The name of the book The Fire Sermon is derived from Buddhist literature. Fire Sermon was the famous address given by Buddha for salvation in which He has given the allegory of burning. Burning is inevitable through lust, hate, grief and sorrow; and there is great strife to escape from burning. It is more so as the editor and the translator of the book says with a feminine soul. Each of the ten stories of the anthology touches on the burning; the stories are on different aspects of feminism.
The first story of the anthology Ahyarani (the queen who dies while her husband is alive by Binalani Mohanty) epitomises the traditional Indian woman. The woman is not known by her name. She is known by Mala’s mother. Even Mala is not her own daughter but daughter of the deceased first wife of her husband. Mala’s mother lovingly takes care of her husband despite her knowledge that he is having an affair with another woman. Under a superstitious belief, she fasts, worships and takes penance to escape widowhood, to die before the death of her husband.
But things are changing in the society. The protagonist of the story Bidesha (A Foreign land by Gourahari Das) is not submissive traditional type superstitious woman; Itishree is educated, confident and assertive. She stays in the USA with her husband. When she returns to her village, she finds the joint family she was brought up in has broken down; and, with it, the love and care that existed before she left is also missing after death of their mother. Her father is neglected. Father’s home has become foreign to her and to her father also. She proposes to take her father with her to the USA.
The stories in the anthology can be broadly divided into two categories. In one category, the women in the stories are uneducated, dependent and traditional. In the other category, the characters are educated, confident and modern. But each of the stories is on a different aspect of feminism. In Sarojini Sahoo’s Kuhudi (fog), the girl is not good at studies but an excellent cook who caters to the culinary taste of the family members. Her bridegroom demands a hefty dowry. The girl has been subject to humiliation both in the house and outside.
In Salaukhuda (the sweet popped rice by Ajay Swain), an uneducated village girl, daughter of a labourer, falls in love with the grandson of the landowner and has been seduced and forgotten.
Whereas Snigdha in Papa, Punya, Semiti Kichhi (vice, virtue or something of that sort) by Paramita Satpathy) has not allowed her girl child to be born and aborted even without consulting her husband so as not to enable the girl to face the cruelty of the world being born as a woman. She faces a divorce case.
In Biplabani (the rebellious woman) by Paresh Patnaik), Rama Mohanty has challenged the tradition, religion and everything which she believes anti-woman. Even, she questions the Odia words like ‘Ramani’ and ‘Kamini’, whose etymological meanings are worthy of ‘Raman’ or lovemaking and the one who fulfils the sexual desire, respectively.
Besides, the book also contains the stories of Sahadev Sahoo, Adhyapak Biswaranjan, Hirnmayee Misra and GopaNayak. GopaNayak, the editor and translator, has selected some of the best stories written around woman in Odia. With a foreward given by Kavita Kane, the book is an attempt to understand the changing trend in thinking, upward moving women and the changing societal attitude not only in Odia but also in the Indian society towards the woman.
