Kerala, known as God’s own country, is often stopped as a model state due to its high level of competence, advanced politics and a history of strong communist movements. But under this famous picture there is a much older, much darker reality: caste. Despite his left heritage, the forth in Kerala is still alive and omnipresent, anchored in institutions, language and everyday interactions. The state’s temples were once closed for adivasis and dalits; Schools refused to access them; Streets were forbidden, and even marginalized women modesty was used and taxed (the very notorious breast tax). Social reformers such as Ayyankali and movements such as the Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham demanded this oppression, and demanded education, dignity and country.
This contradiction of modernism via casticistic practices is also deep in Kerala’s literary world. For years, the Malayalam literature has largely ignored Dalit votes. When it recognized them, it was often due to the voyeuristic look of the top caste writers who live Dalit, either pathetic or exotic. Savarna critics like CP Achutha Menon did not estimate the early representations of the dalits in the literature, since they believed that the emotions of a Dalit hero deserved little attention in the literature compared to their colleagues in the upper tap.
Source: Fii
It was only in the mid -20th century that the Dalit writer began to break in Kerala and to write their truths in raw, unused language. Her literature was neither polished to appease the upper boxes, nor did she hold her rules. It was angry, honest and apologetically. Under these voices, Vijila Chirappad not only stands out as a Dalit writer, but also as a Dalit woman who speaks of the crossings of the caste and gender.
The personal is political and poetic
Reading Vijila Chirappad’s poems is like a peep hole in the life of the many Dalit women who exist all around us – as mothers, girls and so many other women who were forced to make themselves smaller and invisible. Her poems are a mirror that does not flatter, not romanticized and not twitching. Vijila’s poems are not asking for empathy. It dares to recognize and remember.
Vijila Chirappad was born in Perambra, Kozhikode, and began to write poems as a student, even though he had to fight for every centimeter room in a literary world that had never expected that someone like you speak, let alone publish. Despite these challenges, Vijila has three famous collections of poems: Adukala Illatha Vedu (a home without a kitchen, 2006), Amma Oru Kalpanika Kavitha Alla (mother is not a poetic invention of our imagination, 2009) and Pakarthi Ezhuthu (copied notes, 2015).
Vijila Chirappad was born in Perambra, Kozhikode, and began to write poems as a student, even though he had to fight for every centimeter room in a literary world that had never expected that someone like you speak, let alone publish.
She spoke about her first fights to be published, and said: “You see that publishing is a tedious process in itself. And since I am not even an adoptive child of the mainstream society, you can guess how difficult it was for me. But I didn’t even think about giving up. I had to book literally to get where I was now in the poetic area.
Source: Fii
In a literary tradition that often romances or transforms it into abstract metaphors, Vijila makes something radically simple by exposing the naked truth in its raw and most realistic form. Through her words we meet the Dalit woman in her abundance: tired, angry, defiant, tender and, above all, real. Her poems are soaked in the normalized routine of the caste and gender -specific violence in Kerala, a state that is often praised for its advanced politics, but how much India, like a large part of India, is deeply drawn by the Brahman Patriarchate.
A Dalit voice without apology
In her poem “A Place for Me”, Vijila writes about a woman who loses everything – her home, her country, her wealth – but on her alphabetes and relationships and lifes. “The abundant bowl with relationships,” she says, offers more food than wealth ever could. This is not just sentimality, but an explanation that the survival of Dalit is not only physically or personal, but also collective and intellectual.
She reflects the ideas that Amedkar has provided by the spokesman for the poem, which, although she has lost every cent that she had the crowd of the Oberkaste, loves the wealth of her training. Ambedar argued that education had contributed significantly to change the life and social status of the untouchable. In addition, the poem is also a contradiction to the upper caste, which has refused to access education and a life in dignity to the Dalits.
This is a recurring topic in Vijila’s poetry – how language and memory become tools of resistance.
This is a recurring topic in Vijila’s poetry – how language and memory become tools of resistance. In a society in which Dalits historically refused access to literacy and narrative power, the act of writing becomes an act of recovery and revolt. Your words are not raw because they are not missing any decorations, but because they decide not to take or bend a look at the upper caste.
About mothers, work and everyday life
The mother often portrays the Indian mainstream poetry as a mythical educator – calm, holy, wrapped in Sarees of Metapher. But the mothers in Vijila’s poetry are shown in their truest and rawest forms. They go their lives and earn their livelihood every day, tedious. In ‘she flew forward,’ she writes:
‘In our house
There is no TV set
No refrigerator
None of the mixers
Still mill …
But my mother knew it
How to operate this
Much before I did it.
Because…
As in Madhavikuttys stories
She is Janu –
The servant. ‘
Source: Fii
This mother is not a muse. It is far from how mothers are shown in the Indian mainstream media due to the narrative of the upper caste. It does not exist in an imaginary nostalgia, but in the real and often unknown work of Dalit house employee. Vijila not only calls casticistic representations in the literature of the upper caste, but also claims visibility for these women and their lives. The mothers Vijila who knew are not ornaments in family dramas. They are those who woke up before the world opened their eyes, worked in houses that were not them and returned to feed families of stoves who came up with hope and borrowed fuel.
In ‘Wasteland’ (Purampokku), Vijila reveals everyday boxism, which pursues even the world’s most worldly moments. The poem tells the story of Chandrika, a Dalit woman who can only enter certain houses through the back door. You, a human being and the fish from the market have the same entrance to a house. This comparison is brutal and intentionally. It starts how Kaste not only decides where they can go, but as they are seen, touched, touched and tolerated.
The poem ends with the fact that Chandrika will listen to Indian promise on August 15 – all Indians are my brothers and sisters – a line that becomes worthless in view of the discrimination.
The poem ends with the fact that Chandrika will listen to Indian promise on August 15 – all Indians are my brothers and sisters – a line that becomes worthless in view of the discrimination. The poem does not require sympathy, it demands that the reader of the hypocrisy of a society confront, sing equality and at the same time maintain invisible walls of the caste.
Autobiography of a bitch: her anger and despite her
Perhaps one of Vijila’s most powerful poems is “Oru Penpattiyude Atmakadha” (the autobiography of a bitch). It is a scorching, sarcastic and brutally honest representation of how society sees dalit women – not as humans, but as available and dirty.
‘Oh world, world
Our species
Hid in the backyards
Eyes attached to remnants
Rolled up in back verandas
Find consolation in the dark. ‘
Here the speaker compares with a street dog and reflects how caste and gender hierarchies like women. But there is no self -pity. Instead, there is anger and irony. The poem not only demands violence outside the community, but also the internalized shame. The lines are a rally scream for Dalit women who reject the conditioning that tells them that they are not enough that they are not beautiful enough, not worthy and not human enough.
A wild Dalit woman who break poetic traditions
Vijila’s poems are postmodern in the best way. They break the rules of the poems because these rules were not written for people as they were written at all. She writes about kitchen rags, lice, leaky roofs. The tone in their poems is often full of irony. It uses the everyday to present the life of the oppressed and oppressed.
Source: Fii
Kerala’s so -called progressiveness often masked the deep roots of the casticistic and patriarchal values. As Vijila said Interviews“Kastism is embedded in the subconscious of the Kerala Society.” Your poems reveal this subconscious. Vijila Chirappad’s poems are not just verses. They are words of survival, protest and seeing. They demand that we not only listen, but learn, but learn. They insist that Dalit women should not only be passive victims, but also violent historians of their own life.
