Rebel with a pause: The rugged landscape of Mahadevi Verma

“I have bathed the darkness
Of many a night
And washed the redness
With the yellow vermillion of the evening…”

From Neehar (The Mist)

Almost like the multitude within oneself, the polyphony inside the mono-tone, Mahadevi Verma contains inside her a lot of rivers. Rivers that resonate with a shared womanhood (not feminism), with the 17th century Rani Chenamma, 12th century Akka Mahadevi, Aideo Handique (who was shunned after acting in Assam’s first film ‘Joymoti’), Chandraparabha Saikani raising her son as a single unwed mother, back in 1923, Rani Durgavati of the Garh Mandala who took on Akbar’s army in 1564 (defeated them thrice before losing the third battle), Pandita Ramabai (who married a man of a lower caste, became a widow, converted to Christianity and began a home for the widowed, homeless, orphans called Mukti Sadan), Tarabai Shinde, Bhandaru Acchamamba, Matangini Hazra, Kamala Das and of course the great Lal Ded.

These rivers create a huge amount of cross-currents and always raise questions. And many of us, living on the shores, ponder over those questions and then ignore it. By the time history repeats itself to haunt us, once more; those questions have turned into flashpoints that have altered a generation. Mostly for the worse. Mahadevi Verma always plunged headlong into this river, even if the tide was hostile and life in jeopardy.

Amongst the many Mahadevis on offer, the poet, essayist, the untiring freedom fighter, the organiser, the vice chancellor (Prayaag Mahila Vidyapeeth), the much awarded (Jnanpith-1982, Distinguished Fellow Sahitya Academi-1981, Padma Bhushan-1956, D-Lit by Benaras Hindu University), painter, memoir writer, child verse creator… are all well known. Yet, in that matrix of well-known and much feted achievements, there was a constant sense of rebellion. Never at ease, always edgy, constantly carving out new literary roadmaps, tirelessly organising meets to facilitate discussions (All India Women’s Poet -1930, bought a building in Allahabad to house the Sahityakar Sansad in 1945, All India Writer’s Meet and Festival of Literature in 1950 amongst others) and firmly challenging the agenda of both apparent and embedded patriarchy.

In today’s fragmented media and artistic landscapes, how would she have coped? The answer lies in her seminal work, ‘Shrinkhala Ki Kadiyan’ (1942) which was published by Bharti Bhandar in Allahabad and ran into six editions by the year 1949. It is in this book, I can see the kernel of Mahadevi Verma as a media activist and a fiery editor. Of course, not to mention her book of poems that embody a rare sense of spoken musicality called ‘Sandhya Geet’ (Evening Songs).

The real significance of Mahadevi’s work is how she talked about women’s issues with a rare candour. In a 1937 essay, she writes: Society is a collective of such individuals as have agreed to be ruled by some common regulations that allow for homogeneity and equality in their diverse conduct in order to publicly safeguard their personal interests…when a society gives a lot of amenities to some individuals without any contribution from them and keeps others deprived of even the essentials of life despite their hard labour, it can only be said to have strayed from its goal because such a situation can exist even in a savage state….”

After all these years, I am amazed by the clarity of these lines. Amazed more so because we are in a media dominated scenario of conflicting signals. As we continue to stare at the increasing emptiness-within-feeling which islands of urbanity (ranging from social networking to capital market highs and lows to becoming nothing better than a swipe card number logging the hours clocked as you troop in and saunter out of this glass façade corporate den), so precisely, successfully (and gleefully) creates from time to time, you cannot but help feeling that the end of the proverbial end of the barrel is near. But…the fight is not yet over.

Who aids us in this fight? As Mahadevi Verma writes in the same essay (quoted above): “Revolution is indeed the pioneer of each era, but its work is similar to stemming the flow of water to change its course from one direction to another. Therefore, first it has to erase what has been inscribed before, forget whatever has been learnt and uproot the settled…” Look at the phrase “uproot the settled,” therein lies the utter clarity with which Mahadevi reminds us the futility of the status quo approach.

Let me talk about this apocryphal legend. A group of devas (as opposed to asuras) were sleeping one night and a gargantuan monster came to attack them. One of them, who was semi-awake (osenstibly to protect the others), took on the giant monster. They fought bitterly. But the monster had the better of him. He was pulped, pasted, battered to submission. But was spared.

The next day, the monster dropped in to wish all of them well. The vanquished guy told the monster that he was looking small, as opposed to the night before.

The monster laughed and said that he was the same and maybe the vanquished man’s confidence about his own gaze, had changed. That’s the point as you keep negotiating all kinds of bullets all your life. And then you are facing the final volley of them.

And Mahadevi exclaims with you in ‘Oh, Mad World’ from the book ‘Neerja’ (The Lotus):

“Oh, mad world!
You are cold and covered with darkness,
Do not ask for the gift of burning…”

How do you bite the bullet? If the mainstream fires a bullet, aimed at your heart, then how do you survive?

Let’s assume that bullet has been fired. The last bullet called globalization aimed at muffling/standardizing/sponsoring voices. Let’s trace the trajectory of that (one space less)last bullet. The bullet travels across landscapes and timescapes and manages to kill 41 journalists (with confirmed motives), 5 media workers, 33 journalists (motives unconfirmed) in 2011. The same bullet ensured over the years that 888 journalists have been killed and 554 journalists murdered with impunity since 1992.

Parts of the bullet were lodged inside the heart of 649 journalists- in-exile, worldwide. Almost like a slow poison. The bullet growing inside the body… across frontiers… across multiple identities, nationalities and ad-hoc and permanent patriots.

And the mortal remains after the bullet trail evokes a sense of nostalgia, overwhelming sense of regret and an underwhelming sense of reality. Grim realities. Those who died in the genocide became victims and those who missed the globalization bus were faced with their own set of pet peeves. There is always a sense of feeling, as to why did I miss the bus. But, what was that bus and why should it have been there at all?

Is it the bus designed by the savage state? Mahadevi asks in Neehar:

“With a broken harp in my hand
And putting together the loose strings
With the heavy weight of pain
My lord, how can I come towards eternity?”

You cannot seek eternity, when your basic voice of protest disappears. When your act of dissent is branded as anti-state. Dissent, invariably, attracts a binary backlash. Co-opt or muffle the voice. Infact, both happens together.

We need to strive for the newness of that fringe, insistent, radical, dissenting voice. Yet, place the content in a mould where choices are laid out, not preached. Informed choices that shape our world view. Without that choice, our voices would be arrested. And that can neither be faith or fate.

As Mahadevi says in the poem ‘Reply’ from the book Neehar:

“Let your heart be absorbed in the worn out stars…..
But the play of my heart
will never cease;
I have found you in pain
And in you shall search for pain…”

Mahadevi Verma wipes her thick glass frame. A little bit of rain, tears and hope is stuck on it. Shorn of ornamental, melodramatic sentimentality, she walks out to fight another day. For another generation.