TAGORE’S WOMEN: BEYOND KADAMBARI, MRINALINI, CHARULATA, BIMALA…

(OUR OBSESSION WITH TAGORE’S PERSONAL LIFE ROBS US OF HIS LESSER KNOWN FEMALE CHARACTERS)

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay had been my all-time favourite feminist author in school and college. His depiction of the resilience and victory of a woman in the face of a society that tries every time and by every means to dominate and annihilate her, be it Annada didi, Abhaya or Rajlakshmi and many more, had always given me confidence and encouragement. But this was till I came upon Sadharon Meye, by Rabindranath Tagore, where he challenges Sarat Babu mockingly to actually elevate an ordinary Bengali girl to the utopic arena and standards of Sarat Chandra’s women. Along with Tagore I too realised Sarat Babu’s women were mostly heroines, Tagore’s women on the contrary were the real life ones, defeated, battered, failed; Instances where they couldn’t stand up against the social customs and at times those who did, turn victims of the social diktats or succumb to the pressures of a family that had no respect for their women.  

  Probably it was easier for Rabindranath to depict the pain, travails and failed wishes of a woman in its true light because he himself was a father who had to bow down to the social customs like dowry when marrying off his daughters, even shedding tears when the daughter has a failed marriage and is tortured by her husband and in-laws. Yes, he too at a point was a helpless father, and though he had to accept the social customs and follow them when marrying off his daughters, he never spared his pen from protesting against them. For him it seemed life and literature went hand in hand.

Our obsession with Tagore’s relationship with numerous women who came his way however stops us from exploring all the Sadharon Meye (ordinary women) of his short stories and novels. We love to stick to a few, those that were made into films and dissect his life as if it was our own. I have stumbled upon at least a dozen of his female characters who even through their deaths have mocked the society that had always and even today push their women out of the mainstream and force them to die. Literally they kill them.

Kusum, the young widow of Ghater Katha (The Autobiography of a Bathing Ghat) is ridiculed by neighbours and relatives as she meets a sanyasi (hermit) regularly who had come to stay in her village. As we know ‘people talk.’ So did Kusum’s society. They stamped upon her the tag of a fallen widow as she met an unknown man, be he a hermit, even in the late hours of night. But little did that society know that the hermit was in reality Kusum’s husband who had left the family after marriage and Kusum was termed a widow as the husband was nowhere to be found and hence assumed dead. Kusum reminds me of Annada didi who had fled with her own husband, even though the society thought she fled with a snake charmer. But Tagore’s Kusum serves. She serves the hermit daily as she would have done to her husband, and when the society pushes her with ridicule to the brink of her existence, she commits suicide, she doesn’t run away with the hermit, she sacrifices. Yet, she is not a coward, she mocks the society that didn’t understand and failed to recognise the love between a man and a woman, between a so-called widow and a hermit, who in reality is the husband. Kusum was battered twice, once when her husband after marriage leaves her to embrace the life of a hermit (not her fault that she was abandoned) and next when the society makes her leave her husband who returns to her.

While Nirupama of Dena Paona (give and take) reminds me of Tagore himself, where the father is barred from meeting his daughter, let alone take her home, because he had failed to pay the dowry to the in-laws who happened to be rich zamindars. And when the father sells off his house and deprives his family just to pay off the dowry and save his daughter from further agony at the in-laws place, it is Nirupama who stands up against her father’s wishes and forces him to go back home with the money. Nirupama knew if her in-laws got to know that she did not allow her father to pay off her dowry, she will be further tortured, yet she stood ground. That was her silent protest. “Ami ki kebol ekta taka r tholi, tomar meyer ki kono maryada nei” (Am I just a bagful of money? Don’t I have any respect), she asks her father. Yet when she dies due to a long fever, and complete negligence on part of the in-laws (they didn’t even call the doctor), the zamindar performs Nirupama’s last rites with great pomp and show. A woman who was given no love or respect when she was alive, and who through her silent death met an end was garlanded on her pyre. And the in-laws promptly found another wife for their son with an assurance of a bigger dowry. Again through death Nirupama ridicules this society and Tagore’s pen becomes mightier than a sword.

And those famous words from Jibito O Mrito “Kadambini moriya  proman korilo je shey morey nai’ (where Kadambini had to prove that she was not a ghost by literally drowning herself and finally dying). Tagore’s lines stating Kadambini had neither any place in this world, or in the other world, she is trapped between the two worlds and has nowhere to go. Isn’t that a challenge that we all women face? We belong nowhere. We tend to lose our identity struggling to perform the role of a doting mother, a responsible daughter, a perfect bride or an ever-smiling docile daughter-in-law and of course the sexy girlfriend. Just like Kadambini, we too are trapped in a net laid by the society’s expectations from a woman. Yet the woman is the second class citizen, she has to suffer, else she has to die to prove she was alive once. Tagore’s women bring out that desperation, their agony, distress, sufferings. And where the humans fail to understand the women, animals at least show friendships, like in Subha, the protagonist  is a deaf and mute girl. She is married off and when the husband realises she cannot speak, he marries again. Subha is left nowhere. While in her village she could communicate with her animal friends who seemed to understand her, played with her, gave her solace. But once taken away from her animal friends into the ‘man’s world’, she is trapped.

Or Dakshayani of Taraprasanner Kirti is loved by her husband and she adores her husband and is proud that he is learned though he earns nothing. But even a woman who is proud of a poor yet learned husband feels guilty when she keeps on producing daughters instead of sons. Many modern women married to rich households still can be compared to Dakshayani. I have heard of designer babies where the sex of the child is altered, I have witnessed women going through repeated pregnancies for a son despite knowing her health can be at stake, I know of a woman who even asked me why I am not going for another child as ‘Ek ladka se kya hotha hai? Aur ek do ladka nahin hone se kya faida!” (One son means nothing, you  should try and produce atleast two more sons) Wish she could say produce a daughter.

Yes we are all trapped just like Tagore’s women were and even after more than a hundred years after he created his women, they are still relevant, and we shall probably find a Nirupama, a Dakshayani, a Kadambini amongst us. The exploitation of a woman is timeless, ageless and knows no boundary. She can rise up against the atrocities like Sarat Chandra’s heroines, and many do so, but how many?