Au Revoir! My pupils shatter stereotypes
The Oracle of Delphi was credited with the maxim ‘Know Thyself’. Teaching my post graduate students ‘Literature and Gender’, I adhere to this principle of ‘Know Thyself’, urging them to celebrate women power and femininity. Life is filled with a montage of ordinary moments woven together by threads of beauty. Fortunately my threads of beauty are knitted and bound around the works of feminist writers such as Virgina Woolf, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, Simon de Beauvoir, who are prescribed in syllabus of MA. The last writer I look up in this semester was Shashi Deshpande and her novel, ‘That Long Silence’. A womencentric novel, set in stereotype Indian social milieu, the girls instinctively and immediately related to the trial and tribulation, agony and anxiety of central protagonist ‘Jaya’. Many felt she resembled the womenfolk at their homes who live a life of marginalisation and subordination. The novel ended and so did the semester. With moist and misty eyes, I bade them farewell. The words of PG Woodhouse ringing in my mind — “There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature”.
Suddenly Rama , a brilliant student of mine, came, touched my feet and hugged me. Crying bitterly, she expressed her gratitude for making her and other girls aware and awakened to their right to equality and freedom, keeping intact the quest for identity. But amidst her sobs, she gave me a nugget of pure truth, “Mam, choice and equality is always a western ideology. To me idea is rosy, but to many a woman in my village, this is simply unheard of. They are getting their equal share but in an unequal measure. My agony of injustice meted out to women is more intense now since I know what ails the system but we are taught to take the pain.”
Her all-time truth brought a kaleidoscopic glimpse of whole gamut in the transition of a girl child from teens to old age. An awkward adolescence, rosy twenties when parents dot on her as she blooms into youth with style and substance, marriage, a job with both partners shouldering the alliance equally or career of a housewife, challenges of motherhood, fledging baby growing, her scale of priority tilting towards pressing needs of family, guilt of not being an ideal wife or mother etc. As the wheel of time rolls, her mental and physical energies dwindle but her liabilities mount. In her ambivalent attitude, there is hardly any place left for softness of ‘she’ gender. In unequal music, her professional, personal and emotional needs takes the back seat.
Has feminism gained any significant momentum? I am not too sure. It may be time, we stop ‘flight’ from dreaded ‘F’ word and begin ‘fight’ at the grassroots level. I hugged Rama and made her realise that if education (a writer’s assertion) can give her courage and conviction, why can’t she become voice of womenfolk at her place, women who are longing for space, space for laughter, space for smile? My utterances had a positive impact on her. I could feel the pain, the anguish as well as the triumph of spirit. She gave me a tight embrace and promised not only to fight and stand up for what she wished to do but resolved to bring breeze of radical transformation in her home and village. Teary-eyed, she bade me adieu, I stood motionless and speechless once again, marveling at the cathartic, educative and therapeutic power of literature. Rise and Shine my pupils. Au revoir! You will be missed a lot.
SHE GAVE ME A TIGHT EMBRACE AND PROMISED NOT ONLY TO STAND UP FOR WHAT SHE WISHED TO DO BUT RESOLVED TO BRING BREEZE OF RADICAL TRANSFORMATION IN HER VILLAGE