The Interview : Malashri Lal

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl, talks to Malashri Lal, writer and academic, with twenty-four books to her credit. Malashri retired as Professor, English Department, University of Delhi. Her books include Tagore and the Feminine, and The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English. Co-edited with Namita Gokhale is the ‘goddess trilogy’, and also Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt  which received the Kalinga Fiction Award.  Lal’s poems Mandalas of Time has recently been translated into Hindi as Mandal Dhwani. She is currently Convener, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. Honours include the prestigious ‘Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence’.

Thank you Malashri, for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl

RS: Your latest poetry collection, Mandalas of Time, weaves together cosmopolitan experiences with memories of India’s epics and landscapes. What inspired you to create this intricate poetic mandala?

ML: Mandalas are centres of energy and pools of creativity. When I compiled the poetry, I became aware of the fragmented histories in my upbringing and my experiences. Some reached back to an intrepid grandmother who would inspect schools in Bengal’s villages by taking rides in a bullock cart. Other memories evoked the sophistication of Bellagio in Italy, the Rockefeller Centre for international fellowships for writers. Namita Gokhale and I had a joint residency where we worked on the manuscript of our book In Search of Sita. I have a poem ‘Bellagio, Italy’ on this phase. So, the mythology from India travelled with us, so to speak, and we also searched for local Celtic tales. Mandalas of Time accommodated this beautiful range of global, cosmopolitan, yet culturally rooted experiences.

RS: Sita and Radha play a significant role in your poetic consciousness. How do you reinterpret these iconic figures in the contemporary landscape of gender and social choice?

ML: Feminist discourse in India is multidimensional, and ought to retain that diversity. Sita’s ‘image’ in the popular imagination is that of a devoted, gentle and loyal wife. She is that—but she also presents additional attributes of strength in decision making, self-protection while in captivity in Ashok Van, resourcefulness during the forest exile. The spousal relationship of Sita and Ram is significant and our book focussed on the feminine strengths. My poems pick up vignettes such as ‘Sita’s Rasoi’. By contrast, the story of Radha and Krishna presents a partnership outside marriage, yet it is sanctified by mutual devotion and unconditional love. Jaydeva’s Gitagovinda offers vivid storytelling, but our research unravelled several less known aspects, including the secrets behind the sacred geography of Brajbhoomi. Radha and Krishna are the indivisible body-soul pairing, hence beyond strict societal norms. See ‘Radha’s Flute” as an example.

Such tales are reminders that in ancient Indian thought, gender justice and social choice were often guided by the ideal of equality between woman and man. The Ardhanareesvara is a highly sophisticated concept of intermingling, coexistence, mutual dependency, eternal love and respect, and my book, Mandalas, opens with a homage to this icon. This ideal is as relevant today as it was in originary tales in the classics.  

RS: Your poetry reflects a balance between rebellion and heartbreak, ecstasy and hope. How do you navigate these emotional contrasts in your writing?

ML: My poetry is built upon forty years of work in women’s studies—both academic and field-based. Rebellion and heartbreak are counterpoints of family and social relations in India. Brought up to believe that a woman must be the ‘giver’, it’s hard to align that with woman as the ‘achiever’. The rebellion is often against expectations of domesticity, as in my poems ‘Escape’ and ‘Crushed’; and the heartbreak is about the friction when a woman refuses to yield to unrealistic demands. Feminism is not a situation of man vs woman; it’s the realisation that patriarchy grips woman as well as man in the same stranglehold. ‘Samjhuata’, a Hindi word, is hard to translate as ‘understanding’ because it’s much more than that—it alludes to an internalisation of the respect for differing viewpoints. There is a ground between the extremes of rebellion and heartbreak that one can seek. I explore that possibility in a poem such as, ‘A Prayer for my Granddaughter’.

Ecstasy and hope denote a woman’s secret space—the interstices when flowers speak and leaves rustle with stories. Poetry resides in this  mystical interregnum  of an alignment with a power beyond the self. These are not necessarily spiritual or meditative moments—they can be hauntings of ‘otherness’ or fears of an ending. In my poems ‘Blue Haze’ or ‘Benediction’, the darkness and light coexist in the woman-being causing agitation and also  its resolution.

RS: You have written extensively on women’s voices in literature. How does Mandalas of Time extend your engagement with feminist themes?

ML: By now I have twenty-four books, the first several were purely academic, The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English (Shimla: IIAS, 1995, 2000), proposing an Indian theoretical frame which is still read as a signpost. Sarojini Naidu is, I believe, the foremother of Indian feminism—poet, politician, home-maker, mother, administrator—she was the supreme multitasker who excelled in each role. I am not suggesting that such ‘perfection’ is the ideal of feminism because that would lead to overburdening a woman—but I mean to emphasise the choices she made from the age of fifteen onwards. So, the first principle for me is that a woman ought to assert her choice. Another set of books explored Indian mythology to find the roots of social thinking, and then my realisation that revisiting the epics, legends, folklore of the country yields rich material on positive assertions. Namita Gokhale and my latest book in the ‘goddess trilogy’ is The Treasures of Lakshmi (Penguin India, 2025). The Goddess bestows generously, commands the cosmic forces, is Vishnu’s consort through his avatars. She asserts without strife, and compassion is one of her several endearing features.

Mandalas of Time (Hawakal, 2023) is my first book of poems and I’m delighted to discover the power of allusion that the genre allows. I’ve poured my feminist consciousness into the pages comprising words, the silences, and the margins. Several poems end in question marks because  I wish to engage the reader in the queries raised, and I do not have an answer.

RS: The Hindi translation of your poetry collection, Mandal Dhwani, has recently been released. What was the experience of seeing your work transition into another language?

ML: The Hindi translation as Mandal Dhwani emerged from a pathbreaking experiment in co-ordinated translation. Guided by the editor Alka Tyagi, thirteen poets selected and translated the poems that appealed to them. I made a few suggestions such as the poems about Jaipur and Kolkata could be given to translators residing in those cities. For the rest, poets were mostly in Delhi and  one in  Toronto. The eminent Hindi poet Anamika, a Sahitya Akademi awardee, wrote a beautiful Foreword touching upon the principle of sisterhood and amicable coexistence being a goal in feminist thinking. Among the translators were men too, but as I’ve said before, feminism is not located on narrow definitions. The resultant book Mandal Dhwani (Hawakal 2025), launched at the famous Jaipur Literature Festival, is a remarkable confluence of diverse voices speaking in harmony. I am grateful to the publishers and to Seema Jain, poet and the copyeditor, for the final production. The contents are arranged by the name of the translator and hence different from the original chronology of Mandalas. This book is a pathbreaker in translation methodology and poetic multivocality.   

RS: Your academic work includes Tagore and the Feminine. Do you see parallels between Tagore’s engagement with gender and your own poetic exploration of womanhood?

ML: Rabindranath Tagore’s portrayal of women is filled with paradoxes. My book Tagore and the Feminine (2014) was the outcome of an assignment during the celebrations of  Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. As part of the planning committee on the theme of ‘Tagore Beyond Bengal’ I discovered the magnitude of his global outreach, specially in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Argentina and other countries. Being curious about the response to his women characters, I realised there was no single book on Tagore and the ‘feminine’ despite this vast readership. That’s how my book took shape.

My approach to Tagore is dualistic—as a Bengali who never lived in Bengal, and as a researcher in women’s studies. The paradoxes jump out when I read him—‘Kabuliwala’ , in my reading, is  a study of an Afghan stereotype and a girl child’s response, the ending of Ghare Bahire /The Home and the World troubles me, ‘Streer Patra’/ ‘Wife’s Letter’ fills me with admiration but I ask why Mrinal has to leave her home to write that analytical statement on patriarchal practices.  As to Tagore’s poetry, I drew attention to the female divine who appears occasionally in Gitanajali, and I translated some of his less known poems. The contrast between Rabindranath’s letters to his wife Mrinalini, and to his Argentinian hostess Victoria Ocampo required socio-cultural analysis too.

In summary, I offer a critique of Tagore, I do not shadow him.   

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RS: Rajasthan and Bengal deeply influence your poetic imagination. How do these cultural heritages shape your sense of language, imagery, and emotion?

ML: If I had the energy, I’d write about the long history of association between Bengal and Rajasthan. As a shortcut, I wrote the poem ‘Shila Devi of Amber’, the deity brought by Raja Man Singh I  from Jessore to Rajasthan in early 17th century. Her priests were Bengali and continue to be so. Jaipur’s ‘pink city’ town planner was Vidyadhar Bhattacharya. Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur was from the royal family of Coochbehar, Bengal, and studied  in Shantiniketan.  Numerous bureaucrats and doctors in Rajasthan were Bengalis, among them, my father Mohan Mukerji who was in the Indian Administrative Service.

I grew up reading, writing and speaking Bengali and am familiar with Tagore’s writing and music. Our family home in Jaipur was named ‘Shyamoli’ after Rabindranath’s own home in Shantiniketan, and his poem about this eco-friendly, mud-built structure. Consequently, Tagore and Bengal seep into my poems as easily as my genetic makeup.

But my cultural upbringing was totally in Rajasthan—and its bardic poetry, folktales, vibrant songs, rich architecture and history held a magnetic charm. The collision in my mind was between progressive Bengal and conservative Rajasthan when it came to the woman question. Rajasthan observed purdah, practiced child marriage, son preference, census figures showed adverse sex ratio, girls’ education was not encouraged. Maharani Gayatri Devi’s  liberal education and background brought change when she set up a school in 1943 to educate Rajput women, and later opened it to others. I was fortune to study at MGD school, and the Bengal-Rajasthan link became better understood. It entered my poetic subject and language in poems such as ‘Rani Padmini Today’, ‘Hawa Mahal’, ‘Royal Heritage’. These were counterpoints to ‘Shyamoli’, ‘Song of the Forest’, ‘To Rabindranath Tagore’.     

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RS: With 24 books to your credit and prestigious honours like the ‘Maharani Gayatri Devi Award,’ what keeps you motivated to continue exploring new literary and poetic terrains?

ML: Writing comes to me as naturally as breathing—and it’s not always at a steady pace! The woman question appears in many forms to fill up my thinking cells. Teaching women’s writing, learning from civil society organisations (where I volunteer), interacting with students, colleagues, writers, attending literary events, have all contributed to my holistic view of feminism in India. The genre in which I will express my understanding has differed from time to time, but for me it has always been a meaningful and rewarding experience. Poetry is increasingly a preferred mode as the intensity and ambiguity of emotions finds space. My readers and friends keep me motivated, as we share each other’s work, and plenty of talk. Periodically, we have a poetry group that meets under a gigantic Pilkhan tree in our home, and everyone reads their new poetry. We discuss and celebrate each writer’s new books. Mutual joy is the driving force, and I’m grateful for all the friends who love literature.   

Thank you Malashri for talking with The Wise Owl about your creativity and your work. We wish you the very best in all your creative endeavours and hope you continue garnering praise and awards for your work.