1) in the story Matchbox Nomita torches her Sari when her anger towards
Ajit becomes uncontrollable. Later she les about this incident and explains
that everything happened when she lifted a hot pot of water off the stove. On
the basis of the above mentioned situation analyse the character of Nomita
in a paragraph along
Answers
The Jnanpith Awardee, Ashapurna Debi’s short story entitled Matchbox included in the higher secondary curriculum in the State of Kerala provides the teachers in English with enormous opportunities to delve deep into a variety of issues related with women empowerment and man woman relationships. The mid-adolescents who are yet to hatch out towards their adulthood are too sensitive symptomatic of their age. Since prefrontal cortex, the logical part of the brain is in developmental stage, the adolescents depend upon the amygdala which is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression and instincts. The sort of code these teenagers decode from the words uttered advertently or inadvertently by their teachers, is of great importance. We cannot free ourselves from the duty of inculcating values by belittling the characters in the stories or plays comprised in the textbook as fanciful. Moreover, the team of experts and policy makers conceived and developed the textbook issue based and value oriented. Women empowerment is one of the core themes identified and incorporated in the very beginning of the textbook. So, the suicidal attempt of the character Nomita in the story poses a catch 22 situation to many a teacher while transacting. This article attempts to read the gap between the silence and scream of women characters in a few pieces of literature including the trilogy of Ashapurna Debi, which may assist the teachers to devise their lesson plan. In this process, this may resolve their dilemma. The core of the rising action in the story is related with the crumbled letter which Ajit purposefully concealed from Nomita. When she chanced to find that letter sent by her mother in Ajit’s pocket the conflict begins. Nomita’s fury relied on the fact that her husband maintained this ugly habit though she had resisted it many times with her anger, offences, reproaches, humiliations, sarcasms etc. A violent argument follows which leads to the climax of the story in which Nomita torches the anchol of her sari. Ajit rises to action in no time by extinguishing the fire and this leads to the falling action in the story and its final resolution.
The colonial Indian social structure was infected with abominable social evils like superstitions, prejudices, gross injustice to women etc., and Satyabathi’s fight was against these vices. She does not stand for a rejection of the patriarchal culture outright, but she was taking up the woman’s question in order to establish women’s rights. For instance, Satyabathi is treated mercilessly by her mother in law and consequently her husband Nabakumar asks her father to take her away back to home to escape from the torture. But Satyabathi’s decision is to stay back in her husband’s home and to obtain her rights. It is discernible that, to the author, male female dichotomy is not the central issue of concern. The novel ends with her decision to abandon her family and go to Kashi, when against her wishes her daughter Subarnalata is forcefully betrothed at a tender age.
Second volume of the trilogy entitled Subarnalata also attests Ashapurna Debi’s literary feminist activism. The author introduces her heroine, “Subarnalata is the helpless cry of an imprisoned soul…sociologists write down the history of a changing society, I have merely tried a curve to depict the change.” By the time Subarnalata got betrothed, her mother Satyabati had already initiated in her a drive for finding a liberated space within the patriarchal structure. Even while she was confined within ‘antar mahal’ (inner house) her quest was always to find a real open space symbolized by ‘dakshiner baranda’ (south facing balcony). Like her mother, she also treasures the value of education and even gives her sons and daughters personal coaching. Thanks to her mother’s guidance in her childhood, Subarnalata was well aware of her own rights though denied in the social milieu existed then. For example, a hygienic labour room could be accessed by the affluent class at that time and Subarnalata demanded for its proper sanitation.