Women's ways of seeing history & penning poetry

I belong to the times when women were far and few to find in the literary world, heavily populated by men.

- Nirupama Dutt

I belong to the times when women were far and few to find in the literary world, heavily populated by men. Of course, there were the prominent ones who had made their way despite the pride and prejudice of the male-dominated society across the many Indian languages.

To name just a few of the daredevils of the 70s: Kamala Das in Malayalam, Maha Shveta Devi in Bengali, Ismat Chughtai and Qurratulain Hyder in Urdu, Krishna Sobti in Hindi and of course our very own Amrita Pritam to name just a few. Of course, women writers were always there and invariably since mythical times they were iconoclasts. But here in these 800 or so words, I speak only of the times of which I was 'sakshi' (witness). But by and large, literature was a man's world. Interestingly, those were times of mushairas and kavi sammelans which called for poets to sit on the stage and recite their verses one by one.

In a gathering of some three dozen poets competing to loot the show with their art, one would find one or two women, pretty to look at, but not yet evolved into being a challenge to the loud male voices swinging in tarannum or otherwise. But given a chance, the second sex had it in them to cast a spell.

Many recall that after a few years of the cruel Partition of India in 1947, an Indo-Pak mushaira was held in Karachi and a young woman was there in the lineage of stalwart male poets of the two countries of the greatest and bloodiest parting ever in the world. When this young woman got the mic, she spoke just one couplet, everyone was stunned and soon tears were running down the eyes of the audience, both men and women as well as seasoned poets on the stage.