Aamer Hussein is a writer, critic and a Professorial Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton. 37 Bridges and Other Stories, his eighth book, is a masterful new collection of 13 stories. Written beautifully to capture exile, settlement, modernity, friendship, love and art, the book
Ahmedabad: A City in the World Amrita Shah Bloomsbury India Rs 499 | 216 pp Anand Patwardhan’s documentary Father, Son and Holy War begins with scenes of destruction from the Bombay riots of December 1992 and January 1993,
Looking at my somewhat grim face in the mirror, I remembered what a writer from New York had said to me about the city that is home. Sitting across the table, he had told me that Jaipur made him
Once again, the law has taken its own (murky and dubious) course, and once again, the ‘collective conscious of the revenge-seeking society’ has been satisfied—if it can ever be satisfied! Yakub’s body, like Afzal Guru’s, lies cold under the
You know how you always miss what is right in front of you? That has been the classic case with me and this little village called Mattur. Let me first tell you why it is famous. Long, long back
I have seen the future, and there are no motorcycles. No bicycles either, nor buses. There are few pedestrians, and all of them seem to be white. Lots of cars, though. And shiny Metro trains. And airplanes and helicopters and
How does a secular intellectual feminist perspective emerge when one is raised in a highly patriarchal religious community? What specific features is this perspective likely to have, depending on the extent of oppression one experienced at the hands of the
“Puzzled, I stare at the skein not knowing which end I should pull so that one strand comes out untangled, and with its help I could fly beyond the horizon, reaching out like a kite.” —Ismat Chughtai, ‘Chhoti Aapa’
Ismat Chughtai, the most provocative and rebellious among women writers in Urdu, wrote voluminously until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1988. Her formidable body of work comprises several collections of short stories, novels, sketches, plays, reportage, radio plays as
When I saw that tiny collection with her name on the spine on a public library shelf, I couldn’t help being curious. Ismat Chughtai was a friend of my aunt’s; she liked to listen to my mother sing Rajasthani folksongs,