Ends of February “But, I’ve locked the door,โ mothers shout. “This heat is a slitacross the skin!” They tie their hair up in a bun and talk about womenwho brought them flowers day out and day in. In spring, you and I squat on the terrace and dig away in silence.At our heel sticks the…
โMy mother has not stopped talking about it.โ โ This is how Meena Kandasamy begins her soaring poem of a novel titled โWhen I Hit You Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wifeโ. At around 250 pages, the partially-autobiographical narrative is written in the first person and along with being a chronicle…
Beneath the modern metropolitan Delhi of today lie the remains of a royal Dehli which survived centuries. Rana Safvi, in her book, City of my Heart, digs up and translates some fragments of an era which could be attributed as magnanimous, more so, a golden period in the history of the Indian subcontinent. This book…
A season of death, a season of loss; our buds rest into coffins, our blossoms have the scent of scars. With a call for Namaz, there’s a greater call to visit graveyards. Decades of violence; an abode of learners, a valley blooming with the hues of knowledgeโ now cradles in the darkness of ignorance. From…
New Delhi: Mirza Waheed speaks the way he writes: with care. Ask this Kashmiri novelist a question, he looks a tad flustered. He averts his eyes, fidgets with his fingers and weighs his words before he finally answers the query. I spend time writing my sentences, I donโt want to hurry. And I am not a…