Aug 13 2023 to Aug 13 2023 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems is a collection of poems written in the imagined voice of India’s first female medical doctor and the first Indian woman to come to the United States and study medicine in 1883. Anandibai Joshee’s life story (1865-1887) is a brief yet compelling one of struggle, empowerment, and allyship in the 19th century. Challenging gender expectations and crossing waters considered impure/taboo, Anandibai fought her family and society to get an education in India and then against much protest, came to America, alone, to study medicine. Anandibai dazzled the Western world with her intelligence, grace, and determination, piercing through misconceptions about the East, while opening doors for Indian women who were otherwise confined to domestic duties within the home. The poems in Shikha Malaviya’s book are a chronological rendering of Anandibai’s life-from her birth and childhood in the bustling town of Kalyan in Maharashtra and her marriage to an eccentric man sixteen years older, to early childbirth and the loss of her infant, from which her desire to become a doctor was born. Drawing from extensive research and told in a variety of poetic forms-sonnet, epistolary, prose, pantoum, ghazal, ekphrastic, duplex, etc., the author captures and conveys Anandibai’s voice, culled from her life and letters. Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems isn’t just poetry, but biography and history as well. In this session, author Shikha Malaviya will be in conversation with Sohini Basak. A Q&A with the audience will follow.