Counter Narrative and Woman’s Desire: Reflections On Ahalya In The Light Of Vishnu Narayanan Namboothiri’s “Ahalyamoksham’

Abstract

Desire is a part of the conceptualization of gender and sexuality. It is subjected to both sociological and psychological investigations and delimited by the tools of disciplinary standards proposed by the society. Desire is manifested through language, body, choices and responses. Though generally desire is conceived as an excess by the society, societal perspectives on desire divide it as legitimate and illegitimate depending on the factors such as who, where, when and how associated with desire. The gender biased society attributes different norms on different gender identities which decide whether the desire exercised by an individual is licentious or not. Caste, gender, class, ethnicity etc. are taken as the criteria to check whether the expression of desire is promiscuous or not. Obviously the discourse of desire is complex and mythical texts sometimes fail to address this complexity. The current paper is an attempt to examine the way how contemporary literature responds to the mythical portrayal of woman’s desire by examining the poem, “Ahalayamoksham” by Vishnu Narayanan Namboothiri. The paper attempts to visualize the paradigm shift in the literary perspectives boosted by the historical scenario from where the literary productions are emerged.