‘Portraits from Memory’ by Mahadevi Varma: Capturing the shadows of wounded lives

There are 18 memoirs in ‘Portraits from Memory’, drawing from their “wounded lives”, as Mahadevi Varma would like to identify her protagonists, combining her two books of pen portraits published in 1941 and 1943. These are essentially characters portraying her own life’s reflections, triggered by their fettered status of extreme marginalisation, socially and economically, in a stagnant patriarchal society. She has boldly built up the uniqueness of each of the 18 individuals right in the beginning of the narratives, either through an assertive conversation or a compelling situation, describing very vividly their physical features and social traits, thus keeping them…