‘Iru’: A biography in motion about anthropologist Irawati Karwe, who lived life on her own terms

Nefertiti, the queen of Ancient Egypt, who lived during the 14th century BC, was believed to have been her husband’s co-ruler rather than just a consort. A rather forgotten and erased figure till about the early 1900s, Nefertiti, it seems, was never given much credence by history. Rediscovered by a German archaeological mission in 1912 – in the form of a bust unearthed from the ruins, with a missing left eye – Nefertiti has been on display at a museum in Berlin since the 1920s.

Much like her, another woman – “vaguely remembered” – as informed by authors Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa in the early pages of this book – began her “remarkable” journey in Berlin in the late 1920s. Irawati. Named after the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (then Burma), Irawati was born in 1905 in Myingyan, a city at the “river’s edge”. Little did this girl with an unusual name know, she would be living her life on the edge and rattling those around her with her ways and manner.

Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve, written by Urmilla Deshpande, Irawati Karve’s granddaughter, and Brazilian anthropologist Thiago Pinto Barbosa, is divided into four parts and does not follow a linear chronology. These segments could...

Read more