There is a little application on our phones, called Notes, a silent place where we retreat to at moments of despair. It is where we unravel our emotions that we cannot utter and where we allow our thoughts to breathe. It has turned into an easy but intimate mechanism of coping with life. Yet even before this digital refuge was created, there was a young girl who had figured out her own survival method of weathering the storms within. She accepted her heartache and made out her grief in words. What she wrote was one of the most extraordinary works of Bengali literature, a version where the emphasis was no longer on kings and battles but the unspoken sacrifices of women.

Her name was Chandrabati and she is the first poetess in Bangladesh history.

Near the smooth running of the Phuleshwari river, Chandrabati was born in a little village named Patuair within Kishorganj. Her life was developed in the landscape of river winds, bamboo houses and the great echo of folk songs floating on the water.Poverty was a family history in her family. The suffering had begun several generations ago under the rule of her grandparents Jadabananda and Anjana Bhattacharya. They lived in a basic bamboo house roofed with palm-leaves. Their son, Dwij Bangshi Das was born and brought up in the same hut. He had been brought up with very little yet he still retained the strong feeling of devotion. The family was Devi Manasa worshippers in silent dedication. They said that Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, abandoned the house in anger when they had their trust in Manasa. Later, Chandrabati stated this belief in her own Ramayan when she was talking about the struggles of her family. Poverty came to be a common household that influenced their lives day to day in small and unforgiving measures.One night, in a dream, Dwij Bangshi saw Devi Manasa when the burden of the situation was piled upon him. This deity told him to sing her bhasan, the religious songs that glorified her power and legends. The dream turned out to be a turning point. Ever since then, he started going from village to village singing the stories of Manasa. The little money they would get out of such performances would be the only consistent revenue in the family. Those songs sustained them, dressed them, and held the shanty home in their hands.

Chandrabati was brought up in this environment. She was a witness of the needless devotion of her father, she heard the rhythm of his poems, and she was taught that narration was not a form of culture but a survival mechanism. The literature existed within their poverty and in their hut. The initial stirrings of a poetess started shaping up in this silent world by the Phuleshwari.

Just as the love story of Chandrabati is remembered the same way as her writing. It was assumed that she was beautiful and her verses came later to gain attention. Her youth was spent along the Phuleshwari River, and during her tender childhood days she had a friend to play with. His name was Jayananda. They had been raised as playmates, picking flowers to use in the morning prayers. Jayananda would bend the branches and Chandrabati would pick the blossoms. Their merry-making and sporting rang along the bank. Years later, her father motivated her to write and Jayananda started writing too. He made verses to her, recited them and silently fostered a strong attachment. Friendship changed to affection and the two families slowly realized that they were close to each other. As Dwij Bangshi realized how much they both loved each other, he vowed to get them married at the right moment. A date was decided. Their ways were coming together at last.

Jayananda was already accepted by Chandrabati as her future. Her love, born out of innocence and trust, had buried itself in her heart. But life had become a surprise. A different woman came into the life of Jayananda. She was the daughter of a Kazi named Asmani. Attracted to her- he converted and married her. Chandrabati was devastated by the news. The girl who had walked the riverbank with him had been left alone in the same spot. Grief overwhelmed her. Marriage no longer seemed to be possible and meaningful. She devoted her life to a new life of worship at the request of her father. In the Phuleshwari a little Shiva shrine was built, where she tried to find peace in prayer and writing.

Once the betrayal struck, when Chandrabati could not stand the burden of her sorrow any longer, her father was the silent power that had her moving ahead. He watched the way heartbreak had scuttled her soul and encouraged her to pour that sadness into words. So Chandrabati started to write again. She sat in the temple of Shiva with palm-leaf manuscripts and soot-ink. The outside world was becoming different with all the political stress as well as religious concerns in the world, which were pressing on women. Maybe this is the reason why she never wrote again in the same ways as she used to do. A Ramayan was growing there out of that silent riverbank. Chandrabati did not want to narrate the story in the heroic way of Rama but in the poor heart of Sita. In Chandrabati’s version the divine mystery goes away and the human pain comes to the fore. Her poems depict a world in which women bear the weight that men make. They mourn in silence, suffer betrayal, and wait indefinitely to get justice which hardly comes. Chandrabati knew too well of this anguish. Her personal heartbreak filtered into the story of Sita, and the character has a depth that centuries had neglected to consider. Perhaps this is because of growing up in an abandoned environment. It is possible that Sita was the voice that she never managed to use in her life. Whichever the case, Chandrabati Ramayan still lingered in the minds of village women long after being rejected by scholars. Her songs were sung at gatherings, at weddings, at rituals and her words had passed through generations.

As Chandrabati was writing in the temple, Jayananda was drowning with regrets. The woman he had left was now out of his reach.Jayananda later came to know what he lost. Feeling remorse he went back and asked forgiveness. Chandrabati, wounded irreparably, declined to see him. One day he visited the Shiva temple where she served. The door was closed. He called her every now and then. She did not open it. In despair Jayananda stamped the juice of her favourite flower, the evening jasmine, upon the door, and wrote a brief poem, asking pardon. When there was no answer, he went to the river where they used to pick flowers, and jumped into its depths. Chandrabati opened the door later after concluding her prayers. She discovered the poem that he had composed and knew that he had been there. She had gone to the river to find water, but she hears that Jayananda committed suicide. This was a blow to her. Still in shock and grief, even she went down the Phuleshwari and committed suicide.

Life of Chandrabati swung between poverty, devotion and heartbreak, and rebellion, but out of all the wounded she created something higher than her grief. Her betrayal, having ruined her youth, led her to writing and her Ramayan, the first to be written by a woman, finally appeared. Her poems spread much farther than her village, and were carried in the mouths of mothers, rowers and narrators and have preserved a heritage of pain and vision. She is not only remembered today as a tragic hero but as a mute revolutionist who provided women with a seat at the table of Bengali literature and left a dent on history as subtle as a watermark.