Read more about Amrita Ganguly at: http://angie.pnn.com

Amrita Ganguly, based in Kolkata, India is an eclectic writer and artist who in I delves into the sexual development of a feminist in India. Based on incidents that have actually come to pass as can seen from her blog mentioned above I is at once an aggressive and angst ridden, tender and hard full of pain and empathizes with women who suffer indiscrimination and abuse for daring to stand up for their rights. She hopes it will be an inspiration for all women to break the silence as she has.

From her piece “I”

I (5)

The sound of a guitar in the moonlit night

Of a woman being strummed of hyacinth and lilacs

It’s like New York

A dame at perpetual climax

What nocturnal vision awaits us

At the dawn of enlightenment

They say your dreams come true

Is that fucking true ?

What about the nightmares?

Now, they’re more true,

More constant a friend

Than the greatest dream

That was ever crushed

A lonely woman in a havela

Bent and wrinkled

Squats

And picks up a cigarette butt from the gutter

And lights it

Ah! Our addictions

Nicotine, pussy and perky breasts- a perfect fit

Nipples the hue of wild raisins

Forever erect- even at the age of 42

I am 40-and finally at peace

A perfectly shaped pink clit

Pink deep in

I flick my tongue in and out with consummate ease

The scent of freshly crushed herbs

Why are men so boring?

Y’know, the greatest sign

Of respect is not smoking

A cigarette when you’re

Making out

I couldn’t

With those brutes

Those groveling animals

Whom I cuckolded in my

Mind with glee

I outsmart all men

I love my woman

For whom I double as a foster mother

The abuse

The indignity

A woman being kicked around because she’s a dyke

Review:

I first heard of Amrita Ganguly when she sent me a play she had written, The Women We Are, a couple of years ago.  My theatre company, the Penny-a-Line Players produced and directed her play for the 2007 Festival of Artistic and Creative Expression . . .not an easy piece to watch, her play brought focus to sexual abuse and the similarity of it’s destruction all over the world.

In her new work, “I”-Amrita revisits the abuse, the may hem (as she calls it) and I find myself once again in Amrita’s world of anger and frustration. It is a brave woman who writes about lesbianism and being sexually abused in India.  Having been fortunate enough to have several delightful phone calls with her, I appreciate her  approach to the struggle for feminism . . .I was struck by the similarity in our worlds; her a struggling writer and survivor in India and me, the same in Canada. There was not a lot of difference in our pain and silent suffering and we certainly fought for our liberation going down much the same path. Like Amrita, I hope her work, inspires other women to break the silence.

We look forward to doing a reading of the complete work of “I” in March 2011 at a Celebration of Women in Abbotsford. We will also feature a film by another outspoken artist in India Gwynneth Alicia Mawlong.