Between silence and song: Women on the margins

India has never struggled to worship women, only to respect them. From sanctums where goddesses are adorned with vermilion and incense, to households where women are pushed into corners of obedience. The paradox sits carefully unchallenged.

- NAYANIKA SAMANTA

There are books that tell stories and then there are books that reveal truths. Amrita D Mitter's "We Are Just Numbers" is one such work, a debut that refuses to call its women by names. The women who inhabit these pages are not faceless digits but embodiments of stories that might otherwise remain buried in silence. They are identified by numbers: Sixteen, a teenager slain in an honour killing; Twenty-Four, a college student reduced to the question of her virginity; Forty-One, a widow suffocated by societal scrutiny.