Listicle

Explore mental health through these seven reads in Indian literature

The ongoing pandemic has wrought a debilitating impact on the collective mental health of the global community. According to a survey carried out among health professionals by The Bengaluru-based Suicide Prevention Foundation observed that nearly 65% therapists observed an increase in self-harm and suicide ideation or death wish amongst those who sought therapy, since the pandemic hit. This alarming statistic of soaring mental health cases, due to a combination of factors like forced isolation, fear of the virus, financial insecurity, domestic violence and rising anxiety, have further aggravated the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Now more than ever, it is imperative that we fight the stigma and backlash around mental illness, which has long been a cultural taboo in the Indian social context, owing to widespread ignorance, misinformation and lack of health care resources. Literature, as a domain, ensures increased awareness about mental health issues and challenges the problematic stereotypes which relegate them to the closet. It accomplishes this by providing a peek into the many-shaded contradictions, ambiguities and vulnerabilities associated with mental health crises, facilitating catharsis, healing and emotional empowerment.

Indian literature’s nuanced exploration of mental health began much before it was integrated into our common vocabulary. Jayakanthan’s ‘Rishi Moolam’ and Shanta Gokhale’s ‘Rita Welinkar’ or ‘Avinash’ are striking examples of the same. This World Mental Health Day, we bring to you a diverse selection from the repository of Indian literary canon which reflect and address mental health. Although not an exhaustive list, these books enlighten us on how there is no one sanctioned way to engage with subterranean depths of the human mind.

Rita Welinkar by Shanta Gokhale
Marathi
First Published 1990, translated into English by the writer herself in 1995

Outside, the palm trees wail, with the wild monsoon wind in their hair. In her hospital bed, Rita lies still, her eyes tuned to the wind. Recovering from her breakdown, she sifts through seasons full of memories—of her self-absorbed, critical parents; her demanding role as family breadwinner from the age of eighteen; her secret for an understanding of the events that brought her to the breaking-point. This well-structured novel helps readers understand what leads to Rita’s nervous breakdown and how important it is to recognise and address it as it is. Translated by Shanta Gokhale herself from the Marathi original, ‘Rita Welinkar’ won her much critical acclaim and the VS Khandekar Award from the Maharashtra government.

Rishi Moolam by Jayakanthan
Tamil
First Published 1969

In his preface, Jayakanthan writes, ‘an individual devoid of a healthy orientation towards the man-woman relationship cannot be considered a properly developed person.’ In ‘Rishi Moolam’ Rajaraman, the protagonist, suffers from a psychosis about his sexuality. Not being able to forgive himself for thinking and acting in an unscrupulous way with his mother-like figure, the story captures his inner turmoil, self-denial and self-perception. The success of Jayakanthan lies in evoking in the reader a profound empathy with the tragically ‘deviant’ character who is a victim of a psychological malady arising from his suppressed libido and Oedpius complex rather than condemning him to moral policing.

Swadesh Deepak by Maine Mandu Nahin Dekha
Hindi
First Published in 2003

Swadesh Deepak, Hindi novelist, Sahitya Akademi winning playwright, short-story writer is remembered for his memoir ‘Maine Mandu Nahin Dekha’, an account of his seven-year battle with bipolar disorder. First serialised in the Hindi monthly, ‘Kathadesh’, the book accounts for shifts between time and space showing the reader the fragmented, collage-like quality of Deepak’s life as he dealt with his inner demons. The searing 331-page book is also being translated into English by Jerry Pinto.

Raat ka Reporter by Nirmal Verma
Hindi
First published in 1989

Set during the Emergency (1975-77), Nirmal Verma’s ‘Raat ka Reporter’ addresses the theme of totalitarianism, oppression and violence that marked those 21 months. The protagonist Rishi is a journalist who gets warned about government surveillance and the possibility of his arrest at any time. By offering a lens into Rishi’s sudden realisation of impending custodial torture accompanied by his anxiety inducing self-reflexivity being targeted as the ‘enemy’ of the state—‘Raat ka Reporter’ lays bare the pervasive climate of state-manufactured paranoia through a psychological analysis of a fear-stricken chapter in Rishi’s life.

Herbert by Nabarun Bhattacharya
Bengali
First published in 1994

Set in a corner of old Calcutta in May 1992, when communism was collapsing all around, Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Sahitya Akademi winning novel ‘Herbert’ introduces us to the titular character Herbert Sarkar, sole proprietor of a company that delivers messages from the dead. The ‘scathingly satiric and yet deeply tender’ portrayal of a doomed young man through a mosaic of manic and immersive episodes, also holds a mirror to the city struggling to resist the same forces as him, that prove to be entirely beyond their control.

Avinash by Shanta Gokhale
Marathi
First published in 1988

Unfolding at a relentless pace over a tight span of twenty-four hours, Shanta Gokhale’s Marathi play ‘Avinash’ is an intense family drama in which the tensions between various members of a middle-class family over the mental health of the eldest son escalates to a tragic climax. Talking about the text, Shanta Gokhale mentioned, ‘A character in my 1988 play ‘Avinash’ says the depression his older brother suffers from may not be the result entirely of some inborn psychological tic. Its roots might also lie in economics, in the social structure and the political system.’

Brink by SL Bhyrappa
Kannada
First Published in 1990

SL Bhyrappa’s epic Kannada novel ‘Anchu’ or ‘Brink’ portrays the sensitive relationship between Somasekhar—a widower and caregiver, and Amrita—an estranged woman with suicidal tendencies. An important and timely book — ‘Brink’ raises the question of mental health awareness by addressing depression from the point of view of the person suffering as well as the caregiver and meditates on the moral, philosophical and physical aspect of love between a man and a woman.

Originally published on Belongg

BOOK REVIEW

The Man who learnt to Fly but Could not Land

Here is a novel that speaks to millions about the instability of our country’s current fragile condition. The death of democracy. The sweeping of power from the smaller public to transfer of it to the ones who control economy and government in their pockets. The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could not Land is at once a whisper to the artistic society and a scream to the political pivots.

A poet and political activist, Kottoor was active in political and literary circles in Malabar but never moved centre stage to etch his name in history. He symbolises many such activists who are the lifeline of any movement. They remain anonymous or, at best, as footnotes in the pages of history. We don’t know their names or their achievements or about their families. But each person must have had his/her own story. KTN Kottoor, a fictional character, was one such person.

Through Kottoor, we step into the main political movements that rocked Malabar and meet the leaders who were at the forefront of those struggles.

The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could not Land is thinly veiled fiction. It barely hides that the author borrows everything in its pages from real history and from the events of the Freedom Struggle. This is a book about India’s cultural history, and in that sense, it is a good one. For those who are familiar with cultural and political scene in the last century, it’s difficult not to recognize nearly every character as a real person or escape the novel’s use of inter-textuality. It doesn’t try and hide cheeky references either. This intermixing of fact with fiction is something that struck me right at the first sight. As the author goes on shifting voices, from active to passive, to passive to active, from second to third person throughout the book, you continuously question yourself what is real and what is not. It is almost a Ramachandra Guha biography stuck in an intermixing fiction like that of Thayil.

KTN Kottoor struck me at many different levels. His efficiency at judging political situations at a young age is something we can hope each one in the youth to have to save this country from doom. His poetic sense and his incredible clapback at stupid reviewers was such a spectacular scene to read. He laughs and says an incredible line which even today after a whole century is applicable at many levels, “….what they have read is not the poem. They have been reading the time and context of the poem. I am not a party to that.”

Though this book has a whole plethora of characters, a plate full of people who are different from each other in many many ways, yet this unusual satiable and acceptable protagonist is the apple of my eyes. I have not come across at such a dominating and strong protagonist presence in a novel in a very long time. Rajeevan’s style of storytelling and commentary has left me moved. There is not even a single moment in the book where you are not remembered of the protagonist. This is something that often only biographies have but to achieve this in a novel is really commendable.

One of the most striking scenes of the book comes right at the start when Kunjappa Nair, the father of Kottoor dies. The scene and it’s striking narration catches the breath of a reader. There is no gloom in the scene but rather a sensation of realisation in it. The way “independence” required a “sacrifice” is such a strong catchphrase. Rajeevan’s striking power of telling the scene with robust prose and ensuring that the reader gets not gloom but rather the sense of freedom and liberation after reading the part. The scene that made Kottoor who he is even the one that makes the reader cling to the book.

Why to name the book with such a long title? The title strikes you as a lightning bolt after you are done with the book. Kottoor learns to fly, to fly till the sun and enjoy the fluttering winds of the higher skies, above the clouds. He gets up from stratch, from his father’s death’s misery, grows wings and flies at the highest points. But as the country is caught in chaos in its rebirth, the life of this idealist is caught in the maelstrom. Not knowing how to land properly, he goes missing into thin air like a kite lost after the string is cut.

The additional writeups are masterpieces in themselves. One is hit by a sense of conflict when reading it, is it the author speaking through the protagonist or is it the protagonist acting like th author? As one ponders over this fact and tries to unknot to the tight and complex knot, he is sucked into the short prose’s unimaginable beauty in language and it’s attachment to the realism and it’s sense of current timing. The poems etched to perfection, liked diamonds formed under pressure, present fractured and hidden within miles of paragraphs.

An essential quality of works like these is a kind of boredom with the sheer exhaustiveness of details. This results in a constant turning of the pages to the endnotes. As a reading experience, this book is exasperating as well as exhilarating. T. P. Rajeevan handles the jargon and maxims with quite an expertise, satisfying the need of the themes. His style, depending upon the demands of the mood in the stories, could be racy or reserved, flowing or laconic, narrative or symbolic. While weaving the language into the fabric of his style, he maintains a logical balance to form a regular pattern. A novel with a difference, it tells us very human stories that make us smile, laugh out loud and sometimes get jolted. Hard. At other times it evokes poetry that makes the heart sing. The book is part fiction, part biography and part cultural criticism and it’s through its irreverential blurring of these lines that the book delights. This is among the best historical fiction I have ever read. Complex and fascinating. A treat for globetrotters who like to get under the skin of complex places.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Hachette India for sending me a copy of this book in lieu of an honest review.

Originally published on A Hindu’s View

Book List

Five gems of Hindi Literature

I always struggle with choosing anything—a dish, a sari, a moment to photograph in the falling and fading dusk… But the most difficult is choosing favourite books, out of so many that I find myself re-reading and thinking about. So, this is not a list of my favourite books, because it is impossible for me to compile one, this is just a list of five Hindi classics I read at a young and impressionable age:
 

I read Punarnava by Aacharya Hazari Prasad Dwivedi as a child, and was entranced by the sheer beauty of its Sanskritised prose. Aacharya Dwivedi was amongst the most learned literary luminaries. He was a Sanskrit scholar and brought the beauty of the Sanskrit language and literary references and forms into Hindi. His most celebrated work is Banbhatt ki Atmakatha, a seminal novel truly unparalleled in Hindi literature. But I like Punarnava for its strong women characters and the beautiful, star-crossed, unselfish romances. Read it for the two heroines, Mrinal Manjari and Chanda, who are stronger, more courageous and expressive than the male protagonists.
 

Parati Parikatha by Phaneeshwarnath Renu was another book that I read early on. Though perhaps his first novel, Maila Aanchal, is better known, to me Parati Parikatha is a one-of-its-kind novel portraying village-life in a part of Bihar in lyrical, regional-language laden prose. It brings to life the village and its people in all their absurdity, wisdom, wiliness and idealism and depicts the deep fault-lines of caste, ignorance and social injustices. A must read for, amongst other factors, its iconic characters who remain with the reader for long while.
 

Krishna Sobti’s Daar se Bichudi is the story of a woman abducted from her family and sexually exploited by multiple men against the backdrop of 19th century India. The heroine, Pasho, tugs at the heart with her beauty, innocence and helplessness and I remember being filled with anger at the way she is disempowered by the society and her own family. Perhaps that is what Krishna Sobti intended. But the real appeal of Daar se Bichudi lies in its Punjabi-laced prose that borders on poetry and delicious descriptions of home-life in prosperous 19th century households. I prefer this book over Mitro Marjaani, the more celebrated, more iconoclastic of her works for the loving portrayal of Pasho.
 

Mannu Bhandari is amongst my favourite writers. Her understanding of human frailties and her nuanced, subtle handling of them cannot be matched in Hindi literature. Her novel Aapka Bunty is a heart-breaking story about a small boy’s suffering through his parents’ separation. It deals with a broken family and the inarticulate pain of a child. While reading it, I cried at each new hurt Bunty received as he was tossed between the new families his parents had built for themselves. This book needs to be read for Mannu Bhandari’s sensitive writing and her masterly understanding of a child’s perspective.
 

Shekhar ek Jeevani by Agyeya, a seminal and controversial work about the protagonist by the same name, an acutely self-aware man, sifting through and analysing his life-experiences while awaiting execution for taking part in revolutionary activities. It is an intense novel in two parts and delves in the psyche of Shekhar who had several similarities with the writer himself. The work is remarkable for its non-linear narrative and unafraid exploration of socially and psychologically challenging themes and for Agyeya’s polished, precise, flowing prose.

Reading these books revealed the beauty and power of language to me and taught me that story-telling is a constant exploration, which requires breaching the boundaries of form and subject.
   

About the writer
Anukrti Upadhyay writers fiction and poetry in both English and Hindi. Her collection of Hindi short stories, titled Japani Sarai, and two English novellas, Daura and Bhaunri, were published in 2019. Her has also appeared in numerous literary journals. Kintsugi which was released late July 2020 is her fourth book. In her other life, she is a law and finance professional and conservation enthusiast.

Dogri poetry

Verses of a vanishing language

A reader mourns the neglect of Dogri literature

The first words that were spoken to me, and the ones I uttered, were in Dogri. It’s the language that I dreamt in, and still do. But when I started reading—at the age of 9 or 10—it was in Hindi. ‘Baal Jagat’ was a carefully curated section for children in Dharamyug, a weekly magazine we subscribed to. I couldn’t wait to read the story, poem, occasional joke or anecdote, and an accompanying cartoon that completed ‘Baal Jagat’. Gradually, I moved to the short-stories in the feature section and was introduced to the works of Malti Joshi, Yashpal Sharma, and such prolific writers.

I was introduced to Dogri literature through my father, a Dogri writer. I can’t recall exactly when arthritis began to set in in his writing hand, but that was when I started taking dictation of his Dogri short-stories. I was hooked. I quickly read all his other stories, and then moved on to other writers.

After losing my father, we also started losing his tangible heritage—the books and literary magazines that he cared for all his life. Watching these objects of memories erode would break my sister’s heart, and on her insistence, I collected his remaining books and brought them home with me. From his collection, I discovered Tanthiyan, a book written by an iconic Dogri writer, Padma Sachdev. We knew Sachdev was the first woman poet of the language. We would sing her Dogri songs (many of which were sung by Lata Mangeshkar) on all happy occasions. But we had never read her books, her poetry and novels.

The title, Tanthiyan, reminded me of what my mother would say when we siblings and cousins would engage in an energetic chatter. “एह केह तैथियां लाईं दियां न,” what’s all this unnecessary banter, she would say. Tanthiyan or ‘unnecessary banter’ was an intriguing title, but I was not prepared for what a book with such an unassuming title would have in store for me.

Tanthiyan was not an easy book to read. A poetry collection, with all poems in four crisp lines. Life’s lessons, experiences and observations distilled into four measured lines. The vocabulary was challenging, and kept me motivated to understand the essence of the poems. It wasn’t easy, but it was so satisfying and nourishing to read such couplets in Dogri. Without doubt, Sachdev’s Tanthiyan is a literary masterpiece, a complex yet superbly crafted poetry. Some poems are perhaps the most beautifully structured lines in Dogri literature:

“सुक्का दा ऐ बन बड़ा बसदा बी हा ,
रूह ही तरेयाई दी पर हसदा बी हा ।
बदले कन्ने पेच लड़ान्दा बी हा ,
धरतिये दे पैर ए झसदा बी हा ।”

I attempted to translate these lines. I could barely convey the context, definitely not the brilliance:
This decaying forest was once flourishing
Despite the thirsty soul it would laugh
It would also play with the clouds
And massage the feet of the earth

Sachdev has penned a few other poetry books in Dogri— Tawi te Chenah, Nehariya Galiya, Pota Pota Nimbal and many, many more. In 2001, she was awarded Padma Shri for her contribution to literature.

There are many such literary classics in Dogri. They are our literary heritage that are barely read by a handful of people now. Slowly, we are losing Dogri. Children are not taught the language. Sachdev is deeply saddened to witness the state of Dogri in its own land. Even in her twilight years, she is tirelessly working to convince speakers of Dogri to reclaim their language. To her disappointment, speakers of Dogri have massively dwindled in her own lifetime. These beautiful poem in Tanthiyan, describe her pain:

“स्हाड़ी बक्खी कुन करा दा सारताँ,
कुन पढ़ान्दा म्हिसि ग़ेदियां बॉरताँ
खिसका दी ऐ ड़ोगरें दी इट्ट इट्ट्ट
कुन खडेरे ढोन्दियां ए मारतां। !”

Who is looking out for us, guiding us
Who is reading to us our forgotten stories
Foundation of us Dogras is shaking, brick by brick
Who can resurrect these crumbling buildings

About the blogger
Ranjana Sharma was born in Jammu, and lived the first 2 decades of her surrounded by Dogra culture and heritage. She moved to Muscat, Oman after her marriage, and has been living there for 27 years, where she teaches cooking and painting. She is deeply fond of Dogri culture and literature, and hopes that more and more Dogras cherish their language.

Queer Literature

Queer literature from India you haven’t read, but probably should

To read queer literature from India is, to a large extent, to read between the lines. Since the augment of notions of colonial morality in the subcontinent, there has been a systemic erasure of queer voices. What remain today are largely texts that merely hint at the love and relationship shared between same-sex companions. Talking about this systemic erasure Ashwini Sukthankar, in her Introduction to Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India says ‘terms historically used to describe women who love women – such as sakhi and saheli – have been purged of their eroticism over time and reshaped into harmless descriptions of female friendship, so that today we find ourselves banished from language itself, literally at a loss for words.’ Still, some texts remain preserved in our history that not only vaguely allude to, but rather openly declare, the pervasiveness of desires other than normative heterosexual ones.

This listicle aims to bring to light a few of these groundbreaking and provocative works of Indian language literature. It explores chronologically works of literature from India’s past, written by people who might or might not themselves have been queer. We then delve into two contemporary translated works written by LGBTQ+ individuals. These texts become important because they call attention to this country’s journey into queer selfhood, and highlight the importance of reclaiming queer literature as our own.

 

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Indira (1873)

Indira is a novella written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who considered to be Bengal’s greatest novelist of the nineteenth century. The story of Indira revolves around the protagonist’s passionate and intense friendship with Subhashini. Although Indira is a married woman; she maintains a lifelong love for her friend. The novella is rife with subtext regarding the attraction the women feel for one another, as well as unflinching descriptions of their physical proximity. Indira, through the course of the narrative, finds herself wondering, ‘Can there ever be love like this? Can anyone ever love like Subhashini?’.

 

Suryakant Tripathi Nirala
Kulli Bhaat (1939)

Regarded as one of India’s best known Hindi language writers, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala wrote novels, poetry as well as essays. In Kulli Bhaat, Nirala chronicles his lifelong friendship with Kulli, who’s attraction to the poet as well as his sexuality are alluded to but never explicitly stated. Throughout the novel Nirala humanizes and empathizes with Kulli, despite other people’s reservations about him.

 

Ismat Chugtai
Terhi Lakeer (1945)

Chugtai is most popularly known for her short story ‘Lihaaf’, where a young narrator witnesses a relationship between two women. The story caused an uproar, and Chugtai was charged with obscenity and was forced to face a court trial. Terhi Lakeer follows the life of its middle-class Muslim protagonist called Shamman as she navigates the trials of life, female spaces and the politics of India’s Independence movement. In the novel, Chugtai alludes to the fluidity of female sexuality, especially in the chapters wherein Shamman finds herself attracted to her young female teacher, Miss Charan.

 

Sachin Kundalkar
Cobalt Blue (2006)

Originally written in Marathi, Kundalkar’s novel Cobalt Blue was translated into English by Jerry Pinto in 2013. The novel is about Tanay and Anuja ¬– siblings living in Pune who fall in love with the same man. The coming-of-age novel beautifully casts a sympathetic gaze at homosexuality in an oppressive and hostile society. Kundalkar, who himself identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community, lends to the narrative a keen understanding of what it means to be a gay man in India.

 

Vasudhendhra
Mohanaswamy (2016)

Vasudhendhra’s Mohanaswamy is a Kannada novel translated into English by Rashmi Terdal. It is regarded as the first work of gay fiction written in Kannada. A collection of short stories, Mohanaswamy talks about the lives of gay man in India, chronicling their trials and tribulations. Vasudhendhra unflinchingly records the experiences the queer community in India who do not have the privilege of having access to English as a language.

Contemporary works of queer writing in India have largely been confined to the space of Indian writing in English, set only in urban metropolitan spaces. However, queer voices in India have existed across time periods, regions and languages. These novels attempt to bring to light these voices which have so often been relegated to the margins of Indian literature.

Children’s magazines

Raising good Indians: What early twentieth-century children’s journals in Hindi tried to teach

The early 1900s saw the rise of Hindi children’s journals such as ‘Balak’, ‘Balsakha’ and ‘Kanya Manorajan’, which tried to instil nationalist morals.

Parallel to monumental publications such as Anandmath and Hind Swaraj that emerged during the Indian freedom movement, there developed another kind of literature – children’s journals. These journals were started as a new enterprise in publishing – with the printing press coming into prominence – to carve out a national identity for children, future citizens of the nascent nation. That there was power in children’s literature was evident in how Iqbal’s song for children, “Saare Jahaan Se Achha” became a popular nationalist song against the British rule.

In the early 1900s, Hindi was gaining acceptance as the vehicle for cultural self-assertion in the nationalist discourse – especially in north India. The concept of rashtra bhasa (national language) – a Hindi public sphere – was used to rally the masses. South Asian literatures scholar Francesca Orsini explains this as the common language for everyone – Bhartendu’s nij bhasa – “which is at one time of the individual and of the community…that should acquire the seal of recognition by becoming the language of the state (rajbhasa) and of the nation (rastrabhasa)…”

Thus, the nationalist project of the 1920s and 1930s used Hindi children’s periodicals to expand the locus of “home” from the immediate location of birth to the national space, allowing Hindi pedagogues to mediate their nationalism for children.

It was in this milieu that Hindi children’s journals, such as Balak, Balsakha, Kanya Manorajan, Vidyarthi, Kumari Darpan, Shishu, and Khilauna, gained prominence as national journals – instilling nationalist morals and patriotism, opining on what constitutes an ideal future-citizen for India.

Modern India historian Gyan Prakash points to the assumption prevalent among many Hindu nationalists of the time that the “infant nation” needed to be endowed with literature, history, culture and science. This was clearly reflected in the content of these children’s journals, which ranged across: (i) prayers; (ii) rhymes, lullabies and poetry; (iii) short stories, fairy tales and serialised novels; (iv) moral essays, biographies and scientific articles on geography, botany, biology, astrology, music and domestic science; (v) riddles; and (vi) editorial. A look at the tenor of content sheds light on how belongingness was inculcated.

Prof Shobna Nijhawan, in “Hindi Children’s Journals and the Nationalist Discourse (1910-1930)”, gives the example of Kumari Darpan (Mirror of the Maiden), first published in Allahabad in 1916. How a feeling of national belonging was camouflaged in “factual knowledge”. In the article “Brahmand aur Saur Jagat (The Cosmos and the Solar System)”, the writer talks about the wonders of the universe, with the additional line: “How often would you have wished to hear stories about all these things?…This is why I will tell you this story in your own language.”

In the second part of the article, “Bhugol ki Kahani (The Story of Geography)”, the child is taught about her origins:

“Where is the country in which we people live? In which part of the world is it located?… Our country, Hindustan, which is also called Hind, Bharatkhand or Bharatvarsh or simply Bharat, is located in South Asia. Asia is the home of many people who populate the land from Asia to Europe. These people are of Aryan origin. Before learning more about the Asian people, we should take a closer look at our country.”

Linking the Aryans of the Indian subcontinent to Europe, she says, “The inhabitants of Europe are for the most part the offspring of the Aryans who travelled West.” Conspicuous in her narrative is use of race, ethnicity and territoriality as the central denominators of the nation. She also informs her readers of the achievements of the Indus Valley Civilisation to impress upon them the idea that because India was an ancient civilisation, Indian Aryans belonged to the “leading race” of the world.

Nationalism, thus, functioned as the glue that packed together the prayers, poems, stories and scientific essays of such journals.

So popular were these journals that, according to scholar Nandini Chandra, the circulation of monthly magazines like Balak and Balsakha ranged between 3,500 and 5,000 – comparable to popular adult literary magazines Sarasvati and Madhuri, whose figures were 3,000 and 6,000, respectively, for the year 1924. In “The Pedagogic Imperative of Travel Writing in the Hindi World: Children’s Periodicals (1920–1950)”, she also adds that “for girls, many of whom did not attend formal schools like their brothers, these periodicals really did constitute alternate schooling”.

Interestingly, initially these journals hesitated from making direct attacks at the discriminatory policies of the colonial administration till the mid-1910s. This changed with the advent of Mahatma Gandhi in mainstream Indian political struggle. The following passage from Swarup Kumari Nehru’s 1917 article “Deshbhakti (Patriotism)” in Kumari Darpan, tellingly illustrates the changing face of the Hindi literary sphere:

“Patriotism is to be practised with the body, the mind, and one’s possessions…Whether the person is old, young, or a child, rich or poor, it is the dharma of every person to serve the country. Whosoever wants to practise true devotion should first make the effort to wear svadeshi clothes, eat svadeshi food and advise friends to do the same.”

Such exhortations continued to gain strength as the nationalist campaign gained further momentum in the 1920s. Khilauna (Game), a children’s journal first published in 1927, was markedly different in format from its predecessors. This published poem shows the militant nationalist tone adopted by children’s journals in the coming decades:

Ham vir hain, valvir hain, randhir hain, balvan
Mar janyage, kat janyage, ho janyage, balidan
Marenge ham, tyagenge ham, chorenge ham, dhanpran 
Nij des hit, nij dharm hit, nij jati hit, abhiman

We are heroes, rebels, brave and powerful
We will be wounded, die in battle and be sacrificed
We will dedicate our lives, leave behind all wealth and abandon everything
For the welfare of our own country, our own belief, our own people and pride

The poem illustrates that the journals’ agenda was never to simply entertain children or educate their parents on child-rearing. They were also devices to influence the social imagination of the emerging middle class in a language that was imagined as the medium for creating a unitary linguistic consciousness. “Desh ki Baat (News of the Nation)” was a regular column that focused on anti-colonial discourse.

Eventually, the nationalist campaign led by Jawaharlal Nehru and a new generation of leaders, under the guidance of Gandhi, managed to overthrow the British yoke in 1947. However, the project of creating a common identity amongst people of a diversified land did not come to an end. The “Ideal Boy” charts of post-Independence India continued to offer fables featuring virtuous protagonists, encouraging children to become “ideal sons of the nation”. Only this time, the pedagogical exercise was not only the product of the national movement and Independence but of the Partition that followed.

While extensive research in the field is not available, studies in these didactic exercises help understand how young children encountered the nation and explored everyday nationalism. According to education and culture scholar Zsuzsa Millei, “exploring how children inhabit and learn the nation – as banal as singing and discussing the world or singing a song through which forms of sociality arise, emotions learned and attachments are formed – is a significant agenda.”

Such exercises aid our understanding of how collective identity and imagination of nationhood can emerge. Therefore, studying how nationalism works to establish the idea of a national community amongst children is important, especially amongst a diverse populace such that of India.

This article is part of Saha Sutra, on www.sahapedia.org, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India.

The above article is taken from www.scroll.in and was published on November 17, 2019

BOOK REVIEW

Non Fiction: Manto Unvarnished

If asked to describe Saadat Hasan Manto in one word, this reviewer would unhesitatingly call him an enigma. Strange as it may seem, Manto, arguably the greatest short story writer in Urdu, failed in Urdu in his high school exams. What is no less surprising is that, incurable alcoholic that he was — he asked for whiskey while being driven in an ambulance to the hospital on his fatal journey and was obliged by his family members — he always wrote ‘786’, the numerical symbol of Bismillah ir Rahman nir Raheem, at the top of his writings, be they for broadcasting, publishing or films.

‘Fraud’ was his favourite word. He called many people — including his own self — a ‘fraud’, but as his childhood friend and biographer Abu Saeed Qureshi says, “He was a very transparent person and there appeared no gap between his internal and external selves.”

Manto Saheb: Friends and Enemies of the Great Maverick, featuring translations of articles by fellow writers, publishers and two close relatives on the enigmatic personality is, by and large, quite absorbing.

The first piece is by Saadat Hasan, the ‘twin’ of Manto the writer, who predicts — and quite rightly so — that the man would die but the writer would live on. But then that is applicable to all distinguished men of letters, be they William Shakespeare, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib or Rabindranath Tagore.

One feels strongly that the finest piece on Manto should have been by his devoted, and often deceived, wife, Safia. He may have remained in love with her, but she was the one who suffered endlessly on his account. Every contributor to the volume under review has nothing but words of praise for the lady.

Writes their second daughter, Nuzhat: “My mother’s experience of life as a writer’s wife was far from pleasant. She never accepted Manto saheb’s habit of drinking excessively. And to top it all, he gave away money without hesitation … My mother used to often complain to him about his habit of frittering away money, especially when there was not enough to run the house.”

Nuzhat further reveals, “Ammi jaan used to be the first reader of father’s stories. She told us about our father’s exceptional talent. There were times when he would verbally dictate three different stories to three different people.”

The biggest tragedy in Manto’s life is recalled by his friend Krishan Chander, another well-known fiction writer. It was the death of his eldest child, a year and a half old son. Writes Chander: “The armour of cynicism that he had built up all around himself was smashed to smithereens.” According to Manto’s eldest daughter Nighat, the loss affected her father so much that he was transformed from a social drinker to an irreversible alcoholic.

The longest piece in the book is by Urdu/Hindi writer Upendranath Ashk and is rightly titled ‘Manto, My Enemy’. While admitting that Manto had an inflated ego, one cannot ignore the fact that Ashk — a less accomplished writer — liked to provoke him. Once they even exchanged blows. Ashk was Manto’s contemporary at All India Radio (AIR), Delhi, and later at Filmistan Studios in Bombay [Mumbai]. Their skirmishes were a source of amusement to those present in the rooms. Not surprisingly, Ashk and his wife were admirers of “Safia bhaabi.”

When Manto got Ashk invited to join Filmistan, he hosted Ashk in his Bombay flat for a week. A fact that Ashk ungrudgingly acknowledges is that, whether at home or outside, Manto was invariably dressed in spotless and well-ironed clothes. Manto liked to dress in a lounge suit and matching necktie as much as he enjoyed sporting kurta-pyjamas, with or without covering himself with a sherwani.

His papers were well-stacked and his books properly shelved. Everything was placed in great order in the room of a person who otherwise led a disordered life.

Back to Ashk, his judgement that “Manto didn’t seem to realise that the strongest adversaries of humans are humans themselves,” is far from the truth. Manto’s stories built around Partition are about killers, rapists and their victims. Likewise, in his tales of pimps and prostitutes, he mentions in no uncertain words that young girls are kidnapped or enticed to enter into the flesh trade.

Poet and critic Ali Sardar Jafri criticises Manto for writing “obscene stories”, but also compliments him for his ability to narrate a story effectively. Jafri eulogises Manto for writing such exceptional stories as ‘Naya Qanoon’, ‘Tarraqqi Pasand’, ‘Mootri’, ‘Khol Do’ and ‘Toba Tek Singh’, but he joins Sajjad Zaheer in condemning such “painful but irrelevant” stories as ‘Boo’ and ‘Hatak’. Jafri, however, concedes that, “From the perspective of art, Manto was unique and unparalleled. No other writer had the ability to create the impact that Manto could with the simplicity, dexterity and perspicacity of his language.” Jafri is also all praise for Manto’s “sharp and astute” characterisation and “well structured” plots.

Perhaps the most readable of all the pieces in the book is ‘My Friend, My Foe’ by Ismat Chughtai, herself a bold writer of fiction. Manto was a blunt conversationalist and Chughtai did not believe in niceties either, so when she goes to see Manto for the first time, she decides to “pay him back in the same coin.” The two start arguing with all their might. When he addresses her as ‘sister’, she protests. “If you don’t like to hear the word then I will continue you to call you ‘Ismat behen’” comes the provocative reply.

Writes Chughtai, “If Manto and I decided to meet for five minutes, the programme inevitably stretched out to five hours.” The exchange of fireworks is not to the liking of Safia and Shahid Lateef, Chughtai’s spouse.

Manto and Chughtai have to go all the way from Bombay to Lahore where the local government has filed a case against them for what they called ‘obscene writings’. Chughtai is under fire for writing one of her most popular short stories, ‘Lihaaf’, which has veiled references to lesbianism. The two writers have a whale of a time interacting with Lahore-based Urdu writers.

They lose touch when Manto migrates to Pakistan. Manto is nostalgic about Bombay and, when Urdu poet Naresh Kumar Shad visits from India, he finds Manto remembering the people and the streets of the city he had left behind, quite passionately.

Another noteworthy piece is by Mehdi Ali Siddiqui, a judge in an obscenity case filed against Manto for his controversial story ‘Upar, Neechay Aur Darmiyaan’. The accused is restless. He wants the judge to give his judgement soon. Siddiqui is, luckily, an avid fan of Manto and believes that after the death of Premchand, Manto is the greatest Urdu writer. A token fine of Rs 25 is announced, which is duly paid by one of the writer’s guarantors.

Manto and his friends later go to the judge’s room and invite him to meet the writer at the centrally located Zelin’s Coffee House, where the two strike up a friendship. Manto insists that the story is based on truth. Shortly before his death, Manto includes the story in his new collection, a collection he titles ‘Upar, Neechay Aur Darmiyaan’ and dedicates it to Siddiqui.

Noted writer and editor of the literary magazine Saqi, Shahid Ahmed Dehlvi makes a relevant point when he says, “Everybody used to be astonished by Manto’s pace, and what was even more extraordinary was that everything he wrote would be precise and accurate, leaving absolutely no scope to tinker around with even a little.”

Mohammad Tufail, editor and publisher of the reputed literary journal Naqoosh, claims to have come to Manto’s rescue more than once. Manto wants Tufail to bring out a special issue on him and says that he will contribute his own elegy. But Tufail is late; he tries to make up by writing a letter from Manto — now settled in the other world — in Manto’s style and publishing it in the special edition of Naqoosh along with several writers who knew the man who kicked the bucket at the young age of 42.

A piece by Balwant Gargi, a novelist and playwright who wrote in Punjabi, makes for interesting reading too. Gargi narrates an incident dating back to the time when both he and Manto worked at AIR. A programme scheduled on a certain day is in jeopardy because the writer has not sent the script. Gargi and other colleagues of Manto at the Delhi station know that he could suitably fill the gap. On their insistence, Manto writes a play called Intezaar and Gargi maintains that it ranks among the best plays broadcast by AIR.

Not much has been lost in the translations of Manto Saheb: Friends and Enemies of the Great Maverick, but what is irksome is poor proofreading. The names of eminent people are misspelled. Can anyone be forgiven for writing ‘Jinha’ instead of ‘Jinnah’? Gujrat, the city in central Punjab, is spelled Gujarat (which is how the name of Narendra Modi’s state is written). ‘Martial law’ is written as ‘Marshall law’. The perfectionist that Manto was, he would turn in his grave if he were to see the copy of this otherwise useful book for those who can’t read the script in which the pieces were originally penned.

The reviewer is a senior journalist and author of four books, including Tales of Two Cities

Manto Saheb: Friends and Enemies of the Great Maverick
Translated by Vibha S. Chauhan and Khalid Alvi
Speaking Tiger, India
ISBN: 978-9388070256
287pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 20th, 2019

BOOK EXCERPT

Indian Writing: History and Perspectives

An eminent poet, critic, translator, playwright and travel-writer, K. Satchidanandan is often regarded as a torch-bearer of the socio-cultural revolution that redefined Malayalam literature. His first collection of poems, ‘Anchu Sooryan’ (Five Suns) came out in 1971 and since then he has published more than 20 collections of poetry. He has also authored an equal number of collections of essays on literature, philosophy and social issues, two plays, four books of travelogues and a memoir in Malayalam, besides four books on comparative Indian literature in English. He has won 51 awards including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and National Sahitya Akademi Award, Knighthood by the Govt of Italy, Dante Medal by Dante Institute, Ravenna, International Poetry for Peace Award by the government of UAE, and Indo-Polish Friendship Medal by the Govt of Poland.

His latest work, ‘Positions: Essays on Indian Literature’ features a careful selection from his essays on Indian literature, written over the past 25 years. The book contains essays that look for paradigms based on Indian textual practices and reading traditions, while also drawing freely on Indian and western critical concepts and close readings of certain texts. The first part of the book discusses questions on the idea of Indian literature, the poetics of Bhakti, the concept of the ‘modern’, the location of English writing in India, the conflicting ideas of India, projected especially by the subaltern literary movements and the issues of literary criticism and translation. The second part of the book discusses the work of individual authors including Sarala Das, Mirza Ghalib, Kabir, Rabindranath Tagore, Saratchandra Chatterjee, Sarojini Naidu, Kedarnath Singh, A.K. Ramanujan and Kamala Das.

‘Positions’ contribute to the growing, yet insufficient, corpus of literary studies in India.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

THE PLURAL AND THE SINGULAR

The Making of Indian Literature

Whenever I think of Indian literature, a story retold by A.K. Ramanujan comes to mind: Hanuman reaches the netherworld in search of Rama’s ring that had disappeared through a hole. The King of Spirits in the netherworld tells Hanuman that there have been so many Ramas over the ages; whenever one incarnation nears its end, Rama’s ring falls down. The King shows Hanuman a whole platter with thousands of rings, all of them Rama’s, and asks him to pick out his Rama’s ring. He tells this devotee from earth that his Rama too has entered the river Sarayu by now, after crowninghis sons, Lava and Kusha. Many Ramas also mean many Ramayanas and we have hundreds of them in oral, written, painted, carved and performed versions. If this is true of a single seminal Indian work, one needs only to imagine the diversity of the whole of Indian literature recited, narrated and written in scores of languages. No wonder, one of the fundamental questions in any discussion of Indian literature has been whether to speak of Indian literature in singular or plural. With 184 mother tongues (as per Census, 1991; it was 179 in George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, along with 544 dialects, and 1,652 in 1961), 22 of which are in the Eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution; 25 writing systems, 14 of them major, with scores of oral literary traditions and several traditions of written literature, most of them at least a millennium old, the diversity of India’s literary landscape can match only the complexity of its linguistic map. Probably it was this challenging complexity that had forced an astute critic like Nihar Ranjan Ray to conclude that there cannot be a single Indian literature, as there is no single language that can be termed ‘Indian’.

Excerpt published with the permission of the publisher: Niyogi Books Pvt Limited.

Tribute

Goodbye, my dear friend

We met in 1965, remember? In the MA English Literature class, taught by many luminaries, among whom the most brilliant were Nissim Ezekiel and Dr RB Patankar. You and Yasmeen Lukmani and I would traipse over to Dr Patankar’s room in the university building at Fort to hang around. That’s what it was. Hanging around, with cups of tea, and Dr Patankar sitting across the table, his fingertips together, and a characteristic half- smile lighting up his face. Often Dr MP Rege dropped in too, and our debates rose to some other level. How we argued. We were allowed to do that in those glorious days when ideas could be freely exchanged and challenged. You once said to me, “I wonder how you would look with your mouth shut.”

I could have said the same to you. We all talked too much, testing our ideas, revelling in new ones that the professors so generously shared. Dr Patankar and Dr Rege both wrote incisive blurbs for your first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis.

Years before it was published, you had called me. Come and spend the day at my place you had said. You had sounded secretive. When I arrived, you took me directly to your writing desk. You pulled out the chair for me. You said, “Sit and read this. I’ll give you lunch. Then you can go back to it.” “This” was a sheaf of some hundred pages of Saat Sakkam Trechalis. I’m not sure the title was in place, but everything else was. I was bowled over by what I read. Was it a novel? I didn’t know. You didn’t know. But it showed signs of being one.

Saat Sakkam Trechalis was a tough novel to write and an equally tough one to read. I was teaching at HR College when it was published. You stood outside the staff room door beckoning to me. You were distressed. Nobody had reviewed the book. Could I please? You had already talked to the editor of a mainline daily who had agreed to carry the review. When it was published, Kumar Ketkar wrote a letter to the editor telling us both off for being so “bourgeois” and “out of touch with things that really mattered”. He was at IIT then and an already fullblown or blossoming Marxist.

Years afterwards your cousin Shobha offered to translate the novel. She had already done two drafts. Both had left you dissatisfied. You came to me with the third. For seven days we sat together going through her translation word by word, phrase by phrase. It is a good translation, I said. You sighed the sigh of every author who finds the translation of his work not quite there. But it can’t be Kiran, I argued. Language isn’t a neutral medium. A language brings in its own tonalities. You sighed again, but called it a day. Shobha was taken off the hook, the translation was published and you and Tulsi gave me a lovely doria sari, which I wore for years afterwards.

Those were years when the cultural agencies of Britain, America and Germany held interesting seminars and book discussions. We were invited to one such discussion with the American theatre director and critic Harold Clurman. Mahesh Elkunchwar was also there. The participants were seated in two rings round an oval table. You and I were in the outer ring. In front of us in the inner ring was Pearl Padamsee. In the course of the debate you got very agitated and wanted to have your say. You took a long stride over the inner ring to grab the mike on the table, creating in the process a bit of slapstick comedy, which left everybody bemused. First, in your lunge for the mike, you dropped your chappal in Pearl’s lap and then went on to express yourself at great length in a mumble that nobody understood. Forty years on, I still felt a trifle nervous when you got up to speak at a St Xavier’s College seminar. But I needn’t have worried. For by then you had become an international figure and learnt that the first step to being understood was to open your mouth when you spoke. Your speech that day was brilliant.

Like Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and many of us back then, you were bilingual. Your next book Ravan and Eddie was in English. Nobody else writing in English could have given us such a consummately tragi-comic view of chawl life. Indo-Anglian writers did not know the Bombay you did, nor did they have your inimitable way of looking at life and its absurdities. No wonder you made it your mission in recent years to fight for the health of the BEST bus service. The BEST bus was uniquely Bombay. Your Bombay.

Your wit was always irreverent, and bawdy to boot. I remember the first reading of your play Bedtime Story at Dr Shreeram Lagoo’s place in Worli. Nothing like it had ever been written for the Marathi stage before. We laughed uproariously. We loved the wit, the crazy ideas, the tremendous scope it would give to directors and actors. But no directors and actors were forthcoming. The Marathi stage, even the experimental variety, tucked its tail firmly between its legs and fled. Did you learn your lesson from that experience? I wish you hadn’t. Because the play you wrote after the destruction of the Babri mosque had neither the delicious surprises nor the wit of the first. Rekha Sabnis put a lot of life into her production of it, but it still didn’t work. I told you so and you were hurt. Even offended. But perhaps I was forgiven when I loved Cuckold and said so in black-and-white.

The last book I read of yours was God’s Little Soldier. It was perhaps your first book to be panned. You were distraught. You asked me to write about it and I did. A book that large might not work as a whole, but might have large chunks that do, illumining the whole. I found many such in the book and wrote about them showing how the novel could be read through them.

After that I lost track of your work. We continued to meet on and off at various events. The last time we met was at Darryl D’Monte’s funeral, in March this year. We grieved over his going and recalled the time when he and I were putting together a special issue of the Times of India devoted to Bombay in commemoration of the newspaper’s sesquicentennial, in 1998. Among the writers we had invited to contribute to the issue was you. You did what only you would have done. You sent us an essay about Mumbai’s lepers. Darryl was horrified. We can’t use that in a celebratory issue he said. I returned the essay to you with great regret. You were not amused.

A #MeToo cloud was hanging over you when we met. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. As a friend I had to hear what you had to say. You didn’t know what had hit you. You defended yourself with conviction. I reached for your hand and held it tight. I am happy that, for once, I allowed the friend rather than the critic in me to respond. The body memory of our clasped hands consoles me now.

Shanta Gokhale is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, translator, critic, columnist and theatre historian.

The above tribute was originally published in The Mumbai Mirror on Saturday, September 7, 2019

 

 

Perspective

Beyond the Gulf Dream — Malayali writers investigate the lives of immigrant workers

What is the Gulf dream?

“Perhaps the same stock dreams that 1.4 million Malayalis in the Gulf had when they were in Kerala — a gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain.” (Goat Days 38)

The oil boom in the mid-1960’s beckoned to the cheap and unskilled labour and more than a few fleets of ships set course for the Middle East from the coasts of Kerala. Accounts of first-generation Malayalis who reached the Gulf shores on launches and ships are replete with bitter experiences. But the contribution of these expats or pravasis towards improving the standard of living in Kerala is always recounted with pride. Gulf cities and towns are still epicentres of dreams and nightmares for a large section of Malayali diaspora. The narratives around the life of a pravasi have thus become a major theme in the Malayali expatriate writings.

The saying that ‘Malayalis are as ubiquitous in the Gulf as the sandy deserts and shopping malls’, stands true even today. While the skilled and semi-skilled workers still choose to work in the Middle East, majority of migrant workers are unskilled Malayalis belonging to the lower middle-class. They often work without citizenship rights, endure miserable living conditions, and ultimately have to leave the Gulf. The humanitarian crisis of these labourers has managed only a bleak exposure in Indian fiction till now. However, in recent times, a number of novels and travelogues published in the Malayalam ingeniously encapsulate the ordeals of the migrant community.

Writer and author Benyamin’s Malayalam novel, Aadujeevitham (2008) is one such work. The novel gained a wide readership owing to its realistic and heart-wrenching prose, and was translated as Goat Days (2012) by Joseph Koyippally. The novel presents the protagonist, Najeeb’s journey through the desert land, the trials and hardships he undergoes. But more importantly, it draws a picture of the life of an immigrant worker forced into labour in Saudi Arabia. The inability to satisfy his needs from his meagre income and the regulation in sand mining activity in his hometown lures Najeeb to the Gulf.

“When a friend from Karuvatta casually mentioned there was a visa for sale, I felt a yearning I had never experienced before. How long have I been here, diving for a living? How about going abroad for once? Not for long. I am not that greedy. Only long enough to settle for a few debts. Add a room to the house. Just the usual cravings of most Malayalis.” (Goat Days 35)

Najeeb’s dreams shatter on receiving an inhuman treatment by his arbab, his employer. He was promised a job in a construction firm but was forced to spend over three years as bonded labourer in a goat farm. Yearning for the homeland and the sheer will of the immigrant labourers to survive the toughest situations form the pith and core of the novel.

Many such accounts of these ‘guest workers’ are remembered, recollected and often written in Malayalam. English translations of these become a window for the non-Malayali reader in to the social, mental and physical sufferings that the forced labourers endure in Gulf countries. Najeeb’s story contrasts our ideas and assumptions of the Gulf life of the expats — the one with fancy perfumes, imported chocolates, dry fruits, and gigantic houses that adorn the streets of Kerala.

Contemporary Malayali writers have explored the lives of underprivileged labourers who sailed to the Middle East, chasing the glittering Gulf dream, but slowly eroding in hard labour. Many travelogues, memoirs and other non-fiction works in the Malayalam, with a focus on the migrant labourer, are now added to the list of brilliant fiction titles in the language. Here, a list of books will give you a peek in to the lives of Indian labourers in the Gulf:

Marubhoomiyude Atmakatha (2008), which translates to ‘the biography of the desert’, is a travelogue by V Musafar Ahammed that won the Sahitya Akademi award in the year 2010. Ahammed’s work acquaints the reader with the slave narratives against the celebrated narratives of the Gulf dream. It was translated in English by PJ Mathew, and was titled, Camels in the Sky: Travels in Arabia.

Babu Bharadwaj’s Pravasiyude Kurippukal (2010) directly translating to ‘notes of an expat’, is a memoir of life and thoughts of a man in exile. The recurrent themes of love, life and loneliness are weaved into the narrative.

P Manikandhan’s Malayaliyude Swanthwasneshanangal (2010), ‘Malayalis’ search for themselves,’ was the winner of NV Krishna Warrier award for best critical work by Kerala Bhasha literature. It covers subjects from the Gulf migrant workers’ literary endeavours to politics of eco-feminism.

Jasmine Days, 2018 English translation of Benyamin’s Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal (2014) is the story of Sameera Parvin, a young Pakistani woman who works as a radio jockey in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country that is on the verge of revolution.

Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People, is a set of interrelated stories—with a hint of magic realism—on Indian labourers in the Middle East. The book won 2016 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Work cited:
Benyamin. Goat Days. Penguin Random House, 2012. Print.