A new biography profiles Nandini Satpathy, the former Odisha chief minister and fiction writer

One of Nandini Sathpathy’s stories is “Wounded Pride” in the collection titled One Step Towards the Sun; Short Stories by Women from Orissa edited by Valerie Henitiuk and Supriya Kar, which was published in 2010. Here, she explored the sexual dilemmas of a housewife trapped in the hollows of a dull marriage.

Sanghamitra, in a marriage of 25 odd years, let the hem of her saree to soak in the urine of her child and wiped off her husband’s greasy hands, losing her individuality, yard by yard. Wrapped in the evenness of those sarees, she untied the knots of her imagination and escaped into ideas of a romance with an old friend. The story ends with the character rekindling her romance with her own husband, rediscovering him in a new light.

Nandini unabashedly wrote about the weight of domesticity that crumples within it the sexuality of a woman. Beyond the high chambers of patriarchy, women have sexual desires that were, and perhaps still continue to be, a taboo to talk about.

She was a political figure seeking the love and support of those masses who stood donning the same patriarchy that her writing sought to disrobe. What a life of contrasts. Communism and feminism and...

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