Exploring Love, Sex, and Loneliness in Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's "Panty"

Abstract

Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay (b. 1974), a modern feminist writer, promotes and celebrates women’s freedom that the women seek to enjoy both physically and psychologically. Bold and candid, Bandyopadhyay exposes “hardcore sexuality” into her work, going against the flow in society. Panty, one of her best-known works, is a novella about a nameless woman who goes through surreal experiences. The novella is set in contemporary Kolkata, a boisterous metropolis, where women work at part with men, but still the women feel a sense of inferiority. The woman in the novella enters a dark apartment, owned by a mysterious man with whom she has a complicated relationship, at night and finds a soft and silky panty in leopard-skin print. Circumstances force her to wear the panty, and just then she begins to imagine its original owner along with her wild sexual life. The rest of the story evolves around the woman’s imagination, her love, sex, loneliness, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and so forth. This article analyzes how a woman struggles to achieve a secure space in society as well as an established identity. The article also explores how a woman navigates between love and sex, freedom and dependence, and continues to search for a life that she has not yet lived.