Keyabat Meye by Shripantha [Hardcover]

"Keyabat-Meye" means—Well done, girl. Brave girl. The new heroine of modern times. This is a girl who is completely different from those who followed the practice of adorning themselves with embellishments, serving food on the floor with care, and submitting to traditional roles. She is distinct in both appearance and mannerisms. It's hard to even recognize her as Bengali. In these seven essays, there are seven women—meaning seven symbols, seven different lives and struggles, seven perspectives that capture a society and several time periods. The essays offer seven images of social transformation through ShriPanth’s analytical pen. These essays narrate the emergence of the new Bengali women of the nineteenth century who studied in schools and colleges and broke free from the heavy veil of the old society, as in the writing of "Keyabat Meye." The other essays also portray different aspects of women’s lives in other societies, such as in the piece "Kalabibi," which explores the life of a Bengali woman married to a foreigner. However, these historical and social writings on women don't just reflect the lives of women from that time, but also reflect the men in their lives, their own men, foreign men, and other surrounding men. For example, the story of the men who once gathered in a meeting under the monument’s shadow, debating the right of young women to sing devotional songs. In his writings about the "pata" or traditional scroll art, he brings into focus the “Babu” (upper-class men) houses and gardens, where the women of these scrolls were often invited to perform and entertain. The author has also written about the madness of the Indian youth for fair-skinned, foreign women, and raised questions about why such preferences existed in Bengali art, including the obsession with painting beautiful European women. The current book is like a "saptaparni" branch. It covers seven themes that attempt to answer several questions and offer many possible answers. It serves as a photographic report of the mental world of Bengali people. The unique part of this book is its inclusion of rare photographs that make its thrilling content more vivid. ShriPanth is a journalist by profession and a social historian by passion. His universe is Kolkata, and his exploration spans 200-250 years of history. His travels, though limited geographically to areas like Tala, Tollygunge, Baruipur, and Barrackpore, stretch to infinity in his writing, as he covers Kolkata's changing landscape over time. His scholarly and captivating pen has left an indelible mark on numerous books. One of his famous works is "Sripanther Kolkata," a collection of writings on the city's multifaceted nature. Other works include "Jakhon Chapakhana Elo" and "Alokeshi Mahanta Sambad," and he has written extensively on Betel leaf carving. His writings on the first printed book, Haleder Byakaran, have also significantly contributed to Bengali literature and historical studies. Despite the complexity of his subjects, his writing style has always remained engaging and masterful. In the current book, consisting of seven essays, ShriPanth brings a sharp, insightful, and deeply reflective perspective.