“I have experienced the horror of insurgency in my pulse.” Axamiyâ Writer Arupa Patangia Kalita Speaks to Aruni Kashyap about Literature in the Times of Insurgency.
Aruni Kashyap: What do you think about recent trends in Assamese writing?
Arupa Patangia Kalita: The most important trend I have observed is that the current literary scenario in Assam is dominated by women writers who are unique and exceptional in their own ways -- Anamika Bora, Monika Devi, are some very young, talented writers. When I started writing, I had very few precursors and contemporaries, among them Nirupama Borgohain and Mamoni (Indira)Goswami.
The other important aspect of contemporary Assamese literature is that the new generation of Assamese writers is very talented and promising. They are portraying some very harsh realities intricately related with Assam in very daunting ways. Sanjib Pol Deka and Arup Kumar Nath are some of them, besides Anamika and Monika. In their stories, they have absorbed the traumatic, gruesome reality of the period and place we are living in, and have used their pen as protest. For instance, Arup Kumar Nath’s short story, “Koli Puran” captures the plight of a woman caught in a communal strife during the Assam Movement of the eighties -- the violence of the period has remained as a scar in the Assamese psyche. Stagnating governance, social order, and modern life is the location of Anamika (Bora)’s short story published in Natun Padatik, and titled “Jalaxay”. Narrated from the point of view of an unmarried woman, it articulates successfully how the only mode of emancipation left to a woman in our society is marriage. Since she is not married, she is systematically marginalized in the city. She is the representative of all Assamese women caught in a patriarchal society, with not enough choices to live on.
AK: Is that what troubles you the most -- the plight of women, and is that why they occupy a dominant space in your writings? Is that why your fictional works provide these oppressed and marginalized women the space and freedom that is denied them by society? All your women are progressive, they resist in their own small ways, but they always have an agency: be it Binapani and Tagar in Ayananta (Dawn), or the group of women in Phelani.
APK: Actually it is very simple: I’m a woman and hence I write about women in my society. If I were a black woman, I would have written about black women. It is as simple as that. In this uneven society that I belong to, I always feel I have a lot of say about women, as a woman. You know, the perspective vis a vis an incident changes the moment I take a gendered view of it. I have explored this in Singari Ghar also where I have written about women being used as ransom by the Ahom kings of Assam. In Pas Sotalor Kathakata (Conversations in the Backyard), I have explored the plight of the widows in the colonial period.
AK: You received the prestigious Basanti Devi Award given to the Best Assamese Woman Writer by the most prestigious literary body of Assam, the Asom Sahitya Sabha. But you rejected it.
APK: A text is a text, written by a woman or a man. I feel, after it is published and given away to the readers to judge, it should be considered merely as a text and judged according to its merit as a text, not on the basis of gender. Even men have written about woman sensitively, and some immortal female characters in literature have been created by male writers. When questions of merit and judgment come in, a writer should be treated as a writer, not as a male or female writer.
AK: Tell our readers a little about your recent novel, Phelani.
APK: Phelani covers the tumultuous period of Assam history from 1983 to 1998. It starts with the Assam movement that continued between 1979-1985, and ends with the plight of the people affected by the violent activities of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and other terrorist outfits of Assam with separatist tendencies. I have also looked at the role played by surrendered ULFA members, popularly known as the SULFAs. All these I have looked at through the eyes of a small group of about twenty women, and I have asked, through the story of their lives: if it is so, why it is so?
Women, thrown away like garbage, oppressed, marginalized, rejected, but in this state also, vibrantly asserting life. And I glorify their existence.
AK: Yes, they are not big names, famous people; they are women from the lower class, living from day to day. In the end you have used the metaphor of the kanhi grasses, you cut them, they grow again, you throw them away, they grow again… and they continue to live…
APK: Their existence is itself a struggle; just the fact that they have been able to survive amidst all this, is a rebellion in itself; and that is what I have portrayed. During the one-thousand-hour long bandh (general strike) called by Bodo militants, I have tried to depict what these women who live on daily wages do to earn their bread, to exist. One of the characters has accepted life with a sick husband, but she loses her mental balance unable to bear the trauma brought about by the stasis, the uncertainty, of a one-thousand-hour bandh. She starts behaving like a possessed person, and people think she has been visited by some divine power, probably Kali. Her losing her mental balance is not a solution, it is an escape route. What was the aim of the bandh really?
AK: Insurgency has changed the landscape of Assamese literature and a new genre almost of texts with this traumatic experience as the backdrop has emerged in recent years.
APK: True, but for all that, one cannot stay in an ivory tower and preach art for arts sake. A writer breathes the air, drinks the water that is polluted by the socio-political situation around her. She cannot overlook the surroundings for long. Writing can not be an airy existence; it has to have a strong foothold on the ground, and must portray what is on the ground. There are some good works that have been written in Assamese and reflecting upon insurgency.
AK: You have written a lot of fiction on the experience of insurgency. How has the phenomenon of insurgency influenced you and your writings?
APK: “Aai” (Mother) is one of the short stories depicting insurgency. A mentally retarded woman who took two days to recognize the dead body of her son is the protagonist. I have also written about the “secret killings”, another gruesome chapter in the history of counter-insurgency in Assam when relatives of insurgents were systematically killed, in the novella Arunimar Swadesh. For me, I cannot but reflect the reality that I have seen. I have experienced the horror of insurgency in my pulses. I have seen in front of my house with my own eyes the dead bodies of seven young boys, killed in an encounter between insurgents and the army, being taken away in bamboo biers. My own student was chased and shot dead by ULFA militants after he gave up arms and became a SULFA. I was present on the day when a hand-grenade was found in our college common room. Our college principal was shot dead in broad daylight. So I know, what words like insurgency, terrorism, and extortion mean. They have occupied a huge space in my writings and given it a new direction.
