Saturday, April 9, 2016

Personal is Political- these stories reverberate...


Stories have always had a very strong relation with me. Books have been my best companions and since childhood, growing up in a Bengali household, short stories have dominated my love and longing. I still remember the magazine “Desh”, which we used to subscribe. My mother and my aunt would be busy following up the sequence of the novels (I think those were the days of Pratham Alo  and I was in school, in primary classes), while I used to look forward to short stories. The novelty of idea, the fast pace and the lingering aftertaste, which baba (my father) used to quote as “” Shesh Hoiao Hoilo na Shesh”.. always stayed with me. The short stories written by the English writers came to me later and then too I read O henry and Oscar Wilde. Contemporary English authors like Jack London and even Fitzgerald, I read much later. But Bangla short stories and thereby the authors seemed too lucrative and too loving a territory for me. We used to subscribe to Anandomela as well, but the short stories in Desh and in the Puja Barshikis were something I coveted for always.  And soon, Subodh Ghosh (his 3 volume short stories I still carry along with shifting cities), Tarashankar, Bibhutibhushan and my all-time favorite Manik Bandopadhyay came along.  Travelling in different cities, settled somewhere where access to Bangla books are less, and of course having circle of friends from all over the country, having a spouse who doesn’t read Bengali (I am married to a Kashmiri), made me love these stories even more as anecdotes, I mentioned to these friends. And often struggle to find translations. How would I ever be able to explain the phenomenon called Parashuram to anyone, who is not oriented to the warp and weft of the language, its wry humor?
These days, I am delighted to see so much of translation works happening and thanks to Arunava Sinha. Half of the books by Bengali authors that I have gifted to my non-bangla reading friends have been his translations. Hence needless to say, the moment I saw this book published, with an interesting title- The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told, I downloaded the Kindle version and now that I am done, I want to speak of few of the stories which have moved me completely. Not that I haven’t read them earlier. Narendranath Mitra’s Ras I had read and so did Ashapurna Devi’s story, still in this collection few stories just stand out for me, with multiple possibilities..
They are:
·         Einstein and Indubala (Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay)
·         Thunder and Lightning (Ashapurna Devi)
·         Ras (Narendranath Mitra)
·         News of Murder (Moti Nandy)
·         India (Ramapada Choudhury)

Of all these stories, the first fours almost weave and complement each other, as I try to look at them from the perspective of Personal is Political.
Well personal is political is an essay by Carol Hanische, an interesting piece written to analyze the feminist movements and its peripherals. Hanische through her experiences found that often women groups were criticized of bringing the issues of their personal life into political discourses. And the second wave of feminism tries to argue and dismiss the concept of both being different. In fact why more and more women were not joining the movement was because the liminality was not clear to them and they found the movement theoretically too conceptual to be of any use to their lives at home. Personal is indeed political at every sphere and for the feminist movement more so, since every single experience of oppression or love that the woman goes through is a result of an all-encompassing patriarchal system and hence to make someone understand the system and to defy it, be angry or have the desire to break the shackles, it’s important to engage with her through her home and personal life and family. Hanische said (aptly)- “One more thing: I think we must listen to what so-called apolitical women have to say—not so we can do a better job of organizing them but because together we are a mass movement. I think we who work full-time in the movement tend to become very narrow. What is happening now is that when non-movement women disagree with us, we assume it’s because they are “apolitical,” not because there might be something wrong with our thinking. Women have left the movement in droves. The obvious reasons are that we are tired of being sex slaves and doing shitwork for men whose hypocrisy is so blatant in their political stance of liberation for everybody (else). But there is really a lot more to it than that. I can’t quite articulate it yet. I think “apolitical” women are not in the movement for very good reasons, and as long as we say “you have to think like us and live like us to join the charmed circle,” we will fail.”
This has stayed with me since the time I read Hanische and her essay and others speaking on the same area. And I now try and look into things which speak about this strongly.
These stories to me bring back the gender lens.
Interestingly Einstein and Indubala, many may disagree with me and I when had read it first, had typified it as a sexist story in parts often (quite wrongly). At multiple instances the story refers to the decision of everyone especially the males to go and see Ms. Indubala’s performance alibi the women’s demand. This angered me, since even today such stereotypes exist be it in office or at home. However now when I reread it and in the light of Hanische, it seems so political to me and refreshingly so. Einstein with all his knowledge and his idea of space can be of no interest to women or men of a different class, the non-intellectuals, and I am not invoking caste here. However together they all represent whom is the question and whom do they choose? It is pertinent today especially in a majoritarian democracy where doles and benefits seem to be a political choice of winning votes, shall we raise our noses demeaning the choice of many (which I do often) or try and see the political significance of the choice of others. Women find Indubala more endearing than Einstein, someone they may not even have heard. Rightfully so, since he doesn’t even understand them, doesn’t try to engage. In fact he really thinks that French pamphlets will work in India? Einstein hasn’t reached their home and their hearths. However, somehow Indubala’s presence also seem to liberate the men from their façade, alibi accompanying the women. This story in fact is the icing on the cake.
Ashapurna Devi, stands for her stories set in the private spaces- home and family. She always presents a slice of intimate lives within the 4 walls of the home, the daily chores, the interplay of relations, with the woman at the centre. In the introduction to Prasenjit Gupta’s collection of Ashapurna Devi’s short stories Jhumpa Lahiri mentions: The home itself, as both physical setting and symbolic space, is the most central feature of Ashapurna Debi’s stories, and it frequently plays a complex and contradictory role. At times the home represents an adversary, a physical prison, a site of constraint beyond which the truth about a family cannot be disclosed. At other times her stories endorse the home as a haven, a refuge representative of ownership, comfort, and escape, which protects the individual from the danger and disorder rampant in city life. This polarized notion of home, as both prison and sanctuary, provides perpetual grist for Debi’s fictional mill”.
Thunder and Lightning is no exception. However here the protagonist Bula almost poses a very political question through living her personal life and her choice of financial access. Bula, the rejected wife and the ever-servile daughter-in-law leaves her in-laws house to join films. The family disowns her, however is seen at an interesting quagmire when she sends money order. And this also exposes the biggest question- is financial independence the way to woman’s liberation, so called economic empowerment, or its merely a negotiation tool, softly buying and bribing existence- since the so called inherent right to dignity is not there. Also for Bula, home and her access to family become symbolic of her existence-the lines between oppressors and the oppressed becomes blurred here.
Ras by Narendranath Mitra again brings forth this question of economics in marriage or family. This translation was published earlier in Caravan (http://www.caravanmagazine.in/fiction-poetry/ras­) However in this rural economic setting there is more to the story that mere economics and games around it. This is equally the story of two distinct women- Majubi and Phulbano, women who were open and unabashed about their choices and their desires. That is incredible. Phulbano seeks divorce from her first marriage due to her dissatisfaction with an older husband and Majubi, being divorced by Motalef, is clear about her options. The interesting part of the story is, one cannot distinctly side with anyone. At one point I may hate Motalef with his schemes and transactions, however did Majubi doesn’t appear to be a victim. This interplay is what made Ras remarkable to me.
News of Murder by Moti Nandy reminds me of an essay I read sometime back about the anxiety that all women go through in fear of violence of any form. It said that the fear of rape permeates our lives.  And the social stigma associated with it. The cage seems to suffocate the living. Bibha’s paranoia was brought upon by her family and its confines. A small news on the newspaper, having the name of the victim same as he name, got the family fussing over her apparent security and more of saving their honor at the cost of her impending confinement. Something I think women go through at every point in their lives.
India by Ramapada Choudhury of course needs to be looked with a different lens. The last few lines, is still going through my mind- “The train left. But everyone at Mahatogaon turned into beggars. All those people who lived off the soil- all of them had been turned into beggars”.  Isn’t this something too well known to all of us- we may not even need the Americans throwing off coins as amusements. There are structured organizations to do the same, banks, UN agencies with doles and schemes, with good intentions of helping communities. This reminded me of Damisa Moyo, the African author and economist who writes critically of the aid culture, ripping communities of their rights and dignities in the pretext of help.  This is indeed a very interesting piece and I am planning to use this as a story for discourses on development, sometime in a group.
However, it’s a very interesting collection and of course contributed to making my Saturday a great one.


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