Known Turf

I had forgotten to post this when it first appeared but during the pandemic, in 2021, I did this wide-ranging conversation with Naveen Kish...

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 ...

Once upon a time, I was judgmental about selfies. From film stars to your third cousin, everyone was pouting, clicking, and uploading selfie...

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...

What is a Dalit perspective in literature? How does it differ from the phrase 'Dalit literature'? These were some of the questions I...

Spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the story introduces the reader to women who rejected factory and homestead and immersed th...

It has taken thirteen years but, finally, my play 'Name, Place, Animal, Thing' got staged. The Bay Area Drama Company produced it an...

A good school or college teaches students to see people for the good or harm they do rather than focus on their skin, surnames, hair or tiff...

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 ...

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....

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 i...

A short passage from an essay I wrote about Indian writing in English, and the insinuation that it was an elitist club: Occasionally, I also...

We do the work of creation in the hope that it achieves something in our communities. Something gentle, or fierce, or resplendent. Something...

New book, published by Cambridge University Press. Out today. A brief extract is available here: https://ninedotsprize.org/extract-f...

Here's a new short story, recently published in The Charles River Journal. The story is called 'Jhimmi'. It was written after I...

I walked away that afternoon with a heavy heart. When I looked around the building, I saw an open terrace where laundry was drying, and lar...

We like to believe that justice is served when a murderer goes to the gallows. Death offers closure. It also shields us from the awful trut...

Somebody on Twitter called me a 'corona virus ki shakal ki...' (other words followed) It was obviously meant as an insult. Made me...

Less going out of the house (which I do reluctantly at the best of times) means more reading. Over the last few weeks, between deadlines, a...

Women's day, so I'm linking to the first documentary I made in 2015. It's online and free to watch now. I'll also say ...