Journey towards the absolute
BENGALURU: During a lecture on ‘The question of applicability and avant-gardism in literature’ that I attended, the orator, a famous octogenarian author in Kannada language, said: “I am in great dilemma when it comes to considering what is ‘modern’ and what is ‘ancient’. Is it the 60s’ and 70s’ when we were young and part of a social revolution rejecting casteism, class differences and sexual taboos or is it this decade, where more and more youngsters are being drawn towards antique social structure and restrictions? Is it limited to progression of a timeline or is it about evolution of sensibilities?”
His words reminded me of two books. One was Ismat Chughtai’s famed novel Terhi Lakeer (The Crooked Line), a Bildungsroman wherein the life of the central character keeps clashing with the Indian independence movement. The second was an extraordinary concoction of private and public crises of characters showcased in Annie Zaidi’s novel Prelude to a Riot - about the turn of events in a small, scenic town that seems to have reached a boiling point, waiting to explode. Juxtaposing private lives with the politics of the times, especially the responses of a younger generation to various facets real-time issues has been accomplished by Zaidi in a seamless manner.
An important magnitude of post-colonial literary works has been the acknowledgement and reappearance of women’s experiences after being concealed from the histories of colonial societies. Many of the stereotypical representations of Indian women have been powerfully rejected in a flood of women’s writings. Many women writers have placed women at the centre of history, as makers and agents of history, not mute witnesses to it.
All across the world, especially in the Indian sub-continent, the act of writing is for a woman essentially an act of breaking her silence because her repressive patriarchal/racial society has taught her to be culturally silent. The feminine is essentially the marginalised consciousness that operates on the periphery of patriarchal discourse. Tehmina Durrani, a Pakistani English authoress, in her fictional autobiography My Feudal Lord describes her traumatic marital life with Gulam Mustafa Khar, an important politician in the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government, who later became the Chief Minister of Punjab, who was a wife abuser on a personal front. This autobiographical novel won the Italian Marrissa Bellasario prize and was later translated into several languages. It maps Tehmina’s progress from an ordinary elitist housewife to an emancipated human being contesting for equal rights and empowerment.
Progressive feminist politics has constantly rejected the alluring and constricting boundaries regulating the experiences or identities of women. The generalisation of sexual difference or shared subordination negates the multiple yet specific overlapping entities of women across the world – be it political, cultural, historical or economical. It is vital that the very confines and binaries that feminism pursues to challenge be examined through these lenses. My Feudal Lord, Terhi Lakeer and Prelude to a Riot are fearless, breathtaking and full of anticipation because they record many such unheard voices.