Mahaswetadi and I have quite a few things in common. Both our fathers are poets; both of us have four-syllabled names; both our nicknames are Khuku; and both of us were born on Poush Sankranti.

I remember seeing her father Manish Ghatak and her in our house in my childhood. Mahaswetadi was very affectionate towards me and treated me as a sister far younger in years. Possibly because she was the eldest of 10 siblings and had practically raised all of them, there was that maternal air about her.

Her mother Dharitri Devi, who brought out a Little Magazine, was often ill. If Mahaswetadi was maturer than her years I, a single child, was far more naive than my age.

I have seen her remake herself time and again, breaking the barriers of middle-class life and values. She never cared for public opinion. Smoking cigarettes and bidis, marrying twice, roaming villages in keds shoes – she did exactly what she pleased. I admired her hugely.

She was writing her newspaper columns -in Jugantar – besides teaching in Vijaygarh College. In her single-room establishment in a mess in Ballygunge Station Road, she did much of her writing besides keeping an open house. It bustled with people – friends, folks from the villages, her pet cat… she would cook for everyone. I would drop by often on my way back from Jadavpur University.

She was tremendously hard-working. While she was very warm, she was also blunt. (This is perhaps the only virtue of hers that I share!) Many who did not know her well feared her. Like most members of her family, Mahaswetadi had a wonderful singing voice. She was Suchitradi (Mitra)’s contemporary in Santiniketan.

The one image of her coming most to my mind today is of the day when my father (Narendra Dev) passed away. She sat on folded knees by his bed, singing one Rabindrasangeet after another. That was all we needed, my mother and I, to deal with that moment.

It was awe-inspiring how, relinquishing her middle-class identity, she chose to embrace the cause of the Shabars, and more importantly got accepted as one of them. What did she not do for them – staying in their huts, sharing their food, opening her home to them, highlighting their problems through her writings, even fighting long-lasting court cases on their behalf spending money from her own pocket…. She tried to understand them by analysing our socio-political history and showed us how they have continued being victims of the feudal system.

She showed how history and society are against those who work – be it tribals, be it women. She rebelled against the feudal system, be it the land system or the social structure. When her name was raised for the Jnanpith Award, some members objected to her nomination saying she was an anthropologist. We had to point out that no, she was a writer.

That award gave her national renown and led to her Hindi translations. Meeting Gayatri (Chakravorty Spivak) was a turning point in her life. She presented her as the voice of the subaltern.

Had Gayatri not translated her work into English, Mahaswetadi would not have become the international figure that she is. She is taught in various universities abroad.

I remember at a meeting on Nandigram how she urged a woman who had been gangraped to speak up.

She never called herself a feminist but in her writings she always sided with oppressed women, who are doubly victimised if they are from “untouchable” communities.

Mahaswetadi has made her place in the history of the Shabar tribe and of Bengali literature.

As told to Sudeshna Banerjee

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / by Nabaneeta Dev Sen / Friday – July 29th, 2016