On a summer morning in 1994, I was working in my Kalachuvadu office. The room has large windows, and from my desk I can clearly see the front gate. A large vehicle had pulled up. Several heads came into sight, mostly women with saris firmly covering their hair. They walked into the front yard in a group.
We were expecting them. I knew one of them was Salma. She was coming to visit my father, the writer Sundara Ramaswamy. My father ran an open house, so we were used to visitors, some announced but most of them unannounced, dropping in at all times of the day. Food would always be cooked in excess; there were guest rooms upstairs. A Tamil literary magazine once wrote, “Don’t waste your money booking a hotel room when you go to Nagercoil. Just go to Suraa’s home.”
As I watched, they all walked in, hesitantly. This was probably their first visit to a non-Muslim household. I could immediately pick out Salma—I had seen a photograph of hers earlier. She wore her sari slightly above her ankles, the way village women do, and seemed uncertain in her movements, hinting perhaps at her secluded life. But for most of us, she was the wonder woman we were waiting to meet.
We knew her story. She was from the Thuvarankurichi village. She had been forced to drop out of high school. Her mother, feigning grave illness, had extracted a “deathbed” promise that Salma would marry, and so she had been married off early and bore two sons. Salma loved literature, was a voracious reader, and had begun to write. My father found her poems promising. But her husband and in-laws were hostile to the very idea of her reading and writing. They found it subversive. Her parents didn’t support her either.
Her poems were critical of male domination, they revealed her alienation from the system she was forced to live in. Her husband had instinctively guessed that she would write against him, and this compounded her problems with him.
Written in the bathroom
At Kalachuvadu, we had seen her secret notebook of poems. I had been shocked to learn later that she wrote many of them in the bathroom. She had to write in secret and hide the notebook from her husband.
We published her poetry under the pen name she had picked, Salma. Her poems immediately drew the attention of readers and critics. We got several queries about her, but we kept her identity secret. Salma came under fire from the guardians of Tamil culture and Islamic fundamentalists, who guessed that she was Muslim. But equally, her work began to be widely acknowledged as having pioneered a new genre of women’s poetry in Tamil, inspiring others to write boldly about their bodies and sexuality.
Several of her works were translated into English and published in Indian Literature, a Sahitya Akademi journal, and later in Hindi as well. Since her contact address, for obvious reasons, was Kalachuvadu, I was the first to read the letters that fans sent, from Orissa to Kashmir. I would read them out to her on our occasional phone calls and I could sense that she drank them in thirstily. Her writing and these endorsements became the reason for her existence.
In 1998, Kalachuvadu Publications decided to launch four books in Chennai, and Salma decided to attend the event, travelling under the guise of needing medical treatment. It was her first literary event. Her mother was a hesitant accomplice in her escapade—to travel alone was unthinkable!
First steps outside
One day, a few of us invited her to a restaurant nearby. She glanced at her mother, then, receiving a silent message, came with us. As we walked, it was obvious she had trouble negotiating the city’s crowded pavements and roads. In the restaurant, it was a sight to watch her eat a dosa. Another first! We teased her but she enjoyed every bit of it; to this day she retains that self-deprecation and humour.
A few weeks later, Salma attended another meet in Madurai, not far from her village, again disguising it as a medical visit. Already a minor star, she was invited to say a few words. When Salma walked up to the stage—another first for her—she stood for a few minutes before the microphone, trying to speak, then slowly walked back without managing to utter a word.
In 2000, Kalachuvadu co-organised a World Tamil Conference in Chennai. Salma spent three days there, meeting writers from across the globe. The day before the conference, when we released her first poetry collection, Salma refused to go on stage, afraid that if the Tamil press ran a photograph of the event, it might result in an uproar in her village and family.
But, despite these constraints, Salma was beginning to assert herself as a writer. And when a friend gifted her some long notebooks, she started writing a novel in 2000. Although she finished it in 2001, she was afraid to give it to me for publication, because she anticipated a backlash from the community and her family.
Then, something unexpected happened. Panchayat Raj elections came up in 2001, and Salma’s village panchayat was reserved for women that year. Her husband, who had been hoping to contest, was forced to ask Salma to contest instead. She agreed.
The chains began to loosen. From keeping her prisoner indoors, her family now persuaded her to go out to gather votes. Her posters were put up everywhere. She addressed public meetings. Her writer image was now promoted, since it helped her campaign. The Tamil and English media highlighted the Muslim woman poet who was running for election. Salma easily won.
The swift change in her status changed equations at home too. Salma now wrote and published openly. She could receive magazines and letters at home. She was now ready to publish her novel. Handwritten in several notebooks, Salma refused to post them to me, afraid they might get lost. I finally had to send someone to her village to fetch the notebooks. In various sizes, with loose leaves pinned to them, the notebooks were scribbled full in her childlike handwriting. There were spelling and grammar errors, a pitiful reminder of her incomplete schooling. But despite this, as I read it I was fascinated by the story that emerged, of the life of Muslim women in a Tamil village.
The novel was published in 2004 in Chennai. Urvashi Butalia of Zubaan called me almost immediately for the publishing rights in English.
Now, Salma was a bigger public personality, and her actions came under greater scrutiny by her community. A Muslim women travelling alone was unheard of in her village, and when Salma attended conferences in Delhi, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, it created a furore. When she appeared on television with uncovered head, there was criticism. Provocative lines from her poems were pulled out of context and put up on posters.
Being an atheist
Sections of her novel were critical of the Muslim leadership, and the religious hierarchy was deeply provoked. Salma had to pay a heavy price—emotionally, socially and politically. Muslim magazines published scathing attacks on her. Kalachuvadu was attacked for publishing her novel. That a Muslim girl has a relationship with a Hindu boy in the novel continues to infuriate religious bigots to this day. A Muslim magazine featured Salma on its cover with a scathing critique of her Facebook page where she identifies herself as ‘atheist’ under ‘Faith’. It censures her novel for having Muslim women in extramarital relationships with Hindu men.
No reference is ever made to the fact that her novel has a Muslim man in relationship with a Hindu/ Dalit women. It’s not the sexuality, but the politics of the sexuality that infuriates her critics. Her scathing criticism of male domination and the religious oppression of women adds fuel to the fire. Salma has been branded the Tamil Taslima Nasreen. Only, Salma has taken care not to question the basic tenets of Islam, so religious extremists and clergymen have been unable to push beyond a point.
As her tenure as Panchayat president neared its end, her family encouraged her to join the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). With assembly elections due in 2006, Salma resigned as Panchayat president and contested the Thuvarankurichi assembly seat, a traditional stronghold of the AIADMK. She lost by a few thousand votes, but the party recognised her potential and made her chairperson of the social welfare board.
Yet, while she is DMK’s most well-known writer, the party has strangely refrained from honouring her the way it has other party writers such as Vairamuthu, Thamizhachi Thangapandian, Imayam or Manushyaputhiran. Meanwhile, Salma has fought for women’s rights and transgender issues, but her career as a writer has suffered. She can’t be outspoken on social issues, since she has to factor in the official position. One is increasingly apprehensive that party politics might succeed where her family failed—in diluting a strong and original literary voice.
The writer is publisher of Kalachuvadu Publications.
