The More You Confine Me, the More I Spill Over – A View from the Selected Contemporary 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, an embodiment of sacrifice, backbone of the family, et al., these appreciation of words keep them under the control of menfolk and wants women dependent, and servant to them. Though we are in the modernworld, 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, MalathiMaithri, Salma, KuttiRevathi 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’sAvvaiyar smoldered a man horizontally 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 crops 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 artistic beauty and originality and above all it shows their own individuality. The Tamil women who are with the 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 the modern art forms and the 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 woman is in one way or the other involved with her body. It is her personal domain. But men have set of ‘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 attractive. The words of ‘bubbles’, ‘swelled’ and ‘blossomed’ spelled her admiration towards her body. She is surprised by her bodily 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. Hers another poem Mazhaiyinnathi (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 Period 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)

The trope of red earth and pouring rain is an intertextual reference to a poem from Kurunthogai (2^nd century AD), ‘Yaayum yaaum yaaraagiyaro’, best known to non-Tamil readers in A.K. Ramanujan’s translation. The image of red earth and pouring rain is used in KuttiRevathi’s poem with the same intense passion as in the Sangam poem.

            She is also taken into account of some love poems. In recent times, there is a political and feminist oriented theme she focused on. In Tharkolai Viiraangkanai (Suicide-soldier), Gandhari and Kaldevadaigal (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 too controversial and unconventional as to receive comment and criticism from readers and discerning critics.

            MalathiMaithri 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, Orumiinkuudai (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 6^th 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. MalathiMaithri 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 KanavuKel (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 further. 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 Dalits 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 of being reveals 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, 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. Hence this paper.

Works Cited:

Holmstrom, Lakshmi. Wild Words.HarperCollins Publishers, 2012.