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Magazine
FACE TO FACE
True example of empowerment
ZIYA US SALAM
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‘I write about women, all women’ says Tamil writer Salma talking about her poetry and her first novel.
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When a woman talks of social issues it is the easiest thing to say it is vulgar. When men write something similar, it is okay. But a different yardstick is applied to women.
Quiet dignity: Salma
Founder-director of Translating Bharat, Namita Gokhale, calls her success a true example of empowerment through literature. And English-speaking readers, usually the most smug of the lot, are beginning to take note of Rokkiah, Or Salma, as this upcoming Tamil writer is known, courtesy translations and media coverage.
She did not go to a writers’ club, does not live in a writers’ colony either. Shy to the point of being self-effacing, Salma, who is in Jaipur to take part in the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival, is a picture of quiet dignity.
On a trip down memory lane, she reveals that she is a school dropout. Not because she did not want to study but because her conservative parents thought a Muslim girl should not go to school after puberty.
“I was born in a village in Tamil Nadu. I had to drop out after ninth standard and was at home for some seven-eight years before I got married. I used to read at home. My brother would go to a library and bring me books, as I used to be very fond of reading. But it was all Tamil literature, as I was not comfortable with English. I am still not fluent in the language. For all those years before marriage, I used to read and write. After I got married at 20, my new family, including my husband, did not allow me to write. My official name is Rokkiah but I adopted a pen name to write. My husband used to subject me to physical and emotional torture but once my picture came in a Tamil magazine alongside an article, things changed.”
Her first book
Still a shade nervous talking to the media, Salma reveals it was a while before her first book came out. “After 10 years my first collection of poems was published. My family did not know. Only my mother knew. My poems got a good reception. That gave me confidence.”
It was actually much more difficult than the modest author allows herself to say. Her first collections of poems shocked the conservative society where women were supposed to be silent spectators. And Salma was bold enough to talk of female subjugation, giving an insightful look into the Muslim society along the way.
“I wear purdah outside my home. I am a practising Muslim, but the Muslim community still does not like my writing. I have raised women’s and sexual issues through my writings. People allege that I use vulgar words in my writings. It is not true. All women poets are criticised for their poems. When a woman talks of social issues it is the easiest thing to say it is vulgar. When men write something similar, it is okay. But a different yardstick is applied to women.”
Salma reveals she writes largely abut Muslim women because she comes from that background but her writing is applicable to women from other communities. “I write about women, all women. In my novel, there are characters of other communities too. But I don’t say a word about religion. I talk of men and their mindset; I talk of women. Irrespective of their religion, they suffer.”
As Salma herself has. But that is in the past though things did not change overnight. “My writings made me famous. That gave me power. My husband wanted to be the chief of the panchayat. But that seat was reserved for women. I contested and won the elections. That made me powerful. People started accepting me elsewhere too. My photo reaches distant places, but people in my village still cannot read me.”
The Tamil Nadu Government appointed her as chairperson of the TN Social Welfare Board, a responsibility Salma is still discharging. Literary accomplishments continue to pile up for the Tamil author now winning fans from other languages, courtesy translations of her works; her novel Midnight Tales (Irandaam Jamangalin Kathai) is soon to be published by Zubaan. Last summer, she was the featured author at the first Norman Cutler Conference on South Asian Literature at the University of Chicago.
For the moment though, her attention is on the Literature Festival. “My novel’s English translation will be published in February. The Malayalam translation is already done.” Happy reading.
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Born in 1968, Salma dropped out of school in the ninth standard. She started writing seriously at age 17. She is now head of the panchayat of Thuvarankurichi (near Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu).
Her first novel Midnight Tales is being translated into English by Lakshmi Holmström.
Her poetry volumes One Evening, Another Evening and The Green Deity are also being translated into English by Sascha Ebeling.
In 2003, Salma and three other women poets faced obscenity cahrges and violent threats, a controversy that inspired filmmakers Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar to make SheWrite (2005), a documentary on Tamil women poets.
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