Discrimination of Women in Jayanta Mahapatra’s Poetry

— Ms.I.M.Sheeba Alorcious

Abstract
From time immemorial women are considered as the weaker sex, food giver, pleasure maker; but
never has her status and dignity of being a woman respected in the society and at home. Though
woman has always been considered to be “part and parcel of life”, history is full of instances
where she is meted out injustice, deprived of her basic needs and fundamental rights. Mahapatra
expresses such discriminated women in his works. The women, in the world of Mahapatra live in
penury, hunger and starvation. They are the most important facet of the life of the Indian masses.
In Mahapatra’s work, the discriminated are the women who live a meaningless and futile life.
They struggle for their own identity and they survive amidst sorrows and hardships. They were
allowed to live in darkness and left with nothing expect vacuum filling their lives which is nothing
but a hell. This paper throws light on those deprived women through the eyes of Jayanta
Mahapatra.

Since time immemorial women are considered as toys in the hands of men.
Men use women as they like. As Gloucester says in “King Lear”, “As flies to
wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport”, the patriarchal
society treats women like flies and derive pleasure from the sufferings of its
counterpart. Man lays rules and regulations for women. He had laid a frontier for
her to wander under his supervision. A net is woven around her, in which she lays
stranded. Women are considered to be sacred, especially in country like India,
where women are treated as Goddesses and embodiment of Love and sacrifice.
Though the society pretends to respect women, history is full of instances where
she is meted out injustice and denied the basic necessities. This subject was a
greater concern and touched by many writers. One such notable writer is Jayanta
Mahapatra. He throws light on the status of women in Orissa and expresses the
plight of those ‘unvoiced beings’ in his poems. With heavy heart, he portrays the
women of his land, who were deprived of their rights to survive as human beings.
The present day life of Orissa together with its history, myth, and tradition of
his milieu along with contemporary Indian situations, life and living form the
bedrock of his poetry. Mahapatra's poetry is deep as the well springs of the human
spirit. Mahapatra is one of the most haunting of the Indian English poets with a
highly demanding poetic style. The nature of his poetic probe into the ceaseless
desire for human suffering especially women and becomes equally complex and
challenging in understanding his poetry.Orissa constitutes the most important
theme of his poetry. Besides this regional outlook, his poetry deals with human
relationships, social problems, love, sex, marriage, morality, human nature and so
on. Mahapatra is a poet of human relationship. This thematic range is wide enough
to prove Mahapatra a successful Indian poet writing in English.
 Mahapatra also focuses on the theme of indiscrimination of female sexin his
poetry. In most of his poems love is a feeling of disappointment.The contemporary
reality is a great concern for Mahapatra. He is unhappy to observe the
overwhelming decline of human values in his time.Mahapatra is deeply mortified
at the sufferings of women in India. He shows their plight and predicament through
multiple images.The sense of presenting the realities of woman’s life has always
been sensible and significant in the Indian scenario, so the pathetic conditions of
women form a part and parcel of his poetry.
Mahapatra’s ‘Hunger’ poem shows his distress over poverty and the
discrimination of women which are undoubtedly the greatest problem in our
country. He obviously feels much perturbed by poverty and destitution of the
Indian people. ‘Hunger’ is brimmed with an integrated, specific content, quite
exceptional in Mahapatra's canon.In ‘Hunger’ the fisherman makes an agreement
to offer his teenaged daughter as a sexual partner. Thefisherman’s low financial
status compels him to push his young daughter towards prostitution.
I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen…
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside… (“ Hunger”)
It is the poverty that has driven the fisherman take refuge in trailing his nets and
his nerves which indicate his disturbed psychological state of mind where an
unresolvable conflict is going on. The fisherman is restless, and nervous; perhaps it
is the first time that he is forced to sell his daughter.Hunger bears ambiguous
meaning – the hunger of the belly and the hunger of the sexual organ.In this poem
Mahapatra shows that love is mere carnal passion with an irresistible desire
forsexual gratification. Here it is not a spiritual bond but a business for transaction
of sexual pleasures. The love of a father for the daughter often tends to build up
feelings of securities from the male-dominated world. A daughter starts relying
onthe male species in general and conceptualises about all of them as her own
father’s world of love has madeher perceived:
…My daughter, she’s just turned fifteen…Feel her… ( “Hunger”)
A father might never visualise her daughter as an object of sexual
gratification, but for the patriarchal worldshe is nothing beyond a sexual object. In
a country like India, girlchild is forced negligence and subtle ignorance. This form
of feelings that the little girl confronts developin her an attitude to be engrossed
with her own self. Thus the primary stage of self-love evolves with
suchreciprocation from the society she grows.
 The conception of considering a prostitute woman as a part of the civic
society is a blasphemy. But Mahapatra gave them a transcended romantic identity.
The prostitutes have been considered as ostricised individuals, who cannot be a
part of the decent and cultured society. Mahapatra considers the prostitutesas a part
of the society and an identity iscreated by him as he deals with pain andagonizes
the less unfortunate ones inconfronting the cultured society.
His poem “The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street” seemed to deal with the
pains and agonies that these prostitutes suffer in their everyday life.In the poem a
customer enters the premises with a great hope of seeing pretty faces of the whores
as advertised on posters and public hoardings. But he experiences a sense of guilt
and shame and learns something more about the women as the whore asks him to
hurry up and finish his turn so that she may be able to go away for another
customer.Love does not have any existence in today’s life. Only burning passion is
involved. The woman becomes the victim of the commercial, passionate instinct of
exploitation.
“Women are acute sufferers of gender biasing. They are neglected and
marginalized at both cultural and biological levels. On the one hand their life is
restricted to house and kitchen, to look after the children, husband and others; on
the other hand they are only meant to quench the carnal crave of men. Basically it
is very painful that woman is compelled to be alone”. Shesuffers from loneliness,
not only a social one, but also an emotional loneliness.AWoman once married
loses her freedom. She is to put up with everything after becoming a wife. She
maintains a mechanical life.She has neither emotion nor any interest. Only a
fatigued, tired, exhausted and tasteless life is her world. As if she herself is a
mechanical creation, though a wife, but a prostitute on the other hand. She is
forbidden to see her face in the mirror.
The good wife
lies in my bed
through the long afternoon
dreaming still, unexhausted
by the deep roar of funeral pyres
In the darkened room
A woman can’t find her
Reflection in the mirror. (“A Missing Person“)
The role of a wife is enunciated withspeculative irony. The wife is denied the
freedom that she enjoyed before marriage. Shegets ignorance and nothing else. She
strives toovercome the physiological and psychological loneliness, which is the
only present condition and part of her life.She tries to decentralize her freedom just
with theexpectation of being loved and respected. But unfortunately she receives
neither of them but only imposed with dictums that the orthodox patriarchy wants
her to follow without any protest.
Mahapatra not only creates sympathy in the heart of the readers but also
highlights the brutality against female and how the female is victimized
andsexually assaulted .Indian society treats a rape victim differently .The raped
women lose social security besides facing the pain of physical violence .In this
world power operates on the weaker sections of any country and here also the
female is considered weaker and she is tortured.Mahapatra presents how ‘the rape
of a young girl’ took him aback:
Last year on the bend of the Debi River
The rape of young girl
Shocked us like ripe mangoes
Dropping from bare trees in winter. (“A Whiteness of
Bone” )
The raped women lose social security besides experiencing the pain of
physical violence. Usually, power operates on the weaker sections of any country,
and here also, the female body is tortured. The Poet is strongly reactive against the
social corruption inflicted upon women.
Before the morning paper comes I know
that Lata’s rapists and killers
have been set free, for that is how
it has always been.(“Life Signs”)
His poem “Learning from ourselves” instructs the readers to pay heed on the
heart breaking incident that are happening around the world ,brutality against
women are all around .
People in India consider that a widow is an outcast and her life becomes
more hazardous, painful andhumiliating. The social discriminations that she faces
regarding ritual participation and domesticinvolvement compels her to face many
psychological consequences like loneliness and deprivation causing emotional
disturbances. Their lives are full of pity. In India their very existence or seeing
their face earlyin the morning was considered a bad omen. In places of Orissa, she
is not allowed to have food with therest of the family members for she is
compelled to have vegetarian food without spices. In some cases, her life is made
such that she has no other sources for existence. She is made to suffer with social
and economic discriminations and begging is left as only option in her life to
sustain the struggling existence. It is so unfortunatethat widows are never allowed
to participate in these auspicious occasions and it is considered that their visibility
around the premises of these occasions can spoil its piousness.The poem evokes
pity on thepart of the readers.
Their austere eyes
 stare like those caught in the net. (“The Dawn at Puri”)
A simile is presented portraying thewidowed women’s plight to that of thefishes
caught in the net whose eyes starepatiently waiting to enter the temple.
Another injustice, very frequently meted out to women, is again in the
dominant men-made rules and rituals for a widow. For instance, a widower can
remarry but a widow can’t; a widower is allowed to attend a marriage or any
auspicious occasion in society but a widow can’t; a widower can wear all kinds of
colourful clothes whereas a widow is compelled to wear only white sarees and to
remain without make-up. Any such act, as practised and performed liberally by a
widower, is termed “immoral” for her. Thus, only a widow remains to tolerate
miserable and desolate life. What a gross inequality and injustice! The poet
explores this:
Silent white walls of forbearance sit up
And begin to climb the stairs
Of her long inauspicious loneliness. (“Shadow Space”)
Mahapatra uses this staunch reality to shift the poetic quest inward. He tries
to give voice to the deep, concealed emotions of the discriminated women because
he thinks that probably through the literature these agonies and pains can be given
the recognition it deserves. He not only pleads for the ostracized women but also
general women, exiled at home, finds herself portrayed in his poetry. Whether a
wife, a daughter, or a mother, the male-dominated world has set the limits of
existence for the women. He delineates them in all shapes and figures.Mahapatra
ironically refers to the way the Indian woman is not given a space or voice of her
own as an individual in her own right.He presents a meaningless and futile life of
women struggling for their own identity, bound to survive amidst sorrows and
difficulties, having nothing but darkness all around them, thus living like in a
hell.Mahapatra tries to deplore this state of Indian women in the poem “Dawn”:
There is a dawn which travels alone,
Without the effort of creation, without puzzle.
It stands simply, framed in the door, white in the air:
Waiting for what the world will only let her do. (“ Dawn” ).
These lines explain the status of discriminated women and their pathetic
conditions. They are socially discriminated and deprived of their mere rights to live
equally to their male counterparts. Mahapatra demonstrates the weal and woes of
women. It incorporates various vice and virtues associated with them. The
daughters of the dark walk through the lines of Jayanta Mahapatra and he couldn’t
deny their presence amidst him. He feels them and so voices out for the socially
discriminated, underprivileged and unnoticed women. Whether it is heard or
unheard, he still shouts to the world at large.
REFERENCES

PRIMARY SOURCE
1. Parthasarathy, R., (ed.), Ten Twentieth Century Poets. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999

SECONDARY SOURCES
2. Prasad, Madhusudan, '"Echoes of a Bruised Presence": Images of
Women in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatara’, World Literature Written
in English, 28.2, Autumn, 1988
3. Prasad, Madhusudan. ed. The Poetry of JayantaMahapatra: Some Critical
Considerations. New Delhi.
4. Web Source: http://drdineshpanwar.blogspot.in/unvoiced-sorrow-in-poetry-of-
jayanta.html dated 12.04.2013

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