Kathakkurichi in Pudukkottai District of Tamil Nadu, India. Soundarajan, a dalit by birth belongs to poorest of poor category. She grew up in a small hut devoid of toilet, water or electricity. Her mother and father had to go to another town to work in a brickyard, where they earned the equivalent of $4 a week. While they were gone, Shanthi, the oldest, was in charge of taking care of her four siblings. Sometimes, Soundarajan’s grandfather, an accomplished runner, helped while her parents were away. When she was 13, he taught her to run on an open stretch of dirt outside the hut and bought her a pair of shoes. At her first competition, in eighth grade, Soundarajan won a tin cup; she collected 13 more at interschool competitions. The sports coach at a nearby high school took note of her performances and spotted her. The school paid her tuition and provided her with uniform and lunch. Athletics gave a new dimension to her life engulfed with struggles.

She had very impressive track record to her credit. At a national meet in Bangalore in July 2005 she won the 800m, 1,500m and 3000m.In 2005 she attended the Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea, where she won a silver medal. In 2006, she was chosen to represent India at the Asian Games held in Doha, Qatar. In the 800 meters, Soundarajan took the silver in 2 minutes, 3.16 seconds, beating Viktoriya Yalovtseva of Kazakhstan by 0.03. This win and a subsequent failed gender test lead to Soundarajan becoming embroiled in an ongoing, unresolved debate over the issue of transgender and sports (BBC News ,2006).She was told results indicated that she “does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman” (BBC News, 2006). Soon after the results of the sex test came out, she was stripped of her silver medal.

In this backdrop, my descriptive, diagnostic study, based secondary data, would like to trace the plights of transgender sports personnel in India and abroad.

Conceptualizing Transgender:

A person’s sex is rooted in biology. Sex is “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species…distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). On the other hand, gender is a socio-cultural construction. It is the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Transgender is an umbrella term that describes “individuals whose gender identity doesn’t match the gender identity commonly experienced by those of the individuals’ natal sex” (Buzuvis, 2011).

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individual, behaviors and group involving tendencies that diverge from the normative gender role (woman or man) commonly, but not always, assigned at birth, as well as the role traditionally held by society.Transgender is the state of one’s “gender identity” (Self-identification as male, female, both or neither) not matching one’s assigned gender”(identification by others as male or female based on physical/genetic sex) Transgender does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation, they may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual. The precise definition for transgender remains in flux, but include, of relating to or designating a person whose identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender, but combines or moves between these.

A transgender individual may have characteristics that are normally associated with a particular gender, identify elsewhere on the traditional gender continuum, or exist outside of it as “other”, “a-gender”, “inter-gender” or third gender.

According to S.Kessler & W.Mekenna (1978) in theory, transgender is a challenge to the Social Construction of gender. In practice, it is usually transgender people in one way or another not place them outside the conventional male/female dichotomy, yet live in social world that recognizes only females and males. In the light of three possible meanings of trans, they considered to deconstruct gender.

The prefix “trans” has 3 different meanings. Trans means change, as in the word “transform”. In this first sense transgender people change their bodies to fit the gender they feel they always were. Transgender in this sense is synonymous with what is typically meant by the term (Kessler & Mekenna, 1978).

In the second sense “Trans” means across as in the word “transcontinental”. In this sense a transgendered person is one who moves across genders. This meaning does not imply being essentially or permanently committed to one or the other gender and therefore has a more social-constructionist connotation. The transgender person in this meaning does not leave the realm of two genders. The emphasis is on the “crossing” and not on any surgical transformation accompanying it such a person might say “I want people to attribute the gender “female” to me, but I’m not going to get my genitals changed. I don’t mind having my penis”. It is more like a previously unthinkable combination of male and female (Martin and Nguyen, 2004).

Third meaning of “trans” is beyond or through”. In this a trans gendered person is one who has gotten through gender, beyond gender. No clear gender attribution can be made, or is allowed to make. Gender ceases to exist, both for this person and those with whom they interact (Martin and Nguyen, 2004). This third meaning is the most radical, which talks for elimination of gender.

The term transgender was popularized in the 1970’s describing people who wanted to live cross-gender without sex reassignment surgery. In the 1980’s the term was expanded to an umbrella term and became popular as a means of uniting all those whose gender identity did not mesh with their gender assigned at birth. In the 1990’s the term took on a political dimension as an alliance covering all those who have at some print not conformed to gender norms, and the term became used to question the validity of those norms or pursue equal rights and antidiscrimination legislation, leading to its widespread usage in the media, academic world and law. The term continues to evolve; Transgender identity includes many overlapping categories including transsexual, cross-dressers, and transvestite and so on. Among these the term “transsexual” requires little elaboration, as it is closer to the term transgender.

Transsexual is a subcategory under the transgender umbrella. Three criteria are used to classify a transgender individual as transsexual: “(1) persistent discomfort about one’s Birth-Sex, (2) at least two years of persistent preoccupation with acquiring the sex characteristics of the other sex, and (3) having reached puberty (the age at which the reproductive organs mature)”( Pilgrim,2003 495- 501 ) .Transsexual people have deep conviction that the gender to which they were assigned at birth on the basis of their physical anatomy or birth gender is incorrect. That conviction often compels them to undergo hormonal or surgical treatment to bring their physical identity into line with their preferred acquired gender identity.

Transsexualism is not the same as cross-dressing for sexual thrill, psychological comfort or compulsion. It is not the same as being sexually attracted towards people of the same sex. Many transsexual people wish to keep their condition private, and this must be respected and they should be treated as members of their acquired gender…Access Full Text of the Article

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Sexual Psychology in Theodore Sturgeon’s Fiction

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David Layton, DeVry University

Abstract

Many critics have mentioned the importance of Theodore Sturgeon to the history of science fiction, but his work has not received enough academic critical attention. One probable reason for the praise Sturgeon’s work receives, especially from fellow writers, is his candid portrayal of the psychology of male sexual desire. Sturgeon focuses on three specific aspects of male sexuality: the sexual charge of being needed by a woman, the overwhelming power of male sexual urges, and the importance of chance encounters to create the spark igniting a sexual conflagration in men. Sturgeon’s candor about how male sexual desires feel sets him apart from his contemporaries and provides a major reason for the appreciation he receives as a writer.

Theodore Sturgeon’s name is one of those most cited in lists of the writers of science fiction’s “Golden Age.” Many consider him the best “Golden Age” author, mainly because he concentrated less on scientific hardware and more on character interaction than did his contemporaries. A moralistic and romantic writer, his major themes were tolerance for otherness of all kinds and concern that many social problems were results of repressed sexuality. He was among the first American science fiction writers to write plausibly about sex, homosexuality, race, and religion. Because of this, he has sometimes been accused of writing pornography by those who prefer their science fiction in the standard starched-collar puritan mode. In reality, Sturgeon is among the first to turn American science fiction into a fiction for mature, thinking adults, as his influence on writers including Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and Samuel Delany attests.

Indeed, the praise for Sturgeon’s writing is directly proportional to the lack of critical attention paid to his writing. Probably no author so highly regarded has received so little genuine critical assessment. The praise is often effusive, and mostly coming from fellow science-fiction writers. Norman Spinrad(1990) says of Sturgeon that he is “probably the finest short story writer the SF genre has produced, and arguably the finest American short story writer of the post-World War II era” (p. 167). Encomiums nearly this strong have come from Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, and Samuel Delany. Others, such as Brian Aldiss and Barry Malzberg, though not as wowed with Sturgeon’s style, still admit that Sturgeon is essential to understanding the development of science fiction.

What is there precisely in Sturgeon’s writing that garners him such praise and loyalty from other writers in the science fiction field? A key to answering this question may be in the way Sturgeon handles characters, especially male characters. Even when Sturgeon’s characters fit the stereotypes of the markets in which he published, there was usually some dimension beyond the stereotypes, something that made the characters seem like real people and not idealized or cartoon people. Brian Aldiss(1988) has noted Sturgeon’s concern for the underdog, and in particular his rejection of “the dangerous cult of the superman” (p. 226). Aldiss notes Sturgeon’s “interest in the psychology and oddity of human beings” (p. 219), but Sturgeon’s peculiar interest is in the odd psychology of human beings.

An example of this interest in odd psychology is in the way Sturgeon writes about male psychology. Sturgeon’s presentation of sex through the psychology of sex sets him apart from other science-fiction writers of his generation. Sturgeon avoids the “peek-a-boo” prurience of many lesser authors. Other writers of his time often write around the subject even when they try to write about it. Sturgeon also usually avoids the moralizing lecture approach to the subject that Heinlein mistakes for honesty about sex. When Sturgeon writes about sex, he often appears not to be, because titillation, mechanics, and conventional morality in sexual matters do not interest him as a writer. Sturgeon’s subject is the perception and feeling of the man whose mind has been taken over by the sexual imperative.

A running theme in his fiction involves men who find themselves needed by women. Sturgeon twists the “damsel in distress” scenario a little because in his fiction the woman is not the prize. Instead, the psychological driver is being needed. Sturgeon realizes what a potent sexual stimulus being needed by a woman can be. One sees this in “Ghost of a Chance” (1943), in which a man feels compelled to help a woman he has never before met because she proclaims that “something” is after her. She slaps him when he tries to help, and this brings upon him a terrible fascination with her. After a second, humorously painful encounter with her, Gus the protagonist and narrator is hooked. He finds her and finding her cements the sexual bond between them. The driving force for this modern mating dance is that a jealous ghost is smitten with her and attacks any man with whom she becomes even remotely close. Of course, the ghost does terrible things to Gus before he finally figures out how to get rid of it. The question for the reader is this: what drives Gus to emotional extreme and nearly total devotion to a woman with whom he has had only a few brief conversations? It is that he thinks he can do something for her and makes himself determined to do it.

Writing for a popular magazine in the 1940s, Sturgeon could in “Ghost of a Chance” bring the reader only up to a quick view of this aspect of male sexual psychology. Ten years later, Sturgeon had much more room to give the reader a good, hard look at it. In “Bright Segment” (1955), Sturgeon takes a much more graphic and physical approach to this concern. In this story, Sturgeon makes explicit the psychological power of being needed. However, he removes most of the popular fiction-writing encumbrances that prevented a full view of it in “Ghost of a Chance.” In “Bright Segment,” the protagonist is like Gus a man of limited intelligence and no obvious sexual appeal. However, while Gus was just a kind of normal guy, the unnamed protagonist of “Bright Segment” is mentally retarded and physically repulsive, being called an “orangutan.” Like Gus, he encounters an unknown woman in distress late at night. Unlike Iola’s problem in “Ghost of a Chance,” this woman’s problem is neither at a remove nor supernatural – she has been wounded in a mob deal gone badly wrong.

The major and important difference in “Bright Segment” is how this reduction to fundamentals brings out hitherto unknown dimensions to the psychology of male need. Slashed with a razor from groin to throat and dumped out of a car, the woman is insensible and dying when the protagonist first finds her. Sturgeon in this story ups the stakes in terms of desperation, but also carefully avoids explaining the context for what is going on. This has much to do with the protagonist, whose limited intelligence means that he can fix his mind to only one thing at a time.

For the first part of the story, the reader is left bewildered as to what precisely the protagonist is doing with this bleeding woman. Did he attack her? Is he trying to hide the body? After he dumps her onto the bed, is he going to do something perverse? The limited third person point of view works against the reader, who is desperate to find motivation for this man. Yet, it turns out that none of the above questions is true. Instead, this man’s limited intelligence presents a different sort of motivation. He is desperate to be needed, a point driven home several times in the story. He sees in this woman’s situation an opportunity to do the only thing he knows how to do well: “fix it right.” So, he sets out not to abuse the woman, but using nothing other than his handyman skills and the tools in his apartment, to operate on her and save her life.

Sturgeon has freed the issue of “need” from the sexuality of the character, and thus it more intimately reflects on the sexuality of the male reader. That sex is not a motivation for this man is made clear when weeks after the operation, the recuperating woman offers him sex as a “thank you” only to be firmly rejected. His pleasure is not in being wanted, but in being needed. This difference gets revealed late in the story, so that in the earlier parts, the reader fills in what would seem to be “normal” motivation. This technique is particularly strong in the beginning of the story, which describes the operation in quite some detail. The protagonist must undress the woman, must cut away the brassiere and silken panties, must work up close for quite a long time at the open wound in her groin. Sturgeon has brought the matter to the level of touch in this story; whereas, in “Ghost of a Chance” the two principle characters interact mostly through the more distant sense of sight…Access Full Text of the Article

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Resisting Biopolitics through “Diaphanous Wonder”: Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (2003)

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Doro Wiese, Utrecht University

Abstract:

In Gould’s Book of Fish (2003), author Richard Flanagan manages to invent a format in which content and style account for historical events on Sarah Island, Tasmania in the 1820s, yet he does so in a manner that is not in the least objective, disinterested or fact-orientated. The perspective of Gould’s Book of Fish’s (Flanagan, 2003) first-person narrator is highly subjective, usually unreliable and always less than truthful. Flanagan (2003) thereby shows that literature can provide a form of knowledge that differs from historical truth, but without being its dialectical opposite. Literature can construct a non-referential narrative space in which experiences unfold that hardly unimaginable. Literature can show the urge and desire to understand historical events that are terrible to relate to. It can invent a story that can account for the consequences of a violent colonial system. Yet, above all, the novel stresses a desire to render stories of unspeakable horrors through what can be call the “becoming-fish” of its first-person narrator. This desire expresses a hyperbolic love of each and everyone, one which extends so far as to even include all the other wonders of this world in its account too. By depicting convicts and natives as loving and lovable persons, author Richard Flanagan (2003) refrains from reducing them to the colonial conditions in which they were caught up. He thereby offers a point of view that differs from Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) highly influential account of “bare life.” I will take this perspective, in which life and its conditions cannot be lumped together, as a point of departure from which to criticise Agamben’s (1998) transhistorical and transnational account of biopolitical determinations of life.

[Key words: Richard Flanagan, Gould’s Book of Fish, Tasmania, colonization, convict-system, Agamben, bare life, aesthetics, resistance]

Gould’s Book of Fish, a novel by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan (2003), is set during the early days of Britain’s colonisation of Tasmania in the 1820s and used the unreliable narrative voice of inmate William Buelow Gould, a prisoner who lived in the institution from 1829-33. Though based on documented historical occurrences and persons, the narrative relies heavily on metafictional devices to comment on its own constructed nature and uses the voice of the main character to express a distinct view of historical events. Specifically, the first-person narrative voice of the protagonist is used to portray historical events in a distorted and idiosyncratic manner, speaking to and reflecting the distortions and biopolitical control imposed upon on people by brutal and genocidal colonial systems, as occurred in Tasmania, and where the experiences of those under that brutality have been silenced. This novel manifests the fundamental need to tell the story that has been untold or silenced. In the novel this need is manifested in Gould’s desire to tell the story of a fish – an animal that is, by human standards, voiceless.

The novel’s narrator undergoes significant perspective transformations which allow him to be affected by a hyperbolic, generalized love for everyone and everything in the whole world, which can be identified with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of “becomings”. These becomings are important to analyse because the love that they bring about is not only central to the novel’s vision of life, it also is central to the important shift of perspective presented by the novel. This love will also be the counterpoint for examining Agamben’s (1998) highly influential notion of ‘bare life,’ which was introduced and expounded upon in his work Homo Sacer.

  1. Literary Style versus Biopolitical Capture

Gould’s Book of Fish (Flanagan, 2003) is set in the first prison settlement in Tasmania, the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, built in 1822 on a small island in the Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast. Sarah Island, a place of extremely harsh geographic and social conditions (see Maxwell-Steward, 2008), was quickly regarded as one of the harshest locations in the English-speaking world (Hughes, 1987, p. 372). Convicts were worked for twelve to sixteen hours daily, with inadequate food or housing, and corporal punishment was not uncommon (Hughes, 1987). Prison records report 33,723 lashes during public floggings between 1822 and 1826 (Hughes 1987, p. 377). Just as Gould’s Book of Fish describes the conditions in the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station as they appear according to historical records, the first-person narrator is superimposed onto the convict-painter William Buelow Gould (1801-53), imprisoned for forgery, who has been historically recognized for his supurb naturalistic paintings of the area’s flora and fauna (see Allport, 1931; Clune and Stephensen, 1962; Pretyman, 1970). In both the novel and historical record, the protagonist was assigned to assist the colonial surgeon Dr James Scott on Sarah Island, who commissioned him to paint the depictions of local fish, plants, and birds for which he is now known. The novel Gould’s Book of Fish (Flanagan, 2003) takes the form of the convict-painter’s journal, and though fictional, the fish-drawings included in the book are those of Gould, used with permission, and are said to have been painted from memory. The novel weaves a fictitious and embellished storyline based on Gould’s prison time through historical information based on known persons and events on Sarah Island during that time.

Though based on historical events and characters, the use of a non-linear chronology and frequently interrupted storyline, metafictional literary devices, and fantastic and parodic interventions avoids any positivistic renderings of history, and allows the novel, according to various critics, to counter enlightenment thought’s teleological narrative of the “progress of civilization” (see Bogue, 2010; Jones, 2008; Shipway, 2003; Weir, 2005). Gould’s narration depicts the traumatic events transpiring in the Tasmanian penal colony (and in the story itself) through a distorted lens, in this way reflecting the distortions imposed upon people by the brutal and genocidal colonial system in Tasmania, but also testifies to the capacity of people, even under those circumstances, to maintain affective relationships. I will argue that with this novel, Flanagan (2003) shows us how literature can be used as a space to examine (un)imaginable experiences, to aid in comprehending historical events so horrible as to seem incomprehensible, and to address the need for the expression of silent and silenced voices. In Gould’s Book of Fish, Gould’s longing to tell the story of the (voiceless) fish manifests this desire, through a process which is inherently tied to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming. I will contrast Flanagan’s use of literary, stylistic and narrative devices to create an empowering depiction of convicts and indigenous persons in Gould’s Book of Fish, with Agamben’s failure, in Homo Sacer (1998), to similarly invest in the creation of an analysis in which human beings are not dehumanized.

Deleuze and Guattari (1987), in their concept of becoming, have drawn from ideas of Spinoza, especially the importance he places on the composition of relations and encounters, and the effects of those encounters, rather than on the essential traits of a being. Human beings’ understanding of the encounters with external ideas or entities tends to be limited to how the encounter is affecting us: “only our body in its own relation, and our mind in its own relation” (Spinoza qtd. in Deleuze, 1988, p. 19). However, if we are able to go beyond this initial reaction, our minds and bodies, and the bodies and minds of others, are capable of surpassing “the consciousness that we have of it” (Deleuze, 1988, p.19). Though becoming lacks a form through which it can convey its meaning, Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 253) understand it as an interplay of specific, unique moments, happenings, intensities and affectivities. Becoming, therefore, is a process that expresses the capacity of life to go beyond meaning and to create a formulation for the potentiality of joy and possibly even a “love of the whole world” (Lawlor, 2008, p. 173).

In the following analysis I focus on Gould’s becoming-fish, which through its hyperbolic affect of love provides readers with one most consequential and fundamental perspective shifts: that the understanding of a life cannot be limited to an understanding of its circumstances, its suffering, or the brutality imposed upon it, because it has its own subjectivities beyond those bounds that are able to create more and different relations, desires, and action. This understanding of life will be the counterpoint upon which I base my criticism of Agamben’s (1998) transhistorical and transnational analysis of the biopolitical determinations of life in Homo Sacer. I will show how Flanagan’s sets out a vision in which the lives of those historically silenced, subjugated and colonized are given value, character and humanity, and how this vision might guide readers towards the creation of an accountability with the past and a responsibility to the future…Access Full Text of the Article

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Book Review: Of Ghosts and Other Perils by Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay

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By Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay (original author in Bengali)

&

Arnab Bhattacharya (Trans.)

book Paperback: 288 pagesPublisher: Orient Blackswan (7 November 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 8125052348

ISBN-13: 978-8125052340

 

Reviewed by

Ketaki Datta

Bidhannagar College, Kolkata

Arnab Bhattacharya’s translation of Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s selected stories into English titled Of Ghosts and Other Perils is a novel work. It is not an ordinary work of translation, but, hours of assiduous research have gone into it to make it transcend all barriers of ordinariness. And that is evident from his Foreword, Note on the Translation and a detailed ‘Critical’ Afterword. He makes his point clear as a responsible ‘translator’ in ‘A Note on Translation’:

In my translation, I have ‘bent’ the target language, i.e. English, to the source language, i.e. Bengali. My modest attempt has been to make my target language recognizably English, and also to make that English recognizably different in being inflected with Bengali cultural idioms. In a way, this is my subversive response as a postcolonial reader/translator to T.B. Macaulay’s project of making English-educated Indians comprise “ a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” ( the thirty-fourth point of The Minute published on 2 February 1835). I have attempted to make my translation English “in blood and colour” , i.e. in texture, and Indian “ in tastes” i.e. in spirit. [xviii]

And, truly he does so. He retains a few words and phrases of vernacular intact just to keep back the ‘taste’ of native culture and ways of life. And, again some of the words in the original Bengali has a special connotation which no other English equivalent can match. He adds a detailed Glossary of Non-English Words/Phrases at the very outset, for the convenience of non-Bengali or non-Indian readers.

Trailokyanath had a touch of humour in all his stories on ghosts. And, that is really impossible to retain in an alien language. But Bhattacharya successfully achieves it with impeccable use of diction and style. Nowhere it seems to be just a translation as the two languages, translated from/into, have made to sound in unison. Naturally the jarring effect of translation, as we usually come across, is not seen here in this book.

Now, let us take a peep into the content of the book. He has translated seven long stories by Trailokyanath, namely, Birbala, Lullu, Nayanchand’s Business, The Pearl necklace, Smile on MadanGhosh’s face, A Story by Damrudhar and Another Story by Damrudhar. Each story is a class by itself. For example, Birbala’s story requires ‘word-to word’ translation to keep back the flavor of the original tale intact. And, the translator retains the charm of the original in his own way, by keeping the culture-specific words intact. In fact, in almost all the seven stories he follows the same technique, leaving the readers, here and abroad, with a genial feel of the indigenous ‘culture’ the writer portrays, so authentically. The confusing identities of Debisingha, Birbala’s attachment to Debisingha, and, the final union of the two needed a lively portrayal as the original, where any deviation from both the nuances of the language and the genuine appeal would have been fatal to the appreciation of the story. Thanks to the translator, he took no false step to mar the beauty of the original story. Lullu and Nayanchand’s Business have an intrinsic humour in narration. When Lullu is won over by Amir[whose wife had been taken away by the ghost who was a prospective bachelor on the lookout for a perfect match], Lullu’s plight tickles us to laughter when he agrees to run errands for Amir and even be with him forever just to be given a regular supply of ‘chandu’[ sort of addictive leaves] ! Do the ghosts really get addicted to doses of ‘opium’, to be precise? Is it not laughter-inducing to extract oil from a ghost’s body to utilize the same in some sensible way?

In this manner, in almost all the stories in this volume the ghosts engage themselves in laughter-provoking, sometimes again hair-raising antics which ultimately lead on to a disaster for themselves. And, Bhattacharya has captivated us, the readers , with the befitting diction he chose meticulously. Snippets of his impeccable translation would speak volumes of the style he has adopted to mesmerize the readers:

In the evening, the ghost came to their door. They both rode on the ghost’s back. Lullu got out of water and took the sky route. He moved at lightning speed. At about the second prohor of the night they all came to Delhi. The ghost put them down on Amir’s rooftop. Amir had locked the door while leaving his place in the guise of a fakir. Now he and his wife unlocked the door and stepped in. They beckoned Lullu to a room, and said, “Lullu, this room is yours, from now on you’ll stay here. I will give you opium or chandu—whatever you need.”

Lullu said, “ I will never desert you in this life. No way can I do that.”

Next day, Amir called in his neighbours and narrated the entire saga in its right sequence. Seeing Amir back home everyone was elated. [Lullu, p. 51]

But, you know, since my childhood I am a doshokorma, I will do whatever I am entrusted with, having skill in all trades. I composed a rhyme on my own. Let me recite parts of it, listen:

Shitala says ‘Wherever I visit

Gobble up young ‘n’ old as raw meat.

Sixty four thousand in my pox army

Destroy households in matchless spree.

Big pox, small pox, pox’s grandson

Come back from households leaving alive none.’     [Nayanchand’s Business,p.66]

It is not so easy to translate the poetical lines of a piece, though, Bhattacharya does it with perfect ease and elan. Especially, the rhyme scheme of the original lines has been maintained with dexterity.

As The Pearl Necklace is a string of bizarre stories, the translator successfully maintains the oeuvre of the original by staying faithful to it and yet making it readable and appealing at the same time. A quote from the same would make my point clear, I believe:

“The skull said, ‘Listen, we all are betalas[ translator’s explanation follows].We like problems, riddles and stories. If I give you some problems, can you sort them out like Vikramaditya[translator’s explanation given], the king?’

“ I said, ‘No mahasay! I don’t have that ability. I am but a yokel with little knowledge. I don’t know stories.’

…..“ The betala or the skull said, ‘You cannot solve riddles, you cannot tell stories either. Which means you can do nothing. But still you want me to go and start knocking and banging against another skull! Does that make sense? Okay then, go and marry Coconut-face, and raise a happy family.’ [The Pearl Necklace,p.123]

The quote shows how the translator maintains a balance, while making the two cultures stand and shake hands with each other, on the same pedestal. Thus, in the next three stories, the translator follows the same style and goes winning the hearts of the readers.

The Afterword from the Translator is an added bonanza which, I am sure, would make us more knowledgeable about the story-telling modes of Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay, with an erudite discussion on Magic Realism and the author. The translator expatiates on the ‘adda’ culture of Bengal too, at length.

This book is a rare gem in the field of translation and surely would add prestige to the stack of each library across the world, apart from being just an individual collector’s pride.

Dr. Ketaki Datta is an Associate Professor of English, Bidhannagar College, Kolkata. She is a novelist, short story writer, critic and a translator. She had been to Lisbon on an invitation from IFTR [Ireland chapter] to read out a paper titled “Human Values and Modern Bengali Drama”, which got published in the Festival Issue of The Statesman in India. “Indo-Anglian Literature: Past to Present” [2008], “New Literatures in English: Fresh Perspectives”[2011], “ Avenel Wings of Short Fiction” [2012],“Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore in Translation”[2013], “The Black and Nonblack Shades of Tennessee Williams”[ 2012] , “The Last Salute”[translated novel] [SahityaAkademi, 2013], “The Voyage”(translated novel) [2009], “Across the Blue Horizon”[poetry collection, England, 2014], and two novels [A Bird Alone(2008) and One Year for Mourning(2014)] are a few of her notable publications. Her short story has been published in New Asian Writing Anthology, 2013. She has also been interviewed by NAW [New Asian Writing]. She is the only contributor from India in the forthcoming book titled “Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy” [to be released in August, 2014], being compiled by Prof. Magda Romanska of Emerson College, Boston, USA.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol. VI, No. 3, 2014.

Ed. Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay &Tarun Tapas Mukherjee

URL of the Issue: http://rupkatha.com/v6n3.php

URL of the review: http://rupkatha.com/V6/n3/14_Review_Troilokyanath_Mukhopadhyay.pdf                               

Kolkata, India. Copyrighted material. www.rupkatha.com

Translation: “Mother India” by Mahasweta Devi

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Mahasweta Devi (0riginal author in Bengali)

&

Arun Pramanik (Trans.)

[Translated by Arun Pramanik from the Bengali Original Standayini Ebong Annyanya Golpa, Karuna Prakashani, 1997]

Mother India is eighty years, blackish-copper complexioned, curly small-haired. Every line of her face looks splitted like the visible mud on the banks of the river Ganga over which millions of earthworms have just moved after the ebb. Two hazy eyes look like the dead stars. Those two stars died long ago, yet they think that they are still shining as the earth pays no attention to them. A torn and tattered cloth wrapped twice on her back, and the end rounded on her neck.

Her name is Mother India. How many years ago when a cinema picture was frequently seen on the walls, and she used to sit on the footpath and only cry for days after days, nights after nights for her sons, then Sidhu told her, Masi you’re Mother India. It was Sidhu who gave her a place in this footpath. It’s to be fortunate enough to get a permanent place on Kolkata footpath. Every year those who come from the south can’t manage such a place.

They float from one place to another for days after days. She got such a place only for Sidhu’s grace. Sidhu said, I’ve called her Masi, so she must stay here. Sidhu is no more, he is dead. But before his death he bequeathed her the wood of his own packing box and the sackcloth tent.

Sidhu is not a son from her womb. Though he is not a son of her own, yet what he has given to her is not given even by her own sons.

At least a mere shade, space and the name too.

Sidhu even managed for her the means of getting rice. But she could not keep up that. She used to cook for four or five beggars like Sidhu. In the afternoon, she used to broom the marketplace and bring the cabbage leaves, spinach leaves, and the entrails of goats. By using three bricks as a furnace, she used to cook manna for these beggars. The mistress of the nearby building used to buy the begged-rice. She used to cook these in her house for the casual visitors of her relations. She did not know that her maid used to give Mother India salt, chillies etc. In exchange Mother India used to relief her from sciatica.

Mother India somehow could manage food then. But now for many years she can’t. With the passing of time, the new beggars are now her neighbours. Now Fullwara cooks for them.

Now Mother India supplies dried cow dung. Feels terrible back pain to bring the dust from the timber yard. She mixes mud with the wood-dust, and makes them big charcoal balls. Now in the neighbouring houses, the people use these charcoal balls. Wood balls emit lesser smoke than cow dung balls.

Putting these handmade balls under the sunrays, and sitting on the throne of the packing box she keeps a close watch on these. The whole body feels burnt in hunger. Like a big scorched tree. In those far old lost childhood, she used to go with her baul father to offer puja to the Bonbibi. Crossing three fields and two canals. She could get to see a badly scorched peepul tree every year. In every rainy season, new branches began to sprout with fresh leaves. But in the summer days, the leaves became dried up.

The father used to say, the banyan and the peepul tress are god-like. That’s why these don’t die even when dying. This is really strange.

Her body gets burnt like that tree. In the fire of hunger. Yet when it gets wet by the memory-water, still so many memories of those ever-lost past begin to sprout.

When she gets lost on those memories, the lines of her face become blur, and she looks calm. By this time she does not know that she looks like the goddess Manasa. Like her she is still waiting for worship only with handful rice, cupful oil and a mere cloth to cover her nakedness. She is like her whom nobody understands, only drives away saying as unlucky and unadorable ‘Go away, you ugly blind woman’. The people drive away – only drive away, that’s why her begging for handful rice never ends.

Now her appearance looks stern. From those blurred eyes, tearless cries seem to come out. She had three sons, but everyone is lost from her. By whom? Still she does not know which mighty force has taken away them from her.

Is that a recent story? It seems so many decades when Shashi Dhara and his wife Patul went with their fellowmen to cultivate in the land acquired from the Manna family. Shashi Dhara’s wife never accompanied them before. Her baul father did not allow her. He said, does anybody go there with the young ones? Besides, this is not right.

Why? Why not right?

Do you not know?

Like a hooded snake, Gagan Bauli looked at his son-in-law’s face with his fierce and red eyes, and said,

Do you not know that this Golbadan Manna does not evict those people who were cultivating the lands in other places for eleven years? One gets right of the land after cultivating twelve years. That’s why in the eleven year, they are kicked off. So these people are prior to claim the land. Would they leave you?

Knodding his head Shashi Dhara became silent with his helpless smile. But he did not give up his tenacity. He said, They have to get much pain to evict us. We have babus behind us.

But Shashi’s words proved false. Uncultivated forest land leads to ferocity, strife and anger. Those who once succeed to capture the land, and begin to cultivate, and if they are evicted later from that land, their anger knows no bound. The people like Shashi are to fight long against these evicted people, and the other exploiters of the forest. Then a long bloody war filled the air followed by the smell of autumn rice. The evicted forest like the evicted people felt defeated and was forced to go back.

All those past still come to her memory. As though someone unties the canvas of the tale of Shashi Dhara and his wife for a moment before her eyes, and then rolls back. Shashi married and had a family. They had three babbling sons. Seeing their domestic life, Gagan Bauli said, My son, they would evict you after eleven years. You rather come and settle in my house.

The words proved true. When Sashi and his family were evicted, by that time Gagan Bauli has left this world.

The people like Shashi make the uncultivated forest land fertile, but when they are evicted in the eleven years, they usually fight. And this time Shashi fought too. In the struggle between scythe and gun, the people like Shashi usually die. This time it happened too. Being desperate, Shashi’s wife too came out with the scythe. But she was taken to the jail. When released from the jail, she goes to the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law told, My son is dead. And your elder son too died with him. You can stay here. But it would create more trouble. The police would not leave you.

Shashi Dhara’s wife then could understand that she is drifting by the full tide. It’s like the swift tidal flow of the river Matla. During the high tide, the river merges into the sea. This tide of life took away the helpless woman, and threw her into the big world. But the struggle of the people like Shashi did not stop. That’s why the policemen were frantically pursuing these criminals. So, Haran Samanta told her, Is there no place in this world? Not any place? Let’s flee in the darkness of the night.

Many of them came to Kolkata. The old village man Haran took them to different places for a shelter. Once in how many places this Shashi Dhara’s wife succeeded to capture the highland; how many paddy-fields of the fortune’s favourites were filled with crops in the sowing of her own hands; how many days lowering her back for hours after hours, she used to plant in deep anger. In the days of the goddess Bipattarini, in the offering days of the Lotansasthi, Shashi Dhara’s wife used to clean the paddy-fields in almost knee-dipped water. During the harvesting time of the Pous month filled in the chilly air of the Pous Lakshmi, she used to harvest the golden paddy crops, and fill others’ farmyards – everything is now in the canvas of a village painter. Neglected. Disgraced. Blurred portraits after portraits.

It’s now difficult to remember that how many times they became anxious in the fear of being driven out as soon as they could see the coming of the new farmers. But when Shashi Dhara’s wife tries to remember these repeated evictions, she is reminded with the days of those far-old childhood time. Her baul father is going to offer his prayer to Bonbibi. The mother-lost dark-complexioned daughter with him. The small boat moves slowly in the canal. The shades of the mangrove tree get reflected in the water. The girl could see how the grasshoppers took shelter on the floating leaves after leaves, and how the leaves gradually merge in to water as the boat passed leaving the grasshoppers in water. She can still remember the water’s smell like the smelly fish-mixed dry earth wetted with rain water, and the smell of oil and tobacco of her father’s body.

And she can remember the smell of cooked rice. The greed of this smell of cooked rice made Shashi Dhara’s wife inhuman and wretched too. As Shashi Dhara told her when he left, Let me go. But you would never leave the scythe, they can do everything possible.

And that was the last time when Shashi put the scythe in his wife’s hand and left with his eldest son. From then Shashi’s wife does not leave the scythe. Before going to the jail, she put it in the leafy roof of her mother-in-law. As soon as she came out from the jail, she took out it.

Last time when Shashi Dhara’s wife was evicted from the land, she came from Midnapore to Kolkata with the mere cloth in her attire, the scythe and her two growing sons. Babus brought them with the words, Come with us to join in the procession. Then Haran told, This is rather good babu. They said, Such are the flags, and the processions are like this. You would get bread, you would get money.

Does the procession take place every day?

Shashi Dhara’s wife became scared. The procession does not take place every day, and they too don’t get bread every day. But she did not like to return to her village although her sons tried to take her back. She said, Should I devour the saliva which I spat earlier? What do you have there?

What do you have here? Who are with you?

I can’t float anymore, my sons. I would stay here.

What would you eat mother.

Whatever we would get to eat.

The sons said nothing after that. They are absolutely dependant on the mother. Shashi Dhara’s wife brought up her sons in hungry and fierce love. The sons are still tied to her as they were tied once to the biblical cord. Such dependence of the grown up sons on the mother is very rare in this hard and floating life. Shashi’s wife asked her sons once, At the end . . .

What mother?

Would you put Ganga water when I die? Here the whole city is on the river Ganga.

Still then they used to live at the corner of this footpath. Sidhu did not say them to stay there. He did not even give them shelter under his canopy. He did not even drive away them. He told the other beggars, See. They are not permanent. Temporary. They would go away.

From there, they went to Behala Market. Shashi’s wife used to clean spices in the spices-shops. The boys used to chop wood in the timber yard. Some people announced in mike, and took away them from there. The second son rushed to her, and gave six rupees in her hands. And told, Take this food mother. There is much uproar. Crowds of people are coming from elsewhere. We too are going.

Shashi’s wife told, If the disturbance gets worse, then come back my sons. Don’t get involved in any disturbance.

Do you think we would stay?

The portrait of her own son’s departure from her for ever is still clear in the canvas of her mind. The mother stood on the bus road, and they sons were getting away from her with the smiling face and nodding their heads. Crowds of people on the road.

After that even before the sunset, everything is silent, and looked dumb-stuck like the moment after the death of Shashi Dhara when she tried to hide in the silent forest to avert the police with the acute pain in her heart like the labor-pain felt by a dumb-born woman.

At night some people rushed in the midst of the disturbance. Some gossiped about the firing, and how the farmers rushed aimlessly as they did not know the way, and how the people gheraoed the surroundings when the dead bodies were secretly removed away in cars. Nobody except the dogs could enter the place under the vigilance of the boot-wearing policemen. Huge disturbance.

Shashi’s wife like others was not scared at the beginning. She too was in trouble because of her sons. She had to flee away like others from the vigilance of the approaching stick-holders and pursuing boot-wearers.

Her sons knew how to flee.

But the boys did never return. Does she herself not go in search of them? But there were only walls of the red-bricked houses towering to the sky. Nobody could give any news of Nirapada Dhara and Lakshindar Dhara.

Oh babus, all of you have returned, but where are my Nirapada, my Lakshindar?

Nobody could answer of her query. The babus then arranged another procession with the people like Shashi Dhara’s wife. But in the midst of that procession, Shashi Dhara’s wife somehow removed herself. She did not follow the path which the others followed. Rather she only howled in search of her sons, Oh Nirapodo, Oh, Lakshindo, why did you go my naughty sons? Thus she repeatedly slapped on her breast, and sometimes fell stumbled on the road.

The fleeting images of the canvas rapidly changed its shape like the deceptive Marichi. Being hopeful, Shashi Dhara’s wife used to roundabout in the paths and the Maidan of the city like a tired dung-beetle which circles in bewilderment under the extreme heat of the sun. Sometimes she remained busy to eat the leftovers of the marriage ceremony, sometimes she asked the passing air, Where are my two sons?

When someone said, Perhaps they are dead, Shashi Dhara’s wife at once threatened them saying, I would pierce your body with the scythe. By that time she lost the scythe, although unknowingly. Her mental state became turbid as the blood-mixed mud. But when the words ‘they are dead’ reach to her ears, she became startled. Her baul father used to say, If you don’t see anybody to die, then don’t believe that the person is dead. As there was still doubt, she thought to tie the sanctified-chanted cloth in her home. As long as the cloth would last, there would be hope.

By this time one day Shashi Dhara’s wife comes again on her way to the footpath of Sidhu and the fellow beggars. Sidhu recognized her at once. He said, Such is your condition?

Shashi Dhara’s wife frowned and asked, Why?

You’ve become so. Where are your sons?

They are gone.

Sidhu gave her shelter. Shashi Dhar’s wife then goes on begging satisfactorily. She used to put paises on her anchhal tied to the belley. She gave money to Sidhu. She did not even know why she gave him money. She could not later understand herself about her own conducts by that time. Then she began to bathe in the hydrant water. She began to eat, and thus one day she looked well. She again came back to her balanced state of mind. But in this intermediate time as she left her scythe, her cooking earthen-pot, her comb and napkin, she too left with these her uncontrollable anger, rage and tenacity too.

Sidhu said, The woman have become silent in extreme grief and anger.

The other beggars said, You are a woman and so angry you were?

Sidhu takes a puff in his bidi and said, one thing I have to say, She is no more temporary. She is permanent. And it’s the duty of the permanent beggars to give shelter to the other permanent beggars. This is the law of the footpath.

Do you know really?

Besides she would take care of our household activities.

The other beggars became convinced. This is true that their belongings too are increasing day by day – cloth- sack- paper- boards – sandals – kerosin – wooden box.

They became quite ensured. Sidhu is giving her shelter with this selfish motif. If Sidhu told them that it’s out of compassion that he has given her shelter, could they really believe him at all?

Sidhu again takes a puff from his bidi, and said, Do you see her appearance. Totally Mother India make up.

Sidhu said, Nulo cooks for us. But if you cook then he can go out for begging more and more.

The beggars cook once a day. Within few days, Shashi Dhara’s wife became habituated with this. She herself took the charge of selling the alms of the beggars to the nearby building, and giving money to the beggars. Within few days she learnt to sweep the market, and to bring the rotten tomatoes, cabage leaves, half-rotten potato and the entrails of goats. One day when Sidhu died, she entered into his sack- cloth roofed home. Nobody objected in that. Nobody even questioned whether he has the right or not.

Because within these few days, both sides of the river Ganga have been repaired and the C.M.D.A. has begun road work. The slogans on the walls, and the words on the wall of the crematorium become faded. So many days are passed now.

Entering into the home, she tied two rags of cloth on a bamboo blade.

You have entered into the new home. Would you not offer Puja? Thus Nulo said. He also said, Would we not get sweet?

She did not say anything. Her bauli father used to say, As long as you’ve hope, don’t untie the cloth. It would work as a force. So long as you know one to be dead can return one day.

After knotting the rags of cloth she said, If anybody unties it, I would not spare to kill.

Why? What is there in it?

My sons’ lives.

Would they return any more?

They would surely come. They would quench my thirst of getting Ganga water in my death-bed.

When Shashi Dhara’s wife keeps close watch on the cow-dung balls under the sunrays, her life story hovers in her mind. Her mind is like the sun. In the life-sky of Shashi Dhara’s wife, this sun has to reappear again. But now she can feel that her life is coming to an end. The brightness of her life-sun gradually moves to twilight. It slowly loses its heat.

Now her neighbours are the new beggars. They come back in the evening. Then Fullwara cooks for them. Fullwara wanders at the bus stand during the day. Sometimes she comes to Shashi’s wife for medicine. This woman has gone astray, dirty too. She cannot tolerate the other women beggars. But this Fullwara tied a cord in Shshi’s wife’s hand, and a scrape in her neck after bathing naked in the hydrant water.

Today after putting the dried cow-dung balls in the basket, she said, Oh Fullwara, call Mokshada to take away these.

Would you not go?

I can’t. My health is not well.

What are you telling. Today there is a burnt-offering in babu’s house.

You go and eat there.

Fullwara became very surprised. The houses where Shashi’s wife supplies cow-dung balls, on those houses she is surely invited during marriage, sraddha, in the ceremony of the wearing holy-thread and birthday too. And she would not attend in such invitations!

Fullwara asked why are you shivering?

Is it too cold today?

Who told you cold? Let me check your body.

Not much fever, yet the whole body shivers. She said, Fullwara you should rather take the cow dung balls today, and take money properly.

Would you eat sago and molasses?

Hush!

She pulls the curtain of her home. Lay down with folded body.

She keeps a small gap in the sack-clothed wall, and looks at the way. It’s as though the salt water of a canal flows through her mind. And the mangrove leaves are falling one by one. Today she is trying to seat on a leaf again and again but whenever she tries to sit on the leaf, it floats away.

Her mind is trying to seat on how many leaves. A leaf reflects the image of excited and red-faced Shashi Dhara just before his last departure. That leaf moves away. Her bauli father says, don’t untie the cloth, your uncle would surely return from the tiger’s clutches. That leaf too goes away. There is huge torrent in the salty canal now. Santhal daoals of murshidabad are ready to cut the crops, but as they flee away with their children, their tree-leaves huts are burnt into ashes. But the sons say now, They would give us meal, give us money, we would return too. This leaf again and again comes back defying the flow of the river. She abuses them, and says, Remember, if you don’t return, I would not get Ganga water.

She awakes in amazement. How starange! She did not say these to her sons. She only said, If the disturbance gets worse, then come back my sons. My sons, don’t get involved in any disturbance.

Fullwara lights the lantern before leaving.

As she lies on the bed then and there, never rises up. The next day the sun rises. It is gradually becoming bright. After the whole night revelry, Fullwara on her way to bathe rises the curtain and asks, O Masi, are you not well today too.

Then as she bends down, she comes to realize everything.

The beggars of the footpath, and the maid servants on their way shake her head. Sidhu used to call her Mother India. But she is surely from a fortunate and good family. She falls ill and dies in silence. Pointing her thin fingers to the tied cloths. A mere footpath beggar does not die such. The wealthy people die such suddenly. Masi is perhaps from such a wealthy family.

Police brought a carrier for her funeral. She was cremated at the government cost. Before picking up the body by the dom, Fullwara and the beggars lifted the body to the van.

Fullwara asked where are you going to burn the body?

The other beggars said, Why are you asking?

The woman longed for Ganga water, but her sons are missing. Would they give her Ganga water in the cremation ground?

Suddenly Fullwara feels deep grief for Masi. As she is crying, she can’t see the van to take away the body, and the legs of the Mother India lay flat in the open gate. She is going to be cremated as an unclaimed body. And Mother India could not see how a few beggars and a prostitute being grief-stricken on her death are performing ‘no work’ and desecration.

Arun Pramanik is a Reserch scholar of the Dept. of English, Vidyasagar University (W. B.). He is working on Translation Studies. He studied M. A. from V. U., and M. Phil from the University of Burdwan. He taught in Raja N. L. Khan Women’s college, Midnapore. He has participated in different national and international seminars, presented papers, and published translations and articles. He is also an Academic Counselor of IGNOU.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol. VI, No. 3, 2014.

Ed. Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay &Tarun Tapas Mukherjee

URL of the Issue: http://rupkatha.com/v6n3.php

URL of the review: http://rupkatha.com/V6/n3/15_translation_Mahasweta_Debi_Story.pdf                               

Kolkata, India. Copyrighted material. www.rupkatha.com

 

                       

 

 

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