The Philosopher’s Stone

First published in The Thumb Print. Click here to read.

“…the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good…”

 — The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

Is it possible to change evil to good? Are we the right people to judge what is evil or good and go on a witch hunt and start a riot that disrupts lives? The words above were mouthed by a humanoid robot at the end of the novel — in a society where differences among humans persist despite technological advances. Human nature then seems similar to what it is now, though in a futuristic setting.

Recently, reading Devaki Jain’s autobiography, The Brass Notebook, made one thing clear. If you really want something, you can get it. But the desire has to be strong enough to override the feeling of having lost out because one often needs to pay a price. The other thing that is noticeable is Jain’s ability to override societal values with their judgemental outlook of good or evil, of what is acceptable and what is not. A South Indian Brahmin, born in 1933, she cast aside the patriarchal norms surrounding her to reinvent her life in the way she wanted. In the process, she was touched by many great lives and she touched many lives with her own work. She was a woman who with her convictions helped many less privileged and went on to prove that economics needed to be redefined beyond the reaches of patriarchal and colonial thought processes. 

Jain was sexually harassed a couple of times — the kind of molestation which could well be fodder for the ‘me too’ movement or for a less vocal woman, the incident could result in a feeling of being abused and losing self-worth. But she treated them as events to be merely brushed aside and moved forward to live the life she wanted — a strong woman and an influencer. The most impressive thing is that she published her autobiography after having crossed her eighties, at a point when most are obsessed with geriatric issues. Would she have been judged evil by the patriarchal society whose norms she upended? Would she be judged good by the people whose lives she changed with her open outlook and daring theories?

A woman similar to her was created by Aruna Chakravarti in her novel Suralakshmi Villa. Suralakshmi found her own groom late in life — a married irresolute man who she dumps when she finds him sexually molesting and trying to rape her ward, a young Muslim girl. She goes on to open a thriving hospital in rural Bengal and helps the less privileged. Suralakshmi would probably be living in a time parallel to Jain. Again, a strong woman not given to regrets and with the ability to brush aside smaller issues. 

One of the features that is truly inspiring about Chakravarti’s women in novels like Suralakshmi Villa and Jorasanko, her story of the Tagore family, is the strength she portrays in her women, who despite being surrounded by patriarchal values are able to stand for themselves and hold on to their sense of self-worth and independence, as seen in the character of Jain in The Brass Notebook. This is a recurring theme in Chakravarti’s short stories too, like Through the Looking Glass, where the protagonist despite being a victim of patriarchal abuse lives a life of struggle but feels like a princess near the conclusion. The “old, ugly, unloved Pomo Dasi had vanished. Rajkumari Promoda Sundari, only daughter of  Sreel Sreejukta Raja Raghobendra Chandra Rai, seventeenth in line from the Chandra Rai dynasty of Garh Bishnupur, was sporting with her companions in the royal gardens.”  

What could be this philosopher’s stone that makes a human regain their self-worth? 

(Click here to read the full essay)

In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

(First published in Borderless Journal, republished in Countercurrents, translated to Persian and published in Arzhang)

A woman who weaves stories from the past, from history, from what has been and makes them so real that they become a part of ones’ own existence – this has been my experience of Dr Aruna Chakravarti and her writing. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, Vaitalik award and Sarat Puraskar, Chakravarti was the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fifteen published books. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors have sold widely and received rave reviews. Jorasanko and its sequel are based on the women in the household of Rabindranath Tagore. Jorasanko one of the best and most impactful books I have read in my life and with a flavour of realism that transports you into that era. The focus on the strength that resided in women trapped with a set of patriarchal values in colonial India is amazing and attractive. Suralakshmi Villa, her latest novel which was released at the start of 2020, is also modelled on a woman from the past as she will reveal in this exclusive interview.

You are a multiple national award- winning writer. At a point you stopped writing. Why?

I had started writing during my childhood and had continued to do so through my school days happily and unselfconsciously. I wrote poems, short stories and even tried my hand at a novel. But when I joined the English Honours course in college and was introduced to the academics of literature; when I learned the principles of criticism and picked up the ability to distinguish good writing from mediocre, a change came over me. I suffered from a loss of self-worth. I felt I was not and could never be a good writer. Self-criticism is good but unfortunately it worked adversely for me. I convinced myself that my work was imitative and lacking in merit. From that time onwards I stopped writing.

When did you take up writing again? Did your translations come first?

It happened nearly twenty- five years later. Yes, my translations came first. The cycle of negative feelings about my writing, to which I had strapped myself, broke in a miraculous way. The year was 1982.  At a chamber concert of Rabindra sangeet, in which I was taking part, a Gujarati gentleman from the audience made a request. He asked if one of the participants could translate the songs that were being sung so that non-Bengalis, many of whom were present, could understand the words. Since I was teaching English in a Delhi University college at the time, all eyes turned to me. I was horrified. To be called upon to translate a literary giant like Rabindranath Tagore, that too his lyrics, without any preparation whatsoever, would have daunted anyone leave alone me with my record of diffidence and self-doubt. But to my own shock and bewilderment, I agreed. The rest is history. There was a publisher in the audience who offered to bring out a collection of Tagore songs in translation. That was my first publication. Tagore: Songs rendered into English came out in 1984. Though the publisher was practically unknown, the book created waves in literary circles. Other translations followed. Srikanta by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and later Those days and First Light by Sunil Gangopadhyaywere published by Penguin India. I also picked up a number of awards.

It was Sunil Gangopadhyay who advised me to try my hand at creative writing. After some hesitation I did so. My first novel The Inheritors was accepted by Penguin India and published in 2004. After it was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I found the courage to write more.

You were the Principal of a Delhi University college. Did your work impact your writing?

No strangely enough it didn’t. My creative inspiration never drew from my experience as a Principal. I was dealing with women from a younger generation. I was privy to their concerns, their joys and sorrows, their fears and aspirations.  I understood their psychology. Yet I never wanted to write about them except in a tangential way. As part of a larger context. For me the present failed to provide the spark that kindled my creative imagination. That came invariably from some past memory. In a strange way the past seems more meaningful to me than the present.

But my role as an administrator helped me in another way. Office work is dry and prosaic. But it is worthwhile work. And, much as I felt good doing it, I looked forward intensely to the end of the day when I could doff my Principal’s hat and don my writer’s one. And, having indulged myself by writing till late into the night, I was ready to take up my work schedule the next morning. The two interests sustained each other and created a balance.

Why did you translate the writers? What did you learn by translating them? Did it impact your own story telling or knowledge base?

Click here to read more…

Book of the Year: Jorasanko

 

Title: Jorasanko

Author: Aruna Chakravarti

Jorasanko was published in 2013, but it has been the best book I read this year, especially relevant for understanding the violence faced by women in our society, the fear instilled in them by age old blind beliefs and customs. Authored by Aruna Chakravarti, a translator, writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner,  the novel gives the story of Rabindranath Tagore’s family and the Nobel laureate himself — his wife, his inspiration, his daughters and the women who grew up within the manor of the same name in Calcutta.

What is fascinating is not just the compelling storytelling but the history of Indian women emerging out of abarodh and moving towards progress and education. Abarodh, literally means blockade, is the state of purdah among the Hindu women where we are told, they did not even have adequate woollens or shoes to face the winter as it was deemed unnecessary because they lived behind closed doors and never stepped out. It is an in depth telling, or a historical account one can say, of a change in the psyche of womenfolk in India, of the awakening of their strength and their sense of independence and also of Tagore’s own realisation of how much these women had impacted his life and creations.

It starts with Tagore’s grandfather, father, his brothers and then him. The story is not the Nobel laureate centric but women centric. We see Jnananandini emerge out of the young simple child Genu, the fashionable and Westernised mejoboudi* who evolved the modern day style of wearing the saree with a blouse; Kadambari, his sister-in-law who suffered from depression and yet was his inspiration and most importantly, Mrinalini or Chhuti, his own wife, a woman who metamorphosed into a butterfly from a caterpillar and the one who exorcised the ghost of Kadambari with her own vibrancy. Perhaps, one should not call Mrinalini a butterfly but a deep, caring, nurturing, kind and strong woman. She stood by her husband to her end.

I felt the book is really relevant in context of the current crisis faced by women where rape accompanied by murder seem to be on the rise in India.

The deeply patriarchal mindset prevalent in Tagore’s grandfather, Debendranath — who despite moving on to Brahmo faith, refused to countenance widow remarriage — can still be seen in the patriarchal statements made by earlier politicians in India about women’s safety and security and PM Modi’s stunning silence as rape and murder cases keep rising. Debendranath had perhaps a less patriarchal mindset despite his belief in abarodh and his opposition to widow remarriage as he does eventually cleave in to his grand daughter travelling to Mysore to teach in a school run by the Maharaja. That in the nineteenth century, men compelled women to stay home within ‘safe’ boundaries while they were free to indulge their whims and the women complied is well woven into the fabric of the narrative.

They advocated safety for women by keeping them in the house, and not by educating humans to treat women as equals and as more than vessels for bearing children and seducing men. That was actually the role of the woman as prescribed by Tagore’s mother who believed in, lived and died within the confines of the abarodh. We are told that she firmly believes, “Females… were required by society to perform only two functions. To serve as sex partners to men and to perpetuate their lineage.”

The call for change starts with Tagore’s generation. Satyandranath, Tagore’s elder brother, freshly returned with an ICS from England tells his father, Debendrenath —“…An educated woman will find it more difficult to stay within the rules of the abarodh. Education must go hand in hand with freedom. One without the other is meaningless.” When Debendrenath expresses his distaste for the changes his ICS son is making to the house and hearth as the women never complained, Satyandranath tells his father —“They don’t even know they have a right to complain. They’ve been conditioned, so thoroughly, to accept their lot in life that they have no idea that something is missing?”

Can this statement be still seen as true for some of the womenfolk in India and across the world? Can it be women are still pre-conditioned to look at themselves as helpless and disempowered when faced with masculine might?

As early as 1931, Begum Rokeya had written a novel called Abarodh Basini, which is said to be a spirited attack on women in purdah. Attempts are being made repeatedly to create an awareness and bring in a change. Things have definitely improved over the last century for women in general — though one is not fully certain looking at the violence and violation countenanced by them in the recent months if the perpetrators have evolved as humans at all.

The need for educating men and women to counter violence and violation of women is an ongoing issue. We find in these pages a powerful awareness among women wakening to the negatives of purdah and concealment, to the need for education and emancipation, to rebel against strong reinforcements of patriarchy.

This should be a book read by every man and woman. And then we should wonder — when will we all learn to be human … look beyond our animal needs and instincts and rise above them to have a humane world.

 

*middle sister-in-law