lies in my bed through the long afternoon
lies in my bed through the long afternoon;dreaming still, unexhausted by the deep roar of funeral pyres.”
Indian SummerShe does not have anyone to share her pains with and gradually she starts talking to herself a very mildform of narcissism. She falls gradually in love with her own self –especially with her shadows and her image:
“In the darkened rooma womancannot find her reflection in the mirror waiting as usual at the edge of sleep. …”
A Missing PersonThe enigmatic world of self-love where she is thrown into, is an outcome of reliance on several dominant factors. One of them is definitely she makes a very big mistake by accepting the bare fact that her husband’s world is her everything. This is where the over-expectations and dreams relating to the relationship with the dominant patriarchal world fails. The psychological imbalances that she undergoes, either through the self-involvement or the extreme self-love in conditions of loneliness, emerges the banality of her desires and dreams. The confrontation with such a traumatised life comes from the feeling of minimal freedom that she enjoyed before marriage. She tries to decentralise her freedom just with the expectation of being loved and respected. But unfortunately she receives neither of them instead she is imposed with dictums that the orthodox patriarchy wants her to follow without any rebel. Probably writers like Mahapatra are trying to break these notions of the society with their creations. Marriage, homemaking, child rearing, and maintaining the traditional etiquette of the family are some of the dictums that define her as a woman in the prevailing culture of the patriarchal society. A male-dominated society fails to look deep into the pathos that the women undergo for maintaining her responsibilities that is being imposed upon them in the name of traditions and cultures. This conventional authoritative phenomenon is very common not only in Orissa but also in most parts of the north of India. Women exist here with sacrificing their dreams and desires. Decentralising their roles from one to the other might prove their adaptive characteristics but within this lies the invisible voice
