Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mapping the Spaces of Minorities
- 2 The Armenians of Calcutta
- 3 The Jews of Calcutta: An Interview with Michael Ezra
- 4 The Sindhis of Calcutta
- 5 The City of Colleges
- 6 The Chinese Community of Calcutta
- 7 The Anglo–Indians of Calcutta
- 8 The Biharis of Calcutta
- 9 Agraharis of Calcutta
- 10 A Journey into My Neighbourhood
- 11 The ‘South Indians’ of Calcutta: Experiences in Cultural Processes
- 12 ‘Non-Bengali’ Icons of Malevolence
- 13 Selfing the City
13 - Selfing the City
Single Women Outsiders in Calcutta, Gender and the Processes of Everyday Urban Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mapping the Spaces of Minorities
- 2 The Armenians of Calcutta
- 3 The Jews of Calcutta: An Interview with Michael Ezra
- 4 The Sindhis of Calcutta
- 5 The City of Colleges
- 6 The Chinese Community of Calcutta
- 7 The Anglo–Indians of Calcutta
- 8 The Biharis of Calcutta
- 9 Agraharis of Calcutta
- 10 A Journey into My Neighbourhood
- 11 The ‘South Indians’ of Calcutta: Experiences in Cultural Processes
- 12 ‘Non-Bengali’ Icons of Malevolence
- 13 Selfing the City
Summary
This chapter is born out of an attempt to understand the experiences of oneself and very many similar women as part of a process – the process of ‘selfing’ the city to which we have come as outsiders. These experiences, this apparently ‘personal’ process of adjustment and negotiation is also seen as contributing to a larger process – it is difficult to call it a process of social transformation or even change, though all the signs of such a description seem implicit in understanding the material out of which the chapter is made. Hence at this stage, I shall merely provide an account of the material and attempt to connect these accounts with each other in order to construct a context. Whether this context is the result of a change or is in itself a sign of change can then be speculated upon. The project is an attempt to give meaning to memories of sharing – hostel rooms, confidences, double dates, boyfriend problems, local guardian woes and many such realities that had not existed in the sheltered lives we had left behind in order to chase a dream – the dream of the city. In later years, this was the experience of many students and friends that I could identify with – only now the scene has shifted to PG digs, shared flats, rented accommodation, and the problems could all be classified under the large, loose category of ‘staying or sticking on’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Calcutta MosaicEssays and Interviews on the Minority Communities of Calcutta, pp. 253 - 264Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009