Ahilya’s Feminist Awakening in Navdeep Kaur’s Poetry"
Ahilya is a narrative poem of Dr. Navdeep Kaur. In the center of this long poem is the mythical story of a woman. She was turned into stone by the curse of sage Gautama. However, in this poem, Ahilya breaks her muteness and stone-turned self with the power of her great consciousness. In symbolic meanings she challenges the supremacy of man with her intellectual power, which marginalizes her existence and also humiliates her. She also questions the divine knowledge and sage knowledge, that creates the illusion of knowing the material and the super-material truth, but is unable to know the truth of his wife.
Navdeep Kaur has refuted the hegemonic and Oedipal authority of patriarchy and the power of man, which dominates women and denies their existence. In such an inhuman situation, if a woman has to come out of her mute and stone-like condition, she does not need any god’s touch rather will have to unleash the great power of her inner intellectual consciousness. The great achievement of Navdeep Kaur’s epic poetry lies in her power of poetic sensibility. Her minute and microscopic vision has touched every vein and pulse of woman’s innate mind and soul.
She has created Ahilya in a new context with new meanings. The reawakened Ahilya is no longer a slave to a man but she is now a liberated, bold and strong person. Ahily’s new existential revival that has come through great consciousness adds new dimensions to feminist thought.I suggest everyone specially to woman readers to read this book of narrative poetry.
Dr.S.K.Deweshwar
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