Lavanyadevi

Chronicling change in women’s lives over two centuries, Lavanyadevi is as valuable today for its questioning of majoritarian perspectives of caste, culture, sexuality, and faith, as for its advocacy of humanitarianism beyond borders.

Marwari literature from Bengal reflects a rich interplay of migration, dislocation and fluid identities. As a Kolkata Marwari, in Kusum Khemani’s fiction the schisms between ‘Bengali’ and ‘Marwari’ blur to reveal a delightfully plural, composite, and distinctively Indian ethos. Lavanyadevi, her award-winning 2013 novel, follows a traditional aristocratic Bengali family as it transitions into modernity, from British India to the present. Spanning five generations of a zamindar family, Lavanyadevi is a story about women and their search for self, about shared laughter and friendships that endure across generations, beliefs and cultures—between mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, and Marwari and Bengali women. Khemani’s women protagonists are strong, clear-sighted, both worldly and sublime, embodying a larger-than-life idealism while being grounded firmly in the everyday. Lavanyadevi—a compelling woman of perfection, extraordinary vision, qualities, and grace—remains real and credible because she is self-aware, self-critical, open to others, and to change.