THE STORY OF PEARSE - Sujata Bhatt

About the Poet 

Sujata Bhatt ( Born 6 May 1956, Ahmedabad, India) is an Indian poet.She is the recipient of various awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Cholmondeley Award.She has published six collection of poems, including Monkey Shadows (1991) and Augatora (2000), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations;  A Colour for Solitude (2002), which deals exclusively with the life and work of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker. Her 2008 collection, Pure Lizard, was shortlisted for the 2008 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Poetry Collection of the Year. Her latest collection is Poppies in Translation (2015).

Overview of the Poem 

The Story of Pearse is a poem and part of collection by Sujata Bhatt, titled Point no Point which was published in 1997.

The beginning of the poem give an inkling to the theme, connecting it to Pearse Hutchinson’s book, titled The Soul that Kissed the Body. The mention of the fragrant body that represents love and its eventual departure suggests a contrast between the vitality of love and the inevitability of mortality.

Summary

Through this poem Sujata highlights the plight of middle class married women in patriarchal Indian society. This poem is strongly based on her aunt Hiraben, who was mistreated by her mother-in-law and her husband in her loveless marriage. She was stacked starved, beaten up and abused by her in laws in different ways and in different occasions. Tired of her mistreatment over years ,one day she took a difficult decision to set herself free from her marriage through court. 

Hiraben in country like India where calling off marriage makes a women's life more miserable as it is not consideredand acceptable norm. Hiraben resolved to freed herself from cruel married life which itself was a courageous decision and worked as a nurse after her divorce.  But now her life was more difficult as it was in her marriage, since the doctors or men around her took liberties with her physically when she longed for her wounds to heal or her scars to fade...or maybe her times to change. She was never sympathized for her sufferings and the atrocities on her were considered rightly as a deservings of her fate. She was compared to her well of married sisters who had children and were leading happy lives. She was condemned by society for leaving her miserable life in her marriage and criticised for not submitting to monstrosity of her husband and also for not optimistically hoping in any change of hearts in her in-laws. She suffered over time choosing her freedom instead which she received ultimately at the expense of her soul embracing death, she paid a heavy price for choosing freedom over injustice. Thus Sujata Bhatt compares the loss of the soul of her aunt with an extract of a poem in a book by Irish Poet Pearse Hunchinson by the name 'The soul that kissed that body'and compares it to the lonely unattended sorrowful death of her aunt,who had no mourners.