Behind Barbed Lives: Women’s Trauma and Resistance in Sudha Bharadwaj's From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada

The carceral lives of the inmates are being brought into writing in recent times, and this has opened up various dimensions for research and study. Among the various themes dealt with in prison literature, the most significant one is about the lives of women prisoners. Life inside prison is such a very painful and excruciating experience, as it is filled with a lot of hardships. The prison inmates face a lot of mental trauma and anguish because of the harsh realities of life that exist in the prison. The constant surveillance, rigid routine, and physical and mental abuse by authorities and the fellow inmates make life miserable for prisoners in general. However, in addition to experiencing the aforementioned problems, women in prison face different sets of issues that need to be discussed. These issues pertain to the loss of their human rights and gender biases. This paper is an attempt to study the miserable conditions of women inside the prison, with reference to From Phasni Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada by Sudha Bharadwaj. The paper aims to study how women prisoners negotiate their lives, combating all the challenges and hardships that they encounter on a day-to-day basis, with the theoretical framework of Angela Davis.