"Aur, aur… aurat" or Contemporary Autobiographies by Women in Hindi

Abstract

The article in the opening section foregrounds theoretical debate on autobiography with particular reference to women’s writing in South Asia. Subsequently, it presents motivations for recent interest in the genre amongst women writing in Hindi and, eventually, it looks into the narrative strategies employed by Krishna Agnihotri (Lagtā nahī ̃ hai dil merā (‘My heart is not in it’), 1996; Aur, aur... aurat (‘And, and… woman’), 2010) and Maitreyi Pushpa (Kasturī kuṇḍal basai (‘Kasturi and Her Jewel of a Daughter’), 2002; Guṛiyā bhītar guṛiyā (‘A Doll within a Doll’), 2008). Agnihotri and Pushpa authored two volumes of autobiographies and the article further analyses their various strategies of constructing their ‘narrative selves’ and of particular arrangement of their life stories in two separate volumes.