ABSTRACT
In Sabra’s story, we saw shifts in fortune and shifts in mood, hope and a sense of unpredictability, agency as well as endurance and victimhood. Here were preoccupations with matters of birth, marriage, and death and with the present and future well-being of the household. Sabra’s story leaves a bittersweet taste—the “sadness and happiness” that people in Dharmnagri and Jhakri so often alluded to in conversations with us. Through the accounts of Sabra and the other women who feature in these pages—and our own overarching narrative structuring the book—we have aimed to illuminate the complex conditions within which women in rural Bijnor could exercise their capacities for agency.
