Critical Appreciation - Fire by Taslima Nasrin

This is a critical appreciation of Taslima Nasrin’s poem in Celebrating India Love without Borders published by Nivasini Publishers. Everything said here is my personal interpretation and should not be taken as the publisher’s or poet’s point of view

Fire by Taslima Nasrin

He is my husband, the dictionary says that he’s

my

chief, lord, master, et cetera et cetera

Society agrees that he is my god.

My doddering old husband has learned well

the prevailing rules and regulations to exert

authority

He’s very eager to stroll over the bride of

eternity

to the glittering realm of paradise,

he wants all kinds of fruits, brightly-coloured

cordials and delicious foods,

he lusts after

the fair-skinned bodies of bouris to chew, suck

and lick.

Nothing’s written on my forehead but ill fate,

I spend my lifespan in society thrusting chunks

of firewood

into the oven of these earthly days.

In the afterlife I see my doddering husband

exult over the seventy-seven pleasures of sex.

I am alone, in the joyous garden of paradise I’m

alone.

Watching the blind obscenity of men

I burn inside in the everlasting fires of hell,

a chaste and virtuous woman.

At the face of it, what might come across as a purely feminist point of view, hides within its covers, a much deeper meaning than the subject of the poem, that being, the subjugation of women by men because society too supports and propagates this way of life. Whether a man is lame, old, deaf or dumb, his position, vis-a-vis women is always that of superiority. Taslima Nasrin laments this position and burns with anger within, yet must accept this as her ‘fate’ because, the man in her poem is her husband. And although she is seething inside, she must bear silently, as he enjoys all the luxuries of life, including his enormous appetite for women and sex.

But, if one looks deeper, the reader may see many other levels to this poem. For instance, from a psychological point of view, there is forever a conflict within the mind, between the norms of society outside and the desires of the female body inside. And although she herself is capable of far more intensity in love and sex, women allow the norms of society to bind them. The pleasure deriving sexual object she can luxuriate in, is in deep conflict within her, and must find her expression, mostly out of the normative framework of society, rather than within it. Hence, standing on the periphery and talking of the chains she is bound in, is to some extent, in my opinion, redundant.

From a philosophical point of view, the purusha/prakriti, outside/inside dynamics is the larger picture of the world. There is an inherent attraction/resistance in the very coexistence of these two phenomenons. What Taslima Nasrin does not spell out in her poem is what she is doing about this state of injustice. Seething in anger, but bearing it silently, because it is her ‘fate’ is a passive reaction to the situation. Unless she is willing to turn a submissive to an active, the purpose of lamenting the state is uninspiring.

From a personal point of view, the poet’s lamentation is indicative of her own state of being, the prisoner in her own body, which might agitate but is far from being free of the shackles that a male dominated society has bound around her. Thus, the poem expresses in no uncertain terms, her anger, which we can easily assume to be directed towards herself, only.

Taslima Nasrin, is a doctor by profession, who prefers to follow her passion for writing prose and poetry and is socially involved in bringing about change through the power of the written word. She shot to fame when she authored Lajja, which brought forth the wrath of the clergy in her own land, Bangladesh and ever since, she has been a resident of many lands. “In 1992, she won a major Kolkata literary Award for a collection of her co-ed columns and essays that criticised political leaders, literacy figures, and conservative religious values that conspired to oppress women.” (pg 183, Celebrating India Love Without Borders). Between these years she attempted to seek asylum in India, living in Kolkata, but was finally not granted it. Her heart-wrenching plea that she found Kolkata closest to her ‘home’ went debated, but not granted.

“Because of her thoughts and ideas, she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.”(https://www.newsintervention.com/author/taslimanasreen/ )

Needless to say, the anger inside her must be so self-consuming, that it has tinted her tongue and her poem. It is her own state of alienation she is speaking of in the poem, where she is the protagonist, the shackled prisoner burning in anger, the woman.  

You may like to Get Your Copy Now from HERE

Stop being so butch!

I am sure, you have by now, aligned yourself to the realities of the Susan chronicles. If not, after you have read this post, do please stop by and read. (See below).

There is absolutely no reason why anyone, worth their salt in terms of wanting to break out and form their own social group, should study Sociology in India. You may want to know the reason why.

After spending a lifetime fighting the system and trying to set sail on her own, our protagonist, Susan, highly empowered by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and her well endowed Sociology teacher at college, she decided that if Dagny Taggart of Atlas Shrugged could do it, so could she. She broke all rules including the biggest one called family, and formed a single unit, all by herself, only to get lost in the maze of the family once again. When she went back to her teacher many years after, because she could not forget the impact her bosom made on her, and many of her friends lurking around in dark and dingy corridors, her teacher could not place her in her mind.

“But I was your favourite student, wasn’t I whom you pursued to do my Masters?” Susan interrogated feeling rather annoyed to have lost her place in her teacher’s mind.

“Oh of course,” her teacher quipped, ‘I have a favourite in every batch. Besides you went on to do your Masters in real life. That is real Sociology.’ Susan was dashed!

Imagine, dear reader, having come a long way, all Susan heard was a list of students who had married, had children and were one big family just like her teachers. Her teacher confessed she could not relate to the one Susan had been telling her about – the life of a single woman, singled out in society, living in a maze of other families, all going along as life should be, going with the flow! There was Sunita, getting married one day, and Krutika having a baby the next and Mala becoming a grandmother on yet another occasion, it was evident from the scene around her, that Susan had got it all wrong, in the first place. What made it worse is that the family of ‘singletons’ coming together to make one big family, all single, but not ‘paired and cohabitating’ in the real sense of the term, had also taken a nose dive somewhere and got all mixed up, in butch and femme talk and landed in the bed with dramatic consequences – Who is going to be the man? And if one was a ‘man’, was ‘he’ going to read the papers all day and not participate in household chores? The argument can go on and on, but in a nutshell, getting out of one accepted structure and evolving another often undergoes a ‘me too’ first, which is exactly where, Susan’s problem was. Clearly she had not got out of one, only to walk into the other, where the figures dominating the unit, were clearly butch and femme, with defined roles which sometimes went out of hand.

“Are you not supposed to be that docile doormat, lady in waiting? But you are showing me a side of yourself, you never displayed while we were courting? You are like a man!”

“I am not a man! You are the man, but you behave like a woman!”

Let us not go into the philosophical angle of such discussions. Suffice it to say that gender is fluid and what you might be and feel this moment, may not be the same the next. There is no argument on this. Did we not hear about this highly philosophical adage, change is the only reality and this too shall pass?

Susan is in a mess. The more she has tried to get out of the system, the more it has followed her. Breaking out has not been easy, but what is harder for her to accept is that the brand new ‘family’ she was planning to make, consisting of singles only, has eluded her so far and again and again, she is at crossroads, which one to negotiate is always a tough choice. Most often one that makes her bounce back to where she started from.

Needless to say, there is going to be much hullabaloo on the 24^th in India’s capital New Delhi and many are going to walk the streets demanding, their place under the sun and rejoicing in it. Susan is contemplating joining them, but she is wary and wants to know, whether they have really broken the cast, really, or are they all going to scream and shout in broken voices like adolescent boys, the winter having caught their throats nicely.

There is a plus, in all this though, Susan has concluded. While the rest of Delhi is busy getting married, having children, grandchildren, and going with the flow, the Delhi Pride March may let out a big sneeze, and many of its traditional junta might catch the cold!

Even then, there is a disturbing voice nagging behind her.

“Don’t be so cock-sure and stop being so butch!”

Stop by to read: The Susan Chronicle I

http://juliadutta.blogspot.in/2013/11/each-one-teach-one.html

  Video credit: Queer Ink

India - The Good Earth

The colours, vibrancy, moods and diversity of India makes me love her with passionate obsession of a lover whose very life depends on the fervent expression of his love to his beloved, in many ways, physically, emotionally spiritually. As if he were lost and totally given to the passion burning in his heart and soul, his groins and his brain.

India is this and much more to me.

I often wonder, why I choose to be born in India and not in England? Why in India and not in Tibet? For all these countries, have, also been my home in some life or the other. I know it in my veins and when the words arise from my being, I know, I am not only an Indian but many countries in one.

Yet, it gives me pride to say, I am Indian. And my thirst is quenched, when her earth is drenched with the torrential rain of the monsoon. These waters from the sky have another message of love for me. Like gallons of pouring emotions forever falling over parched and hungry body of desire. That is why perhaps they say, it never rains, but it pours.

So let it rain over my longing to have been on this part of the earth. This land of diversity, its peoples and its cultures, its many languages and religions which come together in a medley of all that I can ever want. And so it has been my tryst with life in India this time, a dash of joy, laughter in the air, and a bath in the same river of spirituality which has wed with the zest for life as well.

Zorba, the Buddha, a better way to mean what I stand for today – deeply entrenched in the many colours, vibrancy, moods and diversity of India and at the same time, totally detached to it too, in a spiritual way.

And now I know why I chose India to be my home.

I love the contrast, the black and white, the colour and the lack of it, the materialistic and the spiritual, the complete opposites, all in one place. It’s so enchanting, so captivating, so engrossing, this, my India.

Like a woman’s bosom, the more you nestle against it, the more she sucks you in.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/juliadutta/NovemberInShimla#