The tradition of women writing poetry in Maharashtra also goes back to the age of the saint-poets, around 12 A.D (Nadkarni, 12). Dnyandev's sister Muktabai, Janabai, and others sang of and to God in subtle, simple and moving verse. In the twentieth century, the tradition continues in the songs and poetry of Bahinabai Chowdhari, a barely literate woman whose writing is deeply moving and imbued with humanist philosophy. Like that of the male saint-poets, women's bhakti verse is connected to the everyday and the secular. A common theme in traditional (rural) women's songs and poems is the daily work of women in tradition-bound Maharashtrian society. It is written in an everyday, colloquial language, is rhythmic, and sometimes repetitive, and it mirrors the tasks done by women in this milieu, such as grinding grain or cooking. As Bahinabai says in one of her most famous songs:

Ah, this world, this life
like a hot pan
on the cooking fire,
first burns your hand,
and only then gives you
your heart's desire. (Cited by Nadkarni, 14)^[i]

 

    This inserts a difference into the spiritual poetry insofar as the address to the divine is not a rude rebuff stressing harsh human reality, but a yearning for release into a purified realm of ideal love.    Indira Sant's work continues in this tradition. Her first book of verse was a collaborative effort with N. M. Sant, published in 1940. Her second (and first solo collection) of verse, Shèla, was published in 1950, which is why she is placed as Mardhekar's contemporary. The saint-poets and the 'cult of madhura-bhakti' (Nadkarni, 12), writing to or addressing God as a lover, has great relevance to Sant's work. The two recurring themes in her poetry are nature and the yearning for a lover, on symbolic and literal levels, as can be seen in the following examples:

The field is restless today.
The broad, barren field. A single pathway
Rarely walked on.
Dry grass occasionally grazed on.
Perpetual silence. Uselessness. (trans by Nabar and Ezekiel, 29)

 

Once you supported my joys, griefs, hopes, ambitions.
I never thought of your soul
As separate from mine.
Shadow-like, you merged with me,
And were absorbed in me.
... To me, our divided existence is impossible.
My ingratitude is the curse on me,
And to follow me with slow dragging steps
Is the curse on you. (trans by Nabar and Ezekiel, 65)

 
    This lover is generally interpreted as being her dead husband, as she was widowed very young; but, as Nadkarni points out:

those who have learnt to decipher love poetry need not be told that the Ultimate Lover to whom all such emotion-filled lines are addressed has an ostensibly symbolic existence — [Sant's poetry] — is a continuous search for an identity, and this symbol is a focal point of her search. (Nadkarni, 13)

 
    Many younger women poets tried to imitate Sant's philosophical lyricism, but only ended up sounding banal and uncontrolled. One sees that in the contemporary Marathi of the 1990s, women writers are characterised as writing melodramatic, sentimental outpourings that do not rank very high in terms of literary or poetic merit (Dahake, "Vyatheeth", 152).^[ii] The same charge is often made against Indian women poets writing in English. Another criticism seems to be that the women writers of this period write 'only' confessional poetry. The women writers of this generation have thus been described as being aloof, almost indifferent to larger concerns and socio-cultural trends, and too focused on the self (Dahake, "Vyatheeth", 153).^[iii]

 

---

 

[i] Translated by Shalmalee Palekar.

[ii] Translated by S. Palekar. Please note that Dahake's essay on Ganorkar and Ganorkar's poetry collection are both called Vyatheeth.

[iii] While Dahake criticises women's writing of this period as being sentimental and melodramatic, he emphasises that this viewpoint does not apply to all women writers and goes on to discuss the literary merit of 'confessional' poetry as seen in Vyatheeth. Translated by S. Palekar.