Book Review of Nandini Sahu’s Medusa

By Malashri Lal 

Nandini Sahu, Medusa (A Collection of Poems), Black Eagle Books:  Dublin, USA, and Bhubaneswar, India, 2025. Pages 123, Rs. 300.

The name ‘Medusa’ evokes the terrible image of a woman who has snakes for her hair and a dreaded capacity for turning her opponent into stone. The word ‘petrified’ etymologically means ‘turned to stone’, and that is precisely what Medusa does in actual and metaphorical terms in the mythological tale and its adaptations. Nandini Sahu in her collection of poems, Medusa, generates a thought-provoking alternative image, that of a woman wronged in the story from Greek mythology and who deserves a sympathetic look. Sahu recalls that Medusa was a beautiful priestess in Athena’s temple. Pursued by Poseidon, she took refuge in the temple but was sexually assaulted there. Goddess Athena, angry that her sanctuary had been desecrated, cursed Medusa into becoming the dreaded figure that we know her as—ugly and destructive. Poseidon was never punished for misusing his power. Nandini Sahu revisits the original story and unravels the suppressions imposed on Medusa:  her unspoken desires, choices, identity and freedom. This trope of the violated woman is not unknown in the narratives repeated over generations and Nandini Sahu, an eminent scholar of Comparative Literature brings her knowledge to bear upon the forgotten histories of the women who were silenced. Examples I can cite would be Philomela whose tongue was cut off so she could never reveal details of her rape. There is also Ahalya who is tricked by Indra who appeared in the guise of Ahalya’s husband and seduced her. The woman is the victim, yet she is punished, not the man. Why should there be such injustice, and that too perpetuated over time?

In this context, Nandini Sahu’s Medusa is a path breaking collection because she uses the idea of Medusa, and not necessarily the details of the story, to assert that women cherish their dreams and aspirations, but are caught in the bind of patriarchal power structures and often exploited by men. Many forego all thoughts of fulfilling their goals. Coming to the poems themselves, I am particularly struck by the confident feminine voice that articulates its needs, fearlessly, and claims its independence. Comparative Studies would be encouraged by such a book as Medusa from Greek legends metamorphoses into contemporary figures in India and elsewhere.  Examples of specific poems may be cited. ‘An Ode to Every Woman’ has the lines ‘She bends to none, she is indomitable/ that is the paradox of strength in her soft hands’ (26). In ‘Mago’ the poet admits ‘My worst battle is between/ what I know, and what I feel’ (54). Another poem has the lines ‘Synaesthesia, the neutral condition/ causes me a consolidation of the senses’ (101). These quotations have in common the self-questioning of an intellectual woman who has understood the social constructions and is discovering her strategies for overcoming the obstacles.  This, to my mind, is a universal paradigm, and therefore, even when Nandini Sahu uses specifically Indian material, the stories serve as emblems of the suppression imposed on women, and the legacy of such silencing that continues even today.

Embedded within the book’s theme of woman’s objectification is the long poem titled ‘Dushyant and Shakuntala’. It takes us through the story that is well known of a secret marriage, a token of remembrance, the forgetfulness, the final discovery of the truth and the union of lovers. The poem, however, questions the values attached to the court and the pastoral village. Shakuntala muses in the final section about the relative merits in words such as these:

For love in a forest is root and thorn,
bound to earth, yet free, forlorn.
But love in a palace is chiselled stone,
a thing of the heart yet carved alone. (79)

Sahu tends to focus on the interiority of the woman’s mind, thereby broadening the horizons of traditional narratives. For example, she uses generic subheadings in the Dushyant-Shakuntala poem such as the ‘Recognition and Reunion’, and ‘A Woman in Waiting’. The reader understands the nucleus of the story in a modern context of abandonment, helplessness, dislocation—these are today’s experiences though far from the ashram environment of the original tale.

Turning to regional folklore is the story of Tapoi from Odissa sources (89) It recounts how a woman prayed to Goddess Mangala to get her brothers back, and she finally triumphs as a figure of celebration. Tracking mainstream myths, the poem ‘Manthan’ revisits the famous churning of the ocean as the gods and Demons fight over Amrit or the elixir of life. But the modern message is more personal and positive as the woman discovers for herself that Manthan also throws up love which is ‘ember’ and ‘granite’ but also ‘a prayer from the heart’ (21). The diversity in the volume, and the intertextual connections with global literature in Medusa builds a rich archive echoing material from the English syllabus that many of us have studied. Yet Sahu’s post-modernist twist excites a contemporary energy that is feminist without being hostile.

I end my review with the author’s Preface which forcefully states her idea of Medusa, ‘She is the regular, here and now, normal woman with all the strengths and weaknesses in her multi layered, multifaceted character, like us modern, post- modern and post- post- modern women, hence this title of my book; (11). Appropriately, the opening poem begins with the words ‘I am Medusa, I merge with you’.  Later follow my favourite lines,

Medusa is nonjudgemental, audacious,

beautiful flexible, yet unyielding.

Medusa is some myth and yet she is the ultimate truth.

Medusa is many lives in one life (18).

In other words, there is a Medusa lurking in each woman who has tried to protect herself against the forces of oppression. She has been assaulted and punished and reviled. It takes a scholar of Nandini Sahu’s stature to revisit such a figure and restore to her the dignity that is due and to also pull her into our contemporary discourse, so that women under threat are inspired to express their rebellion and seek the collaboration of sisterhood. The book finally leaves a message of courage and self-growth for today’s women, not just in India or in Greece, but women as a whole as a gendered ‘second sex’.

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Bio: Malashri Lal, with twenty-four books, retired as Professor, English Department, University of Delhi. Publications include Tagore and the Feminine, and The Law of the Threshold. Co-edited with Namita Gokhale is the ‘goddess trilogy’ and also Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt which received the Kalinga Fiction Award.  Lal’s poems Mandalas of Time received global acclaim. Honours include the prestigious ‘Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence’ and the international SETU award of Excellence.

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Setu, September 2025