The Sutradhar - the narrator of tales of the voiceless
My first introduction to the novelist, essayist and poet Amrita Pritam was through a movie based on her famous novel Pinjar (The Cage). The portrayal of the ravages of Partition through the eyes of a female victim was so nuanced that it even took a look at the motivations and regrets of her perpetrator. I really wanted to pick Pinjar as the work I read for this Doodle book project. Unfortunately, the e-book of the English translation was out of circulation due to some error reported in it.
Amrita Pritam wrote in Punjabi and Hindi and there are very few English translations available for her works. None in e-book format at the moment. So, I gathered my courage again and decided to pick one of her Hindi books available in the Kindle bookstore. This happened to be an author-curated collection of her short stories titled “Meri Priya Kahaniyan” (My Favourite Stories). Luckily for me, her Hindi is a lot more contemporary and accessible to a lay speaker of the language as compared to the lofty literary language of Mahadevi Varma.
So, I settled quite comfortably into her words and could see a reflection of my own thoughts and feelings in them never mind that we have gone through life 62 years apart.
Themes
The common themes of a lot of these short stories are love, life as a woman and societal expectations from both women and men. Some of these stories seem to be drawn from real life people that Amrita met. She also makes keen observations on how life and world-views change across social classes.
On Love
Amrita narrates how Angoori, a simple village woman, believes that love is caused by ingesting some wild herbal concoction that men spring on unsuspecting maidens. A concoction that makes them sing a lot and cry a lot.
Meanwhile in another story, Sukumar, a young man from the middle-class who falls in love with a fellow collaborator on a community magazine, can only dare to day-dream of his beloved’s presence around him doing little everyday things with him. In society, however, they feel the need to hide behind the threads of a rakhi to legitimize their association.
At the other end of the spectrum is Guliana - a solo-traveller who has literally and figuratively seen the world and realizes that true love does not grow confined to a flower-pot (social conventions), but rather upon taking root in the vast Earth out in the open where it can take up as much room as it needs.
On Being a Woman
The challenges of being a woman colour practically every story of this collection. But, there is one allegorical tale where she focuses on how these challenges change depending on the strata of society to which women belong. In this tale, Life decides to visit 5 sisters.
The first one is your average middle-class woman confined behind walls of tradition and who ages when she is still a child. The second is a poor woman who like a fearful beast even mistrusts life itself. The third is a sensitive soul who upon marrying an influential rich man had surgery to “replace her heart with a rock of gold”. The fourth is a rape survivor from the Partition who is now reduced to stewing in the venom of prostitution. The fifth is an artist who is forbidden to live life to the fullest for fear of being considered a threat to society. Like you, I am wondering if this last one is auto-biographical.
This was for me one of the more memorable stories in the collection. In one fell swoop of the pen she helps you traverse the whole spectrum of experiencing womanhood.
On Societal Expectations
In exploring this theme, Amrita uses the voices of both women and men. In doing so she holds up a mirror to a society that deprives its women of freedom and basic human rights, but in the process, ends up depriving its men of the freedom to follow their hearts too.
Whether it is Kishore, who forbidden to marry the village belle he loves, decides to live his life on auto-pilot like a bull tied to the grinding mill of marriage or Maanak whose family urges him to abandon his beloved but barren wife only to live traumatized by the consequences of this action; the happiness of ordinary men is routinely sacrificed at the altar of a society that oppresses the women they love.
The most heart-breaking tale though is that of Roopi and her mother-in-law. Roopi’s scribbling of her beloved Raju’s name in her notebook is erased by her teacher. Since society wouldn’t let his name appear on her wedding card either, she is forced to move onto her married home carrying only his memory in the form of one of his initialed handkerchiefs. But, out of fear of its discovery by her in-laws as a memento of her former life, Roopi - like her teacher before her - ends up removing the traces of Raju’s name from his handkerchief.
Her mother-in-law is a second wife and only years older than Roopi. She too had a beloved: a clay-stove-maker. But, her impoverished family decides to marry her off to an older man who promises them money in return. So, she is sentenced to a life of silent recollection that she breaks every fortnight as she breaks down their kitchen stove and fashions a new one out of fresh clay. Kneading the clay brings her alive such that she breaks into song. These songs are heart-rending laments about her fate: of life, love and youth lost.
Writing Style
Like Kuvempu and Mahadevi Varma, Amrita Pritam’s words also reflect the vision of a poet. Her writing is full of imagery. Here are but three examples to give you a flavor of what I mean:
“हर नजम खामोशी की औलाद होती है। जब आदमी एक तरफ से इतना गूँगा हो जाता है कि एक शब्द भी नहीं बोल पाता, तो उसे अपनी खामोशी से घबराकर कविता लिखनी पड़ती है।”
[Every poem is the child of silence. When, in a way, a man feels so mute that he cannot even utter a word to express himself, he is scared by his silence into writing poetry.]
“उस रात वह फटा हुआ पन्ना किसी जानवर के टूटे हुए पंख की तरह उसकी छाती में हिलता रहा।”
[That night, the memory of that torn page kept fluttering in his breast like the broken wing of a bird.]
“केवल उन शब्दों के स्थान पर, जो बहुत संकोचशील हो उठे थे, उसने बिन्दु डाल दिए थे - शब्द जैसे सिकुड़ गए थे। केवल बिन्दु बनकर रह गए थे … .”
[Except, when she felt too coy to write certain words, she would replace them with dots - as if the bashful words had shrunken down. Only to be reduced to dots …. ]
All throughout her tales, Amrita Pritam gives you the feel of being a fly on the wall, witnessing the lives of men and women attempting to dream or struggling to live despite the restrictions society puts on them, fighting to breathe free or reminiscing their regrets or wishing to be become immortal through their tales.
More than one voiceless woman is given the opportunity to share her story through the author’s words. While the author seems to disappear into the background of her tales even when she is a part of it, society seems to come alive as an oppressive, unseen character in many of these short stories, particularly in the romantic tragedies.
My Favourite Character
This is unmistakably Guliana, the solo-traveller that I mentioned before. Her thoughts and motivations are so contemporary that it made me check how old the anthology was. The author died in 2005, so I figure this was written sometime towards the end of the 20th century.
I could relate to Guliana in so many ways. Her need to see the world before she could begin to write anything seems so familiar to my own curious mind. Her thoughts on love make sense to me and her loneliness had induced the same thoughts in her as mine has in me. Most of all, her frustration with the way women cannot just up and walk to whichever place caught their fancy because they had to beware of male predators felt like it was being drawn out of my own heart. The anger and defiance she feels have rankled in my own chest from time to time. I wish I had one-tenth her courage and stamina (she journeyed on foot mostly) and I hope I can fulfill for myself the dreams that she dreamed.
I end this review by leaving you with some of my favourite quotes from this story:
“चाहती थी कि कोई जगह मुझे रोक ले , मुझे थाम ले , बाँध ले । पर . . . ” “ ज़िन्दगी के किसी हाथ में इतनी ताकत नहीं आई ? ” “ मैं शायद ज़िन्दगी से कुछ अधिक माँगती हूँ - ज़रूरत से ज़्यादा । मेरा देश जब गुलाम था , मैं आज़ादी की जंग में शामिल हो गई थी । ”
[“I wanted one of these places {I visited} to stop me, to hold me and bind me to it. But …” “No hand in your life had the strength to do so?” “Perhaps, I ask too much from life - more than is necessary. Even when my country was enslaved, I joined the fight to demand for independence.”]
“ कुछ किया ज़रूर था , पर वह प्यार नहीं था । अगर प्यार होता , तो ज़िन्दगी से लम्बा होता । साथ ही मेरे महबूब को भी मेरी उतनी ही ज़रूरत होती जितनी मुझे उसकी ज़रूरत थी । मैंने विवाह भी किया था , पर यह विवाह उस गमले की तरह था जिसमें मेरे मन का फूल कभी न उगा।”
[I did experience something, but it was not love. If it had been, it would have lasted a lifetime. Similarly, my beloved would have needed me as much as I needed him. I did marry, but that marriage was like the pot in which the flower of my heart could not grow.]
“सभ्यता का युग तब आएगा जब औरत की मरजी के बिना कोई औरत के जिस्म को हाथ नहीं लगाएगा ।”
[We will truly enter the era of civilization only when nobody touches a woman’s body without her consent.]
“वह मेरे साथ कभी नहीं गया, पर उसने अपनी गाड़ी मुझे दे दी । ड्राइवर भी दे दिया । मुझे वह सहारा ओढ़ना पड़ा । पर ऐसा कोई भी सहारा हमें क्यों ओढ़ना पड़े?”
[Speaking of a fellow hotel guest in Egypt where it isn’t the custom for women to travel alone: “He did not come with me, but he gave me the use of his car. Along with the car came a chauffeur too. I had to rely on this kindness. But, why should we be forced to rely on any such help?”]
Amrita Pritam wrote in Punjabi and Hindi and there are very few English translations available for her works. None in e-book format at the moment. So, I gathered my courage again and decided to pick one of her Hindi books available in the Kindle bookstore. This happened to be an author-curated collection of her short stories titled “Meri Priya Kahaniyan” (My Favourite Stories). Luckily for me, her Hindi is a lot more contemporary and accessible to a lay speaker of the language as compared to the lofty literary language of Mahadevi Varma.
So, I settled quite comfortably into her words and could see a reflection of my own thoughts and feelings in them never mind that we have gone through life 62 years apart.
Themes
The common themes of a lot of these short stories are love, life as a woman and societal expectations from both women and men. Some of these stories seem to be drawn from real life people that Amrita met. She also makes keen observations on how life and world-views change across social classes.
On Love
Amrita narrates how Angoori, a simple village woman, believes that love is caused by ingesting some wild herbal concoction that men spring on unsuspecting maidens. A concoction that makes them sing a lot and cry a lot.
Meanwhile in another story, Sukumar, a young man from the middle-class who falls in love with a fellow collaborator on a community magazine, can only dare to day-dream of his beloved’s presence around him doing little everyday things with him. In society, however, they feel the need to hide behind the threads of a rakhi to legitimize their association.
At the other end of the spectrum is Guliana - a solo-traveller who has literally and figuratively seen the world and realizes that true love does not grow confined to a flower-pot (social conventions), but rather upon taking root in the vast Earth out in the open where it can take up as much room as it needs.
On Being a Woman
The challenges of being a woman colour practically every story of this collection. But, there is one allegorical tale where she focuses on how these challenges change depending on the strata of society to which women belong. In this tale, Life decides to visit 5 sisters.
The first one is your average middle-class woman confined behind walls of tradition and who ages when she is still a child. The second is a poor woman who like a fearful beast even mistrusts life itself. The third is a sensitive soul who upon marrying an influential rich man had surgery to “replace her heart with a rock of gold”. The fourth is a rape survivor from the Partition who is now reduced to stewing in the venom of prostitution. The fifth is an artist who is forbidden to live life to the fullest for fear of being considered a threat to society. Like you, I am wondering if this last one is auto-biographical.
This was for me one of the more memorable stories in the collection. In one fell swoop of the pen she helps you traverse the whole spectrum of experiencing womanhood.
On Societal Expectations
In exploring this theme, Amrita uses the voices of both women and men. In doing so she holds up a mirror to a society that deprives its women of freedom and basic human rights, but in the process, ends up depriving its men of the freedom to follow their hearts too.
Whether it is Kishore, who forbidden to marry the village belle he loves, decides to live his life on auto-pilot like a bull tied to the grinding mill of marriage or Maanak whose family urges him to abandon his beloved but barren wife only to live traumatized by the consequences of this action; the happiness of ordinary men is routinely sacrificed at the altar of a society that oppresses the women they love.
The most heart-breaking tale though is that of Roopi and her mother-in-law. Roopi’s scribbling of her beloved Raju’s name in her notebook is erased by her teacher. Since society wouldn’t let his name appear on her wedding card either, she is forced to move onto her married home carrying only his memory in the form of one of his initialed handkerchiefs. But, out of fear of its discovery by her in-laws as a memento of her former life, Roopi - like her teacher before her - ends up removing the traces of Raju’s name from his handkerchief.
Her mother-in-law is a second wife and only years older than Roopi. She too had a beloved: a clay-stove-maker. But, her impoverished family decides to marry her off to an older man who promises them money in return. So, she is sentenced to a life of silent recollection that she breaks every fortnight as she breaks down their kitchen stove and fashions a new one out of fresh clay. Kneading the clay brings her alive such that she breaks into song. These songs are heart-rending laments about her fate: of life, love and youth lost.
Writing Style
Like Kuvempu and Mahadevi Varma, Amrita Pritam’s words also reflect the vision of a poet. Her writing is full of imagery. Here are but three examples to give you a flavor of what I mean:
“हर नजम खामोशी की औलाद होती है। जब आदमी एक तरफ से इतना गूँगा हो जाता है कि एक शब्द भी नहीं बोल पाता, तो उसे अपनी खामोशी से घबराकर कविता लिखनी पड़ती है।”
[Every poem is the child of silence. When, in a way, a man feels so mute that he cannot even utter a word to express himself, he is scared by his silence into writing poetry.]
“उस रात वह फटा हुआ पन्ना किसी जानवर के टूटे हुए पंख की तरह उसकी छाती में हिलता रहा।”
[That night, the memory of that torn page kept fluttering in his breast like the broken wing of a bird.]
“केवल उन शब्दों के स्थान पर, जो बहुत संकोचशील हो उठे थे, उसने बिन्दु डाल दिए थे - शब्द जैसे सिकुड़ गए थे। केवल बिन्दु बनकर रह गए थे … .”
[Except, when she felt too coy to write certain words, she would replace them with dots - as if the bashful words had shrunken down. Only to be reduced to dots …. ]
All throughout her tales, Amrita Pritam gives you the feel of being a fly on the wall, witnessing the lives of men and women attempting to dream or struggling to live despite the restrictions society puts on them, fighting to breathe free or reminiscing their regrets or wishing to be become immortal through their tales.
More than one voiceless woman is given the opportunity to share her story through the author’s words. While the author seems to disappear into the background of her tales even when she is a part of it, society seems to come alive as an oppressive, unseen character in many of these short stories, particularly in the romantic tragedies.
My Favourite Character
This is unmistakably Guliana, the solo-traveller that I mentioned before. Her thoughts and motivations are so contemporary that it made me check how old the anthology was. The author died in 2005, so I figure this was written sometime towards the end of the 20th century.
I could relate to Guliana in so many ways. Her need to see the world before she could begin to write anything seems so familiar to my own curious mind. Her thoughts on love make sense to me and her loneliness had induced the same thoughts in her as mine has in me. Most of all, her frustration with the way women cannot just up and walk to whichever place caught their fancy because they had to beware of male predators felt like it was being drawn out of my own heart. The anger and defiance she feels have rankled in my own chest from time to time. I wish I had one-tenth her courage and stamina (she journeyed on foot mostly) and I hope I can fulfill for myself the dreams that she dreamed.
I end this review by leaving you with some of my favourite quotes from this story:
“चाहती थी कि कोई जगह मुझे रोक ले , मुझे थाम ले , बाँध ले । पर . . . ” “ ज़िन्दगी के किसी हाथ में इतनी ताकत नहीं आई ? ” “ मैं शायद ज़िन्दगी से कुछ अधिक माँगती हूँ - ज़रूरत से ज़्यादा । मेरा देश जब गुलाम था , मैं आज़ादी की जंग में शामिल हो गई थी । ”
[“I wanted one of these places {I visited} to stop me, to hold me and bind me to it. But …” “No hand in your life had the strength to do so?” “Perhaps, I ask too much from life - more than is necessary. Even when my country was enslaved, I joined the fight to demand for independence.”]
“ कुछ किया ज़रूर था , पर वह प्यार नहीं था । अगर प्यार होता , तो ज़िन्दगी से लम्बा होता । साथ ही मेरे महबूब को भी मेरी उतनी ही ज़रूरत होती जितनी मुझे उसकी ज़रूरत थी । मैंने विवाह भी किया था , पर यह विवाह उस गमले की तरह था जिसमें मेरे मन का फूल कभी न उगा।”
[I did experience something, but it was not love. If it had been, it would have lasted a lifetime. Similarly, my beloved would have needed me as much as I needed him. I did marry, but that marriage was like the pot in which the flower of my heart could not grow.]
“सभ्यता का युग तब आएगा जब औरत की मरजी के बिना कोई औरत के जिस्म को हाथ नहीं लगाएगा ।”
[We will truly enter the era of civilization only when nobody touches a woman’s body without her consent.]
“वह मेरे साथ कभी नहीं गया, पर उसने अपनी गाड़ी मुझे दे दी । ड्राइवर भी दे दिया । मुझे वह सहारा ओढ़ना पड़ा । पर ऐसा कोई भी सहारा हमें क्यों ओढ़ना पड़े?”
[Speaking of a fellow hotel guest in Egypt where it isn’t the custom for women to travel alone: “He did not come with me, but he gave me the use of his car. Along with the car came a chauffeur too. I had to rely on this kindness. But, why should we be forced to rely on any such help?”]