Imagery: Drapaudi
Dopdi is leaving the village, heading to the forest, when she is followed by the police. The narrator describes the moment when she is captured: "Now Dopdi spreads her arms, raises her face to the sky, turns toward the forest, and ululates with the force of her entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and flap their wings. The echo of the call travels far." The reader can imagine her raising her arms and setting off a war cry to warn her rebel group of her capture by the government forces; the image is one of power and resistance, and one that shows that Dopdi is a force to be reckoned with.
Imagery: Draupadi
Draupadi is captured by the government forces and gruesomely tortured. She is raped and beaten in order for her to reveal information on the whereabouts of the others in the rebel group. The narrator describes her tortured body: "Draupadi's black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, What's the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man?" This imagery shows Draupadi as wild and powerful, as beaten physically but not mentally cowed; she is more powerful than Senanayak at this moment.
Imagery: Bayen
Chandi is described as an isolated, dangerous woman with a "red flag" on her hut and red clothing, living near a "dead pond" with a "dog on her trail." She has a "sun-bronzed face framed by wild matted hair. And eyes that silently devoured [Bhagirath's]." This imagery shows Chandi as beyond the margins of society, as a figure to be feared; it is only as the story progresses that we realize how she came to be like this.
Imagery: Breast-Giver
The story is full of imagery of Jashoda's breasts—Kangali playing with them, milk coming from them, nursing the Haldar household, and, at the end of the story, the breasts turning against her by drying up, developing cancer, and eventually bursting and causing her death. The fixation on her breasts shows how she is only valued for this body part and not for anything else; once that body part is no longer of use or interest to anyone, she no longer is either.
