The ‘Black Magic Women’ of Assam

Moushumi Kandali in her collection of short stories, 'The Black Magic Women', captures the struggle of her characters to retain their inherent 'Assameseness' as they try to assimilate. The title story, "Black Magic Women", is about how mainstream India perceives Assamese women, as women with powers of the art of seduction and black magic, and how they are made to endure social discrimination that can range from racial slurs to physical abuse. Juxtaposing two different eras, it is a historic-fictional re-telling of gender bias chronicled in the early 19th-century colonial reportage by a British officer.

The stories range from racial discrimination to politics in the entertainment industry, from sexual harassment to the existential and ideological dilemma of the late eighties. Using a generous sprinkle of fable, myth, and various metaphors, they deliver a powerful punch to the reader.

"Here is a bunch of exceptionally powerful stories that work at many semantic planes and reveal the range of Moushumi Kandali's concerns as a writer. Moushumi deals boldly yet suggestively with social and political questions. Her handling of the erotic is mature, her symbolism fresh, her style enchantingly lyrical and profoundly meditative. Here is the new voice of Indian fiction, daring, philosophical, intensely poetic," says critic, poet and Sahitya Academy winner K. Satchidanandan.

Kandali is a bilingual short story writer, art historian and translator. Her stories have been published in several literary magazines and anthologies such as "Oxford anthology of North East Writing", "Penguin anthology of fifteen classic Assamese short stories", "The Greatest Assamese Stories Ever Told" etc.

Her stories have been translated into German, Korean, Spanish, and others along with several Indian languages.

Before joining the department of Cultural Studies in Tezpur Central University, she had taught at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions at Ambedkar University of Delhi.

Translator Parbina Rashid is a senior journalist with The Tribune, Chandigarh. She has translated a number of books from Assamese into English.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday.)