The
oldest profession in the world prostitution, takes on a serious side in India,
when one reads cases and books on what is called the devadasi system in India, which is rooted in religion. In Rasana
Atreya’s new Novelette, The Temple Is Not
My Father, the reader encounters the shocking realities of how, the system
is both used and abused by bigoted family instruments which can bring up an
immense amount of anger towards those, who force women to corners of society,
where life is but a bleak existence of no hope.
Godavari,
named after a river in India, is the third daughter of parents who have had
five daughters, which in itself is ominous, because, only a son is an
auspicious addition to a family. She has been sold at seven to the temple by
her father, where like many devadasis in
India, is wedded to Goddess Yellamma. Frequented by one after another man, on a
daily basis, she becomes pregnant and bears a baby girl, Sreeja. Godavari’s
mother has shown much resistance to this, but with an adamant husband to
manage, she has lost to him. But, she decides not to allow, the plight of her
daughter to be repeated with her granddaughter. By willing all her wealth to
Godavari, she has raised the wrath of all her children, including her son, who
ought to have inherited the wealth of his mother. Shunned by family except a
single sister, Krishna, Godavari lives a solitary life with her daughter, in a
house inherited from her mother.
Soon,
their solitary life is interjected by two delightful girls, Neeraja and Vanaja,
who have been sent by their chastity-obsessed parents living in the US to
India, to live and study with their grandmother, for fear that the girls now
coming of age may give in to poor moral standards existing in the US, and date
and mate with boys! A great relief for Sreeja, daughter of Godavari, the little
girl begins to know the value of friendship, with the two girls and also learn
from them. But their grandmother is not happy at the association and stops the
girls from coming. When finally they are able to break loose, it is only to
tell Godavari that they would be sent away to boarding school so that they can
be kept away from social outcasts like Godavari and little Sreeja. This is a
blow to Godavari.
In
the mean time, before the two girls leave, an NGO run by Asha garu takes little Sreeja away from her
mother, and gives her for adoption, so that Sreeja can have a normal life, ands
not as a shunned by society, uneducated daughter of a devadasi. This breaks Godavari’s heart but she survives the pain by
focussing on changing her life too. She too joins an NGO and begins to learn
computer and is guided into a life of saving children from prostitution. This
is how she meets Raji, who is mimed from the torture of being given to
prostitution at the age of seven. It takes Godavari three years to make the
girl speak even a single sentence.
The
book ends with a typical Rasana Atreya sign off – a tremendous twist in the
story most readers would never have imagined in their wildest dreams.
Tibor
Jones Asia Prize nominee, 2012, Rasana Atreya, is not only a story teller par
excellence now. She is a Brand. She writes stories from the heart of India
based on social structure that continues to exist despite its urbanization. She
is disturbed by this and no reader can put her book down without feeling waves
of disturbance themselves. Her writings rise the bile in your belly and make
you want to go and change the system and yet, it is true, that perhaps those
who stand to protect us, actually are the perpetrators themselves. Whether, it
is The Temple is Not My Father, or
her book which was nominated for the Tibor Jones Asia Prize, Tell A Thousand Lies, Rasana Atreya,
jars you to sit up and think.
And
the twists and turns of her stories are at once, a great art in story telling
at the same time, very natural to Rasana Atreya as an author and a Brand.
You
can read her book, by downloading it here:
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