Nasrin- The Red Vermillion of Feminism

“If you (woman) are human, you will smash your chain to stand tall”
-Nasrin’s Jhumur

Perhaps the talk of feminism and feminist writers is not alien to us and neither is the fact that women have constantly been suppressed under the garb of Patriarchy. But even amidst this social bias, there remain arrays of beams, which will willingly tear through the curtains of darkness and help the seeds of feminism resurface and further nurture them to mould into full bloom.
What we mustn’t conceptualise fallaciously is the fact that these feminist writers are devoid of power and most of all mere expression. On the contrary, many feminist works blatantly echo the female’s trials and tribulations pertaining to the real societal scenario and reek of what is simply termed ‘rawness’.
For centuries, society has had a tussle with these feminists and we do know of occasions when the subject of feminism has been evocative enough to conjure lurid images of communal rioting and many other forms of social evil, stemming from the sinister minds of many out there, amidst us. There have been innumerable controversies surrounding the mindsets of these feminist writers, which if rationally contemplated on, depict only the truth and nothing else. It is not their usage of imagery, but their conceptualisation of the truth that causes this pandemonium.
The topic of Indian feminism is incomplete without an analysis of one of India’s newest, most difficult and sinisterly raw feminist writer, Dr. Taslima Nasrin. An MBBS from the Dhaka medical college, Nasrin grew up in a state of affairs that challenged her sense of autonomy and mere expression. Oppression played the key protagonist, backed by lurid viciousness that intricately bound together with the author’s contorted life to make it inescapable. Childhood too was lost somewhere in the murky undergrowth of social evil and so was the mere fun of being a lady in the traumatising and persistent condition of life that wasn’t anything but black.
Nasrin’s personality is like her writing- rather vague. It reeks of the horrific indignance of a feminist coupled with the golden eye for detail. It symbolises the unravelling plethora of individual stimulation and the bittersweet brew of pessimistic optimism. In short she befits Rushdie’s comment “…a difficult woman and an advocate (horror of horrors) of free love, Nasrin has conjured tears by reconstructing and rearticulating her experience of humiliation”
Anybody who has read Taslima Nasrin would agree that not only is her thought process bare and wild, it is speckled with innumerably vast attempts at seeking love as a revolutionary concept. Thus, her depiction of the Indian woman is par a single role like a daughter or sister or wife, rather it exceeds all others by acting as an arbitrary platform for the female to protest through the mighty power of words and most of all mere raw expression.
When I read Nasrin’s controversial Shodh the feeling that came over me was not that of an extensively researched and remoulded soap, but of a dismally true picture of the Indian woman, that felt as if it demanded my sympathy and awe.
Shodh revokes the hues of social evil, telling the tale of young Jhumur and her repressed autonomy and love. While she bears the fruit of a faithful husband, his consistent rebuttal leaves her shattered, dangling between the doldrums of abortion. Thus sets in a tale of Jhumur’s indignant perseverance and most of all the bittersweet vengeance of her questioning love in the most vividly defined and detailed narration, bound by intricate instance and difficult humanism.
Dr. Nasrin is truly an epitome of stoicism and spitefulness. Not an escapist- a feminist.