Tag Archives: Gender

Women in the Worlds of Labour, originating in a conference on the same theme in 2014, brings wide-ranging critical and theoretical approaches into conversation with one another. While not claiming to be comprehensive, the editors lay out the analytical and historical importance of an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective on the subject.

The issue of gender in India is a complicated one—a society that is marked by a dividual sense of individuality—the ‘woman’ may find herself diluted in the various roles and versions that threaten to drown her and her voice, and surely even her desire. The struggle for being acceptable, needed, and valued may be so intense that it is seen to be bargained for one’s own sense of self. It is going to be difficult to review a feminist writing without bringing in all the other authors who have so prolifically written on the subject, but I am going to stick to the book at hand.

Decentring the gender discourse has emerged as a vital task for those seeking to understand the unprecedented expansion of Hindutva politics and the social and political ground it has gained since the erstwhile Jan Sangh won just two seats in the Indian Parliament in the year 1982. To dismiss the ‘gender’ of the political formation as conservative could be superficial, pernicious or simply convenient; a closer and more incisive examination of the women of Hindutva remains the need of the hour, to use a cliché.

There is a lovely story in Navaneetha Mokkil’s Unruly Figures describing a moment from the sex worker and activist Nalini Jameela’s Autobiography of a Sex Worker. Jameela, used to doing sex work in a darkened room, is asked by her client to go into the light so he can see what she looks like. His face lights up when he sees her, and Jameela realizes for the first time that she is beautiful. Mokkil likens this to how we often ‘see’ ourselves through others.

According to the National Crimes Record Bureau data available in 2016, there is a total of 20 women’s prisons in India, housing more than 3000 inmates. Tamil Nadu has the largest number of women’s prisons, five, and they are less than half full; while West Bengal, Delhi and Maharashtra each have one women’s prison and have more than full capacity of inmates.

Like the Draupadi and Sita that she created in her memorable novels, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni emerges in this book as a strong and questioning woman who turns received knowledge on its head. A compendium of academic essays on her works captures the genres of novel, short story and poetry while the interviews with Divakaruni along with her autobiographical note give this book an admirable range.

There is no gainsaying that violence has been instrumental in creating and shaping societies. Less attention has been paid to shame and guilt—emotions that rarely show up in discussions on politics and society. Durba Mitra places these ideas front and centre in her devastating explication of the history of the linkages between notions of sexuality and their impact on the evolution of social thought in colonial India.

Mutinies for Equality: Contemporary Developments in Law and Gender in India edited by Tanja Herklotz and Siddharth Peter de Souza is an attempt to examine gender inequality in India on the basis of doctrinal and empirical research in multiple sites.  Titling the volume ‘Mutinies for Equality’, the editors argue, is a ‘recognition of the many battles that have been and continue to be fought to bring out greater gender equality in India and their implications for wider systemic transformations’ (p. 3). 

‘You can become a philosopher after you become rich.’—Shah Rukh KhanActor and superstar Shah Rukh Khan, the object of the intelligent Indian woman’s fantasies, warns of the perils of getting lost in intellectualizing life before securing its material bases.

The Grumpy Man makes for a delightful reading experience. Illustrated by Suvidha Mistry, the scenes are set so beautifully that children are sure to have a blast reading this short story by Cheryl Rao.As the title suggests, the story is about a grumpy man and the kids in the neighbourhood who are wary of him. Their curiosity is aroused and they want to know about this grumpy man who is not moved even by their good deeds. Their childhood pranks are always met with disapproval. On holidays, they would leave sweets for him at his doorstep but even that gesture does not endear him to them…

Yamini and the 7:00 pm Ghosts is a story by CG Salamander that revolves around 12-year-old Yamini and her friends discovering the mystery of ghosts in their neighbourhood. The story begins with Yamini hearing the rumours about ghosts in her neighbourhood that come around 7 in the evening. Everyone in the neighbourhood is scared of these ghosts, including Yamini’s friends. But Yamini doesn’t believe in the rumours. Therefore, she tries to solve the mystery…

Once cheerful and sunny, the village of Himmatnagar has changed in the past month since the mysterious deaths of three of its nativesRam Nayak, Chintamani, and Reddy. The natives of the village seem to have stopped smiling and are always tense; the police seem to have no leads to the cause of the deaths. Welcome to the village of ‘Himmatnagar: Land of the Brave’, formerly known as ‘Phattupur: Village of Cowards’.Adithi Rao in The Bhootbusters of Himmatnagar brings the village canvas alive—­the trees, the ponds, the local school, the expansive farmlands, and the village cemetery. Illustrated by Sayan Mukherjee…

The Sackclothman has been developed for Different Tales: Stories from Marginal Cultures and Regional Languages, an initiative of the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Hyderabad. To be honest, I judged this book by its cover–in fact, I was totally intrigued by it. The illustrations by Rakhi Peswani are commendable. The story evokes the familiar imagery from Rabindranath Tagore’s famous story ‘Kabuliwala’. There is a young girl, an ‘outsider’, a social outcast; and the familiar attachment between the two of them. It even has the same gut-wrenching scene of the outsider being taken away from society after establishing a tender bond with the little girl…

The Waiting may seem like a simple book, but it is pretty complex with multiple stories surrounding the main character, Anit, and his friends–Bimal, Chandan, and Deeksha, also known as the ABCD gang in the book.Dipavali Sen talks about bullying/ragging and connects it with mythology, magic, historical research, scientific experiment, contemporary attitudes, and mystical practices.The Waiting is an adventure book. It starts with Anit’s story of shifting to a new house, a new school, and how he is bullied there as a new boy. Even though he is irritated and frustrated, he does not tell his parents about the ordeals of the ragging he faced. Being an the only child, he understands all the hardships his parents had gone through to buy a house for themselves…

Hawa Mithai by the renowned Hindi poet is a collection of essays on the elements, water, light, air, as also on sound, the earth, sky, fire, the seasons. E.g., water is derived from clouds, rains and rivers and light are derived from the Sun, Moon and the stars. Humans, birds, animals and even plants and trees, all depend on the elements. We derive abundance of pleasure from them but when we make them angry, they bring misery to us by causing floods, earthquakes, thunderstorms, etc.The author has described these elements in colourful details. There are three essays on potatoes, cycle and green chillies to add spice to the volume. The illustrations are attractive, Kulkarni has done a very good job…

The ‘children’s books’ I grew up with were essentially preachy adult stuff parading as stories for children. It is a delight, therefore, to see these six books which try and see the world through the eyes of a child.Sher ki Neend (The Lion’s Sleep) written and illustrated by Manica K Musil presents a lion who is not a fierce hunter out to kill and frighten children. Rather, it is a lion that desperately needs a snooze but cannot sleep because birds and monkeys and insects don’t let him. Finally a bird leads him up a hill and he falls asleep: a lovely metaphor for a child’s desire to guide grownups. While the tale alone is sure to engage any six-seven year old, the fabulous illustrations, created with a variety of fabrics, threads, rope and wool, would compel even older people to turn its pages…

Chaman Lal Ke Pyjame is an interesting collection of six stories written by Anil Singh for children aged 8 and above. All the stories are set in Umariya, a district in Madhya Pradesh. The language is colloquial bringing back memories of a Madhya Pradesh I grew up in. The Hindi spoken in small towns of many Hindi-speaking States is something one does not generally hear in Metropolitan cities. It is very quaint and only people living in those parts may be familiar with some of the words that I came across in these stories…

Babies In My Heart is a simply-written story about the concept of family, and the types of families found in today’s world. The story begins by introducing the reader to a standard nuclear family with biological father, mother and their biological children—the archetypical Hum do hamare do; and then goes on to introduce families with twins, triplets and quadruplets. Then come same-sex families with two mothers or two fathers. Here, the concept of adoption is brought up by differentiating between tummy mummy and heart family. Then the concept of a single parent (actually a single woman) family is introduced…

Gulab, the daughter of a manual scavenger—is mocked at by her class mates as ‘stinky Gulab’, not because she is filthy but because of her father’s profession which involves cleansing of clogged gutters.So, on science day in school Gulab takes the first bold step of showcasing a machine to clean up the drains without involving any human. She names it Gulab which will remove the dirt and spread fragrance.The story revolves around the inherent class divide existing in our society. Both Gulab and the bullies are the victims of this societal discrepancy, one as perpetrator and the other as victim…

The story revolves around two princesses created by the fairy queen Sheera to deal with her boredom. One of the princesses is sent to the kingdom of darkness and is to be protected from the sun while the other is sent to the prosperous kingdom of the light and is to be protected from the night. Sheera keeps adding up complexities to their lives as the plot progresses until they both finally meet each other and help each other’s kingdoms.The story has three female characters as protagonists and all three of them are appreciated for their beauty first and other characteristics later. The adjectives used for the females are only focusing upon their physical attributes which follows the standard beauty norms…