TAMIL WOMEN WRITERS
“The More You Confine Me, the More I Spill
Over” – A View from the Selected Contemporary Tamil Women Writers
Women
are portrayed as God, embodiment of sacrifice, backbone of the family, et
al., these appreciation of words keep
them under the control of menfolk. Latter wants women dependent, and servant to
them. Though we are in the modern technology, treating women in the name of
culture, and custom is really a pathetic one. Most probably, women are expected
to be a modest girl, never go-out-of girl, complete obedience to menfolk,
especially to spouse, trained good cook, accommodate to family members. But
these qualities are never expected from men. Treatment given to women
physically, mentally and sexually are unbearable.
Some contemporary Tamil women poets
boldly question on the taboo subject, and stereotype living. The women poets
of, particularly, Malathi Maithri, Salma, Kutti Revathi and Sukirtharani have
guts enough to raise the voice for voiceless women. Their writings peeled off
the ideology that confinement life is contentment life. Their approach on
handling sex, modest and body is unique from others.
People who considered themselves as
guardian of Tamil culture opposed their writings. They charged women with
obscenity and immodesty. These women poets came into limelight by their
collections of poetry between 2000 and 2002. The themes of politics of
sexuality and a woman’s relationship to her body are all common to be
discussed, but in the name of culture and as they are a woman they were
condemned and nullified.
Andal, Avvaiyar, Thiruvalluvar and
other eminent writers in Tamil spilled their artistic sexual themes in their
works. In the first century A.D Sangam’s Avvaiyar smoldered a man horizantaling
between her breasts, deciding to leave for harsher paths. Andal, in the eighth
century, was determined to remove and throw her futile breasts on the Lord who
remains apathetic towards her. These four women poets were not doing anything
that was not done by Andal or Avvaiyar.
After
several centuries, a bunch of women poets crop up to restitute the feminine
rights which lost in the appropriation of Tamil literary space. Their voices
instill the confidence among women to act on their own. Men writers protest
against their writings and labeled them as bad girls who wrote body poetry and
good girls who wrote normal poetry.
These
four women poets showcase their beauty, originality and above all the
individually of them. The Tamil women who with traditional values of accham (fearfulness), madam (propriety) and naanam (modesty) are adorned as good
girl. On contrary, these poets have chosen the fearlessness, unconventional
behavior and constant questioning of stereotyped rules. They claimed their
foremother Avvai, Velliviidhi and Sappho, Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath and
Kamala Das as their role models.
It
is cinema which sows the seeds of art of writing to Kutti Revathi. She herself
says that she came to understand modern art forms and world politics through
cinema. Her first collection of poetry came out in 2001 and was entitled Punnaiyaipol Alaiyum Veliccham (Light Prowls
Like Cat). This was followed in 2002 by Mullaigal
(Breasts). Her second work created
shock waves in writing community. She has been speaking out for the rights of
the downtrodden. Agnostic in her beliefs, she trusts human values and poetic
virtues. Her poem explicitly state that a woman need not always welcome a man’s
advances; and that he is often harsh, indifferent and selfish. Her poems
express a woman’s loneliness and anger. Her poem Mulaigal (Breasts) states:
Breasts
are bubbles,
rising from marshlands.
As they gently
swelled and blossomed
at due season,
at Time’s edge,
I watched over them in amazement.
(Breasts,
58)
Breasts
are central to a woman’s body. They are her obsession too. It attracts menfolk
towards her. Every women is in one way or the other involved with her body. It
is her personal domain. But men have set ‘rights’ over women’s body by
snatching away even a woman’s right to speak, share thoughts about her body or
parts of it with herself or with others. In the above lines, ‘bubbles’
symbolize the size of the breasts and temporary of its attractivess. The words
of ‘bubbles’, ‘swelled’ and ‘blossomed’ spelled her admiration towards her
body. She is surprised by her body
development from child to adolescent. She supports every woman’s right to her
own body, to speak about it or to do anything with it as she pleases. Her body
is hers and hers only.
The ways in which she has imagined
and depicted the body is constantly intriguing and refreshing. Her another poem
Mazhaiyin nathi (Rain-river) is
complete erotic. She uses beautiful images associated with her body. The poem
also demonstrates how closely she identifies with the natural landscape, making
it her own. Her love for Tamil Poetry especially the sangam’s is reflected in
the poem.
I am the
rain’s fall;
you are the
pull of the river.
The force of
our love’s union
is like red
earth and pouring rain-
the leaping
of fish into the body-
the
entwining of water-weeds.
(Rain-river,60)
She is also taken into account some
love poems. In recent times, there is a political and feminist orient themes
she focused. In Tharkolai Viiraangkanai
(Suicide-soldier), Gandhari and Kal
devadaigal (Stone goddess), She
exemplifies her personal experience and her body is either manipulated or
distorted in some way by social, cultural and political. Her brutally frankness
of tone and whose overexposure of sex has earned for her the labels, a bad girl
and a sexy poet. A puzzling, intriguing
personality, full of contradictions, she has been differently described as “a
poet of the body”. Both her life and work
are so controversial and unconventional as to receive comment and
criticism from readers and discerning critics.
Malathi Maithri is brought up in poor
family conditions. She belongs to fishing community. Having seen the scenes of
fishing in sea, and river, she knows very well the hardships of fishermen and
working women there. These ideas are reflected in her poem titled Ottaganga, kudiraigal, Oru miin kuudai
(Camels, horses and a fish basket). Her poems says,
At earliest dawn
when even the morning star
hesitated to appear,
she swept the courtyard
scoured the dishes
cleaned her teeth
…………
Then she filled her stomach
from a small pitcher of rice-water
and set off eastwards
with her fish basket
(CHF,
25-26)
The above lines portray the real
picture of fisherwomen life. Her life from morning marks with domestic chores
and drinking rice-water indicates her penury conditions. She walks miles to
save bus fares from one village to other to sell fish. While returning home,
she buys rice, tamarind, chillies, snacks for the children.
In
her another poem entitled My Home, she expresses the reality of society treating
the dalit people. Liberty to speak, living with society make human beings
different from animals. Alienating people in the name of caste and gender could
not meet any progress in the society. Her poetry is filled with the gender
discrimination and requirement of space to express one’s ideas. She strongly
believes that poetry has the power to create that space for women. For
instance, in another poem entitled Demon
Language she says,
Poetry’s features are all
saint
become woman
become poet
become demon
Demon language
is liberty
outside Earth
she stands:
niili, wicked woman.
(DL,
27)
This
poem alludes to the Karaikkal Ammai, one of the sixty-three canonized Saiva
saints, who lived in the 6th century CE Punithavathy who gave up her
youth and beauty when her spouse hesitated to live with her by seeing her godly
qualities. Then, she became a poet-saint devoted only to God Siva. She tries to
break the shackles of male chauvinism associated with Tamil culture. She seeks
a new language to express her grief in new world. It is well-nigh chiseled with
trope in this poem. Malathi Maithri is a poet of portraying real events. She
transmutes her personal emotion into artistic emotion. Thus her distinction to
discover poetry in ordinary reality as observed, known, felt and experienced
than as the intellect thinks it should be, is in evidence, in her works like My Home, Bhumadevi, Incessant War and Camels, horses and a fish basket.
An
another famous Tamil women poet is Sukirtharani, who hails from Dalit
community. Her past life taught her the discrimination prevailing in the
society. Gender and caste play major role in the society. She realized the
caste distinctions when she started school. Other caste students would avoid
her. She got inspiration from teacher to love Tamil literature. It kindles her
interest to learn more about poetry. She began to think about societal
structure for caste and gender. She begins to write poetry but her parents did
not approve her writing on feminism. She defied the parents words and published
her first collection Kaippatri En Kanavu
Kel (Hold Me and Hear My Dreams) in 2002. Her name was branded as Obscene
writer, which abhors her parents and stayed away from her completely.
She
never give up her writing at any cost, nothing can stop her futher. She read
writings of Kamala Das and Taslima Nasreen. She writes, ‘I realized then, a
woman’s body had become the property of man. I realized that it was my first
duty to redeem it. So my poetry began to put forward a politics of the body’.
The
perspective of Dalit and Feminst get differs in her writing from the world
view. She writes boldly in her poem ‘I speak up bluntly’,
But
now
If
anyone asks me
I
speak up bluntly:
I
am a Paraichi.
(I
speak up bluntly,79)
She
picturises her personal experience and treatment meted out to Dalits. They are
always ignored by their profession and caste. She never expresses her feelings.
She afraid to reveal her father profession to school mates. She states in the
same poem,
When
I saw my father in the street
the
leather drum slung from his neck,
I
turned my face away
and
passed him by.
Because I
wouldn’t reveal
my father’s
job, his income,
The teacher
hit me.
Friendless, I
sat alone
on the back
bench, weeping,
though no one
knew.
(I
speak up bluntly, 79)
Her
poetry depicts the humiliation and shame that she experiences as dalit and
woman. The oppression and suppression of her never lose her spirit from writing
against society evils. She continually raises her voice for voiceless. She
cannot be bend over by the social criticism.
Her boldness and courage is
explicitly expressed in the poem entitled Nature’s
Fountainhead.
I
myself will become
earth
fire
sky
wind
water.
The
more you confine me ,the more I will spill over,
Nature’s
fountainhead.
(Nature’s
Fountainhead, 85)
Her writings consist of myriad
themes. She not only focused on dalit’s oppression and discrimination but also
the body, sexual thirst and landscape of her land.
Salma,
an another famous poet of Tamil, belongs to Muslim community, leads a
confinement life. She was banned to go to school as they were reported as
watching the pornographic film in Theatre with her friends. With her parents’
permission, she learns herself by interest. She expressed her career as writer.
But her parents turned down her proposal. She was forced to get married. She could not stop writing and she wrote
under the pseudonym Salma. Her first collection of poetry Oru Maalaiyum Innoru Maalaiyum (One Evening, Another Evening) came
out in 2000, Pacchai Devadai (Green
Angel) in 2002, followed by Irandaam
Jaamangalin Kadai, (The Hour Past Midnight) in 2004.
Her
poems reflect the loneliness, treating women by women, yearning for true love.
She burst out in her poem The Contract the deep anguish she felt at
home. The criticism from her parents for her sexual act irritates her. She
states,
Always
my
sister will repeat in anger
what
Amma says more subtly:
that
I am to blame
for
all that goes wrong
in
the bedroom.
(The
Contract, 35)
She
finds monotonous of living through a loveless marriage. She could not get any
chance to share her feelings with her husband.
Salma perfectly uses the imagery which portraits the real picture of her
bitter and confinement life. In the poem An
Evening, another evening, Salma writes that her
The present is
as tangled
As
the world of a cat
That
lurks in the kitchen.
(An
Evening, another evening, 40)
Her
poetry is marked by a search for loneliness. Her poignant feelings expressed
through the images of a tiger in her bedside and painted houses through which
she monologues her desires and expectations. All the four poets in the
anthology speak frankly about female desire and the body. Most of the poetical
ideas are stemmed from their personal past and familial past.
Before applying the crusted moral
yardsticks to judge the character and personality of these poets, one has to
study the influence of societal treatment meted out to them in their personal
life.
Works Cited:
Holmstrom, Lakshmi. Wild Words. HarperCollins Publishers,
2012.
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