Jail birds

On a hot summer afternoon in June 2011, I walked into a tin roofed room in a women’s correctional home in Kolkata. Dubbed the “ICDS” room,” it was here that in the mornings the government-appointed Integrated Child Development Scheme workers would attend to pregnant and nursing inmates and the kids of female prisoners. Whey they’d left for the day, I’d come here to interview, for my PhD research, Bangladeshi female inmates who had been jailed for illegal immigration into India. Sometimes, we’d sit in the corner of the room if there was a dance class or another activity in session. The room was an otherwise bare space, with an idol of Saraswati at the far end, a table and bench, two chairs, and paintings by prisoners tacked up on the walls. I’d been meeting with my research participants almost every second day since last December and today, the five I’d come to meet were excited because a fellow inmate had given birth to a baby girl.