Salma is a renowned poet in India. In her time, she’s also been a politician, village leader and on the state social welfare board.
But for 25 years, from the age of 13, Salma was locked away from the world.
[…]
But she began smuggling her poems out in the laundry and her mother posted them off to a publisher. She became a literary sensation, with much speculation about who she was. Despite the subject matter of her poetry which hadn’t been brought to public attention before (the lot of women, their sadness, their subjugation to men), some people even suggested Salma the poet was actually a man.
I met the real Salma at Sheffield DocFest where a film about her life is premiering.
The filmmaker Kim Longinotto documents Salma’s return to the village where she was grew up.
Read the full article and watch the video at Channel 4.