“Clouded eyes held clouded eyes in a steady gaze and a luminous woman opened herself to a luminous man. She was as wide and deep as a river in spate. He sailed on her waters. She could feel him moving deeper and deeper into her. Frantic. Frenzied. Asking to be let in further. Further. Stopped only by the shape of her. The shape of him. And when he was refused, when he had touched the deepest depths of her, with a sobbing shuddering sigh, he drowned.”
There is in it an undercurrent of the sinister of everyday life whose fearless acknowledgement makes the novel stand apart. Ismat Chugtai did not do any different in her stories wherein she exposed the dual nature of society. She talked of elephant shadows that lurked under warm winter quilts.
Chugtai was considered ‘obscene’, whereas Arundhati Roy received acclaim for exposing similar ’small things’ that have elephantine repercussions. Arundhati Roy won the Booker prize for her novel and also an unheard of sum in advances from publishers who clamoured for her book. She became an international figure overnight.
Contemporary women writing hence is allowed a freedom of expression hitherto unknown and is universally applauded for stating the truths which lie covered by the mask of the social fabric, whether it be incest, rape, politics of desire, or aberrant familial relationships.
*
Through womens’ writings, a search for identity continues. The voices may come from different places, and they may at different points of development, but the idea of finding oneself is deep rooted in them.
In the story “The Journey”, in her book, “Daughter’s Daughter” (1993), writer Mrinal Pandey writes of what lies beneath a traditional married relationship as viewed by a young daughter.
“Mother closes the windows near the beds with a bang and wipes the sill with a towel grumbling as though she has never been away. I can smell her fear as a dog. I am afraid of patience thinning and fear swelling and thickening and finally gushing out disguised as anger.”
The pain and the anguish and the fear of a woman who has nowhere to go has to be dealt with. And this is expressed through the words of a daughter in this story.
In her story “The Cure,” in her collection of stories from the book “Junglee Girl”(1995), Ginu Kamani writes:
“What kind of food did he like? He probably loved chilies, and I would have to learn to like them as well.
Would his mother choose to change my name, giving me a new identity as the lucky young bride? “
A very young girl fantasizes about marrying her driver, who is kind to her, and she already knows the things she will have to accept as part of her marriage-the supremacy of the husband and the mother-in-law over her self. The situation of the mother- in- law is clear. She has to retain her stronghold in the family situation, the only power structure she knows.
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