Kedarnath Singh's 'Mukti'

Making an attempt to translate one of my favourite Hindi poets, Kedarnath Singh's 'Mukti'.


When I found no other path to liberation
I have sat down to write

I want to write 'tree'
Though I know that to write is to become tree
I want to write 'water'

'Man' 'Man' - I want to write
A child's hand
A woman's face
With all my strength
I want to hurl words at man
Though I know nothing will come of it
On a bustling street, I want to hear the explosion
Of word colliding with man

Though I know nothing comes of writing
I want to write.

-

Original poem in Hindi


मुक्ति का जब कोई रास्ता नहीं मिला
मैं लिखने बैठ गया हूँ

मैं लिखना चाहता हूँ 'पेड़'
यह जानते हुए कि लिखना पेड़ हो जाना है
मैं लिखना चाहता हूँ 'पानी'

'आदमी' 'आदमी' - मैं लिखना चाहता हूँ
एक बच्चे का हाथ
एक स्त्री का चेहरा
मैं पूरी ताकत के साथ
शब्दों को फेंकना चाहता हूँ आदमी की तरफ
यह जानते हुए कि आदमी का कुछ नहीं होगा
मैं भरी सड़क पर सुनना चाहता हूँ वह धमाका
जो शब्द और आदमी की टक्कर से पैदा होता है

यह जानते हुए कि लिखने से कुछ नहीं होगा
मैं लिखना चाहता हूँ।

- Kedarnath Singh

[Translation: Annie Zaidi]

MA as fantasy

Julia Kristeva has written of consecrated motherhood as a fantasy of lost territory that is nurtured by all adults. In the religious sphere, we see it in the form of a Mother Goddess or as Mother Mary, while in culture, we see it as the ordinary-seeming Ma who holds her son’s heart in her fist. In politics too, it emerges as the motherland, although politicians also tap into the power of consecrated motherhood when they bring their flesh-and-blood mothers into political discourse. We saw this most recently when Kamala Harris described her mother as an immigrant in the US – “a brown woman with an accent” who was tough, courageous, and yet, never lost her cool.

What Harris doesn’t quite say is that her mother, being human, is fallible. Instead, she sticks with the fantasy Ma – an unfailing, temperate presence who compensates for other lacking, including an absent or distant father...

Interestingly, the Hindi screen Ma looms larger if she is widowed, divorced or has been abandoned by the father. In this form, she is nearer to the primal Mother – the unrivalled creator and provider whose primacy cannot be challenged. In this way, she becomes an article of faith rather than a flesh and blood woman. The tricky part, of course, is that articles of faith never have any longings of their own. In Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich writes that it is only as mothers that women’s bodies are seen as “beneficent, sacred, pure, asexual, nourishing”. In order to be deemed worthy, a woman must be seen as maternal, or at least potentially maternal, and these ideas still play out in public discourse.

Read the full article here: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/kamala-harris-salim-javed-mother-9539227/

Of love as fodder for fiction and a self-concious formal experiment

Is a novel a beautiful thing? What of a novel that is presented as an “outline” for the first draft of a novel that the narrator intends to write? Should the reader approach it as a finished aesthetic product or should it be taken for what it claims to be: a loose skein of ideas and character notes? Rahman Abbas’ On the Other Side is a tricky novel to read partly because it poses these questions even as it sidesteps genre conventions through the device of a narrator who claims to be working on a “bulky novel” based on the diaries of his deceased protagonist, the novelist-teacher Abdus-Salam.

Abdus-Salam is not necessarily a likeable or an admirable character, and the unnamed narrator does not tell us why he (or she) cares about him or his legacy. In many respects, Abdus-Salam is a fairly ordinary man. He chews a spiced-up tobacco mix and teaches at a suburban school while harbouring creative ambitions. While he has complex and conflicting thoughts about religion, in this, too, he is not very different from most people. He veers between opting in occasionally (going to the mosque once in a while, if only out of long-standing habit), to claiming that “God is everyone’s shield”, to doubting god privately even as he fears divine retribution in moments of crisis, such as illness. His amorous adventures, however, do make him an exceptional protagonist, if only because of how long the list of his paramours is, and how he uses them as fodder for fiction.

Read the full review in Frontline magazine: https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/rahman-abbas-on-the-other-side-indian-translated-fiction-experimental-writing-review/article68553415.ece

Against the Death of Dream (in Wasafiri, 40th anniversary issue, Autumn 2024)

I've written my first essay for the lastest issue of Wasafiri, themed Futurisms. Here's a very short extract from my essay, Against the Death of Dream: 

One of the most dangerous things, Pash warned, is the clock that moves on your wrist but not in your eyes. For years I wondered at this image of a stopped clock in the reader’s eye, and the way the poet juxtaposes frozen time against water frozen inside eyes. (Sabse khatarnaak vo aankh hoti hai/jo sab dekhti hui bhi jami barf hoti hai). If to dream is to have a vision for the future, then the death of dream is to accept that the present moment is all of time, and that we must lose all hope for a safer, more loving, more leisurely time. Read in this light, I would argue that the danger is not restricted only to the loss of hopeful dreams; it is just as dangerous to lose our nightmares.

In Radical Hope, philosopher-psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear writes that anxiety can be a realistic response to the world, which suggests that anxiety-induced dreams serve to alert us to individual and collective threats. If we know how to ‘read’ our nightmares, we may find that they serve as timely warnings. In my own experience, I find nightmares to be a useful aid in reconnecting with my instinctive ‘self’. Last year, I had woken up from a miserable dream...

Please read the rest of the essay in the lastest issue of Wasafiri (119, 40th anniversary issue, Autumn 2024).

Annie Zaidi

Ye na samjho matwalo

One of Ali Jawad Zaidi's Urdu ghazals, likely written soon after India won independence: 

Ye na samjho matwalo! Kaun ab sataayega?

Haar maan li dukh ne, sukh to aazmaayega

Bekasi ke mele mein jo bhi gaahak aayega

Jholoyaa.n to bhar lega, khud bhi lut ke jayega

Dhoop mein naha legi jab asaadh ki dharti

Zarre-zarre mein saawan phir se kunmunaayega

Har guzarte lamhe par muhar lag chuki lekin

Laakh bhool jayega, phir bhi yaad aayega

Humne kitne afsaane likh ke chaak chaak kar daale

Waqt apna afsaana, hum ko kya sunaayega!

Baar-baar mud-mud kar yoon na dekh, deewane

Kaun raah dekhega, kaun phir bulaayega

Aankh kyun ladaate ho, dopahar ke sooraj se

Shaam ke dhundhalke mein, khud ye milne aayega

Za'm khud-parasti  mein aaj ka naya insaa.n

Zindagi ki mayyat se butkada sajaayega 

Fard-fard tanha hai, kul samaaj tanha hai

Main jo chup rahoon Zaidi, kaun gungunaayega? 

      [From the collection, Nazeem-e-dasht-e-Arzoo]

طشتری میں چائے کو پھونک مارتے ہوئے مجھے فیض مل گئے۔

I've tried my hand at translating a poem from English into Urdu. The poem is 'I find Faiz Blowing on his Saucer of Tea' by Imtiaz Dharkar. You'll find the same text in Nagri letters and Naskh. 

طشتری میں چائے کو پھونک مارتے ہوئے مجھے فیض مل گئے۔

 طشتری میں چائے کو پھونک مارتے ہوئے مجھے فیض مل گئے 

پڑوس کی دکان میں. 

فیض چچا، میں نے کہا، اپنا پرانا محلہ پہچان میں نہیں آتا۔

مکان مالک نے کرایہ بڑھا دیا  

اور جن لوگوں کو ہم جانتے تھے، سب چلے گئے۔

اکال میں اجڑنے کو آپ کا باغ چھوڑ آئے۔

کسی نے آپ کی کتابیں طاق سے اتاریں  

اور دوبارہ چھاپ دیں الفاظ بغیر۔  

ساری کوئلیں اٹھا لی گئیں اور پنجروں میں بند کر دی گئیں۔

وہ گلوکار جو آپ کے نغمے گایا کرتے تھے  

سامعین کے سامنے ہی ان کے گلے دبا دیے گئے۔

فیض نے طشتری اٹھا لی اور چائے پی۔  

جب دل بھر جائے، وہ زمین کا چہرہ

چیر دیتا ہے۔

تم اسے دکھ کہتی ہو،  

میں اسے امید کا ایک پھول۔

انہوں نے کہا، مجھے ایسا لگا مگر  

شاید مجھ سے سننے میں کوئی غلطی ہوئی ہو۔

ہو سکتا ہے ترجمے میں ان کے الفاظ  

الٹے ہو گئے ہوں۔

- Imtiaz Dharkar/Tr. Annie Zaidi

Many thanks to Saif Mahmood for discussion on a couple of tricky lines, and for correcting any mistakes he found in my Urdu spellings.

तश्तरी में चाय को फूंक मारते, मुझे फ़ैज़ मिल गए

पड़ोस की दुकान में

फ़ैज़ चचा, मैंने कहा,अपना पुराना मोहल्ला पहचान में नहीं आता

मकान मालिक ने किराया बढ़ा दिया

और जिन लोगों को हम जानते थे, सब चले गए

अकाल में उजड़ने को आपका बाग़ छोड़ आए

किसी ने आपकी किताबें ताक़ से उतारीं 

और दोबारा छाप दीं अल्फाज़  बग़ैर 

सारी कोइलें उठा ली गईं और पिंजरों में डाल दी गईं

जो गुलुकार आपके नग़मे गाया करते थे 

सामाइन के सामने ही उनके गले दबा दिए गए 

फ़ैज़ ने तश्तरी उठा ली और चाय पी

जब दिल भरा हो, वो ज़मीन का चेहरा 

चीर देता है 

तुम इसे दुःख कहती हो

मैं इसे उम्मीद का एक फूल

उन्होंने कहा, मुझे ऐसा लगा मगर

शायद मुझसे सुनने में गलती हुई हो

हो सकता है तर्जुमे में उनके अल्फाज़ 

उल्टे हो गए हों ।

[From Imtiaz Dharkar's 'Shadow Reader', page 79]

'Mohabbat karti aurat'

I took the liberty of doing an Urdu translation of Manglesh Dabral's Hindi poem 'Prem karti stree'. It didn't take much translation to be honest. The basic grammer and syntax is the same in Hindi/Urdu and Dabral's poetic idiom is rooted in the sort of everyday Hindi that is quite similar to everyday Urdu. This poem in particular had very few words that needed translation. I have only changed a few words, substituting everyday Urdu words that are also common to Hindi.

محبت  کرتی عورت دیکھتی ہے

ایک خواب  روز 

جاگنے پر سوچتی ہے کیا تھا وہ 

نکالنے بیٹھتی ہے معنی  

دکھتی ہیں اسکو عام فہم چیزیں 

کوئی ریتیلی جگہ 

لگاتار بہتا نل 

اسکا گھر بکھرا ہوا 

دیکھتی ہے کچھ ہے جو نظر نہیں آتا  

کئی بار دیکھنے کے بعد 

محبت  کرتی عورت  

یقین نہیں کرتی کسی کا 

کنگھا گرا دیتی ہے 

آئنے میں نہیں دیکھتی خود کو 

سوچتی ہے میں ایسے ہی ہوں ٹھیک 

اس کی سہیلیاں ایک ایک کر

اسے چھوڑ کر چلی جاتی ہیں 

دھوپ اسکے پاس آیے بنا نکل جاتی ہے 

   ہوا اسکے بال پریشان کیے بنا بہتی ہے 

اسکے کھاتے  بنا ہو جاتا ہے کھانا ختم 

محبت کرتی عورت 

ٹھگی جاتی ہے روز 

اسکو پتا نہیں چلتا باہر کیا ہو رہا ہے 

کون ٹھگ رہا ہے کون ہے بدکار  

پتا نہیں چلتا کہاں سے شروع ہوئی کہانی 

دنیا کو سمجھتی ہے وہ  

گود میں بیٹھا ہوا بچہ 

نکل جاتی ہے اکیلی سڑک پر 

دیکھتی ہے کتنا بڑا پھیلا شہر 

سوچتی ہے میں رہ لون گی یہیں کہیں 

- منگلیش ڈبرال  

In Roman font:

Mohabbat karti aurat dekhti hai

ek khwaab roz

Jaagne par sochti hai kya tha vo?

Nikaalne baith'ti hai maa'ni 

Dikhti hain use aam-fahm cheezain 

Koi reyteeli jagah

Lagataar behta nal

Uska ghar bikhra hua 

Dekhti hai kuch hai jo nazar nahin aata

kayi baar dekhne ke baad 

Mohabbat karti aurat

yaqeen nahin karti kisi ka 

Kangha gira deti hai

Aaine mein nahin dekhti khud ko

Sochti hai main aise hi hoon theek

Uski saheliyaan ek-ek kar

usey chhod kar chali jaati hain

Dhoop uske paas aaye bina nikal jaati hai

Hava uske baal bikhraaye bina behti hai

Uske khaaye bina ho jaata hai khana khatm

Mohabbat karti aurat

tthagi jaati hai roz

Usko pata nahin chalta baahar kya ho raha hai

kaun thag raha hai kaun hai badkaar

Pata nahin chalta kahaan se shuru hui kahaani

Duniya ko samajhti hai vo

go'd mein baitha hua bachcha

Nikal jaati hai akeli sadak par

Dekhti hai kitna bada phaila shehr

Sochti hai main reh loongi yahin kahin. 

- Manglesh Dabral 

(Urdu rendition of his Hindi poem 'Prem Karti Stree'. The original can be found here: https://www.hindwi.org/kavita/prem-karti-istri-manglesh-dabral-kavita)

An Ordinary Woman and Twelve Ordinary Men

CAN A WOMAN tell the unvarnished truth about what happened to her? This is the central question at the heart of Anand Ekarshi’s Aattam (The Play), the 2023 Malayalam film that was recently adjudged the best film at the 47th edition of the Kerala Film Critics Awards.

The film takes its structure from the iconic Twelve Angry Men (1954), a teleplay that has inspired multiple films since, including the Hindi film Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986). A bunch of men weigh in on what appears at first to be a matter of outright criminality, and must decide the fate of the accused.

However, what makes the creative twist in Aattam particularly successful is that it has freed the “judgement” from legal institutional frameworks and moved it into a creative workplace. The “case” in question is sexual harassment. Anjali (Zarin Shihab), the lone female member of a small drama company, has been molested and the other members must decide whether or not her alleged abuser should continue working with them.

I wrote this short essay about Aattam, Indian movies and representation of sexual harassment, especially at  the workplace. My own headline for it was: 'An Ordinary Woman and Twelve Ordinary Men'. 

Read it the rest of it here: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/aattam-frames-woman-loneliness-sexual-harassment-9343881/lite/ 

Look out for 'Two Way Street'

Very pleased to hear that 'Two Way Street,' a short film I wrote has been named by Platform magazine as one of the shorts to look out for in 2024. Do look out for it at festivals, screenings or wherever it might be available to watch. 

Here's what they say about the film: 

As a versatile artist encompassing roles as a screenwriter, filmmaker, actor, and stage lighting designer, Asmit has made a significant mark in the film industry. His films have been featured at prestigious festivals such as MAMI, IFFLA, IDSFFK, SASFF, and many others. His recent short film, Two Way Street, garnered acclaim by winning the V Shantaram Golden Award for Direction at the South Asian Short Film Fest. Following its success as a winner at the Best of India Short Film Festival, the film qualified for the Academy Awards 2024. In this compelling narrative, an ordinary taxi ride transforms into a battleground when the Taxi Driver refuses to enter a particular lane. The passenger, in response, decides not to disembark until reaching his destination. The story unfolds as a poignant projection of the taxi driver's inherent bias against a specific community and the passenger's determination not to become a victim of discrimination.

Here's a link to the article: https://www.platform-mag.com/film/short-films-to-watch-in-2024.html

Three new poems in Usawa

Three new poems in Usawa Literary Review's tenth edition (Jan 2024) . One of them, below. 

There was a country we could have been

 

There was a country we could have been

together – utterly shapeless

and well past reform

 

A laughing country with as many sides

as a well-cut diamond – tumbling valleys

of rusty lakes, rivers above,

seas to the right and left

 

The world would look and lust

for this land glistening emerald and sapphire

sitting in the sun rocking

on its heels with night's cool laughter –

How they'd hate us and how they'd long

for our warmth, our knowing, our winking

and getting by

 

If the mist came down real thick

some morning with the blinding rain

with the mountains plush and forest thick

and the bears standing guard

while everyone was busy fighting –

could we be our country yet?

*

 (c) Annie Zaidi

Link to three of my poems in Usawa: https://www.usawa.in/issue-10/poetry-10/there-was-a-country-we-could-have-been-and-other-poems-by-annie-zaidi/

Review: Stories about being Muslim in contemporary India

My review of Tabish Khair's latest collection, Namaste Trump and Other Stories: 

The book’s structure is imaginative, if also unusual. While its contents can be described as split into two broad sections–the novella Night of Happiness, which was published as a standalone in India in 2018, and a set of short stories–it would not be wise to read the novella as distinct from the stories. In fact, it is impossible to read each story as a self-contained whole to the extent that the same characters re-appear in more than one story; the narrative appears to pick up where it had been left off, with a different story inserted in between. 

Why has the author chosen this unusual approach instead of simply writing two or three novellas, and what should we read into the placement of the pieces? To me, it appears that Khair is nudging the reader to look beyond the events of individual stories, to seek out patterns, and to pay attention to the movements of time and shifts of location that the characters undergo. Some characters are semi-rural while others are firmly urban but all are strung together on the twin threads of Phansa, a small town in Bihar, and the experience of being Muslim in contemporary India, be it as protagonist, victim or observer... The horror of violence – past, present or future – repeatedly manifests in these stories in the shape of a paranormal experience. The sympathetic narrator of Night of Happiness must contend with an invisible halwa that leads him to feel “a bony hand” clutching at his heart. 

The titular story, “Namaste Trump” reveals the banal cruelty of a cynical upper-class executive who turns out a domestic worker during the COVID-19 pandemic, an act that has spiritual consequences. “Shadow of a Story” is a proper ghost story where Khair is in his element as a writer of fiction working in academia. Its narrator is a man who takes literature seriously and is able to reconsider positions taken in the context of literary criticism, and reassess his own valourisation of a particular postcolonial aesthetic after an encounter with brute violence in Phansa. Truth appears as a frightening presence in “The Thing with Feathers.” A personal favourite, this is a story about the unravelling of a teacher, Rakesh Sir, who “did things properly, always within limits” but who loses control of his tongue, and thus inadvertently becomes dangerous. The author once again drives us to a junction of reason where the evidence provided by one’s physical senses and simple common sense collides with an intangible, unbelievable world where the rules of our world no longer hold good. 

Through these Phansa-connected stories and their chaotic or uncanny outcomes, Khair reveals to us a landscape where petty cruelty is interlaced with looming threats of violence or destitution, and also with a quiet courage that approaches madness. It is a landscape filled with memorable characters that the reader can carry into, or far beyond, the towns and villages of their own origin. 

Read the full review in Frontline magazine: https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/book-review-namaste-trump-and-other-stories-tabish-khair-confronts-experience-of-being-muslim-in-contemporary-india/article67729914.ece

Eaten by a look

In Western fairy tales, a witch is a scary woman who might ‘eat’ you, cooked or uncooked. In South Asian fairy tales and folklore, she might eat you simply through gazing at you. Worse, she might marry you and then eat you at leisure. I have been researching witches in contemporary South Asian fiction for my doctoral thesis (a work in progress) but in the meantime, I've published this blog post for the Durham University Edible Histories project. It looks at witch appetites in folklore, mainly from India. Do read if you're interested in the subject. Link below: https://staffblog.webspace.durham.ac.uk/eaten-by-a-gaze-witches-in-south-asian-folklore/

A brief meditation on selfies and resilience

Once upon a time, I was judgmental about selfies. From film stars to your third cousin, everyone was pouting, clicking, and uploading selfies on social media, and I was disapproving. A photograph taken by others captures more of the physical environment, a more uncertain expression, a likeness that you cannot fully control. Selfies, on the other hand, give their subjects too much control. The selfie-taker is intent on being seen as they see themselves rather than on capturing memories. And how much memory could a selfie possibly contain?

I bit down on my disapproval though, and read scholarly commentary on the sociocultural implications of relentless self-portraiture: what does it say about our generation? What does it say about societies where women are unsafe when they become visible, or where self-fashioning comes with a side of grievous harm? Perhaps selfies were good for something after all, if they could help us understand ourselves?

I cringe now to think of that former self—so blinkered, she didn’t even know how to look at herself squarely in the eye. How, then, did I get to a point where I have a folder full of goofy selfies and where my own self-portraiture is unapologetic?

The answer lies buried in an analogue photo album.

Read the full essay here: https://frontline.thehindu.com/society/white-space-annie-zaidi-i-click-therefore-i-breathe-the-journey-of-a-former-selfie-sceptic/article67437578.ece

A first attempt at translating prose

Shakeela Akhtar was one of the earliest women writers of Urdu fiction in the twentieth century. Born and buried in Bihar, she was obviously deeply rooted in the local landscape, local dialects and, if we are to use this story as any indication, in the texture of its social relations.

I do not claim to know the body of her work, and I am but a fledgling translator. However, I chanced upon ‘Dain’ in the course of my current research on representations of witch bodies in South Asian literature. Since it wasn’t yet available in English translation, I decided to undertake the task myself.

Shakeela Akhtar was born into a zamindar family in Ardal, near the river Son in Bihar. The river features prominently in this short story and the author was evidently well-acquainted with the vicissitudes in the lives of fishing communities in the region. While I have not read Akhtar’s own memoir, I have read Balmiki Ram’s Shakeela Akhtar Bahaisiyat Fiction-nigaar (Kitabi Duniya, Dehli, 2014). Ram was a Junior Research Fellow at Patna University when he wrote this analysis of Akhtar’s fiction, and it includes basic biographic details about the author.

Akhtar’s date of birth is uncertain. Ram’s book suggests that different scholars have mentioned the years 1912, 1914, 1919 and 1921 while 1916 has been mentioned on the website Rekhta.org. Her first story ‘Rehmat’ was published in 1939 in the journal Adab Latif, Lahore. Elsewhere, Ram mentions that her first story ‘Mothers’ was published in Adab Latif. There are disputes too over the claim that her first collection was first published by Maktaba Urdu, Lahore, when she was just eighteen. However, it is known that she was married to Dr Akhtar Urainvi in 1933 and that her literary life began soon thereafter. According to Ram, her first published book was Darpan (likely published in 1940), the second was Aankh Micholi (1948), third collection was Dain aur Doosre Afsane (1952); fourth was Aag aur Paththar (1962); the fifth book was a set of three novelettes, published as Tinke ka Sahara (1975) and the sixth was Lahu ke Mol (1978) for which she received an Urdu Akademi award. Her last book was Aakhri Salaam (1982). Shakeela Akhtar died on 10th February, 1994.

Read 'dain' in English translation here: https://www.outofprintmagazine.co.in/shakeela-akhtar_dain.html

A brief note on the translation: This story, 'Dain' was hard to translate partly because it made significant use of local dialects, spoken in the region around the river Son in Bihar. It is set in a time when zamindars or landlords were treated as local kings or rulers. The workers, agricultural or otherwise, were ‘rayyat,’ which literally means people and, in this story, is used in the sense of subjects or workers. However, in order to avoid confusion for readers in English, I have used the word tenant since it is a more accurate description of their status. In Urdu, the fisher-women address the landlord and his family as ‘maalik,’ which literally means ‘master’ and I have translated it as such. The relationship is essentially feudal but it is not that of owner and slave as ‘master’ might suggest in the western (especially American) context.

The original text had very erratic punctuation with quotation marks often missing or placed incorrectly. I have added these where required, but have stuck to the original tenses and first/third person speech as in the original.

I must profusely thank Musharraf Farooqi who was instrumental not only in my learning to read and write the Urdu script but who has also offered valuable feedback on this, my first attempt at translating Urdu prose. I must also thank Prof Abdur Rehman for helping with a sentence in Bhojpuri or Magahi that I was struggling with.

Some sad news

Terrible news. Desraj Kali is gone. Other people have written detailed obits, and friends like Shekhar have written personal accounts that show the sort of man he was, the instant acceptance, warmth and affection he offered even to strangers. I feel a bit numb and don't know where to begin. 

I have written about Kali (he referred to himself as Kali, and so I did too) in Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales. He was one of the doorways through which I encountered Punjab outside of the loud, Bollywood stereotype. And yet, paradoxically, he also inhabited and enlivened that stereotype. He was warm and generous and welcoming. When I first met him, it was through Ajay Bharadwaj whose film Kitte Mil Ve Mahi I had watched. I wanted to do a deeper dive into Sufism and the dera culture in Punjab and Ajay said there was no better guide than Kali. His family had attached itself to a dera but who himself was a writer and journalist and therefore understood the political and caste context in which faith is enacted. 

Kali introduced me to other professors and writers and traveled with me to many deras. He also insisted that I come home and introduced me to his own family, referring to his wife as 'your Bhabhi'. We met again, in Chandigarh a few times, while I was curating the Chandigarh Literature Festival. His Punjabi novel Shanti Parav had not yet been translated into English and I pestered him to get it published in the Hindi script at least, so I could read it. Eventually it was translated and published in English and he called me to say,  "There! Now you've no excuse not to read it!"

In recent years, he set up his own YouTube channel, BarqtanWebTv, where he discussed politics and culture in Punjabi. He also made appearances at various festivals and at online talks such as this one about the history of Jalandhar, where his personality and warmth are evident.  

I know one is supposed to say things like 'Go Well' and 'Rest in Peace' but I feel like saying, 'Don't go yet, Kali' even though he's already gone. Whenever he called, he asked me to come visit again, to eat the food 'your bhabhi' would cook. I always said that the taste of her cooking was still fresh on my tongue. He was unabashed in his expression of affection and sometimes when he called, he would admit that he was drunk and that he was ringing up all the people he loved. I kept saying I would visit next year, but there was always work and deadlines and new projects. I can't say how much I will miss someone like Desraj Kali. There are few people like him and the loss of his voice and his large heart will be felt by many. 

Book alert!

Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (Aleph 2023) is just out. This is a new edition of Known Turf (2010), with a fresh Introduction chapter and a lot of footnotes that update the book's information with newer data, which lend it fresh context. 

This book of essays was nominated for the Crossword book prize in the non-fiction category when it first came out, and had a bunch of mostly good reviews when it first came out. It attempts to tell the story of our country in our times, with brief dips and detours into banditry, caste crimes, gender violence, displacement, hunger and malnourishment, faith and identity. All of these are, as I have learnt over the years, interlinked processes. I urge you to buy and read the book. 

Review links from 2010: 

"Annie Zaidi’s collection of essays, Known Turf, is arresting and unforgettable; about realities we prefer didn’t exist. Starvation deaths, female infanticide and communal intolerance step out of the anonymity of statistics to become people like us. They remind us of our defence mechanisms in the face of horror and sorrow; our efforts to stay sane and functional" - Karthika Nair in Tehelka

"Known Turf is a wonderfully engaging example of a puzzling trend in contemporary Indian writing in English. Despite the hype surrounding the novels-with-large-advances, the best writing today is happening in non-fiction." Alok Rai in Outlook

"Tragic and tender and brutal and funny." Known Turf covers a lot of turf.

"At its best, the book combines a reporter’s on-the-spot perception and a writer’s reflection and language to etch interesting, nuanced portraits of that half-mythical being in the throes of constant change: contemporary India. Known Turf is definitely worth reading, and not just for the sake of Gabbar Singh." Tabish Khair in Mint

"...anyone who has braved the railways without a confirmed reservation will get cathartic pleasure reading Zaidi’s graphic account of sitting on the corner of a seat, at a 45 degrees angle, with an RAC (Reservation against cancellation) ticket in a train to Lucknow" Alpana Chowdhury in DNA

"A book like this, written by someone who may once have been just as sheltered as they were, will resonate with Generation iPad in a way that a more world-weary account would bypass entirely." Manjula Padmanabhan in Outlook Traveller

"It’s a rare look into the lives of dacoits minus caricature.  Zaidi’s writing attempts to evoke an understanding of their reality." The Reporter and her Beat in Civil Society

"Among all the issues that Zaidi touches on, I find molestation to be the most moving. Though she puts in a lot of information on the other subjects she chooses, the whole force of her personality comes into play only when she starts speaking of molestation and eve teasing." From here

More reviews here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Kaise unhein dikhayein jo parvaane jal gaye - Ali Jawad Zaidi

Here is a transcription of one of my grandfather's ghazals, for those who are interested in poetry but can't read the script. I thought I'd make a valiant effort to translate the poem into English but after staring at the first couplet for fifteen minutes, I gave up. Here's the poem in Roman script anyway:

Ghazal: page 222 (Naseem-e-dasht-e-aarzu)

Kaise unhein dikhayein jo parvaane jal gaye
Shole hazaar phool ke saanche mein dhal gaye

Badla nahin hunooz yahi ik maqaam-e-shauq
Kitne nizaam chashm-e-zadan mein badal gaye

Kya keh diya naseem-e-bahaari ne kaan mein
Sahra navard sair-e-chaman ko nikal gaye

Yaad-e-vafa-e-yaar teri umr ho daraaz
Do chaar saa'aton ke liye dil behel gaye

Saaqi ki chashm-e-mast ka jaadu yahi to hai
Jo log ladkhadaane lage thhe, sambhal gaye

Thhe jin pe tana baar tunak zarf-e-tez rau
Ta aastaan-e-shauq vahi paa-e-shal gaye*

Izhaar-e-jurm-e-ishq khilaaf-e-mizaaj thha
Daar-o-rasan ke zikr pe lekin machal gaye

Ae dil yahi hai barhana paayi ka marhala
Is khaar-zaar mein to kayi sar ke bal gaye

Zaidi ne raat apni kahaani jo chhed di
Jo dil thhe na-shanaas-e-mohabbat dahal gaye.

- Ali jawad Zaidi

Many thanks to Saif Mahmood for clarifying some words that I couldn't decipher in nastaliq (Gah! when will I learn?) and for explaining the meaning of one of the more tricky couplets (sharing the meaning below since it may be a bit difficult even for Urdu speakers). 

*Thhe jin pe tana baar tunak zarf-e-tez rau
Ta aastaan-e-shauq vahi paa-e-shal gaye

Translation:
They, who were taunted by fast-walking boors
Kept moving towards their goal on wounded feet

Some rollicking late summer fun

I reviewed a new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is still as much fun as it was four hundred years ago. It speaks to the power and longevity of a good script.

Link to the review: https://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com/2023/07/22/rollicking-review-of-a-midsummer-nights-dream-by-elysium-theatre-company/

Not quite a review: Ma is Scared and Other Stories

What is a Dalit perspective in literature? How does it differ from the phrase 'Dalit literature'? These were some of the questions I have been musing upon since reading Anjali Kajal's Ma is Scared, and other stories, translated by Kavita Bhanot. 

This book is unusual for three reasons. Firstly, it is not just a translation but also an original compilation. Kajal has been writing and publishing in various Hindi literary journals for several years, but her stories have not been collected into a book in Hindi. The translated book is therefore also the only book, and it has been published in the U.K. rather than in India. It is also unusual in that it does not offer readers any formal or thematic stereotypes that might inform their reading of these stories. Thirdly, it is unusual in its quiet exploration of feminine experience, foregrounding their thoughts and their relationships with each other rather than the drama of what has gone, or could go, wrong. 

Kajal's stories often highlight the intersectionality of exploitative processes such as caste and patriarchy. They are told mainly from a female character's perspective and serve as sensitive portraits of reflections on caste, disability, love and careers. In 'To Be Recognised,' a teacher is forced to 'sign for the full salary' even though she gets paid only a fraction of the salary due to her. In 'Pathways', a bright student refuses to take help from a sympathetic upper caste woman, who nevertheless can't help saying: "What would Sanjay have done with himself as a software engineer?... The system in our society was created for a reason." As Bhanot points out in her translator's note, a lot of Savarna hostility is directed towards 'reservations' or affirmative action in education or jobs. Kajal weaves this enduring hostility into many of her stories, including one set in the lockdown/pandemic when many students from marginalized backgrounds were forced out of learning altogether because of lack of equipment and wi-fi networks. 

Resentment and exploitation play out in a very different way in 'Suffocation', where an older woman has to learn how to live with her husband after a lifetime spent apart because of his job. Women's social isolation and their unstated fears feed into 'The Newspaper' where a mother begins to develop a phobia of the world outside after reading negative reports everyday. These are stories that do not leave you easy, but they also tend to surprise you with their refusal to go too far down the dark road. 

The book is not published in India yet but I do hope that it will be, and soon. 

Sad Stories You are Old Enough to Hear

Eight years ago, I had my first essay accepted in the Griffith Review. 'Embodying Venus' was a meditation on women's bodies and (un)covering and the politics around it. There were a few more pieces in the journal since: 'Golden Girls' about the rise of young female wrestlers in India, 'Dangerous Little Things' about the significance of student politics, and a short story about ideological wars on Twitter, 'Cows Come Home'.

This year, again, I have a piece in their newest edition, Creation Stories. It is written in the form of a letter to a beloved young person who is growing up in fraught times: Sad Stories You are Old Enough to Hear

Dear A, 

The other day, I told you to stay out of it when two adults were talking about something serious. I saw your face, startled perhaps that this should come from me. I regretted it at once, partly because you are not a child. You are what we call ‘young adult’ in the world of literary endeavour and a young adult must be allowed into adult conversations. I know that my concerns may not be yours and perhaps even your sense of identity is not the same as mine. Perhaps you will be content to define yourself through pronouns or talent and no other struggle will be necessary. Still, we share blood, history and a love of stories, and I want to tell you some true stories today. Destabilising stories that offer neither resolution nor catharsis. Stories that go on, like an underground railroad loop inside your head. Stories that may explain the prickly, fragmented being you sometimes catch a glimpse of, before I clumsily gather myself. You will not remember it, but there’s a fragment of me permanently embedded on a railway platform in Mumbai...

The whole piece is behind a paywall but do read it here: https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/sad-stories-you-are-old-enough-to-hear/?fbclid=IwAR2xV0B2_KcjkLdCvNQH2TT9yRNNS697-_Slrq2GwCd43R5RKtlTFlC64hI