Reviewing the women in our epics

Anyone who has read the Silappadikaram — a literary work which is considered one of the five great epics of Tamil literature, would have been involved in a discussion about its characters — Kannagi, a chaste woman and Madhavi, a courtesan dancer, at some point or the other. The tale, penned by Ilago Adigal, revolves around the lives of Kannagi, her husband, Kovalan, who leaves Kannagi to live with Madhavi. The storyline and its characters have also given way to a multitude of discussions on which of the two women is greater — often leading to Madhavi being referred to as the ‘other woman’.

With an idea to revise and review the way women in the epics have been seen, beyond the binary good and bad, Lets Talk Life, a public forum which discusses societal issues through poetry, stories, art etc, is working with renowned Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer, Dr. Swarnamalya Ganesh.

They aim to view women from our literary works with an outlook to understand their idiosyncrasies and not simply write them off. The event titled, ‘Breaking the mould: Re-visioning women in the epics’, will be serving as a platform for conversations, poetry recitals, and performances which explore the stereotypes that women in epics and other literary works, have been subject to.

“The idea is that women need not be seen as shadows of men, which unfortunately is the most common way we tend to look at female characters in our stories. Women in our books deserve to be celebrated for who they were. If we take the case of Madhavi, the character has had to undergo a great deal of slut-shaming but was never applauded for her boldness. Most often, women artists are looked at with condescension. We want to get the conversation on this started through the means of art, poetry and a dance drama by Swarnamalya,” says Sharada Vijay, the co-founder of Lets Talk Life.

One can expect around 10-12 poets from the city and budding guitarists among other performance artistes, to come together and put forth their views on women’s representation and understanding in popular literary works. The event will be a prelude to the dance drama by Swarnamalya, which will retell Silappadikaram from Madhavi’s perspective, which will take place on April 17, at the Narada Gana Sabha.

“We aim to look at the female characters in the epics beyond their face value. Silappadikaram is one of the most progressive texts and the women in it have a lot for us to learn from, if we keep the misconceptions and misreading of the text apart. Female artists are constantly character assassinated and even I have not be spared from it. While one can disregard Draupadi and Sita as very archaic characters, they are timeless and have been standing as strong symbols for women. This gathering is to let the artists explore this issue in their own way,” Swarnamalya says.

Maathevan Thiyagarajan, one of the poets who will be performing at the event, believes that when it comes to women in books, one often tends to generalise  and confine them. “We barely have women in our epics who are projected as bold characters and many readers generally tend to put them in boxes. This is what we want to change through art,” Maathevan says, signing off.