Dear Editor,
Pointing out how Mahadai Das was politically used and abused with horrific consequences is not reductionist at all. Actually it adds to her luster that in spite of having gone through all the pain, suffering, agony and debilitation, her poetry emitted pearls of perfection. And her achievements intensify and rise higher as a result. Nowhere in pointing out these horrific realities about her life is her poetry ever pulled down or diminished. In fact, if anything, the spotlight would actually send many scurrying for her poetry to find out what manner of individual can go through all that she did yet produce the brilliance that emanated from her.
Besides, no individual is one dimensional, single layered, unifaceted and Mahadai Das is certainly not. Thus to somehow insinuate that her poetry is all she is – is the actual reductionism, especially since, as Ellie Williams-Brown and Shivani Sahaya pointed out in writing about JK Rowling, following her transphobic tweets, an author/poet is not separate from his/her creation; his/her work reflects his/her worldview. And who can doubt that Mahadai Das’ worldview was significantly impacted by her horrific rape and its awful consequences, which consumed her life thereafter? Thus it is important that her work be given context so that her messages can be provided with meaning and clarity. For in the final analysis it is the writing that survives everything else as Khalil Gibran so succinctly points out:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
So in feasting on the words Mahadai Das left behind we must do so with a clear grasp of how she was shaped and what pushed her to create. And in the final analysis we would grasp that this tragic daughter of Guyana was a victim of our all-consuming politics that drives men to the most abominable and horrific acts and that may well have stymied her genius, if not cut short her life.
Sincerely,
Annan Boodram
