A Leaf In The Storm(Title)

(1)Write the appropriateness of the title of the short story ‘A Leaf In The Storm’ written
by Lalithambika Antharjanam and translated by Narayan Chandran.
  
    Lalithambika Antharjanam’s ‘A Leaf in the Storm’ is a brutal tale of partition, violence,
and gender. The story’s protagonist is Jyoti, or Jyotirmoyi  Devpal, a young Sikh woman
who is raped along with fifteen other women while crossing the border from Pakistan to
India, after the partition. At the refugee camp in India, a pregnant Jyoti struggles to
accept her fate and the child growing in her womb, who she terms “the seed of
damnation”.To Jyoti, the child represents hate, not love, and is a reminder of the horrific
events that transpired, that led to its conception.
    The titular “leaf” represents this child and the “storm” represents the partition and all
the violence associated with it. The “leaf” child is innocent, it has done nothing wrong to
deserve the scorn of its mother, who vehemently refuses to have anything to do with it
and admires the bravery of a woman in the refugee camp,who,under similar
circumstance circumstances, throttles to death the child that she gave birth to.Amidst
the “storm” of the partition,the child is an untainted soul that survives the storm and
represents the future of the newly birthed nation.
    The “storm” represents the violence and destruction that the partition unleashed on
the people of both nations, especially the women. The countries were divided, but the
women remained colonized, first by the colonizers, and second,by the men of their own
countries.The woman’s honor became that of the nation; once defiled, it became a site
of destruction.The woman’s body, akin to a tree that bears its flowers and leaves, is
reduced to the possession of the patriarchal society, that must survive the violence and
trauma inflicted upon it. When Jyoti is raped along with fifteen others, it is described as
the falling of flowers — the loss of innocence.  
    The motif of the tree appears multiple times in the story.The tree represents a woman
who grows, nurtures, and remains bent but unbroken despite the violence inflicted on it
by the storm.A survivor in the refugee camp is a woman who has lost her nine children
and fifty grandchildren to the partition, but “supporting herself on a stick”, she eats,
drinks, speaks, and survives. The large tree in the camp is a site for gathering of men,
who have been chased out of their homes and lands, who discuss the injustices
inflicted upon them. It is also here that it is preached that children of all  abandoned
women be accepted as the first progeny of the new nation, despite their origins. It is
under this tree that Jyoti gives birth and considers burying her newborn, but is unable
to. She is overcome by the feelings of motherhood and finally, decides to accept her
fate after denying it for so long.As the tree that has been left ravaged but not broken by
the storm, she accepts her leaf, her child.
   This shows the appropriateness of the title of the short story.No matter how many
storms, wars, or partitions take place, the woman with her body — akin to a tree suffers
and survives through all the violence while nurturing and protecting within  herself her
leaves — her innocent children.