Sunday, April 3, 2016

Mitro Marjani...Of Desire and Longing..


As women are we supposed to have desires? Carnal?  And if so, how do we express and long for it. Krishna Sobti in her 1964 book Mitro Marjani created Mitro aka Sumitravanta, the wife of the middle son of a mercantile joint family as if to speak it out.. so out of her times and ways.
Mitro is unabashed about her desires and longings. She feels that her body, her beauty has more to it that merely be an obedient house-wife and suppressing wishes. Hence she engages in verbal as well as physical battles with her husband. She is an odd-one out. However the interesting part is the family which although wary and repulsive accepts her frankness. Mitro speaks about sex openly and in fact gets angry at the hypocrisy of keeping things under the wraps.  In fact this is her power, which makes her husband lash at her, her in-laws to keep a distance away from her.
And I wonder what make Sobti write about Mitro. Mitro also has a mother who is open about her desires, to the extent, she being a widow is almost jealous of her daughter and her proximity to her husband. Where have we seen such female protagonists- so full of desire? In fact in many novels of those times and even now, we find the protagonists repentant and almost to do penance for this kind of carnal longing or even longing for an identity. This reminds me of Grihadaha (by Saratchandra) and in fact even in Tagore’s novels, the one who desires, is almost plotted as the one who creates anarchy and even Tagore couldn’t handle anarchy….

Wish there were more Mitros and that would have changed the dialogues and discussions in a household..

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