First time MP: ‘I practised the oath so that I don’t stumble’

This week, Shambhavi Choudhury returned to Delhi as the first woman parliamentarian from Samastipur, Bihar.

Shambhavi Choudhury first moved to the Capital in the spring of 2016 as a bright-eyed 18-year-old from Patna. As an undergraduate student of sociology, Choudhury spent three years shuttling between her paying guest accommodation and the leafy campus of Lady Shri Ram College in south Delhi. “I did everything a girl in DU has to do – splitting bills, hopping between cafes in GK1, fighting over plates of momos – all in the middle of two hour class breaks,” she said. “And being late to the next class.”

An alumna of LSR and Delhi School of Economics, Shambhavi Choudhury was a director in a Patna school for a few years. (Arvind Yadav/ Hindustan Times)