The Farmer’s Wife
by Volga (P. Lalita Kumari) · translated by Vasanth Kannabiran
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- Main Idea: A dramatic monologue of a farmer's widow who criticizes her husband's suicide and resolves to survive for her children.
- Key Imagery: The "worm-eaten cotton pod," "harvest of my womb," and the act of "clenching a fist."
- Theme: Gender inequality, the agricultural crisis in India, and the resilience of women.
- Message: Suicide is an act of cowardice that leaves the family in deeper misery; life is a struggle that must be faced, not abandoned.
- Ending: An assertion of the "will to survive" and the need to "embrace life."
Detailed Summary
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"The Farmer’s Wife" by the renowned Telugu writer Volga is a powerful response to the agrarian crisis in India, specifically the high rate of farmer suicides. The poem is written from the perspective of a widow whose husband has recently ended his life due to debt and crop failure.
Irony, abuse and abandonment
In the first stanza, the speaker uses biting irony. She calls her husband "virtuous" for leaving, while labeling herself a "poor sinner" who remains behind to face the creditors. She contrasts his "dignity", his inability to bend his head or stretch out a hand for help, with her own life. She says she was born with a "head bent" and a "hand outstretched," implying that as a woman, she has always lived a life of submission and hardship. Her husband "crossed over" to death to escape shame, but he left her to deal with the same "bitter existence" he found unbearable.
The poem highlights the husband's selfishness. He found "release with poison," but that poison has now entered her life. The speaker notes that the "cotton crop" that failed was only "yesterday's" problem, but their family is a permanent responsibility. She recalls the domestic abuse she suffered, how he "abused," "reviled," or "kicked" her when drunk. Despite this, she accepted him as "but a man," never imagining he would deal her the "death blow" of abandonment.
The children and a fierce resolve
The most emotional section of the poem discusses their children. The speaker asks how he could imagine her "back would bear the burden of four children." He only saw the destroyed crop in the field, but he ignored the "harvest of my womb", their living children. She refuses to leave them to the wind like "worm-eaten cotton pods." She acknowledges that it "takes a moment to die," but it takes a "firm heart" to live and ask "Why is this?"
The poem ends on a note of fierce determination. The speaker resolves to teach her children to "clench a fist", not just to beg for rice, but to fight for their rights and survival. She rejects the path of death and chooses to "embrace life" and the "struggle for life." The poem transforms from a lament into a revolutionary assertion of female strength and social critique.