Leeladhar Mandloi’s memoir, Jab Se Aankh Khuli Hain (Since the Eyes Opened), transcends the conventional boundaries of autobiography, establishing itself not merely as a chronicle of an individual life but as a searing, aesthetically conscious social narrative of the marginalized experience in post-colonial India. The text is a profound testament to the truth of life lived on the periphery, where personal pain becomes inextricably linked with the collective anguish of a community perpetually battling caste prejudice, economic deprivation, and systemic violence. Mandloi navigates the challenging terrain of self-recollection, adhering to his commitment to reality over imagination, a feat he acknowledges as difficult: “Nearly thirty years have passed, and I’ve struggled to keep my memories grounded in reality, away from imagination’s sway.” This dedication to unvarnished truth elevates the work, positioning it within the literary conversation initiated by William C. Spengemann, yet distinctively reframing the genre's possibilities within the context of subaltern discourse.
Mandloi's narrative thrust is immediately established by a chilling, visceral memory that serves as the work's moral core: the knife attack by the village sarpanch’s nephew, an act of sheer caste-fueled hatred provoked solely by the author’s academic success. “A vile curse rang out—‘Take this for coming first!’—and a knife plunged into my left rib.” This episode, recounted with stark clarity, is the ultimate articulation of the oppressive social structure—a society where excellence in a lower-caste child is met not with encouragement but with physical violence and existential threat. The Sarpanch Pandey’s attempts to discourage the author’s father from educating his children reveal a deep-seated anxiety among the upper-caste community about the disruption of the social hierarchy. The memoir thus begins with a declaration of war—the war fought by the Kabir society against entrenched privilege, a war waged with the fragile weapons of intellect and persistence.
The inherent conflict between the author’s life and the literary form he chooses to employ is what imbues Jab Se Aankh Khuli Hain with its unique power. While Spengemann categorizes autobiography into historical, philosophical, and poetic forms, and even posits that all literature is inherently autobiographical, Mandloi’s work challenges the notion of a detached, individualistic self-narrative typically associated with elite literature. Mandloi, a renowned poet, infuses his prose with a distinct aesthetic sensibility, demonstrating a creative consciousness that captures the “pain endured by marginalized communities, presenting it creatively to readers.” This aligns with Muktibodh’s philosophy, where beauty is not a flight from reality but a profound understanding of it: “The joyous emotion born in the process of seeking meaning and delight in experience-driven fantasy is the essence of aesthetic experience.” For Mandloi, the truth of his life—the poverty, the struggle, the discrimination—becomes the root of his aesthetic, tying beauty intrinsically to truth, as Muktibodh suggests.
The sheer difficulty of the journey of recollection is expressed with poetic nuance in the author’s opening poem and subsequent prose: “The path back is rugged, strewn with sharp stones and thorns. My parents walked it barefoot… a wild path, the ruggedness of mountains, terrifying nights, the fear of wild animals… hunger, poverty, loneliness. Amid displacement, the only recourse left was to fight.” This confession not only justifies the seventy-five chapters detailing his life from crushing poverty to stability but also prepares the reader for a narrative where hardship is tempered by an extraordinary capacity for wonder.
Mandloi’s poetic eye filters even the bitterest memories through an aesthetic lens. Recalling his impoverished childhood, he remembers his mother’s lullaby about a cap adorned with delicate flowers, a cap that never existed. “The curious thing was, there was no cap, nor any flowers. Yet, listening to the lullaby, it felt like there was a cap—a beautiful one…” This tender, wondrous imagination transforms deprivation into dignity, suggesting that for the oppressed, beauty and hope are often acts of necessary, imaginative creation. Furthermore, his distinction as a poet informs his remarkable attention to sensory detail, particularly the sounds associated with his labourer parents: “The clink of the spade, trowel, and shovel… these sounds also meant everything was alright.” The resonance of brass in his mother's voice, mirroring the pot she played while singing folk songs, is a powerful synesthetic detail that binds the parent's work, their music, and the child's security into a single, cohesive memory.
The work masterfully transcends the individual by detailing the collective struggles of his class. Mandloi’s critique extends to contemporary social and economic shifts, particularly the deleterious effects of neoliberalism: “White bread was the first thing to arrive on the waves of the market… usurping the taste of traditional rotis.” This is not merely a nostalgic observation but a critique of how the market’s “discordant, tuneless sounds” slowly obliterate traditional, community-based ways of life, displacing authentic nourishment with packaged artificiality. His introspection, a favoured state of self-dialogue that aids his creative process, allows him to confront the silence, fear, compassion, and anger of his past, making his memory a sieve for collective experience.
The profound influence of his mother and elder sister is continually highlighted, particularly their stoic capacity for silent suffering. The mother, in a paradoxical sense of “selfishness,” keeps her pain to herself, “as if she amassed a treasure of troubles, then lost the key.” This image of a hidden, locked treasure of agony speaks volumes about the emotional burdens carried by subaltern women. His father’s anguish upon being evicted from their self-built home—a recurring trauma of displacement—underscores the precariousness of their existence: “Once again, the same story. Thirty years ago, we were similarly homeless.” The image of the family cleaning a cowshed to live with animals—“We learned then that humans and animals could live under one roof when living with other humans became unbearable”—is a heartbreaking commentary on the social cruelty faced by the marginalized.
Mandloi’s ability to find joy and beauty amidst relentless struggle contrasts sharply with the perceived dullness of comfortable life. He captures the beauty of labour—a theme resonant with progressive Hindi poetry, notably Kedarnath Agarwal—through the vibrant descriptions of working-class individuals. The laborer Leela, agile and tireless, singing folk songs while her coworker beats rhythm on a tin can, embodies a resilience and natural vitality. Similarly, his portrayal of the Bharia tribals of Patalkot, with their "toned bodies, agile movements" and intoxicating dances like Karma-Saila, is a celebration of an uncolonized, organic life force, untouched by bourgeois notions of aesthetics.
Crucially, Mandloi’s perspective on nature is non-metropolitan and deeply ecological. His childhood ramblings in the forest are not merely idyllic; they are lessons in interspecies community. His fascination with the squirrel, the Kullu tree yielding gum, and the array of birds, earning him the title of “modern Hindi literature’s birdman,” reflects a consciousness that sees all non-human creatures as integral parts of the same ecosystem. This resonates with the tribal philosophy he credits Mir Taqi Mir with articulating, suggesting that only through an intimate, reverent relationship with nature can the universe be saved. He questions the notion of environmentally harmful development while asserting nature's generosity, especially to the poor.
The memoir unflinchingly details the systemic discrimination within the school environment. Mandloi highlights the bitter irony that even teachers from marginalized communities, succumbed to social pressure, favoured so-called upper-caste students. The assignment of cleaning tasks exclusively to lower-caste children, making school a “torture chamber,” and the denial of seats on donated mats to them solidified the “poor-rich divide.” The ultimate act of violence—the stabbing—is the culmination of this daily prejudice, forcing his departure from the village. Yet, his perseverance remained fueled by his parents’ dreams: “With a broom in hand and screams from cane lashes on my back, my labourer parents’ dreams lived on.”
Mandloi’s depiction of Rajjo, his “first friend in life” and “first worker-warrior companion,” is perhaps the clearest instance of class-based empathy triumphing over bourgeois morality. Rajjo, driven by hunger, snatches fistfuls of grain while carrying it to the mill for the affluent. Mandloi’s response is not disgust but a “surge of love,” rooting emotional connection in the shared empathy of the marginalized.
This interplay of distinct characters and ideologies brings to mind Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony. In Jab Se Aankh Khuli Hain, the author avoids imposing a monolithic perspective. Instead of a singular, objective world, the memoir is a confluence of multiple consciousnesses—the Sarpanch’s arrogant nephew, the singing laborer Leela, the silent-suffering mother, the wise, beleaguered father, and the hungry, beautiful Rajjo. Each character’s voice, each perspective on reality, holds its own validity and artistic weight, refusing to merge into a single authorial bias. Mandloi’s pen acts not to propagate a single ideology but to authentically recreate a dialogic reality where ideas are concretized through vibrant, autonomous characters. His voice, as expressed in his poem Mera Prem, is a collective one: “What I speak is not my own speech, / It carries their voices within it.” This affirms the observation that subaltern male autobiographies, much like women’s autobiographies, serve as both self-discovery and powerful community narratives, distinguishing them sharply from the focus on individuality found in elite male autobiographies. Mandloi’s work is, ultimately, a compelling and aesthetically rich testimony to the collective rage, hatred for injustice, and abiding love for humanity found within the heart of the world’s forgotten.
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*Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad
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