Dr.Sarojini Sahoo
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A distinguished Indian feminist writer, Dr. Sarojini Sahoo (born in 1956) has been conferred with the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award, 1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award and the Prajatantra Award.
Born in a small town of Dhenkanal in Orissa (India), Sarojini has MA and PhD degrees in Oriya Literature and a Bachelor of Law from Utkal University. She now teaches at a degree college in Belpahar, Jharsuguda of Orissa. She is the second daughter of Ishwar Chandra Sahoo and (late) Nalini Devi and is married to Jagadish Mohanty, a veteran writer of Orissa, and has a son and a daughter.
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[edit] Short stories
She has published eight anthologies of short stories. The selected short stories of the author translated in English from the Oriya has been anthologized and published in 2006 by Grassroots (Kolkata) under the title of Sarojini Sahoo short stories (ISBN 81-89040-26-X). Her other Oriya anthologies of short stories are: Sukhara Muhanmuhin (1981), NijaGahirareNije (1989), Amrutara Pratikshare (1992), Chowkath (1994), Tarali Jauthiba Durga (1995), Deshantari (1999), and Dukha Apramita (2006). She has been conferred with Orissa sahitya akademi Award and Bhubaneswar Book fair award for her short stories collections Amrutara Pratikshare.
[edit] Novels
Six novels are published so far to her credit. They are: Upanibesh (1998), Pratibandi (1999), Swapna Khojali Mane (2000) Mahajatra (2001), Gambhiri Ghara (2005), Bishad Ishwari (2006). Her novel Gambhiri Ghara proved to be a bestseller in Oriya Literature. Her novels have gained a reputation for the frankness about sexuality and of feministic outlook.
[edit] Awards
She has been conferred with: Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award, 1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award (1993) and the Prajatantra Award.(1981,1993)
[edit] Feminism
Sarojini Sahoo is a prime figure and trendsetter of feminism in contemporary Oriya literature. For her; feminism is not a gender problem or any confrontational attack on male hegemony. So, it is quite different from that of Virginia Woolf or Judith Butler. She accepts feminism as a total entity of femalehood which is completely separate from the man’s world. She writes with a greater consciousness of women bodies, which would create a more honest and appropriate style of openness, fragmentation and non-linearity. Her fictions always project a feminine sensibility from puberty to menopause. The feminine feelings like restrictions in the adolescence, the pregnancy, the fear factors like being raped or being condemned by society and the concept of a bad girl etc always have the thematic exposure in her novels and short stories.
Sarojini sahoo is considered as the Simone de Beauvoir of India. Her feminism always linked with sexual politics of a woman. She denies the patriarchy limits of sexual expression for a woman and she identifies women's sexual liberation as the real motive behind the women's movement. For her, orgasm is the body's natural call to feminist politics: if being a woman is this good, women must be worth something. Her novels like Upanibesh, Pratibandi and Gambhiri Ghara cover a myriad of areas from sexuality to philosophy, from the politics of the home to politics of the world.
[edit] Sexuality
Sexuality is something that can be related to a lot of other aspects of culture, tightly linked with an individual life, or into the evolution of a culture. Anyone’s class or ethnic or geographic identity could be closely associated to his/her sexuality, or any one’s sense of art or literature. Sexuality is not just an entity in itself.B ut still, either in west or in east, there is a reluctant outlook towards sexuality and society has always tried to hide it from any open forum. The censorship on speech, and adding decorum to dress and declaring the sexual organs as obscene, the society has imposed a ban on it. However, in spite of such self imposed censorship, sexuality has its place in public forum in religious and spiritual texts to establish any philosophical notion, judiciary and legislative documents and bills often used to restrict the sexuality, medical text books to explore the human body and lastly in literature.
But neither the society, nor the legislative, even the judiciary also do not stand by the ede of sexuality to support it. In the West, James Joyce’s Ulysses or even Radclyffe Hall's Loneliness in the Well or Virginia Woolf’s Orlando are some examples which have to suffer a lot for describing sexuality in literature.In the west, sexuality in literature grew with feminism. Simone De Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex, first elaborately described the gender role and problem away from the biological differences. In Oriya Literature Sarojini is considered as a prime person to discuss sexuality in her fiction with a sincere effort to express her feministic ideas. The novel Upanibesh was the first attempt in Oriya Literature to focus the sexuality as a part of social revolt by any woman. Medha, the protagonist of Sarojini’s novel, was a bohemian. In her pre-marital stage, she was thinking that it was boring to live with a man for life long. Perhaps she wanted chain free life, where there would be only love, only sex and wouldn’t be any monotony. But she had to marry Bhaskar. Can Indian society imagine a lady with bohemianism?
In her novel Pratibandi, Sarojini has also described the thematic development of sexuality in a woman. Priyanka, the protagonist of the novel has to encounter the loneliness in the exile of Saragpali, a remote village of India. This lonliness develops in to a sexual urge and sooner Priyanka finds her self sexually attached with the ex MP. Though there is an age gap between them, the intelligence in him impressed her and she discovers a hidden archeologist in him. Sarojini has painted successfully the difference of sensibility towards sexuality among male and female. Sarojini has her own credibility for the frankness to deals with the sensitive matters either it may be in politics or in sexuality. She has gained a reputation and has her own place in the history of Oriya fiction.
Her novel Gambhiri Ghara she describes an unusual relationship between two people, a Hindu house wife of India and a Muslim artist of Pakistan. It is a net oriented novel. A woman related with such a man, who is experienced fifty two fair sex in his life. One day he asked, if she had any such experience. The woman(here after we refer her as Kuki) scolded him and insulted him by saying him a caterpillar. She said without love lust is like hunger of a caterpillar. Gradually they involved with love, lust and spiritually. That man considers her as his daughter, lover, mother, and above all these as a Goddess. They both madly loved each other, thru net, thru phone. They talked obscene; they kissed each other on line. Kuki did not lead a happy conjugal life though she has a love marriage with Aniket. The novel is not limited to only a love story. It has a greater aspect. It deals with the relationship between State and individual. Safique, who is not a Muslim by temperament, and as a historian, thinks the Pakistan of today is separated itself from its root and looked towards Arabian legends for his history. He protested that why the syllabus of history for the school would start from seventh century AD, not from the Mahenjodaro and Harappa. This broad Safique was once arrested after the bomb blast of London for allegation of being associated with the terrorist. But is it a true fact? Later Kuki came to know that, Safiques is trapped by military junta. The ex-lover of Tabassum had revenged on Safique by arresting him with an allegation of terrorism.
Here comes the question of terrorism. We often speak about terrorism caused by an individual or by a group. We never discussed the terrorism caused by a state. And again, think over a state. What is a state? Is it a group of people reside within a political and geographical boundaries? Are a state’s identity, mood and wishes separate from its ruler? Is the wish of George Bush not considered as the wish of America? Has it reflected the mood and wish of the people of America? So, every time, the state’s arranged anarchism or terrorism is mere a reflection of a terrorism caused by an individual. The great truth lies beneath Safique as a terrorist is actually develops from the mind of that military man.
Thus from sexuality to politics, Sarojini’s frank view always stir the readers.
