Sahityasetu

Abstract:

The self/other binary has facilitated engaging discussions in different disciplines including philosophical, anthropological, psychological, cultural, sociological and literary. From Hegel’s interrogation of the ‘other’ from the phenomenological perspective to Levinas’ ontological view of the ‘Infinite Other’ and Derrida’s ethical aspect of friendship, one can convincingly establish the fact that the consciousness of ‘other’ is the very condition for the emergence of an individual self. Although apparently ‘self’ and ‘other’ stand antithetical regulated by the politics of difference / exclusion, from the Hegelian perspective, they are relational, reciprocal and constitutive as well. Hegel maintains that self consciousness is the result born out of the dialectical interchange of sameness and otherness. In other sense, identity is the result of a never-ending flow uniting homogeneity as well as difference.

In the postcolonial context, self/other binary becomes a subject of increased attention against the backdrop of the crushed identity of the colonized ‘other’. The production of racist political policy together with biased cultural norms based on the colonizers reliance on differentiation and exclusionary ideology has vigorously been challenged by numerous postcolonial thinkers and critics including Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Franz Fanon, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and many more. The interrogation of self/other gets further momentum in the feminist discourse wherein woman is projected as the ‘other’ against the backdrop of patriarchal hegemony and the rituals of torture. In this connection, Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical analysis of the female alterity in The Second Sex (2010) and Kate Millet’s inquiry into the power-structured relationship in Sexual Politics (2000) vindicate the fact that the woman’s condition as well as position is strictly conditioned by the ideological apparatus of the oppressive patriarchy as a result of which, otherness becomes the hallmark of female identity. Following the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, Beauvoir maintains that the subjugation of women by the patriarchal forces gives rise to the condition of mastery and servitude. In view of the above theoretical musings, the present paper analyses Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry volume Temple (1989) with the aim to situate woman as the ‘other’ in the patriarchal ambiance.

Key Words: Self and Other, Patriarchy, Hegemony, Feminism, Jayanta Mahapatra

The interrogation of ‘other’ has been a topic of intellectual/philosophical mediation in different fields of enquiry and has gained momentum against the backdrop of Postcolonial Studies, Subaltern Studies, Cultural Studies and gender discourse. There is no denying the fact that the ‘self-other’ binary remains the fundamental principle against which identity is constructed and defined. The dialectical nature of self-identity, consciousness will try to maintain the polarity between self-sameness and difference and it is aptly vindicated by the philosophical reflections of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel who, in his The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) theorizes the concept of the ‘other’ through his idea of the master-slave dialectics. Hegel, in the chapter titled ‘Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness’ puts forward his ‘master-slave dialectics’/ ‘lordship-bondage dialectics’ through an encounter between the two self- consciousnesses in which ‘one’ masters the ‘other’. The conflict between master and slave is one in which the historical themes of dominance and obedience, dependence and independence are philosophically conceptualized. He views that the solipsistic ‘I’ has a self-consciousness which is confronted by an encounter with another ‘I’. Through this profound confrontation, the individual subject becomes conscious of his/her existence as an object in the consciousness of other individual. And out of fear and anxiety, the objectified ‘other’ is circumstantially compelled to submit to the subject/dominant self which further leads the ‘other’ to the state of subservience/servitude. Hegel observes: “on approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby subfolded that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other” (111).

Hegel’s interrogation of the two consciousnesses in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1978) establishes the fact that the essence of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is not fixed, rather an ongoing process of becoming. Hegel perceives life as an irrevocably dialectical process in which consciousness remains affected by the contradictory forces. Due to inherent tension in the contradictory forces, the construction/ reconstruction of self/other binary cannot be conceived as a substantial entity, endowed with a fixed identity. The process behind the construction of a particular self consciousness is like “a movement” which undergoes the stages of confrontation, recognition and acceptance. The two fold human relationship manifested through the ‘Master-Slave Dialectics’ determines the concepts of ‘domination’, ‘subjugation’ and ‘resistance’ that eventually leads to the attainment of self consciousness. In the process of mutual interaction, one self continuously struggles and negotiates with the other so as to draw recognition. As the ‘master’ has the power and controlling authority to subjugate the ‘other’, the slave finds no other option except to surrender to the master. The submission of the slave to the master can be the thesis part which is followed by the antithesis in which the slave develops and exhibits the courage to confront the power-politics of the master. As the slave vigorously intends to get due recognition from the master, he negates the authoritative role of the master with the revolutionary spirit so as to dismantle the hegemonic structure. Finally, in the last phase of synthesis, both the master and slave become self-conscious of each other's dependency for smooth survival. Hegel’s theorization aptly demonstrates the fact that the construction of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is a process rather than a product characterised by constant crisis and negotiation.

Viewed from the Hegelian perspective, the subject-object formation and reformation become a continuous process of mediation between the ‘self’ and ‘other’. The conflicting relationship between the ‘self’ and ‘other’ is further problematized by Hegel in “Philosophy of Mind/Spirit”, the third part of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), wherein he observes the tremendous difference between ‘I’ and ‘the infinite variety of the world’ which ‘has not yet reached a genuine mediation’ (166). In other words, the dichotomy between ‘I’ and the ‘the world’ suggests the tremendous amount of difference/ distance which galvanizes antagonism and conflict in relationships bereft of negotiation, coordination and understanding. Such philosophical musings of Hegel have not only influenced the Marxist binary between bourgeois and proletariat, but also shaped the postcolonial thinking which is firmly based on the binaries like master/slave, civilized/savage, ignorant/enlightened and white/black. For instance, drawing upon Hegel’s master-slave dialectics, Frantz Fanon in his Black Skin, White Masks (1952) problematizes the effects of colonial hegemony and racial policies of the white masters on the Negroes. To Fanon, the white men’s oppressive rituals of otherization, exploitation and marginalization of the Black on the grounds of their colour, culture and language have intensified the dichotomy between the colonizer and the colonized thereby vindicating the superiority of the Eurocentric sensibility characterized by the progression of civilization, religious and intellectual refinement and rational and scientific temperament. Like Hegel’s ‘dominated self’ which is helplessly reduced to servitude and then followed by recognition and acceptance through resistance, Fanon’s Black slave strives hard to wear the white mask so as to resist with a desire to replace the dominant master (172). This clearly vindicates Fanon’s ideological belief that the master-slave relationship can be dismantled only through voice, conflict and resistance.

The interplay between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is also evident in the philosophical works of Jacques Lacan and Jean-Paul Sartre, wherein they postulate that through the gaze of the ‘other’ the philosophical subject becomes an object or ‘other’. In Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1966), Jean-Paul Sartre conceptualizes ‘self’ in relation to its ‘alterity’. Further, Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1969) is critical about the ontological view of the ‘Infinite Other’ which is indicative of the hegemonic outlook of the imperialists and colonial masters (29). He deprecates the notion of totality- one that curtails the freedom of the other in the empirical sense of the term. According to him, infinity is always propagated, perceived and appreciated by a singularity (self) which contains the infinitude within itself. The idea of infinity is certainly inclusive of a myriad of ‘others’. Further, he purports that the responsibility for the other is inescapable and mandatory for the self, which can also bring the subject close to divinity. In Alterity and Transcendence, Levinas comments: “In the relation to the other, the other appears to me as one to whom I owe something, toward whom I have a responsibility ...” (101). The unquestionable and primary obligation of the self to the other is also highlighted in his Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-other (1991) wherein Levinas theorizes the concept called ‘ethical self’. Levinasian philosophy is essentially the ethical one in which ethics arises from the presence of conceptual infinity within the human situation wherein the discourse between ‘I’ and the ‘other’ becomes self reflective.

Levinasian conceptualization of the ethical encounter of the ‘self’ with the ‘other’ can be correlated with Jacques Derrida’s ‘ethics of the ear’ that refers to the voice of the other. Derrida in The Politics of Friendship (1997) holds that the ‘self’ has an obligation to honour the voice of the other in order to replace the totalitarian outlook of language and culture by a democratic one (22). Through the apostrophe “O my friends, there is no friend” Derrida signifies the death of friendship precisely because there lacks harmony and reciprocal relationship. According to Derrida, for friendship to sustain itself it needs to exhibit “its responsibility, the obligation to answer, the responsibility in calling as much as in responding to the call...” (39). The intimacy of friendship, Derrida believes, lies in the sensation of recognizing oneself in the eyes of another. The chapter titled “This Mad ‘Truth’: The Just Name of Friendship” in The Politics of Friendship conceptualizes ‘good friendship’ based on truth, freedom and equality: “It demands a certain rupture in reciprocity or equality” (62). Derrida’s interrogation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through the metaphor called ‘friendship’ remains more ethical, responsive and reciprocal. Unlike the theorizations of ‘self’ and ‘other’ made by Levinas and Derrida wherein ethical aspect of relationship predominates thereby lacking any scope for resistance or revolutionary readjustment leading to the liberation of the subjugated, it is compensated by another German philosopher Karl Marx who, in his The Communist Manifesto (1848), offers an elaboration of history in terms of perpetual class struggle ending in the victory of the proletariats over the bourgeois or vice versa (65).

The concept of ‘other’ has been a topic of ardent discussion in feminist discourse. Hegel’s interrogation of ‘self-other’ remains inspirational to many feminist thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s seminar text The Second Sex (2010) explicitly reflects her intense engagement with Hegelian philosophy wherein she problematizes the concept of female alterity. Her provocative declaration, “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute- she is the Other'' encapsulates the otherness of female identity. To be ‘other’ necessarily vindicates the existence of a non-subject, deprived of power, freedom and individuality. She argues that the self/other dichotomy in general and the male/female binary in particular are fundamental to the Western thought and in this regard, she asserts: “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought” (44). In fact, Beauvoir provides crucial insight into the politics of patriarchy in which man discursive constructs woman as his binary opposite thereby compelling her to be “incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential” (44). Further, she asserts that humanity is essentially ‘male’ centric as a result of which, “man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him” (44). Her claim that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (295) endorses the distinction between sex as the biological aspect of the female body, and gender as the cultural meaning gradually acquired by that sexed body. That woman is historically colonised through the cultural stereotypes attached with her gender role is aptly vindicated by Beauvoir and it gets further impetus through the theorization of Kate Millet in her classic feminist text Sexual Politics (2000). Through sexual politics she critiques the “power-structured relationship” in which “sex is a status category with political implications” (23-24). As the very essence of politics is power, sexual politics is essentially the politics governed by patriarchal ideology and male hegemony. In this regard, Millet observes, “sexual dominion obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power” (25). As the ideological apparatus of patriarchy is deeply embedded in the institutional practices, gender-based otherization becomes an established phenomenon. Because of the cultural intervention, female subjectivity and the internal dynamics of a woman are often shaped by the negative process of cultural ‘othering’ and in this regard, Judith Butler’s performative theory of gender and sexuality stands significant as Butler conceptualizes gender as a performative act.

There is no denying the fact that the patriarchal dominance intersects with other aspects such as class, caste, race, colour and religion as a result of which, female otherization remains many-folded. In this regard, while championing the cause of Black women, Carole Boyce Davies maintains that like a colonized subject, women have also been otherized in terms of ‘double colonization’ by the colonial power on the one hand and by patriarchy on the other. The historical experience of the disempowered non-white women under the colonial-patriarchal forces of the Third World has rightly been exposed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who observes the limitation of the Western feminism. According to Spivak, the context-specific female conditions, histories and their struggles are never addressed by the Western feminism. In her deconstructive reading of Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Breast Giver’ in her seminal essay “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Stanadayini’”, Spivak aptly vindicates the fact that the localized female experiences cannot be measured by the established canons of the Western feminism. Arguing on the importance of cultural differences in the context of women’s experiences, she puts emphasis on the retrieval and recognition of disempowered indigenous women so as to unmask the historic, social and material conditions under which they are constructed as the ‘other’.

Against the background of the dynamics of power and hegemonization of the dominant over the dominated, the ‘other’ also develops the spirit of resistance gradually and such counter-hegemonic resistance has brilliantly been theorized by Michel Foucault according to whom, “where there is power, there is resistance” (The History of Sexuality 95). Further, bell hooks, while stressing the interplay between margin and centre, suggests that oppression gets transformed into resistance in the hands of the ‘other’ thereby offering new radical perspectives, new sites of imagination and creativity. According to hooks, margin becomes the “space of radical openness” (Yearning 145-53) which stands similar to Bhabha’s concept of ‘Third Space’ and Edward Soja’s ‘trialectics of spatiality’. While foregrounding “hidden transcripts” and “everyday resistance” in Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, James Scott introduces far more ordinary and indirect strategies of opposition in everyday acts which stand sharply different from the organized collective mobilization. Unlike collective resistance, everyday acts of resistance remain mostly at the individual level which encompasses ‘foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage’ respectively (Weapons of the Weak xvi). Scott’s concept of ‘everyday resistance’ relates to human opposition to various forms of power and dominance in a myriad of different contexts. Keeping in view the aforesaid problematization, the present paper attempts to analyse Jayanta Mahapatra’s Temple (1989) from the standpoint of female otherization.

Mahapatra has carved a niche in the realm of Indian poetry written in English in the post-independent era. As a powerful ‘new poet’, he stands unparalleled for his wonderful observation of and critical insight into the contemporary socio-cultural landscape of India. Acute awareness of the social disparity, casteism, deprivation, hunger, untouchability, dispensation of justice on the basis of class, caste and gender and the resulting dissatisfaction and anger etc. have forced Mahapatra to situate the unheard voice of the ‘others’ in his poetic creations. More significantly, the otherization of females constitutes his poetic canvas and it is well testified by the volume titled Temple (1989). It remains one of the classic creations of Mahapatra which exhibits his acute awareness of female subjectivity against the backdrop of the contemporary Indian situation. It is apt to note that Temple is the long saga of female victimization in which Mahapatra convincingly articulates the pain and suffering of Chelammal who progresses from her childhood to conjugal life and then to her motherhood in the midst of physical, psychological and spiritual plight together with indigence, illusion and disillusion. It is the unbearable plight of the common Indian woman which is used as the raw material for the construction of the three pillars of the Temple namely, ‘The Hall of Dancing’, ‘The Hall of Offering’ and ‘Sanctum Sanctorum: The Shine’. Interestingly, these three pillars of the Temple correspond to the three important stages of a woman’s life- girlwood, marriage and motherhood and these three stages of her life get a befitting poetic representation through the cursed life of Chelammal who is poignantly introduced in the prologue to the volume.

The prologue to the Temple contains the news item of an octogenarian couple belonging to the weaver community Ramanujam (85) and Chelammal (80) who are believed to have committed suicide because of poverty and loneliness. The whole volume is a painful account of Chelammal’s body and mind, her dream and reality together with her painful reflections on her past and present against the backdrop of poverty and tortuous patriarchal norms. Her journey from innocence to maturity passing through the different stages of her life including her impoverished childhood days, innocence and tenderness, sexual awareness, pre-marital rituals and her marriage is deeply intertwined with her strong sense of pain, shame and loneliness and it is aptly vindicated through the subtle interplay of her memory, dream, reality and illusion. The first part of the Temple encompasses all these aspects of Chelammal’s early life, narrated through her self-reflection, critical introspection and recollection. While recollecting her past life, she wonders if at all she would have “the promise of paradise”. In fact, Chelammal is the complicit victim of caste, class and gender like Mahasweta Devi’s Jeshoda in “Stanadayini”. Chelammal’s class-based otheroization is best reflected in the Temple wherein Mahapatra with the help of befitting poetic expressions highlights the gruesome impact of poverty on her body and mind. The expressions like “unadorned face”, “the misted eyes”, “vague dreams in the dust” and “the shrine of her bare bone” (‘The Hall of Dancing’ 57-60) are enough to suggest her rotten economic condition which plays an instrumental role in her otherization. To remain alive itself becomes a big challenge for her:

At the beginning I remember
I was fighting to stay alive,
the veil drawn over
the radiant nakedness of my body;
as I walked on
I saw my shadow walk beside,
watching it play its tricks on me.
(‘The Hall of Dancing’ 164-170)

Chelammal’s traumatic experience of ‘tricks’ played on her by her own shadow aptly foregrounds the politics of body which gets further aggravated by the flame of chronic poverty. Her attainment of puberty and her experience of poverty move side by side and it gets a brilliant poetic articulation when she recalls her ‘sweaty underfoot” in the “mud floor” and “the fireplace in which / an earthen rice pot simmered / over an impoverished flame” (‘The Hall of Dancing’ 171-175). Her poverty-stricken life gets further poetic expressions through “the mournful eye of a stone Buddha”, “shadows of silence”, “a river flowing backward”, “her body daring to take a breath”, “barrenness of her bone”, “tormented cry of eternal darkness” and “dreamless dawn of her fate”. Ironically, through pain and suffering Chelammal starts measuring her life and also making her “conscious of being alive” (‘The Hall of Dancing’ 21).

Together with poverty there remains the oppressive patriarchy as the agency for Chelammal’s otherization. In fact, Mahapatra brings to the fore the troubled psyche of Chelammal whose life is strictly conditioned by the tortuous patriarchal norms thereby forcing her to be in the midst of constant ignominy and denigration. In ‘The Hall of Offerings’ the poet aptly projects her traumatic experience of patriarchy through numerous poetic expressions like “feeling the ache of panic pass through her” (6), “sinking/ through the slime of dead leaves and rot” (8-9) and “her body daring to take breath” (12). Such expressions pertinently suggest the fact that woman is eternally entrapped by the “power structured relationship” in which she is no other than the object of patriarchal torture. Chelammal becomes the softest target of the patriarchal conspiracy and expressions like “Man of authority” and “Leader of the conspirators!” poignantly brings to the fore the oppressive presence of patriarchy wherein power is intermingled with endless conspiracies (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 249-251).

Chelammal’s powerless existence is not an unfortunate aberration but systematically entrenched in culture and society, powered and nourished by the patriarchal ideologies. She is conditioned to be powerless ‘other’ so as to preserve and glorify the presence of patriarchal hegemony and oppression. In other sense, the oppressive patriarchy survives only at the cost of the wretched life of Chelammal as a result of which, she is simply forced to be shrunk with fear: “they do not fear me / because I am in fear of them” (‘The Hall of Offerings 257-258). Her fear of the authoritative presence of the ruthless male power presupposes her hapless domestic as well as socio-cultural space in which she is completely bereft of love, compassion and support. In ‘The Hall of Offerings’, Mahapatra poignantly articulates:

There is no woman
who is not alone,
no woman who is sure
she has found her way
to her real purpose of life,

Excruciating loneliness remains all pervasive in Chelammal’s life who has realized the naked truth of her life that nobody stands by her: “Her father, brothers all move with the sadness of man. / They belong, but not to her” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 28). Loneliness together with the patriarchal rituals of torture and antipathy has pulled Chelammal into the sea of eternal darkness in which she finds no way to “set her grief free” and it is precisely the reason, why “living” for her simply stands “for nothing” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 43-50). That she is essentially a puppet in the hands of the patriarchal puppeteers is poignantly depicted through the image of fish caught in the drained terraces of the rice fields:

For like the fish spawned in rice fields:
wasn’t she fated to be caught
when the terraces were finally drained?
(‘The Hall of Offerings 55-57)

Needless to mention, Chelammal is compelled to be a living dead by the imperious forces of patriarchy which renders her a faceless and voiceless existence in all aspects of her life and in this connection, Mahapatra has succinctly compared Chelammal’s state of existence to “a faceless shell on a beach” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 99). Just like a shell lies on the sea shore without having a dignified identity, similar is the case with Chelammal whose domestic as well as socio-cultural identity has been systematically stigmatized, belittled and finally crushed by the wheels of patriarchy.

Ironically Chelammal’s cursed life stands opposite to the established Indian mythological notion of woman in which female is considered as the manifestation of the primordial cosmic energy/ ‘Shakti’, signifying the divine feminine energy of creation and liberation. However, Chelammal’s prolonged otherization has also constructed a fertile illusory space for her own redemption in spite of the fact that her redemption lies essentially in her death. Although in her life she fails to assert her individuality due to the overwhelming presence of tyrannical patriarchy, she wishes to challenge the institutionalized practices of patriarchy through crossing “her laxman-rekha” so as to proclaim her another self characterised by the spirit of resistance and aggression (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 25). Her revolutionary spirit to cross the culturally sanctioned “laxman-rekha” aptly testifies the fact that otherized space is also the space for liberation and it well justifies bell hooks’ theorization as well. Chelammal not only intends to situate herself in a world characterized by dignity and freedom but also hopes to see her children in an oppression free ambiance: “...hope opening beyond my life, my own, / in the lives of my children to come,” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 127-128). But unfortunately she has never been blessed with motherhood and her barrenness also contributes to her tortuous loneliness. Again it is the loneliness which drives her to the world of fantasy: “For only when you dream, reality begins” (‘Sanctum Sanctorum: The Shine’ 165).

The narrative of Chelammal life is shaped by the interplay between dream and reality. Being an ‘other’ she envisions her emancipation only through illusion and Mahapatra suggests the aspect through the metaphor “barren tree of illusions”. Her illusory spirit of resistance is predominantly shaped by the mythological characters and goddesses like ‘Chandi’ and ‘Kali’ so as to signify the belligerent nature of female energy. Like ‘Chandi’ and ‘Kali’, Chelammal intends to slay the evil doers as a ferocious avenger. In her illusion, she also invokes Nagabhusan Patnaik, the Naxalite leader who, according to her is the saviour of the poor and oppressed:

He has seen the anguish on our faces,
tried to lift us out of ourselves;
I seem to know him so well, without ever
seeing him. He could have been my son.
(‘The Hall of Offerings’ 236-239)

Although the dedicated efforts of Nagabhusan Patnaik towards the upliftment of the destitute boosts Chelammal’s morale, the reality hardly brings any change to the state of her own moth-eaten existence. Like Nagabhusan Patnaik, Chelammal is never set free to execute her plans. She endlessly remains behind the oppressive bar of patriarchy just like Nagabhusan Patnaik, who remains behind “the dark prison cell...and his mind forgets when he was last sure of himself” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 264-269). Although in her “autistic battles of dream”, Chelammal cherishes to fight against her tortuous life, in reality she moves towards her death. The precarious condition of Chelammal’s life is aptly vindicated by the image “empty sky of fear and hope” in which “Everything had been planned, yet it was no plan”, (‘Prologue’ 9). Chelammal’s servility in the hands of poverty and patriarchy remains so deep-rooted that very ironically her search for freedom simply paves the way “to chasten the vision of her own death” (‘The Hall of Offerings’ 84). Her agonised life culminating to painful death together with her illusory redemption establishes her own myth:

She builds the future myth
exploring death’s melting festival
to release the secret venom of her own redemption:
(‘Sanctum Sanctorum: The Shine’ 143-145)

The myth of Chelammal is essentially the myth of the ordinary women whose lives are crushed into pieces by the politics of patriarchy together with deprivation and poverty. Her myth fortifies the gruesome reality of the otherized live of a female wherein she is helplessly trapped eternally.

An exhaustive analysis of the Temple, done in the paper convincingly establishes the fact that in Mahapatra’s poetic vision ‘other’ occupies a stronghold. Further, the analysis satisfactorily brings to the fore that the otherization of females under the tragic burden the oppressive patriarchy gets brilliant articulation in the hands of Mahapatra. Together with the patriarchal power politics, there remains the curse of poverty and caste consciousness, all of which are instrumental in snatching away female voices and identity. With the help of images and symbols, myths and metaphors, rites and rituals Mahapatra pertinently projects the otherness of Chelammal. From the Hegelian perspective, Chelammal’s position is no better than a slave having no recognition, dignity and freedom. Although she remains bereft of power and autonomy, she exhibits her spirit of resistance through illusion and dream. Her revolting spirit against the patriarchal hegemony corresponds to the theoretical paradigm of bell hooks according to whom, marginality gives birth to an alternative space characterised by resistance, autonomy and freedom. Again, Chelammal’s resistance is much more like the everyday act of resistance theorized by James C. Scott. As Chelammal remains aware of her limitations against the backdrop of the all encompassing patriarchy, she adopts the strategy of taking revenge against the hegemonic forces of the society with the help of dream. That Mahapatra remains a master penetrator into the tormented psyche of the ‘other’ is well vindicated by this poetry volume. Finally, it is worthy to note that instead of superficial and mimetic representation of the ‘other’, the poet adopts the technique of critical realism so as to critique the issues of female identity, dominance, otherization and victimization in the contemporary Indian situation. In Mahapatra’s poetic treatment of these issues, one can also locate his strong humanitarian principle together with his vision to have an inclusive society based on equity, dignity and harmony.

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