Locating Memory as a Tool for Resilience and Metamorphosis: A Reflective Analysis of Kavita Kane’s Ahalya’s Awakening

Abstract

Every single person on the earth is engulfed in a pool of memories. Because our life, our becoming, and belonging depend on our ability to remember, record, and forget. While these statements encapsulate the inevitable presence of memories in our daily life, they also additionally stress the fundamental role memory plays in crafting our identities, experiences, explaining how our interactions with others and our environment, as well as our sense of self are intertwined to memories. Trauma can also drastically affect memory, influencing not just how we recall events but also the way we respond to the surroundings. Hence, recollections pertaining to trauma furnish a more fertile ground for memory research. Memory studies has hitherto, progressed to a burgeoning state where, the very act of remembering past events can elicit strong emotional debates and intense political engagements, instead of simply dealing with a stored set of past information. Ahalya’s Awakening by Kavita Kane goes beyond being a captivating narrative of memorabilia and traces the eponymous heroine’s life journey.  The legend is that, Ahalya, a character in the mythology supposedly had to endure a curse from her husband sage Gautam that transformed her into a stone, where she remained forever. This curse resulted from her moment of weakness, when Indra, posing as her spouse, deceived her. Lord Rama saw her in her stone form as he was travelling through the woods. By his miraculous touch, she was set free and returned to her original form. Amidst the multitude of characters in the mythological narrative, she was cast as a lady who was punished for her alleged transgression and placed in the background of the narrative. In Kavita Kane’s retelling, the author revisits various facets of Ahalya’s turbulent past, where the protagonist confronts her trauma, in an act of remembrance to discover atonement. For those like Ahalya, who have undergone distressful events and upsetting occurrences, memory means a lot more than mere recollection and remembrance. Having earned the fame of infidelity, Ahalya shoulders the trauma of being a social misfit. However, her look back to the stigmatised past rather causes a sharp revival of memory, that aids her to re-visit her repressed identity which further sets off resilience and metamorphosis. De-traumatisation occurs explicitly, and a coping mechanism is eventually developed as an outcome. Drawing on Cathy Caruth’s conceptual notions of trauma and memory, the investigation undertaken considers Indian writer in English, Kavita Kane’s select mythological re-telling, with the overarching goal to confront memory at the individual level as well as to show how in certain circumstances, memory can function as an inadvertent tool for building resilience and effecting metamorphosis. Katharine Hodgkin’s and Susannah Radstone’s take on transforming dimensions of memory are additionally utilised to support the claims.