ABSTRACT
The trajectory of Kalyani’s life from poverty, deprivation and caste discrimination to finding an identity and voice is a human story of struggle and resilience. In some ways, it traces the journey of Dalit women in Bengal who braved the stigma of caste to liberate themselves largely through education. Every step that she took was in search for an identity and every word that she wrote was an assertion of that. Running through her poetry and writing is this self-reflexive strain that is transformed naturally into a form of Dalit activism. In a sense, her voice is that of the women in her community, but the question is whether she has been able to reconcile her activist position with the aesthetics and ethics of creative writing. By straying away from mainstream literature, by publishing through Dalit outfits, by refashioning idiom and form to represent alternative experiences, how far has Dalit writing made a lasting contribution to the understanding of caste dynamics in contemporary India? After an interview with the author, that is the question that the article attempts to address.
