After
Kurukshetra : Three Stories by Mahasweta Devi, Anjum
Katyal (translator)
The author, Mahasweta Devi needs no introduction in the Indian academic
circles. She is a renowned activist, prolific writer and admired by all as a foremost
literary personality. She had been honoured with the foremost national honours
in literary achievement as well as the highest civilian recognitions as well. So,
a tale coming from her is always sure to pack a punch.
Originally written in Bengali (one of the most poetic language ever, according
to me) this short collection of three tales brings to focus the women in the
margins and gives them a hitherto unheard narrative voice. The women in focus
are all from the margins and live alongside those whose names we already know
from the great Indian epic – the Mahabharata.
The Mahabharata is immense. It’s a treasure trove of stories both within
it as well as the many perspectives that it can generate like this collection.
I can only think of Greek Mythology as coming close to this in its immensity
and epic proportion.
The three stories listed in this slim volume (just 54 pages!) becomes
even more potent since these are stories of women who though are never part of
the main picture are nevertheless affected by the consequences of the war that
claimed thousands of lives and rendered many women childless and widowed.
The first story, ‘The Five Women’ (Panchakanya) portrays five lower-caste
war widows who are brought in as companions for Uttara, the pregnant widow of
Abhimanyu, the dead Pandava hero. Though very young herself, her unborn child
is the only remaining hope for the continuation of the Pandava clan. Though
they won the war, the cost of the battle has been immense. The contrast between
the widows of royal lineage and that of common peasant’s are very stark.
Whereas the royal women carry their widowhood with a stately decorum, crushed
by their widowhood by generations of systemically held beliefs, the young wives
of the dead peasants (who also had been killed in the war) mourn for their dead
wearing the accustomed black mourning dress but also have the courage and are willing
to put that behind them. These women who sing and talk despite the death of
their husbands come as a shock for the young widowed and pregnant Uttara.
“Everything happens outside the women’s quarters,
here. Pujas, ceremonial sacrifices, yagnas. There, the world is full of bustle
and activity. Here, you white-clad widows float around like shadowy ghosts. We
wonder, won’t you ever laugh, talk loudly, run outside on restless feet?”
These are powerful questions that simultaneously shake
the puritanical notion of a ‘Dharmayudha’ or Holy war as it was called, and criticize
the consequences of it for women from different social strata. Rather than
showing a homogenous victimhood of women, Mahasweta Devi interprets the
individuality of the suffering women – each with their own courage and strength
of beliefs.
In the second story ‘Kunti and the Nishadin’(Kunti o Nishadi) deals with how Kunti accepts her injustice to Karna, her abandoned son but
forgets her bigger injustice which ended the lives of six innocents.
Kunti is the matriarch of the Pandava clan who had given birth to a son , Karna
who she then abandoned out of shame. Now, after the end of the war she has left
the life in the palace to seek renunciation in the forest along with her blind
brother-in-law (Dhritarashtra) and his dutiful wife (Gandhari). They had lost
all their hundred sons in the battle. Together they live a life of penance in
the forest.
Kunti now painfully regrets how she committed a
grave injustice to Karna by abandoning him and then by denying him his parentage.
Though he would always honour the promise she had asked of him, to spare her
sons in the battle, Karna himself would have to die in the end without being acknowledged
as her first born. While ruminations on this past injustice swells up in her,
she is forced to encounter a Nishadin (woman of the Nishad people, considered
one of the uncivilized races of ancient India chiefly living by hunting,
gathering crops etc.)
It turns out this Nishadin has been directly
affected by one of Kunti’s own actions which she engineered to save her sons’
lives. That action had in turn changed the life of the Nishadin standing in
front of her. So by the end of her life Kunti comes face to face with
unexpected consequences of her actions and compels her to voice her guilt and
shame that had remained covered in the past.
The final tale ‘Souvali’(Souvali) is the story of the woman employed to serve Dhritarashtra,
patriarch of the Kauravas and who had also fathered her son, Yuyutsu. Her reaction to his death and the lifestyle
she has chosen is in stark contrast to a the woman of the royal household who
are never free. Her slight criticism of her son who aspires to be recognized doesn’t
go unnoticed but remains the pertaining insight that we get from these potent
tales from the side-lines.
“Who has ever really looked at them? Nothing more
than insignificant presences. But now, suddenly those presences have been
granted form, granted notice.”
Mahasweta Devi always weaves a compelling story and
never fails to recognize the voices behind the mainstream. The translator has
clearly done a near perfect expression of what the author must have intended
since the language evokes the pain, suffering and resilience of all these
women.
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