3 days ago
Four Young Women Confront Change in 1970s Kolkata
Chuni tells the story of spending a day outside with three friends.
The friends are Bulan, Renu, Suman, and Chuni herself.
Chuni jokes about how people notice some girls more than others.
She especially admires Suman, who is beautiful, lively, and wears whatever clothes she likes.
The girls tease one another about their families, bodies, and futures.
They also notice how other people stare at women’s clothes and bodies.
Chuni questions whether words like “pure” and “virgin” should decide a girl’s value.
The story shows four young women living in a changing Kolkata during the 1970s.
Chuni narrates a day out with her friends Bulan, Renu, and Suman in Kolkata’s Dalhousie area.
The friends’ conversations reveal close bonds, teasing, sexuality, and anxieties about female respectability.
Suman is portrayed as beautiful, confident, unconventional, and resistant to her mother’s clothing advice.
The narrator questions ideas of purity and virginity, especially the way women’s bodies are judged.
The excerpt comes from Kabita Singha’s Bengali novel Four Angry Women, translated by Shamita Das Dasgupta.
- Who
- Chuni, Bulan, Renu, and Suman, four young women; the excerpt is by Kabita Singha and translated by Shamita Das Dasgupta.
- What
- An excerpt portraying the friends’ relationships, appearance, clothing, sexuality, and challenges to ideas of female purity.
- Where
- The Dalhousie area of Kolkata, with references to the women’s neighborhood.
- When
- The story is set in the 1970s; the excerpt does not give a more precise date.
- Why
- The excerpt explores friendship and how women are judged through beauty, clothing, virginity, and respectability.
Key facts
- Work
- Four Angry Women
- Author
- Kabita Singha
- Translator
- Shamita Das Dasgupta
- Original language
- Bengali
- Setting
- Kolkata in the 1970s
- Featured friends
- Chuni, Bulan, Renu, and Suman
- Excerpt publisher
- Antonym Collections
Quotes
Sumitra
Suman’s mother, who is living in Delhi after separating from Suman’s father.
“You should never wear clothes that display your contours.”
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“Look, a piece of poetry!”
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Sources
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