her life, our lesson- Rassundari Devi's 'Amar Jiban'

She was an ordinary woman who made history with the power of her pen by silently attacking the patriarchal framework. She was Rassundari Devi, a woman unknown who crawled out of the maze of her oppression and expressed the ordeal of her forced domestic life, 'a caged bird'. By acquiring an independent education she wrote down her life story in her autobiography 'Amar Jiban', was happened to be the first ever autobiography written in full fledged Bangla.

Rassundari Devi learned to write and read herself, Image Source: Pinterest

Women for generations have been subordinated in the name of being good wives, daughters, and mothers. Our mothers and their mothers have been through a lot to give confident independent modern women who exist with pride and prudence today. What our foremothers have gone through is only known through their narration of their past life.

Almost every child at least once in their lifetime has sat on their mother’s or grandmother’s lap. Their old wrinkled lips, lined with hardships and experience of being dutiful mothers and wives, eyes clouded with memories and sadness. The pain of sacrificing one’s happiness and opportunities for the sake of their family is evident in their eyes as they narrate snippets of their life stories.

But mothers would never express the true pain and suffering women often went through to raise their children, and for most of them being married turns out to be a dreadful ordeal if their husbands happen to be emotionally unavailable or unsupportive, which happened to be a most common type of husband during those times. For mothers to be expressive of their feelings purely, is a phenomenon that requires great courage and a kind of demystifying of their child’s perception of a ‘happy family.

But years ago, when most of our silent mothers were not even born, an oppressed woman with the power of her pen, wrote down every single, little detail of her sad and outrageous marriage, the motherhood which was heaped on her, and the helplessness of not being able to be with her mother on her deathbed. All these sorrows which were buried inside her chest tightly for many years came tumbling down on paper, in the form of her autobiography. This woman was called Rassundari Devi. The year was 1876 and the book she wrote is called “Amar Jiban”, meaning “My Life”.

The woman who wrote the first autobiography in Bangla, Rasssundari Devi, Image Source: Scroll

Rassundari not only used her pen as a weapon to express her sham of a marriage, critiquing a society that denied every means of liberty to women, treating them as mere slaves, enclosed in the domestic quarters, forced to slog away in the kitchen while bearing children as well. Rassundari not only mustered the courage to fully express herself in front of the whole world, but she was also the first ever person to ever write an autobiography in Bangla, before any man, she became the first-ever Bengali, giving out an equality statement for all.

Let's take a look at Rassundari’s life, the life she so smoothly expressed in her autobiography. Writing it must have been difficult, but living that life was pure hell, a misery so deep that expressing that sentence in words must have felt like living it all over again. Nonetheless, she did live and documented it and so let's have a glimpse of her life.

Rassundari was born in an upper-class Bengali family in a small village called Patajia, her father died when she was quite young so she was close to her father. Despite their strong bond, Rassundari was married off at the age of just 12 years to Sitanath Ray, a man many years her senior.

Rassundari remembers how as a little girl on the day of her marriage she was so sad and confused about the prospect of living her home, her mother, and going to a new home, to ‘the other family, as she writes in her book. During the Bidai, Rassundari’s mother advises her tearful daughter to stay strong as God will always be with her, no matter what.

Rassundari Devi's 'Amar Jiban', Image Source: Google Images

From that day on, Rassundari developed an unshakable belief and devotion to God, as her savior and confidante, always in wonder of his ‘Leela’. In short, Rassundari became a Vaishnav devotee, always conversing in her mind with God, sharing every sorrow and happiness with him, and seeling courage. Rassundari nonchalantly narrates how she was supposed to work in the kitchen all day long, cooking as per the demands of various family members, and when the children started coming in, taking care of the children along with the housework many times forced her to go away without eating for two days.

In one episode of her day, Rassundari confides that she was not able to eat for a whole day. First, she was supposed to serve her husband who came home late that day, then one of her children started wailing because of a storm, then when she tried to eat with the child on her lap, he urinated all over her food. Rassundari states that she was so immensely tired and frustrated by that time that she didn’t even express her anger but laughed a maniac laugh, admonishing God of his wonders.

From the age of 18 to 44, Rassundari undergo repetitive pregnancies almost every year of her married life, most of her children survived and when her childbearing years were over, she felt this deep-seated yearning to get educated so that she can read religious scriptures, to show God her gratitude. After many years she did manage to get educated, all on her own and when life gave her some rest, she penned down her tale of being a housewife and helpless mother.

Rassundari perhaps didn’t realize that this act of her jotting down her life on paper would be studied as a piece of literature in the future, giving sustenance and strength to women of the future generations, to express and never to remain silent, as Rassundari did. Rassundari Devi set an example, and a warning, to never endure and always express, to get educated and live one’s life to the fullest.