New Books in History Kalpana Karunakaran, "A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras" (Context, 2026)
Mar 18, 2026
Kalpana Karunakaran, associate professor at IIT Madras and scholar of gender and development, digs into her grandmother Pankajam’s five-decade archive of letters, autofiction and autobiography. Short, vivid scenes explore desire, conjugal longing, friendship across cultures, caste and religion, and the tensions of writing intimately about family while doing rigorous scholarship.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Discovery Of A Hidden Five Decade Autobiography
- Kalpana Karunakaran discovered her grandmother Pankajam's five-decade autobiography and autofiction unexpectedly in a wooden box, which redirected her book project from her mother to Pankajam.
- The archive contained autobiography (1949–1994), fictionalized stories of three women mirroring Pankajam, and poems that revealed candid domestic and emotional life.
Using Scholarly Distance With Familial Intimacy
- Kalpana used scholarly distance by naming family members as characters rather than kin terms, framing the book as social history rather than private memoir.
- This approach let her combine tenderness with critical analysis of caste, gender, and urban Madras without collapsing into family nostalgia.
Autofiction Forced Inclusion Of Family Hardships
- Kalpana already knew her grandmother's curiosity and love of books, but the emotional candour about an unhappy marriage in the autofiction surprised her.
- The autofiction's frankness forced Kalpana to include painful family details she might otherwise have omitted.
