ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the plantations, in their negotiation with other spaces, function as gendered space. It focuses on how the women and the men of the plantations negotiate with the three key external sites – bazaar, town and bagaan. The plantation becomes a social space only when the people animate the various physical sites within it, endowing them with meaning. The chapter examines how the women workers understood the plantation vis-a-vis the other spatial entities in their lives. Daahlia and Kaalka were quite contrasting in terms of the understanding of the plantation as social space in relation to other spaces. In the conception of most of Daahlia's residents and in the way they carried out their everyday life, the sense of being in a space distinct if not isolated from the main townships prevailed. The separation of the bazaar from the bagaan is brought into sharp focus in the women's approach to Jamnaghat, a weekly market held near Daahlia.
