Writer of rare conviction: Mahasweta Devi

To remember Mahasweta Devi is not to pay homage to someone who has left this world. To remember her means to reminisce the realistic life she had illustrated through 150 novels, 350 short stories and more than 1500 articles. Besides,  to remember her is to remember the history of the most turbulent political phases in India, too. It is also to remember the masses of Indian people who remain poor for generations -- exploited, tortured, dispossessed and displaced.

To remember her, thus, is to keep alive the memory of the complex social reality called India. And it is also to remember that she was the last of that generation who could remind you so many things at a time, by just a name. My attachment to Mahasweta Devi began in 2007 when I opened the book  Arshilata: Women's Fiction From India and Bangladesh, edited by Niaz Zaman, to see the translation of my story Mohamanja (translated by J Devika as Yellow Is The Colour Of Longing) along with Giribala of Mahasweta Devi. That was a great moment of pride for an upcoming writer. I wished I could meet her in person some day and talk about her life and her writing career.

And I did meet her in the next year itself. That was when she came to speak in the protest meeting at Moolampilli in Kochi, where people had been evicted forcefully to acquire land for the Vallarpadom road connectivity project.  But there was no scope to talk about her life or works then. To tell the truth, there was no scope even to talk. She sat that with the most serious face I have ever seen. There was not even a trace of smile. Her eyes were like stone walls, with no doors, no windows. She seemed to be getting angry with every question. I wondered  what made a woman of 85 that stone- like. 

May be she had a wounded and bleeding heart which made it impossible for her to smile heartily.  Maybe she had had enough of people who approach her and take advantage of her celebrity status. Maybe there was so much misery all around her. Hers was quite a life, from a writer's perspective. And she was proud of that too. When I asked her what made her interfere in the social issues, while many other writers prefer to keep silence, her reply was striking:  "What 'why'? I am like this. Ritwik Ghatak was my uncle. My dad Manish Ghatak was very progressive even in those days. We were brought up like that."

She seemed to be conscious of how fortunate she was to have born in that family, in that era, because she could see a number of shades of life even from her childhood. She had seen her bit of the Partition, enriched her personality in Santiniketan, witnessed the freedom struggle from a close quarter, took part in the  IPTA movement along with Bijan Bhattacharya, her first husband, got an opportunity to mingle with the youth as a college teacher, and  then with the tribal communities including Lodhars and Sabbars, as an activist.

A Bengali woman who knows her told me: "You know what, Mahasweta can't stand the middle class women like you and me but you should see how her face brightens up when Adivasi women come near." I was amused. Now I understood her better. And her answer to my question 'after working among the Adivasis all these years, what change have you brought in their lives?' became more clear. "Change? What change?" She furiously answered,  "the Adivasis need no change. Adivasis are more civilized than you and me. They value the earth. They value the rivers. They consider girls and boys equal. They don't have the dowry system. They value justice. I was extremely fortunate to have a chance to work among them. "

Maybe it is this conviction that makes her different from others who wrote on Adivasis and Dalits. She could write with love and awe. And as an author, she had mastered the craft of telling an ordinary story with extra ordinary power so that it transcends the regional barriers and attain a universal dimension. Thus to remember her is to relish the new horizons she created for Indian literature by drawing on the marginal lives unknown until then.

I met her again after three years, at Moolampilli where I was also a speaker. She had softened to me by then, though I remained the same middle class.   She was frail and weak.  I could see the body losing its strength with every meeting. I still remember when she asked for help to to use the toilet at the meeting place. The toilets were outside and she had to be lifted in a chair. She was holding my hands and I had to help her to use the toilet. It was then I saw her feet.

Something pierced my heart and I stood there in a painful trance. Her both feet were swollen up to the knees. She couldn't move, she couldn't sit.  I dared not to  look into her eyes fearing I would break down. When she got back to the stage I could see her as a new person. That evening I was also there when she checked into a room in a hotel in Kochi and I helped her to remove her socks before lying down. I touched her feet. She said she had lost sensation. The swelling had by then turned into blue. I too felt a numbness.  

I met her once again, in her Kolkata home. It was a small flat right on the road side and she was sitting in her chair by a table with many books. She was extremely weak and but cheerful when  I presented her a copy of my Yellow is The Colour of Longing for which she had wrote a blurb - 'Interesting, Challenging'. It was she who gave me the Bangla for vulture- Griddha-  which I used to name the hangman family in my novel Aaraachaar (Hangwoman, as tanslated by Devika).

It is true that I never got a chance to sit down and talk to her about her life and works. If I had, maybe she would have talked to me despite my middle class-dom.  But I didn't try to talk to her. There was no need for that.  The picture of her swollen feet had been etched in my memory for ever. She might be gone, but that picture of an 85-year-old lying down after a whole day's ordeal stretching her swollen feet  will remain. The pain and strain were palpable.  Will I have enough social commitment and perseverance to travel two thousand kilometers at an age of 85 with such swollen feet to talk for a few homeless people ?  I don't dare to promise.  

Mahasweta Devi is no more. To remember her is to keep alive the memory of men and events in literature, politics, history and people's struggles.   For me, it is also to pay tribute to a generation of strong women who have dared to risk their social and emotional security for achieving total freedom and equal citizenship.

(K R Meera is an award winning Malayalam writer)