Maids have become an inseparable part of the daily lives of amiddle-classa urban households in India. Despite the fact that increasing numbers of poor women are joining this profession, very little has been written about them, especially the part-time domestic workers, each of whom services a number of households at a time. They are not accorded their rightful status as workers either by the employers, their own families, the Government or traditional trade unions. Isolated in the privacy of employersa homes, the problem of recognizing their work or organizing them is the same as for women isolated in their own homes. Another important reason is that most such women are rendered voiceless by their social location: unlettered; staying in aillegala settlements; migrants; working to survive; performing afemininea work both paid and unpaid, and both devalued. This book is therefore about making the unheard heard. It draws from personal narratives of part time women domestic workers residing in two slum-settlements of Kolkata, who speak about their work, lives, dreams and despair. By moving between the workplace and the homes of the workers, this book makes a departure from general accounts of labour and talks instead about labouring lives.

Domestic Days: Women, Work, and Politics in Contemporary Kolkata

Politics & Social Sciences

Sengupta, Nilanjana

Sen, Samita

Politics & Government

Oxford University Press

The Female Voice of Myanmar seeks to offer a female perspective on the history and political evolution of Myanmar. It delves into the lives and works of four of Myanmar's remarkable women who set aside their lives to answer the call of their country: Khin Myo Chit, who spoke about latent sexual politics in pre-Independent Burma; Ludu Daw Amar, who as the editor of the leftist Ludu Daily, was deemed anti-establishment and was witness to the socialist government's abortive efforts at ethnic reconciliation; Ma Thida, whose writing bears testimony to the impact the authoritative military rule had on the individual psyche; and Aung San Suu Kyi, who has re-articulated Burmese nationalism. This book breaks new ground in exploring their writing, both published and hitherto unexamined, some in English and much in Burmese, while the intimate biographical sketches offer a glimpse into the Burmese home and the shifting feminine image.

The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi

History

Asia

Cambridge University Press

SINGAPORE, MY COUNTRY: BIOGRAPHY OF M BALA SUBRAMANION

When after three decades of research Singapore could produce its own water, the little city-state was said to have lost its vulnerability. No longer would every policy have to bend at the knees for water survival. It was finally time to celebrate liberty! 
 When did the same moment come in Bala's life? Was it when in mid-Atlantic he heard of his promotion as Controller of Posts? Or was it when he was appointed by the President as member of the Parliamentary Elections Minority Committee? Or was it at a moment of tragic loss when he realised he had nothing more to lose? 
 Singapore, My Country tells M Bala Subramanion's story, a second generation Indian who lost his father to the Death Railway, witnessed Subhas Chandra Bose at the Padang and later emerged as not only a senior civil servant but the man behind multiple social interventions, living in a fast evolving Singapore. 
 The histories of the man and his nation remain seamlessly intertwined, each peppered with equal doses of endeavour, ingenuity and a sheer will to survive! 
 Readership: General readers, students involved in Southeast Asian research, readers interested in South Indians in Singapore, readers interested in Singapore's history, Indian communities in Singapore, postal and philatelic organisations in Singapore.

Singapore, My Country: Biography Of M Bala Subramanion

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

WS PROFESSIONAL

A rivetting look at the fiercely original, intellectually brilliant mind of Singapore's unofficial Poet-Laureate, Edwin Thumboo. Born of Tamil and Teochew parents, he embraced the Protestant faith late in his life. He has a self-confessed fetish for Yeats and Pound and yet completed his doctoral thesis on post-colonial African poetry. He taught himself the Ramayana and I-Ching but found traces of the Odysseus in the shadows of the Merlion. He is brusquely vocal about poetry with a purpose and yet appears a hopeless romantic in his poems about his wife. What happens when a mind which is such a melting pot of brilliant ideas and contrary emotions tries to unscramble the identity of a country like Singapore which is complex, multiracial, has known a fierce economic growth that has often elbowed aside everything else? The Votive Pen sets out to see Edwin Thumboo's poetry - steadily and see it whole - without the intervening static of earlier critical writing and with an intense alertness to the text.

The Votive Pen: Writings on Edwin Thumboo

Arts & Literature

Penguin Random House SEA

Chickpeas to Cook is the story of the woman of the tribe, women from some of the smallest of communities, often no more than a few hundred families in Singapore. How do these women live, think, even breathe? What does the Dawoodi Bohra woman answer, for instance, when she's asked if her daughter will don the ridah after marriage? When does the Sikh woman decide it's time to come out of her brother's shadow and live for herself? What does the Eurasian woman do when her DNA report arrives and it doesn't quite tally with what her parents told her? What does the Zoroastrian woman tell the author about bridges and confluences while she helps her navigate a difficult period of introspection? Yes, it's a world of dwindling walls, a veritable house of mirrors where reflections bounce off each other into infinitude, yet each appears more familiar than the last. It's about ordinary women living ordinary lives, taking ordinary decisions, made extraordinary only by the love, empathy and fortitude they invest into it. But beware! For under the haunting haze lies magic - a woman's communion with herself, with the truths of the universe. And when one sows together the individual stories it transforms into a connected journey of intimate understanding.

Chickpeas to Cook and Other Stories

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Sengupta, Nilanjana