Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Gulab hooks reviewers

"Gulab is restrained, ephemeral, delicate. Her characters leave much unsaid; there are telling silences and crucial pauses. Her prose is sparse and minimalist. All of which suits the subject matter - the mysteries of the paranormal - perfectly."
- The Hindustan Times

"The story unfolds like a Bollywood movie of suspense and thrill from the 70s, urging the reader to keep at it, even though the ending doesn’t do much to dissipate the anxiety. The plot, rife with unexpected twists, is fitting for stage production or even a Bollywood script, and in the form of a novella, it provides the reader a perfect adrenalin rush."
 - The Kathmandu Post

"Annie Zaidi's Gulab is a near-perfect ghost story and one of the things it does so well is achieving this balance. It is perfectly paced and uses its ghost shrewdly and sparingly."
- The Sunday Guardian 

"Zaidi makes brilliant use of the sense of disorientation that comes from an unacknowledged sense of loss, coupled with an unfamiliar location, a strange language and self-assured strangers. Bit by bit, she tugs away at all that Nikunj knows—his memories of Saira, his belief that he’d gotten over her, his ideas of life, love, fidelity and death—till he stands naked, confronting only the reality of himself and his perceptions."
- Mint

"There is a whirlwind of conversations, heated exchanges, physical fights and helpless sobs as the tempo builds and the mystery deepens. It’s nothing sort of a roller coaster ride, smooth one minute, scary the other and in between pregnant with foreboding."

"It begins with a darkly comic, almost absurd response to the idea of courting the supernatural with its everyman ordinary hero. And it ends with a chilling and seductive struggle as Nikunj is drawn to the magnetism of a dead woman’s charms."
- The Asian Age


"There’s more fun watching a ghost movie than reading a scary book. But Annie Zaidi’s novel, Gulab, ticks all the right boxes for an entertaining read. To start with, the book is all of 184 pages, it is a love story, it has a ghost, it has intrigue and a twist in the tale."

"From the very beginning we know what to expect from the story, yet the simplicity with which the author has woven monologues and dialogues, built up suspense and created situations keeps you hooked.

What binds the narrative together is the 24-hour time-span within which the story takes many unexpected turns." 

Saturday, December 27, 2014

In a new anthology

I have a new graphic short story in this great new anthology of feminist speculative fiction Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean. It is targeted at young adults, but can be enjoyed by all. 

My story was extracted in Scroll
http://scroll.in/article/695911/A-new-graphic-novel-reimagines-the-story-of-Anarkali-as-an-anthem-for-freedom


The reviews for the book are great too! 

'A Cross-Continental Flight of Fancy', by Maegan Dobson Sippy at New Indian Express

'This Anthology of Short Stories Takes an 'Alternative' Approach to Women Empowerment' by Debesh Banerjee, at Indian Express

'Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean: Feminine Tales of Unity' by Nuvena Rajendran, at Deccan Chronicle

'An Anthology Dripping with Collaborative Alchemy', by Aditya Mani Jha at Sunday Guardian

'For the Girls Who Mess With Boundaries' by Kareena Gianani, at Mid-Day 

'It's a Woman's World' by Karan Bhardwaj, Daily Pioneer

Press Trust of India, at NDTV and at Economic Times

'High As the Sky, Deep As the Ocean' by Sravasti Datta, at The Hindu

'Book Review: Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean ' by Bijal Vachharajan, at LiveMint


Unsweetened greetings

What does it mean to "indulge" in a food culture that has made sugar and grease the norm?
Today, you can get a bar of cheap chocolate for ten rupees. You cannot buy any fruit (except bananas) for that price, nor a bajra roti, boiled peas, boiled potatos. Cookies, full of sugar, salt, fat, are available for less than that, as are deep-fried chips and colas, where the main ingredient is sugar. You can get salted butter cheaper than a litre of whole milk.
How has this happened to us, and what are we going to do about it?
Read on: http://www.dailyo.in/life/why-feasting-on-festival-sweets-is-no-longer-a-treat/story/1/1218.html

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Governance, Dear Santa, governance!

Dear Santa,
Compliments of the season. I don't usually write, but I've been a very good girl this year. Worked hard, met deadlines, paid taxes, filed returns. So I feel entitled to a few things. Besides, the Indian government seems to like you and Christmas a great deal. They're upping the celebration ante with this Good Governance Day thing, which is sort of providential. Good Governance is just the thing I wanted. So, please, get the Indian government to do the following:

Interview: Esther Freud

Mr Mac And Me, set in 1914, neatly blends fiction with history as it tells the story of a young boy with a twisted foot and a talent for drawing, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish artist and architect who did actually live in a seaside village during World War I. In fact, he stayed and drank at the pub that later became a house where Freud lived. It was this small fact that got her interested in his story, she says. “Someone told me many years ago, did you know Mackintosh came to this village a hundred years ago, and people were suspicious and they thought maybe he was a German spy? And I thought, wow, amazing story! But it had nothing to do with me. But when I discovered that he had stayed in the house I lived in, then I thought, hmm, maybe there is something in it for me.” 

Freud believes that most writers need an “in” into a story; for her, it is a personal connection with her material. “It doesn’t have to be autobiographical. But something that’s enough to make it feel like it’s my story. I didn’t feel like I could just go to Glasgow and start researching Mackintosh. I mean, why me? But when I think that the man who lived in my house designed the Glasgow School of Art, then I want to go and look at everything he did.” Eventually, she was so fascinated with the man and his work that she looked for a way to insert a mini biography of Mackintosh into the novel even though the story spans just about a year.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/PuSFK7SsQH6eURTQXepS3J/Esther-Freud-Its-always-personal.html?utm_source=copy

Thursday, December 11, 2014

What do you know,

We can be buried on land or at sea, or burnt, or left to the vultures. We can turn into dust and manure, or we can line the digestive tracts of some other species. Finally, we will return back into the elements, just as we were created from the elements through a series of magical – if scientifically explicable – processes of nature. We accept this, and still, the question remains. The “me” that was neither skeleton nor synapse, where does that go?
There was a time when I would have unequivocally said, “Nowhere!” 
The spirit is probably an electrical impulse. You may survive in the memory, or in the DNA, of the living. But no dead person has access to our living rooms, living habits, living bodies. If legs have decayed, on what does a spirit walk? If tongues and vocal chords have decayed, with what does the spirit speak? Dreams, failures, injustices, anger – all of it ceases. I was sure of this. 
Then, I was no longer so sure. 

This is from an essay I wrote about certain strange/inexplicable/paranormal experiences originally published in 'What The Jaguar Knows We Don’t Know': The Kindle Biannual (2014). Link: http://scroll.in/article/693137/If-you-don%E2%80%99t-believe-in-the-paranormal,-can-you-explain-these

Sunday, November 30, 2014

An interview with poet Vijay Seshadri

Seshadri, born to Tamil- and Kannada-speaking parents, did not study Indian literature or the epics, but as a teenager in the US, he did engage with mythology and some of the ancient scriptures, as he had opted for Religion as one of his classes in school. That was when he first, he recalls, read the story of Yudhisthir and his journey to heaven. “What reading Indian mythology gave me was a taste for the imaginative and the fantastic. Indian stories are so imaginative, so wild. Like the stories from the Bhagavata Purana. I’ve always had an attraction for the imaginative, even among writers.” 

And what about his love for poetry, where did that come from? “There is no such thing as poetry out there,” he counters. “You fall in love with a poem. So I fell in love with certain poems. As the number of those poems kept growing, my interest in the art grew.” 

In the early years, though, Seshadri thought he wanted to write fiction. He made an unsuccessful attempt at writing his first novel, and, he says, out of the failure of that came his early poetry. As his appreciation of poetry grew, he also found encouragement from his professors for his own poems. However, his vocation did lie in the realm of storytelling. There is a definite narrative running through each poem and much of it is, mercifully, quite accessible. 

Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/recliner/poetry-is-the-most-democratic-of-the-arts-says-vijay-seshadri/39043/1#ixzz3KXHRxvsX

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

How an Indian woman dresses

Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before 'western' influences hit mainstream sartorial choices): Exhibit 1



Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes, indulging in a traditional Indian indulgence (before 'western' influence on Indian culture): Exhibit 2


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before 'western' influences hit their sartorial choices): Exhibit 3

Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before 'western' influence): Exhibit 4


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before 'western' influence): Exhibit 5


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (hard to say whether this is before, after or despite 'western' influence): Exhibit 6


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before/after/despite 'western' influence): Exhibit 7


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (most likely before any significant cultural influence barring her own tribe, given the confidence of her stance and lack of shame about her body): Exhibit 8


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before/after 'western' influence?): Exhibit 9


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (before/after 'western' influence?): Exhibit 10


Indian girl wearing traditional Indian clothes: Exhibit 11


Indian girl wearing traditional Indian clothes: Exhibit 12


Indian couple wearing traditional Indian clothes (probably only for a special festive occasion and not the clothes worn in their daily lives): Exhibit 13


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (almost certainly despite 'western' influence, given the source of the photograph): Exhibit 14


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes: Exhibit 15


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (obviously, donned for the stage): Exhibit 16


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes: Exhibit 17


Indian women wearing traditional/modern/contemporary Indian clothes (and their own comfortable, traditional method of draping): Exhibit 18


Indian women wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 19


Indian women wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 20


Indian woman wearing traditional Indian clothes (and traditional woman's hat): Exhibit 21


Indian women wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 22


Indian women wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 23


Indian women wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 24


Indian women wearing traditional Indian clothes (obviously, donned for a stage performance): Exhibit 25


Indian woman wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 26


Indian woman wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 27


Indian child wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 28


Indian women wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 29


Indian woman wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 30


Indian woman wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 31


Indian women wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 32


Indian women wearing traditional/modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 34


Indian women wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 35


Indian woman wearing modern Indian clothes: Exhibit 36


Indian woman's figure representing a 'yakshi' wearing what once must have been 'normal' clothes for a woman in some part of the Indian subcontinent: Exhibit 37


This is for all those who want to tell women what Indian culture is, or isn't, or what our great 'Indian' tradition and culture expects women to wear or not wear. Take a good hard look. We have worn all sorts of things depending on climate, comfort, and available technology. Also, depending on our desire. OUR NEEDS and DESIRE were reflected in OUR CULTURE. We exposed various parts of our bodies at all ages, at various times during our shared history and geography. And we will continue to do so. Learn to live with that.

Consider this a brief tutorial, those of you -- Yesudas, Madhu Kishwar, Mohan Bhagwat, Mamta Sharma, and politicians affiliated to a range of parties including the currently ruling BJP (Goa CM and Madhya Pradesh CM), TDPNCP, TMC, CPM -- who have directly or indirectly suggested that 'western' influences on our clothing lead to assaults on our persons. You seek to confine us to Exhibit 24, 29 or 34 in the name of 'safety' and 'Indian' cultural values with no sense of the history or reality of Indian women's clothing. The truth is that none of these women were or are safe from sexual assault or harassment, with the possible exception of Exhibit 37. And that is because she is cast in metal and cannot experience an assault even if it is aimed at her body.

[Photos sourced from the internet. All sources linked to at the mention of the relevant exhibit]

Saturday, September 27, 2014

A deliberation on song, sexiness, and the filmy mahila

It could be that I'm blinded and deafened by the deliberate sexiness of the new Bollywood. But I often feel like feminine desire as depicted in film songs these days has all the charm of the high headlights on a speeding truck. Which makes me wonder how far we come in our representation of women. 

I keep watching old Hindi film songs and what I come away with is a gentler view of women's desire. Take the lovely innocence of 'mausam mausam, lovely mausam'. This song, perfect for rainy afternoons, stars a very young Padmini Kolhapure. The way the song has been directed and choreographed leaves me feeling content – as if this is how a song of adolescent love ought to be. There is a sense of gentleness and safety, an implicit trust. (It also strikes me that I cannot tell whether the director was a man or a woman, and this is a wonderful thing.)

Or, take a song like 'O phirki-wali'. It has royalty (he is dressed like a prince) chasing after a girl who sells phirkis. Obviously, the power balance is tilted against the girl, and yet, in the video, it is the girl who has power. This power does not come from physical strength, or class or caste. It is rooted in her ability to say 'yes' or 'no', and more significantly, in the man's ability to take 'no', or to negotiate towards a playful 'maybe'.

The man is pursuing the woman, but not stalking her. She is fully aware of his presence. She is smiling. As a viewer, you get the impression that if the on-screen woman expressed fear, the man would leave. Even though he is a prince, he will not assume that she is flattered by his attention. That is what makes him a 'hero'.

Another reason I love the video is that it features a working class girl, who has all but vanished from popular culture. A few decades ago, we saw songs attached to women who did all kinds of work: 
the phirki-wali (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9J8aXqiesI&feature=kp
the flower-seller who can row her own boat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHCf8FUwkJE
the maalin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObKhSldrhnw
the chaku-churi-sharpening girl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flmj_t5fgGM
the nariyal-paani vendor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdyD_jaRXm0
the farm hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u5UaxHDl3E
the chai-wali (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crzo7x07GTs
and even the thief (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TiNABGkMvM)

In these songs, the women's profession – an aspect of their lives which does not involve a man – is in the forefront. That they work, and that work means stepping out into public spaces, partaking of the social economy, engaging with strangers –  all this was reinforced.

This applies to working class male protagonists too. The factory worker, farmer, even the army jawaan are no longer at the heart of Hindi cinema. Now we have the industrialist, the pilot, the gangster, the middle class student, and sometimes the unemployed (or unemployable) youth. But for now, let us keep our sights trained on women and songs.

It is also true that more women professionals are part of Hindi film stories now: wedding planners, scholars, academics, bank executives. But in songs, they're usually depicted in a romantic or familial context. If film songs are intended as an expression of the inner life of a character, then what does the new Bollywood song tell us?

From the lyrics, we get the impression that characters are looking to be loved, or are upset at not being loved. The video often focuses on the woman's clothes, vibrant colours, interesting landscapes. But the visual contours of love, or lust, are cautiously defined. The woman is often depicted running (in front of the man or away from him), holding up substantial skirts. Or she stands about, waiting coyly, while the man approaches and makes a romantic or sensual overture. This is particularly true of lip-synced songs.

Watching them, I realize what I miss most is the 'forward' woman, and I am not alone. I went to a women's only college and I remember that the songs we girls enjoyed most were the ones where a female protagonist is flirting, seducing, wooing, complaining.

They allow the character to be a person, and not just a pretty object of desire. And the male protagonists were also allowed to sulk, or have a coy personality that required women to woo them. Look at Tanuja propositioning Dev Anand directly in 'Raat akeli hai'; or trying to get closer to a somewhat scared, Jitendra. 

Jaya Bhaduri is demanding some physical loving from a hands-off Sanjeev Kumar in 'Baahon mein chale aao'; Asha Parekh is teasing Shammi Kapoor under the guiseof seeking forgiveness; Asha Parekh is teasing Rajesh Khanna under no guise whatsoever, and is suitably punished for her pranks; Madhubala is manaao-ing a sullen Dev Anand; Jaya Bhaduri is manaao-ing a sulky husband; Mumtaz is asserting her intentions; a child-like Saira Banu is teasing the crochety Shammi Kapoor

The women have a greater degree of control in these songs, and the men seem to be decent human beings with minds of their own – they can be tempted, or not; they are sulky, upset, nervous, laidback. They were not eternally lustful, nor scornful of women who pursue them. The woman here is not a tease; she's doing the teasing. 

In the 1990s, there were a few instances of videos where female protagonists expressed desire towards 'tough' guys who seemed not very interested: Mamta Kulkarni doing a fine matka-jhatka job of wooing Salman Khan in 'Ek munda meri umr da'; and Raveena Tandon, sinuous in yellow, seducing Akshay Kumar in the rain. In recent years, the only song that struck me as allowing a full expression of female desire was 'DreamumWakeupum'; it is not only overtly sexy but the director also takes kitsch and the filmy-panaa of the fantasy to an extreme so that you see it for the fun it is. But since the 1990s, there were very few shy or bewildered 'heroes on screen.

Even when the song is romantic, my impression is that the women (or girls) appear more 'whole' in songs from the 1960s and 70s. 

There is something very significant about the choreography of love songs. We draw our ideas about love scripts from what we watch, or read, and we also feed our own ideas into the pool of popular art. The songs I like best show great 'engagement' between lovers. They look at each other longer – Raj Kapoor and Nargis in'pyaar hua iqraar hua' is the first example that comes to mind. They hold out their arms, hold hands, hug as Sanjeev Kumar and Suchitra Sen in 'tum aa gaye ho'. There is no doubt in the audience's mind that this is mutual desire. It is not one person reaching out, and the other person being reluctant or indifferent.

This business of depicting a woman's reluctance or indifference correctly is crucial, especially when we are struggling with a street culture that romanticizes feminine reluctance and worships male aggression.

In this regard, older film songs are more balanced. There are songs where romance is in the air, but the woman is not yet responsive, like 'Maana janaab ne pukaara nahin', 'Bekaraar karke humein yoon na jaaiye', or even 'O phirki wali'. Note that in the videos, the man follows the woman but his gestures never turn threatening. He does not touch the woman, until she does begin to respond. He might be playful but he is not aggressive. And he does not 'gang up' on the woman, ever.

Since the 1980s, there have been more songs and more where the camera follows the woman's body, focussing on curves and clothes, rather than feelings. One of the most annoying and boring examples of this was a song I stumbled upon. The director forces the poor actress into a white saree, places her in water, making her touch herself for a very long five and a half minutes. Yet, the director is not even brave enough to show her body through a wet white saree.

This poses an interesting contrast to Raj Kapoor, who found the courage to film the wet saree-no blouse song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqVJJym959U) and the white-saree-under-waterfall songs (here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvuFicZH3Jw ; and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3AtYcr_6Hw). That the latter video has millions of views and that viewers have noticed nothing but breasts is another matter. How people respond to a visual sequence cannot be controlled by the filmmaker. But his view of society, and of women, is communicated through the camera. I get the feeling that Raj Kapoor was not afraid of showing off his own liking of women's breasts.

I don't know how women in the 1970s and 80s responded to Raj Kapoor's wet saree songs (I'd be interested to know) but I personally don't mind them. Kapoor did not fail these characters by giving them nothing except breasts. To his credit, he made stories about men's conflicted relationship with women, and sexual desire, and society's exploitation of women's bodies. He even included a brief nude scene as part of the schoolboy's fantasy in Mera Naam Joker. In his time, he must have raised hackles but he have had the courage to deal with how people received his work.

Now just look at this song from the Sanjay Khan directed 'Abdullah'. It is an example of what can go wrong when the director is not careful about how women's sexuality is portrayed. Although the perspective is that of a bunch of villainous-looking Peeping Toms, the actress is depicted singing, frolicking in the water with girl friends. But the frolic is choreographed as if it were a performance, as if it were intended for consumption.

This is bad film direction. It suggests that the filmmaker was not thinking of the female character as a person whose voice the audience would hear. She was a distraction, a beautiful object. Contrast the 'Abdullah' song with the sexiness of Zeenat Aman in this beautiful rain-dance number. There is coyness and joyous sexiness, but there is also fun, and a definite engagement between the protagonists.

Viewers who complain about 'vulgarity' in songs are unable to articulate why they are uncomfortable with the imagery. Some of it may stem from a sexually conservative upbringing. But many of us are also complaining about 'objectification' and one of the things we instinctively sense is a lack of empathy.

The camera and the choreography tell us something that the video's creators will not – the song puts women at the centre of focus so they may serve a certain kind of fantasy. In this fantasy, the woman (or multiple women) have little agency, no special skills, no warmth, no hopes for her own heart. She's there, at best, seeking to draw attention to her beauty, and, at worst, drawn by the scent of a man's money or power.

We usually tolerate the kind of fantasy described above. But when repeated too often, it gets exhausting. And some days, when real world people talk or behave in ways that mirror that warped fantasy world – when I remember that some men would rather kill a woman than see her take charge of her life, her heart, her body – a film song can infuriate me. And on those days, I turn to youtube and begin to google old Hindi film songs for comfort.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

That other space

 
Gulab tests the limits that our mind sets upon a ghost’s powers. If you see her as a woman clinging to life, there is not much to fear. Yet: what if she wants to return to your life? 
And what makes you think you can make her leave?

Annie Zaidi brings her characteristically clear-eyed exploration of love to this beguiling, 
hair-raising ghost story.

Order it online. Or walk into the neighbourhood bookstore and ask. The book ought to be in stores over the next few days. 

Sunday, June 29, 2014

An Impractical Education

This is the latest comic I wrote for the Mint.




I have been thinking for a while now about the inadequacy of our secondary and senior secondary school syllabi. As far as I can see, the syllabus informs teenagers about fairly complex natural, physical and chemical phenomena, formulae for equations and trignometric calculations that most of them will never use in their daily lives. But it leaves them totally unprepared for life.

The average school student is illiterate when it comes to survival skills, especially in urban areas where they do not have any opportunity to learn through direct observation.

The choice of studying Science, Arts, or Commerce is a significant life decision if we assume that this choice is to have a real bearing on how we live our lives, or how we can make a living. I took up Science and later, in undergraduate college, 'Arts' (which is really the Humanities and Social Sciences). But the curriculum told me nothing about how to live. All I had was an assortment of facts and formulations, decrees and interpretations. If I had not been lucky enough to have the money for a specialized degree afterwards, I would have floundered. If my family did not support me further, I would have sunk into poverty. At fifteen, I was being prepared for what could eventually be a career in, say, medicine or astronomy or biochemical engineering. But I was totally unprepared for supporting myself in case I did not have the resources or temperament to study towards the aforementioned careers.

A formal school education tells us very little about how to make a living from the land or how to actually - practically - tap into nature's resources. We grow up knowing nothing about sustaining life (or love, which is incredibly sad and goes a long way towards dehumanizing and de-sensitizing the populace). Why is this so?

I am starting to believe that a highly stratified (in India, this means stratified along class and caste lines) society has something to do with it. We take human labour and basic survival skills for granted because we expect someone else to do it for the higher ups, i.e. people who access to formal schooling.

This someone else would be a low-paid mazdoor, some unfortunate born with limited access to white collar schooling. Even if this someone wrangles some schooling out of the system, a secondary school certificate is not likely to lead to a white collar job. The only other way out of poverty would be entrepreneurship, which would mean a small investment of money or material assets. The poorest in India have been rendered landless either by the caste system or modern institutional 'development' leading to displacement. Worse, they often work under conditions that lead to health breakdowns with no compensating insurance or benefits.

The pool of labour might have shrunk, but it exists. And so, the rest of us survive without having any real survival skills. Growing hundreds of food crops, harvesting, cooking, cleaning, growing cotton, rearing silkworms, beekeepers, weaving, sewing, shoe-making, assembling machines, cutting wood, building houses, mining sand and stone, cutting and shaping metal, identifying medicinal herbs. We cannot do any of this.

Skills that define human civilization, skills without which we would not last a day, are denied to us. And we allow it because we see so little value attached to these skills in the current economic system.

I often wonder, what would it be like if we actually began to attach value to our own survival? Would we not be a different sort of India?



Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Still smouldering

The best thing about being able to look at a banned book in hindsight is that it also offers a kind of foresight.

The short stories – and a one-act play – that made up Angaaray are mundane stories in the literal sense. The book focussed on the everyday brutality suffered by millions of Indian Muslims in the early twentieth century. Economic despair, domestic enslavement, sexual oppression, hypocrisy practised under the guise of religion, the physical damage suffered by women who are not allowed to make childbirth choices – it is at the intersection of these truths that the four Angaaray writers placed this book.

What we have now is an English translation of the original Urdu manuscript that was published in 1932. There are five stories by Sajjad Zaheer, two by Ahmed Ali, a story and a play by Dr Rashid Jahan, and a story by Mahmud-uz-Zafar.  The saddest thing about reading the book today is that it remains relevant.

Read the rest of this review in TimeOut 

Monday, June 09, 2014

A bookish adventure

I stack books in double rows on each shelf so that an invisible row sits behind the visible row. Some shelves are three thick. I’ve also begun to stack books in horizontal piles on top of a row. Last year, I donated a boxful to a children’s library. But a donation cull is one thing; sentencing a book to death by drowning is another thing. To leave a book vulnerable is to say that the ideas it holds are insignificant. Which leads to a difficult question: what books are more significant than others?
There is no better time to evaluate a book than a physical crisis. A couple of years ago, the house was flooded again. As the water rose around my ankles, I decided to put on a pair of gum boots and get down to the dirty work of classifying books in descending order of ‘significance’. On the lowest shelf went the most ‘dispensable’ ones. I’m not naming names but...
Read the rest of the essay on trying to rescue books in a household flooding situation and thus assessing its importance, published in the new edition of Kindle mag. 

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

More about love

I was invited to read and talk about love at the Godrej India Culture Lab book club event in February 2013.

I had upheld love as the only truly significant thing that happens in our lives, apart from the necessity of making money in order to stay alive. But for what should one stay alive if not to love, and enable love? I do believe that all human life and endeavour is about finding and keeping love. In most human societies, marriage is the cornerstone of our culture, but perhaps that is only so because we use marriage as a way of holding on to love, trying to prevent ourselves from frittering away our loves too easily.

You can listen to some extracts from in Love Stories # 1 to 14 in this video.


Sunday, April 27, 2014

An excavation of our pre-partitioned self

Peoples’ political and cultural choices are directly impacted by history, or whatever little scrap of history is allowed into our narratives about who we are, and it is a shame that most of us in India and Pakistan are either ignorant of the forces that led us to where we are, or have been actively misinformed. A God in Every Stone sets out to peel back some layers, revealing a part of our selves that lay buried under the dust of the 20th century.
I reviewed Kamila Shamsie's new novel for Timeout recently. Read it here.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Because so much rupaiyya makes us blind

As citizens and voters, we are often stumped by the glaring lack of options. There doesn't seem to be anyone 'good' around. All candidates appear to be either directly corrupt - having been implicated in scams, or their family members named as beneficiaries of their time in office - or else, their politics is inherently corrupt. Their policies benefit a certain small group of people, heaping privilege upon privilege instead of levelling the playing field, and doing little to extend public infrastructure, that is truly public in the sense of being accessible to all. 

Why do they do this? 

As always, the answer is - money. Political campaigns are very big business, and therefore, likely to be pro-big business. The more expensive a campaign is, the more compromised the candidate is, no matter how good his/her intentions. India does not even have a precedent of candidates and political parties revealing the source of 'donors' to election funds. AAP has made a fresh start in this direction. I wish all parties would follow suit. Transparency must begin with political parties.


For voters, the mounting of a 'big' (expensive) campaign is especially problematic because it obscures the candidature of smaller parties or independent men and women. The Election Commission is supposed to monitor how much money is being spent, but there has to be a way for the media to play a more proactive role during elections. It is not enough to discuss the 'chances' of various high-profile candidates. That is not what the fourth pillar of democracy is expected to do. If the media is supposed to 'communicate' information to the voting public, is incumbent upon the media to discuss all candidates - their work, their track record, their manifestos, their background, their allegiances, their politico-cultural agenda - and give each one a fair chance. 

On the subject, a comic I wrote recently for Mint



I attempted to show why the few 'clean' candidates who want to serve as politicians are so invisible. We seem to only hear and see of people after they have spent a lot of money, and this is enabled largely through media. Click on the picture to see a larger image.


Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Sharing, caring etc

Further musings on toilets and our shared existence as citizens, families, lovers etc. I do firmly believe that the day we all start leaving a public toilet cleaner than we found it, we will have understood the true meaning of patriotism.

I'd also like to say that there is nothing so unromantic as an unclean toilet, and that a nice, airy, really sparkling clean bathroom-toilet is a strong incentive to commit to someone.

The following comic appeared in Mint.


Saturday, February 15, 2014

because lioness hearts are not the same as lion hearts

"cubs are slow, fathers fast and lion mothers know that truth
is the thing that prevails... "

I have a new-ish poem in Kindle magazine. This one was inspired by a National Geographic program about the lives of lionesses and lions in the savannah grasslands in Africa. Read the full poem here.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Short Story - Inverter

For a minute, nothing. Then a pool of light gathered at the window across, smearing itself untidily against the grimy glass.

I didn’t know what to do after that. I looked at the moon, at the street below, and sucked in the warmth spreading in my blood.

The next night was the same. She let her pool of light shimmy across the lane one more time, and went down the stairs. I too pointed my torch at her, turned off the light, then turned it on again.

We did this every day now...."  

From a new short story 'Inverter', published in Verve magazine. Read it here.


Sunday, February 02, 2014

A snatch of music

This is the latest script I did for The Small Picture in Mint. It comes from me missing music in public spaces, and then, chancing upon a few snatches at suburban railway stations last year. Artist Archana Sreenivasan has beautifully captured that sense of grey one experiences in this city, especially at an aural level.




Wednesday, January 15, 2014

# wishlist 2014

I had, on an impulse, begun to tweet a wish-list in the new year. Most of these were civic or political wishes. Am compiling them here in one place and will keep adding to them as I keep wishing and wanting.
- Can somebody not pass a law against people stealing others' hisse ki dhoop? Isn't sunshine basic human right like food, water, oxygen

- Pass a law to prevent housing society discriminating against tenants and home buyers on the basis of religion/ race/ caste/ sex/ marital status.

- Do away with 'obscenity' as a legal concept for arts and public spaces. Define sex/ nudity limits for the public in clear terms. Everyone should be subject to same rules, regardless of religion/gender. If Naga Sadhus can be nude at a public mela, so can performers in a park.

- Introduce farming, childcare, sewing as optional subjects at the Senior Secondary school level instead of Chemistry, Physics, or Geography. Home Science must be a compulsory exam (theory + practicals) for both boys and girls at the higher secondary level. Cooking, cleaning etc should be treated as new subjects and be available as new combinations. (For instance, Biology + Farming + Childcare is an excellent combination and it should be allowed at an entrance levels for pre-medical exams. Any additional knowledge of other subjects, say Chemistry, can be acquired after the entrance is cleared, through a secondary exam for students who opted out in school.)

- Insist that all public offices be open to citizen engagement via email, along with a guarantee that they will get a response within 3-5 days. Officials in all departments MUST resolve email complaints in 7-15 days. Failing which, citizens should be able to approach a higher official to escalate the issue, also via email or phone.

- Citizens must have the right to approach a lower court directly in case public officials fail to respond to email complaints within 15 days.

- Insist on TOTAL transparency, especially for wages and labour. Firms, even private ones that employ less than 20 people must also be open for public scrutiny.

- I want cars to be taxed MUCH higher. The state should also incentivize experiments in transport: 4-wheel cycle carts? Solar cars? Also incentivize WALKING.

- Free up transport choices. I want cycle rickshaws in Mumbai and other cities. Cyclists need to be given priority because they are the most efficient commuters in every way possible.

- Set up a website and an office to help less educated/ illiterate workers get registered for work, and potential employers can access them through phone calls.

- If people are going to jail for non-violent crimes only because they cannot pay the fines, allow them to opt for community service instead.

- For sexual crime offenders, along with jail terms, they must take a course of education on gender, consent, sexual rights. They must read certain books, watch certain films etc.

- Make gender studies compulsory in secondary schools, as a sub-set of social sciences. Make it optional in colleges, in lieu of compulsory English/Hindi.

- Let sewage treatment happen at local levels (within residential colonies and each territory demarcated along political zones). Make corporator/ MLA directly responsible, and encourage citizens to take care of their own sh*t.

- Instead of 'free' water and electricity, let people harvest their own water in cities and use solar energy. The capital cities must lead by example. They must also own up to the fact that there's nothing free in life. Citizens in villages pay with their lives for 'free' water and electricity (@ArvindKejriwal listen up!). If we must have free water (in taps, inside homes) and 24-hour electricity, let the villages have it first, before the cities do.
- Enforce commercial land grant rules based on intent of use. If a factory/ mill shuts down, the land reverts to the city or the public commons. It can only be put to commercial use, if someone wants to set up another labour-intensive project.

- If private schools, hospitals are not admitting the poor, then let them buy land at commercial rates. If subsidized land rates are being offered in cities, then the schools and hospitals must be open to the public. Preferably just build a whole lot of public hospitals.

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