Layout 3 - India Foundation for the Arts - IFA

One can see the text as a defined one
and not look beyond its surface
meanings. Or it can become a text
with several layers, one hidden
beneath the other, and be beyond
definition. At a certain stage of this
body-text merging, one tells oneself: I
don’t have to limit my body. I can
redefine it the way I want. It is my
body. I give it the meaning I want.
The epic text finally tells one what one
has been searching for: that nothing is
unifocal and that a text, like
everything else, can be seen from
multiple positions of age, gender,
language and perspective. It can
assume the darkness of a forest and
become complex and dense, forcing
one to make one’s own way. It can also
become simple and open like a forest
filled with light. It can be dark at
times and full of light at other times
depending on who is reading it and
when. It can also be both dark and full
of light at the same time as if it is
constantly playing hide and seek with
one throughout one’s life. We carry the
text with us like we carry our body.
Like the body it can lie with
deadweight heavily on the ground or
like the body become light and rise
like musical notes. We create texts like
we create our body. In different forms
and shapes. To each her own.
Imagining Rama – C.S. Lakshmi
C.S. Lakshmi, Tamil writer and
researcher in Women’s Studies, is
currently the Director of SPARROW
(Sound & Picture Archives for Research
on Women).
ENDNOTES
1. George L Hart and Hank Heifetz, The
Forest Book of Ramayana of Kamban
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988).
2. Translated from the Tamil original Adavi
by Lakshmi Holmström.
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