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Playlist: Inspiration

Compiled By: Tom Langley

Caption: PRX default Playlist image

Interesting and inspiring stories

A Woman of No Consequence

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | 31:32

The story of a remarkable Indian woman who struggled with the bonds of tradition and finally broke them in old age, told by her granddaughter.

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Born into a cultured Indian family, she read all the novels of Charles Dickens before she turned ten. Then she was forced to leave school to get married. At 15 she was a mother. And for most of her adult life, Sethu Ramaswamy was in the shadows, trying to find her place in the light.

Finally, at 80, her memoir - Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Woman - was published, to great fanfare and acclaim.

This is the surprising third act in a drama full of surprises - the story of a child bride whose husband was both her true love and the biggest obstacle to her freedom, the story of a woman who set out one day to make for herself the  life she'd always wanted.

Sarmishta Subramanian’s intimate and remarkable documentary brings us the story of her grandmother:  It’s called "A Woman of No Consequence" 

 

Sarmishta Subramanian is a senior editor with Maclean’s Magazine, a national news weekly. This is her first radio documentary.

Karen Levine is the documentary editor at CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition. She is a two-time winner of the Peabody Award.