From Masculine Gender to Masculine Genitalia

Dr K M Sherrif
Reader, Dept. of
Studies in English
Kannur University

Feminist writing in Malayalam, in the sense of writing the woman and of strident
opposition to patriarchy can be traced to K Saraswathi Amma. But the tone and tenor of
feminist writing have undergone drastic changes since Saraswathi Amma’s days. In fact
one can even say that a number of ‘generations’ of feminist writers have made their mark
on Malayalam literature since Saraswathi Amma’s days.
The attitudes of these women writers have marked a number of political positions:
bourgeois liberal, radical, socialist, anarchic, postmodern/postmarxist etc. Writing the
body has not been a predominant trend at any particular moment in the history of the
feminist movement in Malayalam. It can be argued that Madhavikkutty/Kamala
Das/Kamala Suraiyya did attempt writing the body in My Story. But Madhavikkutty’s
stories have since then been wrapped in an effulgent glow of romantic fantasies. It can
very well be argued that she did not come to grass tracks. It is also noticed that several
writers who followed Madhavikkutty only recorded the angst of being female, the
psychological traumas they underwent etc.

It was Gracy who went a little beyond the confines of traditional writing. Right from the
first collection, ]Snbnd§nt¸mb ]mÀÆXn . Her notion was that anything men could
do, women could also do.

There is a sense in which women writing for the last half century has eschewed the
typical middle class attitudes that mark the writing of say Margaret Atwood.

It is symptomatic of our times that any radical impulse or movement can be absorbed by
the market. There are countless examples for such absorption. Rekha’s collection of
stories is also not different. In the story Fgp¯pImcnsb¡pdn¨v acWm\³Xcw the
young writer reflects on the hordes of letters which men wrote to her after reading her
stories. One of the letters refers to her photograph on the cover: \µbpsS
IYs¡m¸apÅ t^mt«m Iïp. kpµcnbmWv. F\ns¡mcp adp]Sn FgpXptam?
The whole thing becomes a calamitous foreboding (Adw ]äð) on the author as is seen
from the cover of her collection of stories. One wonders whether art imitates life here.
In any case the stranglehold of the market is more than evident in anything that any writer
tries to get across to audiences. GXmbmepw GSmIqS¯nte¡mWv Imcy§fpsS
t]m¡v

Whatever the limitations of early feminist fiction in Malayalam, the most glaring is that
there has been few attempts to celebrate the body, in the way it is done in, for instance,
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the fiction of Margaret Atwood. Much of the fiction of Madhavikkutty, Valsala, Manasi
Priya A S , Ashita etc. shied away from confronting sexuality, or made it into a trope.
Geeta Hiranyan made an attempt to come near to it. K R Meera and now Rekha k have
confronted sexuality.

Rekha’s story I\yIbpw ]pñnwKhpw marks a particular turn in Women writing in

Malayalam. It deconstructs phallocentrism both literally and metaphorically. For one, it
is the woman who goes to the man for sexual gratification. And a woman with a child at
that. Nabeesa’s words C\nbpw Rm³ hcpw. AXp ]t£ Fsâ kzmX{´yt_m[w
sImïmbncn¡nñ, icoct_m[w sImïp am{Xw. HcmWns\ thWsaóp
tXmópt¼mÄ . \nsâ a®m¦«¡hnXIsfmópw Aóv FâSpt¯¡v ASp¸n¡cpXv is a
reminder not only to sham male intellectuals who occasionally flirt with feminism, but
also to both activists and writers among the feminists who juggle with issues like
sexuality as if they were mere tropes. The coinage icoct_m[w perhaps has no parallel
in English.

The author has a few more statements to make later in the story. Sabitha who moves in
intellectual circles and is reputed to be practicing the ideal of free sex turns out to be a
greenhorn as far as sex is concerned. Here was a good opportunity for the cynics and
skeptics to rejoice. But the author with a deft, decisive stroke pulls the rug from under
their feet. Her first sexual experience does not shatter Sabitha. There are no regrets over
the lost virginity. She quickly puts on her clothes, opens her umbrella to walk out into
the sun, turns to Aneesh and remarks kmcansñtSm, A]Ssamópw DïmImsX
t\m¡mw

The story ‘Santa Claus’ exposes the dangerous chasm between middle class complacency
and altruism and the ground realities of marginalized womanhood.

It is also possible to read Rekha’s story as a critique of sterile discussions on

phallocentrism and patriarchy which never come to the point.

The story AgIfhv marks the advent of globalization in Kerala society. In accepting it as
natural, one notices a radical departure from earlier modes of discourse which projected it
as a monster.

Rekha’s fiction marks the new leap women writing made in Malayalam. Along with
Rekha can be placed such writers like K R Meera.

However Rekha’s fiction is not completely free of the retrogression which catches writers
and common people alike unawares – what in Malayalam would be called a ]n³hnfn.
In Fgp¯pImcnsb¡pdn¨v acWm\´cw the young writer Nanda sees the banners of a
just concluded conference of lesbians being pulled down. Nanda reflects sardonically
that it is five men who are doing the job. This is an unwarranted digression in the story
which verges on a tacit approval of essentialism. The first story in the collection is aan
attempt to reproduce a stereotype about which the author appears to literally know
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nothing: the apparently shadowy world of the Malayalee Muslim woman. And for that
reason it is one of the most untenable stories in the collection.

A story like tÉäpa\Êv examines the way in which highly educated Malayalee
womanhood is trapped in a feudal time warp, the same kind of time warp one saw in Gita
hiranyan’s monumental story Hä kv\m¸nð HXp¡m\mhnñ Hcp PòkXyw. The time
warp is a crisis all progressive movements including the feminist movement faces in
Kerala society.

Rekha’s stories are ruthlessly critical and self-critical. The ruthlessness of insight is what
marks the coming off age of women writing in Malayalam. Sarah Joseph’s search for the
masculine gender of ‘virgin’ has invariably to give way to the confronation and
negotiation of masculine genitalia in Rekha K’s fiction. It is the same ruthlessness that
marked the movement from the periphery to centrestage of a great writer from a
marginalized section of society: Vaikom Muhammed Basheer.