ABSTRACT
The list of deeply disturbing reactions to the savage gang rape of Jyoti Singh on the night of 16 December 2012, dredged up by Nisha Susan as she recalls this horrific moment, does not end there. ‘Messy’ and ‘chaotic’ counter terms that seek to demarcate the terrain of Indian feminism: the terms gesture in the direction of meaning rather than claiming to encompass it. In a collection that identifies the contemporary, and mostly the urban contemporary, as its concern, there is little faith put in transformation of a permanent sort anyway. Instead, there is a complex patchwork of reality and women’s engagement of it. Women slip into a fantasy world, choose escape, live complicit lives, or seek ways to disavow the norms to which they are subject. In 2018, a second anthology of women’s graphic narratives, which featured some of the same participants, was published in English; the German edition appeared a year earlier.
