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Literary Review
DALIT LITERATURE
A call for action
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`Bama, in these new creative literary forms has found a voice, genuine and unaffected, uniquely her own.'
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K. GAJENDRAN
Bama with the Crossword Award for her previous book Karukku.
MUCH like the ragi-kuuzh that her community subsists on morning, noon and night, Bama's writing is raw, earthy and natural. And it has the sharp zesty tang too of the pickle, chilli or onion that one chomps on between mouthfuls. If Karukku was an autobiography, Sangati profiles the entire community. And Bama in these new creative literary forms has found a voice, genuine and unaffected, uniquely her own, which turns proprieties upside down, flouts the standard dictates of grammar and spelling, and unabashedly uses the Dalit dialect even for narration.
A double cross
It is the women of the community who interest Bama and in these vignettes, three generations of them play out their lives, toiling from morning to night even before they have "sprouted three leaves, so to speak", struggling with hard manual labour to the point of being worn out, rearing children single-handedly, seeing to the housework, keeping the hearth burning on their measly daily wages, and above all, submitting to the violence of their husbands every night even if their bodies are wracked by pain. It seems to the author-narrator that "their lives are unceasingly tedious" and their "bodies, mind, feelings, words and deeds are always under control and domination". And as Dalit women they have a double cross to bear: not only are they exploited outside home by the upper castes, they are also abused by the highly patriarchal men within the community
Yet they possess a rare spirit which allows them to grasp life by the scruff of its neck and cope with whatever it throws in the face. Resilient and rebellious, they refuse to be cowed down and no matter how many blows fall on their heads, they seem to cheekily thumb their nose at adversity. And they laugh, sing and celebrate with great vigour. As the indomitable women in this book where Bama celebrates their vibrant, colourful culture will testify. Take, for instance, the robust, toothless, betel-chewing grandmother, the village's honorary midwife, one of the main characters in these anecdotes of personal experience, who has a marked influence on the author-narrator. A woman, abandoned by her husband, who worked almost till the day she died and single-handedly brought up her children, her wise counsel and homespun wisdom fill the narrator's ears while gathering firewood with her, collecting dung, or even picking lice from the hair. Immensely practical, it is always the unadorned truth that interests Vellaiyamma Kizhavi: "We have to labour in the fields as hard as men do, and then on top of that, struggle to bear and raise our children. As for the men, their work ends when they have finished in the fields. If you are born into this world, it is best you were born a man." Not that the author-narrator listens to her tamely. At every turn she ponders over her grandmother's views, subjecting them to severe scrutiny, picking arguments with her.
Irrepressible spirit
Who can forget the irrepressible, gutsy Sammuga Kizhavi, the stubborn old thing with just four strands of hair (which she shakes out with great relish every now and then), who once pulled away the barbed wire and jumped into the well of an upper caste and swam around. When she was caught red-handed by the landlord, she had only this to say: "Ayya, the water in your well is not at all good. It's all salty," and then spat loudly into the water. And when landlords with political pretensions give her a ride in the car to the voting booth, she insists on being dropped back, refusing to get out of the car. And later in the grazing grounds she reveals with a laugh: "All that Govalsaami did was to give me a free ride. I didn't vote for any of them, I just folded up the paper just as it was and shoved it into the box."
Poignant narrative
And then there is the tiny bright-eyed Maikanni (she is given this name because her beautiful eyes look as if they are edged with kohl), all of 11, who has been looking after her seven younger siblings and doing the housework (sweeping, scrubbing pots, collecting water, gathering firewood, preparing kanji, running to the shops) ever since she can remember. Whenever her mother goes into labour, she plays breadwinner and is packed off to work in a match factory where overseers don't hesitate to give sharp knocks on the skull for merely smearing more paste than required. Smart as a whip, and wise beyond her years, she is but a child nevertheless: "Periamma, my Appa beat me today because I took a rupee out of my wages, and spent it. You see, today, all the other children bought and ate ice. They call it cone-ice or something. That ice man is a funny fellow, Periamma. He pulls out a golden brown cone smartly, fills it with ice cream as white as white and as smooth as smooth like a kuuzh made of raw rice, and then hands it out, one at a time... It's as sweet as anything. You know the brown cone thing under the ice, you can eat that up as well, in the end... "
When her drunken husband drags Rakkamma by the hair, pushes her down and stamps on her lower belly, she shouts obscenities and shames him by lifting up her sari in front of the whole crowd, and ticks off the outraged women: "If I hadn't shamed him like this, he would surely have split my skull in two, the horrible man." At first the author too is disgusted, but later realises that for the vulnerable battered women who have to cope with such behaviour day in and day out, such outrageous conduct and shrieking out four-letter words — direct and often crude, and referring explicitly to body parts — are clearly a means of survival and escape. And perhaps the despicable, inexcusable behaviour of the oppressed men is mere assertion of manly pride.
But Bama is clear that no one is going to help the hapless women of her community, certainly not the government. It is up to the women themselves to take their lives into their own hands — for a start girls should be given the same treatment as the boys (even the fair-minded grandmother gave food to her grandsons first). Such reflections might seem didactic, but Bama's writings, edged with a Dalit-feminist perspective, clearly call for action.
Truthful translation
We can only thank Lakshmi Holmström for taking on the audacious task of rendering in English such a difficult book. Dialect is always hard to translate, especially when it is full of expletives, which spill out not with any intention of shocking, but naturally, matter-of-factly. After all, it is everyday speech. To be true to the spirit of the original is sacrosanct to any translator, and Lakshmi Holmström's conscious decisions to capture the essence of Bama's prose have paid off handsomely. Her well-researched, insightful introduction puts everything in context.
It is to editor Mini Krishnan's credit that she has initiated a series devoted to Dalit literature. These marginalised voices must be heard. A word about the striking cover painting by S. Venkatesan. It is stark, compelling, and the bright colours echo Bama's vibrant, spirited prose, where rain, for instance, can "piss down as if an elephant was up there in the sky."
"I wanted to shout out these stories," says Bama. We are thankful we can hear the ringing tones.
SUBASHREE KRISHNASWAMY
Sangati, Bama, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström, Oxford University Press.
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