Gopika Jadeja
Women, reading
Dhokra (also spelt Dokra) is non–ferrous metal casting using the lost-wax casting technique. This sort of metal casting has been used in India for over 4,000 years and is still used. One of the earliest known lost wax artefacts is the dancing girl of Mohenjo-daro. The product of dhokra artisans are in great demand in domestic and foreign markets because of primitive simplicity, enchanting folk motifs and forceful form. Dhokra horses, elephants, peacocks, owls, religious images, measuring bowls, and lamp caskets etc., are highly appreciated.
Wikipedia entry on ‘Dhokra’
I.
I collect images of women, reading.
A vintage photograph I picked up from a pavement seller in Hong Kong. Another, I found on a blog about Hokkien and cultural appropriation.
Then there are the Dhokra bronzes that I first saw in Ambai’s office. A woman lying on her belly reading a book, a child by her side. Another is a woman sitting cross-legged, reading. Yet another a women reading on her belly, no child by her side. Little statuettes of women reading crafted using cire perdue, the lost wax process, by people who read forests and rivers, whose names remain unknown.
These bronze women are perched on my open bookshelves, guardians of my books, my reading. Reminders of women who read and write – hiding in the bathroom, in the kitchen stirring a stew, in bed, in forests and in the street, bringing the world into the room they cannot call their own.
I collect images of women, reading – a reminder for my self.
II.
My mother arrived at her marital home with two steamer trunks full of books, only to learn that her mother-in-law could not read. So she gave Ba the newspaper and taught her to read. She read aloud first, pointing to the letters. Slowly, Ba taught herself to read.
III.
Ba, my father’s mother, learnt to read with a newspaper – one headline, one incident, accident, obituary at a time. Moving her lips, forming the words as she read. She used to read the local Gujarati evening newspaper, Akila, sitting in the doorway every day, from as long as back as I can remember, maybe earlier. From the time before Dadabapu died, leaving her a widow in white and grey, for years longer than she has been a married woman.
Aware, maybe, of mortality and loneliness, Ba always read all the avasaan nondh, death notices, with the grainy black and white photographs garlanded with patterns of curly lines and dots – if you could afford the attempted illumination. When she died, no one remembered to send an avsaan nondh to Akila.
IV.
The only photograph I have in my house is that of my Nanabapu, sitting on a windowsill somewhere in Mogadishu in the 1930s, reading. The photograph that I would have wanted to have in my house, but does not exist, is of my Nanima sitting on a swing in their sunlit veranda in the village of Bavli in Gujarat, reading.
Nanima, my mother’s mother, devoured books and raised cattle – both occupations because she married the husband she did. Reading because she loved to, and her husband let her. Rearing cattle because her husband loved words too much, read and wrote, was a rebel too much, to hold a job down for longer than a few months.
The man who went to town every morning to deliver the cans of milk also had to go to the town library to bring back books for the family. Sometimes he was sent back in the evening to the library, to replenish the stream of books – food for those who wanted to wander the world, but found refuge in a village.
V.
One school day at thirteen, I got on to the school bus with my sisters waving bye to our mother sitting on the swing on the garden, reading. We returned, asking what’s for lunch right at the gate, and saw her sitting there, still reading.
Till a few years ago I used to think that the Gujarati sweet of meetha bhajiya, deep-fried sweet batter doused in sugar, that she made that afternoon to our squealing delight, were called ‘Kutch Kaladhar’.[1]
VI.
I love the rain tree overlooking the balcony in my newly rented apartment. I like even more, the wall to ceiling bookshelves in the living room.
VII.
A message on my phone that I have not deleted – the image of a newspaper clipping whose headline reads, ‘Daughter asked father for books equal to her weight as a wedding gift, Father will present her with a cartful of books.’ The story is accompanied with a picture of the young woman in an auspicious read and gold saree, head covered, standing next to two towers of books, taller than her.
‘Where will she keep her books?’ I wanted to ask. ‘And will she have the time to read?’
My mother’s books, in the same steamer trunks, lie in the storeroom.
**
Maybe Faiz was wrong
But I who am bound by my mirror
As well as my bed
See causes in colour
As well as in sex
And sit here wondering
Which me will survive
These liberations.
- Audre Lorde
You hold tighter in your not holding. You quote Faiz.
Mujh se pahlī sī mohabbat mirī mahbūb na maañg
Do not ask me for that love again, my beloved.
Torn between causes, I did not see there was no again.
That lustlovelust was never yours. Mindtouched mindfucked
in the x-rayed uranium showered landscape of yourour
nation of the mind, my body was never beautiful to your touch.
In our country of cracked feet breasts lose their song.
Mindfucked mindtouched still looking for their lost sounds
I say to you, maybe Faiz was wrong. Maybe my fingers tongue
skin on yours on mine could touch this barren nation to life.
I hear you in Farida Khanum’s breath – terī sūrat se hai
aalam meñ bahāroñ ko sabāt /terī āñkhoñ ke sivā duniyā
meñ rakkhā kyā hai the beauty your face turned the season/
to eternal spring/ All else is vain, your eyes encompass the
world – and I know it was never about the beauty of my face
or the depth of my eyes. I say Faiz, but you were wrong.
Maybe I can still unfuck myself, slip out of my skin, teach
myself to touch be touched again. To call this nation of ours
to love and life.
*******
Notes [1] Kutch Kaladhar [Heroes of Kutch] is a work in two volumes by the beloved writer from Kutch, Dulerai Karani. It includes narartives of valour and love, folk tales and oral histories that move between Kutch and Sindh and some further into the region to Rajasthan and Punjab. -- Women, reading was first published in Rabbit 33: Asia. -- Maybe Faiz was wrong was first published in Witness: The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, edited by Nabina Das (2021).
Gopika Jadeja is a bilingual poet and translator writing in English and Gujarati. Her work has been widely published in MPT, Wasafiri, Asymptote, Indian Literature, and others. She is working on a project of English translations of poetry from Gujarat. She currently lives and works in Singapore
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