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Shades of life, the wife's way
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Mitra Phukan talks about her first novel
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A WOMAN'S GAZE: Mitra Phukan in New Delhi PHOTO: R.V. MOORTHY
When her children were small, Mitra Phukan wrote stories for children.
As they grew up, she began writing stories for adolescents, and now, as her children reach adulthood, her fiction addresses adults. Mitra Phukan's first novel, "The Collector's Wife", has recently been released by Penguin.
With women artists the world over making a significant contribution to the world of thought with their unique voices, the well-known literary and music critic from Assam remarks, "Every individual has a point of view, and gender plays a part there, both in the social aspect and the biological. It is after all, as they say, the woman's gaze." In her novel, whose protagonist is a woman, the author explains, "Everything is seen from her point of view, which is obviously different from all the men around her. But of the main characters, three men and one woman, I have lavished a great deal of care on all of them."
Mitra, now here for the Katha festival, which focuses this year on writings from the North-East, is a familiar face on the literary circuit of the Capital.
However, it has not always been like that. If there are difficulties for a writer, they stem not from being a woman, but from "the geographical distance from Delhi, which is the publishing centre."
Mitra, a Hindustani vocalist, also translates from Assamese to English.
Dialects of English
Deeply aware of the various approaches to language to serve different purposes, she also concedes that English in India is spoken and understood in a multitude of ways. "Yes, there are different `dialects'. A lot of it comes from the culture. English is a very flexible language. It is very accommodating."
As for how her works are likely to be appreciated in a vast country where readers are not in the majority, English readers even less so, Mitra points out, "I never really thought of a readership. I had a story to tell. Language is just a medium anyway. Even in Assamese, there are so many dialects." Though Mitra mentions, rather disarmingly, "Because our voice is so different we don't know if people will like it," her novel is universal in its basis. Interwoven in the story of Rukmini, the wife of the District Collector of a small town in Assam, are issues of belonging, hatred and tolerance, of the hazy line between personal and public existence.
ANJANA RAJAN
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