prasad1
Active member
People in India and outside, who are familiar with the epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, know about female protagonists such as Sita, Draupadi, Kunti, and so on.
These women have been put on pedestals of honour, fortitude and what is regarded as ‘ideal womanhood’. But contemporary writers and creative performers are reading in between the lines and bringing out certain nuances in their characters that make them more human and more accessible, as a discussion on the epic women, held as a part of a recent literary festival in Kolkata, brought out.
Another refreshing aspect of this new look at the ancient scripts is that writers are training their literary lens at ‘lesser’ women characters, who have been otherwise overshadowed by the heroines.
Amish Tripathi, the writer of bestsellers including the Meluha trilogy that focuses on Shiva, points out, “Our epics are not one book, rather, a collection of books, written by different people at different times, and so sometimes values prevalent in the time are reflected in the portrayal of women characters.” Earlier, he says, women were not portrayed as subservient, which happened later for various reasons. “The further one goes back in time, the more one finds that women were strong feminists,” he articulates. For instance, he shares, “Parvati (Shiva’s consort) is no pushover. She has a mind of her own; she takes her own decisions and follows them. For example, she decides to go to her father’s ‘daksha yagya’ uninvited even though Shiva asks her not to.”
Pune-based author Kavita Kane’s best-selling debut book, Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen, is on Uruvi, the wife of Karna, the unsung hero of the Mahabharata. She is hardly visible in the magnum opus though she was an accomplished Kshatriya princess. She fell in love with Karna and stood by him in his times of distress, when he was ridiculed for his ‘low birth’.
Kavita has written on other lesser characters of the epics, like Urmila, Sita’s sister and Lakshman’s wife who was left behind when he opted to go to exile with his elder brother and sister-in-law Sita. “Lakshman is portrayed as a dutiful brother and protector of Sita in the jungles. Urmila was Sita’s sister, equally talented and beautiful. What did she do in those 14 long years in her husband’s absence? How did she take it when he left her behind as a new bride? Wasn’t he a husband to her, too?” she asks. Urmila, in fact, became a scholar and retired into ‘private exile’.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/537993/a-relook-women-indian-mythology.html
These women have been put on pedestals of honour, fortitude and what is regarded as ‘ideal womanhood’. But contemporary writers and creative performers are reading in between the lines and bringing out certain nuances in their characters that make them more human and more accessible, as a discussion on the epic women, held as a part of a recent literary festival in Kolkata, brought out.
Another refreshing aspect of this new look at the ancient scripts is that writers are training their literary lens at ‘lesser’ women characters, who have been otherwise overshadowed by the heroines.
Amish Tripathi, the writer of bestsellers including the Meluha trilogy that focuses on Shiva, points out, “Our epics are not one book, rather, a collection of books, written by different people at different times, and so sometimes values prevalent in the time are reflected in the portrayal of women characters.” Earlier, he says, women were not portrayed as subservient, which happened later for various reasons. “The further one goes back in time, the more one finds that women were strong feminists,” he articulates. For instance, he shares, “Parvati (Shiva’s consort) is no pushover. She has a mind of her own; she takes her own decisions and follows them. For example, she decides to go to her father’s ‘daksha yagya’ uninvited even though Shiva asks her not to.”
Pune-based author Kavita Kane’s best-selling debut book, Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen, is on Uruvi, the wife of Karna, the unsung hero of the Mahabharata. She is hardly visible in the magnum opus though she was an accomplished Kshatriya princess. She fell in love with Karna and stood by him in his times of distress, when he was ridiculed for his ‘low birth’.
Kavita has written on other lesser characters of the epics, like Urmila, Sita’s sister and Lakshman’s wife who was left behind when he opted to go to exile with his elder brother and sister-in-law Sita. “Lakshman is portrayed as a dutiful brother and protector of Sita in the jungles. Urmila was Sita’s sister, equally talented and beautiful. What did she do in those 14 long years in her husband’s absence? How did she take it when he left her behind as a new bride? Wasn’t he a husband to her, too?” she asks. Urmila, in fact, became a scholar and retired into ‘private exile’.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/537993/a-relook-women-indian-mythology.html
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