WRITING THE WOMAN'S LIFE:
(DALLAS BASED AUTHOR AND POET LOPAMUDRA BANERJEE'S THWARTED ESCAPE TOUCHED EVERY CHORD WITH MY OWN LIFE AS AN INDIAN WOMAN)
When I first met Lopamudra at her book launch, I thought her latest book Thwarted Escape was more about the journey of a middle class Bengali girl from the suburbs of Kolkata to the grand dreamworld of USA that became her adopted home. I was expecting something of a Jhumpa Lahiri kind of memoir. In fact, the author herself told me so, that she was trying to fathom how far one can go away from her ancestral roots. I thought thus the book is all about the self identity of a woman far away from her hometown.
But once I started reading (and I must say the poet in Lopamudra has expressed herself in every word she uses, like a lyrical melodrama) I realised the book is more about an Indian woman's journey and her experiences on her way right from childhood to adulthood through the so called shames of puberty. I viewed the book from an angle that I could relate to. Kolkata of the '80s and early '90s when we were all in school and the various characters of an extended families, convent schools, the yearning to be convent educated, the child molestation from within the family. It's like the author takes us on a journey of flourishing womanhood and never forgets to shout and tell this world as a woman we indeed had to fight our way through at every crossing of our growing up years.
She explores the Durga, Draupadi and Sita in every woman. For her "Goddess Durga or Mahamaya is the Supernova created by the omniscient, omnipotent male trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar. Sita and Draupadi, the two pillars of epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, fuelled in me the desire to enquire the essence of patriarchy." What strikes a chord with me is her curious mind since childhood and how she questions every step of even subtle challenges that a woman faces in her growing up years through her puberty, through her first crush, her school days, even slapped by her father for faking the report card grade. Yes, we have all lived it at one time or the other. That's why Thwarted Escape is so real and brings forth emotions, that every reader can relate to.
And yes, Lopamudra is bold enough to speak out at last through her words against child molestation, a subject that was usually a hush hush in those days. How she was molested by some from within the Bengali community she had grown up in as a child, on a Kali puja night. And the trauma that still haunts her. Even the way a dark complexioned woman is treated in the marriage market and how the author keeps her heart above all these mundane happenings in life she had to go through, just by seeping in he splendours of nature and her love for words. She calls it the 'pretty looking prison of my blossoming womanhood.' That's where the rebel in the woman gets expressed. Lopamudra is undoubtedly a rebel. She not only questions what goes on around her, but she also tries to criticise it in her own words, bringing down the age old traditions of the Indian society that primarily aimed at awarding the woman a second class citizenship. "The sunlight sits tight, over my skin, my face, my arms, preventing me from being the coy woman, the forsha or fair maid." A typical example of how a woman is weighed in the marriage market.
So rather than calling Thwarted Escape as just 'An Immigrant's Wayward Journey,' I would surely love to call it the Walking Woman's Tale, a woman who has crossed continents, walked miles and miles through roses and thorns and yet a woman's mind that still loves, still cries for the loss.
(DALLAS BASED AUTHOR AND POET LOPAMUDRA BANERJEE'S THWARTED ESCAPE TOUCHED EVERY CHORD WITH MY OWN LIFE AS AN INDIAN WOMAN)
But once I started reading (and I must say the poet in Lopamudra has expressed herself in every word she uses, like a lyrical melodrama) I realised the book is more about an Indian woman's journey and her experiences on her way right from childhood to adulthood through the so called shames of puberty. I viewed the book from an angle that I could relate to. Kolkata of the '80s and early '90s when we were all in school and the various characters of an extended families, convent schools, the yearning to be convent educated, the child molestation from within the family. It's like the author takes us on a journey of flourishing womanhood and never forgets to shout and tell this world as a woman we indeed had to fight our way through at every crossing of our growing up years.
She explores the Durga, Draupadi and Sita in every woman. For her "Goddess Durga or Mahamaya is the Supernova created by the omniscient, omnipotent male trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar. Sita and Draupadi, the two pillars of epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, fuelled in me the desire to enquire the essence of patriarchy." What strikes a chord with me is her curious mind since childhood and how she questions every step of even subtle challenges that a woman faces in her growing up years through her puberty, through her first crush, her school days, even slapped by her father for faking the report card grade. Yes, we have all lived it at one time or the other. That's why Thwarted Escape is so real and brings forth emotions, that every reader can relate to.
And yes, Lopamudra is bold enough to speak out at last through her words against child molestation, a subject that was usually a hush hush in those days. How she was molested by some from within the Bengali community she had grown up in as a child, on a Kali puja night. And the trauma that still haunts her. Even the way a dark complexioned woman is treated in the marriage market and how the author keeps her heart above all these mundane happenings in life she had to go through, just by seeping in he splendours of nature and her love for words. She calls it the 'pretty looking prison of my blossoming womanhood.' That's where the rebel in the woman gets expressed. Lopamudra is undoubtedly a rebel. She not only questions what goes on around her, but she also tries to criticise it in her own words, bringing down the age old traditions of the Indian society that primarily aimed at awarding the woman a second class citizenship. "The sunlight sits tight, over my skin, my face, my arms, preventing me from being the coy woman, the forsha or fair maid." A typical example of how a woman is weighed in the marriage market.
So rather than calling Thwarted Escape as just 'An Immigrant's Wayward Journey,' I would surely love to call it the Walking Woman's Tale, a woman who has crossed continents, walked miles and miles through roses and thorns and yet a woman's mind that still loves, still cries for the loss.
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