Known Turf

There was nothing sexy about me. I didn’t know what it meant to be sexy. But at 17, I began to write. And when I looked up from my books, I ...

Some years ago, I’d been shoveled up on stage to discuss women’s literature and romance. The head of Mills&Boon, India, was also on the ...

A democracy is a system whereby all citizens have a vote, and a majority vote decides who will make decisions for the rest of us for a given...

Sometimes, I lie awake at night wondering what I might do if I was just walking along somewhere —maybe on a deserted road running parallel t...

I got off lightly. I mostly suffered communal slaps. When I say ‘communal’, I mean it was a community experience. The whole class would be l...

The Other Country is a collation of Mrinal Pande’s recent columns for newspapers like the Mint, Telegraph and The Hindu. What makes the ent...

A young journalist recently asked me some questions for an article about women characters in Bollywood films. I spent several hours going o...

One of life’s minor joys is finding someone to admire. Not many heroes are left to us, thanks to the mainstream press ignoring instances o...

She wanted money for a shroud for her dead husband. I glanced across the road. Indeed, somebody lay on the pavement. I didn’t know if he wa...

A couple of months ago, I undertook an arduous but very interesting train journey. It happened like this: I was booked on a night train betw...

"Words don’t die of cold they die from a lack of courage Words often perish because of humid weather I once met a word that was ...

I'm just copying (and endorsing) this from here . Read, share, protest. And remember, the freedom struggle is an ongoing one. #flashr...

The year is 2005. The rain has settled into a sweet Delhi drizzle. Between the bus conductor’s lusty cries of ‘ Gurgaanva !’ the radio crac...

In a collection of ghost stories, Washer of the Dead , Venita Coelho describes a place where women no longer speak. Mothers cooperate by sil...

Over a year and they haven’t faded — two tiny scars on my right hand, caused by another woman’s hands. Both of us were trying to get into ...

A tribal person set out from home to encash a cheque, after working hard to collect tendu leaves. He was ‘picked up’ allegedly by the Chhatt...

My colony has a fancy western-sounding name and, while constructing the illusion that we were buying into something exotic, the builder ha...

So, it is a new year, and I hope it is a good one. Many new things are happening. For one, there are so many new babies. At the time of writ...

[A poem I wrote in 2009, at a New Years' party. Setting it free today. Ainwayee.] I had heard of human love, thwarted by the underwo...