Gender and Story in South India

1. Anklets on the Pyal: Women Present Women’s Stories from South India

1 1 Anklets on the Pyal: Women Present Women’s Stories from South India LEELA PRASAD Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Effortlessly May you overcome troubles Ululuuluulu-a, hayi A girl is born, a swan is born A boy is born, a pearl is born Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Do not weep, do not weep, my silly little girl If you weep, your eyes will flow with tears Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Do not weep, do not weep, my silly little girl I cannot bear to see tears flow from your eyes Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Let it be milk instead that flows from your golden eyes Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Bogeyman, come here, weaving your baskets Give us the little girl in your basket and go Ululuuluulu-a, hayi I am grateful to Ruth Bottigheimer and Pika Ghosh for help in fine-tuning this introductory chapter. Any discordant notes that remain are mine. Hayamma, Bayamma, sisters I – gamma, Do – mamma, co-sisters Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Cinnarõ – , Ponnarõ – , come little Srõ – Laksmõ – Come Adi Laksmõ – , come and play with mother Sri Rama, victorious Rama, beautiful Rama Tell me, who is Rama? Sita of the Raghavas! Ululuuluulu-a, hayi Has the little girl out at play come back? I hear anklets on the pyal Ululuuluulu-a, hayi T his Telugu cradle song1 that I have heard and sung many times comes to mind as I write the introductory chapter of this volume. Perhaps because it is a woman’s song, perhaps because it is sung by women, or perhaps because it addresses a girl child. Or perhaps simply because it links me to my mother, to my grandmother before her, to my daughters after me—and calls up the remarkable crisscrossing ways in which women in India assimilate “women’s experiences” and arrive at selfunderstandings that are deeply shared despite their divergences and fluidity . This volume, one might say, is about divergences and fluidity that, in the main, take South Indian locales: in Andhra Pradesh, the Eastern Godavari district, Hyderabad city, and the village of Chavarambakam in Chittoor district; in Tamilnadu, Uttumalai in Tirunelveli district and Madurai city; and various parts of Karnataka, Konkan, Pondicherry, and Kerala.2 These essays on women-centered narratives draw on stories and songs heard and narrated, of literatures remembered, of practices observed and absorbed, and of distances traveled and felt, to explore connections between the social and the imagined worlds of women in India. Thus gender converses with other aspects of identity: men and women are also Shi’a Muslims, or from the Golla [cowherd] community, or urban-dwelling, or university educated. The emotional power of the cradle song comes not only from its alliterative melody, but also from its unselfconscious empathy with women’s worlds and its female-oriented poetic. The mother, singing the song, asks 2 Gender and Story in South India for divine protection as she celebrates the birth of a child. The child, girl or boy, is as precious, rare, and pure as a swan or a pearl, both things of great beauty, one connoting gracefulness and the other, wealth. The mother empathizes with her baby daughter—sorrow for a daughter is sorrow for a mother—but like the many women narrators in this volume, she is aware of women’s predicaments beyond her own when she seeks “the girl in the basket” of the bogeyman [bu – civa. da]. Is this girl in the basket abandoned, is she unwanted, or is she just a plaything? Whichever she may be, she is wanted, to be included with “us.” The mother points her daughter toward worlds peopled by womenfolk: in the natal home are Hayamma and Bayamma, her sisters, and in the conjugal home, I – gamma and Do – mamma will be her cosisters, or wives of her brothers-in-law. Tellingly, while the names Hayamma and Bayamma are comforting (one of the meanings of hayi is comfort), õ – ga, the word for housefly, and do – ma, the word for mosquito, suggest that female company in the conjugal home may not be congenial, in fact, even annoying. The child (endearingly called “cinnari, ponnari”) is addressed as Laksmõ – , using an affectionate form of address commonly reserved for little girls who are considered bringers of prosperity. While extolling Rama, the prince-god of the epic of the Ramayana, in traditional praise-language as victorious and beautiful, the mother teasingly asks Sõ – ta of the Raghavas (Rama’s dynasty) who Rama is...