Prison narratives offer a rich account of female subculture within prison as they express the author’s curiosity about fellow prisoners, both comrades and common inmates. In the seventies, the Naxalite women actively explored the possibility of building sisterhood among comrades, and of creating an alternate family in captivity. Rita Banerjee’s account celebrates the commune that was consciously built in Presidency’s division ward, complete with a commune mother, and she offers a memorable account of the talents that many shared, ranging from cooking and gardening to singing, sewing, drawing and acting (R. Banerjee 2021: 67–70). The account makes clear that quotidian life in the commune was not restricted to sharing and caring but that it included cheering, consoling and joking too. More importantly, incarceration bestowed a political inflection to these common social and individual activities. Banerjee recalls an afternoon when her comrade, Anna, while eating off a common plate, enlightened…

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