The Liberation of Sita Read online

  What Volga attempts through these stories is a compelling exercise in ‘re-visionist myth-making’. It was nearly four decades ago that Adrienne Rich made that famous statement about women’s writing as ‘re-visioning’. In the words of Rich, ‘Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for us [women] more than a chapter in cultural history, it is an act of survival’ (18). Since then, re-visioning has figured prominently on the agenda of women writers, and all institutions—political, social and religious—have been subjected to a critical re-vision in women’s writing. Even the processes of cognition and contemplation have not escaped the re-visionist project and feminism has come to mean ‘a rethinking of thinking’ itself (Held, 60). In the process, re-vision no longer remains a simple act of looking back nor a mere act of survival. It evolves into an active remaking of the past and a re-invention of tradition. In other words, re-vision has turned into an act of creation and trans-creation.

  As part of this remaking of the past, old stories—stories from ancient myths—came to be retold in new ways, from gynocentric perspectives. Women initially tried to make an intervention into myths and subsequently acquired the confidence to play with them. As Patricia Yaegar points out, ‘As women play with old texts, the burden of tradition is lightened and shifted; it has the potential of being remade’ (18).This playful reinvention of myths has figured prominently in Indian women’s writing as well. Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Dopdi’ and ‘Stanadayani’ (Bangla), Yashodhara Mishra’s ‘Purana Katha’ (Odiya), Muppala Ranganayakamma’s Ramayana Visha Vrikham (Telugu), Sara Joseph’s Ramayana Kathakal (Malayalam)—to name a few, exemplify this trend. Through their retellings, women not only break the hold of tradition but free tradition from its fixity and take it to a free zone where multiple mutations and transmutations become possible.

  Volga’s Vimukta not only belongs to this tradition of feminist revisionist myth-making but takes it further. Volga does not use re-visioning merely as a strategy to subvert patriarchal structures embedded in mythical texts but also as a means to forge a vision of life in which liberation is total, autonomous and complete. She also creates a community of women by re-presenting myths from alternative points of view, and by networking women across ages and generations. She achieves this through different narrative strategies: giving voice to women characters marginalized in the ‘master narrative’, extending the story of a character beyond its conventional closure; forging female bonds and creating a female collective; and redefining many conventional epistemes including liberation.

  ‘The Reunion’ narrates the story of Sita meeting Surpanakha in the forest. Sita, abandoned by Rama, takes refuge in Valmiki’s ashram and devotes herself to raising her sons. She meets Surpanakha, who, after her humiliation and mutilation, has recovered and creates for herself a state of ineffable joy by cultivating a beautiful garden. Surpanakha, having conquered her rage and revenge, realizes that beauty is not a physical attribute but the truth of nature. She finds fulfillment in growing a garden that reflects the beauty of nature. Having attained a state of non-dependent joy, she also finds a soulmate in Sudhira who respects her wisdom and discernment. Sita learns that her fulfillment, too, does not lie in bringing up her children but in discovering herself. She tells Surpanakha, ‘After my children leave me and go to the city, I will become the daughter of Mother Earth. Resting under these cool trees, I shall create a new meaning for my life.’ Thus Sita and Surpanakha strike a bond of sisterhood not as victims of patriarchy but as two mature women in pursuit of self-realization.

  ‘The Music of the Earth’ is a retelling of Ahalya’s story. The popular version of Ahalya’s story portrays her as a victim of patriarchal norms of female chastity. Lord Indra, desirous of her beauty, dons the form of Ahalya’s husband, Sage Gautama and enjoys her. The sage, on coming to know of this, curses Indra and turns Ahalya into a boulder. Later, he provides relief by telling her that she would be redeemed from her accursed state by the touch of the holy feet of Sri Rama. In Volga’s story, Ahalya meets Sita in the forest and enlightens her about the complexities in popular notions of female chastity. According to Ahalya, the core issue is not that of female fidelity or the lack of it but of man’s power to put it to test. Sita does not understand the implication of this argument until she is asked to face the trial by fire. She recalls Ahalya’s words when she is asked to prove her chastity by going through the fire test, yet she brushes it off convincing herself that it is not out of suspicion that Rama has put her chastity to test. However, when Sita is abandoned by Rama, Ahalya visits her in Valmiki’s ashram. Now Sita is able to appreciate Ahalya’s astuteness and listens to her advice intently: ‘Don’t grieve over what has already happened. It is all for your own good, and is part of the process of self-realization. Be happy. Observe nature and the evolution of life. Notice the continual changes in them … You belong to this whole world, not just to Rama …’

  Renuka, the wife of Sage Jamadagni, whom her own son Parasurama beheads in obedience to his father’s injunction, is the spokesperson of the story, ‘The Sand Pot’. She tells Sita how paativratyam or fidelity of a married woman is as fragile as a sand pot. A fleeting feeling of desire for a gandharva makes her an adulteress in the eyes of her husband who then orders their son to behead her. No woman can escape a charge of this kind. It is, therefore, futile for a woman to anchor her identity in her marital status or in her motherhood. Though Sita doesn’t follow Renuka’s advice initially, it proves useful to Sita when the time comes to hand over her grown up sons to Rama. Rama gives Sita the opportunity to return to the royal household on the condition that she declares her innocence in the royal court. But her question is: ‘Do I need to do that? Is there any sense to such an effort?’ Instead she chooses to join her mother—Mother Earth.

  ‘The Liberated’ offers the interesting account of an encounter between Sita, who returns to the royal household after fourteen years of life in the forest, and Urmila, who lives all those years in a self-imposed penance. Urmila, breaking her fourteen-year long silence, tells Sita how she felt abandoned and dejected when her husband left her to accompany Rama into the forest. Out of annoyance and rage, she withdrew into a self-imposed exile within the four walls of her chambers but that wrath slowly turned into a quest for truth. She began to study herself, her feelings, her emotions and her relationships. She saw how love, hate, jealousy and respect are but shades of the same condition—dependence on others. She struggled with all these and arrived at a state of inner peace. Sita finds Urmila’s experience edifying. Later in Valmiki’s ashram, when Sita comes to know that Rama is performing the Aswamedha Yaga, she feels terribly disturbed by the thought that Rama might have taken another wife to become eligible to perform the ritual. Urmila visits her sister in that hour of despair and makes Sita realize that it is immaterial whether Rama takes another wife or not. She tells Sita: ‘You must liberate yourself from Rama … Each of these trials is meant to liberate you from Rama. To secure you for yourself. Fight, meditate, look within until you find the truth that is you.’ Liberation from Rama marks the real emancipation for Sita.

  ‘The Shackled’, the last story in the collection, reads like an extended interior monologue of Rama. Held captive in the prison of Arya Dharma, Rama has no personal freedom. The only time Rama could just be himself was the period of his banishment in the forest, which to him was more of a boon since it freed him from the rigid frames of royal power. Rama confesses to Lakshmana: ‘My exalted nobleness is my handicap. With this political power, I have lost power over myself. I have lost my Sita. I have lost my son.’ At every stage Rama remains chained to Arya Dharma. Eventually, when Sita hands over the children to Rama as heirs to his throne, she liberates herself. But Rama remains shackled.

  Volga’s re-visionist myth-making thus opens new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to view their life and experiences from gynocentric perspectives. They recreate a world of freedom in which
they not only willingly bear the responsibility of their own survival, but also have a sense of joy and complete freedom. Women are no longer means to serve someone else’s ends, nor are they merely the prizes in men’s quests. On the contrary, they are questers seeking their own salvation.

  Works cited

  Held, Virginia. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. New York: OUP, 2006. Print.

  Rich, Adrienne. ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision’. College English 34.1, ‘Women, Writing and Teaching’ (1972): 18–30. Print.

  Yaeger, Patricia. Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women’s Writing. NY: Columbia University Press, 1988. Print.

  Volga: An Interview

  T. Vijay Kumar

  ‘Volga’ is the name by which Popuri Lalitha Kumari (1950–) writes. ‘Volga’ was in fact the name of her elder sister who died an untimely death when Lalitha Kumari was sixteen. Their communist father had named her sister in memory of a Soviet girl who was killed by the Nazi Army on the same day her sister was born. After the death of her sister, Lalitha Kumari assumed her sister’s name and to this day continues to write under the name Volga.

  In her college days, Volga was an active member of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and later joined the Revolutionary Writers’ Association which was an offshoot of CPI (ML) (Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist).Then in 1980, frustrated by the party’s patriarchal attitude towards women, she quit left politics and devoted herself to propagate feminism among Telugu readers through her activism and writing.

  Among Volga’s nearly fifty publications are seven novels, six short story collections, nine edited volumes, twelve translations from English, six books of literary criticism and three feminist theoretical works.

  T. Vijay Kumar: Which is your favourite genre and why?

  Volga: Short story and literary criticism. In a short story, you can convey what you want to concisely and with density. Short story has greater reach—it reaches more number of people—and is also perhaps relatively easier to write. I don’t mean it is a ‘light’ genre, not by any means. It has its own complexities—you have to say everything in the limited space and you have to establish the characters within the limited canvas. But still, I like the short story. Whenever something appeals to me, I feel like writing a [short] story and not, say, a poem. Initially I did write poetry and then novels in a line. But later, I wrote more short stories. I also like literary criticism—not purely academic criticism but literary appreciation. Analyzing a book I liked from a feminist perspective gives me a lot of satisfaction.

  What have been the influences on you as a writer?

  In poetry, Sri Sri1, Tilak2 among others. When I started writing, Digambara Kavulu3 (Naked Poets) had created a stir in Telugu literature with their views and style. Influenced by them, I along with four other friends formed Paigambara Kavulu (Prophet-Poets) and brought out two anthologies. In fiction, Chalam4 and KoKu5 have been great influences. There has been no major women’s writing tradition, and so I did not have any women writers as my role models. There certainly were women writers—like Malathi Chandur (1930–2013), for instance—but because of my political outlook, they did not appeal to me. They may have been role models for others, but to me, influenced as I was by revolutionary writers like Sri Sri, their concerns—family and domestic matters—looked too limited.

  When did you shift from writing poetry to writing fiction, and why?

  When I was in college, I wrote a poem titled ‘Panchadi Nirmala varasuraalini’ (‘I am the heir of Panchadi Nirmala’,6 1972). It got me a lot of recognition, perhaps more than any other work of mine. Then I wrote a short story—‘Jailu gadi aatmakatha’ (‘Autobiography of a prison cell’, 1972)—while I was a member of the Revolutionary Writers Association. That story gave me a lot of satisfaction, if not recognition. I felt that I found my medium. It was a sort of self-discovery, and I felt more capable writing short stories than poetry. I thought that the story came out exactly as I had conceived it, which was not often the case in poetry. Later, too, I wrote a few stories which were received quite well.

  If writing gave you such satisfaction, why was there a break in your writing career?

  Yes, there was a long gap in my writing career and it was because of my activism. I was doing a lot of work in the Revolutionary Writers Association and in the civil liberties movement. That work took most of my time and precedence over writing because, while there were many others who were writing, there weren’t many at that time to do the kind of work I was willing to do. Moreover, I was writing at a time when there were stalwarts—Sri Sri, RaaVi Sastry7, KoKu, KV Ramana Reddy (1928–1998)—who were all my seniors in RWA. Then my colleagues and immediate seniors were Varavara Rao,8 Tiragabadda Kavulu, Cherabanda Raju9 and other Digambara Kavulu. There were no women, unfortunately. Only Krishna Bai used to come, but she was not a creative writer but an occasional critic and was much senior to me. I was, thus, in the company of well-established and dynamic writers. So I thought that since so many of them were writing—and so well—nothing would be lost if I didn’t write. I was, therefore, more into organizing meetings, rallies, signature campaigns—against the Emergency (1975–77), for instance—which took all my time.

  So where do you stand in the debate between art and activism?

  The reason for my not writing for a while was not because I considered literature less important. Not at all! Thanks to my father, there were always good books at home. I started reading very good literature from the age of seven. So I grew up on literature and firmly believed that literature was a powerful medium, and that it can change people and society. In fact, I used to have even greater illusions then. But there were so many writers producing such good work. However, there were no women activists. To work with women, to mobilize them—I felt that I was needed more there. So it was only the dearth of women in activism that drew me away from writing and was not my lack of faith in the importance of literature.

  But then you left activism and came back to writing.

  Yes, there certainly were different phases in my writing career. Before the 1980s, I was a writer, but a non-serious one. I was more inclined towards activism. Then in 1981, I quit left politics and turned to feminist politics. It was a turning point in my career. I took writing seriously as I felt obliged to write because no one was writing about feminism or from feminist perspectives in Telugu. So to introduce feminism and to take it to the people, I felt I had to write. Writing is a powerful medium, and in any case, it was the only option available to me then as there were no major feminist movements. So in 1983, I started with literary criticism and published Athadu, aame, manam (He, She, We),10 which explained how to read a text from a feminist point of view. Then since 1985, I have been writing novels and short stories regularly. So one can say that, in my writing career, the pre-1980s was the leftist phase and the post-80s was the feminist phase.

  How has your understanding of feminism evolved over time?

  When I started in the ’80s, reading and writing at a feverish pace, I looked at women as a homogeneous category—that all women were one, a sort of ‘workers of the world unite’ kind of understanding. Then in the 1990s, caste emerged as a major issue—maybe because of the Karamchedu incident11 and the debates that followed. I wrote Aakasamlo sagam (Half the Sky, 1990), with a Dalit heroine, and with the sense that all women are not the same and that caste plays a major role. Yet, when I did an anthology of feminist poetry Neeli Meghalu (Blue Clouds) in 1993, there weren’t many Dalit women writers in it. There were, in fact, not many of them writing then with a Dalit-feminist consciousness. Yet, I felt that it was a shortcoming of the anthology. Gradually I realized the broad scope of feminism which includes not just caste, but also several other factors—religion, race, gender (LGBT). Feminism has given me that power to accept, understand and integrate differences. The inclusiveness that I learnt from feminism—I try to express in my writings.

  What then is your response to t
he politics of representation?

  I have been clear about it from the beginning. It is not right to say that only women should write about women. While I do believe that women can write about women’s experiences better and differently because it is their own, I don’t agree that only women should write. Such a stand is also unnatural. Without Gurajada12, Chalam, KoKu—and if I hadn’t read and understood them—I wouldn’t be what I am today. Any human being who understands the suffering and the oppression of fellow beings can write about them. Even my first book of literary criticism Athadu, aame, manam was highly appreciative of Uppala Lakshmana Rao’s novel. I also wrote research essays on Chalam, KoKu, etc. So I had that clarity from the beginning—that I do not agree that only women should write about women or only Dalits should write about Dalits. But gradually, because of the growing trend of exclusivism, my writing on Dalit issues has come down. This is because what I wrote was not only failing its purpose but was also creating unnecessary conflicts, and was leading to unconstructive and needless discussions—about authenticity, about what has not been included, etc. So if someone like me, who believes that anyone with the right understanding can write about Dalit issues, has reduced writing about them, I suppose it is even more so in the case of others.

  Is non-Dalits not writing about Dalit issues a loss to the overall understanding of the issues?

  It’s a loss, definitely. Whatever I know, even if it is only little, I will want to share it, in my own way and in my own style, with my readers. But if I desist from doing so to avoid a needless controversy, it is definitely a loss. But it’s not just in my case. There are many others who can write better than me. Take the case of [Akkineni] Kutumba Rao who wrote Sorajjem (Self-government) in 1981. After Malapalli (1922)13 it is only the second Dalit novel in Telugu. It’s a very good novel. There has been no novel after Malapalli which depicts Dalit life so effectively and so realistically. He could write it only because the current trend [of exclusivism] was not there then. I doubt if he can write it now. And if he can’t, because of any apprehensions, isn’t it a loss? It leaves a gap in the overall understanding because the non-Dalit perspective on caste is also a part of the total picture. How you perceive Dalit issues, from your upper caste perspective—whether you show sympathy, empathy, incomprehension or confusion—is also important. Isn’t it better if that perspective is presented too? This atmosphere that inhibits such a representation is a little painful. Of course, Dalits should write, women should write. Everyone should write their own stories, there is no two ways about it. And they can write well too because subjective experience is always a powerful factor in writing.