Page 226 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation
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Grindmill Songs 201
7
Grindmill SonGS: A reference
of AutonomouS Self-inSiGht
Hema RaiRkaR
‘One Should Talk with the Mill’
The age-old women’s tradition of grindmill songs has proved down
the centuries to be a privileged means of self-expression and com-
munication for Indian peasant women. These songs were sung on the
millstone at dawn by illiterate women while sitting and facing each
other in a dark corner of the farmhouse, apart from men still asleep
and more or less indifferent to melodies of housewives. They stand as a
particularly significant emblem of cultural creativity and a striking form
of traditional communication (Poitevin and Rairkar 1996: 113–37).
Gender does not merely stand in that folk tradition as synonym to such
sociological concepts as biological and social reproduction, division of
labour, subalternity, and so on:
The chariot of Ram resounds for the grinding at dawn
My mind feels transported to sing the verses.
O Lord mill, I battle with you
I pull you, stone, to the rhythm of songs.
The early hours, from 4:30 a.m. till sun rises, belong to women as
a time and space reserved for them alone to ‘tell the world the recol-
lection of my mother’s songs’:
