New poem: The Station Ghazal

I have a new poem out in the Stone Circle Review. 

Read it here:  https://stonecirclereview.com/the-station/

Interview in Helter Skelter magazine

From an interview in Helter Skelter magazine:

The first thing that struck me when reading The Comeback is that it feels like it takes place at a distance from where the quote unquote “action” is. I found that such an interesting choice, where we’re hearing about things from a distance, and we’re not on the stage itself. What made you want to set it at that distance? 

That’s interesting you pick up on that. It was not done consciously, but I think one of the reasons I wrote the book at all was that I felt like I was at a distance from everything. I was missing theatre. I wasn’t writing theatre anymore, I wasn’t even watching too much professional theatre. It came out of my own sense of feeling like I was missing out on something and wanting to be at the centre of things, but at the same time, being in a smaller place and recognising that being at the centre of things doesn’t necessarily mean being in a big city. Sometimes you can be in a big city and still have serious F.O.M.O. because all the cool things are happening somewhere else, you know? 

Also, a little bit consciously, I was thinking about our commitments to big cities in the arts. I think it’s unconscious and we can’t always control it, because we go where the money is, and we go where the big industries are. Writers tend to congregate around places where the publishing hub is, [actors] to where the film scene is. But at the same time, I think that we also are then controlled by the big scene. It’s a trade-off, and we trade our own sensibility. The other possibility that is traded in is of actually having control over what you want to do, setting up your own thing in your own social context. So I think it comes a little bit from there, the sense of wanting and not wanting to be in the thick of things.

Link to the full interview: https://helterskelter.in/2025/03/interview-annie-zaidi-the-comeback/

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

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 

Review of C

I've written a long, critical review of the 'C: A Novel'. A short extract and a link to the full review below:

She moves to the more prosaic revelation that she cannot counter a man who says the right things but does not give her what she needs. While other details of space and location do pull the narrative in other directions, it arches back to the question of a relationship that is intense but unfulfilling. Aside from this theme, much of this novel is about the struggle to create. The city and the storyteller want to go ‘go for the kill’, to capture some essential truth. The writer’s self-doubt is projected onto the voice of the city who observes: “Have I chosen the wrong storyteller?”

Most chapters read like a writer’s journal. They describe her determination to make her time abroad add up to something, her experiences in libraries, admiration for Sylvia Plath, and her pondering experiments in writing from a male perspective. Through her struggle to live a creative life and to resolve her complicated relationship, the reader gains insights into the formation of the narrator’s literary self – exposed to seminal literature in at least two languages – as well as to a wounded self, the one that was mocked and knuckle-rapped by teachers, sexually assaulted, romantically involved with ‘scumbags’, and guilty. As the ghost says, “What you’re writing is who you are.”

Link to the review was published in The Beacon: https://www.thebeacon.in/2022/08/30/annie-zaidi-reviews-c-a-novel-by-anupama-raju-a-poets-novel/

City of Incident: Reviews

"We are reminded that the author’s voice, shining through the telling, illuminating the prose, is what keeps the novel vital and alive. While binge-watching leaves us exhausted and glazed-eyed in the wake of a series, when we dive into the quiet, transformative pool of powerful prose, we emerge renewed."

- A review by Devapriya Roy in the Indian Express

"Sight and insight; every episode, and there are twelve interlinked ones, appears at first glance a stand-alone narrative even though the blurb advises us they are interlinked. But the interlinks are subtle and demand of the reader the embrace of that same cinematic gaze that defines the telling of this novel: the reader has to remember that a the plastic bag will reappear as a defining moment in the emotive core of other protagonists inhabiting this city whose own core is defined by the precincts of the railway line at one end and high rise apartments at the other. In between the skywalk on which the dispossessed make their homes as ladies in their clackety-clack heels pass by. For Zaidi, this contrasting scene of poverty and middling affluence is not the site for social realism, breast-beating about the iniquities that plague the city. They are the locations of illusions, of yearnings, and glimmers of redemption from love denied or a life despised."

- A review by Ashoak Upadhyay in The Beacon

"Haruki Murakami once asked, “Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves.” Zaidi posits a painful answer to this question, unflinchingly marking the social divisions that proliferate her web.

Some of these social markers inevitably crisscross – like gender complicating class relations. Zaidi also pays attention to how these divisions are uniquely manifested in the space of a city, which is as merciful as alienating in its bequeathal of anonymity."

- A review of City of Incident by Gayathri Shankar in Scroll.in

"This sense of something just beyond — something nameless that is tantalisingly within one’s grasp, but recedes as soon as one stretches out a hand to it — unites Zaidi’s characters, all of whom labour under different forms of constraint: everyday constraints imposed by class, patriarchy, age."

- A review by Gautam Bhatia in The Hindu

"City of Incident captures the aspirations and losses of a bunch of people irrespective of their socio-economic status—there’s a trinket seller, a bank employee, a policeman, a security guard, etcetera. Most of them are unhappy in their own ways, some more than the other. As an author, Zaidi doesn’t provide her characters with many dialogues. She sets the stage simply by establishing the scene and ruminates on the peripheries that carry it forward."

- A review by Karthik Keramalu in Open magazine

"This is where people meet; this is where they fall in love and this is where they settle down. Those riding its trains, buses and ferries have their dreams too, though mostly unfulfilled. That is a given. But one cannot brush them aside or push them under the mildewing carpet of memory."

- A review by Ganesh Saili in The New Indian Express

"The narration is lively and attractive. The story is not to delve deeper into the lives but to understand the merging of the city, its color, and the people’s psyches."

- A review by Swapna Peri in Storizen

"Short sketches are meant to be packed with detail, not a word out of place, and this is exactly the vividness that characterises this collection. And yet there is a sense of universality about the sketches as the reader will instantly recognise such characters in their lives too. The empathy with which she writes is at the heart and soul of every story. The stories linger with the reader after the book is closed."

- A review by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose 

"A diverse cast of characters — a cop, a bank teller, a security guard, a fragile woman having an affair, her lover, his ex-wife… — show up and, one by one, reveal parts of themselves: their thoughts, their observations, how other people see them, how they see other people, a significant life-altering incident. The local train runs in the backdrop."

- A review by Saudamini Jain in HT

Other reviews on Goodreads: 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60123555-city-of-incident---a-novel-in-twelve-parts?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=9JILgnWEtR&rank=1

More reviews on Amazon: 

https://www.amazon.in/City-Incident-Novel-Twelve-Parts/dp/939065212X 

A review of Rohzin

Myth, muse, mirage, a romance and a lament -- the metropolis is a protean beast haunting the dreams of its writers. In Rahman Abbas’ Rohzin, Mumbai serves many of these functions, now a watery canvas floating the boat of first love and now a cesspool of emotional traumas.

The story begins in Mabadmorpho, a coastal village where Asrar has just finished high school, and decided to go to Mumbai to learn a trade. Living in ‘Jamat ki kholi’, along with other boys from the village, the teenager is introduced to the glitz, the stink and the contestations of identity that have defined Mumbai in recent decades. Seen through his eyes, the city comes alive with details such as a gold tooth with a yellowing one right next to it, a commode that looks like a bursting and blistering ulcer, a drain in Kamathipura and its sustenance of animal and insect life.

Despite its sensory shocks, Asrar is willing to be seduced by the city and is not disappointed. He finds work with a manufacturer of costume jewellery and embraces new experiences, though the sadness and confusion that had infused his life in the village continues to inflect his moods. That is, until he meets Hina, the daughter of a perfumer. The romance that unfolds is marked by sweetness and a lack of calculation typical of teenage love, but the novel is saved from the cliches of love-at-first-sight through other, less idealized sexual encounters and the quiet grief of the young men who live and work together. Feminine grief and desire are pencilled in rather than detailed, and ultimately subsumed or made serviceable within an overarching masculine fantasy.

The perfumer, Yusuf, has also been shaken from his moorings through an encounter with an Algerian woman, whose beauty and erudition lead him to reconsidering his faith and his marriage. He leaves his wife, whom he has treated less like a partner and more like a field to be ‘ploughed’, and enters a circle of Luciferians. Here, one set of rituals is exchanged for another, replete with candles and speeches, and sexual encounters are unencumbered by responsibility. The novel frequently segues into philosophical conversations about sex and strictures that may limit human experience, and the question of whether one can liberate oneself from civilization. However, it stops short of building a serious debate about such questions and it is never clear whether Abbas portray the ‘reptiles’ of the unconscious ironically or as a conscious commentary on cults that may emerge from grief, guilt or ennui.

The writer addresses upfront the role identity plays in triggering external and internal crises. The average Indian wears a multi-layered identity, constructed from historic and ongoing migrations. Asrar, for instance, has Zoroastrian heritage on one side, Konkani on the other, and is Muslim perhaps only as an accident of birth. Similarly, other characters are Gujarati Muslim or Arab, but connected to a pre-Islamic Egyptian or Algerian heritage. Linguistic identity complicates matters further. On the train, Asrar and his friends are initially dismissed as ‘bhaiyya’ by a group of Gujarati passengers. In response, they immediately assert their Maharashtrian identity by speaking in Konkani, thus shutting up the Gujarati group. Later, Asrar notices burqas and bearded men at one station and wonders if the area is ‘ours’. However, this identity is complex too, since these people are identified as Qasai or Chilya, and not Konkani Muslims.

Mumba devi is another major character in the novel. Through history, dream and surrealist asides, Abbas weaves in legends about the goddess, myths surrounding the seven islands that make up Mumbai, and a foretold catastrophe. The novel draws on a modern literary tradition and the influence of Urdu writers like Naiyer Masud is apparent, with realism and surrealism colluding to create a strangeness that manifests as mourning dolphins, Djinns who eat hearts, mysterious books that may turn the world on its head, and conversations between a tree and a monster.

Unfortunately, the translation is more literal than literary. While the flavour and flow of the original text is suggested, it does not always translate neatly into the English idiom. The use of phrases such as ‘temporary tiles’ and ‘looking at the fort from a very exclusive angle’ tend to jar, as does the use of ‘votive promise’ for what one imagines was ‘mannat’ in the original Urdu. Such phrases are entirely unnecessary in a book otherwise peppered with Hindi words and where whole sentences have been retained in Roman script. The inconsistent use of translated text within brackets is another inexplicable editorial decision since most of the dialogue has been translated into English and it is apparent that the characters converse mainly in Hindi, Marathi or Konkani. Worse, where translations are provided alongside the original text, they show themselves to be only partial faithful. For instance, when a character talks to a beggar boy, he addresses the latter pejoratively as ‘Abe Saale’, which has been omitted entirely in translation. I sympathize with the translator given the task at hand was so difficult (how does one faithfully translate a Bambaiyya phrase like ‘Eda ban kar peda khane ka’?) but bilingual readers will find it hard ignore such bumps and elisions.

What makes it worthwhile is the interlacing of closely observed lives in contemporary Mumbai and the fantastical elements of the Urdu imaginary. The novel also recalls the trauma of the 1992-93 riots and subsequent bomb blasts, the Dockyards tragedy of 1944, the custodial death of Khwaja Yunus in 2003, and even the future terror attack of 2008. Some of these events muddy the timeline of the novel, disorienting readers who are familiar with the city’s history. Still, the incorporation of such memories means that, despite its occupation with sex and love, the novel never strays far from the city’s socio-political wounds. For those who know the city, the novel may thus serve as ‘sheher-e-ashob’, a literature that laments even as it recognizes the beauty of what is lost.

Published in The Hindu: 

https://www.thehindu.com/society/rohzin-by-rahman-abbas-translated-by-sabika-abbas-naqvi-reviewed-by-annie-zaidi/article65438723.ece

An interview with Mint Lounge about City of Incident: A novel in twelve parts

From an interview with Mint about my new novel, City of Incident

With City Of ... I had started with just little flashes of incidents (in Mumbai) that I remembered, little scraps of detail that I saw/read somewhere, sights that haven’t quite left me, things I have been carrying around for years and have never forgotten. And I was unable to make sense of them, vis-a-vis my own relationship with the city and its people. With this book, I was aware that I needed to tell a story, that it had to capture the essence of all these little things—for me they are memories, but in literary terms they are just images. I wanted to construct a sense of what it means to live in a city, where so many things happen—small and big tragedies.

I think of cities primarily as people’s spaces and not so much as geography or an urban plan. And when you tell the story of a city through its people, you are bound to use a kind of fragmented approach because that’s just what the city is... 

I think every (form) has its limitations. If you ask me if I would do this form of writing again, I would say no, not in the near future. Usually, you need certain preconditions for interconnectedness or multiple-perspective stories to work: There’s this central incident and you come to it from different ways—what happened before it, what happened after it; and all the characters involved have a role to play. In film, you would see this often; the most famous one is, of course, Rashomon (directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1950).

City Of Incident does something similar, except that there is no central event. Bits of the information of one chapter will feed into the next chapter, and you will know a little bit about the characters, but ultimately, the only thing you will know a lot about is the city itself.


Link to the full interview:

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/how-to-lounge/books/i-think-of-cities-as-people-s-spaces-annie-zaidi-111645774746321.html

An interview about the latest book, about cities and loneliness and some thoughts on literary ethical

I was interviewed by Chintan Girish Modi this week about my new book. One question in particular led me to think deeper around a topic that I had been debating internally for a while, so I put down my thoughts at some length.


Q. What are some of the ethical questions that you grapple with while writing about people whose lives are available to you through observation but far removed from your own experience? For instance, people who sleep on pavements and under bridges.


Annie - I have been reading around the question of cultural representation, ‘voice’ and debates about who should write what. I run the risk of writing an essay in response to your question, but this is as good a time as any to put down some reflections and fears.

The first aspect of this question is: Should one write of what/who one sees, or should one only write about what one has personally experienced? I have to say that I disagree with the notion that one should only write what one experiences. People are told ‘write what you know’, especially when they are just starting to write, because they may not have an instinctive, immediate capacity for vivid or plausible description based only on imagination. But if we all only wrote what we have personally experienced, we’d only churn out diaries and memoirs. Where does that leave fiction? Science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction would be absolutely impossible under such conditions.

Besides, the point of literature, especially fiction, is to transpose. The writer transposes herself by building up characters in a world that may not be based on lived experience. Even if it is ‘real’, the writer could have experienced only part of it. If it is conjured, that world is unexperience-able. If it is a combination of real and conjured, the writer herself neither knows nor does not-know. She can only try to capture feelings the way one tries to capture images and memories.

Even within a narrow range of experience, within the same caste, class, religion, gender, it is impossible to represent or experience another life. You may think you ‘know’, but do you? My grandmother’s life was very different from mine though we have the same gender, class/caste background. I observed her, but her experience was not mine. Should I not write about her? I believe I should. Even if she has told her own story in her words, I should still try and make sense of her as a character from my perspective, maybe even try to make sense of my own self as a character seen from her lens.

The second part of the question is about assumptions about knowing. Do we ‘know’? To answer that, we must dip into philosophy, spirituality, neuroscience, and this is not a suitable venue for such expansions, nor am I a scholar of such breadth. To a writer, the more relevant question is: Can we know through reading and writing? Can we know each other’s hearts? Can we at least try? And my response is to try.

The third part of your question is about the person observed. We all observe people whose lives are far removed from our own. There’s little question of an ethical dilemma if the gaze is reversed, say, if a homeless man were to write about a woman riding in a bus one hot afternoon. So, this question is not about who observes; it is about who writes. In theory, anyone. In practice, not everyone.

So, I disagree with the framing of the debate though I agree that it is important to discuss who is allowed what in our society. The shape of the argument must clarify its true ethical intent: everyone deserves a voice. Everyone deserves to be able to read and write. For this, we have to argue that everyone deserves housing and cultural materials. Food, clothing, shelter, but also books, performances and internet access. In countries that do have such a vision, there are public libraries equipped with computers; people can use them for free. There are high-quality, free performances in public spaces like parks or town squares.

The fourth part is the core of the debate: equity. The ethics question arises not because of who is writing but because of who is not writing, not getting published.

I’ve considered this debate by imagining myself in the position of one who has limited cultural access. If I become part of a very tiny minority in another location, and I can’t find a publisher for my work, or don’t have the time to write fiction, or can’t find a publisher that publishes in my language, do I want others to not write about women like me? My answer is: if they can write with empathy and insight, then they should. However, I also want an environment conducive to me writing in my own language.

I also imagine the alternative: what if writers actually stopped describing lives outside of their experience? Nirala wrote about Kulli Bhat. Kulli Bhat should have been able to write about Nirala too. Should Nirala have refused to describe what he was seeing and hearing, and limited himself to writing about his own family? What would be gained from that moment in time, in literature, in our country’s consciousness, not being written? Kamala Markandeya wrote Nectar in a Sieve, about a farmer couple and their distress. The farmer should have written too. But would we be better served by Markandeya writing only about upper or middle class, English-speaking women?

There is obviously a vast difference between stories based on observation and what emerges from lived experience. This is a difference between Markandeya or even Mahasweta Devi’s work, and that of Manoranjan Byapari or Baby Halder. But I don’t think it is a good idea to create rules about who should write about what. It is bound to boomerang. If we say that white people can’t write about black or brown lives, can we argue that black and brown people do have the right to write about white people or their motivations? Or are we only allowed to write from the perspective of a victimized/colonized person? Such rules are easily hijacked by those who are politically and socially powerful, and used against those who are trying to right the balance of power. There is a danger of writers who write about class or caste divisions being silenced on the grounds that they don’t really know what they’re talking about, because they cannot possibly have experienced both (or all) sides of the divide.

In an oral literary culture, cultural equity is easier to achieve. Ali Khan Mahmudabad, in his book Poetry of Belonging, writes about mushairas where unlettered, working class poets participated alongside upper and middle class poets. Publishing and, even more significantly, distribution equity is much harder to achieve. So we must advocate for publishing those who want to write but can’t access literary organizations. We must ask for free libraries too.

When we strike a blow for equality, we must be aware of how the blow lands, and whether it has the desired impact. Is the blow landing on the shoulders of writers of fiction, instead of shaking up governments and leading to policy changes? We have no comprehensive data about the income/caste/gender profile of writers in India. We still need permission from the censors to enact a play, permission from the police to perform on the streets. But I notice that the more inequality increases in the world, the more people focus their critiques on artists and their individual choices instead of turning on structural inequity, patriarchy and state policy.

What power does a writer have, after all, except powers of observation, comprehension and empathy, and a certain felicity with language? You write about what you see or know, about what matters to you, what moves you, what you feel is important. That is the core of a writer’s ethic. Or, my ethic anyway.

The full interview is available here: 

https://www.news9live.com/art-culture/annie-zaidi-large-cities-impress-upon-us-a-painful-economy-of-leisure-and-socialisation-151690

Happy Basant

 

I was looking for a bright yellow photo to post on social media for Basant Panchami. Among my saved photos, I found this one. I am in a hotel room, on a research trip to Sirohi in 2019, for my book 'Bread, Cement, Cactus: A Memoir of Belonging and Dislocation'.

In most small hotels in central and western India and many parts of the north too, especially in district headquarter towns, small-ish hotels are the only option available to travellers. These tend to be usually business travellers rather than tourists or researchers. In such places, if you want tea or breakfast, you have to call the reception (if the room phone works) and ask for one of the employees to go to a local dhaba and fetch something to eat. The only option is poha (unless you want samosa or jalebi first thing in the morning, which I don't). You see my feet in the photo because I was sitting on the bed and eating. There was no table to eat at.

Here's to research, to travel, and to poha (although the featured poha in this photo was a sad little dish; I prefer it with lots of peanuts, potatoes, and even shredded chicken in mine).

A first review for City of Incident

"Short sketches are meant to be packed with detail, not a word out of place, and this is exactly the vividness that characterises this collection. And yet there is a sense of universality about the sketches as the reader will instantly recognise such characters in their lives too. The empathy with which she writes is at the heart and soul of every story. The stories linger with the reader after the book is closed.

The universality of her characters is also played out by the ordinariness of their roles. Community, caste, and religion are not the identifying features of these stories. These scenarios can belong to anyone. It comes as a shock to the reader to realise this. Everyone has a story to tell. This collection proves it as long as one is prepared to look beyond the nameless faces and make the effort to understand."

A review by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose: http://www.jayabhattacharjirose.com/city-of-incident-by-annie-zaidi/?fbclid=IwAR0Xg5teyNtAS9JhSHtExxhViydiAYt7q6jb3-r0pwPGU4pQlxGtwaA-OtE

Another extract from my new novel, 'City of Incident':

Another extract from my new novel, 'City of Incident' has been published and is free to read on shethepeople.tv. Do buy the book either online or in your favourite local bookstores.

This woman is so transparent, the evil eye cannot fall upon her. Perhaps the evil goes right through her body, falling on the person standing right behind her in queue for the renewal of a second-class pass.

Not that she travels second class. She travels first class, bindaas. Who can challenge her? She wears sleeveless tops and big dangly earrings, just like a college girl. She has an office job and a faux leather handbag with a Hello Kitty clasp that she polishes once a week with Brasso. Nobody would look at her and say that she doesn’t look first class. Besides, in the terrible crush of the morning, no ticket examiner dares enter the compartment. No commuter could be expected to reach into her purse to extract a ticket or a pass. All arms are trapped, pressed, and pinned down by a dozen other arms and shoulders. All the ladies must suck in their bellies and squash each other’s breasts as they make their way from seat to aisle to door. There is safety in such crowds.

Even so, she is aware that luck is on her side. Night after night, she travels in the first-class coach when it is near empty. In four years, not once has any ticket examiner shown up and asked to see her ticket.

Read more at: https://www.shethepeople.tv/books/city-of-incident-annie-zaidi/

An extract from City of Incident

Here is an extract from the first chapter of City of Incident. Please read, and then please go find the book and buy it and read the whole thing. 

They carry knives, some of them. He has seen them squatting on the train floor, chopping up beans and shelling peas into plastic bags while on their way home. It is more likely one of these ladies who carry a knife while travelling than an urchin who doesn’t even have a bag to hide it in.

What else could a woman use? A hairpin, possibly. A thin, black metal hairpin. He had scratched his forearm against one such pin and had been startled at the sliver of blood it drew, for he hadn’t noticed any sharp objects on the cluster of heads surrounding him. Or perhaps it was a needle. Those are quite sharp too and the ladies do knit and crochet in the train. Or a safety pin. Yes. That is just the sort of thing a lady might do if she was sitting by herself in an empty coach. Her restless fingers would take a safety pin to the teal-blue rexine. Stick it in. Gouge. Rip it up with a wrench and a twist of her wrist.

More here: 

https://scroll.in/article/1014259/annie-zaidis-new-novel-captures-the-lives-of-12-people-living-on-the-edges-of-mumbai-city 

New book

I have a new book out. A novel about 12 characters in a metropolis, seeking balance, love, repair. 

Please buy it, ideally at a bookstore, but if you can't go out on account of the pandemic or if you want a soft copy, it is also available in both formats online. Link below. 

Buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/dp/939065212X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RM9SUZE609HP&keywords=city+of+incident&qid=1641444239&sprefix=city+of+incident,aps,205&sr=8-1

A play read, at last

 When I first began work on my own, as a freelance writer, I had decided to give myself permission to write in any genre, form or style without thinking of whether it would lead to an income, or even a publishing contract or a performance. 

Not having a daily job, being free of the compulsions of form and word restrictions, I was also finally free to really think about all the things that I'd gathered over eight years of being a journalist and an observer of society. I had done some stories around children who worked as domestic workers, and while many were ill-treated and had to be rescued by social organisations, I had also observed many children growing up as employees in middle class families and not being "abused" (I use the quote marks with some deliberation, to suggest the ambiguity of familiar behaviour). Some of these kids were sent to school, or at least, were given the option of studying, usually at a government school or a cheap, private school. They ate what their employers ate, most of the time, and some of them even had a room with a modicum of privacy. Some were scolded or hit, or prevented from going out without permission, but in many Indian families, parents tended to treat their own children in similar ways. 

Those who grew up within a household of which they are a part, face a quandary. If they were good students, they might seek their employer's help to go to college, or they might want to marry and settle into families of their own making. However, their choices would be restricted by whatever ideas their employers had about deserved freedoms. In large cities, space is at a premium. Where would a young domestic worker go if she wanted to date someone? Could she afford to marry for love and/or to quit her job? 

On the other hand, where would a middle-class girl go if her parents disapproved of her lover? Apart from having a better education and a chance to find a well-paying job, is a daughter's situation so different from that of a domestic worker? Who is allowed to make mistakes, and what does nomenclature have to do with self-image?

Questions like these had been revolving around in my head for a few years and they led me to write a play, Name, Place, Animal Thing. The script was shortlisted for The Hindu playwrights' prize, and that gave me the confidence to keep writing plays. This particular script was never staged or professionally read, though. Now, nearly 11 years later, it has been read (and read very well!) at the Almeeda Theatre in the UK. 

A recording of the reading is up on YouTube, and is free to watch for a few days. Please click on the link below to watch. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eX4Pjd9mFY

Update: 

I noticed months later that Maryam Philpott had written about this performance. Here's an extract from what she writes, and a link below:

"When men appear in this fascinating story, they create lane-changing momentum in the pace and direction of the play and Nancy’s life. Her severe Uncle Malik represents the established social order, the old world that seeks to confine Nancy within a religious and political structure that sees marriage as the ultimate outcome for a woman. Malik’s personality and belief in his absolute righteousness defines the play, motoring the action that, prior to and during this story, shape his family so completely – especially the haunting presence of his daughter lost shortly before Nancy took the same treacherous path.

But other men provide direction as well, not least Nancy’s ineffectual rubbish collector husband who appears more than once to demand the return of his wife as property and to plead his cause, while a clothing salesman’s alluring patter charms the homely women of the play in a variety of ways. What is clear is that none of these men have the best interests of the womenfolk in mind and, young or old, these men prioritise their own happiness and sense of propriety such as it is with fateful effects."

The full article here:

https://maryamphilpottblog.wordpress.com/tag/name-place-animal-thing/

'Bread, Cement, Cactus': some reviews

Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation is available in the USA, UK and in India, in print as well as in ebook format. You can buy the book at a bookstore or look it up online. 

A free download is also available at the Cambridge University Press (UK) website.

"In the author’s world, there is space to learn from family and strangers, boatmen and historians, poets and gangsters. She paints a vivid picture of the people she encounters in person or hears about from others. If they come from a different set of life circumstances, she uses that moment as an opportunity to reflect on her own position in society based on gender, language, marital status, religion, parentage and property. This inward gaze is missing from a lot of political analysis about the current state of the country, and that is why this book stands out for its sincerity. It is not a rant; it is sensitive and sophisticated."

- The Hindustan Times 

"In the end, the architecture of the book attempts to lead us towards a counter-resolution that will establish home instead in the paradise of personal experience – in “the morning mist” for example – but this is never as convincing as the lasting sense of indignation and injustice that Zaidi evokes. “What belongs to whom?” she asks. “Who pays the costs of what is taken and cannot be returned?” These are questions perhaps more powerful than the answers Zaidi can provide, but it’s through questions such as these that she points towards the deeper mysteries of our human condition."

- The Guardian 

"Zaidi is keen to tell the stories of people who lose power, and then have to give up ground. The migrants who live on the margins; the Adivasis, who “displaced often, end up in cities where they are reduced to penury and homelessness”; and minorities, including Muslims who face bias in everyday life.

So, this safe place called home, does it exist? For her, a home is where she wants to return to, the heart being a compass. Sometimes, she thinks of home as morning mist, wispy and beyond her grasp."

- The Hindu


"Zaidi shines a light on the horror of what an androcentric society is, yet reiterates the concept of dislocation not only to emphasize the pain women go through but the healing and belonging they could find when following their own path."

- The Brown Girl Magazine

"The disenfranchisement of women, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, ghastly incidents such as how the body of a Dalit person was airdropped from a bridge to avoid the upper caste section of a crematorium, and the British legacies that still enable the displacement of forest dwellers and exploitation of natural resources, are juxtaposed alongside personal meditations. At one point, the author recalls how an experiment of living on the urban poverty line of Rs47 a day, even as a person without dependents, made her quickly realise: ‘…all the things that lend me a feeling of home—language, history, memory—would dissolve into the overwhelming consideration of hunger. Food would be home.’

In prose that is admirably both poetic and compact, Zaidi creates in Bread, Cement, Cactus both a memoir of her own multiple belongings as well as a tract that sets out India’s various modalities of displacement. ‘Dislocation can be abrupt but the internal compass dissolves slowly,’ she writes. This book ponders not only that slow dissolution, but a subsequent reassembling too—but always, with the sober acknowledgment of fragmentations yet to come."

- Open magazine

On Ghulam Yazdani and preserving that which was

Dr Ghulam Yazdani was the first to photograph Ajanta paintings, and to initiate the first serious conservation of Ajanta and Ellora. His work on the two sites was exhaustive and published in two volumes. He did much more, studying and helping conserve several Indian historical sites, including those in Warangal, Mandu and Bidar. His efforts and scholarship were enabled by the Nizam of Hyderabad. Please read this article for more information on his work. 

Here’s a smaller personal anecdote. In the summer of 2016, I was sent on assignment on the Deccan Odyssey. I wrote the magazine article without mentioning sadness and moments of unease, given the light sprinkling of Islamophobia encountered at various spots.

The trains stopped and allowed us to visit two wildlife reserves, Tadoba and Pench, and sites of artistic and historic significance in the Deccan such as Ajanta and Ellora. The architecture and art is exceptional. That is why people of all faiths come to visit, to admire and perhaps gain some knowledge. In most conversations, local guides tended to emphasize the role of the British in conserving Ajanta and Ellora, when actually this was territory controlled by the Nizam of the kingdom of Hyderabad and it was his administration that conserved and documented much of whatever still remains.  

Some of the guides also attempt to twist the history of Daulatabad. I was traveling with a book (Aurangabad with Daulatabad, Khuldabad and Ahmadnagar by Pushkar Sohoni, published by Jaico) and was able to note these discrepancies. Some people were mouthing the usual falsehoods, describing all medieval-era mosques as having been built on top of temples. The fact of architectural synthesis was twisted further in service of the narrative that Muslim rulers were antagonistic, when in fact, they were creative and very open to local cultural influences. 

I first heard of Dr Yazdani at Ellora. I had walked away from my own group and guide, and was walking past another group when their guide mentioned the Nizam’s role in the conservation of the temples. I stopped to listen and as the group began to walk further, I sidled up to their guide and asked: what were you saying about conservation? 

He told me about Ghulam Yazdani's enormous work and the state of Hyderabad preservation of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu sites. I expressed surprise because our guide had not mentioned this at all. The young man just smiled.

We had our respective jobs to do, so I thanked the younger guide and perfunctorily exchanged names. His was a Muslim name too. As he left, there was that smile again, rueful. I understood this time what it suggested: it is not so much that accredited guides don't know but that they want to forget, to discredit and to disengage from a better past. The positive role played by Indian Muslim scholars mattered to him. And it mattered to me. It mattered very little to most others. 

I have forgotten that guide’s name now, but I have not forgotten that look of pained understanding in his eyes, that rueful smile. And perhaps he read some recognition in the rueful smile I returned before turning away. 

 

 

On touching, un-touching and segregation

From my essay on learning from the lockdown and the new normal, published in The Indian Express:

In the new millennium, I saw new kinds of informal touch: air-kissing, fist-bumps, high-fives. By early 2020, the casual half-hug had little emotional significance. It remained, however, a significant social contract. Hugs assured participants of a certain peerdom for, always, there were others, people bricked off from your affection. You could always tell which social class you belonged to based on who gave you a hug while leaving the room, who would merely nod, and who didn’t feel the need to acknowledge you at all.

Now that separateness is the norm, now that we hesitate at thresholds and elevators and are constantly alert to each body’s proximity, I see clearly what was always there, but not easy to acknowledge. Casual social hugging had become one of those tools that affirmed class distinctions.

Indians are not new to social and physical distancing. Long before the pandemic, there were separate lifts and staircases for ‘service’ staff. Private gardens restricted access to “non-residents”. It is no secret that most upper caste households keep separate cups and plates for domestic workers. There are apartment complexes where Muslims or Dalits may not reside even if they can afford to. Public parks charge entrance fees, effectively barring the poor and the homeless. Kids are routinely segregated via food with certain schools insisting on vegetarian tiffin, and many states refusing to allow eggs or meat in school lunches.

Read the whole essay here: https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/social-distancing-is-now-the-norm-but-segregation-has-always-been-around-7121312/

New book

New book, published by Cambridge University Press. Out today.

A brief extract is available here:

https://ninedotsprize.org/extract-from-bread-cement-cactus/

Because grief is not an event you can cancel

Behind all funerary efforts and expenses is the urgent need to confront the loss of someone with whom you had (and continue to have) a unique relationship. You acknowledge the person not just as blood and flesh but as someone who was at the centre of a distinct web of relationships, with a distinct place in this world. The food, the sharing of memories, the travel helped the bereaved move past the fact of a death and into the continuum of life.

During a pandemic, however, the last rites do not permit gathering and rallying around. Old friends won’t be sending floral tributes, or condolence cards. There will be no hugs. Grief will hover in the air. Like the virus itself, it might cling to your breath, hair, clothes, the undersides of your shoes.

Yet, grief is not an event. It can’t be cancelled, or even postponed. It has to be worked through, performed, acknowledged.

Please read this brief essay about coping and adapting to make room for grief (or joy) during the lockdown:

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/india-news-opinion-grief-is-not-an-event-it-cant-be-cancelled-or-postponed-during-corona-time-we-have-to-adapt/303159