Sarojini Sahoo

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She was born on 4th January, 1956.

 She is an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner, Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and an associate editor of Chennai-based English magazine Indian AGE. She has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by Kindle Magazine of Kolkata.

   She was born in Dhenkanal in Odisha (India). She completed her MA and PhD degrees in Odia Literature and a Bachelor of Law from Utkal University. She now teaches at a degree college in Belpahar, Jharsuguda, Odisha. She is the second daughter of Ishwar Chandra Sahoo and the late Nalini Devi and is married to Jagadish Mohanty, a veteran writer of Odisha. 

  Her novel Gambhiri Ghara proved to be a bestseller in Odia literature which has been translated into English and published from India under the title The Dark Abode (2008) and published from Bangladesh in Bengali as Mithya Gerosthali (2007). Prameela K.P has translated this novel into Malayalam and has been published as "Irunda Koodaram" by Chintha Publishers, Thiruvananthapuram. Martina Fuchs for German and Dinesh Kumar Mali for Hindi. Another novel Pakhibas has been translated into Bengali and published from Bangladesh under the same title in 2009. This novel has been translated into Hindi by Dinesh Kumar Mali and has been published with same title by Yash Prakashan, Delhi in 2010. She has published a collection of essays titled 'Sensible Sensuality (2010). Sarojini Sahoo's writings deal candidly with the emotional lives of women, and the intricate fabric of human relationships, depicting extensively about the interior experiences of women and how their burgeoning sexuality is seen as a threat to traditional patriarchal societies. Her debatable concept on feminism, her denial of Simone De Beauvoir's 'the other theory', make her a prominent feminist personality of South Asia and for which KINDLE Magazine of India has placed her among 25 exceptional mindset women of India. Sahoo accepts feminism as an integral part of femaleness separate from the masculine world. Treating female sexuality from puberty to menopause, her fiction always projects a feminine sensibility. Feminine feelings such as restrictions during adolescence or pregnancy, fear factors such as rape or being condemned by society, the concept of the "bad girl," and so on, are treated thematically and in-depth throughout her novels and short stories. 

 In South Asian Outlook, an e-magazine published from Canada, Menka Walia writes: "Sahoo typically evolves her stories around Indian women and sexuality, which is something not commonly written about, but is rather discouraged in a traditionalist society. As a feminist, she advocates women's rights and usually gives light to the injustices Eastern women face. In her interviews, she usually talks about the fact that women are second-class citizens in India, backing up these facts with examples of how love marriages are forbidden, the rejection of divorces, the unfairness of dowries, and the rejection of female politicians..”

According to American journalist Linda Lowen, Sarojini Sahoo has written extensively as an Indian feminist about the interior lives of women and how their burgeoning sexuality is seen as a threat to traditional patriarchal societies.” In Odia literature, Sarojini is considered a key figure to discuss sexuality in her fiction with a sincere effort to express her feminist ideas. 

Her novel Upanibesh was the first attempt in Odia literature to focus on sexuality as a part of social revolt by any woman. Medha, the protagonist of her novel, was a bohemian . In her pre-marital stage, she was thinking that it was boring to live with a man lifelong. Perhaps she wanted a chain free life, where there would be only love, only sex and would not be any monotony. But she had to marry Bhaskar. Can Indian society imagine a lady with bohemianism?

In her novel Pratibandi, Sarojini has also described the thematic development of sexuality in a woman. Priyanka, the protagonist of the novel has to encounter the loneliness in the exile of Saragpali, a remote village of India. This loneliness develops into a sexual urge and soon, Priyanka finds herself sexually attached with a former Member of Parliament. Though there is an age gap between them, his intelligence impresses her and she discovers a hidden archaeologist in him.

In her novel Gambhiri Ghara, she describes an unusual relationship between two people: a Hindu housewife of India and a Muslim artist of Pakistan. It is a net-oriented novel. A woman meets a very sexually experienced man. One day he asks if she had any such experience. The woman, Kuki, scolds him and insults him by calling him a caterpillar. She said without love, lust is like hunger of a caterpillar. Gradually they become involved with love, lust, and spiritually. That man considers her as his daughter, lover, mother, and above all these, as a Goddess. They both madly love each other, through the internet and on the phone. They use obscene language and they kiss each other online. Kuki does not lead a happy conjugal life though she has a love marriage with Aniket. But the novel is not limited to only a love story.

She has successfully painted the difference of sensibility towards sexuality between male and female. She has been awarded:Odisha Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, Jhankar Award, 1992, Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award, 1993, Prajatantra Award, 1981,1993, Ladli Media Award, 2011.