An activist life in fiction

Mahasweta Devi drew imaginary landscapes to narrate stories of the oppressed and the marginalised.

Great fiction, once come in your ken never leaves you. If I were asked to pack up and carry only one story with me to an imaginary world, I would cling to Pterodactyl of Mahasweta Devi. It transformed my dreams.

Pterodactyl is a mythical bird, ominous to the sceptic and epiphenic to the believer. Mahasweta brought it in to depict the truth about adivasis, to lash out at our failure to understand them. Gayatri Spivak translated it from Bangla and, together with Draupadi put it in a collection called Imaginary Maps.

When I first met Mahasweta, she was 72 and already a living legend. A Jnanpith, a Magsaysay and a formidable global fame as writer to her credit, she was already more of an idea than a person. Every feminist, political activist, aspiring writer swore by her. Therefore, when she agreed to visit Baroda, I had expected to meet with a difficult person, a female Che or a contemporary Laxmibai.

She was to come for the Verrier Elwin lecture of Bhasha Centre. When I asked where she would like to be put up, she replied with a single word, “home”. Her flight was to arrive at Ahmedabad. I requested Tridip Suhrud to receive her, feed her and bring her to Baroda. The flight was delayed. Tridip called me from Ahmedabad to say that she refused to eat. I knew that by the time they get to Baroda all restaurants will be closed. My wife Surekha was away in the US on a research assignment. I was not enough of a cook to feed a legend.

I kept calling friends who had already arrived in Baroda to listen to Mahasweta the next day. There was the folklorist Bhagwandas Patel, the rebel writer Laxman Gaikwad, historian Ajay Dandekar and poet Kanji Patel. Out of our collective courage, we put together some oranges, boiled eggs and peanuts as a possible meal. I knew how disastrous the results would be.

Close to midnight, the guest arrived. Mahasweta stood at the entrance tentatively. Neighbours had gathered to have a glimpse of her. After an uncertain moment, she held my hands and said nothing. I was thinking of the meal that we had concocted for her. Not knowing how to put across the difficulty, I asked, “Do you have teeth?” She laughed. That was a sterling laugh. She replied, quite unexpectedly in Hindi, “kuchh bhi de do, I don’t care.” She stepped inside and sat with all of us. The neighbours brought some daal and rice. I made tea. She asked for more. We talked of adivasis, struggles and her stories. By the time, the dawn broke out, we had become friends for life. What energy she exuded!

That was in March 1998. Over the next 15 years, she made Baroda her second home. Her visits stopped when, beyond 85, her body rejected the idea of long journeys. During those years, we travelled together to villages, towns and cities, meeting nomadic communities and listening to them. We travelled to all parts of India, in trains, cars, buses and planes. As part of our campaign for the rights of the de-notified tribes, we met prime ministers, home ministers, judges, police officers.

This was when I was trying to create the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh. Mahasweta developed a great affection for the campus. There, in the old caves, she saw the pre-historic rock paintings for the first time and was surprised to see how the images resembled her depiction of the pterodactyl. We went to rivers, where she swam. We went to relief camps after the earthquake, after the riots. We shared people’s grief, agony and anger.

She spent long spells in Baroda talking to Surekha and Bhupen Khakhar, the painter, for who she had developed a keen admiration. She sang old Hindi songs and in return Bhupen sang Gujarati bhajans. She talked to him about her stories. In response, he painted epiphenic elephants. She would talk to us about her mother, her time in Shantiniketan, her uneasy marriage and son Nabarun Bhattacharya, a poet, of whom she was mightily proud. When she was not in Baroda, she sent hand-written letters to me, copies of various petitions she had filed, copies of Bortika, the journal she used to edit, lists of things that she wanted Surekha to get for her. She became a mother, a sister and a daughter to us, found her home in our home.

The Adivasi Academy became for her the Shantiniketan of her childhood; my colleagues became her adopted children. She repeatedly said she wanted to live on as a tree there. We cried thinking of her affection for us. At the Jaipur Festival, she said that sleep under the majestic tree at Tejgadh would bring her eternal peace. Her pterodactyl! This is the most extraordinary of endings she created in her fiction!

The author, a cultural activist and literary critic, founded with Mahasweta Devi the Denotified & Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group, DNT-RAG

Source: Indian Express, 29-07-2016

Mahasweta Devi: The goddess of the downtrodden

Mahasweta Devi, one of the greatest littérateurs who fought for the downtrodden, believed in Marxist ideology and yet lent her undying spirit to the ouster of a 34-year-old Left regime from Bengal. On Thursday, she left a legacy that none can match.

South Asia’s most decorated author and social activist, Mahasweta Devi always felt embarrassed to talk about her Sahitya Akademi Award, Jnanpith Award, Ramon Magasasay Award, Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan. “It is not money or award but sincerity towards one’s mission, honesty and self-reliance that makes the difference,” she told HT in an interview a few years ago, as she looked out of her study window from the second floor of her modest three-storey house on Kasba Connector off EM Bypass.

Mahasweta Devi graduated from Visva Bharati, where she came in touch with Rabindranath Tagore. She said it was Tagore who taught her to be self-reliant, developed a taste for art and inspired her to write. She used to do a lot of homework before starting a novel. “For Jhansi Ki Rani, I consulted history books and several eminent historians. I did similar groundwork while writing Adhar Manik and Rudali. I believe in homework,” said the writer. A small, cluttered table with a precariously placed telephone, a bookrack and the divan comprised her study.

Associated with communist movement in her early life, Marxist thoughts influenced her writings and activism. Her father, Manish Ghatak, was a well-known poet and writer of Kallol Yug. Her paternal uncle was famous film director Ritwik Ghatak. Her maternal uncles were noted sculptor Sankha Chowdhury and Sachin Chowdhury, the founder-editor of Economic and Political Weekly of India.

Mahasweta Devi married well-known playwright Bijon Bhattacharya, who was a founder-father of the IPTA movement and writer of the historic play ‘Nabanna’ which presented a shocking picture of the Great Bengal Famine. Her son, famous writer Nabarun Bhattacharya, died on July 31, 2014 and left behind “I was influenced by Marxism but I am not into politics. I have never minced words to criticize the misdoings of the Left or the Right. I have struggled all my life and lived in rented houses, I built this house last year,” she told HT in 2012.a rich volume of work and a band of students and followers.

The devastating Bengal Famine of 1943 brought out the activist in Mahasweta Devi. Subsequently, the plight of tribals in Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh drew her closer to them. Soon, she became a champion for the cause of the Lodha and the Sabar tribes. “I was in tears to see the debt-bonded labour system imposed on tribals by the Palmau zamindars. My book `Dust on the Road’ tells the sad tale,” she said.

The writer was shocked to find people killing the Lodhas of Midnapore, Kheria Sabars of Purulia and Dhikaros of Birbhum just because the British Raj had declared them “criminal tribes.” The ghastly practice made Mahasweta Devi launch a relentless campaign to protect the tribes.

“My doors are always open for the tribals. We collect donations to work among them in Purulia. I believe one doesn’t need crores of rupees to do good work. Ford Foundation had offered funds but I refused. Today, with our meagre resources, we run 11 schools in Purulia,” said the writer.

Mahasweta Devi criticised the Left Front government for ignoring the tribals and forcibly acquiring farmland for corporate houses. “I criticised former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The Left had left us with a poor health and education system, bad urban and rural infrastructure, water crisis, inadequate irrigation and rampant deforestation.”

Mamata Banerjee, too, did not respond to her demand for welfare of the tribals, said Mahasweta, who at one point was very close to the chief minister.

As chairperson of the Bangla Academy, she refused to accept government interference in choosing candidates for the Vidyasagar Purashkar in 2012 and resigned. But this was not the only reason for her resignation. She said the Academy could have done useful work by promoting rich literature and encourage talents from districts and tribal areas. “Mamata misunderstood me. I am keen to work with her and help her,” she told HT.

Defending Mamata Banerjee, the author said she had great hopes for poriborton (change). “But one cannot not expect change overnight. It is not magic. I know Mamata is sincere and not corrupt. But she needs to take correct decisions and have good advisers,” said the writer.

Age could not rob Mahasweta Devi of her spirit and sense of humour. Feeble but alert, tottering in her room and speaking in a hushed voice, the writer, who in the last 44 years churned out 114 novels and 20 collection of short stories, told HT: “I will be writing another novel. Do you know, I conceived and finished writing Hazar Chaurasi Ki Maa in 60 hours.”

She said when Govind Nihalani was making Hazar Chaurasi Ki Maa, based on Naxalism, Jaya Bachchan came to meet her. And the author was astonished to know that someone was a complete vegetarian. “I can’t believe how can one eat bhindi for the whole life,” Mahasweta Devi said, mischievously hinting at Amitabh Bachchan.

A true incident in a Rajput zamindar family in Palmau, Bihar, inspired her to write Rudali. She could not believe when she saw the family of a local zamindar hiring wailers to mourn after his death. Rudali was made into a Bollywood film with Dimple Kapadia in the lead.

Age might had slowed down the prolific, grand old dame. But as long as she had a clear, thinking mind and a beating heart, she planned to keep on writing just like Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“I am in search of that man who is in the crowd. I am unable to catch him. But the day I do, I will complete my new novel.” Mahasweta Devi had said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 29-07-2016