Alamelu Janaki

I was not ready for Dorothy . I cried, continued to cry as I watched the film. Not that kind of crying that comes with a sentimental scene, where you wipe away your tear and move on. I simply couldn’t. I felt very uncomfortable, anxious and eventually content. I am trying to comprehend all of it. I have encountered this sort of violence before- in literature and cinema that stubbornly refuses to let us look away. When I first read The Begetter by Imayam, I was a college student. It was a part of my syllabus and I had to present it to the class. I read the night before, I couldn’t sleep. A lump in my throat refused to move.   The honour-killing episode and the violence inflicted consciously by the society broke something open in me. It wasn’t the violence that affected me but the terrible familiarity of it. The way such violence can be made inevitable, sanctioned and even ordinary within the structures that produce and sustain gender inequality.   The next day while ...

Three Letters, Eight Years An eight year PhD journey! Dr. Alamelu Janaki. These initials are very deceptive and alluring.   There is something almost femme fatale about them. Three letters that make eight years of reading, writing, waiting, doubting, stopping, starting and starting all over again look almost effortless. This journey derailed and challenged me in more ways than I had anticipated. It demanded relentless consistency and dedication—two things I was, frankly, spectacularly bad at. Looking back, I don't see one continuous version of myself moving steadily towards a doctorate. I see several versions of me: evolving, struggling, stopping, restarting and, somehow, continuing. So, I thought I would tell the story through those versions of myself.   1.        The Young Adult Who Began When I was doing my UG, my professor Shanmuga Priya ma’am planted that seed of pursuing a doctorate. But I certainly did not begin with the...