“I can say with confidence that it is my determination that has brought me to this place”

(159).

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The book, I, Salma ends with this statement. It is the closing remark of an extensive interview of the poet Salma taken by Chandana Dutta as a part of this text. This statement aptly summarises the entire ethos of Rajathi Samsudeen, aka Salma’s works. When one has to fight long and arduous battles against orthodoxy, exploitation, violence and discrimination, not just within society but also within one’s home, it takes a strong determination or will to succeed. Reading Salma’s story is reading a story of an iron will and a never-say-die attitude.

I, Salma is not just a book but a celebration of a woman who has become a feminist icon through her lived experiences and her writings against patriarchy. As the title suggests, it is the reiteration of the self, as pitted against the authoritative forces that stand against the freedom, dignity and identity of an individual, particularly if the identity is that of a marginalised person. It is a call to recognise the power of a woman, a reclaiming of her identity through the power of her pen. In a uniquely composed book that brings together several intellectuals in their capacities as translators, interviewer and essayists, I, Salma is a significant addition to the repertoire of feminist studies, marginal literature and of course, poetry.

Poems of Salma, translated by K Srilata and Shobhna Kumar, form the central body of the book. The poems are in Salma’s own words, her ‘freedom song’. Indian poetry has a long history of protest poems and Salma’s works significantly contribute to that. Poetry has been used as a tool to communicate issues related to oppression, violence, identity politics, and much more. Works of women poets like Akka Mahadevi, Lal Ded and in more recent years, Kamala Das, the contemporary Meena Kandaswamy, to name a few, boast of a legacy of poetry that resisted the traditional expectations of society from women and questioned the legitimacy of such expectations. Salma’s verses too speak against meaningless conventions and restrictions imposed upon women in general and Muslim women in particular. Her poems strike the readers with their directness and simplicity. Her voice is that of the one who has suffered, one who has fought this battle almost single handedly. That adds a strong note of authenticity to her poems. They speak of resistance and solidarity. They also speak of the body – the female body as a site of violence, the stigma attached to it, the need to be liberated from the patriarchal notions of the female body.

In the first poem of the anthology, the poet talks about ‘Self Portrait’, which she knows “has been drawn in bold strokes” (21). This is an apt introduction to the poet, who is unapologetic in speaking up against exploitation and authoritarianism. The poems that follow unravel this bold self through verses that are brutally honest, shredding through the patriarchy and its trappings. The poetry section of this book has been divided into five parts, titled respectively ‘Between Waking and Sleeping’, ‘Dreams’, ‘The Deep Night’, ‘The Waking Rays of Dawn’ and the last one, ‘Beginnings’ by the translators, according to their readings of Salma’s poems and the tropes that they located in these. It is difficult to categorise Salma’s poems as they blend into each other, yet a loose thematic resemblance can be traced in the categorisation.

The first section contains poems that talk about the anxieties of a conjugal relationship, loss of sovereignty of a woman over her body that comes with marriage, motherhood toils, as well as loss of childhood innocence and shelter. “This bed only fuels fearful/ thoughts of pregnancy./ This bed is a weapon/ in the hands of its master” (22), says the poet in the poem, ‘When all traces have disappeared’. Marital bed becomes the site of a battlefield where the man exercises complete control over the woman’s or wife’s body. An interesting composition in this section is the poem ‘Rain of Parting’. Constructed as a poem with two voices – one that is awakened to reality and the other voice that ‘dreams’, it is a suitable closing to this section titled ‘Between Waking and Sleeping’. It speaks of the loneliness of a woman, her solace in memories, and her pain.

The poems in the section ‘Dreams’ also speak of the loneliness of the woman and the “stench of unsought sex, unwanted” (53). In Salma’s poems, dreams are often nightmares. In the poem, ‘The Sisters of Waris Dirie’, she raises voice against female genital mutilation, a practice followed in many communities –

“Pierced by the pointed edges

of sharpened tools,

these tender flowers

pulsate with pain in the wind.” (45)

Salma writes of the body, with the body. In many ways, her poems exemplify the ‘ecriture feminism’ in a way that it should mean within this subcontinent. By talking of the ‘stitched yonis’, ‘unsought sex’, and many similar examples scattered throughout her poems, she creates a language that disrupts the conventional patriarchal discourses of female sexuality.

The poems in the section ‘The Deep Night’, speak of nights of agony, betrayal, loneliness and violence. The section begins with the need to build a fortress around the self.

“On the ruins

of an open field

I build a fortress

to protect myself now.” (59)

There is a search for peace in solitude because the company does not allow it to the woman. In ‘The story of a Deep Night’ we meet another anguished woman whose partner is revolted by the “fat body, with its stretch marks”(63). The father remains ‘unmarked by their birth’ while it is the mother who bears the pain of birthing as well as the marks of that pain. Yet, instead of bearing the dissatisfaction of the man in silence, the woman here has the courage to ask, “Wasn’t it with you that it began – that first phase of my downfall?”.

The women in Salma’s poem question, protest and fight for their space in this world. This indomitable spirit is captured in the poem, ‘The One Who has Become Herself’, in which the woman retorts, “You’ve been eliminating me from history” (69) on being asked to “cover (her) body. Guard (your) youth”.

After ‘The Deep Night’ comes the next section, ‘Waking Rays of Dawn’. Ironically, the section begins with a poem referring to hysterectomy, “may the womb find peace at least now” (76). The idea of femininity, which revolves around a woman’s reproductive organ and gives her social validity through motherhood, is challenged when the woman “declares in a voice that holds no fear, ‘Now I am half woman’”. The poet also talks about the growing up of a son and the growing away, a distance that every mother has to cover. The poems in this section talk about the ailing grandmother and blossoming friendships, shifting the focus from marital relations and sexual abuses for a

The final section of the poems is titled ‘Beginnings’. Poems in ‘Beginnings’ are mostly poems of realisation, of the self and the other. There is no new ‘beginning’ in the literal sense of the word, but in many ways, they are a continuation. The opening poem of this section, ‘What else to do’ (89) is coming to terms with an understanding of the self and a realisation that there is nothing more can be done apart from an acceptance of that understanding. ‘Angles’ in a few lines highlight the ways in which we look at the other from our perspective “with fear and wonder” (90). The poet understands ‘Violence’ (100) as betrayal of the body. The everyday movements of the women through the social space is often a trespassing of her physical self, a violence that women have to deal with throughout.

The poems of Salma are hard-hitting and thought provoking. They compel the readers to take note of the issues that the poet raises. Poetry translation has often been associated with a sense of loss. In spite of Robert Frost’s aphorism of poetry being what gets lost in translation, these poems read remarkably well. One of the measures of successful translation is to reach the target readers in a way that the translation does not read as translation. That means the translated pieces can stand on their own as creative work. The poems in I, Salma translated by K. Srilata and Shobhna Kumar do just that. Without any knowledge of Tamil language, the Source Language of Salma’s poems, I cannot be a judge of the exactness of translation or their degrees of fidelity. But as a reader of poetry, I can feel the poems reaching out to me. The anger, the disillusionment, resistance and retaliation, all of these are well articulated through these poems. The craft of poetry has also been taken care of. Short lines, precise expressions and minimalist footnotes have helped in retaining the sharpness of the poems. Inclusion of a rich metatext in the form of an introduction, a translators’ note, three significant essays on the poet and an extensive interview, has complimented the poems in a meaningful way. For readers of poetry in translation, a background helps in a deeper appreciation of the text. These metatexts help the readers understand the world and worldview of Salma in a more engaged manner. They act as channels of communication between her readers and herself. The interview by Chandana Dutta focuses on the becoming of Salma, the travails, her journey through life and much more. It gives a holistic picture of the poet’s life: her journey from the exploited and marginalised wife to the liberated woman, her political career, her literary career and her overall growth as a human being.

She is as candid in her interview as she is in her poetry. The three essays that are included in this volume, ‘Reclaiming Women’s Space’ by Meena Kandaswamy, ‘Friendships We Cannot Take Home’ by Perumal Murugan and ‘From a Small Village to State Politics: The Evolution of Salma the Writer’ by Kannan Sundaram critically discusses both prose and poetry of Salma as well as her life. These third person narratives are significant because they present the poet in the perspective of contemporary literature. Though the poems themselves are more than enough to stand for themselves and reach the readers, these additions enrich the reading experience. The essays and the interviews are literary pieces in their own merit. Conceptualised and curated by Chandana Datta, this book therefore reaches the readers as a wholesome nourishment for the soul. For any literary minded person, this anthology from the Red River is a must read.

The reviewer is a translator, creative writer and academician, and teaches in Sarsuna College, Kolkata.

Spotlight

I, Salma – Selected Poems

By Salma (Rajathi Samsudeen)

Translated by K Srilata and Shobhana Kumar

Red River, 2023

163 pages, Rs 360/-