Rooted Yet Restless: Identity and Longing in Selected Tripura Manipuri Women’s Poetry

Author(s): Dr. Anuradha Nongmaithem

Abstract:

The paper is a study of selected women poetry from Tripura. Tripura Manipuri poetry by women writers emerge from a complex historical and cultural context marked by migration, displacement, marginality and discrimination. Living outside the geographical and cultural centre of Manipur, Tripura Manipuri communities often experience a persistent sense of rootlessness and cultural dislocation, which deeply informs women’s poetic expression. This paper examines how selected Tripura Manipuri women (TMW) poetess articulate feelings of longing, fragmented selfhood, and the absence of a stable and unified identity. Their poetry reveals an ongoing negotiation between inherited cultural memory and the lived realities of exile-like existence within Tripura, where language, tradition, and belonging remain continuously under strain. The poetess’ voices oscillate between attachment to ancestral roots and a restless search for self-definition, resulting in expressions of loss, nostalgia, and emotional vulnerability. Through close textual analysis, the study highlights how personal longing becomes a metaphor for collective uncertainty, reflecting the community’s struggle to assert cultural identity amid social invisibility and historical neglect. The paper argues that Tripura Manipuri women’s poetry not only records emotional unrest but also serves as a subtle form of resistance, preserving cultural consciousness while simultaneously questioning the possibility of a secure and unified identity. Through close reading, these poetesses transform personal pain and emotional restlessness into acts of self-assertion, using poetry as a space to negotiate belonging and articulate alternative forms of identity.

keywords:
Tripura Manipuri Women, Identity, Feminism, Rootlessness, Ima

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