A_Terrible_Matriarchy-a_Synopsis

A Terrible Matriarchy-A synopsis “My Grandmother didn’t like me. I knew this when I was about four and a half.” These are the opening words spoken by Dieleno or Lieno, in short, the narrator and protagonist of Easterine Iralu’s ATerrible Matriarchy. A Terrible Matriarchy is Delieno’s story set in the mid 60s Nagaland, specifically in Kohima. The literal translation of this Angami name means ‘little errand girl’. The story describes the life of Delieno from the age of five to twenty three. When she is five years she is sent off to live with her disciplinarian grandmother Vibano who wants to train her up to be a good naga wife and mother. According to the grandmother, girls don’t need education, they don’t need love and affection, or time to play or even a good piece of meat with their gravy. “In my time”, her grandmother would say,” boys never did any work because they had to look after the village and engage enemy warriors in warfare. The household that did not have a male heir was considered barren. They were always in constant danger if there was a war. The women would only have one male to protect them. That is why we love our male children so much and we give them the best of food.” It is no wonder that the grandmother dotes on her grandsons. Delieno, or Lieno, the youngest and only daughter of five siblings is the darling of her parents and brothers. She resents having to leave her home to become the Dieleno or domestic help to her despotic grandmother, but she has no choice but to obey the wishes of her elders. For the six years of her stay with her grandmother, she knows no rest from work or verbal abuse of her grandmother. Rising daily at dawn to fetch water from the village watering spot, cook ,clean, rush to school and back only to continue endless other chores till bed time. The novel continues as Lieno's life moves forward, she excels in her school, she loses 2 brothers along the way, one to sickness and one to alcoholism., Dieleno is exceptionally strong willed who refuses to be defeated. Her grandmother may be credited for imbibing in Dieleno the accepted social etiquettes, duties and responsibilities expected of a woman by the society of her time, but is unable to break her spirit. intelligent, hard working, coupled with her humanity and sense of social justice ,Dieleno grows up to be an admirable and accomplished young woman.This is best summed up in her mother’s tribute to her” I guess she (grandmother ) had grown up to believe that girls are weak and not as good as boys. We were all told that as children. But I know differently now. I am amazed at your strength sometimes, Lieno. The way you took over the household when Pete died. You were just eleven and half and yet you took over my role so naturally. In short, A Terrible Matriarchy is the story of the journey of a girl from childhood to womanhood. It also gives us a view of three generations of Naga women, the grandmother, the mother and Lieno, whose intimately intertwined lives accentuate their generational differences amid times of rapid social change in Nagaland. The grandmother who has lived her life serving the men folk of her clan continue to live a life of the typical traditional Angami Society and its belief that the purpose of a woman’s existence lies in giving birth, raising their children, men’s caregivers, consolers, preservers of social etiquette and upholders of of the community’s virtues. In contrast to the dragonian grandmother, in Dielno’s mother we see a sensitive, understanding and long-suffering soul representing many Naga mothers. They have been made so from generations of caring for people from birth to death. It is from this kind of women that the strength and wisdom is passed down for to the younger generation like Lieno. A Terrible Matriarchy is the journey of a girl from childhood to womanhood, which mirrors in parallel the journey of a society whose women like Lieno and her mother have helped make the transition from an age of a terrible matriarchy to a progressive one. Apart from the three major female characters, the novel is crowded with other female minor characters. Lieno’s sister-in- law, nisano, another longsuffering young widow, Bano the spinster who is grandmother’s niece and Lieno’s older-sister figure at grandmother’s house, who served and kept house for grandmother till her death. Lieno’s best friend Vimenuo, who grandmother looks down upon as from a family of bad blood because her father is a drunkard. The neighbourhood gossips at water spot, the loud bawdy women who runs drinking houses, smug,petty women like Aunt Bino who sent away the firt three suitors of Lieno on the pretext that Lieno is too loud and aggressive to make a good wife. These characters typecast the kind of women we come across every day in and around the neighbourhood of our society. Burning issues of the time like the importance of the emerging church, the problems of alcoholism and promiscuity, the general distrust of the Indian Army and its brutality against the youth of the Naga army in an era of the conflict-torn state of Nagaland, and the British and colonial influences on Naga society are all sensitively evoked and woven into the tale.