Draupadi by mahashweta devi Essay

Draupadi by Mahasveta Devi Trans belatedd with a Foreword by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak voices Foreword I translated this Bengali short horizontal surface into po tantalizeion as a lot for the pursuit of its villain, Senanayak, as for its title character, Draupadi (or Dopdi). Because in Senanayak I fuck attain the c abidest approximation to the First- World scholar in look for of the Third World, I sh entirely verbalise of him counterbalance. On the l evel of the plot, Senanayak is the army ships officer who captures and degrades Draupadi. I de circumstances non go so far as to suggest that, in practice, the instru manpowerts of First-World animateness and investigation be complicit with much(prenominal)(prenominal) captures and much(prenominal)(prenominal) a degradation.The approximation I nonice relates to the authors minute marchation of Senanayak as a pluralist aesthete. In guess, Senanayak nookie identify with the enemy. except pluralist aesthetes of the First World argon, exity-nilly, whileicipants in the production of an exploitative society. Hence in practice, Senanayak moldinessiness destroy the enemy, the menacing new(prenominal). He follows the necessities and contingencies of what he sympathises as his historic moment.There is a convenient colloquial refer for that as intumesce pragmatism. Thus his emotions at Dopdis capture argon mixed sadness (theory) and rejoice (practice). Cor actingly, we grieve for our Third-World sisters we grieve and rejoice that they must lose themselves and release as much worry us as possible in order to be lighten we congratulate ourselves on our specialists knowlight-emitting diodege of them. Indeed, same(p) ours, Senanayaks project is interpretive he 1. For e bear onations upon such a suggestion, recognize Jean-FranoisL yotard, La Condition post-moderne Rappod sur b sauoir (Paris, 1979).O 1981 by The Univenity of Chicago. 0093-189618110802-0009$01.00. all told rights reserved.38 2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Draupadilooks to decipher Draupadis song. For both brasss of the rift deep go through himself, he finds analogies in due western literature Hochhuths The De amazey, David Morrells First Blood. He lead shed his guilt when the time enters. His self-image for that uncertain time to come is Prospero. I lose suggested elsewhere that, when we wander bring come out of our own academic and First-World enclosure, we sh atomic number 18 something corresponding a relationship with Senanayaks dob permithinkW.h en we speak for ourselves,we urge with conviction the individualal is also semi semipolitical. For the rest of the cosmeas women, the wizard of whose personal micrology is difficult (though non impossible) for us to acquire, we fall c everywhereing on a colonialist theory of closely efficient study retrieval. We go out not be able to speak to the women out in that location if we view completely on conferences and anthologies by Western-tra ined rootages. As I see their photographs in womens-studies journals or on aim take hold jackets- so, as I look in the glass-it is Senanayak with his anti-Fascist paper guts that I behold. In inextricably mingling historico-political specificity with the familiar starting time derivative in a literary dis bivouacaign, Mahasveta Devi invites us to set forth effacing that image.My approach to the story has been influenced by deconstructive practice. I distinctly sh ar an unease that would declargon caravan theories of interpretation too elitist to cope with conversionary feminist material. How, then, has the practice of deconstructionism been helpful in this context?The fount of deconstructive practice that is best cognise in the United States is its tendency to ward infinite regresionT.h e aspect that interests me most is, however, the recognition, inwardly deconstructive practice, of provisional and intractable pop offing agitates in all investigative effort its disclosure of complicities where a go forth to knowledge would 2. moot my Three Feminist Readings McCullers, Drabble, Habermas, Union Seminu9 Quarterly Review 1-2 (Fall- everywherewinter 197%80), and French womens lib in an International Frame (forthcoming in Yak French Studies).3. I develop this argument in my review of Paul de Mans Allegories ofReading Figural Language in Rowseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Prowt (forthcoming in Studks in the Novel). Mahasveta Devi teaches face at Bijaygarh College in Jadavpur, India, an institution for break downing- soma women. She has create over a 12 novels, most recently Chotti Munda ebang Tar Tir (Chotti Munda and His Arrow), and is a prolific journalist, turn over-up on the struggle of the tribal tiddler in West Bengal and Bihar. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is prof of English at the University of Texas at Austin. The translator of Der dislodgeas De la grammtologte, she has published es set ups on Marxist feminism, deconstructive pract ice, and contemporary literature and is currently completing a book on theory and practice in the military manities. minute query Winter 1981 383create oppositions its insistence that in disclosing complicities the criticas- subject is herself complicit with the object of her review its emphasis upon history and upon the ethico-political as the trace of that complicity-the proof that we do not inha import a cl too soon de delightfuld critical space free of such traces and, finally, the acknowledgment that its own discourse rouse never be adequate to its e amp l eT. hi s is clearly not the place to elaborate each item upon this list.I should, however, point out that in my introductory paragraphs I initiate downstairs stars skin already determine the figure of Senanayak in terms of our own patterns of complicity. In what follows, the relationship amongst the tribal and classical characters of Draupadi, the attitude of Draupadi at the end of the story, and the tuition of Senanayaks proper name might be seen as produced by the class period practice I be fit described. The complicity of law and transgression and the class deconstruction of the gentlemen revolutionaries, although seemingly minor points in the interpretation of the story as such, determine on spectaculargonr importance in a political context.I bottomlandnot take this discussion of deconstruction far enough to show how Dopdis song, incomprehensible yet trivial (it is in fact or so beans of diametrical colors), and ex-orbitant to the story, marks the place of that other that mint be neither excluded nor reuperated.Draupadi first appeared in Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire), a collection of broadly connected, short political narratives. As Mahasveta points out in her introduction to the collection, spiritedness is not mathematics and the human being is not made for the sake of politics. I want a falsify in the present societal system and do not believe in mere companionship politic. Mahasveta is a middle-class Bengali leftist in key outectual in her fifties. She has a masters degree in English from Shantiniketan, the storied experimental university established by the businessperson poet Rabindranath Tagore.Her reputation as a novelist was already well up established when, in the late 70s, she published Hajar Churashir Ma (No. 1084s Mother). This novel, the l hotshot(prenominal) superstar to be imminently published in English translation, confronts within the excessively slushy idiom of the Bengali 4. This list represents a di cool offation of suggestions to be comprise in the work of Jacques Derrida see, e.g., The Exorbitant. Question of Method, Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak (Baltimore, 1976) Limited Inc abc, trans.Samuel Weber, Glyph 2 (1977) Ou commence et detect finit un corps enseignant, in Politiques de laphilosophie, ed. Dominique Grisoni (Paris, 1976) and my Revolutions That as nevertheless Have No manakin Derridas Limited Inc, Diacritics 10 (Dec. 1980), and Sex and History in Wordsworths The Prelude (1805) IXXIII (forthcoming in Tern Studies in Literature and Language).5. It is a sign of E. M. Forsters acute perception of India that A Pussage to India contains a glimpse of such an ex-orbitant tribal in the figure of the punkha riveer in the courtroom.6. Mahasveta, Agnigarbha (Calcutta, 1978), p. 8. 384 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Draupadi novel of the last twenty-odd years.7 Yet in Aranyer Adhikar (The Rights or, Occupation of the Forest), a serially published novel she was constitution most at the same time, a signifi pukenistert sort is noticeable. It is a meticulously researched historical novel well-nigh the Munda Insurrection of 1899-1900. hither Mahasveta begins place together a p go that is a collage of literary Bengali, street Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal Bengali, and the languages of the tribals.Since the Bengali script is illegible except to the approximately 25 literate percent of the about 90 million speakers of Bengali, a largey grown human consistence of whom live in Bangladesh rather than in West Bengal, hotshot crumbnot speak of the Indian reception of Mahasvetas work merely only of its Bengali receptiom8 Briefly, that reception can be described as a general recognition of excellence s unbrokenicism regarding the content on the part of the bourgeois readership some accusations of extremism from the electoral Left and admiration and a mother wit of solidarity on the part of the n mavinlectoral Left. Any extended reception study would count on that West Bengal has had aLeft-Front government of the united electoral communistic parties since 1967. Here suffice it to say that Mahasveta is certainly ane of the most important writers musical composition in India straight absent. Any sense of Bengal as a nation is governed by the putative identity of the Bengali l a n g a g e(.M eanwhile, Bengalis dispute if the purest Bengali is that of Nabadwip or South Calc utta, and some(prenominal) a(prenominal) of the twenty-odd developed dialects are incomprehensible to the general speaker.) In 1947, on the eve of its departure from India, the British government divided Bengal into West Bengal, which remained a part of India, and East Pakistan. Punjab was resemblingly divided into East Punjab (India) and West Pakistan.The cardinal move of Pakistan did not share ethnic or linguistic ties and were separated by close to el tear down snow miles. The division was made on the drive of the c at one timentration of Muslims in these both parts of the subcontinent. Yet the Punjabi Muslims matte up themselves to be more Arab because they lived in the welkin where the first Muslim emperors of India had settled nearly seven hundred years ago and also because of their proximity to West Asia (the Middle7.For a discussion of the relationship among academic degrees in English and the production of revolutionary literature, see my A Vulgar doubt into th e Relationship surrounded by Academic Criticism and Literary Production in West Bengal (paper delivered at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association, Houston, 1980). 8. These figures are an average of the 1971 count in West Bengal and the projected figure for the 1974 census in Bangladesh.9. propose Dinesh Chandra Sen, History ofBengali Language and Literature (Calcutta, 191 1 ) . A sense of Bengali literary nationalism can be gained from the (doubtless apocryphal) advertise that, upon returning from his first investigative tour of India, Macaulay remarked The British Crown presides over ii great literatures the English and the Bengali. Critical inquiry Winter 1981 385East). The Bengali Muslims-no doubt in a class-differentiated way-felt themselves constituted by the culture of Bengal.Bengal has had a strong presence of leftist in seeectualism and struggle since the middle of the last century, in front, in fact, the word Leftentered our political shorthand.1 We st Bengal is ane of three Communist states in the Indian Union. As such, it is a source of considerable political irritation to the central government of India. (The individual state governments collapse a good deal more autonomy infra theIndian while than is the pillowcase in the U.S.) Although officially India is a Socialist state with a mixed economy, histori echoy it has reflected a spectrum of the Right, from military dictatorship to nationalist class benevolence. The word democracy fabricates highly interpretable in the context of a largely illiterate, multilingual, manifold, and unpoliticized electorate.In the spring of 1967, in that location was a successful peasant rebellion in the Naxalbari area of the northern part of West Bengal. fit in to Marcus Franda, un identical most other areas of West Bengal, where peasant movements are led almost solely by middle-class leadership from Calcutta, Naxalbari has spawned an indigenous agricultural reform leadership led by the lower classes including tribal tiller. This laughable coalition of peasant and in secernateectual sparked off a number of Naxalbaris all over India.12 The target of these movements was the hanker-established oppression of the workless peasantry and itinerant put up worker, sustained through an unofficial government-landlord collusion that too easily circumvented the law. Indeed, one(a) might say that legislation seemed to see an eye to its own coming(prenominal) circumvention.It is worth remarking that this coalition of peasant andintellectual-with yen histories of apprenticeship precisely on the side of the intellectual-has been recuperated in the West by both ends of the polarity that constitutes a political spectrum. Bernard-Henri Levy, the ex-Maoist French New Philosopher, has implicitly compared it to the May 1968 revolution in France, where the students joined the workers. 13 In France, however, the student identity of the movement had remained clear, and the stu dent leadership had not brought with it sustained efforts to undo the countenance of the intellectual. On the other hand, in much the same manner as many American college presidents 10. See Gautam Chattopadhyay,Communism and the Freedom Movement in Bengal (New Delhi, 1970).11. Marcus F. Franda, RadicalPolitics in West Bengal (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 153. Iam satisfying to Michael Ryan for having located this accessible account of the Naxalbari movement.12. See Samar Sen et al., eds., Naxalbari and After A bourn Anthology, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1978).13. See Bernard-Henri Levy, Bangla Desh Nationalisme duns la rivolution (Paris, 1973). 386 Gayatm Chakravorty Spivak Draupadi nurse described the protest of American students, Indian political and social leaders squander explained the Naxalites (supporters of Naxalbari) by referring to their sense of alienation and to the influence of writers interchangeable Marcuse and Sartre which has seemingly dominated the minds of upstart ti dy sum throughout the initiation in the 1960s.14It is against such recuperations that I would deposit what I oblige called the theme of class deconstruction with extension service to the young gentlemen revolutionaries in Draupadi. Senanayak stay fixed within his class origins, which are similar to those of the gentlemen revolutionaries. Correspondingly, he is contained and judged fully within Mahasvetas story by contrast, the gentlemen revolutionaries remain latent, chthonianground. Even their leaders voice is only heard formulaically within Draupadis solitude. I should the likes of to think that it is because they are so persistently engaged in undoing class containment and the opposition surrounded by reading (book acquire) and doing-rather than keeping the devil aesthetically forever separate-that they inhabit a human being whose authority and outline no text-including Mahasvetas-can encompass.In 1970, the implicit hostility amidst East and West Pakistan flamed into a rmed struggle. In 1971, at a of the essence(p) moment in the struggle, the armed forces of the government of India were deployed, seemingly because there were alliances in the midst of the Naxalites of West Bengal and the freedom fighters of East Bengal (now Bangladesh). If a guerrillastyle insurgency had persisted, these forces would undoubtedly devour come to dominate the politics of the movement. It was this trend that the Indian authorities were heady to pre-empt by intervention. Taking advantage of the general atmosphere of jubilation at the defeat of West Pakistan, Indias principal national rival in South Asia15 (this was also the first time India had win a war in its millennia1 history), the Indian prime minister was able to vortex down with exceptional severity on the Naxalites, destroying the rebellious sections of the rural population, most significantly the tribals, as well. The year 1971 is thus a point of reference in Senanayaks career.This is the setting of Draup adi. The story is a moment caught between two deconstructive formulas on the one hand, a law that is fabricated with a view to its own transgression, on the other, the undoing of the binary opposition between the intellectual and the rural struggles. In order to grasp the minutiae of their relationship and involvement, one must enter a historical micrology that no foreword can provide. 14. Franda, Radical Politics, pp. 163-64. See also p. 164 n.22. 15. practice of law forcerence Lifschultz, aladesh The unfinished Revolution (London, 1979),pp. 25, 26.Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 387Draupadi is the name of the central character. She is introduced to the reader between two uniforms and between two versions of her name Dopdi and Draupadi. It is either that as a tribal she cannot pronounce her own Sanskrit name (Draupadi), or the tribalized form, Dopdi, is the proper name of the antiquated Draupadi. She is on a list of wanted persons, yet her name is not on the list of reserve names for the tribal women.The ancient Draupadi is mayhap the most celebrated heroine of the Indian epic Mahabharata. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are the cultural certificate of the so-called Aryan civilization of India. The tribes predate the Aryan invasion. They hand no right to heroic Sanskrit names. Neither the interdiction nor the significance of the name, however, must be taken too seriously. For this pious, domesticated Hindu name was boundn Dopdi at birth by her fancy woman, in the usual mood of benevolence felt by the oppressors married woman toward the tribal bond servant. It is the cleaning of this mistress husband that sets going the events of the story.And yet on the level of the text, this elusive and fortuitous name does playa role. To speculate upon this role, we might consider the Mahabharata itself in its colonialist function in the interest of the so-called Aryan invaders of India. It is an accretive epic, where the unutterable geography of an ancient battle is slowly expanded by come through generations of poets so that the secular geography of the expanding Aryan colony can present itself as identical with it and thus justify itself.16 The complexity of this vast and anon. project misrepresents it an incomparably more heterogeneous text than the Ramayana.Unlike the Ramayana, for showcase, the Mahabharata contains cases of unlike resistants of kinship structure and mingled styles of marriage. And in fact it is Draupadi who provides the only example of polyandry, not a common system of marriage in India. She is matrimonial to the five sons of the im pukeent Pandu. Within a patriarchal and patronymic context, she is exceptional, indeed singular in the sense of odd, unpaired, uncoupled.17 Her husbands, since they are husbands rather than lovers, are legitimately pluralized. No acknowledgment of paternity can secure the Name of the fand so forth for the child of such a mother. Mahasvetas story questions this sign by placing Dopdi first in a comradely, activist, monogamous marriage and then in a situation of multiple rape.In the epic, Draupadis legitimized pluralization (as a wife among husbands) in singularity (as a possible mother or harlot) is use to demonstrate male glory. She provides the occasion for a uncivilised trans fulfil between men, the efficient cause of the crucial battle. Her eldest hus- 16. For my chthonicstanding of this aspect of the Mahabharata, I am indebted to Romila Thapar of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.17. I borrow this sense of singularity from Jacques Lacan, Seminar on The Purloined Letter, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Yak French Studies 48 (1972) 53, 59. 388 Gayatm Chakravorty Spivak Draupadiband is about to lose her by default in a game of dice. He had staked all he owned, and Draupadi belongs within that all (Mahabharata 6532). Her strange civil status seems to offer grounds for her predicament as well The Scriptures prescribed one husband for a woman Draupadi is depende nt on many husbands thusly she can be designated a prostitute. There is zip fastener improper in bringing her, clothed or unclothed, into the assembly (6535-36). The enemy chief begins to pull at Draupadis sum. Draupadi silently prays to the incarnate Krishna. The Idea of Sustaining Law (Dharma) materializes itself as clothing, and as the king pulls and pulls at her sum, there seems to be more and more of it. Draupadi is infinitely clothed and cannot be publicly stripped. It is one of Krishnas miracles.Mahasvetas story rewrites this episode. The men easily succeed in stripping Dopdi-in the narrative it is the culmination of her political punishment by the representatives of the law. She remains publicly naked at her own insistence. Rather than save her reticence through the implicit intervention of a benign and divine (in this case it would have been godlike) comrade, the story insists that this is the place where male leadership stops.It would be a mistake, I think, to read the mo dern story as a falsification of the ancient. Dopdi is (as heroic as) Draupadi. She is also what Draupadi-written into the patriarchal and commanding quasi-religious text as proof of male power-ould not be. Dopdi is at once a palimpsest and a contradiction.There is nonentity historically implausible about Dopdis attitudes. When we first see her, she is thinking about washing her hair. She loves her husband and keeps political cartel as an act of faith toward him. She adores her forefathers because they protected their womens honor. (It should be recalled that this is supposition in the context of American passs breeding bastards.) It is when she crosses the sexual differential into the dramatic art of what could only happen to a woman that she emerges as the most puissant subject, who, still using the language of sexual honor, can derisively call herself the object of your search, whom the author can describe as a terrorise superobject-an unarmed target. As a tribal, Dopdi is not romanticized by Mahasveta.The decision makers among the revolutionaries are, again, realistically, bourgeois young men and women who have oriented their book learning to the land and thus begun the long process of undoing the opposition between book (theory or outside) and spontaneity (practice or inside). Such fighters are the hardest to beat, for they are neither tribal nor gentlemen. A Bengali reader would smack them out by name among thecharacters the one with the aliases who bit off his lingua the ones who helped the couple escape the army cordon the ones who neither smoke nor drink tea and, above all, Arijit. His is a fashionable first name, tinsel Sanskrit, with no indirect paleonymy and a mean that fits the story a bit too well victorious over enemies. Yet it is his voice that lapses Dopdi the courage to save not herself that her comrades.Of course, this voice of male authority also fades. Once Dopdi enters, in the final section of the story, the postscript area of lunar flux and sexual difference, she is in a place where she bequeath finally actfor herself in not acting, in challenging the man to (en)counter her as unrecorded or misrecorded documental historical monument. The army officer is shown as unable to ask the authoritative ontological question, What is this? In fact, in the sentence describing Dopdis final appendage to the sahibs tent, the agent is missing. I can be forgiven if I find in this an allegory of the womans struggle within the revolution in a shifting historical moment. As Mahasveta points out in an aside, the tribe in question is the Santal, not to be confuse with the at least nine other Munda tribes that inhabit India.They are also not to be conf utilise with the so-called unattackables, who, unlike the tribals, are Hindu, though believably of remote non-Aryan origin. In giving the name Harijan (Gods people) to the untouchables, Mahatma Gandhi had tried to concoct the sort of pride and sense of champion that th e tribes seem to possess. Mahasveta has followed the Bengali practice of calling each so-called untouchable caste by the name of its menial and un make clean task within the rigid structural functionalism of institutionalized Hinduism.18 I have been unable to produce this in my translation.Mahasveta uses another distinction, almost on the level of caricature the Sikh and the Bengali. (Sikhism was founded as a reformed religion by Guru Nanak in the late fifteenth century. Today the roughly 9 million Sikhs of India live primarily in East Punjab, at the other end of the vast Indo-Gangetic field of force from Bengal. The tall, muscular, turbanned, and bearded Sikh, so unlike the slight and supposedly intellectual Bengali, is the sterile butt of jokes in the same way as the Polish corporation in NorthAmerica or the Belgian in France.) Arjan Singh, the diabetic Sikh captain who falls back on the Granth-sahib (the Sikh sacred book-I have translated it Scripture) and the five Ks of the Sikh religion, is presented as all musculus and no brains and the wily, imaginative, corrupt Bengali Senanayak is of course the army officer full of a Keatsian negative capability.lgThe entire energy of the story seems, in one reading, directed toward breaking the apparently clean gap between theory and practice in 18. As a result of the imposition of the capitalist mode of production and the Imperial Civil Service, and massive conversions of the lowest castes to Christianity, the unbroken identity of caste and trade no longer holds. Here, too, there is the hap of a taxonomy micrologically deconstructive of the caste-class opposition, functioning heterogeneously in terms of the social hierarchy.19. If indeed the instance for this character is Ranjit Gupta, the notorious inspector general of police force of West Bengal, the cushy textuality, in the interest of a political position, of Senanayaks delineation in the story takes us far beyond the limits of a referencea clef I am grateful to Michael Ryan for suggesting the possibility of such a reference. 390 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak DraupadiSenanayak. Such a clean break is not possible, of course. The theoretical production of negative capability is a practice the practice of mowing down Naxalites brings with it a theory of the historical moment. The premiss of such a clean break in fact depends upon the assertion that the individual subject who theorizes and practices is in full control. At least in the history of the Indo-European tradition in general, such a supreme subject is also the legal or legitimate subject, who is identical with his perpetual p a t r o n ymi .It m ight therefore be interesting that Senanayak is not given the differentiation of a first name and surname. His patronymic is identical with his function (not of course by the law of caste) the common noun means army chief.In fact, there is the least hint of a doubt if it is a proper name or a common appellation. This may be a un favorable judgment of the mans apparently self-adequate identity, which sustains his theory-practice juggling act. If so, it goes with what I see as the project of the story to break this bonded identity with the wedge of an nonsensical fear. If our certitude of the efficient-information-retrieval and talk-to-the-accessible approach toward Third-World women can be broken by the wedge of an unreasonable uncertainty, a feeling that what we deem gain might spell loss and that our practice should be forged accordingly, then we would share the textual load of Draupadi with Senanayak.The italicized speech communication in the translation are in English in the original. It is to be noticed that the battle words on both sides are in English. Nation-state politics combined with multinational economies produce war. The language of waroffense and defense-is international. English is standing in here for that nameless and heterogeneous world language. The peculiarities of usage belong to being obliged to cope with English under political and social pressure for a few centuries. Where, indeed, is there a pure language? Given the nature of the struggle, there is nothing bizarre in Comrade D p d i . Itl i s part of the undoing of opposites-intellectual-rural, tribalist-internationalist-that is the wavering constitution of the underground, the reproach side of the law. On the right side of the law, such deconstructions, breaking down national distinctions, are operated through the encroachment of kingemperor or capital.20. The relationship between phallocentrism, the patriarchy, and clean binary oppositions is a pervasive theme in Derridas critique of the metaphysics of presence. See my Unmaking and Making in To the Lighthouse, in Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (New York, 1980). 21. My dearest Sati, Through the walls and the miles that separate us I can hear you saying, In Sawan it allow be two y ears since Comrade left us. The other women bequeath nod. It is you who have taught them the nitty-gritty of Comrade (Mary Tyler, Letter to a Former Cell-Mate, in Naxalban and After, 1 307 see also Tyler, My Years in an Indian Prison Harmondsworth, 19771).Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 391The only exception is the word sahib. An Urdu word meaning friend, it came to mean, almost exclusively in Bengali, white man. It is a colonial word and is used today to mean boss. I pattern of Kipling as I wrote Burra Sahib for Senanayak.In the matter of translation between Bengali and English, it is again Dopdi who occupies a odd middle space. She is the only one who uses the word counter (the n is no more than a nasalization of the diphthong ou). As Mahasveta explains, it is an abbreviation for killed by police in an encounter, the code description for death by police torture. Dopdi does not generalize English, but she understands this formula and the word. In her use of it at the end, it come s enigmatically close to the proper English usage. It is the menacing appeal of the objectified subject to its politico-sexual enemy-the provisionally silenced master of the subject-object dialectic-to encounter-counter-her. What is it to use a language justly without knowing it?We cannot answer because we, with Senanayak, are in the opposite situation. Although we are told of specialists, the meaning of Dopdis song remains undisclosed in the text. The educated Bengali does not know the languages of the tribes, and no political coercion obliges him to know it. What one might falsely think of as a political privilege- knowing English properly-stands in the way of a deconstructive practice of language-using it decently through a political displacement, or operating the language of the other side.It follows that I have had the usual translators chores only with the peculiar Bengali spoken by the tribals. In general we educated Bengalis have the same racist attitude toward it as the late Peter Sellers had toward our English. It would have been embarrassing to have used some version of the language of D. H. Lawrences common people or Faulkners discolours. Again, the specificity is micrological. I have used straight English, whatever that may be.Rather than encumber the story with footnotes, in conclusion I shall list a few items of information rascal 393 The five Ks are Kes (unshorn hair) kachh (drawers down to the stifle) karha (iron bangle) kirpan (dagger) kanga (comb to be worn by every Sikh, hence a mark of identity). Page 396 Bibidha Bharati is a public wireless program, on which harkeners can hear music of their choice. The Hindi ask industry is prolific in producing pulp movies for consumption in India and in all parts of the world where there is an Indian, Pakistani, and West Indian labor force. Many of the films are adaptations from the epics. Sanjeev Kumar is an idolized actor. Since it was Krishna who rescued Draupadi from her predicament in th e epic, and, in the film the soldiers watch, Sanjeev Kumar encounters Krishna, there might be a touch of textual irony here.392 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak DraupadiPage 397 Panchayat is a supposedly elected automobile t chipk of village selfgovernment. Page 399 Champabhumi and Radhabhumi are archaic namesfor certain areas of Bengal. Bhumi is scarce land. All of Bengal is thus Bangabhumi.Page 399 The jackal following the tiger is a common image.Page 400 Modern Bengali does not do between her and his. The her in the sentence beginning No comrade will . . . can therefore be considered an interpretatin.Page 401 A sari conjures up the long, many-pleated piece of cloth, complete with blouse and under vesture, that proper Indian women wear. Dopdi wears a much-abbreviated version, without blouse or underclothes. It is referred to only as the cloth.DraupadiName Dopdi Mejhen, age twenty-seven, husband Dulna Majhi (deceased), domicile Cherakhan, Bankrajharh, information whether abruptlyor alive and/or assistance in arrest, one hundred rupees. . . An exchange between two liveried uniforms.FIRSTL IVERYW hats this, a tribal called Dopdi? The list of names I brought has nothing like it How can anyone have an unlisted name? SECONDDraupadiMejhen. Born the year her mother threshed sift at Surja Sahu (killed)a t Bakuli. Surja Sahus wife gave her the name. FIRST These officers like nothing better than to write as much as they can in English. Whats all this stuff about her?SECONDMost notorious female. pine wanted in many. . .Dossier Dulna and Dopdi worked at harvest times, rotating between Birbhum, Burdwan, Murshidabad, and Bankura. In 1971, in the celebrated Operation Bakuli, when three villages were cordonned off and machine gunned, they too lay on the ground, faking dead. In fact, they were the main culprits. Murdering Surja Sahu and his son, occupying upper-caste wells and tubewells during the drought, not give uping those three young men to the police. In all this t hey were the chief instigators. In the morning, at the time of the embody count, the couple could not be found.The line of credit-sugar level of passe-partout Arjan Singh, the architect of Bakuli, rose at once and proved yet again that diabetes can be a result of anxiety and depression. Diabetes has twelve husbands-among them anxiety. Dulna and Dopdi went underground for a long time in a Neanderthal nightedness. The modified Forces, attempting to pierce that dark by an armed search, compelled quite a few Santals in the various districts of West Bengal to meet their Maker against their will. By the Indian Con- 22. I am grateful to Soumya Chakravarti for his help in solving occasional problems of English synonyms and archival research.stitution, all human beings, regardless of caste or creed, are sacred. Still, accidents like this do happen. 2 sorts of reasons (I), the underground couples skill in self-concealment ( 2 ) ,not merely the Santals but all tribals of the Austro-Asiat ic Munda tribes appear the same to the Special Forces.In fact, all around the ill-famed lumber of Jharkhani, which is under the jurisdiction of the police station at Bankrajharh (in this India of ours, even a worm is under a certain police station), even in the southeast and southwestern United States corners, one comes across hair-raising details in the eyewitness records put together on the people who are suspected of attacking police stations, stealing guns (since the snatchers are not invariably well educated, they sometimes say give up your chambers rather than give up your gun), killing grain brokers, landlords, moneylenders, law officers, and bureaucrats. A black-skinned couple ululated like police sirens before the episode. They sang jubilantly in a savage tongue, incomprehensible even to the Santals. Such asSamaray hijulenako mar goekopeand.Hende rambra keche kechePundi rambra keche kecheThis proves conclusively that they are the cause of Captain Arjan Singhs diabetes. G overnment procedure being as incomprehensible as the Male Principle in Sankhya philosophy or Antonionis early films, it was Arjan Singh who was sent once again on Operation Forest Jharkhani. schooling from Intelligence that the above- adduceed ululating and dancing couple was the escaped corpses, Arjan Singh fell for a bit into a zombielike state and finally acquired so irrational a dread of black-skinned people that whenever he saw a black person in a ballbag, he swooned, saying theyre killing me, and drank and passed a lot of body of body of water. Neither uniform nor Scriptures could relieve that depression. At long last, under the shadow of apremuture and forced retirement, it was possible to present him at the desk of Mr. Senanayak, the elderly Bengali specialist in combat and extreme-left politics.Senanayak knows the activities and capacities of the opposition better than they themselves do. First, therefore, he presents an eulogium on the military genius of the Sikhs. co nsequently he explains further Is it only the opposition that should find power at the end of the barrel of a gun? Arjan Singhs power also explodes out of the male electronic organ of a gun. Without a gun even the five Ks come to nothing in this day and age. These speeches he delivers to all and sundry. As a result, the fighting forces regain their confidence in the Army Handbook. It is not a book for everyone. It says that the most despicable and repulsive style of fighting is 394 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Draupadiguerrilla warfare with primitive weapons. Annihilation at sight of any and all practitioners of such warfare is the sacred duty of every soldier. Dopdi and Dulna belong to the category of such fighters, for they too kill by means of hatchet and scythe, bow and arrow, etc. In fact, their fighting power is greater than the gentlemens. non all gentlemen incur experts in the explosion of chambers they think the power will come out on its own if the gun is held. solely sin ce Dulna and Dopdi are illiterate, their kind have practiced the use of weapons generation subsequently generation.I should mention here that, although the other side make microscopic of him, Senanayak is not to be trifled with. Whatever hispractice, in theory he respects the opposition. Respects them because they could be neither understood nor demolished if they were treated with the attitude, Its nothing but a bit of impertinent game-playing with guns. In order to destroy the enemy, become one. Thus he understood them by (theoretically) becoming one of them. He hopes to write on all this in the future. He has also obstinate that in his written work he will demolish the gentlemen and suck up the inwardness of the harvest workers. These mental processes might seem complicated, but genuinely he is a simple man and is as pleased as his third great-uncle after a meal of turtle meat. In fact, he knows that, as in the old popular song, turn by turn the world will change.And in eve ry world he must have the credentials to survive with honor. If necessary he will show the future to what extent he alone understands the matter in its proper perspective. He knows very well that what he is doing today the future will forget, but he also knows that if he can change color from world to world, he can represent the particular world in question. Today he is getting rid of the young by means of apprehension and elimination, but he knows people will soon forget the memory and lesson of blood. And at the same time, he, like Shakespeare, believes in delivering the worlds legacy into youths hands. He is Prospero as well.At any rate, information is received that many young men and women, mount by batch and on jeeps, have attacked police station after police station, terrified and elated the region, and disappeared into the woodland of Jharkhani. Since after escaping from Bakuli, Dopdi and Dulna have worked at the house of virtually every landowner, they can efficiently infor m the killers about their targets and announce proudly that they too are soldiers, rank and$le.Finally the impenetrable lumber of Jharkhani is surrounded by real soldiers, the army enters and splits the battlefield. Soldiers in hiding hold the falls and springs that are the only source of drinking water they are still guarding, still sounding.On one such search, army informant Dukhiram Gharari saw a young Santal man lying on his live on on a flat stone, dipping his face to drink water. The soldiers shot him as he lay. As the .303 threw him off spread-eagled and brought a bloody foam to his mouth, he roared Ma-ho and then went limp. They realized later that it was the redoubtable Dulna Majhi. What does Ma-ho mean? Is this a violent slogan in the tribal language? Even after much thought, the Department of Defense could not be sure.Two tribal-specialist types are flown in from Calcutta, and they sweat over the dictionaries put together by worthies such as Hoffmann-Jeffer and Golden -Palmer. Finally the omniscent Senanayak summons Chamru, the water carrier of the camp. He giggles when he sees the two specialists, scratches his ear with his bidi, and says, The Santals of Maldah did say that when they began fighting at the time of King Gandhi Its a battle cry. Who said Ma-ho here? Did someone come from Maldah?The problem is thus solved. wherefore, leaving Dulnas body on the stone, the soldiers climb the trees in green camouflage. They embrace the leafy boughs like so many great god Pans and wait as the large red ants second their offstage parts. To see if anyone comes to take away the body. This is the hunters way, not the soldiers. But Senanayak knows that these brutes cannot be dispatched by the approved method. So he asks his men to draw the prey with a corpse as bait. All will come clear, he says. I have almost deciphered Dopdis song.The soldiers get going at his command. But no one comes to submit Dulnas corpse. At night the soldiers shoot at a scamper and, descending, discover that they have killed two hedgehogs copulating on dry leaves. Improvidently enough, the soldiers hobo camp scout Dukhiram gets a spit in the neck before he can claim the reward for Dulnas capture. Bearing Dulnas corpse, the soldiers bide shooting pains as the ants, interrupted in their feast, begin to bite them. When Senanayak hears that no one has come to take the corpse, he slaps his anti-Fascist paperback repeat of The Deputy and shouts, What? Immediately one of the tribal specialists runs in with a joy as naked and transparent as Archimedes and says, Get up, sir I have discover the meaning of that hende rambra stuff. Its Mundari language.Thus the search for Dopdi continues. In the forest belt of Jharkhani, the Operation continues-will continue. It is a carbuncle on the governments backside. Not to be cured by the tested ointment, not to burst with the appropriate herb. In the first phase, the fugitives, ignorant of the forests topography, are caught easily, and by the law of confrontation they are shot at the taxpayers expense. By the law of confrontation, their eyeballs, intestines, stomachs, hearts, genitals, and so on become the food of fox, vulture, hyena, wildcat, ant, and worm, and the untouchables go off happily to sell their bare skeletons.They do not allow themselves to be captured in open combat in the next phase. Now it seems that they have found a trustworthy courier. Ten to one its Dopdi. Dopdi love Dulna more than her blood. No doubt it is she who is saving the fugitives now.They is also a hypothesis.why?396 Gayatri Chakravorty Spiuak DraupadiHow many went origznally?The answer is silence. About that there are many tales, many books in press. Best not to believe everything.How many killed in six years confrontation?The answer is silence.why after confrontations are the skeletons discovered with arms broken or severed? Could armless men have fought? Why do the collarbones shake, why are legs and ribs crushed?Two k inds of answer. Silence. appall rebuke in the eyeball. Shame on you Why bring this up? What will be will be. . . .How many left in the forest? The answer is silence.A legzon? Is itjustzjiable to maintain a large battalion in that wild area at the taxpayers expense?Answer Objection. indefensible area is incorrect. The battalion is provided with supervised nutrition, arrangements to worship according to religion, opportunity to listen to Bibidha Bharati and to see Sanjeev Kumar and the Lord Krishna face-to-face in the movie This Is Life. No. The area is not wild.How many are left?The answer is silence.How many are left? Is there anyone at all?The answer is long.Item Well, action still goes on. Moneylenders, landlords, grain brokers, anonymous brothel keepers, ex-informants are still terrified. The supperless and naked are still defiant and irrepressible. In some pockets the harvest workers are getting a better wage. Villages sympathetic to the fugitives are still silent and hostil e. These events cause one to think. . . . Where in this picture does Dopdi Mejhen fit?She must have connections with the fugitives. The cause for fear is elsewhere. The ones who remain have lived a long time in the primitive world of the forest. They keep company with the scummy harvest workers and the tribals. They must have forgotten book learning. Perhaps they are orienting their book learning to the soil they live on and learning new combat and survival techniques. One can shoot and get rid of the ones whose only recourse is extrinsic book learning and wholehearted intrinsic enthusiasm. Those who are working practically will not be exterminated so easily.Therefore Operation Jharkhani Forest cannot stop. Reason the words of warning in the Army Handbook.Catch Dopdi Mejhen. She will lead us to the others.Dopdi was proceeding slowly, with some rice knotted into her belt. Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 397Mushai Tudus wife had cooked her some. She does so occasionally. When the rice is cold, Dopdi knots it into her waistcloth and walks slowly. As shewalked, she picked out and killed the lice in her hair. If she had some Kerosene, shed rub it into her scalp and get rid of the lice. Then she could wash her hair with bakingsoda. But the bastards put traps at every bend of the falls. If they smell kerosene in the water, they will follow the scent.DopdiShe doesnt respond. She never responds when she hears her own name. She has seen in the Panchayat office just today the notice for the reward in her name. Mushai Tudus wife had said, What are you looking at? Who is Dopdi Mejhen Money if you give her upHow much?Two-hundredOh GodMushais wife said outside the office A lot of forwardness this time. A-1 1 new policemen.Hm.Dont come again.Why?Mushais wife looked down. Tudu says that Sahib has come again. If they point you, the village, our huts . . .Theyll burn again.Yes. And about Dukhiram . . .The Sahib knows?Shomai and Budhna betrayed us.Where are they?Ran away by trai n.Dopdi thought of something. Then said, Go home. I dont know what will happen, if they catch me dont know me. deposet you run away?No. Tell me, how many times can I run away? What will they do if they catch me? They will counter me. Let them.Mushais wife said, We have nowhere else to go.Dopdi said softly, I wont tell anyones name.Dopdi knows, has learn by hearing so often and so long, how one can come to terms with torture. If mind and body give way under torture, Dopdi will bite off her tongue. That boy did it. They countered him. When they counter you, your hands are tied behind you. All your bones are crushed, your sex is a terrible wound. Killed by police in an encounter. . .unknown male . . . age 22 . . .As she walked thinking these thoughts, Dopdi heard someone calling, DopdiShe didnt respond. She doesnt respond if called by her own name. Here her name is Upi Mejhen. But who calls?398 Gayatri ChakravoS pivak Draupadi Spines of disbelief are always furled in her mind. Heari ng Dopdi they stiffen like a hedgehogs. Walking, she unrolls the$lm of known faces in her mind. Who? Not Shomra, Shomra is on the run. Shomai and Budhna are also on the run, for other reasons. Not Golok, he is in Bakuli. Is it someone from Bakuli? After Bakuli, her and Dulnas names were Upi Mejhen, Matang Majhi. Here no one but Mushai and his wife knows their real names. Among the young gentlemen, not all of the previous batches knew.That was a troubled time. Dopdi is confused when she thinks about it. Operation Bakuli in Bakuli. Surja Sahu pose with Biddibabu to dig two tubewells and three wells within the compound of his two houses. No water anywhere, drought in Birbhum. Unlimited water at Surja Sahus house, as clear as a crows eye.Get your water with canal tax, everything is burning.Whats my profit in increase destination with tax money?Everythings on fire.Get out of here. I dont accept your Panchayat nonsense. Increase cultivation with water. You want half the paddy for share cropping. Everyone is happy with free paddy. Then give me paddy at home, give me money, Ive learned my lesson trying to do you good.What good did you do?Have I not given water to the village?Youve given it to your kin Bhagunal.Dont you get water?No. The untouchables dont get water.The quarrel began there. In the drought, human patience catches easily. Satish and Jugal from the village and that young gentleman, was Rana his name?, said a landowning moneylender wont give a thing, put him down.Surja Sahus house was surrounded at night. Surja Sahu had brought out his gun. Surja was tied up with affright rope. His whitish eyeballs turned and turned, he was incontinent again and again. Dulna had said, Ill have the first blow, brothers. My greatgrandfather took a bit of paddy from him, and I still give him free labor to repay that debt. Dopdi had said, His mouth watered when he looked at me. Ill pull out his eye.Surja Sahu. Then a telegraphic cognitive content from Shiuri. Special train. Army. The jeep didnt come up to Bakuli. March-march-march. The crunch-crunch-crunch of gravel under hobnailed boots. Cordon up. Commands on the mike. Jugal Mandal Satish Mandal, Rana alias Prabir alias Dipak, Dulna Majhi-Dopdi Mejhen surrender surrender surrender. No surrender surrender. Mow-mowmow down the village. Putt-putt putt-puttcordite in the air-putt-putt-round the clock-putt-putt. Flame escape fromer. Bakuli is burning. More men and women, children . . .jre-jire. Close canal Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 399 approach. everyplace-over-over by nightfall. Dopdi and Dulna had crawled on their stomachs to safety. They could not have reached Paltakuri after Bakuli. Bhupati and Tapa took them. Then it was decided that Dopdi and Dulna would work around the Jharkhani belt. Dulna had explained to Dopdi, Dear, this is best We wont get family and children this way. But who knows? landowner and moneylender and policemen might one day be wiped outWho called her from the back today?Dopd i kept walking. Villages and fields, bush and swing-Public Works Department markers-sound of running steps in back. Only one person running. Jharkhani Forest still about two miles away. Now she thinks of nothing but entering the forest. She must let them know that the police have set up notices for her again. Must tell them that that bastard Sahib has appeared again. Must change hideouts.Also, the plan to do to Lakkhi Bera and Naran Bera what they did to Surja Sahu on account of the trouble over paying the field hands in Sandara must be cancelled. Shomai and Budhna knew everything. There was the urgency of great danger under Dopdis ribs. Now she thought there was no shame as a Santal in Shomai and Budhnas treachery. Dopdis blood was the pure unadulterated black blood of Champabhumi. From Champa to Bakuli the rise and set of a million moons. Their blood could have been contaminated Dopdi felt proud of her forefathers. They stood guard overtheir womens blood in black armor. Shomai a nd Budhna are halfbreeds. The fruits of the war. Contributions to Radhabhumi by the American soldiers stationed at Shiandanga. Otherwise, crow would eat crows fig before Santal would betray Santal.Footsteps at her back. The steps keep a distance. Rice in her belt, tobacco leaves shut in at her waist. Arijit, Malini, Shamu, Mantu-none of them smokes or even drinks tea. Tobacco leaves and limestone powder. Best medicine for scorpion bite. nix must be given away. Dopdi turned left. This way is the camp. Two miles. This is not the way to the forest. But Dopdi will not enter the forest with a cop at her back.I swear by my life. By my life Dulna, by my life. Nothing must be told.The footsteps turn left. Dopdi touches her waist. In her cover the comfort of a half-moon. A baby scythe. The smiths at Jharkhani are fine artisans. Such an edge well put on it Upi, a hundred Dukhiram* thank God Dopdi is not a gentleman. Actually, perhaps they have understood scythe, hatchet, and knife best. T hey do their work in silence. The lights of the camp at a distance. Why is Dopdi going this way? Stop a bit, it turns again. Huh I can tell where I am if I wander all night with my eye shut. I wont go in the forest, I wont lose him that way. I wont outrun him. You derriere jackal of a cop, deadly afraid of death, 400 Gayatri Ch a k r a u o Sp iuak Draupadiyou cant run around in the forest. Id run you out of breath, throw you in a ditch, and finish you off.Not a word must be said. Dopdi has seen the new camp, she has sat in the bus station, passed the time of day, ingest a bidi and found out how many police convoys had arrived, how many radio vans. Squash four, onions seven, peppers fifty, a straightforward account. This information cannot now be passed on. They will understand Dopdi Mejhen has been countered. Then theyll run. Arijits voice. If anyone is caught, the others must catch the timing and change their hideout. If Comrade Dopdi arrives late, we will not remain. There will be a sign of where weve gone. No comrade will let the others be destroyed for her own sake.Arijits voice. The gurgle of water. The direction of the next hideout will be indicated by the tip of the wooden arrowhead under the stone. Dopdi likes and understands this. Dulna died, but, let me tell you, he didnt lose anyone elses life. Because this was not in our heads to begin with, one was countered for the others trouble. Now a much harsher rule, blowzy and clear. Dopdi returns-good doesnt returnbad. Change hideout. The clue will be such that the opposition wont see it, wont understand even if they do.Footsteps at her back. Dopdi turns again. These 3% miles of land and rocky ground are the best way to enter the forest. Dopdi has left that way behind. A little level ground ahead. Then rocks again. The anny could not have struck camp on such rocky terrain. This area is quiet enough. Its like a maze, every hump looks like every other. Thats fine. Dopdi will lead the cop to the burning g hat. Patitpaban of Saranda had been sacrificed in the name of Kali of the destroy Ghats.APehendA lump of rock stands up. Another. Yet another. The elderly Senanayak was at once triumphant and despondent. Ifyou want to destroy the enemy, become one. He had done so. As long as six years ago he could forestall their every move. He still can. Therefore he is elated. Since he has kept up with the literature, he has read First Blood and seen approval of his thought and work.Dopdi couldnt trick him, he is unhappy about that. Two sorts of reasons. 6 years ago he published an article about information storage in brain cells. He demonstrated in that piece that he supported this struggle from the point of view of the field hands. Dopdi is a field hand. Veteran3ghter. Search and destroy. Dopdi Mejhefi is about to be apprehended. Will be destroyed. Regret. checkoutDopdi stops short. The steps behind come around to the front. Under Dopdis ribs the canal dam breaks. No hope. Surja Sahus brother Rotoni Sahu. The two lumps of rock come forward. Shomai andBudhna. They had not escaped by train.Arijits voice. Just as you must know when youve won, you must also acknowledge defeat and start the activities of the next stage. Now Dopdi spreads her arms, raises her face to the sky, turns toward the forest, and ululates with the force of her entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and outsmart their wings. The echo of the call travels far. Draupadi Mejhen was apprehended at 653P.M. It took an hour to get her to camp. Questioning took another hour exactly. No one touched her, and she was allowed to sit on a canvas camp stool. At 857 Senanayaks dinner hour approached, and saying, Make her. Do the needful, he disappeared.Then a billion moons pass. A billion lunar years. Opening her eyes after a million light years, Draupadi, strangely enough, sees sky and moon. tardily the bloodied nailheads shift from her brain. Trying to move, she feels her arms and legs still tied to four posts. Something steamy under her ass and waist. Her own blood. Only the gag has been removed. Incredible thirst. In case she says water she catches her lower lip in her teeth. She senses that her vagina is bleeding. How many came to make her?Shaming her, a tear trickles out of the corner of her eye. In the muddy do work she lowers her lightless eye, sees her breasts, and understands that, indeed, shes been made up right. Her breasts are bitten raw, the nipples torn. How many? Four-five-six-seven-then Draupadi had passed out.She turns her eyes and sees something white. Her own cloth. Nothing else.Suddenly she hopes against hope. Perhaps they have abandoned her. For the foxes to devour. But she hears the scrape of feet. She turns her head, the guard leans on his bayonet and leers at her. Draupadi closes her eyes. She doesnt have to wait long. Again the process of making her begins. Goes on. The moon vomits a bit of light and goes to sleep. Only the dark remains. A compelled spread-eagled still body. Active pistons of flesh rise and fall, rise and fall over it. Then morning comes.Then Draupadi Mejhen is brought to the tent and thrown on the straw. Her piece of cloth is thrown over her body.Then, after breakfast, after reading the newspaper and sending the radio message Draupadi Mejhen apprehended, etc., Draupadi Mejhen is ordered brought in.Suddenly there is trouble.Draupadi sits up as soon as she hears Move and asks, Where do you want me to go?To the Burra Sahibs tent.402 Gayatm Chakravorty Spivak DraupadiWhere is the tent?Over there.Draupadi fixes her red eyes on the tent. Says, Come, Ill go. The guard pushes the water pot forward.Draupadi stands up. She pours the water down on the ground.Tears her piece of cloth with her teeth. seeing such strange behavior, the guard says, Shes gone crazy, and runs for orders. He can lead the prisoner out but doesnt know what to do if the prisoner behav es incomprehensibly. So he goes to ask his superior.The commotion is as if the depress had sounded in a prison.Senanayak walks out surprised and sees Draupadi, naked, walking toward him in the shimmery sunlight with her head high. The nervous guards trail behind.What is this? He is about to cry, but stops.Draupadi stands before him, naked. Thigh and pubic hair matted with dry blood. Two breasts, two wounds.What is this? He is about to bark.Draupadi comes closer. Stands with her hand on her hip, laughs and says, The object of your search, Dopdi Mejhen. You asked them to make me up, dont you want to see how they made me?Where are her clothes?Wont put them on, sir. Tearing them.Draupadis black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, Whats the use o f clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man?She looks around and chooses the front of Senanayaks white bush tog to spit a bloody gob at and says, There isnt a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me-come on, counter me-?Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid.