DIFFERENT REGISTERS
Life of dignity
BY C.S. LAKSHMI
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Popati Hiranandani's works spoke of independent and strong women.
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Unknown: Popati Hiranandani
AFTER many painful years of coping with cancer Popati Hiranandani died quietly on December 16, 2005. She was 81. In Sind, the Pakistani literatti held condolence meetings and paid homage to her. But in Mumbai where she lived and elsewhere in India no one even knew she had passed away. Popati's books are prescribed as part of the syllabus in Pakistan. But in India where she spent her entire life, non-Sindhis have not even heard of her name. Apart from an interview done by Sivasankari for her Knit India Project published with a translation of one of her stories and a recent translation of one of her stories by Thilakavathi, Popati has remained unknown in the literary world.
Popati was born in Karachi on September 17, 1924. As a child Popati lived in Karachi and she was one of seven children. Popati lost her father who was an officer in the Forest Department when she was 10 years old. Her mother was 32 and had seven children to look after. A woman of spirit, her mother sold all her ornaments and settled down in Hyderabad (Sind). Popati belonged to the Amil community of Hyderabad.
Opposed to dowry
The Amils had a long tradition of education and always encouraged their daughters to go for higher education. But the community also believed in demanding a huge dowry from the bride's side. Popati was vehemently opposed to the system of dowry and had endless arguments with her mother about it. Once her mother told her that she didn't have to worry about this aspect of marriage, for she would sell the ancestral home.
"Nothing doing," Popati said firmly. "I will not let myself be treated like an Arabian mare who has to be adorned with a golden saddle to attract the rider."
At one point Popati's mother entreated her to marry and Popati agreed. But she learnt that her mother had given a dowry of Rs. 15, 000. Popati met the boy and told him that since she earned more than him he should pay her a dowry and if he didn't she would not marry him. That evening all the things that had been given to the boy's parents were returned. Popati consoled her mother saying that she did not want to be insulted in the name of tradition and all that she wanted to do was to uphold her dignity as a person.
Popati decided to remain single but she had to listen to degrading comments that made her feel that the society had no regard for its women. She wrote in her autobiography that a woman is made to suffer "not on account of any vice in her character but because of her virtues".
On one occasion she gave a lecture in the Sindhi Sahitya Sangat on Kalidasa and his works. After her lecture a man approached her and asked her why she had not been married.
Since she chose to be single, Popati was subjected to similar questions and even more foolish ones from men who claimed to be litterateurs.
Poet Menka Shivdasani, in one of her articles says that once, when Popati was 67, the Sahitya Akademi was felicitating her at a function in Mumbai.
After a two-hour speech, during the question and answer session she was asked, "Since you insist you are not a man-hater, which of the men in this room do you like?" Popati gave him a look of disdain and moved on to the next question.
Busy career
Popati took up a busy teaching career but managed to make time for writing. In the preface of one of her books she says: I write what I feel. I do not want to entertain or amuse my readers. I endeavour to restore to the Indian woman her lost sense of dignity. I want to tell her that she should unfold her inner strength and should manifest her potentialities. At a time when women writers were not allowed to use the word ishq (love) Popati wrote a poem about the uterus calling it a small box beneath the navel.
The poem created a furore as she used the word dabli for the uterus and wooden dablis were beautifully painted works of art and a speciality of the town of Halan in Sind. Popati's poems and stories spoke about women who were independent and strong.
Popati received the Sahitya Akademi award for her autobiography but throughout her life she retained a sense of homelessness for she felt that Sindhis were treated as refugees and never as Indians. In one of her poems entitled Homeless Me she writes:
"... I am homeless/And destined to be buried alive/In the graveyard of nonentity."
That Sind celebrates her writing to this day tells us how deep this sense of loss must have been.
I feel a deep sense of gratitude towards women like Popati Hiranandani for I feel that people like us could write because women like her lived and wrote before us and brightened our history by living during our times.
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