Book of the Month: ‘Daktarin Jamini Sen’ by Deepta Roy Chakraverti – sign up to meet the author

Each month, eShe Book Club picks one Book of the Month, and hosts the author for an online discussion. Our pick of the month for March 2026 is Deepta Roy Chakraverti’s new release Daktarin Jamini Sen (Penguin India, 2026).

The book traces the life and times of one of British India’s first female doctors, Jamini Sen (1871–1932), whose career took her across India, Europe and Nepal, where she served as the official physician to Nepal’s royal family. Perfect for Women’s History Month? We think so!

Born in a Bengal village, Jamini Sen was also the first ever woman to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. Written by her grand-niece, this book brings together a fascinating historical tale with exciting twists and turns in royal intrigue, and the incredible life of a forgotten feminist icon.

eShe Book Club discussion #2

eShe readers and Book Club members will get the opportunity to interact with Deepta Roy Chakraverti on Zoom and share their views about her new book. All discussions will be recorded and shared on our social-media pages, including as a podcast.

Date: 22 March 2026, Sunday
Time: 7.00 am PST / 10.00 am EST / 3 pm UTC / 8.30 pm India

Deepta Roy Chakraverti is a lawyer from King’s College London and holds a first degree in Mathematics from Delhi University. For more than a decade, Deepta worked in a legal capacity in major corporates like ITC and Reliance Industries but returned to her first love – studying the mystical traditions of the ancient world and writing.

Daktarin Jamini Sen is Deepta’s fourth book, having authored three works of fiction earlier. She currently conducts the Golden Ankh Study Circle of the Wiccan Brigade.

Deepta is descended from the old Bengal family of Brahmo reformer Keshub Chandra Sen, and her ancestors include luminaries such as Suniti Devi of Coochbehar and Sucharu Devi of Mayurbhanj.

Deepta’s mother Ipsita Roy Chakraverti pioneered the Wiccan movement in India and is recognised both for her role in removing superstition and evolving a new understanding of the word ‘witch’ or ‘daayan’.

Deepta is the last of Jamini Sen’s descendants through the line of Jamini’s niece, Roma Sen Chakraverti. With Deepta, both the bloodline and this thread of memory come to an end.

Daktarin Jamini Sen chronicles the life of an Indian woman doctor whose name once travelled across borders – cited, honoured and professionally acknowledged – only to fade from public memory at home.

Pieced together from scattered traces – private diaries, letters, marginal notes in journals, personal effects carefully preserved, and oral histories across generations – the book reconstructs Jamini Sen’s extraordinary trajectory. It follows her medical education and professional validation in Britain, her decade of service as physician to the Nepali royal household, and her introduction of modern medical practice within the guarded rhythms of a royal court.

Yet this is not only the story of a career. It is equally the story of a woman who lived on her own terms. Jamini Sen’s life was marked by intellectual self-assurance, emotional autonomy and a refusal to conform to the expectations that colonial society imposed upon “respectable” womanhood. Through intimate fragments and recovered voices, the book offers a rare portrait of a woman who fashioned her own destiny in an era determined to circumscribe it.

At once medical biography, social history and an act of archival reclamation spanning colonial India, imperial Britain and royal Nepal, Daktarin Jamini Sen asks urgent questions: How are women remembered? Who performs the labour of preserving their lives? And what disappears – irretrievably – when private archives dissolve into silence?

eShe Book Club is where we get together in a stimulating online space to discuss, share and spotlight books by contemporary South Asian women writers. Join our Discord group (app login required), participate with book suggestions, share your views and reviews, promote your own writing, or just drop in for book recommendations! Click here.