An Analysis Of Urmila Pawar's The Weave Of My Life

Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life : Notes From the Margins

Dr. NEELAM BHARDWAJ
Assistant Professor,
Dept. Of English,
S.C.D. Govt. College, Ludhiana

Abstract
The sufferings of the Dalits ,like those of the black slaves in America, are the sufferings of Urmila Pawar’s community. ‘Aaydan’, her autobiography written in Marathi, has been translated into English and titled as 'The Weave of My Life- A Dalit Woman's Memoirs’ by Maya Pandit. Urmila Pawar approaches her subject both as a writer with some literary achievement already under her belt and as an activist who has tried to organize Dalit women and has a specific stance on Dalit feminism. It seems that her objective is to document both caste and patriarchy in the lives that enter into

In her autobiography, she has described the struggle of three generations for the survival to overcome the pain and burden of their caste. She details the village life at the time of her grandmother, mother and her own childhood. In her foreword to the English translation, Wandana Sonalkar writes that the title of the book is a metaphor of writing technique employed by Pawar:
“The lives of different members of her family, her husband’s family her neighbors and classmates, are woven together in a narrative that gradually reveals different aspects of everyday life of Dalits, the manifold ways in which caste asserts itself and grinds them down”. (Pawar xv)
There are two ways to see an autobiography- one can be with sympathy and another with empathy. But at the end as quoted by Pawar in ‘The Weave of My Life:A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs’:
“Life has taught me many things ; showed me much; it has also lashed out at me till I bled. I do not know how much longer I am going to live; nor do I know in what form life is going to confront me. Let it come in any form, I am ready to face it stoically. That is what my life has taught me. That is my life, and that is me.”(Pawar

In the course of time she joined a job in Mumbai and got an opportunity for developing her writing skills over there. As a result she started using her leisure time in writing short stories, drafting articles developing intimacy with female friends and awareness about women’s problems. Pawar has highlighted the issue of distinction of male/female positions and titles awarded to them, she asserts that on being promoted aman becomes Bhaushaeb or Raosaheb but a woman officer will remain only a Bai without the title of Sahib.
Through the example of her own brother Sahu, Pawar has highlighted the other important issue of male child. The attraction for the male child is highlighted when her brother had a son and the namkaran sanskar was performed. On this occasion the sisters have raised the issue of property rights of girls after marriage:
“Don’t you know that Babasaheb had asked in the Hindu code Bill to give the daughters their share of property? So come on, get up now!”(Pawar 289)
Pawar has also described the story of Jyoti who has attempted to steal the child of other woman for this male child craze of her husband.
Superstitious beliefs
Apart from people, Pawar has exposed certain harmful