The Caged
by Ahana Biswas
Translated from the Bengali by Shamita Das Dasgupta
No. of pages: 208
Published by :Antonym Community of Global Art and Literature
An Upside-Down Femme Fatale
A book review of The Caged, written by Ahana Biswas, and translated from the
Bengali by Shamita Das Dasgupta.
By Ankita Bose
If I had to use one word to describe this book, it would have to coincide with my
immediate reaction after reading it—Un-put-downable! When I began reading The
Caged, originally written in Bengali by Ahana Biswas (under the title Karabas), and
translated into English by Shamita Das Dasgupta, I realized that I could not allow
any ‘pause’ in the act of reading. With the riveting quality of a psychological thriller, a
femme fatale protagonist, and most importantly a crucial feminist commentary, this
book attempts to subvert all conventional portrayals of women characters, especially
in the context of Bengali literature.
On the face of it, one cannot put it down in the simple anticipation of the
protagonist’s next action. However, on later reflections, I realized that there may be
other reasons than the sheer hook that makes the novella worth a read.
Primarily, it is significant that most of Pari’s actions and their violent portrayals in the
narrative are not endowed with the element of what ‘action’ entails. Pari’s doings can
be better described as ‘reactions’—her responses to the hetero-patriarchal societal
norms. Hence, she is the ‘caged’ feminine soul in The Caged.
Ahana Biswas’s Bengali narrative is titled Karabas which roughly translates to
‘imprisonment’ in English, but the translator Shamita Das Dasgupta calls the English
translation The Caged because her interpretive reading of Biswas’ narrative involves
looking at it through the lens of feminism. In her beautifully penned Foreword to the
translation, she writes,
“As a feminist, I was attracted to Karabas because of the narrative’s critical
interrogation of several central patriarchal values—female gender role, beauty,
violence, desire, control, and power. Ahana Biswas, the creator of the Bengali
novella, has skillfully woven a unique tale of crime as destruction, as well as female
empowerment. I have named the translation, The Caged, to signify the strength of
patriarchal subjugation and the futility of individual efforts to escape misogynist
oppression.”
Dasgupta’s translation renders Biswas’s narrative a new meaning wherein the
femme fatale protagonist, Pari, who is described by Dasgupta as “an incongruous
blend of heroine and villain, victim and criminal, pathetic and revolting,” seems to
subvert and circumvent her inferior position as a woman in a hetero-patriarchal
system by means of ‘reactive violence’. Consequently, she emerges as a force that
turns oppression upside-down—thereby turning the oppressed into an
oppressor—and leading her to be forever ‘caged’ in her psychological degradation
which becomes crucially pronounced in the last chapter of the novella. The ‘reactive
violence’ is initially passive, characterized by direct involvement in the first chapter
wherein Pari refuses to save her disabled brother from the hands of death. But as
the narrative progresses, what started off as sinister indifference resulting from
sibling rivalry begins to take nefarious forms increasingly brutal. Simultaneously, the
cerebral degradation of her moral principles gradually plummets to a point of
absolute absence. Curiously, she unleashes the ‘reactive violence’ only towards the
male subjects—the masculine power that tries to curtail her freedom in one way or
another. She is strangely empathetic to the female characters. For example, her
solidarity with what happens to Buni in the second chapter of the novella, and her
efforts to help her, are obliquely suggestive of her identification with female
subjugation and make the readers question the fatality of her femme fatale
character—Is she turning into a criminal only as a means of attaining justice against
a system that leaves her with no agency? Is her criminality rooted in an exercise of
subverting her victimhood? These are questions that make the reader empathize
with Pari, although she is the conventional femme fatale—mostly viewed as
villainous and negative. In her portrayal, Pari becomes the axiom on which the very
conventions of the aesthetic treatment of femme fatale are viewed from a feminist
lens. The vulnerability and oppression of the femme fatale protagonist are
pronounced in the narrative, making the readers critically engage with how the
societal conventions of feminine beauty and desire (two crucial elements of femme
fatale) are more constricting than liberating. Although the femme fatale Pari does not
suffer imprisonment or punishment for her crimes, she is forever ‘caged’ by her
beauty and the male gaze that restricts her from exercising her agency, thus making
her the symbol that turns the literary trope of the femme fatale upside-down by
rendering it a meaning that is nestled in feminism—an ideology that both the writer
and the translator proclaims to propagate in the novella.
In the Foreword, Dasgupta draws upon Euripedes’ Medea wherein the eponymous
protagonist’s violence resembles the characteristics of Pari’s ‘reactive violence’ in
The Caged. According to Dasgupta, just like Medea’s “murderous actions” are
justified by “gendered mistreatment”, so are Pari’s. A woman, rooted in her middle-
class, Bengali identity, subjugated and ‘caged’ for centuries, and one that aspires for
emancipation, albeit through dark and ethically questionable ways. Pari’s class and
cultural identity are of immense significance as they are interwoven into the
oppression of her desires. The analogy of Medea becomes all the more significant
when one realizes that femme fatale narratives are a rarity in the enormous
repertoire of Bengali literature. Such a character who exhibits polarities of meditative
wisdom coupled with cold-blooded killer instincts—an unbelievably strong will
directed to cease control of her agency—is a rare occurrence in Bengali literature.
Dasgupta asserts, “In Karabas, I found the reflections of a sari-clad Medea in
modern Bengal.”
While the author strikes the optimal balance between pace and suspense, it is the
protagonist’s psychological moorings that open up spaces laden with another drama
deeply cerebral in its characteristics. It is a book wherein the psychological struggles
within become a microcosm of the external dramatic elements in the narrative, thus
making the story one that lingers in your mind past the goosebumps.
