Sita, Durga, and the Women of Today's India

Naanak bhandai baahra/Ayko sachaa so-i
“O Nanak, the only one without a woman/Is the one True Lord”
~Siri Guru Granth Sahib

The cultural archetype of the woman in India draws from two complex and divergent role models. On the one hand, Sita, wife of Narayana’s avatar Rama, is the personification of chastity and unconditional love for her husband. In the verses of the Ramayana, there is even the suggestion that she is the very embodiment of the Vedas themselves. As a mythic female archetype, she exemplifies the negativity society dumps onto women on equally mythic proportions. She is abducted by Ravana, a serial rapist and tyrannical dictator who has literally conquered the three worlds (earth, devaloka and patal). After she has been held captive by this sadistic and amoral being, the world cannot accept that she was truly faithful to Rama despite Ravana’s daily attempts to seduce her. It is the epitome of adding insult to injury, so to speak, and the greatest insult of all is that Rama himself is forced to banish her because his role as king requires him to dissociate from anything that could undermine his authority among his people. After being kept apart for so long, Sita is unable to have a moment’s peace even after being reunited with Rama. Her unwavering love and devotion to Rama throughout the unending trials of her life has become an example for generations of women for literally thousands of years. Durga, on the other hand, was brought into creation to liberate the universe from oppression of evil and male arrogance, embodied in Mahishasura, a man not unlike Ravana. When the destructive rampages of Mahishasura were brought to the attention of Shiva, who is the transformative aspect of God, he created Durga from his own all-seeing third eye. All the other gods contributed their energy to her creation and so Durga is the sum total of all righteous anger and divine retribution. She vanquished Mahishasura in an epic and gruesome battle, into which she carried the staff of Yama, the bow of Vayu, the arrows of Surya, Shiva’s trishula, Varuna’s conch shell, Agni’s flaming dart, Indra’s thunderbolt, Kubera’s club and the sudarshan chakra of Vishnu. People pray to Durga to liberate them from suffering and to bring them peace and prosperity. Together, these women represent almost antithetical approaches to life: Sita is worshipped because her purity and piety allows her to endure unending suffering. Durga is worshipped because she is endowed with the courage and ferocity to end all suffering. How is contemporary Indian culture able to reconcile these two contending world views? As we see in Susie Tharu and K. Lalita’s second volume of Women Writing in India, women embody various characteristics of both Sita and Durga at different times. There are women who are chaste and steadfast, and are seemingly martyred for those qualities. There are other women who simply seem to absorb the negativity of society whether or not they are pure on the inside. Some women have a rebellious, independent spirit that cannot be tamed; they represent spirits of change and are rarely welcomed. In all instances, whether they are fully or only partially embodiments of Sita or Durga, they are forces to be reckoned with, both as victor and victim. These diverse women all transform their environments and the people in their lives.

The anthology opens with Rasheed Jahan’s Woh, or “That One.” The story chronicles a handful of unpleasant encounters with a woman who has been horrifically disfigured by syphillis, and is presumed to be a prostitute. Everywhere she goes, the lack of compassion in others is aroused. Her pharmacist is the first to malign her: “that one is a scoundrel, a whore, a filthy whore (119).” Later, after “that one” sits down next to Safia, the narrator, at her school, a custodial worker remarks: “Disgusting stinky woman. Why should I dust the chair that one sits on” (120)? The protagonist here is someone who is universally perceived as having completely lost all social status because of her lifestyle. Because she is suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, it is assumed, but never substantiated, that she had been promiscuous and irresponsible with her body. Of course, we do not know this is true. The woman could have contracted syphilis by being raped. Or she could have had a single sexual partner who carried the disease. The interest in exploring these alternatives is to say that very little is known about this woman, but people feel they are entitled to project their negative beliefs onto her. In this respect, there is a strong parallel to the figure of Sita: after her abduction by Ravana, nobody ever looked at her the same way ever again. Rama is heartbroken to learn that, despite her purification by fire following the war against Ravana, his subjects continue to gossip about her and to spread negative rumors about her. The result, as we have mentioned earlier, is that Sita was banished from the kingdom in an effort to maintain Rama’s authority as king. The stigma of that one’s syphilis is the same as the stigma left on Sita by her many months locked away in Ravana’s palace: in both cases, nobody gives the woman the benefit of the doubt, and all assume the worst about her personal character. In both cases, the women are removed from society in order for the social order to be restored. Sita is banished and that one is forced out of the school during a violent attack by a janitor, Naseeban. The negativity brought out by these women is something so drastic that their respective societies are destabilized by their very presence. They both become “sacrificial lambs” that absorb the ugliness society is unable to confront in itself.

The primary difference between Sita and that one, however, is to be found in an examination of motivation and results. Sita, as she herself says over and over again, only cares for Rama, and only wishes to serve him in every way she can. When she finally returns to the depths of the earth that bore her, Sita issues a final pronouncement: “If I have never loved any man but Rama, even in my mind, if I have worshipped him as my only God, in my heart, my words, and my deeds, may my mother Bhumi Devi, who brought me into this world, now receive me back into herself. For all my life’s purposes are accomplished and I do not want to live in this world any more” (Ramesh Menon, trans. The Ramayana 650). Despite all the suffering and humiliation she has suffered, she withdraws from the world in triumph. That one, on the other hand, seems to be looking for a friend. After Safia and her make eye contact at the hospital, she seeks out Safia at the school where she works and brings her a jasmine blossom (Tharu and Lalita 120). We can see that that one is trying to pursue a friendship because “it became a daily affair” (120). Even before Naseeban violently expels her from the school, it is clear that that one is misplacing her trust in Safia, whose private thoughts reveal just as much intolerance as is expressed vociferously by the others: “doesn’t she have a mirror? Doesn’t she know she’s reaping the fruit of a sinful life? Why doesn’t anyone tell her” (121)? That one is seeking friendship, but she finds none: Safia is only too well-bred to treat her as harshly as the others. Whereas Sita endures abduction and banishment but ultimately leaves the world by her own choosing, having fulfilled her life’s purpose, that one is driven out with her desires for companionship remaining unresolved. Perhaps Jahan and Valmiki are documenting the same world, but are offering different conclusions about their observations: Sita is ultimately rewarded for the desire to serve her husband, but that one’s desire for friendship is met with ambivalence at best and outright hatred at the worst.

In Kamal Desai’s Tila Bandh (Close Sesame), we follow a cleverly disguised retelling of the life of Sita. From beginning to end, all major plot details share exact parallels with Sita’s story in the Ramayana. A young math teacher named Urmila is chosen to act in a play, essentially without her consent. This is her abduction, the world of the theatre is her Lanka, and Chanrakeshkhar, the man who forces her to comply, is her Ravana. We see the disregard for Urmila’s own wishes right away. When she attempts to protest, Chandrakeskhar replies “You can. You’ll do it (270).” Just like Ravana, Chandrakeshkhar wants Urmila because he desires her, not because she will really “fit in” with his plans. Sita basically sits around pouting until Rama lays waste to Ravana’s kingdom and slaughters his entire army including his sons and brothers. Similarly, Urmila has no talent as an actress, and is too caught up in her own emotional turmoil to lend herself to the demands of the situation. The discovery of this fact only puts strain on Chandrakeshkhar’s relationships with the other actors. When she arrives on the set, someone remarks “so this is the woman Chandrakeshkhar had set his mind on” (275). Another actor says to Shrinivas, privately, “it’s beyond me why Chandrakeshkhar thinks so highly of her” (278). Urmila is quite uncomfortable in her interactions with the other actors, remarking that, “she has been flung far away. she is on the outside. The distance stays” (277). When she begins to skip rehearsals, however, she is able to reclaim some of her sanity. As she sits at home sipping tea, “she puts down her cup and bursts out laughing” (279). When Chandrakeshkhar confronts her, he realizes that she has managed to redefine the power dynamic between them: “He is helpless before her. He has a feeling she has escaped him” (280). This is not at all unlike Sita’s eventual psychological conquering of Ravana that takes place long before Rama’s Brahmastra obliterates his body. Chandrakeshkhar realizes how infatuated he is with Urmila only when he has lost any power over her, thinking to himself “she has wrapped herself around his heart” (280). He cannot decide to yell at her or to kick her off the play altogether. When the play is finally concluded, Urmila’s experience parallels Sita’s once again: she is alienated from the society to which she returns. When Urmila returns to work, “Nirmala blurts out. ‘She’s a celebrity. She won’t bother with us now” (285). Mrs. Palstule thinks the same thing but does not verbalize it. Later, one of her students exclaims “she shouldn’t have acted that way” (285).

While Urmila and Sita share parallel experiences, and both are ultimately triumphant, the most significant variance between them is in their motivation. Most obviously, Urmila is unmarried and is not motivated by love and devotion toward a man. Whereas Sita was living happily with Rama in the dandaka vana before being abducted by Ravana, Urmila seems to be reaching a kind of stagnation point in her life as a school teacher at the beginning of the story: “perhaps she doesn’t want anything at all... perhaps she’s tired of marking answer books... perhaps - who knows - she isn’t capable of teaching any longer” (267). The sense of futility in the prosaic scruples of her academic work suggests she is waiting for a breakthrough in her life; something that will jar her out of the monotony of her routine and give her a rejuvenated sense of herself and her place in the world. Although she is generally unhappy throughout the production of the play, the vitality that has been missing all along begins to return when the ordeal is over. When she returns her attention once more to her lessons, “she is feeling stimulated, excited without reason” (284). Even when she overhears her coworkers gossiping about her and Chandrakeshkhar, “the words have meant nothing to her” (284). This is a change from how she felt when she arrived on the set of the play and felt alienated from the other actors. She resumes teaching “exactly as she does every day, though perhaps with more passion” (284). We should appreciate that Urmila has attained what she has been seeking all along: a renewed enthusiasm for her teaching and her life in general. While Sita elects to leave the world after fulfilling her goal, Urmila finds new meaning in her earthly duties.

Anupama Niranjana offers us another interpretation of the Sita archetype in Ondu Ghatane Mattu Anantara. This sad and disturbing story depicts an anonymous woman who is abducted by two rapists. Instead of rushing to her aid, however, her husband scurries home to save his own hide. This is a much more cynical take on the Sita myth: her husband, to whom she proclaims “I love you...more than my life” (387), is anything but Vishnu’s avatar. Sita loved Rama because he was quite literally God made flesh, but here we see that women are obliged to settle for men of considerably lower caliber. Shockingly, her husband comes home and cannot even tell his mother what has happened. When he finally retrieves his wife, he never openly confronts the issue of her rape. Even when she asks him, “we’ve got to arrive at a decision, haven’t we” (391), he replies “what’s there to decide about now” (391)? Out of strong feelings of guilt and shame, the woman neither seeks medical treatment nor pursues any prosecution of her assailants. Her silence contrasts with Sita’s cutting and incessant rebuking of Ravana. In every exchange between Sita and her oppressor, she always exclaims “you court death for yourself and your kingdom. Have you no wise men in your court, who advise you against your folley” (Menon 311)? And “nothing in all the worlds, no cause in the yawning ages of time, will persuade me to give in to you. Take me back to Rama, before doom comes to Lanka” (311). The protagonist in Niranjana’s short story shares Sita’s devotion to her husband, but her righteous indignation becomes stifled by her husband’s refusal to confront reality. She is finds no support in him because he is so ashamed of himself that he wants to sweep the whole thing under the rug, so to speak. He is so ashamed, in fact, that he actually wishes that she commit suicide to relieve him of the burden which he has no idea how to handle with dignity: “maybe she had killed herself. Relief displaced all other emotions: what a simple solution to the knotty issue” (Tharu and Lalita 391)! Compare this to Rama’s insurmountable rage that threatens to decimate anything standing between him and Sita. When he needs to cross the ocean separating him from Lanka, for example, he threatens to entirely vaporize it with his astras: “bring me my bow, Lakshmana. Let us see what Varuna does when I make vapor of his waters with my astras, and all his fish lie heaving on an arid bed of sand. The vanaras will walk on dry land to Lanka, where my Sita waits in anguish for me” (Menon 377). In the oppressive silence of her home environment, Niranjana’s protagonist finds no justice. Ultimately she abandons her husband and, presumably, her existing social ties as well. In an unembellished note, she tells her husband: “I am leaving to lead an independent existence. Do not look for me” (Tharu and Lalita 392). Her departure from the world forms yet another parallel with Sita’s life.

The anonymous woman in Niranjana’s story simply wants justice. Her underlying motivation is revealed as she laments to herself: “Why, even a stone would have relented and taken pity on me! And what became of God, the god I worshipped every day? From whom else could I expect help, when my dear husband drove away, without even lifting a finger” (388)? We see that she values justice more than comfort, furthermore, when she clarifies that she would rather be a widow than be married to a selfish, cowardly man: “He could have given up his life, fighting those blackguards - that way I would have retained my respect for him. Even if he had died, I would have lived on with memories of him” (389). She understands that life itself has no meaning without deep values, but her husband is only interested in comfort. At the beginning of the story when he comes home without her, he only reminisces about their sex life: “affection, love, desire, kissing, embracing, then uniting - he had considered these the most significant aspects of creation. But all at once, they lost their meaning, seemed mere shadows, without substance” (385). He is unable to honor his wife after her rape because, while he is suddenly unable to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, he does not in fact awaken to the deeper aspects of relationships or to the true nature of his responsibilities as a husband. He makes his wife’s simple desire for justice impossible first by fleeing the scene of the attack, then by lying to everyone at home about it. He even tells his mother that “she’s gone to a friend’s place” (384), and that her clothes were soiled because “a bull came into the street. I had to brake rather suddenly and she fell off” (388). This second lie is a particular outrage because here he is claiming that he had to act drastically in order to protect his wife from danger, but he is only covering up the fact that is completely unable to do precisely that. Because of his lies, she feels completely alone in her grief, and is therefore completely unable to seek justice while remaining in her current life. She leaves him “to lead an independent existence” (392), but it seems unlikely that she will have justice. Her departure is not the triumph of Sita’s devotion and chastity; rather, it is an act of desperation.

In Rajjia Sajjad Zaheer’s Neech, we turn our attention to the archetype of Durga. Durga represents the feminine power that removes oppressive forces through destructive methods. With this definition in the forefront of our minds, we examine the behavior of Sultana’s servant girl, Shyamali. The oppressive forces combated and overcome by Shyamali are the romantic relationships that constrain her and the social attitudes that prevent Sultana from understanding her and seeing the world more accurately. We see that she embodies the destructive aspects of change when we learn that she left husband, and was not widowed by him as she initially told Sultana (147). In her own words, “What if he is alive? For me, he is dead” (148). She goes on to explain that she left him because he tried to oppress her: “He thought that he cold order me around, just because he gave me food and clothing. Am I a prostitute to be bought with money? My limbs are sound. I can work. I have the courage to feed ten like him” (148). Mahishasura thought he could dominate the whole world because he had gained a boon from Shiva after an intense worship. He felt no need to use his powers responsibly or for the larger benefit of humanity. Similarly, Shyamali’s husband believes he is entitled to order her around simply because he is her husband, and society dictates that she must obey him (this is confirmed by Sultana’s shock at hearing Shyamali’s aforementioned remarks).

Through disruptive actions, Shyamali again liberates herself from oppression when she abruptly ends her relationship with Ram Avatar. Although Ram Avatar does not order her around as her estranged husband did, the pressure placed upon him by being involved with a “low-born” becomes an obstacle in their relationship that she cannot tolerate. Rather than allow Ram Avatar to lose his job on her account, or to allow him to make her feel like a liability to him, she leaves him: “Ram Avatar kept saying that he was going to lose his job because of me. He made me feel that he was doing me a favor. You tell me this - did I tell him that he should or should not take that job? Was it his job that I loved? All the time it was, ‘If I lose my job, how will I give you a living?’ If I had stayed on in his house, I would have heard the reproach all my life” (153). Unlike Durga, Shyamali does not destroy people; she destroys relationships by abruptly abandoning them. While her intent is not malicious, it is consistent with the spirit of Durga in the sense that what is not working is removed rather than tolerated. Durga is not the goddess of self-sacrifice: she destroys and delivers. If the word God is an acronym for Generate, Organize, and Deliver/Destroy, Durga represents the third aspect, and it is fitting that she was born of the third eye of Shiva, who is also the embodiment of transformation, although not definitively violent.

Finally, Shyamali liberates Sultana from the ignorance and naiveté that pains her throughout the story. While this is less direct than the previous two examples, and arguably not in the least bit intentional, it is consistent with her track record, so to speak. Her actions consistently remove the forces of oppression present in her life, and Sultana’s final transformation ought to be viewed in the same regard. We can make this claim because, while Shyamali is not targeting Sultana the way she was directly rebelling against her husband or Ram Avatar, her outspokenness serves as the catalyst for Sultana’s growth. We see that Sultana’s understanding is being stretched by Shyamali’s actions when the issue of her husband arises: “Sultana felt as if she had received an electric shock. Good Lord! Could one speak of one’s husband like that”? (148). After the exchange, Sultana begins to confront her own social prejudices, which are suddenly contrasting against Shyamali’s undeniable strength and independence: “No doubt Shyamali had great courage to think such thoughts. But how could she say such things of her husband - how did she have the heart? A husband was so precious, he was a woman’s honor, her god on earth. Ah, she, thought, with a jerk of her head, the low born. What was that? And she jerked her head again to drive away the thought” (148-9). Because of Shyamali, the limitations in her own understanding. When she attempts to confront Shyalamli about her husband again, she tells Sultana “Let it pass, Bibiji, you wouldn’t understand” (150). Sultana feels “as if an electric wire had touched her” (150), because she is realizing that her naiveté is causing her to be excluded from deeper levels of involvement in her relationships. When Ram Avatar also tells her “It is nothing, sarkar. What can I say to you” (151), “Sultana grew still more furious” (151)... During their final exchange, Zaheer suggests that Sultana finally overcomes her prescribed social values and sees Shyamali for who she really is; a strong, independent woman who, while a somewhat tragic character because of irreconcilable differences with society at large, is living her personal truth very bravely. When Shyamali asks Sultana “How is Ram Avatar, Bibiji? Is he all right? Give him my - my good wishes” (153), Sultana now understands that Shyamali has a good heart and has real values. Her difficulties with men lie in their weaknesses and in her refusal to dishonor herself for the sake of comfort or social status alone. At the end of their exchange, “Shyamali smiled as if to say, ‘This time you have understood me’” (153). By growing to understand Shyamali, Sultana’s own negativity, naiveté and failure to think independently have all been challenged and transformed. Shyamali is therefore a pervasive force for change in her environments: not only are the dysfunctional relationships ended, the overreaching social values that promote narrow gender roles are successfully changed by arousing compassion and understanding. Shyamali, a low born, can play this role because she has so little to lose; not unlike Durga who has no other identity beyond her removal of oppression and conflict.

In Manjul Bhagat’s Bebeji, we see the spirit of Durga embodied in a much less likely vessel: an old, doting widow known only as Bebeji. In this short but charming story, Bhagat leads us through an exploration of Bebeji’s life, trials, and eventual triumph with a skilled brevity. In fact, we do not even see the Durga in her raise its head until the very end of the story, when her big heart and fearless sense of justice are aroused to mend the negative forces in her life. Specifically, Bebeji’s antagonists are her own loneliness and the haughty arrogance of her son, Chhote and his wife.

From the outset of the story we know that Bebeji is lonely. She routinely goes to “the lowly tandoor, the humble eating place of the poor,” (429) even though “Bebeji was not poor” (429). She is going here because she misses her husband, Baoji, who recently died of unspecified causes, and his death has left her with a general feeling of emptiness and unease in her own home: “The day he died Bebeji had lost faith in the house too. It was no longer secure and indestructible” (430). Her desire to continue loving and nurturing finds appreciative acceptance from the anonymous tandurwala (literally “tandoor fellow”), to who she promises, “Son, I will make a jarful of pickled cauliflower for you. Just watch how the pickle will bring you permanent customers. They will return just for the pickle and want more and more rotis to go with it” (430). Bebeji’s attachment to the tandurwala is fully exposed when he leaves to visit his own village for a few days. Bebeji “wandered about like a tortured ghost inside her lonely house” during his absence, but upon his return, bringing his wife and young son with him, it appears her silent prayers are answered. By reaching out to his family and taking responsibility for the growth of both his wife and child, Bebeji transforms her loneliness into a life that has daily, meaningful impact upon others. From the outset, she begins to provide food for them (431), and the son, Nikka “became almost an extension of Bebeji” (432). When Bebeji begins putting the chisel of her age, experience and good breeding to Panno’s “careless ways” (432), the tandurwala is further endeared to her, and he begins “to look after minor repairs [in her] house” (432). Shortly after, the whole family quickly agrees to her request that they “sleep the nights at her house” (432). This is to illustrate that Bebeji manages to rescue herself from loneliness and purposelessness through her own affirmative efforts. Like Durga, she removes the source of emotional negativity in her life by clear and deliberate action. Durga is worshipped because she brings peace and prosperity, and that is precisely what Bebeji brings to the tandurwala’s family. A woman of higher social standing, she offers them a rare opportunity to become more cultivated and refined by taking them under her wing. She also solves the situation of their cramped living quarters by inviting them into her home, thereby distancing them from the patently impoverished situation of sleeping on a “tiny cot” (431) in the back of “the humble eating place of the poor” (429). She transforms her life and the life of the tandurwala’s family through her love and also through her strength and vitality, alleviating suffering and bringing peace and prosperity as well.

When Bebeji’s son Chhote shows up unannounced with his own family, Bebeji shows that she is no pushover. Chhote is aghast to see that strangers of lower social standing are allowed to use what he believes to be his house (433), and Bebeji quickly goes after his haughtiness when she orders Panno to “‘touch your sister-in-law’s feet’” (433), which is a humbling choice of words for Chhote’s wife, who feels “stung at being called the sister-in-law of lowly Panno” (433). To ruffle their feathers even more, Bebeji invites the toddler Nikka to urinate in front of them. Bebeji not only ignores Chhote’s numerous, and rude, protestations, she really cuts into his arrogance when she tells him “we could be away, in Amritsar” (434), and “we” refers to her and the tandurwala’s family, and when Amritsar is a place Bebeji has always yearned to visit and Chhote “always managed to talk her out of going” (432). In this brief exchange Bebeji plays Durga again because she conquers the arrogance and coldheartedness in her son which always stood between her and doing the things she wants to do. She reveals to him that family is not guaranteed, and cannot be taken for granted. Chhote’s rude and egotistical behavior finds him on the receiving end of his mother’s chastising words and actions, the same way Mahishasura’s evil ways put him in direct opposition to the insurmountable force of Durga and her terrifying weapons.

Bebeji’s basic motivation is that she wants to love and be loved, and, for her, one is not possible without the other. We know this is true because she does not simply turn the other cheek to Chhote; her affection is reserved for people who are worthy and appreciative. Because she sees the goodness in the tandurwala and his family, she decides to make herself part of their family. She sees past issues of social class and finds people who can receive her giving spirit and who can offer her something in return: respect, companionship and also material security (which is substantiated by the tandurwala’s efforts to maintain her home). What she wants is a happy family, and she gets just that because she places no restrictions as to where her fulfillment can come from. Rather than remain attached to her relationship with Chhote, she stands up for herself and sends the message “shape up or ship out.” In so doing, she removes that which limits her happiness and ushers in the relationships that promote it.

Yogi Bhajan taught that the projection of a woman is sixteen times more powerful than that of a man. If we have learned anything from the five stories discussed above, it is that Yogi Bhajan was right indeed. The uniting factor of all these different women is precisely the scope of their impact on their environments. The mere silent presence of that one is enough to completely destabilize Safia’s school: nobody can keep from talking about her and a violent outburst by a member of the custodial staff soon occurs. Similarly, Urmila’s participation in the play, also somewhat less than voluntary, completely changes the way the other teachers and students relate to her, and Chandrakeshkhar finds himself quite shaken by their encounter. Niranjana’s protagonist transforms others by the reality of what has been done to her, and the damage done by the effort to deny the fact of it. We learn from her that a woman’s suffering cannot be denied, and any attempt to do so will result in a broken home. Similarly, Shyamali leaves behind a trail of abandoned men who have been set back to square one with their own concepts of male and female roles. In the character of Sultana, we see that Shyamali enlightens as well as confounds. Bebeji, finally, is able to harness her the love she has to give and, with a healthy self respect, guide the right people into her life and the wrong people out of her life. Both the tandurwala and his family and Chhote and his family undergo transformation, and both receive exactly what they need. We ought to see the undeniable force carried by all women through these disparate examples. Whether they are empowered or stifled, there is a force of change acting through them, to which they are often, but not always, oblivious. The archetypal models of Sita and Durga operate through them sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, sometimes to their personal benefit and sometimes not, but it is the change that happens in their presence that makes them conveyors of a power larger than their personal identities, and larger than what society can yet contain.

Book/Film Comparison: To Live

Jaswinder Singh Khalsa
5 May 2009

“To Live” on Paper and on Screen

Yu Hua’s novel To Live tells the story of a man named Fugui, chronicling his mistakes, hardships, and moments of happiness in the larger context of the Maoist revolution in China. Zhang Yimou’s film adaptation does the same thing, and yet these are two very different artistic statements. We see significant changes in the areas of plot, character development and mostly in the overall thematic content. Literature and film are two vastly different idioms, of course. Even the shortest of books contains more information than most films could relay in a compelling manner. This phenomenon exists because of the fundamental difference between the way the mind digests words and the way the mind digests images. Making a book into a film is probably a lot like translating an ancient text in a dead language created by a civilization that no longer exists into contemporary English: many adjustments must be made for the work to be intelligible to its current audience. While most people would readily concede this, what is not so readily perceived is the personal philosophy of the translator, who makes editorial decisions according to his or her personal value judgments. It is precisely these value judgments that account for the differences in Yu Hua’ novel and Zhang Yimou’s film. Yu Hua is predominantly concerned, in his own words, with “getting as close as possible to reality” (237). We see this in his refusal to dramatize events in the novel or to in any way glorify any of his characters. Zhang Yimou, on the other hand, appears to be more concerned with a critique of Maoist China. The changes he makes to Hua’s novel consistently serve to illustrate the ineptitude of the regime, the widespread paranoia it creates, and its progressive overshadowing of traditional Chinese cultural values. We can see these changes in what is added, what is subtracted, and what is exchanged for something else.

One of Zhang Yimou’s most noticeable additions to Yu Hua’s novel are the shadow-puppets. These puppets are used as throughout the film at significant points in the plot, and are in many ways exchanged for the use of the italicized passages by another narrator in the novel. We first notice them in the very beginning of the film when Fugui and Longer and gambling. Fugui criticizes the puppet troupe and invites himself behind the screen, following Longer’s goading. The puppets depict a man and a woman flirting with each other, and this is taken to symbolize Fugui’s hedonistic lifestyle, which the film otherwise omits. The next time we see them is also in the brothel, when Jiazhen unsuccessfully confronts Fugui’s gambling addiction. He returns to his game after humiliating her, and the puppets show a man kicking a woman with his back turned to her. The female puppet is on her knees in a supplicating position. The next time we see the shadow puppets, however, Fugui has already lost all his material possessions to Longer, who lends him the puppets so that he can earn living. The puppets have now come to represent Fugui’s newfound commitment to work by the sweat of his brow instead of gambling for profit. In his first puppet show, with Chunsheng collaborating with him, we hear the words “I am lucky to be alive” as the male puppet turns to face the female puppet. We see a montage of the puppeteers traveling around, performing, and collecting money. Again, there is the image of a man and woman embracing, and in a more dignified way than the hanky-panky of the opening scene. Yimou is telling us that Fugui is growing up: part of why this is so effective is precisely because Fugui is recycling something from his days as a gambler and re-appropriating it toward more mature purposes.

When Fugui and Chunsheng are conscripted, it is worth noting that they are not aware of the military contingency that has encircled them until a bayonet pierces the screen. Just as Fugui is learning to be responsible, it seems, more trouble is heading his way. Here begins Yimou’s scathing criticism of the Communist revolution in China, which begins, interestingly, with a literal assault on the arts. From this point on, Fugui’s puppets take on a more nostalgic feeling. While he and Chunsheng are in the Liberation Army, the puppets serve as a connection to their humanity and to symbolize their personal continuity of life in the face of death. When the Maoist regime begins smelting iron as part of the “great leap forward,” Youqing naively alerts the Team Leader to Fugui’s box of puppets as a potential source of metal. Fugui narrowly prevents the box and the puppets in it from being confiscated, and we sense that the regime, in all its enthusiasm for its values, will consume even the most innocent forms of cultural expression in the name of its ideology and material expansion. In other words, the Maoist regime is starting to cannibalize the society from it emerged, and Yimou is again making the point that art is among the first victims.

The next time we see the puppets is in a context filled with personal and societal significance. After Jiazhen chastises Fugui for punishing Youqing too harshly (an event which we will discuss in more detail later), Fugui encourages Youqing to come see his puppet show taking place the same evening. Youqing “gets even” with Fugui with the help of Jiazhen by serving him an intolerable amount of vinegar and chili paste disguised as tea. The enduring image from the scene is Fugui involuntarily spitting out the liquid on the screen onto which the shadows of the puppets are cast. Fugui chases Youqing around, but the mood is lighthearted. When we analyze the scene more closely, we see that Yimou is continuing his commentary on the Great Leap Forward. As the puppet show is being performed, we see the villagers bringing their bicycles and cooking pots to be collected by the military, who will then melt them down in an attempt to manufacture metals for industrial purposes. Ordinary people are sacrificing their practical utilities of daily use for the sake of a theoretical concept which promises utopia if complied with faithfully. It is worth noting that as these household items are being destroyed (I say destroyed because the overwhelming majority of the metal produced during the Great Leap Forward ended up being absolutely useless), Fugui sings: “he uses the secret mirror and blinds all who look within.” This could be taken as a commentary on the naive enthusiasm and idealism of common people that is being exploited and manipulated by Mao, who in this case is being compared to an evil sorcerer. What happens next with the puppets is a vicious battle breaks out, and one of the warrior puppets ends up decapitating three other combatants before Fugui drinks the chili/vinegar concoction. We can of course read the puppets as foreshadowing the “attack” on Fugui, and we may also see it as a representation of China’s cultural values being beheaded by the Maoist regime one at a time. The large crowd gathered to watch the show, and the unusually fantastic nature of the performance, suggest an element of bread and circuses as well as the overall population embracing the total fantasy world Mao presented them with. The people are buying into a plan that is in no way grounded in reality, and this is represented by everybody gathering to watch a fictional battle between good and evil, while their material possessions are being destroyed behind their backs.

If Yimou is saying that Mao’s promises are like a magic mirror that blinds people while their cultural and material wealth is plundered, nothing drives the point home more than the scene where we learn of Youqing’s death due to the combined ineptitude and over-exhaustion of a truck diver, Chunsheng (another change by Yimou that warrants a separate discussion). Specifically, everybody is watching Fugui’s puppet show and while their backs are all turned, Youqing is killed in a tragic accident. It is hard to avoid the observation that if people had not been distracted by the puppet show, now representing the illusion of communist ideals, they might have been more alert, and Youqing’s death might have somehow been prevented. Fugui’s reaction of horrified shock, which appears to border on denial, can be taken to mean “how could something like this happen to me and my family? I bought into this movement; how could it take my son from me?” Again, we ought to consider the significance of Fugui’s puppet show, a fantasy, being abruptly interrupted by the appearance of his son’s gored corpse. Again, Yimou is alerting us to the fact that what is being promised, and what is being delivered, have a vast gulf between them. It should come to us as no surprise that the next time we see Fugui’s puppets, they are burned because of a statement issued by Mao: “the older, the more reactionary.” Indeed, the dream, as well as the memory of the past, has been consumed in the fires of disillusionment.

To keep our attention on the scene we have just discussed, it is worth mentioning in more detail Yimou’s handling of Youqing’s death. In the novel, Youqing is literally bled dry by doctors who are trying to collect blood donations to save Chunsheng’s wife from dying in childbirth. Yu Hua is obviously suggesting a lack of medical ethics on the part of the doctors, but Yimou wishes to alter the specifics of Youqing’s death to bring an even harsher indictment against the Maoist regime. Here, Chunsheng himself appears to be the killer, but what would be more accurate would be to say that his complete exhaustion and lack of adequate training as a driver were in fact the culprits. We learn from a bystander that the driver of the truck had not slept “for three days,” and backed into a wall, which in turn fell over and killed Youqing. Here the fault lies with the regime itself and not with Chunsheng, who is portrayed as well meaning and fundamentally harmless. It is the regime’s impatience and over-enthusiasm for its material goals that are causing it to overwork its labor force without due consideration to the consequences. China is attempting to industrialize so fast that it is completely disregarding the inherent frailty of human beings and the considerably larger margin for error they must be allotted. Mao is trying to move China into the world of mechanized industry, and the bottom line, so to speak, appears to be the only concern. The result is that workers are not trained properly, and are given more work than can be properly executed even by a skilled worker. We see this clearly when we learn that Chunsheng was the driver: when he and Fugui were in the Nationalist army, we see Chunsheng getting behind the wheel of a truck and imagining that he is driving it. He admits that he has always wanted to be able to drive. Careful what you wish for, as the saying goes, because you just might get it. Chunsheng believes his fantasy of being a truck driver is fulfilled, but in reality he has dealt a tremendous blow to a lifelong friend and claimed the life of an innocent boy. Yimou is continuing the impress upon us the horrors of communism, showing that friends can be unwittingly turned against one another in the blind acceptance of the regime’s tactics. Indeed, we cannot blame Chunsheng for Youqing’s death: we instinctively feel outraged because society itself is somehow ultimately responsible.

To return to an earlier point in the film, we see another area where Yimou wishes to draw more attention to the negative impact of communism. In the novel, Fugui has it out with Youqing on several occasions, and the conflict between them could be understood as Fugui struggling to learn patience and to control his temper. In the film, however, Fugui only hits Youqing one time: in the communal dining hall after Youqing pours hot noodles (again, with lots of chili paste) over the head of another boy. It is significant that Fugui does not become hostile toward Youqing until the father of the boy Youqing poured the noodles on accuses Fugui of being a counterrevolutionary. The man angrily claims that Fugui must have instructed Youqing to do what he did to undermine the communal dining hall and thereby undermine the communist regime entirely. Partially to dispel this assumption before it can become a widespread rumor and partly out of a sincere feeling of anger, Fugui publicly beats Youqing with the heel of his own shoe. He wants everyone to know that he does not condone his son’s actions, and he is also afraid of the collective turning on him as it did Longer, and later Chunsheng and even the Team Leader. We do not have to look very deeply to see Yimou’s point here: the inflexible belief system of the Maoist regime is so narrow and so intolerant of dissent that a widespread paranoia is taking place: those who support the regime believe that its enemies are hiding everywhere, and they are therefore always looking for them. Similarly, everyone is terrified of being mistaken for a dissenter, and will incriminate others to avoid being scrutinized themselves. We find a parallel to this in the phase of American history known as the McCarthy era, criticized by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, where the setting of the Salem Witch Trials provided him with an abundance of parallels and relevant comparisons. Similarly, there is something of a witch trial hanging in the air when the boy’s father insists Fugui must somehow be plotting to overthrow the regime, and Fugui’s immediate, and overzealous beating of Youqing, which serves much more to save Fugui’s hide than it does to teach Youqing a lesson.

Something else that the film does, which the book does not do, is emphasize the cult of personality created by Mao. It is true that Yu Hua includes Wan Erxi’s mural paintings of Maoist slogans on Fugui and Jiazhen’s home, but it is not mentioned outside of this single occurrence. In the film, however, we see the family’s living space being gradually filled with paintings of Mao. When the Team Leader comes to announce a possible match for Fengxia, we see that Fugui’s home is already full of photographs of Mao, and there are little stacks of propaganda books in plain sight. After Wan Erxi fixes up their home with two very extravagant murals of Mao, it seems that every time we see the interior of their home there are new paintings and photographs of “the chairman.” When Wan Erxi and Fengxia are married, they sing propaganda songs instead of actual marriage songs. The lyrics deify Mao and say nothing about the married couple at all. Commitment to Maoist values, it seems, is the only value at all: that is to say, the value of being dedicated to the values seems to have completely obscured the values to which the regime is dedicated. Mao himself, and the regime itself, is the new God in a theoretically Godless society. While these propaganda songs are being sung, Jiazhen and Fugui sit inside their home, reminiscing about Youqing. She still misses him, and she cannot exchange the loving memory of her son for the cheap emotion aroused by a political cause. We feel her pain when Chunsheng brings Fugui and Jiazhen a very expensive looking framed photograph of, you guessed it, The Chairman. The idea that the regime can continue to cover up its crimes, and the broken homes and broken hearts left in its rapacious advance by plastering Mao’s image everywhere is established as offensive but impossible to resist. They do in fact place Chunsheng’s painting on their wall, and the life that is authentically theirs again continues to be swallowed up by the insincere grin of that psychotic megalomaniac whose name is synonymous with the murder of innocent people. When Chunsheng visits them for the last time, still consumed by guilt over Youqing’s death, heartbroken over the suicide of his own wife, and on the verge of suicide, Jiazhen opens the doors of their home to invite him in, showing that almost every inch of wall space has the image of Mao nailed to it. When Chunsheng wanders off into the night for the last time, every inch of the public streets are covered with propaganda slogans. Friends, spouses and children are all swallowed up by Mao’s face and words: the festering wound of reality hidden beneath a band-aid of idealism and empty promises.

In Yu Hua’s novel, Fugui is left with nothing but life itself. He loses his father, his mother, his wife, his son, his daughter, grandson, son in law, and best friend, and is left with an ox and his memories. As the back of the book identifies, Fugui “stands as a model of flinty authenticity,” his continued presence on Earth his true contribution to humanity. Although he endures an unrelenting stream of tragic events, abated only for a few moments on Fengxia’s wedding day, ultimately he stands as a kind of humbly triumphant figure: he has weathered the storms of life, and he has uttered barely a word of complaint regarding the hand life has dealt him. There is a kind of nobility in this. Zhan Yimou preserves more of the family unit, and Fugui is surrounded by Jiazhen, Wan Erxi and “Little Bun.” While the novel suggests that an individual can go on living no matter what is taken away from them, Yimou prefers to emphasize the family’s ultimate victory over the roller coaster ride of the regime. The tumult created by communism trying to establish power and phase out the old way of life took many casualties, but in the end, by sticking together, people can make it through and still keep the relationships and values that really matter in their lives. For all of Yimou’s condemnation of Mao and of communism, he sends the message that the darkness still cannot stand before the right of real love and real values. Personally I feel that both the novel and the film were highly enjoyable, and the changes that appear in the film were perfectly appropriate in the context of Yimou’s larger objectives in making the film. Nobody really wants to simply repeat the ideas of someone else in another medium, and to do so would really not be very much of a contribution in the first place: it is expected that Yimou should add something new and something uniquely his to the adaptation of Hua’s novel. Taken side by side, they give us two complimentary windows into the truth of what is.