The idea of a woman and her femininity has inspired poets and writers through time immemorial. However, more often than not, women find common mention in poetry as subjects of the male gaze. That changed for me last month.
I got the chance to be part of a women poets’ retreat in the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan (it was being held from 26-28 October), I was thrilled, to say the least.
The 19th century Tijara Fort, where the retreat was taking place, was as intriguing as its theme: mystic poetry from India and Spain. Mystical female poets, as I found out, had had a strong presence in both countries. While Spain had St Teresa of Avila, India had women like Lal Ded, Akka Mahadevi and Mira Bai that defied tradition.
Hearing the participant poets, Dr Anamika, Aurora Luque, Esther Syeim, Menchu Gutierrez, Nirupama Dutt and Nuria Barrios discuss women’s writing and narrating their own poems filled me with a greater appreciation for the feminine experience.
Poems That Spoke to Me
I wish I could reproduce all the lovely poems that I heard there, but alas! There’s a limit to the number of poems I can talk about. In the spirit of brevity and limited digital media engagement time, I will share some lines from a few poems that spoke to me.
This one’s called Wicked Woman, written by poetess Nirupama Dutt.
If you come to my city
you are bound to find
my name in the roster
of wicked women
This poem accurately describes how women are maligned in their respective cities, sometimes for only doing the things that the men so openly do. Haven’t we all, irrespective of which city we come from, become the victims of double standards?
Another poem, by the author, is called The Black Woman.
The dreams of a black woman are very fair and her truth pitch dark
She is born with a pain to which no colour can be assigned
The poet, who hails from Punjab, later told us of the prejudices she had to face as a ‘dark woman’. It’s funny how even though we live in a country where brown skin is predominant, so many Indian women are made to feel inadequate just because of their skin colour.
This one, titled Women, by poet Anamika beautifully describes how women are never read or understood well.
We were read
like the torn pages of children’s notebooks
made into cones to hold warm chanajorgaram
We were looked at
the way grumpily, you squint at your wristwatch
after the alarm goes off in the morning.
We were listened to
distractedly
the way film songs assail your ears
spilling from cheap cassettes on a crowded bus
One of the strongest themes was of the female body and female sexuality, and how they has been seen too often through only the male gaze, as passive and purely performative. As discussion wore on, women of Spain and India found that they were closely bound by their similar experiences of suppression. Here are a few takeaways from those illuminating conversations, useful for any woman:
1. To take ownership of your mind, you must take ownership of your own body.
All were in agreement that the female body has been used as a political tool, one that religion, the law of the land, and men have tried to control since forever. For women to have an independent mind and existence, it is imperative to wrest back control of their bodies, whether it is reproductive rights, or consent. Women in both countries have had to battle gender-related violence, and all this shared suffering was reflected in their poetry.
2. The mystical poets, the women remembered even today, were scorned at when they were alive. But they were undaunted by the criticism.
Our image of mysticism is often associated with saadhus and the colour saffron, but these women successfully subverted that stereotype and while living an ascetic life dedicated to bhakti, also produced mystical poetry that was remembered by generations to come. These women rejected the domestic life and expressed their love for the Divine in their songs. They were rebels who broke the rules hundreds of years ago. Nothing, not even poison in the case of Mira Bai could challenge their resolve. A few of them like Mira Bai and Akka Mahadevi came from difficult marriages, while Jana Bai was born in a family that was considered the lowest of castes in Maharasthra. But they never let their circumstances affect them and were defiant to pursue the Divine.
3. And lastly, no matter how different, womanhood all over the world, it is also similar in many respects.
Even though there were some participants that could not speak a common language like English, when the women, through translators, got down to discussing their ideas and their experiences of womanhood, I was amazed to find out the similarities in the narratives for women of both countries. Even though every poet had different perspectives to offer, like Esther Syeim had from her Khasi upbringing and Aurora had of her experiences growing as a woman in Spain, all had a common thread: of rebelling against societal conventions through the medium of words.