Behind the bodice (from

breast stories, by
mahasweta Devi.)

• Sushma Choure.
• M.A. English 3rd sem.
• Subject:- post-Colonialism and Literature.
• Dr. Ambedkar college, Deekshabhoomi
Nagpur.
 Introduction:

• Behind the bodice is the last story of the trilogy.

• Mahasweta Devi’s stories are not only about her

surrounding, rather it reciprocates marginalized
women’s voices.

• It tells the grand narrative of the unspoken story of a

peripheral women in existing society.
• She chooses the tribal women who are in many ways are
submerged by society.

• Their position in society are being exploited for the benefit

of others, not only this, but also their femal body is being
mutitated in the benefit of other.

• In this “ Behind the bodice” she shows how the society

intends to abuse the female being on the basis of a
contemporary Hindi song of a film.
• The story is also the tale of a sexually molested woman.

• Women being are sexually and physically tortured in

every field of our society, and they are in lower ranking.

• They cannot protest against the social injustice.

 Characters :

• Upin-puri :- • an ace – photographer.

. • he’s news did not appear in the paper
as news of upin.
• he makes gangor famous with the
publishing pictures of her breasts in a magazine or
newspaper.
•
• Gangor:- •protagonist.
• Young mother.
• Dalit migrant laborer.
• She was breastfeeding her child When
upin took her photo. ( Snap a photo so give me cash!!)
• the kilns for light bricks and tiles.
• at last she takes the profession of whore.
# Shital mallya:- • upin’s wife.
• a famous Himalaya climber.
( Shital is supposed to be two people ).

# Ujan :- • friend of upin.

• he called upinda to upin.
• Malik Mahajan :

• Sujan Kabir:

• Caretaker:

• Contractor:
• What is there was the national problem that year. When
it became a national issue, the other fuckups of that
time e.g. crop failure-earthquake, everywhere clashes
between so-called terrorist and state power and
therefore killings, the beheading of a young man and
woman in harayan for the crime of marrying out of
caste, etc non issues which by natural law approched
but failed to reach highlighting in the newspapers- all
this remained non-issues.
• Much more important than this was choli k pichhe –
behind the bodice.
• Thus, everyone got busy to find out what was there:
national media, censor-board, liberated anti-bra
• girls—many associations-organizations on the state-
level etc. etc.—cable-tv channels—green eyeshaded
• lady votarians' associations—all the religious groups—
and politicians. Watching cassettes of Khalnayak
• under cover became the 'norm of the day.'
• The nation was busy with all this Upin’s news got only an
inch-and-a-half of space in the newspaper. Escaped the
nation’s eye.
• It was also not known at first that a nameless person’s
corpse crushed by the wheels of a railway train midway
between Jharoa and Seopura was Upin’s body.
• Already before that Upin’s friend and sidekick Ujan had
received a postcard, Come to Jharoa. Very urgent—Upin.
• Upin, the ace photographer is an educated one. He
travels through Bihar and Orissa with his friend Ujan to
take photos.
• Ujan does not know how, upin & shital the two don’t
spend even a month and a half out of the year
together. Yet how the are in love with each other.
• Upin tries to save the endangered tribal culture
through his photographs.
• There are so many unique things of tribals to be
followed like, customs Dresses, songs and Dances.
• In one such project in jharoa , he takes the
photograph of the dalit migrant labourer, gangor. Who
was breastfeeding her child. She was a village woman
of Purulia, west Bengal.
• He wants to show the natural beauty of the tribal
woman.
• He compares the breasts of tribal women and the
breast of mainstream.
• There is no such intention of sexual fascination of upin for
gangor’s breasts .
• He finds only aesthetic pleasure in it.
• It is gangor who becomes desperate towards her life
style.
• Upin pays her first time for snapping her breasts photo.
• She behaves with everyone as her dear and near ones.
• Her photo is published as a newspaper report along with
the headline,
“ The half necked ample breasted female figures of
Orissa are about to be raped. Save them! Save the
breasts .”
• following the publication of Upin’s article, gangor’s
breast are subjected to the gaze of millions of
people through the newspaper article and an
implicit violence deepens through the collective
male gaze.
• Upin loves the natural beauty of tribal and their living
place.
• Somehow he highlights the tribal life through his
photography.
• He is attracted towards the natural beauty of gangor as
well as the ugliness of her life.
• Upin achieves the crown of natural beauty, but he is not
right fully because modern tribal do not live fully in the
lap of nature.
• They are well dressed now
• The conception of upin becomes wrong here as he
thinks tribas are aesthetic beauty of nature.
• He only enjoy the beauty and shares this pleasure to
others through printing media.
• He wants to make gangor conscious about her beauty.
• Upin makes gangor famous.
• Later on she is captured by police under false charges
and gang raped her in custody.
• At that time Upin’s attractive photographes of the breasts
of gangor and the popular Hindi song, choli ke puchhe
together brings the sexual violence in the society.
• Also gangor becomes a victim of sexual hazards in the
police custody.
• A local caretaker says to upin – “you ruined her with
your pictures sir, otherwise, how would she dare!”
• Upin searchs for gangor he revisits the native village of
gangor.
• His sense of emergency takes him to the chullu stand,
where it smells of curried tripes, of the strong country
liquor, of halitosis, of the ordure that bubbles up in the
open drain’s thick scum, of the flushless shithole
beyond the drain.
• Upin stops his nose, his ears, and sits down. Suddenly
‘choli ke pichhe’starts playing.
• And Gangor comes just then. Now she wears a red and
yellow polyester cloth, smelling of stale dirt, and still—
Upin lifts his eyes nervously—a very dark choli, very
insolent breasts, oiled and braided hair,darting
suspicious glance.
• Upin and Gangor look at each other. A sharp
experienced smile blooms on Gangor’s lips.
• She pushes away some man’s hands. Says the
Camera-Sir has been going around for me for a long
time, Contractor.
• Today he’s my client, eh Sir?
• They sit together, look at each other.
• She accuses upin for her disrupted situation of
becoming a whore.
• She reminds him that his picturs of her breasts is the
cause of her ruin.
• She is disrupted by all the police, the contractor and all
the others.
• She becomes alcoholic and low quality whore .
• Upin realizes his fault.
• Suddenly he feels he is alone in a place like this.
• He is lone everywhere, to live in such a solitude, to have
denied the natural demands of life so much was
perhaps not right.
• Now gangor thinks him nothing but a mere customer.
• She declares desperately, will gangor unwind her
clothes or just lift it.
• Do your stuff, twenty rupees. Spend the night, fifty, tell
me quick.
• At the end gangor removes her bodice like “Draupadi”
to show.
• Gangor breathes hard. Says in a voice ragged with
anger, Don’t you hear? Constantly playing it, singing it,
setting the boys on me… behind the bodice… choli ke
pichhe… choli ke…
• You are a bastard too sir… you took photoks [photos] of
my chest, eh? OK… I’ll show… but I’ll take everything
from your pocket, a-ll…

• Gangor takes off her choli and throws it at Upin. Look,

look, look, straw—chaff, rags—look what’s there.
• No breasts. Two dry scars, wrinkled skin, quite flat.
• The two raging volcanic craters spew liquid lava at
Upin—gang rape…biting and tearing gang rape…
police… a court case… again a gang rape in the
lockup… now from Jharoa to Seopura… Seopura to
Jharoa… the Contractor catches clients… terrorizes a
public… plays… plays the song, the song…
• Upin stands up weaving, unsteady.
• Gangor puts her hands in his pockets with skilled ease.
• Upin comes out, Gangor is still screaming, talking,
Kicking the corrugated tin walls with abandon.
• Upin runs..
• There is no non-issue behind the bodice, there is a
rape of the people behind it, Upin would have known if
he had wanted to, could have know.
• Upin runs along the tracks.
• Ujan got there much later. Jharoa was calm. A new bus
station where the warehouses used to be. A new police
station in Jharoa. He got a months-old picture of a dead
man.
• No one by the name of Gangor lived in Jharoa.
• On paper the search for the missing Upin Puri is still
active.
• But those kinds of files sink, way under other files.
 Conclusion:

• Gangor’s breasts’ photography grasps the consumer’s

attention and brings a huge profit to Upin as a symbol
of exotic Oriental, primitive representation of underdogs
India.
• On the contrary the breasts feeding the image of
Gangor which had been falsely represented gives
birth to the narratives of rape, post rape traumatic tale
and the tale of prostitution.
• Here in the information era, people’s knowledge is very
limited and easily transferred.
• That’s why Upin projects whatever makes everyone
believe without justifying its authenticity and
probability.
• She goes through rape, violence, police custody,
gang rape, physical torture, psychological trauma, and
her ultimate metamorphosis into prostitution.
Thank you ~