The Sporty Young Woman in Bengali Fiction: Moti Nandi's Kalabati

Abstract

Bengali sports history features very few women; some examples include enquiry into the representation of women in cricket stadiums as spectators (Naha, 2021) and the history of physical education in a women’s college (Bhattacharya, 2009). Likewise, young adult sports fiction in Bengali hardly engages with girls, with the notable exception of Moti Nandi’s Kalabati novels. This series of nine novels features the eponymous character as a high school student and a cricketer between 1984 and 2005. Belonging to a zamindar family, it is the possession of cultural capital post-abolishment of the zamindari system which allows Kalabati to play cricket. Situating the novel amidst India’s entry into neoliberalism, this chapter employs close reading to examine the ways adopted by the protagonist to manoeuvre new gender roles in conjunction with traditionally ascribed ones. Kalabati’s participation in a sport and a range of physical activities dominated by men goes against the societal codes prescribed for women. Despite that, masquerade and performativity allow Kalabati to assert her agency. Through alternately impersonating men and performing hyper-femininity, she effortlessly adjusts herself to different bodies, etiquettes and markers of gender identity. The fluidity in gender identities and emphasis on performance opens up the straitjacketed discussions around the former. This chapter argues that Kalabati’s exceptionality as a sportsperson is both an embodied and a genealogical trait.

Citation

Biswas, S. and Sinha, S. (2024), "The Sporty Young Woman in Bengali Fiction: Moti Nandi's Kalabati", Mani, V. and Krishnamurthy, M. (Ed.) The Postcolonial Sporting Body: Contemporary Indian Investigations (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 20), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1476-285420240000020003