Katha E-Book

• Herausgeber: Telegram Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Women's stories in India have been handed down from generation to generation, enriched and embroidered along the way. Political change and the arrival of print culture meant that storytelling was pushed into the background. But in more recent times, these voices have once again come centre-stage - confident, varied and complex. Spanning half a century, this collection covers many languages and cultures, and reflects the vast and complex cultures of the country and its diaspora. It offers a view of the changes that have taken place, both in terms of the subjects women choose to write about and their preferred way of writing about these subjects. From established names such as Mahashveta Devi to the newer generation of young authors, such as Tishani Doshi, Katha brings to the reader a vivid array of voices.

Leseprobe

Other titles in the series

Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women

Dinaane: Short Stories by South African Women

Galpa: Short Stories by Women from Bangladesh

Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women

Kahani: Short Stories by Pakistani Women

Povídky: Short Stories by Czech Women

Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women

Scéalta: Short Stories by Irish Women

KATHA

SHORT STORIES BY INDIAN WOMEN

Edited by

Urvashi Butalia

TELEGRAM

Contents

Urvashi Butalia, Introduction

Glossary

Marija Sres, How Kava Deceived Kavi and Defeated Her

Mahasveta Devi, Rudali

Ambai, A Movement, A Folder, Some Tears

Arupa Patangia Kalita, Numoli’s Story

Chandrika B., The Story of a Poem

Wajida Tabassum, Cast-offs

Manjula Padmanabhan, Teaser

Bulbul Sharma, Mayadevi’s London Yatra

Meenal Dave, Nightmare

Geetanjali Shree, March, Ma and Sakura

Vandana Singh, The Wife

Urmila Pawar, Mother

Mridula Koshy, A Large Girl

Shakti Bhatt, The Thief

Tishani Doshi, Spartacus and the Dancing Man

Aishwarya Subramanyam, Lotus

Suniti Namjoshi, The Giantess

Biographical Notes

Acknowledgements

URVASHI BUTALIA

Introduction

Today, it’s become almost fashionable to say that women’s writing no longer inhabits the margins of the literary world. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that women found it difficult to be published. Certainly this was the case a little over a quarter of a century ago, when we set up Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. At the time, feminist publishing was alive and well all over the world – in the UK, the USA, in Australia, Thailand, Japan, Chile, Germany, France, Finland and more – and it was the commitment and energy of feminist publishers that put women’s writing on the international literary map. In Kali, in the mid-eighties, I recall that when we set out to publish a volume of short stories by Indian women writers, the task of locating authors was not easy. Existing anthologies had little to offer, and most women writing in their own languages in India were not known outside the language group or area. Many saw their own writing as somehow inferior, and preferred to keep it in the background in deference to the work of their writer husbands, or other writers. And finally, when we did manage to put a couple of anthologies together, despite the fact that they contained excellent writing, they passed virtually unnoticed. A larger project (that eventually resulted in a two-volume book: Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present Day), begun some years later and covering many different genres of writing, excavated other writers, other work and brought to public attention the wealth of writing by women that lay in obscure libraries or that had been written but not published for lack of attention and attributed importance on the part of the publishing world. Together, the work of feminist scholars and feminist publishers represented the first steps towards the remaking of the canon of writing, and questioned how these canons were made, and indeed who made them.

There’s a story in this collection that, in some ways, best describes the kinds of silences that had for long surrounded women and women’s writing. The protagonist of ‘The Story of a Poem’ by Chandrika B. is a housewife and also secretly a poet. It is this that provides the oxygen in her life. Whenever the urge to write takes her, she struggles to find time in the little moments of freedom she has between household work, between her daily tasks of sweeping and swabbing and washing and cleaning. One day, her husband and children leave the house, he to go to work and the children to go to school. She quickly finishes her morning chores and goes in for a shower. While there, the first few lines of a new poem come to her. She runs out to pen them down before they go out of her head. Standing naked and dripping by the dining table, she writes her lines. Later, involved in housework, she thinks of another few lines, rushes to where her piece of paper lies, and writes them down. Then, between this and that, other lines are added. As evening falls and the light begins to fade she writes the last few lines and, just then, hears her family returning. Immediately, she picks up the paper with the by-now-complete poem and shreds it to bits, throwing it into the bin. The author now tells the reader that if she wishes to read the whole poem, the only way to do so is to piece it together from the story!

Were Chandrika’s protagonist to be writing today, however, it’s likely that she would not have had to destroy her poem, although it’s more difficult to guess whether or not she would still have had to hide it from her husband. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the growth of women’s movements all over the world, and the work of women publishers, have helped to create an enabling environment in which women can have the confidence to write, and to know that they will be read. And this, in turn, has created an interest within the publishing world, both alternative and mainstream, in the market that exists for such writing. Thus there is a growing awareness that women’s writing is no longer something that merely inhabits a niche, but rather something that has a place in the mainstream – and perhaps the evidence of this lies in the disappearance of feminist publishers from much of the world’s literary map. Whether in India or elsewhere, there is no doubt that in recent years some of the most successful authors have been women, and that many of these have been published by mainstream presses.

This anthology puts together the work of a variety of Indian women writers. They come from different parts of the country, write in different languages, and choose different genres. And yet, the stories included here do not even begin to touch the tip of the iceberg of what is available in India. With at least eighteen official languages – that is, languages that have over a million speakers each – and several more waiting to join the list, with a rich oral culture and thousands of dialects, and with a storytelling tradition that is part of every household and community, India offers a wealth of literatures and genres and there is no way a collection such as this can even hope to represent them. Nonetheless the stories included here offer us at least one glimpse of the range of women’s writing: the work of writers included here spans a half-century of writing, with the oldest of the writers being in her seventies and the youngest in her twenties.

Should women’s writing be defined by their gender? Or, to put it another way, do women write their gender? These continue to be troubled questions to which there are no easy answers. Years ago, when women’s writing was marginalized, such questions were easy to answer, for, clearly, the reason why such writing remained peripheral was precisely because of the gender of its writers. However, once women began to emerge into the mainstream literary world, many of them no longer wanted to be defined by their gender. Instead they wished to be seen as writers. This is as it should be, and there can be any number of arguments about whether or not it is right to put writers within the covers of a single book simply because they belong to a particular gender. Would an anthology of men writers, for example, have the same meaning?

And yet, it is important to note that such a yoking together of a group of writers is not entirely meaningless. In some ways it enables the reader to get a broad picture not only of the wealth of form and genre that characterizes writing by women, but it also provides a view of the changes that have taken place in such writing, in terms of both the subjects that women choose to write about and their preferred ways of writing about these. Thus the story itself is redefined – for some writers it becomes a long narrative with a beginning, middle and end, a plot, a structure; for others a fable, or a retelling of one; for others an email exchange, and so on. Similarly, the range of subjects that women now cover has broadened and expanded. One of the things that was believed to characterize women’s writing was also what helped to somehow label it as a ‘lesser’ form of writing, and this was the supposed preoccupation of women with the narrow world of the domestic sphere. But this is no longer true: women write about all kinds of issues, they choose all kinds of genres. The old taboos are being broken and new forms are being created.

This collection does not pretend to be representative, for there is no way that within the covers of a single book one can represent the complex reality that is India. But it does offer a variety – in terms of age, language, subject and so on. It also does not limit itself geographically, touching on writers living in India and in the diaspora – for Indians are today everywhere. Perhaps the one claim that we can make here is that in putting together the work of a handful of women writers from India, this anthology signals the many riches that still remain unexplored and the wealth of writing that exists in the vast subcontinent that is modern India.

Glossary

adivasis

tribals

amla

citrus fruit believed to have medicinal properties

anchals

the part of a sari used to cover the head and breast

angan

courtyard

apsara

a divine dancer

azaan

Muslim call to prayer

bahanji / ben

sister

bas

enough

bhajans

devotional songs

bhakti

a form of devotion, in which the disciple communicates directly with his or her god

bihugeet/biyanaam

song to mark the festival Bihu

buwa

medicine man

chaiwalla

man selling tea

chandlo/mangalsutra

necklace worn to signal marital status

churidar-kameez

long shirt worn over tight trousers

dacoity

highway robbery

Devdas

a Bollywood film

dholak

drum

dupatta

a long scarf

gamosa

a small scarf usually draped over the shoulder

ghagra

a loose-flowing long skirt

ghungroos

bells worn when dancing

gurudwara

a Sikh temple

hakim

a traditional doctor

haveli

large traditional house

huzoor, huzooran, huzoorain

all terms of respect, meaning ‘sir’ or ‘madam’; also means ‘yes’, as in ‘yessir’

Jatayu

a mythical bird in the Hindu Pantheon, with the power to fly long distances

Kabir dohas

couplets composed by the poet Kabir

khuda hafiz

God be with you

kirya

ceremony performed a few days after a person’s death

kumkum

mark on forehead to signal marital status; also worn for fashion

lalas

senior men, could be shop owners or just village elders; sometimes also used in a derogatory way

mahajan

a moneylender

Maharaj

a term of respect or status

mekhela-sadors

wrap worn in northeast India

mela

fair

namaaz

Muslim prayer

nikah

Muslim marriage

panchayati

concerning the panchayat, or village governance cell

pandal

an enclosure where events take place

pandas, pandits

priests

pujas, yagnas, havans puja

prayer, larger public prayer, and the sacred, or ritual fire, central to many prayers and sacrifices

purana

ancient epic

randis

prostitutes

rudalis

women who mourn for the dead

sarai

shelter

sardars

bosses, chiefs

shradh

a death ceremony

sindoor

vermilion powder put in the parting of a woman’s hair to indicate marital status

vaids, hakims

traditional doctors or healers

Yudhistira

a character from the Mahabharata

zamindars

landowners

MARIJA SRES

How Kava Deceived Kavi and Defeated Her

As told by Jivabhai M. Katara

Kava and Kavi slowly recovered after the deluge, and started discovering their new surroundings together. With every passing day they felt more and more at ease with each other. But Kudrat’s companion Deva said to himself: ‘Let’s complicate the relationship between them. Let’s see who is the better of the two.’ Actually, Deva being male favoured Kava over Kavi. So he organized a running competition or spardha for them.

Kavi was a very vibrant girl with a great sense of fun, and she knew she could outmatch the boy any day. So they ran a race, and she was far ahead of him and won.

But Deva had put it into Kava’s mind that he must be better than the girl, and not to settle for defeat. He made Kava feel that it was bad to come second, and that he, Kava, would end up serving Kavi, when it should be the other way round. If not by strength, then Kava must win by trickery.

Kava stayed awake the whole night thinking what to do. Suddenly he saw something shining there on the ground. He picked it up. It was a pair of silver earrings. Oh, how smooth the ornaments felt to the touch, and how they sparkled in his hand. So he said: ‘Right. This will distract her, and I’ll win the next race.’ And he dropped off to sleep happily. Little did he guess that the earrings had been placed there by Deva as part of his plot to boost Kava at Kavi’s expense.

In the morning he went to Kavi, and suggested they run again. As they came to the starting line, Kava produced the silver earrings and dangled them in front of Kavi. ‘Will you wear these in the race?’ he asked. Kavi took them with delight, and as she struggled to put them on, the race began, and Kava ran far ahead. But Kavi was not slow either. Quickly, she snapped the earrings on and, running, outstripped Kava, and completed the race long before he came to the finishing line. Kava had lost again, in spite of his trick.

Kava was upset, but instead of losing heart, he determined to use more trickery.

The next morning, Kava presented Kavi with a nose-ring and bangles. Kavi was happy again to put them on, and while she did so, once again Kava started running. The ornaments did tend to slow Kavi a bit, but without much effort she caught up with Kava, and outstripped him once again.

Again Kava spent the first part of the night planning Kavi’s defeat, instead of making love to her. She felt sad for a while at his inattention, but when in the morning he ornamented her with a beautiful necklace which gleamed in silver against her darkish skin, she smiled again. Kavi wore it proudly, together with all the other ornaments he had given day by day, so that she almost forgot about the context, as she preened herself in the mirror. Deva reminded her that she had still to beat Kava that day, and so she ran, but with difficulty, so that they reached the finishing line almost at the same time, and it was agreed that she had won by a hair’s breadth.

The last day of the spardha dawned, and Kava surprised Kavi with new jewellery. Although she knew that wearing these ornaments tended to slow her down, Kavi could not resist their beauty, and the way they enhanced her looks. She knew that the heavenly beings who were watching the competition envied her good looks, as well as her prowess in running.

That morning Kava came to her with yet another piece of jewellery. ‘You must wear this breastplate,’ he insisted. ‘It’s been made specially for you.’ Kavi put on the breastplate of gold studded with precious stones, and was thrilled. And then Kava knelt down and added a pair of golden anklets, which tinkled with little bells each time she moved her feet. ‘But they are too heavy,’ Kavi protested. ‘Nonsense,’ said Kava. ‘Imagine how the wind will carry the jhanjhar of your bells when you run!’ And so she was persuaded to wear those as well.

Well, no one looked more gorgeous than Kavi all decked in her finery. But as Kava knew (and as Deva had planned) all these ornaments slowly but surely weighed her down. She was no longer as lithe and speedy as a gazelle.

The race started. It was the final race of the spardha, and whoever won would be declared the final victor. Once again Kavi simply flew along the track. Kava ran swiftly too, but he was always behind her. But as they ran in the heat of the sun Kavi felt pulled down by the weight of her jewellery, and her limbs could not move as easily as they had earlier. She felt tired and constrained. In a little while Kava caught up with her, and then overtook her. He increased the space between them, and never again did Kavi make up the distance. The race was won by Kava.

‘I have won, and defeated you,’ Kava crowed proudly. Kavi accepted with a smile. And Kava claimed the first place henceforward, whereas before Kavi and Kava had always walked side by side together. Ever since, men have used gifts, little and big, to distract women, and to make them do their bidding. Women, like Kavi, are happy to receive gifts, not realizing that like this they often lose their freedom. This is how even now the Dungri Garasiya tribe pays for the bride a dapu, a bride price, which shows how a woman becomes a man’s property.

MAHASWETA DEVI

Rudali

In Tahad village, ganjus and dushads were in the majority. Sanichari was a ganju by caste. Like the other villagers, her life was lived in desperate poverty. Her mother-in-law used to say it was because Sanichari was suffering. At that time, Sanichari was a young daughter-in-law; she wasn’t free to speak up. Her mother-in-law died when Sanichari was still young. She was never able to answer back. Sometimes the old woman’s words came back to Sanichari. To herself she would say, ‘Huh! Because I was born on and named after a Saturday, that made me an unlucky daughter-in-law! You were born on a Monday – was your life any happier? Somri, Budhua, Moongri, Bishri – do any of them have happier lives?’

When her mother-in-law died Sanichari didn’t cry. At the time, her husband and his brother, both the old woman’s sons, were in jail because of malik-mahajan Ramavatar Singh. Enraged at the loss of some wheat, he had had all the young dushad and ganju males of the village locked up. Her mother-in-law died in great pain, of dropsy, lying in her own excrement, crying out, over and over, ‘Food, give me food!’ It was pouring that night. Sanichari and her sister-in-law together lowered the old woman into the ground. If the rites weren’t carried out before the night was over, they would have to bear the cost of the repentance rites for keeping the corpse in the house overnight. And there wasn’t even a cupful of grain in the house! So Sanichari was forced to go from neighbour to neighbour in the pouring rain. Dragging the neighbours home with her, and handling all the arrangements for the cremation, she was so busy that there was no time to cry. So what if there wasn’t? The old woman had given her so much trouble that even if Sanichari had tried to cry she wouldn’t have been able to wring out any tears.

The old woman couldn’t stand being alone while she was alive. She couldn’t stand being alone after her death either. Within three years the brother-in-law and his wife were dead too. At that time Ramavatar Singh had started a hue and cry about throwing the dushads and ganjus out of the village. Terrified of being driven out, Sanichari was on tenterhooks. There was no crying over those deaths either. Was one to weep or to worry about how to burn the corpses and feed the neighbours cheaply at the shradh? In this village, everyone was unhappy. They understood suffering. So they were content with being fed just sour curd, sugar and coarse, parched rice. Everyone understood the fact that Sanichari and her husband didn’t shed any tears – how is it possible to weep when you’ve borne three deaths in as many years? Their grief must have hardened into stone within them! To herself, Sanichari had sighed with relief. Was it possible to feed so many mouths on the meagre scrapings they brought home after labouring on the malik’s field? Two dead, just as well. At least their own stomachs would be full.

She had never thought, however, that she wouldn’t cry at her husband’s death. And yet, such was her destiny, that this was just what happened. At the time her only son, Budhua, was six. Leaving the little child at home, Sanichari laboured hard for the sake of a little security in her household. She would go off to the malik’s house where she would split wood, gather fodder for the cows and, in harvest season, work alongside her husband in the fields. A piece of land had been left to her husband’s brother by her father-in-law; together the couple had built a little hut on it. She had painted designs and pictures on the walls. Budhua’s father wanted to fence in their angan, and grow chillies and vegetables. She had plans to raise a calf she would get from the malik’s wife. It was all fixed. Her husband said, ‘Come, let’s visit the Baisakhi mela at Thori. We can offer worship to Shiva as well. After all, we’ve managed to save up seven rupees.’

The mela was a grand affair. The Shiva idol was being bathed in pots and pots of milk donated by the rich. This milk had been collecting in large tanks over the past few days. It gave off a sour stink and was thick with buzzing flies. People were paying the pandas money to drink glasses of this milk and promptly falling sick with cholera. Many died. Including Budhua’s father. It was during British rule. Government officials were dragging the victims off to the hospital tents. There were only five tents. There were sixty to seventy patients. The tents were cordoned off with barbed wire. Sanichari and her son sat and waited beyond the barbed wire. They learnt that Budhua’s father had died. The government officers didn’t give her any time to shed tears. They burned the corpses quickly. They dragged Sanichari and Budhua off for a vaccination against the disease. The pain of the injections made them yowl. Still crying, she washed off the sindoor from her head in the shallow Kuruda River, broke her bangles, and returned to the village. They were new shellac bangles. She had just bought them at the fair. The panda of the Shiva temple at Tohri demanded that she make ritual offerings there before returning to her village, since her husband had died there …

Bikhni was a childhood playmate. Everyone called her Kalikambli Bikhni because she always wore a ghagra made out of a black quilt. Carrying a bundle on her shoulder, she was striding along hastily. Not noticing Sanichari, she bumped into her.

‘What the hell? Are you blind?’

‘It’s your father who is blind.’

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me all right.’

A fine fight was brewing. Sanichari was all set to enjoy herself. A good set-to cleared the brain, got rid of a lot of undergrowth. That’s why Dhatua’s mother literally quarrelled with the crows – quarrelling kept both mind and body in fine fettle, the blood coursing through your veins like bullets from a gun. But as they glared at each other, Bikhni asked: ‘Hey, aren’t you Sanichari?’

‘Who’re you?’

‘Bikhni, Kalikambli Bikhni.’

‘Bikhni?’

‘Yes!’

‘But you were married off in Lohardaga.’

‘I’ve been living in Jujubhatu for many years.’

‘Jujubhatu? And I’ve been in Tahad, just half a day’s walk from you! How come we never met?’

‘Come, let’s sit down somewhere.’

They settled down in the shade of a peepul tree. They eyed each other closely, before each relaxed in the realization that the other was no better off than herself. Like Sanichari, Bikhni’s wrists, throat and forehead sported no jewellery other than blue tattoo marks; both wore pieces of cork in their ears instead of earrings, and their hair was rough and ungroomed. Sanichari handed Bikhni a bidi.

‘Did you come to the market?’

‘No, I came to look for my grandson.’

Sanichari told her about Haroa, about herself, about everything. Bikhni listened, then said, ‘Is there no caring left in this world? Or is it our fate, yours and mine?’

Sanichari laughed bitterly: ‘No husband, no son: wherever my grandson is, may he be safe.’

Bikhni said, ‘I had a son after three daughters. Their father died long ago, I was the one who brought him up. I began to take in calves for rearing, and gradually I managed four cows, and two she-goats of my own. I got my son married, and I fed the whole village on dahi-chivda-gur after taking a loan from the mahajan.’

‘Then?’

‘Now the mahajan is about to claim my house by way of repayment, and my son is moving in with his in-laws.’

Bikhni spat while saying this. She said, ‘His father-in-law has no sons. My son will live there along with his brother-in-law as his servant. I told him, let’s sell the cows and repay the debt to the mahajan but my son took the cows and calves away to his in-laws. But I am Bikhni, after all. I’ve just sold my two goats in this marketplace. My son doesn’t know. Bas, I’ve got twenty rupees in the tank, and I’m off.’

‘Where will you go now?’

‘Who knows? Your son’s no more, mine’s as good as dead. Perhaps I’ll go to Daltonganj, or Bokharo or Gomo. Beg at some station.’

Sanichari heaved a sigh. She said, ‘Come with me. My two-roomed hut is empty. Each room has a platform to sleep on. Budhua built them. The vegetable patch still yields okra, eggplant, chillies.’

‘And when my money runs out?’

‘We’ll face that when it happens. Your money is yours. Sanichari can still earn enough to subsist on.’

‘Then let’s go. Tell me, is there a water problem in your village?’

‘There’s the river. And the panchayati well, though that water’s bitter.’

‘Just a minute.’

Bikhni went to the market and returned after a short while. She said, ‘I’ve bought some medicine for lice. We’ll mix it with kerosene and massage it in, then wash our hair. Lice can worry you more than the most worrying thoughts.’

Walking along, Bikhni said, ‘My granddaughter will probably cry for me. She’s used to sleeping beside me.’

Sanichari said, ‘Only for a few days. Then she’ll forget.’

Bikhni was delighted with Sanichari’s house. Right then and there she sprinkled the place with water and washed it down. She went off to the river and fetched a pot of water. She said, ‘There’s no need to light the stove tonight. I have some roti and achar with me.’

Bikhni loved housework. Within a couple of days, she had put a fresh coat of mud and dung on the floor of the house and compound, washed Sanichari’s and her own clothes thoroughly, and aired all the mats and quilts. At home, she had withdrawn more and more from the housework as her daughter-in-law took the reins into her own hands. This was out of hurt pride, but her daughter-in-law thought she was lazy. Managing a household is addictive. It can set even someone as unhappy as Bikhni to dreaming unrealistic dreams. There was no knowing how long she’d be there – this was Sanichari’s house. One day Bikhni began to dig and tend the vegetable patch. She said, ‘With a little effort we will get lots of vegetables.’

The lice medicine killed the creatures in Sanichari’s hair. After sleeping comfortably she realized that her sleepless nights had been caused by the lice, not by mental anguish. No matter how griefstricken one is, a work-worn body is bound to sleep well.

For some days the two of them ate off Bikhni’s money. When that ran out, Sanichari felt as if the sky had fallen on her head …

… Then she told Bikhni, ‘Come, let’s go to see Dulan. He’s a crafty old rogue, but he has a sharp mind. He’s sure to show us a way.’

After hearing them out, Dulan said, ‘As long as there’s a way of earning, why should anyone die of starvation?’

‘What kind of earning?’

‘Budhua’s mother! Do ready-made ways of earning exist? They may exist for malik-mahajans, but do they exist for dushads and ganjus? We have to make our own opportunities. How much money did your friend bring with her?’

‘Twenty rupees.’

‘Tw-en-ty whole rupees!’

‘Yes, but we’ve spent eighteen rupees on food.’

‘If it was me, I’d have seen Mahabirji in my dreams long before the money ran out.’

‘What on earth are you talking about, Latua’s father?’

‘Why? Can’t you follow me?’

‘No, what do you mean?’

‘Before my money ran out, I would pick up a nice stone from the banks of the Kuruda River. I’d anoint it with oil and sindoor and proclaim that Mahabirji had come to me in my dreams.’

‘But I don’t even dream!’

‘Arre, once you find Mahabirji, you’ll have no shortage of dreams.’

‘Hai baba!’

‘Everyone knows you. It won’t work if you try it. But your friend is new here, we’d all believe her. Then you could present yourself and Mahabirji at the Tohri market-place. Collect offerings from the devout.’

‘Hanky-panky with a god? As it is, Mahabirji’s monkey followers don’t leave any fruit on my trees!’

‘It’s trickery if you consider it trickery. Not otherwise. You have a sinner’s mind, so you think it’s trickery.’

‘How’s that? Eh, Latua’s father?’

‘Because … let me explain.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Lachman’s mother has rheumatism, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, she does.’