Admist this lockdown domestic violence particularly violence upon women is becoming very common and Increasing leaps and bounds. Few day back I came in contact with two pieces of literature one is Tagore’s “Hungry Stones” and Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart – both of addresses the age old atrocities against women in a much different light.
In the first story Srijut who works as a cotton tax collector with the colonial master lodges at a place which used to be Mahmud II’s palace . There he comes in face to face with various Mysterious yet erotic incidents. He atlast hears the agonised cry of a phantasmal women asking him for help to escape from the palace. On later inquiry he finds out that the palace used to be a place of enjoyment and merriment where women were brutally tortured and sexually exploited.
The next story is about a girl Sumire who happens to be a aspiring writer and a lesbian who falls in love with Miu- a much older woman. One night Sumire suddenly disappears like “a smoke”. On the other hand the narrator hears of a incident where Miu very mysteriously locked herself in a giant wheel and saw herself having sex with aman he met few days ago through her flat’s widow which was visible from the giant wheel. After that incident all of her hair turned white and all her sexual urge vanished.
In the first story Tagore successful explores the age old oppression towards women. He also deconstructs and reconstructs history and in doing so breaks the notion of happy, opulent and satisfied Indian women. He dissect to the. gall beneath the smiling and shining faces of Indian women. one the other hand Sputnik Sweetheart written 97 years later focus in the disablity of the society to acknowledge the sexual and orientation and desires of women. Sumire’s vanishing and Miu’s white hair signifies both the things respectively. Both the authors creates a “other world” and ” in- between space” for their female characters.
The contemporary women can create this “other world” and “in – between spaces” by formulating a society devoid of patriarchal voice and authority. Then only a world will be created where all the genders will be open to love irrespective of their sexual orientation where everyone will say
“Let us go you and I
Where the evening is spread out against the sky”
