The shift in the woman's sensibilities as it is reflected in women's writing is distinct and important. Even when the discussion is just about literature, the issue doesn't limit itself to aesthetics; its expanding boundaries reform our understanding. To put it simply, a change in the woman's perspective means a transformation in her understanding of the world and her own self. This is a continuous process. To discover the woman in her essence and to then construct her being has been the preoccupation of several Kannada women writers. In this background, two writers who have found the woman's language and expression in an extraordinary and decisive manner are Vaidehi and Veena Shanteshwara. They walk different paths, yet, you encounter them in their zealous search for identity and authenticity. It is not important to pick the more significant; what is important is the intensity of their negotiations, its possibilities, its relevance and what they have been able to achieve.
In her works, Vaidehi builds the authenticity of the female consciousness from its intangible and instinctive locations. It appears that Vaidehi sets out to say that the ‘new woman' is ‘a revision of her own self'. Instead of saying that the woman's struggle has just begun, she says isn't this how it has always been for her? However, has she ever given up? Has her love of life ebbed away? Even in the face of hundreds of turbulences the woman never turns away from life; Vaidehi's stories discover with great love, care, pride and wonderment these latent energy sources in the woman. The male order is completely aware of the woman's sturdy spirit that is nature's gift to her, yet there is a complete refusal to accord legitimacy to her experience. Vaidehi, through her real and organic narrative style, records this violence without the anxiety of locking horns with patriarchy.
Narration of situations as they are, has earned Vaidehi her philosophic and aesthetic success, it has also placed her among Kannada's most important writers. Literate-illiterate, middle class-upper middle class, rural-urban — Vaidehi has captured the dilemmas, sufferings and strange predicaments of women belonging to different social strata. “Shakuntaleyodane Kaleda Aparaahna”, “Puttamatte mattu Mommagalu”, “Ondu Kalla Vruttaanta”, “Ammachchiyemba Nenapu”… one can list several stories. “Mallinatha Dhyana”, her collection of essays, is among Kannada's most important cultural texts. Having escaped the clutches of self-pity, Vaidehi constructs the woman's world which views itself with enormous dignity and love. The new woman in Vaidehi carries on a silent revolution as a result of the autonomy she has found in her inner world.
Stories are Veena Shanteshwara's chief mode of articulation. Her stories are seen as constructing a “counter world”; the woman's experiences as opposed to the man's. Veena is seen as someone who wholly embraces the philosophy of feminism. However, there are multiple entry points and possibilities to Veena's short stories and that in fact, has earned her a special place in the Kannada short story tradition. Veena examines experiences that are “unique to the woman” by locating them in the community and thereby seeks answers in the unexpected twists and turns of life, in its immense possibilities.
We can recognise two chief concerns in Veena's writings: an intense urge for “soul search” and exploring the routes to “liberation”. Her preoccupation with the ‘mind' is a constant in all phases of her writing. In the anger of her early stories, or in the pain of her later stories, Veena's soul searching mode plays a crucial role.
A first reading of Veena's stories gives you the impression that she seeks to unravel the woman's consciousness. Her stories were written at a time when women began to shed self pity and were moving away from a mindscape that believed a woman had to live in a state of ‘still' helplessness. Hence, in Veena's stories, you see the restless desire to capture the ups and downs of this paradigm shift in perspective. In fact, Veena's stories shocked women more than it shocked the man. Her stories strive with sincerity to build identities that transcend gender. As a result, her stories are not merely uncovering female sexuality. Veena examines relationships in the context of man versus woman, and also woman negotiating between her inner self and external reality.
Veena interrogates the most prominent institutions of society; marriage, she believes, is the chief agent of change in a woman's life. Liberation, which is also her major preoccupation, becomes the running thread in her short stories as well as criticism. Time and again, her characters interrogate age-old institutions and examine if defiance, violation and refusal are the routes to liberation. This search that began in her early story “Mullugalu” continues even in the recent ones. What is most important in this journey is that her notion of freedom itself has evolved. From radical, progressive feminism, she moves towards a more matured, complete understanding. One must refuse to read this change on the scale of victories and triumphs; neither should one see it as an alignment with institutions. They have to be understood in the background of difficulty of choice, accompanied by complexities and dilemmas.
As far as holistic women's narratives are concerned, Vaidehi and Veena are pioneers offering two significant, nuanced modes.
(Translated by Deepa Ganesh)
Vaidehi and Veena Shanteshwar have been conferred the Masti Award to be given away on June 11 in Bangalore.This is the next in our series on women who have walked unbeaten paths.
