37
exist both within the space of the mind and through their associations with temporality and location. 25 Commenting on the way in which narratives often interweave depictions of personal, communal and institutional experiences, Portelli defines these categories of experience by their links to‘ political and spatial referents’( my emphasis). 26 As a spatial referent, the domestic home space frequently occurred across women’ s narratives; many located their resistance activities and discussions of agency within this gendered space, and also stressed the ways in which this space was, as a result, threatened by the Emergency’ s repression of dissent.
This was particularly evident in Pushpa Bhave’ s narrative. Pushpa worked as a teacher at Ruia College, Bombay, during this period. With connections to many Socialist Party members, she played an active role in underground opposition within and outside of the city. Pushpa’ s home was a space of shelter for these opposition members. She recalled:‘ I used to house all the important people who were underground, for example, Mrinal Gore [ Socialist Party leader and Pushpa’ s friend ] used to stay with me very often’ before her arrest in December 1975. The domestic space here functioned as a haven, and her wider family were implicated in its creation. She told me,‘ it was me, my husband and my mother in the house and I was worried about my mother, but I told her that we are going to do this and somehow she took to it.’ 27 Pushpa’ s actions against the Emergency state then represented both a political act and an assertion of domestic authority. Like Uma’ s discussion of the Emergency’ s emotive effects, Pushpa emphasised the ways in which its various measures impacted people’ s daily lives and familial relationships.
Pushpa alluded to the regularity with which she sheltered opposition members, elaborating:‘ we never kept a person for more than four days at a time, so Mrinal used to stay with me off and on, but never for a stretch of longer than four days.’ 28 Her elaboration of the activities that took place during these four day periods located the home not only as a shelter, but a hub of resistance activity. She told me: While they stayed with me we would have small workshops inside the house … against the Emergency, using paper plates, not making any sounds, not producing any flash. My husband used to lock us in from outside and go somewhere, so on the face of it the house would be closed but the meetings would be going on … My house was not very big, but we used to have fifteen people for a meeting, from various places in Maharashtra. 29
25 Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giuila, 32. 26 Ibid., 27. 27 Pushpa Bhave, Interview with Author, 2014.
28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.