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 Going Back to Roots Dr Manisha Patil  In the conventional American ‘Bildungsroman’ (initiation story), the protagonist moves from a rural to an urban area, from South to North, from community to individualism. Song of Solomon, on the other hand, shows the journey of Milkman from urban North to rural South, from individualism to communal sense. In the words of Catherine Lee, ‘For the authors of these slave narratives [Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Harriet Jacob’s Incident in the life of a Slave Girl, in which the protagonist moves from an oppressive, enslaving, agrarian South to an enabling, industrial North] leaving behind family, friends and even names was often essential for escape. For the African American community in the twentieth century, however, Morrison suggests that the isolating individualism that erases the memory of the south destroys spiritual and moral identity.’ Lee further explains her point in the following words: Milkman is indeed naïve about himself, ...

Postcolonialism Colonialism The entire history of the civilized world is in a sense the history of colonization. Colonization means the dominance of a strong nation over a weaker one. Colonialism happens when a strong nation sees that its material interest and affluence require that it expand outside its borders. Colonialism is the acquisition of the colonialist, by brute force, of extra markets, extra resources of raw material and manpower from the colonies. Since the ancient times wars are being fought to conquer lands and people. The conquerors have written the history praising their individual valor and cultural superiority and condemned the conquered as savages in need of control. While constructing this false textual discourse the conquerors have ignored their own atrocities against the larger humanity. For instance, the great ancient civilizations like Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians had open slavery. During the Middle Ages, crusades were fought in the name of religion but undoubt...

 Spiritual Power of African American Woman Dr Manisha Patil  In Song of Solomon, Morrison denounces the destructive, materialistic, individualism which is the hallmark of white American patriarchy and which has also filtered in the psyche of African American men. Instead, she celebrates constructive, community centered spiritualism of African American people epitomized in one single woman – Pilate. ‘Born without a navel, Pilate is the ancestor, an “original” first mother who like the African woman in Tar Baby who holds eggs aloft in a Parisian market, offers eggs to Milkman and Guitar. She is the ancestral mother whose contact with the natural world has remained unbroken and whom her off springs deny at their peril. With blueberry lips constantly chewing seeds and pine kernels, Pilate is surrounded both by natural food and by the relics of her past carried in the green sack of bones [of her father’s bones] and the ear-ring containing the paper on which her father had written h...

 Tar Baby Dr Manisha Patil  In her article Periodizing Toni Morrison’s Work from The Bluest Eye to Jazz: The Importance of Tar Baby, Malin Walther Pereira proposes that taking colonization as the central concern throughout her work, Morrison’s entire work can be divided into two categories – early and later. Her early work struggles with the effects of colonization on African American individuals and the community while her later work moves into an exploration of decolonized African American culture and history. In this context, her fourth novel Tar Baby assumes a rich significance. Understanding the importance of Tar Baby to Morrison’s distancing from the colonizing effects of Euro-American culture is central to understanding how the novel divides her early and later works. Morrison’s first four books, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Tar Baby, constitute Morrison’s struggle with colonization, both for her characters and their communities, as well as in her own writ...

 Respected Sir, Hope you are doing well! I am writing to you on behalf of Dr. Kiran Seth, founder, SPIC MACAY( padma shri awardee). Dr. Seth is on a cycle yatra across the country , to promote and preserve our heritage and spread Mahatma Gandhi’s message of simple thinking and high living and is reaching Mumbai during 6th to 9th July 2023. We seek your support in spreading our heritage and it would be great if we have have a meeting with you and Dr. Seth during his yatra to Mumbai between 6-9 th July, and also introduce us and help to meet some key people in finance, media and govt with Dr. Seth, who can support the movement. We invite you as a very special guest for our All-Mumbai Regional Meet on 9th July 2023 at 3 PM at NITIE College, Powai, Mumbai. We would be grateful if you accept our invitation for the same and join us for this meet. With Warm Regards, Sabyasachi Dey, National Secretary, SPIC MACAY, Contact - 8108098246

 African American Male Chauvinism Dr Manisha Patil  Milkman’s trip south to Shalimar, to the liberating discovery of family and past parallels Solomon’s return to Africa, to origins and to freedom. Yet when we celebrate Milkman’s and Solomon’s return to roots, we forget that it is nothing but the escapist male individualism. Both Solomon and Milkman leave their female counterparts Ryna and Hagar to grieve and to die broken hearted. Gurleen Grewal rightly points out that, ‘Women’s subjection, their lack of control over their own lives is the subtext of Song of Solomon.’9 Unlike her first two novels, Song of Solomon intensely foregrounds the process of identity formation in the novel’s hero (Milkman) on decidedly male grounds similarly both the title of the novel (Song of Solomon) and its one ward dedication (“Daddy”) emphasize the male genealogy. In both the processes, females, femininity and female genealogy are push to the margins. We can even go one step ahead and say that t...

 Colonization : Tar Baby  Dr Manisha Patil  Isle des Chevaliers replicates the colonial class structure. Valerian Street, like Robinson Crusoe and Prospero, has established a profitable civilization on a remote secluded island in the Caribbean. Here he presides over his plantation household like a king ruling over his beautiful wife Margaret, his obedient servants Sydney and Ondine, their occasional helpmates Gideon (Yardman) and Therese (Mary) and Sydney’s visiting niece Jadine. Though Tar Baby is not a tale about brutalities of slavery like Beloved and Valerian is not cruel slave master like the Schoolteacher, he, none-the-less governs the lives of everybody else. He is a typical, representative neo-colonial white American male with an attitude, a masked will, to buy the whole world in the name of philanthropic and patronizing aid. He displays philanthropy not for any genuine altruistic reason but to give free reign to his desire to exercise absolute power by manipulati...

 Alternative History, Reality and Perception Dr Manisha Patil  Like her earlier novel Sula, Song of Solomon also problematizes the binary thinking. Decentring the white patriarchal logos (which is considered to be the ‘universal’), Morrison provides us with alternative ways to look at history and reality. Commenting on the hegemony of the ‘universal’ criterion of great literature Morrison says, “I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never and I don’t know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. It is good – and universal – because it is specifically about a particular world. That’s what I wish to do.”23...

 Song of Solomon  Dr Manisha Patil  In her first two novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula Morrison’s main focus was on the lives, aspirations and problems of African American women. But Morrison is not a narrow feminist writer but rather a ‘womanist’ one, for whom racial, cultural, national economic and political considerations are as important as sexual issues. She is also the historian/custodian of African American culture and community as a whole and community as a whole includes men as well as women. So in Song of Solomon, she has made ‘a radical shift in imagination from a female locus to a male one’ (xii). This novel is about protagonist Milkman’s quest for identity for which he has to go back to his roots in the rural South. His physical travel from north to south symbolizes his moving from materialism to spiritualism. I. Quest for Identity/Self Milkman is born as the single male successor/heir (almost ten years after the first two daughters are born) to a prosperous re...

 उन दिनों तुमसे कुछ कहने के लिए अल्फाज़ ही नहीं थे फिर कुछ न कहने पर कितनी पंचायत रस्मों रिवाजों की दुहाई मानो किसी तेज़ शोर के बीच धूप की तपिश में मैं कोहरे में नहाया हुआ था। अतीत की स्मृतियों को टूटे हुए आईने में चुपचाप  देखना अजीब सा रूखापन  भर देता है फिर किसी की मेहरबानी के लिए भी बहुत देर हो चुकी थी। कोई यह नहीं जान पाया कि चीज़ों को इकट्ठा करने में जब इतनी पीड़ा हो रही थी तो मैं उसी पीड़ा में किसी मीठी चमक को कैसे पा रहा था? आखिर ये कौन सी बीमारी थी ? अगर मैं कुछ बताता भी तो किसी को कहां यकीन होता ? मैं जहां था वहां वक्त ही वक्त था सिर्फ़ अपने हिसाब से जीने की मनाही थी किसी के लिए एकदम से गैर जरूरी होने के दुःख से आँखें अक्सर नम हो जाती इनमें बचा हुआ पानी  कातर भाव में कतार में रहते । मटमैला सा  यह जीवन  मौन विलाप की मुद्रा में अदहन की तरह  चुर रहा था  पुख्ता छानबीन के बाद लगता है कि तुम्हारी यादों में ही कहीं खो जाऊंगा फिर तुमसे ही आंख चुराते हुए वही याद भी करूं जो तुमने कहा था। Dr Manish Kumar Mishra 

 Reclaiming the Feminine Dr Manisha Patil  In her article ‘She was laughing at their God’: Discovering the Goddess within Sula29, Michele Pessoni argues that in the Western World, the culturally ingrained ‘patriarchal fear of the feminine’ has resulted in an imbalanced society whose members remain numbed and indifferent to life and towards one another. This further results into a lot of destruction and a great sense of despair. She further states that patriarchy is ‘a psychic state of mind, a consciousness which often exhibits signs of hostility towards nature as well as towards any quality traditionally associated with the feminine: nurturance, community, contiguity. Patriarchal consciousness is oriented towards individuality, competition, personal acquisition – traits that are not necessarily harmful in themselves but which become potentially fatal to the species when they are over-valued at the expense of feminine traits. Then individuality becomes arrogance and isolation, ...

 51. जब कोई पुकारता है प्यार में पूरी तरह डूबकर जब कोई पुकारता है किसी का नाम तो वह प्रलोभन कितना रसीला होता है !! अपने जूड़े में जब कोई बांधता है मोगरे की खुशबू चाँद के साथ तो उसकी उम्मीदों के खातिर परदेश में वह कितना मचलता है जिसे काम से छुट्टी ही नहीं मिलती !! उसकी आंखों के सवाल उसकी बनावटी मुस्कान के पीछे कितने अकुलाते हैं इसे समझ पाना कठिन है क्योंकि इसके कई कारण हैं। विचारों के बीहड़ में विस्मृत हो चुके कई ज़रूरी मुद्दों पर बहस होती रहती है लेकिन जीवन के स्तर पर इनसे कोई प्रभावित होते दिखाई नहीं पड़ता ऐसे में प्रेम जैसे प्रांजल विषय किस तरह परखें जाएं यह देखना अभी बाकी है इसका असल पैमाना सुना है अतीत की यात्राओं में है पर ऐसी यात्राओं के लिए समय नहीं किसी के पास क्योंकि आजकल सब बहुत जल्दी में रहते हैं इसलिए प्रेम में खतरा तो है पर खतरा कहां नहीं है? 52. सारी रंगतों के बीच मेरे जैसे लोग सारी रंगतों के बीच भी बहुत सी खामियों के शिकार हैं इच्छा का अभाव नहीं पर जरूरतों की हत्या के लिए मजबूर। हमारे रहस्यों को भेदने के लिए लगभग अनुमान से ही काम चलाना होगा इसकी एक वजह यह भी है कि जो...