A video review by Sayari for The Comeback on Scroll's video channel:
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Essay: Because we live in this world and no other
When was the last time you read a story that well and truly blew your mind?
I suppose, in order to answer that question, you’d have to first consider what it means to have your mind blown? To me, it means coming upon a story that makes me reconsider the very foundations of society, and which challenges my assumptions about what it means to be human.
Because we live in a human body, and because we can see it, smell it, inhabit it and drink of it, we imagine that we know it. We certainly fall into the trap of thinking that we know what human culture is (or what it ought to be) because that’s how we already live, and we’d like to keep it this way. At most, we might need to stretch the frontiers of what we can achieve, how far we can travel, and the limitations of our bodies. That’s the kind of science, and also the kind of fantasy, we like to conjure up. But every once in a while, along comes a story that shakes our self-assurance, and forces us to reconsider humanity...
I suppose, in order to answer that question, you’d have to first consider what it means to have your mind blown? To me, it means coming upon a story that makes me reconsider the very foundations of society, and which challenges my assumptions about what it means to be human.
Because we live in a human body, and because we can see it, smell it, inhabit it and drink of it, we imagine that we know it. We certainly fall into the trap of thinking that we know what human culture is (or what it ought to be) because that’s how we already live, and we’d like to keep it this way. At most, we might need to stretch the frontiers of what we can achieve, how far we can travel, and the limitations of our bodies. That’s the kind of science, and also the kind of fantasy, we like to conjure up. But every once in a while, along comes a story that shakes our self-assurance, and forces us to reconsider humanity...
Read the full essay in Outlook magazine: https://www.outlookindia.com/books/because-we-live-in-this-world-and-no-other
Monday, August 25, 2025
A prize for short fiction
One of the good things that happened over the last year: my short story, ‘Zinnias in the Graveyard’, won third prize (shared with Brecht De Poortere) at the Hudson Review Short Story competition 2024-25. It took a while but the story has finally been published in the Summer 2025 issue of the Hudson Review. Here's a brief excerpt:
The last gardener Shafiqa had hired asked for three months’ advance on his pay and disappeared. Just as well. He didn’t do much without supervision, and her every waking minute was consumed by a sick man who could barely chew or swallow without gagging. Mashing his rice and daal, putting fruit and spinach into the blender. A whole hour would pass between bringing a tray to his bed and coaxing a few spoonfuls of goop into his mouth. Scolding him for not sitting up, yanking at his wrist, prodding with increasing degrees of impatience until he uttered a soft oath and allowed her to shovel the spoon into his mouth.
She had scolded him with every spoonful. Eat! Eat! Eat a bit more, for God’s sake! Will you kill me with trying to keep you alive?
She hadn’t been able to keep him, of course. Five months of turning him this side and that side and, yet, bedsores all over his back. Between the feeding, there was the cleaning, the bandaging, the laundry. Wiping the corners of his mouth. Shaving his chin. She barely had time to bathe herself. At the end of the day, she would simply lie prostrate beside him and whisper her prayers, underlining each Arabic phrase with just one thought: Let him stay alive.
He slipped away, complaining about the lack of salt in his porridge. By the time she returned from the kitchen with the salt shaker, he was gone.
He could have asked for a bit of sugar instead, she thought later. He hadn’t tasted sugar in years. She often left out a bowl of temptation, disappearing into the garden for a bit so he could sneak a spoonful. If he asked, she was duty bound to refuse. No, the doctor said, no. Sugar is poison for you. Still, she would leave a bowl of kheer to cool on the dining table. One spoon wouldn’t kill him, but he never touched it. She always knew when her kids stole a few spoons of kheer or halwa. She’d know if the surface of the dessert bowl had been disturbed, no matter that they made clumsy attempts to level it flat again. But her husband?
He had wanted to live. But five months ago, he had begun to murmur in the dark. Enough. Enough. Enough what? she wondered. Pain? Being turned, his sores suppurating, smelling his own shit? He never said anything more than that word, enough...
You can read the fully story here:
https://hudsonreview.com/2025/08/zinnias-in-the-graveyard/
The last gardener Shafiqa had hired asked for three months’ advance on his pay and disappeared. Just as well. He didn’t do much without supervision, and her every waking minute was consumed by a sick man who could barely chew or swallow without gagging. Mashing his rice and daal, putting fruit and spinach into the blender. A whole hour would pass between bringing a tray to his bed and coaxing a few spoonfuls of goop into his mouth. Scolding him for not sitting up, yanking at his wrist, prodding with increasing degrees of impatience until he uttered a soft oath and allowed her to shovel the spoon into his mouth.
She had scolded him with every spoonful. Eat! Eat! Eat a bit more, for God’s sake! Will you kill me with trying to keep you alive?
She hadn’t been able to keep him, of course. Five months of turning him this side and that side and, yet, bedsores all over his back. Between the feeding, there was the cleaning, the bandaging, the laundry. Wiping the corners of his mouth. Shaving his chin. She barely had time to bathe herself. At the end of the day, she would simply lie prostrate beside him and whisper her prayers, underlining each Arabic phrase with just one thought: Let him stay alive.
He slipped away, complaining about the lack of salt in his porridge. By the time she returned from the kitchen with the salt shaker, he was gone.
He could have asked for a bit of sugar instead, she thought later. He hadn’t tasted sugar in years. She often left out a bowl of temptation, disappearing into the garden for a bit so he could sneak a spoonful. If he asked, she was duty bound to refuse. No, the doctor said, no. Sugar is poison for you. Still, she would leave a bowl of kheer to cool on the dining table. One spoon wouldn’t kill him, but he never touched it. She always knew when her kids stole a few spoons of kheer or halwa. She’d know if the surface of the dessert bowl had been disturbed, no matter that they made clumsy attempts to level it flat again. But her husband?
He had wanted to live. But five months ago, he had begun to murmur in the dark. Enough. Enough. Enough what? she wondered. Pain? Being turned, his sores suppurating, smelling his own shit? He never said anything more than that word, enough...
You can read the fully story here:
https://hudsonreview.com/2025/08/zinnias-in-the-graveyard/
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Reviews for The Comeback
'Annie Zaidi’s new novel, The Comeback, is a delightful journey into the heart of Indian theatre, with a focus on small-town India...'
- Jahnavi Acharekar in Frontline magazine
Link to review: https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/theatre-life-review-the-comeback-annie-zaidi/article69385271.ece
'... economical and absorbing. It contains more than a few touches of broad irony, especially when it comes to the business of art and the way eastern and western dramatic traditions are appropriated by the cognoscenti.'
- Sanjay Sipahimalani in The Hindu
Link to review: https://www.thehindu.com/books/book-review-the-comeback-author-annie-zaidi-theatre-films-friendship-betrayal-drama/article69412332.ece
'Through the story of a somewhat successful actor, Zaidi imagines how corrupting any kind of adulation can be. If being ruthless in the guise of ambition is bad, then being conceited as a natural result of one’s success is even worse.'
- Sayari Debnath in Scroll.in
Link: https://scroll.in/article/1080920/the-comeback-annie-zaidis-short-and-sweet-novel-about-second-chances
- Aditya Mani Jha in the Mint
Link to review: https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/art-and-culture/book-review-annie-zaidi-the-comeback-friendship-stagecraft-11740722742207.html
'The book grapples a lot with the worlds of theatre, cinema, and television; and through this, triggers contemplation on an interesting hierarchy that's right in front of us but never paid heed to - that of the politics of where a play should be performed.'
- Garima Sadhwani in the Financial Express
Link to review: https://www.financialexpress.com/life/lifestyle/the-comeback-by-annie-zaidi-review-returning-to-your-roots/3778064/
'At its core, The Comeback is a meditation on lost dreams, fractured relationships, and the possibility of redemption. With a narrative that is both intimate and expansive, Zaidi masterfully captures the emotional turmoil of betrayal, the quiet resilience of those left behind, and the unexpected ways in which life circles back.'
- Anjali Chauhan in the Deccan Herald
Link to review: https://www.deccanherald.com/features/books/meditation-on-broken-bonds-and-lost-dreams-3456598
'The author’s own training in theatre is evident in how the novel is structured. She sketches the backdrop with an enviable economy of words, then allows the characters to take over. The dialogue is crisp, the characters (including the supporting characters) are well-developed, and the plot moves forward at just the right pace.
- Natasha Ramarathnam in Youth ki Awaaz
Link: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2025/02/a-story-of-friendship-and-betrayal-set-in-the-theatre-world/
- Natasha Ramarathnam in Youth ki Awaaz
Link: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2025/02/a-story-of-friendship-and-betrayal-set-in-the-theatre-world/
'Novelist and playwright Annie Zaidi turns to this trope in her latest, The Comeback, and sets the novel in a milieu that she knows intimately — the world of the theatre. The result is a slim novel that is part parable and part a fairy tale.'
- Shuma Raha in The Asian Age
Link to review: https://www.asianage.com/books/book-review-can-theatre-reunite-offer-redemption-1876623
'What follows, thereafter, is a tale of soured friendships, bruised egos, fluctuating fortunes, starting from scratch, and, of course, drama in every which way. An award-winning dramatist, Zaidi has seen the world of theatre, up-close and up-front, and is clearly partial to it. Her descriptions of rehearsals, the shoe-string budgets, the uncompromising determination to stage quality stuff, make for inspiring reading.
Link to review: https://www.asianage.com/books/book-review-can-theatre-reunite-offer-redemption-1876623
'What follows, thereafter, is a tale of soured friendships, bruised egos, fluctuating fortunes, starting from scratch, and, of course, drama in every which way. An award-winning dramatist, Zaidi has seen the world of theatre, up-close and up-front, and is clearly partial to it. Her descriptions of rehearsals, the shoe-string budgets, the uncompromising determination to stage quality stuff, make for inspiring reading.
This is a book that many from the world of grease-paint and arc lights will identify with. Others will enjoy a story, well-told.'
- Alpana Chowdhury in The Free Press Journal
Link to review: https://www.freepressjournal.in/lifestyle/book-review-the-comeback-by-annie-zaidi-a-captivating-story-of-ambition-friendship-and-betrayal
'Asghar’s journey, from brokenness to renewal, is rendered with a sensitivity that avoids clichés, making his evolution not just compelling but deeply affecting. His rediscovery of theatre serves as both an artistic and personal revival, showcasing his resilience. The supporting characters—family, friends, and the theatre troupe—enrich the narrative...'
- Namrata in Kitaab
- Kabir Deb in Outlook
'The Comeback tells us that relationships can be old and strong, yet, fragile.. It deftly delves into the anxieties of people in the contemporary world and the issues that crop up with fame along with personal egos and social status.'
- Newsbits.in
Link to review: https://newsbits.in/the-comeback-annie-zaidis-novel-on-friendship-and-a-strange-betrayal-charms-the-readers#google_vignette
'Though slim, The Comeback travels a full circle in a consistently engaging story that reads like it could be a lively movie (or a series?). Held up against Zaidi's other books, including the acclaimed Prelude to a Riot and her memoir Bread, Cement, Cactus, The Comeback can seem lightweight, but it is warm and large-hearted.'
- Neha Bhatt in India Today
'Zaidi approaches the narrative with subtlety rather than spectacle. The drama here is not loud or exaggerated; instead, it lies in the emotional spaces between the characters. Through carefully drawn scenes and internal reflections, the novel captures the quiet turbulence that accompanies ambition, the desire to succeed, the fear of being forgotten, and the pride that sometimes blinds people to the consequences of their actions.'
- Veda Pahurkar in the Asian Age (Mar 25th, 2026):
Monday, February 17, 2025
An extract from my newest novel
An extract from the first chapter of my newest novel, The Comeback. Read, and if you find yourself enjoying it, do pick up a copy.
.png)
There were five missed calls. By the time I got around to calling Asghar back, it was past midnight but he wouldn’t mind, I was certain. We often talked into the wee hours even on weekdays. He never said a word about having to be up at six in the morning and dropping the kids off at school at a quarter to eight. My own brother might say something like, some of us have real jobs, you know? Not Asghar.
I used to get drunk a few times a year and call him, raving and ranting about how I was passed over yet again, the injustice of it, and how I was sick of everyone, mostly myself. Asghar would get me through the night and into the pale dawn of a new day. Me pouring myself cheap gins, him rooting about in the fridge for a midnight snack. He didn’t get fat, no matter how many kebabs and cream rolls he ate, and his eyes never failed to crinkle when I called him a good-looking bastard with his head of curls, hazel eyes, and lanky frame. If he spent any time at all in the gym, he’d have the kind of torso that sells business suits. He could sing and I bet he could dance, too, if he took lessons. I, on the other hand, with my short legs, big nose, and square jaw, would never turn any heads. Yet, I had ended up the actor and Asghar, the bank manager.
It could so easily have been the other way around. Asghar had a better grip on literature and stagecraft. I had a better head for math. But then, I cleared high school with less than 80 per cent marks and all hopes of getting into engineering college died. Not that I especially minded. I didn’t particularly want to be an engineer, or, for that matter, a banker. Because my own father was a banker, I had signed up for a Bachelor’s in commerce but my first week on campus, I ran into Asghar and I never attended a lecture again. Asghar and his group of friends had founded an undergraduate theatre club in Baansa and I had started acting only because he picked me to play the lead in the club’s first production. That’s all I had been trying to say in the Buzz interview that set off a storm and blew all our boats off course.
For over fifteen years, I had hung about on the fringes of Bollywood. While I waited for my big break, I did whatever jobs came to hand. Plays, theatre lighting, bit parts on television, radio jingles, audiobooks. Fifteen long years of auditioning for meaty roles but, zilch. Then a film producer happened to listen to a Hindi novel that I had narrated. He didn’t just buy the adaptation rights, he insisted I play the narrator’s role in the film. This character was supposed to be an unattractive guy, fortyish, and with a mean streak, and the producer thought that I looked and sounded the part. The film was shot on a low budget. I was paid peanuts but the day I was invited to see the rough cut, I knew, from now on, things were going to be different for me. And they were.
The week the film released in theatres, Buzz called about doing a profile. Now, a profile is already different from merely being interviewed. First, the magazine sent a photographer who shot my face with some love, bringing light to its creases, gouging the hollows under my eyes even deeper. There I sat, holding a book under a lamp, cast into shadows that made me look like a man of obscure and dangerous origins. There I was again, leaning against a balcony railing in a rumpled night suit. Unwashed, unbrushed, almost sexy.
Then a journalist came over to interview me. She insisted on visiting me at home because, she said, she was looking for texture. So I made her a cup of tea and talked about growing up in a small town called Baansa, north of Lucknow but south of Bareilly. How I’d cut classes to meet girls, how swirls of dust rose up in the first week of June and how they filled your nostrils and throat until you felt as if you’d choke to death, and how December brought a sort of rolling fog that blinded you and made you jump at the sound of footsteps so that you started to believe in ghosts. That sort of thing.
This chapter was published here: https://scroll.in/article/1078778/by-annie-zaidi-devastated-by-betrayal-asghar-retreats-to-his-hometown-and-rediscovers-theatre
I used to get drunk a few times a year and call him, raving and ranting about how I was passed over yet again, the injustice of it, and how I was sick of everyone, mostly myself. Asghar would get me through the night and into the pale dawn of a new day. Me pouring myself cheap gins, him rooting about in the fridge for a midnight snack. He didn’t get fat, no matter how many kebabs and cream rolls he ate, and his eyes never failed to crinkle when I called him a good-looking bastard with his head of curls, hazel eyes, and lanky frame. If he spent any time at all in the gym, he’d have the kind of torso that sells business suits. He could sing and I bet he could dance, too, if he took lessons. I, on the other hand, with my short legs, big nose, and square jaw, would never turn any heads. Yet, I had ended up the actor and Asghar, the bank manager.
It could so easily have been the other way around. Asghar had a better grip on literature and stagecraft. I had a better head for math. But then, I cleared high school with less than 80 per cent marks and all hopes of getting into engineering college died. Not that I especially minded. I didn’t particularly want to be an engineer, or, for that matter, a banker. Because my own father was a banker, I had signed up for a Bachelor’s in commerce but my first week on campus, I ran into Asghar and I never attended a lecture again. Asghar and his group of friends had founded an undergraduate theatre club in Baansa and I had started acting only because he picked me to play the lead in the club’s first production. That’s all I had been trying to say in the Buzz interview that set off a storm and blew all our boats off course.
For over fifteen years, I had hung about on the fringes of Bollywood. While I waited for my big break, I did whatever jobs came to hand. Plays, theatre lighting, bit parts on television, radio jingles, audiobooks. Fifteen long years of auditioning for meaty roles but, zilch. Then a film producer happened to listen to a Hindi novel that I had narrated. He didn’t just buy the adaptation rights, he insisted I play the narrator’s role in the film. This character was supposed to be an unattractive guy, fortyish, and with a mean streak, and the producer thought that I looked and sounded the part. The film was shot on a low budget. I was paid peanuts but the day I was invited to see the rough cut, I knew, from now on, things were going to be different for me. And they were.
The week the film released in theatres, Buzz called about doing a profile. Now, a profile is already different from merely being interviewed. First, the magazine sent a photographer who shot my face with some love, bringing light to its creases, gouging the hollows under my eyes even deeper. There I sat, holding a book under a lamp, cast into shadows that made me look like a man of obscure and dangerous origins. There I was again, leaning against a balcony railing in a rumpled night suit. Unwashed, unbrushed, almost sexy.
Then a journalist came over to interview me. She insisted on visiting me at home because, she said, she was looking for texture. So I made her a cup of tea and talked about growing up in a small town called Baansa, north of Lucknow but south of Bareilly. How I’d cut classes to meet girls, how swirls of dust rose up in the first week of June and how they filled your nostrils and throat until you felt as if you’d choke to death, and how December brought a sort of rolling fog that blinded you and made you jump at the sound of footsteps so that you started to believe in ghosts. That sort of thing.
This chapter was published here: https://scroll.in/article/1078778/by-annie-zaidi-devastated-by-betrayal-asghar-retreats-to-his-hometown-and-rediscovers-theatre
Sunday, December 01, 2024
Some more reviews of Prelude to a Riot
Was very pleasantly surprised to find some new(er?) reviews of my novel Prelude to a Riot.
One in Countercurrents says: 'Zaidi’s withholding of subterranean dark forces which “it” can unleash with lightning speed and unassailable strength is a narrative masterstroke.'
Link to review: https://countercurrents.org/2021/07/prelude-to-a-riot/
Another in Writersmelon: https://writersmelon.com/book-review-prelude-to-a-riot/
And one more in DURA (the Dundee University Review of the Arts). Glad to see it (although it is mistaken in one thing; it is not the Hindu girl but the Muslim girl, Fareeda, who is tricked/forced into eating pork). Link to review: https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2021/01/15/prelude-to-a-riot/
Link to buy: https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/shop/books/fiction/historical-fiction/prelude-to-a-riot-hb/
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
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.
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
Thursday, January 25, 2024
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
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
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/
Monday, October 02, 2023
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
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.
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.
Monday, November 07, 2022
After Sappho: a review
Spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the story introduces the reader to women who rejected factory and homestead and immersed themselves in classical poetry, plays, novels, pamphlets, paintings, dancing. The performers among them responded to contemporary works such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Oscar Wilde’s Salome, while others such as Colette, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf wrote their own novels and plays.
Living in France, Italy, Greece or England, many of these women had privileges associated with a middle- or upper-class background. Apart from one named working-class character—Berthe Cleryrergue, a housekeeper who wrote a memoir about the years she spent working for Natalie Barney—most characters appear to be women of some means. They are able to host and attend salons in Paris or travel across the continent, to Lesbos or Capri. They refuse to slip easily into the robes of obedient wives and mothers, and if they cannot flee, they subvert the norms of heterosexual marriage.
Yet, this is not a novel about privilege though it does draw attention to the nature of privilege through the prism of gender. After all, what privilege does a businessman’s daughter have if her father simply hands her over to her rapist? What does privilege mean if you have no say in the workings of the nation, no matter how educated you are or how ignorant the men who rule against you?
Living in France, Italy, Greece or England, many of these women had privileges associated with a middle- or upper-class background. Apart from one named working-class character—Berthe Cleryrergue, a housekeeper who wrote a memoir about the years she spent working for Natalie Barney—most characters appear to be women of some means. They are able to host and attend salons in Paris or travel across the continent, to Lesbos or Capri. They refuse to slip easily into the robes of obedient wives and mothers, and if they cannot flee, they subvert the norms of heterosexual marriage.
Yet, this is not a novel about privilege though it does draw attention to the nature of privilege through the prism of gender. After all, what privilege does a businessman’s daughter have if her father simply hands her over to her rapist? What does privilege mean if you have no say in the workings of the nation, no matter how educated you are or how ignorant the men who rule against you?
Thursday, June 02, 2022
City of Incident: Reviews
- 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."
"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."
"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
"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 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 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
Other reviews on Goodreads:
More reviews on Amazon:
Sunday, January 16, 2022
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/
Thursday, January 06, 2022
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:
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.
Friday, February 05, 2021
Consider the zombie
Consider the zombie. What separates it from a human? Both walk, both get hungry, both are capable of violence, both can – in different ways – reproduce, and anyone who has ever seen a zombie apocalypse movie knows that the undead can be clever in pursuit of their goals. What a zombie is not, is self-interrogative. If it was, we’d think it human.
Over the last few years, there has been some literary debate about the death of the novel. I laughed at it before but now I wonder if our fear is not so much that the novel might be dead as that it may be undead. Many more novels get published than at any time before, but how many of them have a throbbing pulse?
Over the last few years, there has been some literary debate about the death of the novel. I laughed at it before but now I wonder if our fear is not so much that the novel might be dead as that it may be undead. Many more novels get published than at any time before, but how many of them have a throbbing pulse?
Read the full text of this essay in Mint: Consider the Zombie
Sunday, January 31, 2021
A short story about disrupted conversations online
Here's a short story I wrote about a year ago. It was inspired by Twitter fights. It was published in the Griffith Review's special edition 'The New Disruptors'.
Shalin
Shah is no Muslim name. It comes from Sah. Mis-pronounced as Sha. Stop false propaganda @I.namdaar @Prof_Saab
Namdaar Joker
Shah was a title. Used in Iran. @Prof_Saab Correct me if I’m wrong, but Gurkha regiment was earlier called Nasiri Gurkha regiment. Why?
Gunjan
In Kathmandu, Kashmiri Muslims were early settlers. 1400s. Some Kashmiris use Shah surname @I.namdaar @Prof_Saab @Shalin
Prof Saab
True. Gorkha regiment was initially called Nasiri. It means friendly in the local language @I.namdaar @Shalin
Namdaar Joker
And what’s your source for info? A five-second dip into the holy waters of Google? @Prof_Saab @Shalin
Read the whole story here: https://test.griffithreview.com/articles/cows-come-home-zaidi/
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Some thoughts on sanity, truth, violence and protest
I was interviewed recently by Saumya Kalia for Outlook magazine. One of the questions she put to me was taking off on something I said after my book Prelude to a Riot won the Tata Litlive Award for fiction.
I directed my comments towards the sponsors of literature festivals and book prizes, and the question and answer that follow build upon some of my thoughts:
"On winning the Tata Live book prize, you wrote about sponsored literary festivals and the motivation of the rich and powerful to get speakers to participate. For any society to remain sane, a little truth must survive, was your hypothesis. Can you explain what you mean by that?"
Me: The question of who sponsors art, and what art achieves in any society, has been troubling me for a long time. The vision of artists and their sponsors is often at variance. How does this relationship work, then? Artists are dependent on others, not just for their income, but also for spaces (physical, digital, metaphorical) wherein they engage with their audience. Picasso can make Guernica, but where will it hang? Will it survive if the powerful decide to get rid of it? Some of the greatest Renaissance art in Italy was commissioned by patrons like the Medici family, bankers and businessmen. Why did they bother? We have had stories told down the ages about kings and queens, their infidelities, filicides and parricides. Books, plays, oral storytelling arts were supported by the nobility or very wealthy merchants for most of our history. Why did they not insist on censoring all stories so that the nobility was only cast in benevolent light?
This might be for multiple reasons. One, truth itself is powerful. Those who wish to remain powerful must retain an acquaintance with the truth. They may serve disinformation to the rest of the country, but they themselves must have access to correct information. They may not invest in mass access to the arts, but they themselves must have access to the vision, the beauty and even terrifying clarity that artists bring. Two, lack of truth is associated with breakdowns of all kinds. What do we recognize as a loss of sanity? It is a state in which you can no longer tell what is real and what isn’t, what is harmless and what isn’t. Individuals who lose touch with the truth react in unpredictable ways. A society cut off from the truth, and from truthful art, starts to lose itself in similar ways. It becomes unpredictable and does not necessarily act in self-interest, much less underwrites someone else’s profit. Alternately, the truth goes underground, leaving the powerful in the dark and, this is worse for them. Look at any society where truth and art have been suppressed, and you will see that it is a sick/sickening society or a nation at war. I don’t think this state of affairs suits too many people, not for too long anyway.
The full interview is available here:
Saturday, December 19, 2020
On English, elitism and writing in India
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 heard charges of elitism levelled at this
club and, in the beginning, these made me nervous. I knew Hindi well enough but
English was the language I could touch with no gloves on. I was aware that it
was accessible to a smaller fraction of the population but if we were going to
do fractions, what language didn’t have its elites, its tell-tale dialects that
gave away the country cousin, the migrant, the unlettered worker? Even so, a
tail of suspicion attached itself to cultural production in English. The
baggage associated with its colonial antecedents has shifted so that, instead
of examining the inheritors of actual power – politicians, priests and
businesspeople – a certain outsider-hood was invented for those who had a
special relationship with English.
These suspicions confused me. Growing up, much of my reading
was English ‘classics’, which is to say, mainly British novels and plays, some American
short stories and translated works from Russian, German or French. Later,
travelling and working as a journalist, I saw that the concerns of people
remain the same, no matter what language they spoke: how to survive, how to
secure your present so the future appears a little less uncertain, how to gain
freedom, how to protect a reputation, how to find and keep love, how to
transgress without being destroyed by the hegemony of the day. Such were the
struggles and conflicts described in the stories I read, whether they were set
in nineteenth century pastoral England or twenty-first century India. Was it
possible to measure the democratic quotient of a book based on how many people
could potentially read it? And what happens to nations where the majority is
unlettered? Are all literatures elitist if most people cannot afford to read
for pleasure?
Full article in Outlook; link here: https://magazine.outlookindia.com/story/books-way-through-an-old-sieve/304029
Friday, April 24, 2020
A new short story
Here's a new short story, recently published in The Charles River Journal.
The story is called 'Jhimmi'. It was written after I began reading reports about young lovers in India, barely out of college, and the outcome of their loves. I was struck by the strength of their love, their courage, their big hearts. Above all, that: their sheer heart. Their circumstances or fates are secondary after all.
The story is called 'Jhimmi'. It was written after I began reading reports about young lovers in India, barely out of college, and the outcome of their loves. I was struck by the strength of their love, their courage, their big hearts. Above all, that: their sheer heart. Their circumstances or fates are secondary after all.
Remember how I was giggling? Giggled non-stop until people turned around to stare. You kept asking, what’s so funny? It was the guide, going on about the emperor having hundreds of wives and concubines. In my head, I was seeing the Red Fort filled with crawling babies. A hundred white diapers. Little red brocade caps for the boys. In my head, a hundred babies were in the Diwan-e-khaas, on hands and knees. Hanging onto the knees of their father, the Emperor.
Can you see it, Bitoo? Badshah Salaamat has three babies perched on his lap. One of them has a leaky diaper, so His Highness gets miffed and he calls out to someone to take this prince away and change his diaper. What’s Urdu for a soggy diaper? The throne will need to be washed. And all those courtiers, their spines erect. Fancy turbans. Keeping a straight face. Bowing to the babies who tug at their belts. I was imagining the Prime Minister, holding out one heavy beringed finger, and the crown prince trying to chew on it with toothless gums.
Why didn’t I tell you right then, when you asked what’s funny? I thought I’d tell you later, at night, when we would be alone in our hotel room. But there was no room...
Read the full story here: Jhimmi - a short story by Annie Zaidi
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)