Ecstasy cut short
Jaswant Kaur

Kokila
by Surendra Kumar. Har-Anand Publications, New Delhi. Pages 136. Rs 250.

WOMAN is generally considered the "woe of man", to be maltreated by him in every aspect of life. From the day she is born till she is married off, she is a "burden on the family". After marriage, she is a slave to her husband and his family.

If she is a workingwoman and outwits her colleagues, she is termed "aggressive" and "unwomanly". She is suppressed, tortured and burnt alive for want of dowry. She has accepted this as part of life. If she revolts, no one listens to her.

Many centuries before, woman was treated with respect and considered a beautiful representative of nature. She was named Durga—the embodiment of strength and power, Lakshmi—the bestower of wealth, and Saraswati—the source of knowledge.

There are no male equivalents in mythology, yet she is treated with contempt. No reason is given for this injustice. Those who made their place in society had to face great resentment from family, friends and relatives. Kokila’s tale is no different.

Kokila is the story of a girl who is married off when she is not even aware of what marriage is. Thin and tomboyish, she slaps her husband when he tries to rebuke her for disturbing his sleep, raising many an eyebrow. The elderly women of the village say: "Kokila’s mother has failed in inculcating in her the centuries-old respect for tradition." Time passes and Kokila, under the counsel of her in-laws, turns into a 20-year-old woman with an unbound capacity to love, serve and sacrifice, a darling of all and mother of three. Life, to her, seemed to be a bed of roses.

However, by the time she turns 22, she is a widow, with two sons and a daughter to look after. With not a single member of her family to fall back upon, Kokila faces an uphill task. In her village live the so-called members of the low caste, constantly under threat from the powerful Thakurs, incidents of the high-handedness of whom, are not uncommon.

Alone she puts up an endless fight against the cruel, oppressive and chauvinistic society to make a place of her own and ultimately come to be known as Bari Amma—one who comes in to help when the whole world walks out. She inspires and leads the village folk to fight against injustice and tyranny.

Destiny plays a cruel joke on her. By the time she is 100, her children are engrossed in their family affairs, leaving her all alone to relive her past, which opens a whole new world to the reader, the best and the worst of which is portrayed. On the one hand, there is love, compassion and heroic struggle for existence, and on the other, there is selfishness, dogmatism and insensitivity.

Set in the 1940s, Kokila’s tale is one of constant suffering and agony, and speaks for many of her gender. Kokila dies a silent and neglected death in the company of her all-time friend, Ramdevia, and forgotten and shrugged off as a trivial woman. With her ends the "caravan" of her bittersweet memories.

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