My Sainted Aunts was written and published (1992) by Bulbul Sharma, an Indian painter and writer born in 1952. Sharma spent majority of her life in Bhilia, and went to Moscow for her studies. Upon her return to India in 1973, she pursued a career in painting. She joined Gawri, an artist complex in New Delhi. It was only in 1985 that she took to writing full time. She started writing weekly columns in Statesman and editing children's books for various publishers.
Sharma's stories have been translated into French, Italian, German and Finnish. Her other passions include bird-watching and teaching art to disabled children. Her writing style is simple and based on her observations. There is folklore and imagination from various eras in her words. Pointing out the beauty in ordinary things, she makes her books vivid.
My Sainted Aunts contains eight stories, with mostly female protagonists around the lives of old Bengali women in the post-Independence era. These stories deal with feminist aspects from the lives of old Bengali women, with themes ranging from oppression of women because of social evils like child marriage, or ostracizing of widows, to lack of independence of women due to inequality of social status.
