Podcast Summary:

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Date: January 15, 2026
Host: Dr. Raj Balkaran
Guest: Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh

Episode Overview

This episode explores Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh’s book, The Unraveling Heart: Women’s Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi. The discussion centers on women’s oral poetry traditions in Maharashtra, specifically the grindmill songs, their influence on Marathi vernacular literature, and how these oral traditions challenge conventional scholarly views of religious and literary texts in South Asia. The conversation delves into the innovative methodologies employed, the process of collecting and understanding these songs, and how marginalized women have historically shaped Marathi literary culture.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Genesis and Scope of the Project

• Origin: The research began as a literary study of Zanabai, a Bhakti poet associated with the Varkari sect, before expanding to encompass the wider tradition of women’s oral poetry.
• Fieldwork's Importance: Dr. Deshmukh describes being “pushed away from a kind of singular focus on her [Zanabai]” by the poetry and the women themselves, leading to broader and deeper inquiries into oral traditions (02:23).

Notable Quote

"It was Zanabai herself, I feel, that pushed me away from a kind of singular focus on her… She’s revered… as a poet of the people and specifically of working women."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (02:41)

2. Nature and Significance of Grindmill Songs

• These songs were traditionally sung by women during the labor of grinding grains—a practice now obsolete due to technological advances but preserved in memory and culture.
• The grindmill song tradition is described as "an enormous archive of songs, really about so many different subjects and topics," and as complex and compelling as any canonical poetry (05:23).
• An archive of over 100,000 songs exists, being digitized by the People's Archive of Rural India (grindmill.org), which is unmatched elsewhere (06:59).

Notable Quote

"I don't think there's a comparable archive of women's songs for like over a hundred years anywhere else. And the songs are, like, stunning in their poetic aspects."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (07:07)

3. Methodology: Literary Ethnography and Dialogic Analysis

• Dr. Deshmukh integrates fieldwork (recordings and interviews in rural Maharashtra) and textual analysis, following a “back and forth” method inspired by Linda Hess (11:07).
• Songs were transcribed, classified, and linked with major devotional and vernacular texts (e.g., the Nyaneshwari, Ramayan, Līlācaritra).
• Women’s own poetic terminology and concepts (e.g., differences between ovi and abhanga) provided a “meta-understanding” of their tradition (14:22).
• Dr. Deshmukh identifies core metaphors such as unraveling and weaving, which symbolize the interplay between oral composition and literary formation (meta-dialogic relationship between text and song) (16:03).

Notable Quote

"I draw out what I think is a kind of meta understanding of things within the song archive about their own songs and about poetry..."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (14:37)

4. Interplay Between Oral and Written Traditions

• The grindmill tradition is deeply embedded in the formation of Marathi literature—oral and written traditions constantly influence each other.
• Historical research shows continuity of themes and motifs from medieval oral songs (as preserved in texts like the 13th-century Līlācaritra) to present-day grindmill songs (20:00).
• Rather than existing separately, oral poetry and canonical texts exist in dynamic, productive tension—"weaving and unraveling” (16:32; 22:50).

Notable Quote

"I called the grindmill tradition a kind of interlocutor of the textual tradition, you know, that these engaged always in a conversation with each other."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (24:42)

5. The Value of Embodied Fieldwork Over Archival/Textual Study Alone

• Immersive engagement with women singers transformed Dr. Deshmukh’s understanding: seeing the diversity, memory, and agency of marginalized, often unlettered women was crucial (25:55).
• The impact of performance, individuality, and embodiment cannot be captured by texts or recordings alone (28:55; 29:28).
• Each song, while part of a communal archive, becomes personally owned and reshaped by the singer in the act of performance—mirroring the “I” of lyric voice (29:28).

Notable Quote

"Each verse, as a woman sings that verse, it becomes hers. ...Because when you listen to lyric poetry or you recite lyric poetry, you become the I in the poem."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (30:03)

6. What the Book Hopes Readers Will Take Away

• Literary culture is not defined solely by elite, canonical, or male authorship: marginalized women have profoundly shaped Marathi literature, often from the center and not the periphery (32:40).
• The book offers a challenge to dichotomies between elite/popular, textual/oral, and highlights the artistry in women's everyday speech and song (33:38).
• The oral is proposed as a creative, artistic space distinct from both ordinary speech and written text (35:32).

Notable Quote

"What I'm really trying to show in this book is the way that some of the most marginalized women in Maharashtra really contributed... centrally to this enterprise."
— Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (33:01)

7. Highlighting Overlooked Figures in Marathi Literary History

• The final chapter emphasizes two women poets, Zanjanabai and Mahaday, as foundational contributors to Marathi literature, shifting attention from “big male figures” to women’s foundational oral traditions (37:01).

Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On the influence of grindmill songs:
  "The grindmills tradition is everywhere. It's, you know, really central to how poetry came to be theorized in Marathi and in how it came to be written and what aspects of poetry came to be valued in Marathi."
  — Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (23:24)

• On oral tradition’s individuality:
  "I really don't think of it that way because I think of it more as each verse, as a woman sings that verse, it becomes hers. ...that's why I connect it to the form of lyric poetry."
  — Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (30:03)

• On the embodied nature of the tradition:
  "It was their individuality as they sang...when they sing a song, even if it is a song they learned by hearing it, they make it their own."
  — Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (29:28)

• On the importance of the oral:
  “A lot of postmodern theories about language and writing... don’t really take the oral into consideration or oral art into consideration. And yeah, I think that’s really problematic."
  — Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (36:26)

• On methodology:
  "Linda Hess actually talks about this in her book Bodies of Song...a methodology where fieldwork and text work inform and change each other."
  — Dr. Madhuri Deshmukh (11:07)

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:23] — Dr. Deshmukh on how the project shifted from focusing on one poet to the whole tradition.
• [05:20–07:10] — The scope, uniqueness, and history of grindmill song archives.
• [13:54] — Discussion on methods: fieldwork, transcriptions, and use of archives.
• [16:03–16:32] — Explaining metaphors of unraveling and weaving in women's poetry.
• [20:00] — Historical continuity: 13th-century texts and modern oral tradition.
• [24:42] — The centrality of grindmill traditions to Marathi literature.
• [28:55–29:28] — Embodied experience, individuality, and ownership in oral singing.
• [32:40–33:38] — On the central role of marginalized women in vernacular literary culture.
• [37:01] — Highlighting Zanjanabai and Mahaday as foundational figures.

Conclusion

This episode offers a rich, nuanced exploration of how women’s oral poetry traditions are not just parallel to literary cultures but are instrumental in their birth and evolution. Dr. Deshmukh’s interdisciplinary method bridges ethnography and literature, arguing for the essential inclusion of the oral in literary studies. The voices, artistry, and agency of marginalized women emerge as central threads in the fabric of Marathi literature—inviting listeners and readers to rethink received hierarchies of culture, text, and authorship.