Reading Ambai

I've recently been attempting to complete my projects for college. One done, three more to go. The one I've completed is for our "Twentieth Century Indian Writings" paper, and I chose to research on the Tamil author C. S. Lakshmi, better known as Ambai. Her writing interested me, perhaps because it's so different compared to the other authors we've studied so far. There's a certain tranquil quality to it which she uses effectively to convey hard-hitting messages. Beautiful imagery. Voices. Myths and legends. Utterly feminist. Reflective.

I actually got caught up in the whole thing and dragged N off to two libraries for "research". The British Council Library (I knew it wouldn't help, obviously, but I wanted to see it anyway) and the Sahitya Akademi (darker but definitely more helpful). 

The project dragged on for ages. The writing of a project is truly cumbersome. But anyway, the point I was trying to make is that...um...go read Ambai. My favourite story would undoubtedly be "A Movement, A Folder, Some Tears" from her collection In A Forest, A Deer. It's about women's activism after the Gujarat riots, and the trials and tribulations that the Muslim community, especially, had to face.