This Article First Appeared In Indian Express On Jan 16, 2023
Adieu, dearest Sara Abubakar! I wish I were there to bid you the final goodbye. But the next day, as I was speaking to her daughters-in-law, I, for once, felt not going was a good decision after all. It would have been painful to see that angelic face worn down by the wrinkles of time and illness. Her kind and beautiful face is etched in my mind forever.
Who was the writer Sara Abubakar, who passed away last week in Mangalore at 86, to me? Sara and I, like the multitude of contemporary writers born in my community, and the ones yet to tread the same path, are beads on the same string.
Wasn’t Sara a Kannada writer, you may ask? She wrote her novels and stories in Kannada, of course. In that sense, she belongs to the same cohort of literary greats such as Banu Mushtaq, whose works bared the stark realities of life. But why should there be a differentiation based on community and language? The same moral conscience binds us all women writers. A writer’s consciousness comes from shaking off the constraints of our lives and marching forward.