Book review of ‘When Sun Meets Moon – Gender, Eros and Ecstasy in Urdu Poetry’ by Scott Kugle. Publisher: Orient BlackSwan 2016. Rs 1125.00 I think language is the repository of culture, contextual to time and space. And literature is our collective memory of that culture and its social and historical ambience. In bringing out […]
Aesthetics From The Twilight Zone Read More »
This is a conversation I had with my friends and aquaintances over WhatsApp when the hurt I felt about the lynching of Muslims, broke my and their silence. I thought we have heard many debates from the apologists and the dissenters. Should you not hear it from the horse’s mouth? Should not the bigger issue
FROM AN ATHEIST MUSLIM TO ALL INDIANS Read More »
[Sent to Mukta, Telangana Women’s Collective through Vimala Katineni on 28th January 2017] I shall not dwell interminably on the history of art in Telangana or what, if at all, was its feminist content. As a writer who once had the ambition to be a painter because of considerable appreciation from individuals and organisations, put
Art as Gendered Literature Read More »
There has been much clamour and sabre-rattling over Hyderabad of late. ‘HYDERABAD HAMARA HAI’ is an assertion of proprietorship, of rights and an implied ‘therefore-we-can-do-with- it-as-we-please’ relationship. Much like the Pandavas’ did with Draupati. And like her, Hyderabad was lost in a (loaded) dice game, once. She has been disrobed since. Just like then, this
Uniquely Hyderbadi Read More »
Dream. Dream on. It is this dream that will make you complete. The dreams that we build in wide open eyes, when we should actually be seeing reality; the dream that represents our innermost desire to be our own unique self, by bringing it to fruition; the dream to be an artiste, to perform, to
The Space of a Dream Read More »
Invisibility manifests itself in several ways. First, the paradox of invisibility is that we have to be conscious of the existence of the Other, to render him invisible. A non-existent entity is invisible by definition. Second, this consciousness has to be, what we will call, for lack of a better descriptive term, ‘ghost-visibility’. It is
Bill literally pussyfooted into my life at a crucial juncture. My two children were in the most difficult (for me) teenage phase where they found fighting each other a more exciting vocation than trying to determine what they wanted to be in their lives and how they would reach there. My husband was going through
Seven Years Later: She leaned her head against the headboard, exausted by the pain and fever and let out a sigh. Gathering her faculties together, picking up Baburnama with her one hand and putting on her reading glasses with the other, she settled down to heal herself as best she knew; by reading. She would
BABURNAMA AND SICKBED Read More »
“My love for you is photosensitive, you know?” He looked puzzled at her, then slowly started to shake, low rumble-like laughter escaped his lips, graduating into a full throated guffaw. “O my God! Mahi, you are unbelievable!” “Really.” She was laughing too. “Look, I love you more in early mornings, just when dawn is breaking
THE PHYSICS OF LOVE Read More »
I read your books, And mastered your tongue; Your Dante and Milton, Shakespeare and Keats, Your Hugo, Russel, Camus and Sartre And Marx; Your philosophy, your science. Your ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’, I watched with amazement; For, had not our civilizations Lived and grown Aeons before you ‘discovered’ us? I hear your righteous anger
