|
MAHASWETA DEVI The Selected Works [fiction]
Rs 250.00 £
$
Rs 275.00 £
$
His
mother's gone, there's no one to cook hot rice when it's evening . . .
No one to say, 'Son, sit near my lap and eat.'
'Ma, from Dusk to Dawn' is the story of a woman from a nomadic tribe, catapulted by her circumstances into the role of a spiritual mother whose so-called mystical powers depend upon her denial of maternal affection towards her own son during daylight hours. 'Sindhubala' describes the anguish of a childless woman forced to play the role of a semi-divine healer called upon to save other people's offspring. 'Jamunabati's Mother' offers a stringent critique of a consumerist society indifferent to those on the margins and 'Giribala' presents the plight of a village woman whose daughters are trafficked by their own father, to pay for the house he dreams of building. The stories in this volume are linked by a common thread: the idea of the mother. They represent a range of responses to the concept of the maternal, exposing how the traditional deification of motherhood in India often conceals a collective exploitation and attempt to restrict women to their socially prescribed roles while denying them the right to articulate their individual needs and desires. At the same time, they also show the strategies evolved by women to survive and circumvent the repression inflicted on them by social norms. The maternal thus emerges as an ambivalent concept, with both restrictive and emancipatory potential.
Rs 275.00 £
$
'It
is these hoodlums and desperadoes, the derelicts and drifters of the Bengali
underworld as well as their political patrons and protectors in the police,
whom Mahasweta brings to life with her caustic pen in the pages of these
stories. As she pillories the respectable representatives of power in
our political system who sustain this underworld, she offers us the extraordinary
chance to watch a lifelike effigy of the bizarre structure of Indian democracy
burning in the background'-Sumanta Banerjee
Rs 250.00 £
$
'.
. . one day, Sharan arrived. His virile body, his golden hair, the look
that glowed in his pale eyes, intense, brooding-all of this threw her
into a turmoil. Subhadra fell madly in love.'
Rs 325.00
£ 12.95 $ 19.95
'First you mortgaged me to the Malik. I was in his grip for sixteen-eighteen years. No gold, no silver, ten rupees a month, and that piece of land, three bighas. Didn't let me marry Mohor; chased him off. Fell ill himself. Like a mother bird with her nest, I shielded him with both hands. Now I'm an old woman, in two years I'll be forty.' The Glory of Sri Sri Ganesh shows the lives of the underdogs-the Lachhimas, the Rukmanis, the Mohors and the Haroas-as a contrast to the lives of their all-powerful overlords-the Medinis and Ganeshes. Lachhima, whose leashed bitterness and anger of a lifetime against Medini and Ganesh is liberated at the end of the novel when Ganesh begs her to save his life, decides to save him, but on her own terms. The title of the work itself becomes a tool for subversion in this sprawling novel, which takes the reader through a multilayered narrative into the socio-economic malaise of post-independence rural India. Mahasweta Devi's corrosive humour and cryptic style are at their best as she takes on issues of agrarian land relations, inter-caste violence, so-called rural development and the position of women in rural India. Considered one of Mahasweta Devi's most important works, this novel, written in 1981, appeared shortly after her seminal Chotti Munda and His Arrow. The hope of liberation contained in Chotti Munda continues in this book. As the author says, Chotti Munda talked of the dream of the dispossessed tribals uniting in struggle with the equally marginalized low caste communities; while this novel shows how 'being landless and being born low caste is almost inevitably linked in India'. MAHASWETA DEVI is one of India's foremost writers. Her powerful, satiric fiction has won her recognition in the form of the Sahitya Akademi (1979), Jnanpith (1996) and Ramon Magsaysay (1996) awards, amongst several other literary honours. She was also awarded the Padmasree in 1986, for her activist work amongst dispossessed tribal communities. IPSITA CHANDA is a translator who also teaches Comparative Literature in Jadavpur University.
Rs 550
'I had but that one arrow,' says Chotti Munda, the hero of this epic tale. A 'magic' arrow that stood for the pride, the wisdom, the culture, of their society, a society threatened with inevitable disintegration as its traditional structures crumbled under the assault of 'national development'. The wide sweep of this important novel encompasses many layers. It ranges over decades in the life of Chotti-the central character--in which India moves from colonial rule to independence and then to the unrest of the 1970s. It probes and uncovers the complex web of social and economic exchange based on power relations. It traces the changes, some forced, some welcome, in the daily lives of a marginalized rural community. And at its core, it celebrates Chotti, legendary archer; wise and farsighted leader; proud role model to his younger brethren. Written in 1980, this novel is also remarkable for the manner in which it touches on vital issues that have, in subsequent decades, grown into matters of urgent social concern. It raises questions about the place of the tribal on the map of national identity, land rights and human rights, the 'museumization' of 'ethnic' cultures, and the justification of violent resistance as the last resort of a desperate people, amongst others.
Rs 275 £
9.95 $ 14.95
Four women --Dhouli, Shanichari, Josmina, Chinta--all from the most oppressed, marginalized segments of society. Whether it is Dhouli, the young Dusad woman who finds herself an outcast in her own village; Shanichari, the Oraon girl who is forced into working in the brick kilns outside Calcutta; Josmina, the Ho tribal who, with her husband, gets sucked into the racket of trade in cheap coolie labourl or Chinta, a Brahman widow whose caste is no protection against the harsh social strictures that force her into working as a part-time maid in Calcutta--the life stories of each of these women have one thing in common : the unending class, caste and gender exploitation which makes their lives a relentless struggle for survival. Mahasweta Devi's acute and perceptive pen brings them to life with a deep empathy and sensitivity which makes these women step out of the margins of society to live in her own minds, impressive in their quite courage and tenacity, their will to survive.
Rs
325 £ 12.95 $ 19.95
This charming, expansive novel set in sixteenth-century medieval Bengal draws on the life of the great medieval poet Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti, whose epic poem Abhayamanga4 better known as Chandimangal, records the socio-political history of the times. In the section of that epic called Byadhkhanda--the Book of the Hunter--he describes the lives of the hunter tribes, the Shabars, who lived in the forest and its environs. Mahasweta Devi explores the cultural values of the Shabars and how they cope with the slow erosion of their way of life, as more and more forest land gets cleared to make way for settlements. She uses the lives of two couples, the brahman Mukundaram and his wife, and the young Shabars, Phuli and Kalya, to capture the contrasting socio-cultural norms of rural society of the time. Mahasweta Devi acknowledges her debt to Mukundaram, 'who wrote about men and women, not gods and goddesses. The hunter tribes' refusal to cultivate and settle down, as described by him, is true of surviving forest tribes today. The villages and rivers mentioned by him still exist.' Price Rs 150 £
9.95 $ 14.95 A touching tale, filled with humour, delicacy and warmth about five
elderly women and the men in their lives; husbands, lovers, sons and friends; all living
in the margins of society, ageing, enduring, struggling to make two ends meet.
A warmly told historical tale of the charismatic peasant leader,
Titu, who led a revolt against the British in Bengal in 1830-31. Rs 175
£ 9.95 $ 14.95 A cluster of short fiction with a common motif: the breast, which becomes the means of a
harsh indictment of an exploitative social system.
The two stories in this collection- Murti and Mohanpurer Rupkatha- are poignant tales,
delicately drawn, yet ruthlessly bringing to the fore the indifference, apathy and
socio-economic oppression in which these women are forced to survive.
Written in 1973-74, this sensitive novel deals with the psychological trauma of a mother
who awakes one morning to the shattering news that her beloved son is lying dead in the
police morgue, reduced to a mere numeral, 1084. One of Mahasweta Devi's most widely read
works in Bengal, it is an exploration of the personal and the political, and also a
water-shed novel in terms of approach and content, language and style.
Rudali is a powerful short story by Mahasweta Devi. Revolving around the life of Sanichari,
a poor lowcaste woman, it is an ironic tale of exploitation, struggle and survival. In 1992,
it was adapted into a play by Usha Ganguli, a leading theatre director of Calcutta, and
instantly became one of the most acclaimed productions of its time. Both the short story
and the play are included in this volume.
This volume contains four of Mahasweta Devi's most powerful stories -Salt, Seeds, The Witch,
Little Ones- set in the Palamau district, the tribal-intensive region she has toured
extensively.
|
|
5 | | |
Dewana, Khoimala and Holy Banyan Tree
In
the Name of the Mother : four stories
Bait : Four Stories
Romtha
: The Selected Works of Mahasweta Devi
The Glory of Sri Sri Ganesh
Chotti Munda and his Arrow
The Book
of the Hunter
Titu
Mir
