Mahasweta Devi at 100: Naveen Kishore remembers a life of writing as activism

Writing as intimacy. It’s like ‘surrendering’, like being completely drowned in the act of writing. ‘Loving’ the language enough to immerse yourself completely in it. There is no room for the self as an ‘ego’ or ‘personality’ with its own views. ‘Owning’ the spirit of the literary language. Hence writing as ‘activism’.

Also writing as a relationship. Not just between two people. However, he gave freedom to his characters. Or mukti as he said. Mostly in the context of the belief that his characters have the right to imagine their own path. Choose your own destinies. Whatever the consequences, this will lead to some surprising stories where the reader often forgets the author. Is he a writer as a hidden entity? Maybe.

Mahasweta Devi’s ability to combine the realities of her daily life with her fiction. And her activism, which enabled her to instinctively decipher the facts and then translate them into a literature of resistance. Not just as an extension of his own ‘warrior’ self, but also as a human being with an evolving anxious vision.

Writing as an act of intuition. It’s desperate storytelling that doesn’t always position itself on target. This is personal. And political. It is left to the reader to find motivation, strategy, allusion or method in his texts.

“Writing for me became my real world in which I lived and survived,” he said.

We read to each other. Poems and texts in the form of short notes. He insisted that I write. Every day. And to get me started, she had me send her messages for 30 days, long, short, everything I did that day.

Our conversations were meanderings within an otherwise wide and evolving ‘interruption’. Life. And in his case, for example, ‘throwing himself into the fray’ on behalf of his tribal community. They are fighting the police on their behalf. And yet we talked.

Just as we joked about wanting to navigate one’s own wake, we were also joking about death in the same breath.

Mahasweta Devi. | Photo Credit: Naveen Kishore

He hated ‘good people’. He had no time for them. He would often tell me: “You have to promise me that you won’t turn into a good person.”

“What happens to faith when it is betrayed?” Suddenly I said to him out loud:

“On the subject of faith – I have never found a reason to feel negative or pessimistic. The old values are good for me and I see no reason to depart from them. You see how I stay. You have seen me before, you see me now. And I don’t do much, I don’t do anything great. It’s the least I can do. I don’t even feel the urge to do otherwise. People talk about me being a Naxalite sympathizer. Yes, I sympathize with them. For sacrificing their lives. Even though they know that writing slogans on the wall will lead to police shootings, I do this.” They did it. The party used these people and they are waiting impatiently to give me a state funeral.

A sense of self that does not instinctively lean on anyone. Not out of pride. A realistic way to be a woman-person. And remember, she learned to survive in a man’s world at a very early age.

I once asked him: “Don’t you feel lost sometimes? Because I get the feeling that so many ghosts and characters and people haunt you – I think we all do. But for you it’s a little different because they’re almost like the entire scripts of the books you’ve written.”

Mahasweta Devi. | Photo Credit: Naveen Kishore

“They became part of my system,” he said. “I was able to gain insight into a wide range of human society – tribal and non-tribal, all of it. Also, because I write for newspapers – investigative style pieces. I often say that my world is divided between two things – the essential and the non-essential. I’m only interested in the former. I don’t have much use for the non-essential.”

Soon the nature of the conversations would change. Even grind to a halt. It will be replaced by shorter visits. No recorded interviews. Or cameras for black and white photos. He would still smile. And recognize. And do what we say aador into my arm as if to say that you are loved. But already the fog in his mind was becoming an inviting place. An early trap. A slow dementia that will get worse.

Mahasweta Devi. | Photo Credit: Naveen Kishore

Mahasweta Devi. | Photo Credit: Naveen Kishore

But while delivering the keynote address at the Jaipur Literature Festival a few years ago, he said:

“Whether it’s eighty-eight or seven, I often step into the shadows. Sometimes I’m brave enough to step back into the sunlight. As a young person, as a mother, I would often go back to the time when I was old. Entertain my son. Pretend you can’t hear, pretend you can’t see. Wave my hands like a blind man’s game or make fun of memories. Forget the important things. Things that happened a minute ago! These games are for. They’re not funny anymore. My life keeps moving forward and you know what could have been.” I repeat for you.

Now it’s Memory’s turn to make fun of me.”

***

Author Mahasweta Devi in ​​conversation with Naveen Kishore (left) at the 2013 Jaipur Literature Festival. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

A poem for ‘Hazaar Chaurasi ki Maa’

mandolin lights up the night

The street is waiting for the girl to wander everywhere

The girl takes her chalk and cuts the street

reluctant throat

ek-hat – du-hat ek-hat – du-hat

jumps from one numbered square to the next

us and them

us and them, he mutters

opens number ten and returns on bloody feet

The man carefully finishes dressing the naked model

He pulls out his gun and shoots himself in the eye once, twice, three times.

He wakes up every day with shortness of breath.

Mahasweta Devi. | Photo Credit: Naveen Kishore

The author is a photographer, theatrical lighting designer, poet and publisher of Seagull Books.

It was published – 17 July 2026 06:00 IST