Known Turf

I have a fantasy about cities of the future. I’ll be walking on air. Well, almost. I’ll be high up, fifty feet above street level, using my...

Worse, every car sitting out on the road is a thief of opportunity. There could have been a fruit cart sitting there instead and it would b...

There's a photograph I love to think of. A moustachioed farmer, dressed in a white shirt and a dhoti, is running down the highway wit...

I've written a few poems around the theme of the body over the years. Some of them have been published by Anti-Serious, a literary jour...

I wrote this about sexual consent in the context of colleagues, with a few helpful tips for people (men in particular) who are attracted t...

मायावती के जुड़ी एक बात है जो मुझे थोड़ा परेशान करती है, उनके पुतले के हाथ में टंगा वो लेडीज पर्स. जहां इतने नेताओं के पुतले बनते हैं तो...

Gulab , a novella I wrote that was published two years ago by Harper Collins India, has been lucky enough to find a Tamil publisher in Anan...

हिंदी में अब ज़रा और आत्म-विश्वास के साथ लिखने लगी हूँ।  कविता या नाटक लिखने में कभी कोई ख़ास हिचक नहीं हुई मगर, हाँ, गद्द्य लिखते हिचकिचाती ...

I've started a new column for The Hindu focused on the road. Here's the first: There’s a phrase in Hindustani, ‘paidal-haal’....

Wrestling is a sport I've gotten interested in and have been following for over a year now. I wrote two longer essays around wrestlers,...

Last year (summer of 2016), I had the good fortune of travelling abroad the Deccan Odyssey, a train that travels around Maharashtra to sit...

Today (Dec 6) is my grandpa's death anniversary. This year also marks his birth centenary. Ali Jawad Zaidi was born on March 10, 191...

There are several things the nation wants to know and is wondering if the Prime Minister is going to tell us any time soon. I thought I...

I've mostly enjoyed literature and arts festivals and have learnt a lot through them. This year, I was invited to curate the Chandigarh...

Well, we are all doomed to turn into the thing we turn up our noses at. And besides, I did not necessarily enjoy all those non-discriminat...

October 2. I was almost content to let it pass without comment or angst. But I read three morning papers and none had a front page or half...

SIX O’CLOCK ON a winter’s morning. I was kicking myself for promising to show up at the Chhotu Ram Stadium in Rohtak. The sky was still da...

Instead of building up to a climactic event, this novel seeks to examine a tragic chain of circumstances that leads to a young mother’s ult...

I was asked recently to write about my own relationship to a city. I spent much of my childhood in small townships that qualify neither as ...

Tabish Khair has written a fine new novel about Islamic terror and what draws young girls, especially those living in relative comfort in ...