<p>Malika Amar Shaikh was born to Communist-activist parents&mdash;her father, Shahir Amar Shaikh, was a trade-union leader and legendary Marathi folk singer. Brought up amidst the hurly-burly of Maharashtrian politics of the 1960s, and exposed to the best and the brightest in Bombay&rsquo;s cultural scene, Malika was a cosseted child, drawn to poetry and dance. She was barely out of school when she married Namdeo Dhasal, co-founder of the radical Dalit Panthers, and celebrated &lsquo;poet of the underground&rsquo; who transformed Marathi poetry with his incendiary verse.</p>

<p>After the initial days of love, and the birth of their son, the marriage crumbled. Namdeo was an absent husband and father&mdash;given to drink, womanizing and violence&mdash;and uninterested in his family. And while he would repent his actions and his negligence, and they would make up, he never stopped or reformed. <em>I Want to Destroy Myself </em>is Malika&rsquo;s searing, angry account of her life with Dhasal.</p>

<p>The unvarnished story of a marriage and of a woman and a writer seeking her space in a man&rsquo;s world, Malika Amar Shaikh&rsquo;s autobiography is also a portrait of the Bombay of poets, activists, prostitutes and fighters. There isn&rsquo;t another memoir in Indian writing as honest and pitiless as this. Published originally in Marathi, it quickly became a sensation and vanished as quickly. Jerry Pinto&rsquo;s superb translation revives this lost classic and makes it available for the first time in any language other than Marathi.</p>