CRITICAL ANLYSIS OF THE CHARACTER NOMITA “SILENCE! THE WOMAN IS IN SESSION: TRANSACTING ASHAPURNA DEBI’S SHORT STORY MATCHBOX IN HIGHER SECONDARY CLASSROOMS”

DR SAJEENA SHUKKOOR

Which is the more viable solution for the peaceful coexistence in a matrimonial alliance – Adjustment or Accommodation? Adjustment requires conscious efforts of reconciliation from either one or both the couples. If I prefer coffee to tea and my husband tea to coffee and if I make the drink catering to these preferences it falls under adjustment. Accommodation resorts to a sense of harmony in relationships. If I make tea for both, despite the differences in preferences or if my husband makes coffee for both, though he likes tea then it encompasses accommodation. If I insist him to have coffee or if he insists me to have tea, then it is annihilation.

Most breakdowns are the results of annihilation, where one partner wields supremacy over the other and resolutions are not possible for the constant conflicts. Imposing the interests makes the companion fret and fume and consequently the victim looks forward to an early chance for untying the knot.

When the partners adjust between themselves the relation lasts till a point of saturation. Then they weigh the volume of sacrifices each has offered to restore balance in the family. A stone may not break apart with the first strike. But the first strike also shall contribute to the final crumble. So, adjustment costs dearly.

Both the partners give mutual respect and dignity in spite of the obvious dissimilarities, when they accommodate each other. Mutual love feeds the relation with consistency and strength of bondage. Love is contagious and innocence and trust one shows infects the companion and the relationship thrives beautifully. The holy Quran gives an exquisite metaphor for this kind of relationship, “they are as a garment for you and you are as a garment for them”. (2:159) The couple gives warmth, relief and comfort to each other and conceals the shortcomings. As the dress, they are more intimate and they present each other in the most favourable disposition.

The Jnanpith Awardee, Ashapurna Debi’s short story entitled Matchbox included in the higher secondary curriculum in the State of Kerala provides the teachers in English with enormous opportunities to delve deep into a variety of issues related with women empowerment and man woman relationships. The mid-adolescents who are yet to hatch out towards their adulthood are too sensitive symptomatic of their age. Since prefrontal cortex, the logical part of the brain is in developmental stage, the adolescents depend upon the amygdala which is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression and instincts. The sort of code these teenagers decode from the words uttered advertently or inadvertently by their teachers, is of great importance. We cannot free ourselves from the duty of inculcating values by belittling the characters in the stories or plays comprised in the textbook as fanciful. Moreover, the team of experts and policy makers conceived and developed the textbook issue based and value oriented. Women empowerment is one of the core themes identified and incorporated in the very beginning of the textbook. So, the suicidal attempt of the character Nomita in the story poses a catch 22 situation to many a teacher while transacting. This article attempts to read the gap between the silence and scream of women characters in a few pieces of literature including the trilogy of Ashapurna Debi, which may assist the teachers to devise their lesson plan. In this process, this may resolve their dilemma.

The story Matchbox inserted in the unit ‘Flights of Freedom’ is preceded by the poem Any Woman in which the traditional and patriarchal concept of woman as an angel in her home is presented. True to the curriculum objectives the text is processed so as to focus the all-embracing power of a woman to bind her family in union and to analyze this theme in view of Indian women’s plight in the social context. The learners can take the cue from the final line Take me not till the children grow when they are steered into the story Matchbox.

The challenges that Nomita meet in her husband Ajit’s home is multidimensional. The joint family system (twenty six members as author puts the number of members in the family) in which the duo finds it hard to squeeze time and space for an intimate talk, Ajit’s suspicion of Nomita, his attempts of concealing the letters addressed to her, his malicious contempt towards his in-law, Nomita’s financial dependence upon her husband’s income etc., are a few issues unraveled in the story.

The core of the rising action in the story is related with the crumbled letter which Ajit purposefully concealed from Nomita. When she chanced to find that letter sent by her mother in Ajit’s pocket the conflict begins. Nomita’s fury relied on the fact that her husband maintained this ugly habit though she had resisted it many times with her anger, offences, reproaches, humiliations, sarcasms etc. A violent argument follows which leads to the climax of the story in which Nomita torches the anchol of her sari. Ajit rises to action in no time by extinguishing the fire and this leads to the falling action in the story and its final resolution.

Is Nomita’s action becoming? She must have undergone that much indignation at the hands of her husband; even then can we justify it? Ajit’s offensive remarks about her mother cross the limits a daughter can bear; should this give her the reason to resort to a heinous means to divulge her protest?

A discussion of the protagonists of the author’s trilogy sounds good in this context. Nomita’s action can be juxtaposed with the way the author conceives her female characters. Nomita also bears testimony to what the author points out about the heroine of her novel Prothom Prothishruthi, “I have thought and written mostly about women because I have seen their helplessness and that is what I know best. Over the years, great clouds of protests have accumulated, unexpressed in my mind, and Satyabathi the heroine of my novel is the expression of that protest.” i

The colonial Indian social structure was infected with abominable social evils like superstitions, prejudices, gross injustice to women etc., and Satyabathi’s fight was against these vices. She does not stand for a rejection of the patriarchal culture outright, but she was taking up the woman’s question in order to establish women’s rights. For instance, Satyabathi is treated mercilessly by her mother in law and consequently her husband Nabakumar asks her father to take her away back to home to escape from the torture. But Satyabathi’s decision is to stay back in her husband’s home and to obtain her rights. It is discernible that, to the author, male female dichotomy is not the central issue of concern. The novel ends with her decision to abandon her family and go to Kashi, when against her wishes her daughter Subarnalata is forcefully betrothed at a tender age.

Second volume of the trilogy entitled Subarnalata also attests Ashapurna Debi’s literary feminist activism. The author introduces her heroine, “Subarnalata is the helpless cry of an imprisoned soul…sociologists write down the history of a changing society, I have merely tried a curve to depict the change.” By the time Subarnalata got betrothed, her mother Satyabati had already initiated in her a drive for finding a liberated space within the patriarchal structure. Even while she was confined within ‘antar mahal’ (inner house) her quest was always to find a real open space symbolized by ‘dakshiner baranda’ (south facing balcony). Like her mother, she also treasures the value of education and even gives her sons and daughters personal coaching. Thanks to her mother’s guidance in her childhood, Subarnalata was well aware of her own rights though denied in the social milieu existed then. For example, a hygienic labour room could be accessed by the affluent class at that time and Subarnalata demanded for its proper sanitation.

Subarnalata could not accept herself as a machine for producing children. She even contributes in her own unique way to the nationalist movement surging in the country. She became a part of the Swadeshi movement by burning all her new clothes. Her efforts were to bring women from inside the four walls of the kitchen to stamp their own identity. A letter from her mother written long ago encouraging her not to give up her fight to live her own life was her stimulation at the times of bereavement. But her dreams were not consummated and she realized that her struggle to liberate her children from the existing subjugating power structure became fruitless. Bakul is her only daughter who identifies the real self of her mother and throws light on her mother’s deleted stories. In the last volume of the trilogy, Bakul Kotha, Bakul is an unmarried author who cherishes the matrilineal inheritance and delineates the trials and tribulations of women of three generations starting with her grandmother.

The heroines of Ashapurna Debi are not passive, they are strong women who try to assert their voice in a society wooing to listen to the voice of male only. Nomita is portrayed as an outspoken lady who speaks her mind, for the reason why no one attacks her outright, to her face. She is not a silent sufferer; she knows where to strike and when to strike.

The patriarchal narrative carved women in a way so as to abide by the rules of obedience and chastity and if she is beautiful all other accomplishments are useless. Ajit is the typical representative of the male dominated society where the position of a woman is that of a product. Beauty adds value to the product and nothing else is needed. She is a goddess in the silenced corner of the kitchen with her qualities of purity and meekness. Nomita’s protests and shocking arrogance does not provoke Ajit to discard her for two reasons the prominent one being her looks and the other being his confidence that never shall his real self be unmasked by his wife. Ajit stands parallel to Kedarnath, Subarnalatha’s husband who takes delight in the alluring beauty of his wife. His love for his wife is centred around her charms which Nomita is conscious of.

Readers have to keep in their mind that it was pre-independent India in which conservatism and cultural hegemony had taken its deep roots. Women’s role was subservient to men in every sphere of life. Born in 1909 Ashapurna Devi had first hand experience of marginalization inside her home. She admits in one of her interviews that marriage did not change her life. Like Mary Anne Evans who wrote with the pen name George Eliot, Ashapurna Debi also had to write under a male pseudonym when she took to writing and she received better acclaim for her works. When the male world later identified the real author as a woman, she was dismissed by some for the compelling force in her works.

Even in today’s so called civilized society women are denied opportunities, their voice unheard, their aspirations unfulfilled, their dreams shattered and their needs brutally neglected – the reason why initiatives at the governmental level need to be launched in abundance and curriculum comprised with women empowerment as major theme required to be set in order to uplift a section representing half of the population. Hence in the colonial India, it was daring indeed on the part of Ashapurna Debi who created characters distinguished for their assertiveness and boldness.

Woman’s silence itself is pregnant with meaning. It is noteworthy to recall the daring lines of Kumaran Asan’s Chintavishtayaya Sita written in 1919. What did the best man on earth, Sri Rama, (as the answer given to Valmiki) do with Sita? Kumaran Asan elegantly fills the silence of Valmiki, in the context in which he leaves Sita all alone in his ashram and goes with Lava and Kusha to the court of Sri Rama where he conducts Rajasuya. Asan explores the thoughts flashed through Sita’s mind on that eve. Sita, the embodiment of chastity and purity was asking herself whether she was a doll. In the concluding sloka, Asan describes the Sita who reaches Sri Rama’s palace as ‘proud’. She was not ready to testify her chastity, instead she sought asylum in the inner recesses of her Mother Earth.

Nora in Ibsen’s Doll’s House leaves her husband Torvald slamming the door behind her, she took such a decision with the perturbed thought that even after eight years of marriage they could not understand each other and all these years she had been treated like a doll to play with and to admire.

Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) defines ideal woman stereotype as “finding fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination and nurturing maternal love” ii . Ashapurna Debi’s female characters go beyond this typecast. Nomita is no weak and meek, instead shrewd and bold. Her act of igniting the anchol was not an impetuous and irrational action. She was meticulous enough to choose the anchol and not any other part of the sari. Had not Ajit intervened well timed, Nomita was sure to save herself. Like the matchbox, she has enough material within herself to set ablaze a hundred Lankas, but she is hesitant to burn the mask of her husband’s high-mindedness. Like Satyabati and Subarnalata, Nomita also wrestles to assert her own rights including the right to open letters addressed to her by herself. Her venture was not the negation of man which makes her shells coloured, but to establish her personal identity and to broaden her space. She is not the Ophelia in Hamlet, drowned in the despondency caused by Hamlet’s indifference, but she is the Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, who wages a war against Benedick and often wins her battles.

I Datta, D. 2015. Ashapurna Devi and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal: A Bio-critical Reading. Oxford University Press.

Ii Friedan, B. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. W.W. Norton

A Turtle Story, on the World Environment Day

A Turtle Story, on the World Environment Day

Ever since I came to the Andaman Islands, I wanted to see the turtles. They told me those parts of the islands were frequented by turtles- nearly half a dozen different species of them. That was an exciting piece of information and I was eagerly wandering along the serene seashores of Middle Andaman Isles for sighting the big daddy of the tortoises.

But unfortunately for me, no turtles came on my way during the numerous rounds I undertook along the seashores. I began to consider the turtle story only as a myth. Then one day I could trace a few tracks the turtles left on the beach sand, like the trails of truck tyres, running along the wet sand and disappearing in the wavy sea. They told me the turtles came to the sea shores during night, dug a pit and laid eggs there and would fill in the pit and went back to sea. It rekindled my spirits and I continued the search.

One summer evening, I was taking an evening walk along a long and beautiful beach, some two miles away from the Vidyalaya campus. There were no tourists on the beach. Some boys ran along and played on the golden beach sand. There was a hamlet of Telugu fishermen by the beach. Some of the fishing boats were pulled ashore and parked on the strand. I could see a group of boys standing crowded at a spot. There was some excitement in the air, some shouting and commotion. I made my way through the crowd.

What I saw on the sand was a curious sight. The boys were looking intently on a spot of loose, rumpled sand. Then, the sand began to bulge up gently. Up came a tiny head. Then, a pair of limbs. Further, the shelly body. It was a baby turtle. Just coming out from hatch! As I looked on, more and more turtle cubs kept on coming up, struggling their way up through the sand. That was a hatch of turtles coming out of their eggs. It was a marvelous sight! Dozens of turtle cubs, only as big as the palm of a boy, emerging out of the sand. The boys carried them to the wet strand, close to the waves. The turtle cubs crawled towards the water and disappeared in the tides. It looked like the Hindu rituals, where they offer things to the sea.

The boys told me that it was a lucky batch of turtle cubs.

Often, they are spotted by stray dogs or eagles when they come out, and very few of them manage to reach their home, the sea. But luckily for these cubs, none of the boys were wicked. They did not play the cruel games that the children generally play with hapless animals. The boys were fishermen’s children and most of them were illiterate. But they took enormous pleasure and pride in saving a hatch of turtles from the predators and reaching them safely to the sea.

On the World Environment Day, the tiny turtles come to my mind and the jubilant faces of the boys- away, along the shores of Andaman. If the unlettered children of the fisher folk could play their part in safeguarding our endangered amphibians, how much more could each one of us do to save this ailing planet !?

On 5 June 2007

Jaison Jose

MUSINGS OF AN AVERAGE ENGLISH TEACHER- Honey Sabu ,P.J.M.S.G.H.S.S.Kandassankadavu

            As another academic year has come to a close, with the results eagerly awaited, the focus is again on pass percentages. The onus is on the English teachers and Maths teachers, as they become the target of ire of their colleagues and PTA members. The threat of a dip in pass percentage due to the failure in a single subject make them most vulnerable. All the other subjects can be attempted in the mother tongue and do not grossly threaten the respective teachers. Of the vulnerable pall bearing two, the teacher of Mathematics steers through with some poise, as Mathematics is universally acknowledged to be a really ‘tough’ subject. Now, it is up on the hapless English teacher to bear the brunt of the situation.

            What any English teacher longs to do, is to take the class through creative sessions of group work, role plays, debates, lively discussions and guided compositions, inculcating a love of the language and inspiring them to delve further into the depths on their own. Notwithstanding the constraints of a good library, how gladly one would have initiated them into the pleasures of reading!

But, what one aspires to do and what one has to do, are quite different things altogether. “The cream of the group will take care of themselves. Concentrate on the single digit scorers” is always the refrain. Time and again, the English teacher is reminded of the loss of full A+ or Cent percent result as some students fail to clear a single subject, which is inevitably English.

As the pressure mounts, one is forced to succumb and suspend the fruitful learner centred activities towards the end, if not the middle of the year. Then ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ become tasks to be done with. The desperate, cowardly souls then resort to providing readymade answers. Cutting down on lunch hours they take extra classes to make those on the brim, learn by rote, certain all-purpose paragraphs which could be transformed into an editorial, letter, essay or speech by just altering the beginning and end, thereby defeating the raison d’etre of the revised learner centred activity based curriculum.

When the teachers in the lower classes have been following the same survival tactics as well, the ‘all pass generation’ which comes up the educational rung, do not some how seem to write ‘English’, but a strange language sans spellings, punctuation or grammar. Some conscientious reformers seek to make repairs only to be intercepted on the road and told “The girl is spending all her time on spellings and meanings. Why don’t you teach her something from an examination point of view?” The paranoia, over pass percentages, is so gripping that the zealous crusaders, relentlessly trying to preserve the spirit of the new curriculum, end up getting taunted even by their colleagues. It is a matter of regret that the shadows and ghosts of the old memory-based system still lurk in the classrooms.

A Sikkimese Lesson – on the World Environment Day – Jaison Jose (GHSS, Chembuchira)

That was a morning in summer. The year was 2003. I was sitting in a taxicab. Sitting next to me was Liji, my wife and we were heading for Natu La Pass across our Chinese border, in Sikkim. We left Gangtok early in the morning. We were at an elevation of over five thousand feet above sea level and we had to scale another two thousand feet before we reached Natu La.

Gangtok is a sleepy hill station on the foothills of the Himalayas. It is also the capital of Sikkim, the small state with the smallest population in the country. Gangtok is a regular hill station. But it is less crowded than the other hill stations-say Simla, Darjileeng or Ooty. Plus it is much cleaner than the other hill stations. People do not stuff their drains with polythene waste. Plastic is strictly banned here. But lodging could be really costly in Gangtok. We had to satisfy ourselves with a modest room in a regular lodge down town. The lodge owner, a Malayali with a thick moustache and grave smile was rather liberal in helping us –the newly wed Malayali couple. It was he who arranged a taxi for us when we wanted to have a sight seeing trip. He had assured us that Madhav, the Nepali cab driver could be really handy.

The morning was pleasant and we were climbing steadily up. Madhav threw out regular information to us as an accomplished guide. He spoke chaste Hindi. We noticed military camps almost at regular intervals on our way up- a necessary preparedness in a disputed territory by our Chinese boarder. The hills on either side of the road had beautiful mountain flora. As our climb progressed the hills on either side gradually began to be treeless hills. But they were fabulously beautiful. Numerous herbs and creepers grew on the treeless hillocks. They bore flowers- and such flowers!! The small flowers growing in clusters looked angelically beautiful. As we climbed up and up, the flowering herbs began to appear in richer profusion on the rocky hills.

We stopped on the way at Tsongo, a crystal clear lake in the laps of mighty mountains. Madhav tells us that the lake goes frozen in winter. One can walk along the expanse of the lake! Local tribes will give you a ride on a yak on the banks of the lake. Yak is the Himalayan bull with very thick and very long fur. I did not climb on a yak, but allowed my wife to have a ride. It was nicer watching her clinging to the neck of the yak- a female Yam dharma going to rope in a soul!!

* * * * * * *

We were on our way back. Our cab was climbing down the flower-clad hillocks. I asked Madhav to stop the car for a moment. We wanted to have a closer look at those lovely flowers. We wanted to touch them, feel their heavenly smoothness inside our hands….

It was nearly the evening and the sky was slowly changing colours. The flowers felt extremely smooth in our hands.

“Nahim! Nahim!

Math keejiye, Mem Saab!”

I turned back. Liji was about pull out one of those flowering herbs from the rocks. Madhav came running to us. Liji was obviously shocked at the sharp warning from Madhav. But she explained that she wanted to have one of the plants taken down to our home in Kerala. She would plant it there.

“Nahim, Mem Saab!” Madhav refused,” These plants and flowers are not to be plucked.”

‘But it is only a single plant, that is to be planted there in Kerala’, Liji explained in the best possible Hindi that she could speak.

“Dekhiye Mem Saab, “ Madhav explained, “we get thousands of tourists visiting our Sikkim every year. If everybody plucks just one plant, it won’t take much time for all our rocks to become bare and barren. All the beauty will disappear…. And what is Sikkim without her beauty?!’

We did not bring that flowering herb to our home for planting. But we planted something more attractive than that mountain plant deep in our souls that summer. We learned something as tall as the Himalayan foothills.

The great lessons in Environmental Sciences learned from a cab driver.

Protection of nature and natural resources should come from the common man. Our loud academic and intellectual exercises won’t do. Real conservation begins in the streets and waysides, not in air-conditioned seminar halls. 

Dear friend, let me share my Sikkimese lesson with you on the eve of the World Environment Day falling on 5 June .

Love, and best wishes to mother Earth!