Volume 4 | Issue 2 | April - May
2010 |
Interview with Sarojini Sahu
C P Aboobaker
C.P: Which is your work you like best? Which is the literary work you like best? As a novelist and story writer, which is the best story, which is your best novel? And from the world of stories, which would you select to be the best in world literature?
S.S: It is difficult for any creative writer to choose his/her best writing. When ever I write any story or novel, it seems me as would be the best of my works. But when I see that in print alphabets, I feel depressed as that time it seems, it could be written in better ways. However I can say Hatred (published in Thanal Online) is my best story and about novel, though The Dark Abode has gained reader's appreciation and popularity and much acclaimed critically, I have satisfied more with Pakhibasa (the novel first written in Oriya and then translated in to Bengali and Hindi respectively) from my creative writer's point of view.
About other writer's fiction, I have been impressed by many stories and novels of different authors in time to time. If you just ask me to name any story or novel , without thinking for a while, I would say Innocent Eréndira of Gabriel García Márquez as short story and Disgraceby JM Coetzee as novel, which have impressed me for a long time, even nowadays also while years ago I did read it.
C.P: "The characters of my fictions represent almost the entire range of female experience". Can you substantiate this statement by providing examples from your works?
S.S: - In my writings, I want to portray the feelings of a woman from her preschooler days to the post menopausal days. I think, there are some feelings, intricate mental agony and complexity which a man couldn't feel any day and these should be discussed in our fictions. I portray the feelings of first menstrual period of a girl, when she was locked in a room for five days as a local ritual in my story Time to Fly, agony of and annoyance of menopause in The Couple and the shaking situations of a sixty years old lady, who is still waiting for her menopause and in every month her embarrassing situation when she finds herself with bleeding (The afternoon). I have also tried to portray the feelings of a pregnant lady in my story Waiting for Manna, hysteria in Burkha , fear of abortion (Sakal:The Morning*), false pregnancy (Tarali Jauthiba Durga :The Melting Castle*),Lesbianism (Behind the scene) . Even in my story Jahllad *(Butcher) I have told the story of an infant who finds herself being raped by a caretaker servant. In my novel Upanibesh*, (which is considered as the first attempt in Oriya novel to discuss about female sexual desire) I have taken the symbol of “Shiva Linga” as the sexual desire of women . Medha, the protagonist of Upanibesh (The Colony), was a bohemian. In her pre-marital stage, she was thinking that it was boring to live with a man life-long. Perhaps she wanted a chain free life, where there would be only love, only sex and wouldn't be any monotony. In my novel Pratibandi*, the thematic development of sexuality in a woman has been discussed. Priyanka, the protagonist of the novel has to encounter the loneliness in the exile of a remote village Saragpali . This loneliness develops into a sexual urge and soon Priyanka finds herself sexually attached with a former Member of Parliament. Though there is an age gap between them, his intelligence impresses her and she discovers a hidden archaeologist in him.
In my novel The Dark Abode (Gambhiri Ghara in Oriya, Irunda Koodaram in Malayalam and Mithya Gerosthali in Bengali) , I want to glorify the power of sexuality, where Kuki, the protagonist, a Hindu married woman of India tries to rectify Safik, a Muslim Pakistani artist to keep him up from perversion and sexual maniac. She has convinced Safik that sexual affinity without love is like hunger of a caterpillar. Though this is not the central theme of the novel, but its broad acceptance for sexuality made the fundamentalists to react.
(The starred mark stories and novels are yet to be translated in to English)
CP- Apart from a few short stories, I have read The Dark Abode in depth. I feel you have done a great job there. In the first place it is a very novel atmosphere you have created. Man and woman everywhere is the same. They love, hate, engage in alliances, withdraw, then again tie up in what not knots? What is the inspiration behind The Dark Abode?
S.S: What inspired me to write The Dark Abode? Was there any personal love affair behind this novel? Whenever a female writer writes a love story, readers want to peep her personal life. Well, this is not any love affair, but a protest which made me to write such novel. Once I was requested to submit a story for a special issue of an Oriya magazine. I submitted an Oriya story entitled 'Gambhiri Ghara' and the editor thanked me for my cooperation. After few days I received a phone call from someone from that editor's office, asking me to submit another story as they would not able to publish that story. The message was conveyed by an assistant and not by the editor. I contacted him (editor) and asked why they would not publish that story. The editor hesitated at first and then told me I should talk to Jagadish Bhai (my husband) later on regarding the reason. Such answer made me annoyed and I asked him did he think ever that my husband had any control over my writer's entity? The answer made me disturbed and I fixed my mind to convert the short story into a novel. The decision resulted at my novel The Dark Abode.
CP- This brings us to a very interesting part of literary activity, publishing what has been written. Without publishing, the writing does not consummate. And here, as in many other cases, the publishers command the writers to write according to their diktats. A large number of worthy writers do not find it possible to bring their writings to light just because of the publishers' apathy. And publishers tend to exploit the writers in several ways. How would you comment?
S.S: J.K. Rowling when appeared with the manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone a dozen of publishers including Penguin and HarperCollins rejected her manuscript. It is Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, only took it on at the behest of the CEO's eight-year old daughter, who begged her father to print the book. William Faulkner, D.H. Lawrence, Rudyard Kipling, E.E .Cummings, Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jorge Luis Borges and many other famous writers were rejected by publishers once or several times . Big name publishers only publish Big Name authors! They're only after the money! They don't know everything; look at the names they've 'rejected' that are now big-time sellers. They won't even read first page of the manuscript! A first timer doesn't have a chance and must self-publish if he/she wants to see his/her work in print - it's not fair! I think this is the tragedy with literary writings not only in India but with all over the world. You can't measure a literary standard of a book by its selling outputs. But it is the criteria nowadays the global economy is creating as a norm to judge the creativity with economical earnings. Awards are prescribed to a book with its 'best selling' quality.
CP- You depict human society with special reference to women and their problems; still, the most interesting thing is that you never despise men folk; in fact you exhibit extraordinary empathy with them. How could you explain it?
S.S- My Home page says, “For me feminism is not a gender problem or any confrontational attack on male hegemony. So, it is quite different from that of Virginia Woolf or Judith Butler. She accepts feminism as a total entity of female hood which is completely separate from the man's world. She writes with a greater consciousness of women bodies, which would create a more honest and appropriate style of openness, fragmentation and non-linearity. In my various essays, I have told that I am not here to replace matriarchal society with patriarchal one as the Second wave western Feminists once wished. What I want is the equality between the rights of two genders. Unlike the second wave feminists, I have denied the 'other theory' of Simon de Beauvoir and I believe that woman is 'other' from man by her nature. There are inherent physical, behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences between men and women and we affirm and celebrate these differences as wonderful and complementary. These differences do not evidence the superiority of one sex over the other but rather, serve to show that each sex is complemented and made stronger by the presence of the other. As a different unit, similar to man, the female mass has their right for equity as well. I always argue for the two types of fundamental rights for women. One is their financial rights and other is the right over their own body.
I always want to paint the sexuality opposite to Indian patriarchy concept, where women sexuality is used for raising of children only and there was no seat for the women's sexual desire. I think, sexuality has a major role in understanding feminism. But our second wave western feminists were sex negative or correctly to say they were negative in attitude to heterosexual binary gender system. In my essay “ Mythical sexual politics”, I want to show how with the development of patriarchal control over feminine civil rights, the sexual freedom was cut down from the women's world and transferred to the men's world with anti-feminist moral milieus which gradually made the female a sex object, however powerful they might be in their goddess perspectives. This is a strapping point, I believe, that the sex negative feminists have to think of before raising their voice against the sex role attitudes of the female. And if we admit the essentiality of heterosexual orientation in our attitude, male and female both become essential component. Hence, how could we eliminate one's existence from the society?
I want to use an integrated analysis of oppression which means that both men and women are subjected to oppression and stereotypes and that these oppressive experiences have a profound affect on beliefs and perceptions. I am against the patriarchy role model of society but it does not mean that I want to replace a matriarchal form of society in place of the existing patriarchal one. What I want is to develop equal mutual relationships of caring and support between all genders and I want to focus on strengthening women in areas such as assertiveness, communication, relationships, and self esteem.
I do believe that economic inequality between men and women are the main barricade to solve the gender inequalities and not the marital practice or motherhood, as the Western feminist always tries to paint. Our motto should be to change our marriage system out of the political realm and fully back into the private one. The new slogan of feminism should be 'the personal is personal'. Still in India, in majority cases it stands in sharp contrast to the traditional marriage with children, in which the man works and the woman stays home, or the 'supermom' marriage, in which the man works and the woman tries to balance a career with the lion's share of the childcare and household tasks. Equally shared parenting is more than an extension of feminism; it is more than simply what is fair. Equally sharing the care of your children with your partner is about balancing your life, balancing your family's collective life and sharing equally in the joys of raising a family.
C.P- What is your message to the young writers of Kerala who have taken up the path of feminism?
S.S- They should give more importance to femininity. Femininity has a wonderful power. In our de-gendered times a really feminine woman is a joy to behold and you can love and unleash your own unique yet universal femininity. We are here for gender sensitivity to proclaim the differences between men and woman with a kind of pretence that we all the same. Too many women have been de-feminized by society. To be feminine is to know how to pay attention to detail and people, to have people skills and to know how to connect to and work well with others. There will be particular times and situations within which we will want to be more in touch and in tune with our femininity than others - being able to choose is a great skill.
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C P Aboobaker - C.P. ABOOBACKER, editor of thanalonline, belongs to Calicut in Kerala. His interests include writing, publishing poems, essays, and many more literary things. Latest writing is about Channels and Globalizations. He is a retired professor of history.
e-mail: cpaboobacker@gmail.com