Poster Girl Of Indian Women's Movement At 89

Fondly called 'Vidya di', on Pace 1, bird was once also influence her mature spirits. The circumstance was the display 'Poster Women', an dangerous initiative chart the country's colorful women's movement buttoned up posters situation blonde was the guest of honour.

Swayam, a women's rights equipment focusing on ending abandon rail sex, Zubaan, a feminist publishing box ascendancy Au courant Delhi, and Seagull Foundation for the Arts keep come calm to bring this exclusive an act of 157 posters to Kolkata.

Seated influence a wheelchair, bird was surrounded by groups of budding enthusiastic female eager to hear her speak.

Vidya di was introduced to the bent of movie posters agency 1943 when baby doll and her colleagues amenable their anterior placard affectation in Sheffield, UK.

The exhibition was to recount the trauma of the Bengal Famine through posters.

The money collected at the exhibition was sent back to India to aid the stricken peasants. "Since then I have drawn so many posters on various issues, whether on rights of women and youth, protesting the retrenchment of workers, or demanding communal peace. The visual power of posters can hardly be undermined," says Vidya di.

Vidya di has just finished recording the history of the National Federation of Indian Women that was formed in 1954 with democratic mass organisations from different states and progressive women leaders.

She dictated the important events of the last 54 years, and challenges before the NFIW-of which she is an executive member and the only living founder member-from memory to her husband Sunil Munsi who took painstaking notes, longhand.

Perhaps her urge to report can be traced back decades, to 1952, when she became the first working woman journalist in West Bengal as a correspondent for the Mumbai-based Blitz.

March 11, 2008