Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Making her voice felt
|
The women writers at the Africa Asia Literary Conference at Neemrana communicated across cultures by speaking from the heart
|
CROSSING CULTURES Sefi Atta
Cocooned in the isolation of Neemrana Fort, negotiating the snakes and ladders of ascents and descents, one observed 40-odd writers from 24 countries deliberate on `Legacy, Identity and Assertion', the theme of ICCR's three-day Continents of Creation: The Africa Asia Literary Conference.
Heartfelt
Even for one not given to genderising issues, it was noticeable how women writers communicated across cultures by speaking from the heart, while men were more given to intellectualising. How did some of the participating women writers position themselves in a globalised world with paradoxes of asymmetry and burdens of identity and the Self?
Attractive, self-possessed, Nigerian, Sefi Atta, a writer of short stories and radio plays, born of a Muslim Nigerian father and a Christian Yaruba mother, confesses to "a sense of fatigue" invading her in England and America. Not so in Nigeria - or in "India which could be Lagos!" Parents could have, but never taught her their mother tongues. Sefi uses English relying on her "good ear for music and rhythm."
Her latest book on Yaruba women, unlike books, which are an insult to Yaruba culture, means understanding the Yaruba world-view, strange to Anglo-Saxons.
The value of culture
"I am often teased for not speaking the tonal language of the Yaruba which relies a lot on idiom. But my writing is about developing characters and not about culture."
Meira Chand
Asked on her life in Missisippi with its racial overtones, she says, "I have no animosity for the Anglo-Saxon. But people like us gravitate towards foreign communities and make our own circle."
She remembers her dance classes with the British ballet teacher, ignoring her or commanding her to "hold that butt in" in total ignorance of the African body structure.
"I have problems with value of culture but not with value of literature."
It was a seemingly well-adjusted old aunt wrapped in coarse nine-yard sari, with her tonsured hair, lovingly running her hand in wonder over the smooth velvety silk of the `pavadai' worn by the five-year old, that first stirred Vaasanti's mind to the fact that life was more than it presented on the surface. She realised, as she grew up, the skewed gender justice in society and was exposed to how the Kambala-nayakar women trapped in their kitchens painted their dreams and desires on walls. The writer's journey soon led to works like "The Silent Storm", "Nirka Nizhal Vendum" and "Yugasandhi".
Singapore's Meira (Meera) Chand, called `Myra' by friends, rather defeats the purpose of the mother who desirous of exclusivity had the name Meera chosen for the daughter spelt as Meira. Mixed Indian/Swiss parentage has made for a person "from the in-between places." Ignored and dismissed both by an elitist Japanese society and mono-cultural London of the time, Meira discovered early in life that notions of home and exile were confusing for a child with an Indian father who had consciously jettisoned his Indian heritage in search for a new wholeness in London.
Jean Arsanayagam
Five-year-old Meira had been repeatedly told by the father not to ever mention the Indian part of her parentage when he overheard the child telling a stranger who asked her where she was from, that she was from "India", mentioning a country she had never seen.
Meira's prose, which stirs and shakes one with its throbbing power and passion in books like "The Painted Cage" and "The Goddess of Perilous Passage in India", comes from her deeply internalised world.
Her Home and country are within the Self and mind, irrespective of where she chooses to live.
Outspoken
Ever alert to changing social and political realities, noted Sri Lankan non-fiction writer and poet Jean Arsanayagam, coming from the highly mixed Burgher background, in her outspoken manner sparing no punches, scoffs at ideas like purity, race and identity.
Vaasanti
Stung by all forms of injustice in society, she believes in the woman making her voice felt. Touching on the power play in the current ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, Jean condemns "Man Made Maladies" plaguing society.
"If I can establish a wonderful relationship with my Indian husband, a Brahmin from a hierarchical background, anything is achievable."
LEELA VENKATARAMAN
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
