In the 2010s, local blessing pills made in the Arunachal Pradesh town of Tawang were replaced by those made on the Indian mainland. The shift in production is also a story of nationalist transformations in this borderland. THE VERTICAL Tawang's Blessing Pills In the 2010s, local blessing pills made in the Arunachal Pradesh town of Tawang were replaced by those made on the Indian mainland. The shift in production is also a story of nationalist transformations in this borderland. VOL. 2 REPORTAGE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Courtesy of Mihir Joshi. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Courtesy of Mihir Joshi. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Reportage Arunachal Pradesh 7th Jun 2024 Reportage Arunachal Pradesh Tibet Hindutva Hindu Nationalism Tawang Monastery Indigeneity Buddhism Asylum Himalayas Himalayan Tribes BJP Steven Kloos Blessing Pills Medicine Health Chinese Occupation of Tibet Space Indigeneous Spaces Spatial Relations Respatialization Labor Northeast India Sister States Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Spend a week traversing circuitous trails, deep gorges, and high mountain passes in Arunachal Pradesh of the recent past, and you might have come across something otherworldly. Situated atop a hill in a small town called Tawang, a region that has long been disputed between India and China, is a majestic 400-year-old monastery with intricate and colorful artwork. It is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in India. Every three years, monks and volunteers here would chant the mani dungyur mantra one hundred million times. They would do so to bless mani rilbu , red globule-size pills made from roasted barley flour, herbs, and a fermenting agent called phab gyun . “We would sun-dry these pills for weeks and chant the mani dungyur mantra round the clock seeking blessings from the deity Avalokiteshvara,” recalls Rinchin Norbu, an octogenarian who volunteered in the Tawang monastery in the 1960s. These pills, which were highly valued by Tibetan Buddhists and took weeks to make, were eventually distributed to the public because they were believed to ensure the well-being of the people. The practice continued until the 2010s when these local blessing pills were replaced by ones made on the Indian mainland. Intriguingly, this shift in production also tells the story of nationalist transformations of this borderland. In 1959, Tawang became a major asylum route for Tibetans fleeing Chinese occupation . The 14th Dalai Lama entered India via Tawang and a large number of Tibetan refugees who followed him settled here. Thus, the population of the region grew to include Indigenous Himalayan tribes who follow Tibetan Buddhism as well as ethnic Tibetan refugees. Upon settling in India, Tibetan refugees started rebuilding famous Tibetan monasteries across the country, from Himachal Pradesh in the north to Karnataka in the south west. These monasteries produced various blessing pills of their own, which started to circulate among the Himalayan Buddhists. They have become so popular since the late 1990s that they have replaced the mani rilbu made by the Tawang Monastery. Eventually, by 2010, the Tawang Monastery decided to stop making mani rilbu due to lack of demand. Thus, Tawang blessing pills, among the most prominent locally-produced Tibetan “power objects ’ in the region, disappeared. Today, Rinchin Norbu mourns the disappearance of the Tawang mani rilbu tradition. But his 37-year old son Leki Wangchu, who is an ardent supporter of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party, says he has always preferred blessing pills produced by Tibetan monasteries in mainland India over Tawang’s mani rilbu. “The pills from Dharamsala [Himachal Pradesh] are produced by doctors and monks trained in Sowa Rigpa [Tibetan medicine]. Most people these days choose these national jinden [pills] made by Sowa Rigpa experts rather than local mani rilbu. The mani rilbu produced in Tawang Monastery was only a local tradition brought over from Tibet by some monk in the nineteenth century,” Leki tells me emphasizing the ‘Indianness’ of the mani rilbu from Dharamsala in contrast to the obscure Tibetan origin of Tawang mani rilbu. Sowa Rigpa was recognized by the Indian government as an “Indian system of medicine” back in 2010. The popularity of the practice is rising across India following its government recognition. Anthropologist Steven Kloos has captured in rich ethnographic details the tussle between the Himalayan Tibetan Buddhists and the exiled Tibetan community in India over the ownership of Sowa Rigpa. He wrote in the journal Medical Anthropology Today , “While Tibetan medicine had been known and practiced for centuries in the Tibetan-influenced Indian Himalayan regions, it was only with the arrival of Tibetan refugees in India in 1959 and their subsequent institutionalization of Tibetan medicine there that this health tradition developed into a ‘medical system’ with sufficient standards, popularity, and political clout to be recognized by the Indian state.” While Leki Wangchu attributes the decline of Tawang mani rilbu to the rising popularity of standardized Sowa Rigpa medicine, the disappearance of various local, spatialized care practices is also triggered by the rise of right-wing nationalism in the region. In the last two decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS), the ruling party in India and its affiliated cultural organization that champion Hindu majoritarian religious and cultural nationalism, have made a strong ideological inroads in Arunachal Pradesh. As their vision of ‘greater India’ gains acceptance in this borderland, there is an increasing tendency among the locals to assert “Indian” identity through various means, including through purchase of commodities made in India or consumption of cultural products associated with the Indian mainland. Sowa Rigpa's increasing popularity rests to a considerable extent on its supposed “Indianness” following its recognition by the Indian government. For old-timers like Rinchin Norbu, however, the locally made mani rilbu was much more than just a medicine. It was a care practice deeply rooted in the relations humans and local deities share in this landscape and their local understandings of disease etiology. People here believe in a range of deities and spirits connected to mountains, rivers, and other geographical features of the landscape, such as yulha (land deity), tsen, and nyen (deities of the mountain). Some of these deities are like human beings with worldly emotions such as anger and jealousy. “If you contaminate the dwellings of yulha or tsen, or offend them by visiting their places in ungodly hours, they may catch you and cause illnesses such as skin disease and nerve pain,” Rinchin Norbu tells me, “If you eat mani rilbu the spirit will leave you.” Not only did mani rilbu help the local people navigate the anxieties of unpredictable encounters with local deities and spirits, but it was a traditional way of co-production of care in a specific landscape. “The production of Tawang mani rilbu itself was a localized collaborative process between monks, nuns, and lay people, as well as Avalokiteshvara, the divinity that blessed these pills,” writer Yeshe Dorje Thongchi, an acclaimed writer and novelist from Arunachal Pradesh explained to me. In contrast, Rinchin Norbu says, the blessing pills brought over from outside are “just medicines” with no relations to the landscape. “They aren’t as effective as the Tawang mani rilbu we used to make simply because these pills [and their makers] don’t know the local deities causing illnesses in our bodies.” The rise of Hindu nationalism in India has triggered new spiritual practices intended to reify a sense of homogeneous “Indianness.” They often emerge at the expense of long-standing local traditions that relate to place, community, and tradition. The replacement of Tawang mani rilbu by blessing pills made by Sowa Rigpa practitioners from the Indian mainland is just one of many such examples.∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

The Revolution won’t materialise / out of your mere thoughts. FICTION & POETRY Skulls K Za Win The Revolution won’t materialise / out of your mere thoughts. This is the final poem, dated 23.02.2021, by K Za Win (1982–2021), who was shot dead by Myanmar security forces at a protest in Monywa on 3 March 2021. Revolution will be in bloom only when air, water and earth— all the nutrients are in agreement. Before the Revolution opened out, a bullet blew someone’s brains out, out on the street. Did that skull have a message for you? Faced with the devil is this or that statement relevant? In the dharma of dha you can’t just wave the sword. Step forward and cut them down! The Revolution won’t materialise out of your mere thoughts. Like blood, one must rise. Don’t ever waver again! The fuse of the Revolution is either you or myself! First published in Adi Magazine , Summer 2021, t his poem appeared in Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring: Witness Poems and Essays from Burma/Myanmar 1988-2021 , edited by Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman, and published by Gaudy Boy in North America, Balestier Press in the UK, and Ethos Books in Singapore. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 "Skulls" by Hafsa Ashfaq. Mixed-media, digital illustration & acrylic on paper (2023). SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Poetry Myanmar Military Coup Dissident Writers Revolution Spring Revolution Pogroms Picking Prison Incarceration Military Crackdown Politics of Art Adi Magazine Monywa Posthumous Burma Histories of Revolutionary Politics K ZA WIN (1982-2021) was a land rights activist and a Burmese language teacher in addition to a poet. In 2015, he marched with students along the 350 mile route from Mandalay to Yangon for education reforms until the rally was shut down near Yangon and he along with most of the student leaders were arrested and jailed. He spent a year and one month in prison, after which he published his best-known work, a collection of long-form poems, My Reply to Ramon . In the 2020 election, he said he didn’t vote for the National League for Democracy, whose policies he was very critical of, but when the NLD won by a landslide and an election fraud was alleged as an excuse for the 2021 military coup, he was on the frontlines of the anti-coup protests. He was shot dead by Myanmar security forces at a protest in Monywa on 3 March 2021. Poetry Myanmar 4th Apr 2023 On That Note: In the Yoma Foothills 26th FEB Whose Footfall is Loudest? 24th FEB Discourses on Kashmir 24th OCT

“When I say that language has failed us, I mean that there is no amount of information you can give a society that necessarily means it will be compelled to act.” COMMUNITY On the Relationship between Form & Resistance “When I say that language has failed us, I mean that there is no amount of information you can give a society that necessarily means it will be compelled to act.” VOL. 2 PANEL AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Panel 2 of the event "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse" held on 30th March 2024. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Panel 2 of the event "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse" held on 30th March 2024. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Panel Language 17th Apr 2024 Panel Language Solidarity Films Film-Making Capital Investigative Journalism Criminal Justice Abolitionism Solidarity: Across the Disaster-Verse Prisons Police Personal History The Petty Self Kashmiri Struggle Translation India Anti-Colonialism Two Refusals Goa Hybrid Multimedia Sham-e-Ali Nayeem Portuguese Nationalism Afro-Asianism Bandung Conference Angola Mozambique Sita Valles Portuguese Communist Party Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola Angolan Liberation Youth/Police Project Act of Listening Stop and Frisk Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. The second panel from our event on 30th March 2024, "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse," at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, New York, which marked the close of Volume 2 Issue 1 of SAAG. Here, Iman Iftikhar, Sharmin Hossain, Maira Khwaja, Kalpana Raina, and Suneil Sanzigir discuss how the varied forms of storytelling they use inform and are informed by their politics, resistance, and solidarity and how they feel it is most useful. This panel picks up from where Panel 1, "What do we mean when we talk about Solidarity?" ends. What follows is a discussion of form & storytelling with: Iman Iftikhar, a researcher, educator, co-founder and manager of Kitab Ghar, an Associate Editor at SAAG, and an editor at Folio Books. Maira Khwaja, a journalist, multimedia producer, and researcher at the Invisible Institute . She is also an Associate Producer of We Grown Now dir. Minhal Baig, April 2024, Stage 6 Films & Sony Pictures Classics. Kalpana Raina, a co-translator of For Now, It is Night: Stories by Hari Krishna Kaul (Archipelago Books, February 2024) Sharmin Hossain, an abolitionist organizer, artist, and the Organizing Director at 18 Million Rising that organizes Asian Americans. Suneil Sanzgiri, a filmmaker, researcher, artist, whose first solo exhibition, Here the Earth Grows Gold , opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2023. Photographs courtesy of Josh Steinbauer. SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER-VERSE Panel 1: What do we mean when we talk about Solidarity? SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER-VERSE Quintet Performance More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

There's really no shortage of Tamil works to translate, according to N Kalyan Raman, the acclaimed Tamil translator of Perumal Murugan's novel “Poonachi.” On the docket: plays, poems, and works by radical Modernist Tamil literary figures spanning much of the 20th century. INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 5 · Tamil translation & Perumal Murugan's “Poonachi” There's really no shortage of Tamil works to translate, according to N Kalyan Raman, the acclaimed Tamil translator of Perumal Murugan's novel “Poonachi.” On the docket: plays, poems, and works by radical Modernist Tamil literary figures spanning much of the 20th century. VOL. 1 LIVE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Chennai 7th Dec 2020 Live Chennai Tamil Translation Perumal Murugan SAAG Chats Poonachi Modernism Tamil Modernist Literature Playwriting Sahitya Akademi Progressive Writers Radical Writers The Story of a Goat Pudhumaipithan Satire Perundevi Tamil Diasporas Language Language Politics Trail by Silence Resolve Pyre Inequality Modernist Literature Avant-Garde Traditions The Tamil Radical Tradition Ashokamitran Devibharathi Current Show Politics of Translation Ambivalence Poomani Heat Vaasanthi The Goat Thief Talking Animals Scroll Seasons In The Palm Pastoral Primitivism Avant-Garde Form Eru Veyyil Tamil Nadu One Part Woman The Colours of Evil Si Su Chellappa Short Stories Poetry Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. In Episode 5, Aishwarya Kumar had a discussion on Instagram Live on Tamil translation with acclaimed writer and translator N Kalyan Raman, most famously the translator of Perumal Murugan's Poonachi: The Story of a Black Goat , which won the Sahitya Akademi's Translation Award in 2022. Raman discusses the nature of translation, his experience with Murugan's work and the time when he encountered it, as well as seminal Modernist Tamil literary figures, such as Pudhumaipithan, known for his revolutionary and satirical fiction in a radical vein, as well as contemporary poets such as Perundevi. There's no shortage of works to translate, Raman argues convincingly. The Tamil short story, he argues further, is the true peak of Tamil modernist achievement in literature. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Over nearly two decades, the opulence of the Jaipur Literature Festival has only grown and the prestige of attendance has attained unparalleled heights. Yet Torsa Ghosal, of Kaya Press’s imprint Kulhar Books, returned in 2025 with critical realizations about JLF’s core agenda. Reflecting not only on the nationalistic undertones celebrated but also on what was conspicuously absent, Ghosal points to the festival’s failure to meaningfully represent Muslim and Arab voices, and to a troubling insincerity in engaging with the moral crises of our time. BOOKS & ARTS Spiritually Chic Over nearly two decades, the opulence of the Jaipur Literature Festival has only grown and the prestige of attendance has attained unparalleled heights. Yet Torsa Ghosal, of Kaya Press’s imprint Kulhar Books, returned in 2025 with critical realizations about JLF’s core agenda. Reflecting not only on the nationalistic undertones celebrated but also on what was conspicuously absent, Ghosal points to the festival’s failure to meaningfully represent Muslim and Arab voices, and to a troubling insincerity in engaging with the moral crises of our time. GENERAL REVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR "Year of the Snake" (2020), digital drawing by Chaaya Prabhat. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 "Year of the Snake" (2020), digital drawing by Chaaya Prabhat. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Review Jaipur 1st Aug 2025 Review Jaipur Jaipur Literature Festival JLF Kumbh Mela Hindu Nationalism religious nationalism Religion Contemporary Literature Literature & Liberation Pop Spirituality Elitist elitism tokenism Representational Space representation suppression Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Since launching in 2006, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) has been repeatedly called the “Kumbh Mela” of literature festivals. Kumbh Mela is a Hindu religious event held every six to twelve years at the confluence of the three rivers: Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati, where devotees convene in numbers unmatched by any other religious gathering in the world. The Kumbh analogy signals JLF’s massive scale and popularity. Indeed, the book festival is a mela, a social spectacle, that brings anywhere between three to five hundred speakers to Jaipur, shuttles them between the venue and the various four- and five-star hotels lodging them, and swishes them off to party in the city’s gorgeous palaces and forts. 400,000 visitors and around 4000 vendors thronged the festival grounds in 2024 according to estimates. Until recently, the staunch religious underpinnings of Kumbh had no direct equivalent in a festival that branded itself as an international “literary show,” and that has hosted a diverse assortment of luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, Orhan Pamuk, Kamila Shamsie, Oprah Winfrey, and the Dalai Lama. But over the last few decades, Hindu religious identity has increasingly defined national belonging and nationalist policies in India. This year’s Maha Kumbh Mela was attended by 4 times as many people as the previous iteration of the event, blazing proof of the upthrust in religious fervour among Indians and diasporic Hindus. JLF’s programming was not immune to the pulls of religious nationalism. The festival kept the crowds sated on pageantry and celebrations which often obscured the ways in which panels and talks questioned the nationalist agenda. Supported by a SALT travel grant , I was at JLF to scout authors in my role as an acquiring editor for Kaya Press’s brand new South Asian imprint, Kulhar Books . Working with Kaya’s managing editor Neelanjana Banerjee and the rest of the Kaya team, Kulhar editors—Rajiv Mohabir, Jhani Randhawa, and I—aspire to publish stylistically and politically imaginative literature; works that unsettle formulaic expectations caging and sanitizing South Asian literary expressions in America. Courtesy of the author. My first afternoon at JLF I heard the British author Sheena Patel speak about her desire for “the now to be captured” in her writing rather than telling a “timeless story,” and in a similar vein, my intention was to get a sense of “the now” of the literary-cultural scene in South Asia, intuiting that the festival would offer some—even if narrow—opening into the ideas and themes dominating the space. Flipping through the festival program, I tried to locate sessions on literary writings from and about South Asia with a focus on contemporary translated literature and newer voices, a task that proved to be somewhat at odds with JLF’s broad-ranging, political establishment- and celebrity-friendly slate of events, a host of which staged flaccid conversations on Hindu mythology, Hindu national and political identities, excitement about the potentials of AI and digital technology, corporate and startup success, even wellness practices. The festival has a “flashy, dazzling quality,” notes Mrinalina Chakravarty in her 2014 book, In Stereotype , which examines the hackneyed tropes found in literary representations of South Asia. At this year’s edition, social media influencers, Bollywood celebrities, and politicians predictably clinched the largest platform—the front lawn. Educator-philanthropist-billionaire Sudha Murthy’s talk in the lawn was attended by her son-in-law, U.K.’s former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Sunak went viral for greeting the lawn’s audience with folded hands in a “namaste,” obeying the nudges of an elderly woman whom Indian media variously identified as his mother and aunt-in-law. A forty-five-minute session on the same stage was allocated to politician and author Shashi Tharoor unpacking the experience of living as Shashi Tharoor. Influencer Prajakta Koli blurted unprompted that her rom com novel contains “discrepancies” that she hoped readers would not pick up. JLF is often “a theatre of the absurd,” as Chakravarty observes, and the “incongruous juxtapositions of the bizarre and serious” raise questions about whether the festival coheres. JLF does not cohere— purposefully so. Vendors selling gorgeous brass jhumkas, wooden handicrafts, linen quilts and clothes form the backdrop of high-spirited debates and book launches. It is a carnival, almost in the Bakhtinian sense, a heteroglossia boasting of eclectic interests and priorities, but without the revolutionary zing Bakhtin associates with carnivalesque entertainment. JLF makes no pretence of renouncing hierarchies among speakers, vendors, volunteers, media persons, and spectators. There is a distinctly feudal quality to the “royal” warmth the green vest-wearing volunteers and interns shower on the invitees, riffing on the grand, luxurious image of Rajasthan in both the global and desi imagination. Rajasthan is after all the province where celebrities like Liz Hurley and Priyanka Chopra have hosted their weddings. Like crazy rich desi weddings, the happy hodge podge at JLF trades in stereotypes about South Asia’s mystique and splendour. JLF has a controversial history with respect to free speech, which Amitav Ghosh points out , shows how literature has become “embedded within a wider culture of public spectacles and performances…overtaking, and indeed overwhelming writing itself as the primary end of a life in letters.” As far as frenzied public spectacles in India go, none in recent times can compete with the individual and collective performances of the Hindu religious identity at the Mahakumbh, and the book festival arena is a porous zone. The five-day programming at JLF, what speakers thought permissible to say or not say, the audience questions, the popularity of sessions were all rooted within a broader cultural sphere that in 2025 was flooded with giant billboards starring the tight-lipped smiles of India’s Prime Minister alongside his brother in arms, the ascetic-politician Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Both their portraits were pasted onto scenes showing millions on the banks of a river, coloured a shade of blue so rich that I could tell it could only have been achieved after going through layers of digital filters, if the raw photograph was ever of the muddied brown Ganges I have known and swum in. The hoardings carried taglines like “Message from Kumbh, The Nation Must Unify” and “Sanatan Pride, Maha Kumbh Edition.” Courtesy of the author. Desi internet was trending Kumbh news and memes, minting new viral heartthrobs—hot Sadhus and Sadhvis—through WhatsApp forwards and Instagram reels, plus supplying shock and cringe content, that I and surely other festival attendees dutifully consumed. Young people are showing interest in scriptures, Malashri Lal remarked at a session launching mythologist Sunita Pant Bansal’s A Comprehensive Guide to Indian Scriptures . The slim book introduces Hindu sacred texts like the Puranas, Vedas, and the epics “as it is,” the author insisted, “without my opinion.” The aim is to demystify and correct beliefs about Hindu religious texts. Why, then, does the jacket say “Indian scriptures” rather than Hindu scriptures? A young audience member asked after admitting he was “nervous and worried” to raise the question. And if the book is on Hinduism, have texts from Nepal been included? The publisher Dipankar Mukherjee, who was also on stage, chivalrously swooped in to field the question, rationalizing that they were “trying to be somewhat politically correct to ensure the book reaches the right audience…Where they [the scriptures] started to become codified, recorded that’s part of current India.” He subsequently plugged the festival co-director William Dalrymple’s latest book, crediting Dalrymple for completing “half our work” tracing the influence of Indian traditions and philosophy on other cultures. Mukherjee’s blithe verbal acrobatics for swapping Hindu with India not only aligns with the religion-nation nexus the country’s government has openly adopted in the last decade but also follows the money as it were. Writing for New York Times, Anupreeta Das claims that book festivals are all the rage among India’s youth. On the surface, the hipness of literary festivals bodes well. Das notes young people “are increasingly reading literature in their native tongues alongside books written in English. For these readers, books open worlds that India’s higher education system, with its focus on time-consuming preparation for make-or-break examinations, often does not.” But what are the young people reading in these various languages? What kinds of worlds are books unlocking? The answers are not straightforward. Trapped in a long, slow-moving queue formed in front of a toilet in Amer Clarks, women were commiserating about the shortage of bathrooms at the venue. Interrupting this communal bonding, a woman in her early twenties started to hype up her novel that retells the Hindu epic Ramayana. Ramayana has become something of a foundational text in the Hindu nationalist imagination. The woman pitching her retelling to a captive, pee-holding audience explained that her book followed the love story of the Hindu demigod Lakhsman whom “feminism” has unfairly sidelined. Her pithy spiel echoed a pervasive cultural sentiment wherein Hindu culture and Hindu Gods need constant protection from the evil eyes of liberals and heretics. Another young woman asked for the book’s title to order on Amazon. Some days later, while looking up the book, I stumbled upon the author’s public Instagram grid that featured side-by-side photos of her in JLF and at Mahakumbh. Completing the spiritual chic circuit of JLF-Mahakumbh, she follows in the illustrious footsteps of others like Sudha Murty who took a holy dip at Kumbh days ahead of her JLF session. Browsing the aisles of bookstores and catalogues of Indian publishers gives an impression that pop spirituality is booming in India. OMTV, an “Indic storytelling” app, surveyed its users and found that around 80% of those consuming spiritual content are aged between 18 and 30. At the same time, The Crossword Bookstore on JLF festival grounds had eager customers crowding pretty much every corner, picking up new and old titles, not just the spirituality laced ones. And in an offline and online public sphere dominated by Maha Kumbh , JLF still managed to hold some conversations offering critical and nuanced perspectives on political Hinduism. Courtesy of the author. But among the nearly three-hundred delegates, the festival included just a handful of Indian Muslim speakers. Bollywood celebrities like the director Imtiaz Ali, Huma Qureshi, and Javed Akhtar were part of this roster. Mujibur Rehman, who used a comparative framework drawn from histories of Black resistance to talk about the political marginalization and de-Islamization of Indian Muslims in Shikwa-e-Hind (2024), was challenged by a middle-aged, ostensibly Hindu, ponytailed thought leader among the audience. “I have lots of confusion about the premise of your book…Should we continue to call Muslims minorities with twenty percent population?” the man asked. Rehman told the man his book answers the question and supplemented his response with analogies underscoring how minority identity and minority rights are not simply pegged on numbers or even the success and visibility of a select few. India’s constitution despite its secular promises is inherently majoritarian, he argued, which informs the cultural landscape where Indians clapping at America’s flag do not invite suspicion, but an Indian Muslim boy clapping at Pakistan’s flag is interpreted as sedition. Kashmiri Muslim, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi literary authors were largely absent from this edition. Some absences can be blamed on logistics—Pakistan passport holders have immense difficulty procuring Indian visas at present, unless of course they are Maha Kumbh enthusiast Hindus. Then they are handed Indian visas swiftly . State rules force compliance but even state policies cannot explain all erasures. Theatre actor and director MK Raina who comes from a Kashmiri Pandit family, spoke about owing his career to the state of Kashmir’s policy of allowing free education right from the 1940s, commented on inequities in contemporary India, and criticized the unrealistic portrayals of Kashmir in Bollywood. He left the stage when his co-panelist, the Rajasthani singer and thespian Ila Arun, started enacting a lengthy sequence from an Ibsen play she adapted and partly set in Kashmir, where a character “hurts the mother” and “hurts the motherland.” Raina’s abrupt departure was first extrapolated as resulting from his frustration about the supposed misrepresentation of Kashmir and later as following from his irritation with Ila Arun for hogging stage time. Multiple sessions addressed Israel’s war on Gaza, but the sessions recycled a small group of speakers that included the Indian American author Pankaj Mishra, Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh, Pulitzer-winning American journalist Nathan Thrall, and Israeli British historian Avi Shlaim. The number of Arab authors featured was in the low single digits. A JLF official reportedly interrupted an interview between the Press Trust of India and the Palestinian envoy to India Abed Elrazeg Abu Jazer on the grounds that the festival’s PR team hadn’t sanctioned it. JLF’s speaker lineup suffers from issues common in invite-only prestige events. The curators turn to the same authors and cultural delegates year after year, and even each year, the same names reappear across sessions. The festival seems to be battling two opposing drives: an impulse to represent a diversity of relevant ideas and a desire to wring the most out of a trusted clique of speakers, resulting in conversations that sometimes feel repetitive, sometimes tokenistic. Although the festival is held in the state of Rajasthan and makes decorative use of Rajasthan’s crafts and colours to create Instagrammable corners, Rajasthani authors and Rajasthani literature are not at the forefront. The festival is a shimmery tamasha that, like high-budget high-gloss Bollywood films, is fun to dip in, so long as one is willing to forgo critical questions. The scale of the festival remains something to marvel at. But other literature festivals that have cropped up in India after Jaipur, such as the Kerala Literature Festival and Mizoram Literature Festival , have made more emphatic attempts at grounding their events in their local cultures. JLF, on the other hand, is happy to remain the Chicken Tikka Masala of festivals, palatable to a wide-ranging, somewhat international audience, seemingly representative of South Asia, with a desi man and a Scottish one claiming credits for its origins. Courtesy of the author. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Our live event FLUX: An Evening in Dissent began with an unplugged performance by Pakistani folk-pop musician Natasha Noorani of the unreleased title track from her upcoming album. INTERACTIVE FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" Our live event FLUX: An Evening in Dissent began with an unplugged performance by Pakistani folk-pop musician Natasha Noorani of the unreleased title track from her upcoming album. VOL. 1 LIVE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the event in full on IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Lahore 5th Dec 2020 Live Lahore Event FLUX Pakistan Pakistani Pop Women Singers of Pakistan Pop Music Retro Music Contemporary Music Contemporary Pop Unplugged Musician Folk Progressive Rock Experimental Music Khayal Gayaki Choro Munaasib Urdu Music Urdu Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent A pre-release, unplugged version of Natasha Noorani's as-yet-unreleased single "Choro." The official music video followed by a Q&A on the video's aesthetic was subsequently featured in our 2021 event "In Grief, In Solidarity." Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Megha Majumdar in conversation with Fiction Editor Kartika Budhwar. COMMUNITY On Class & Character in Megha Majumdar's Debut Novel Megha Majumdar in conversation with Fiction Editor Kartika Budhwar. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview West Bengal Politics 29th Sep 2020 Interview West Bengal Politics English as Class Signifier Hindutva National Book Award Longlist Debut Novel Humor Centering the Silly The Baby-Sitters Club Debut Authors Working-Class Stories Body Politics Queerness Trans Politics Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Bodily vulnerability is so crucial to confront with people who are shamed, opressed, and made to feel so aware of themselves—even with where they can stand in a street, or whether they can love. RECOMMENDED: A Burning by Megha Majumdar More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

In the wake of the devastating effects of the monsoon season in 2022, villagers in Sindh contend with the loss of their livelihoods and the ecological disaster that’s become increasingly familiar. Sabu Khan Buriro was initially submerged, but the nearby Hamal Lake continued to overflow. Villagers, distrustful of the indifferent and lethargic Pakistani state, took it upon themselves to maintain and strengthen flood protection bunds. THE VERTICAL Dispatch from a Village Near Hamal Lake, Sindh, in August In the wake of the devastating effects of the monsoon season in 2022, villagers in Sindh contend with the loss of their livelihoods and the ecological disaster that’s become increasingly familiar. Sabu Khan Buriro was initially submerged, but the nearby Hamal Lake continued to overflow. Villagers, distrustful of the indifferent and lethargic Pakistani state, took it upon themselves to maintain and strengthen flood protection bunds. VOL. 2 ISSUE 1 DISPATCH AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Photograph courtesy of Rahmat Tunio (2022). ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Photograph courtesy of Rahmat Tunio (2022). SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Dispatch Sindh 12th Mar 2023 Dispatch Sindh Climate Change Floods in Pakistan Capitalism Women Democratic Front Awami Workers Party Sabu Khan Buriro Hamal Lake Livestock Crops Trauma Displacement Anthropocene Environment Sehwan Warah Dadu Environmental Disaster Disaster Capitalism Flood Protection Corruption Pakistan Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. The weather in northwest Sindh remained hot and humid a month after the torrential monsoon spell that wreaked havoc in the region. Among the ceaseless deluge, the struggle to save major cities in northwest Sindh, such as Dadu, Sehwan, Johi, Mehar, and Warah, continued. In the aftermath, people themselves have taken charge of strengthening and monitoring flood protection bunds, reflecting mistrust of the state and its elected officials. As per the official statistics, which are still believed to be under-reported, rainwater and floods have impacted 33 million people, displaced nearly 10 million, and killed more than 1500. 1.5 million houses and a million livestock have also been lost, and hundreds of thousands of acres of crop fields—15% of the country’s rice crop and 40% of its cotton—have been ruined. The full picture of the destruction will only emerge once the water level recedes and surveying becomes possible. On the morning of 24th August, our village, Sabu Khan Buriro, was flooded due to intense water pressure from the overflowing Hamal Lake. The rising water soon breached the flood protection bund, and as water gushed into our village, our priority was to bring our valuables and belongings to dry patches of land. Wading through waist-deep water and in some areas chest deep water, people couldn’t take anything other than bed sheets, charpoys and some rice and wheat grains. They were forced to retreat to elevated surfaces like the flood protection bunds, which were soon packed with people and their belongings. Official rescue efforts are rare in these areas, but surprisingly, the district administration sent 5 mini trucks to evacuate the village. In a state of panic and shock as the water submerged the village, the people were evacuated and most of us ended up on the road. But this is not a story about my village alone. It’s the story of an entire region dispossessed by the floods and unprecedented rains, and the specter of poor governance, unchecked capitalism, and climate disregard that has enabled ecological collapse. Mass migration has begun. Families on the roads are forced to stay on charpoys without shelter, food is scarce, and people are struggling with basic necessities. Many people left for cities unwillingly to save their lives, but still there are hundreds who stayed back in dry areas near villages to look after their livestock or moved to safer places with the help of local boats as flood water levels increased. Thanks to the timely help of comrades from the Women Democratic Front, a Pakistan-based socialist-feminist organization, in our village, my family and I succeeded in rescuing essential goods before the village was delinked from mainland Sindh. This is the story of an entire region dispossessed by the floods and unprecedented rains, and the specter of poor governance, unchecked capitalism, and climate disregard that has enabled ecological collapse. One of the biggest challenges we are facing after rescuing our families is making contact with people who decided to stay behind. When the flooding began, the elected MPA’s family, a major feudal family in the area, instructed people to leave, but many refused in order to look after their livestock and save what little grain they could. It's impossible for 'elected' MPAs and feudal families to understand the logic of village residents. Our livestock and the rice and wheat saved from last year’s harvest are all we own. It is difficult for villagers to leave the only assets they rely upon at the mercy of the government, because we’ve learned over our lifetimes that the government isn't serious about helping people in the long term, indulging instead in corruption around flood relief goods without any long-term planning. Many of the villagers migrating have brought cattle and other livestock with them, fearing the animals would suffer from deadly ailments. Caring for the livestock and arranging for their fodder has become an additional responsibility on top of people’s own survival, but to neglect them would further threaten people’s livelihoods. The livestock and the products they offer—wool, eggs, milk, and more—are not only a source of essential nutrients, but social wealth as well. With their crops destroyed and livestock impacted, people are left with no source of earning or income for the year ahead. As villages and crop fields have turned into lakes and wetlands, cities, water sieged from all sides and acting as makeshift refugee shelters for flood-impacted people, have become a breeding ground for different diseases. Diarrhea, malaria, fever, skin diseases, and respiratory illnesses are spreading, and one of the major priorities for flood-displaced people has been the provision of medical care along with food. But in addition to physical ailments, for displaced persons, the traumatic experience of losing their homes and becoming refugees has led to psychological issues that largely go untreated and ignored. In the medical camp that we organized through the Awami Workers Party and Women Democratic Front's help, many patients, unable to sleep at night or during the day, asked about sleeping pills. This trauma has been repeating, and worsening, for those living in the floodplains of the Indus. My grandfather's brother, Hakim Ali, who is visually impaired, has spent 60 years in the fields and villages of our region. He learned to herd with his brothers in childhood and then passed that knowledge onto his sons, and now grandsons and granddaughters. He has brilliantly memorized how to navigate around the village and the grasslands around Hamal Lake, and in the mountains and fields of Kachu. He says he has never before witnessed such a long monsoon. This is the first time in his life that he has had to take refuge in a city. Signs of despair and restlessness are visible in his body language, as limited space in the city has snatched his freedom to move about in familiar open spaces. The unique experiences of each impacted person tell a tale about people's relationships with their surroundings, land, and ecology. In addition to physical ailments, for displaced persons, the traumatic experience of losing their homes and becoming refugees has led to psychological issues that largely go untreated and ignored. I first experienced displacement when I was in the 8th grade due to the floods in 2007. We lost our wooden and mud huts and were forced to take refuge in Kamber city, 30 kilometers to the east towards the Indus River. Again in 2010 floods destroyed our houses, crops, livestock, and everything on which we had established our livelihoods. My parents spent the next couple of years selling assets like crops and livestock, saving up bit by bit to slowly build a solid house for us. One summer it was a mud-made room, the next, it would be a wooden part of the house. Enduring in this way, our parents made a house out of their labor, patience, care, and most of all, love. Now, a decade later, we’ve once again lost our homes and entire livelihoods. Located along the edge of Hamal Lake in Kamber Shahdadkot District, Sindh, we and hundreds of our fellow villagers have been facing an ongoing water crisis for several years now. Due to water scarcity in the Indus River and little rainfall, Hamal Lake has been completely parched for the past couple of years. Last summer many pastoral families from our village and nearby villages who completely rely on the lake migrated nearer to the Indus for grasslands and herding. When this monsoon started, the long awaited rainfall bore happiness and hope—the hope of rebuilding the lake, of rebuilding the livelihoods entirely dependent on wetlands, of food for our livestock in the arid zones of Kachu where rain creates the possibility for grasslands to emerge. In the last couple of decades, however, rain has either become scarce or bursts forth and the dry soil is unable to soak it in, leading to floods and bringing misery and destruction in another form. The rain continued for a month. At one point it rained for 72 hours without a break. As monsoon spells came to an end in the second half of August, my family, village, and nearby villagers lost everything they had invested in the land: rice crop seeds, rice paddies, fertilizers, and their labor. People here depend on crops, livestock, and Hamal Lake’s wood and fish. In these desperate times, it’s a harsh reminder of how working people and farmers suffer doubly in an extremely unequal and unjust state and society. The government has not learned anything from the floods that have marked the second half of the twentieth century. During the floods of the 1990s, 2007, and 2010, cities had remained safe, but this time, what many are comparing to a doomsday, continuous rain has hardly left any home undamaged. Other than its capital city Karachi, every sphere of public life in Sindh has been disrupted. As village life is uprooted and completely devastated, semi-urban or urban areas aren't safe as well. Food crises have worsened, and inflation is skyrocketing as wheat flour mill owners and small shopkeepers to big dealers hike up prices to cash in on the miseries of the flood-displaced population. The rain continued for a month. At one point it rained for 72 hours without a break. As monsoon spells came to an end in the second half of August, my family, village, and nearby villagers lost everything they had invested in the land: rice crop seeds, rice paddies, fertilizers, and their labor. Climate change is intensifying the monsoon spells. When Hamal Lake dried up last year, it destroyed livestock and wildlife, the livelihoods of millions of people who depend entirely on the lake to make their ends meet. The story of Pakistan's largest lake, Lake Manchar, is no different. In recent years, it has been either completely parched or filled with contaminated water. When rain is scarce, the Indus River water is diverted to upper stream areas or dammed. But this year it’s threatening to inundate two districts in Sindh. These dual problems of drying and overfilling are directly connected to monsoon cycles becoming increasingly unpredictable in nature. According to environmental scientists, Pakistan is the sixth most vulnerable country to climate-related changes. From dried lakes to heavy monsoons, scorching heat waves and extreme winters, this is already our reality. Local, provincial, and federal governments lack preparation for climate emergencies, and their inefficiency in addressing these crises has furthered people's suffering. We can't let governments hide behind words like ‘unprecedented,’ 'natural disaster,’ or ‘punishment due to our sins.’ These are man-made disasters and a crisis of governance at the regional and international level. Economic priorities of profiteering at the cost of ecological disruption have resulted in mass miseries for the working classes. In the epoch of the Anthropocene, worsening air quality, water scarcity, extreme heatwaves and unprecedented rains are becoming a regular feature, not just devastating entire livelihoods but disrupting entire populations. Rain and floods in Sindh are not natural disasters but manifestations of inadequate infrastructure planning as well as consequences of inappropriate efforts to mold and control nature. Rivers, lakes, and natural water streams pave their own ways through the land, and disturbing their natural routes is only causing disasters. If we are to save ourselves from these devastating monster monsoons—as they are being called this year—or deadly heat waves, we need to radically rethink our relationship with nature. We collectively need to reassess our misplaced and delusional drive to alter nature according to our unbridled desires. We need to call out the elephant in the room: Capitalism. And we need to put reins on the unprecedented commodification of everything. If we do not do this and organize against this life-threatening crisis, we will be left with nothing to take protection or refuge in. Each season of the year in South Asia will bring with it a hitherto unknown face of devastation. ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Kashmiri poet Huzaifa Pandit in conversation with Nazish Chunara. COMMUNITY The Craft of Writing in Occupied Kashmir Kashmiri poet Huzaifa Pandit in conversation with Nazish Chunara. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Kashmiri Poetics 24th Jan 2021 Interview Kashmiri Poetics Historicity Poetic Form Poetry Kashmiri Struggle Kashmir Faiz Ahmed Faiz Agha Shahid Ali Mahmoud Darwish PTSD Trauma Mass Protests Memory Language Diversity Urdu Resistance Poetry Metaphor Metaphoricity Raj Rao Varavara Rao Journaling Occupation Pune University Language Language Politics Hindutva Despair Defiance Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. By abolishing Urdu, they are removing its historical significance... By pushing for the extinction of a language, you're pushing the extinction of a history and the sentiments associated with that history. Because in life the present is a function of the past. And so, by altering that past, they're hoping to alter the present altogether beyond the cognition. RECOMMENDED: Green is the Colour of Memory (Hawakal Publishers, 2018) by Huzaifa Pandit. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

A panel on dominant narratives about Kashmir: the longue durée of Kashmiri struggle, the continued movement-building between Kashmir & Palestine, the People's Alliance for Gupkar, and what the repeal of Article 370 really entailed. COMMUNITY Discourses on Kashmir A panel on dominant narratives about Kashmir: the longue durée of Kashmiri struggle, the continued movement-building between Kashmir & Palestine, the People's Alliance for Gupkar, and what the repeal of Article 370 really entailed. VOL. 1 PANEL AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the panel on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the panel on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Panel Kashmir 24th Oct 2020 Panel Kashmir Intellectual History Settler-Colonialism Longue-Duree of Kashmiri Struggle Movement Organization Revolution Colonialism Burhan Wani People's Alliance for Gupkar Subaltern Studies Palestine Affect Internationalist Solidarity Media Blackout Radicalization Narratives Bollywood Occupation Genocide Pogroms Erasure Mass Protests War Crimes Movement Strategy Emancipatory Politics Humanitarian Crisis Activist Media International Law Hindutva Military Crackdown Military Operations Kashmiri Struggle Discourses of War Nationalism Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Just over a year after the repeal of Article 370 from India's constitution, pro-India Kashmiri political parties called for an alliance. What did it all mean? In our second panel from October 2020, Kashmiri activist-scholars Ather Zia & Huma Dar, and journalist Hilal Mir, discuss the predominant discourses of Kashmir that pervade public and international narratives with Editor Kamil Ahsan. The wide-ranging discussion discusses Indian-occupied-Kashmir, India as a settler-colonial state, journalism & how the Azadi Movement and the repeal of Article 370 are depicted, and the many self-serving narratives that don’t take Kashmiri realities into account. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Jamil Jan Kochai reads and discusses "A Premonition; Recollected," a short story published by SAAG that reads like a single, long-drawn breath. The story subsequently appeared in Kochai's acclaimed collection "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories." INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 1 · On A Premonition; Recollected Jamil Jan Kochai Jamil Jan Kochai reads and discusses "A Premonition; Recollected," a short story published by SAAG that reads like a single, long-drawn breath. The story subsequently appeared in Kochai's acclaimed collection "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories." In November 2020, SAAG Chats kicked off with an Instagram Live reading and discussion of "A Premonition; Recollected" between its author, Jamil Jan Kochai, and Fiction Editor Hananah Zaheer. The story was originally published in SAAG Volume 1. Subsequently, the story appeared in Jamil Jan Kochai's acclaimed collection The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories , a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award, and winner of the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2023 Clark Fiction Prize. Here, Jamil Jan Kochai and Hananah Zaheer discuss the balance between brevity and density in the story, and its inspiration both from the nature of memory and the War on Terror in Afghanistan. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Afghanistan Short Story SAAG Chats The Haunting of Hajji Hotak Language Disaster & Language Disaster & Faith Flash Fiction Fiction National Book Award Peshawar Logar War on Terror Memory Discourses of War Allegiance Pashto Farsi Narrators War Crimes Militarism Short Stories JAMIL JAN KOCHAI is the author of 99 Nights in Logar (Viking, 2019), a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His short story collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories (Viking, 2022) was shortlisted for the National Book Award. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories . His essays have been published at The New York Times  and the Los Angeles Times . Kochai was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded the Henfield Prize for Fiction. Currently, he is a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Live Afghanistan 13th Nov 2020 On That Note: The Captive Mind 26th JUN Climate Crimes of US Imperalism in Afghanistan 16th OCT Chats Ep. 4 · On Qurratulain Hyder's sci-fi story “Roshni ki Raftaar” 30th NOV

"How would Rafi Ajmeri have fared in the Progressive era that was dawning just then?  Would his liberal attitudes have hardened into dogma, or would he have swung to conservatism in the Pakistan to which his brothers migrated as he too probably would have?" FICTION & POETRY Four Lives Aamer Hussein "How would Rafi Ajmeri have fared in the Progressive era that was dawning just then? Would his liberal attitudes have hardened into dogma, or would he have swung to conservatism in the Pakistan to which his brothers migrated as he too probably would have?" Editor's Note: Earlier versions of these stories have appeared in Aamer Hussein's collections, albeit not as an interconnected set in conversation with one another as they are intended to be published here. Shefta 1. AS a young man, Mustafa Khan Bangash was given to revelry, wine and the love of dancers. His pen-name was Shefta. He composed verses for his lover Ramju, who many years later wrote her own book of poems. They say he had another lover too. He took lessons in prosody; his verses were improved by illustrious contemporaries: Momin Khan Momin, then later Mirza Ghalib. At the age of thirty-two, he set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy of Holies. On the way he and his fellow-passengers were shipwrecked on an island from where, for many days, they found no rescue, no route to freedom. They lived on a diet of sifted salt-water and herbs. When he returned to Delhi after an absence of two years and six days, Shefta had lost his taste for wine and the love of dancing women. In this city of poets, musicians and courtesans there were also many scholars and saints. Where once he had written of rapture, he now wrote lyrics of renunciation. He still sat beside his master Ghalib and watched the older poet drink, but Shefta no longer raised a glass with anyone. 2. - In 1857, during the Uprising in Delhi, the conquering British accused him of sedition and of fraternising with rebels. He was imprisoned without proof for seven years. His family’s land and properties were confiscated. He was released to see his wrecked and haunted city rebuilt and transformed, the traces of his life erased. Delhi—his birthplace, his prison, his grave. Though he does not know this yet, the task of vindication will fall to his descendants who will fight for freedom. Some will make their home in the new nation of Pakistan. But that’s in another century, in another story that has yet to be written. Uncle Rafi I can’t remember when, exactly, I first heard my mother and aunts talk about Shaikh Rafiuddin Siddiqi, known as Rafi Ajmeri, their maternal uncle whose delightful volume of short stories, Kehkashan , was published only after his early death at the age of 33. I do recall that when I began to take an active interest in modern Urdu fiction, my aunt and then my mother told me of Mamu Mian, as they called him. He had, in his youth, been considered more than promising; already well-known in his 20s, he published fiction and essays in journals such as Sarosh and Saqi . He was handsome and highly literate; although he grew up in Ajmer, where his maternal grandfather Nawab Haji Mohammed Khan had settled, his mother’s family were from Kabul, so Persian was spoken around him. His Kashmiri father was highly educated and encouraged his children in literary pursuits; both Rafi and his sister, my grandmother, published at an early age. They were an articulate, gregarious family; the brothers and sisters quoted Saadi, Rumi and Khusrau from memory; they had heard Iqbal recite his poems in their own home. They also sang and narrated the story-songs of Rajasthan where they were born and raised. I heard these stories and songs in my Karachi childhood from my mother, and with even more enthusiasm from my grandmother during long summer holidays in her home in Indore, and that’s certainly where, at least in part, I inherited my love for old stories. Grandmother married in 1914 and soon devoted herself to family pursuits, while Mamu Mian wrote story after story, spent most of his time in Delhi, and travelled from town to town in search of material. He often visited my grandparents in Indore. My mother, a schoolgirl then, remembers him on his last trip there, in 1937. He was afflicted by a mysterious ailment they referred to as melancholia, and strolled in the garden leaning heavily on his older sister’s arm. Today his condition would be called severe depression. He’d fallen in love with a distant cousin who probably returned his feelings but, in those changing times, he just hadn’t had the courage to propose: she’d married someone her parents chose for her. When the young woman’s mother heard about Mamu Mian’s feelings, she said: He only had to tell me. But it was too late. A few months later, while visiting his niece in Bombay, Mamu Mian was found dead. A literary acquaintance who will remain unnamed, was left in charge of his stories. My uncle complains that Kehkashan was randomly edited; some of Rafi Ajmeri’s stories were lost forever, and others plagiarised and published in other people’s names. However, Kehkashan survived. But though Rafi’s life’s brief story was as fascinating as any tale he might have written, no one in my family had managed to preserve a single copy of his book. It wasn’t until ’97 or ’98 that my friend, Asif, a descendant of one of Uncle Rafi’s earliest editors, unearthed a copy of it in Karachi, which he xeroxed and sent me. (Thank God for Pakistani libraries.) For days I inhabited Rafi’s world. His fiction was set in the increasingly modern milieu of his own time; it barely touched on the princely India my grandparents, and their now-married older daughters, inhabited. He wrote about students, young women and men, seeking their fortune in a competitive late colonial world. The prevailing tone of his stories is light and witty, wordly but never cynical, tinged with romance. (In one, a young woman manages to reach her lost love by an astute or accidental use of subtitles in a silent film.) Later stories show an awareness of the nuances of class and the economics of marriage. In ‘Muhabbat ka bulava’ (my own favourite), a young man falls in love with his friend’s sister, and when his loved one’s very rich father forbids the marriage, not only do the lovers elope, but the hero’s friend escapes with them to set up a life away from the rigid social norms of his family. How would Rafi Ajmeri have fared in the Progressive era that was dawning just then? Would his liberal attitudes have hardened into dogma, or would he have swung to conservatism in the Pakistan to which his brothers migrated as he too probably would have? Or would his fictions have echoed the calm voice of conscience? No way of telling, though one short, bitter text of his suggests another direction he might have taken. Here retells, from an old song, the legend of the bandit Daya Gujjar, who robbed the king’s wife of her jewels to please his demanding wife. Amma ko mera Ram-ram kehna Behna ko mera salam Gujri ko bas itna kehna Reh jaye joban ko re tham Daya ab aana nahin Daya julmi ke phande Daya phaansi ke phande (Give my greetings to my mother and sister, but to the Gujri just say to make good use of her youth: Daya isn’t coming back, he’s in the clutches of the oppressor, the noose is around his neck). As I read it, I could hear my grandmother’s singing voice. My hair stood on end as it did when I first heard it at the age of nine or ten. Lady of the Lotus 1. Her daughter gave her the red diary with a sketch or a poem printed on each page, as a gift for her fifteenth wedding anniversary in February. She had a meeting that morning, and a formal dinner to attend in the evening. Her husband had a difficult day. He didn’t want to go. The next day she was at the airport at noon, to receive the ‘Mother of the Nation’ who was coming home from a trip abroad. Later, a meeting at her sister-in-law’s house, to discuss the situation and progress of Muslim women. Her husband told her he’d had disturbing news. In the diary, she wrote: Just when I feel on the edge of a discovery—an illumination. Between then and June, after her opening entries, she used it only to write down the words of the songs she was learning. Her handwriting intertwined with the printed words and pictures on the pages. 2. June was a musical month. Her teacher, whom she called Khan Sahib, invited connoisseurs of classical music, including Shahid Ahmad, the editor of the literary journal Saqi, to hear her sing. She performed three raags— Khambavati, Anandi and Des — without making a single mistake. Her teacher was quite satisfied, her husband was pleased, the audience impressed. She was thinking of her deadline: a text to be handed over to She the next morning. A musician from Bengal, Begum Jabbar, played the sitar very well. She sang Khambavati and Darbari. Her teacher was satisfied, she wasn’t. She missed a farewell party for her friend Jane who was going back to America. At the next session four days later, Begum Jabbar played well again, Khan Sahib sang well, and her songs were well-appreciated. Her husband was very pleased with her singing, her teacher exultant. Two days later, she was singing again at a concert; she didn’t feel she sang too well; her teacher was most dissatisfied. There was a series of dinners to attend before the music conference at the new Arts Council began. Amanat Ali and Fateh Ali were performing on the opening night, she enjoyed their recital; on the second, Nazakat Ali and Salamat Ali were good in parts, but she was bored by the vocal gymnastics of Roshanara, Queen of Song. She started to learn the new Darbari tarana . It was a composition by Tan Ras Khan. She tried to sing a Thumri in Bhairavi, with her own improvisations and embellishments, but she didn’t make it. She practiced Darbari in the evenings for twenty minutes. She cancelled a party at her friend Suad’s, to practice a new Malhar, but he made her sing Anandi. She waited for him at 5.30 and he appeared at 8.30. She wanted to sing the Malhar she’d learnt but instead he made her sing Aiman and Kedara. June was ending, and she had another deadline, for the Morning News this time. She wanted to sing Malhar. He made her sing Darbari. She wanted something new and he made her repeat old lessons. Then he started her on a new raag, Mian ki Todi . She practiced Des and Bhopali, shifted to Bahaar, wanted to sing the rest of them, but he moved her to Malhar. She’d hoped he’d teach her the new string, but he made her revise the oldest. She didn’t like them much. A full Darbari with a new Tarana, and a new Khambavati at last. Satisfied ( she writes). 3. She notes her deadlines in the diary, but she doesn’t write about driving her children to school in the mornings four miles from P.E.C.H.S to Clifton, or picking them up for lunch. She mentions the parties she attended, but not the night she came back laughing because the Portuguese Ambassador had called her the Maria Callas of Karachi. She doesn’t record the passing of the seasons, the walks to the lake in the mild evening breeze, the flowers and fruit she grows, or the frangipani fallen on wet grass or picked off the branch in the morning for her hair. 4. July. Khan Sahib arrived unexpectedly. She revised Anandi, learnt a new Khambavati. Some beautiful new improvisations: Satisfied (she writes). A few days later, another unexpected visit. From Jahan Khan this time, her teacher’s maternal uncle. He started her on Khambavati. Ai ri mi jagi piya bin sagri rain Jab se gaye mori sudh hu na leni kaise kahun man ki batiyan… Ustad Jahan Khan comes by regularly now (she writes). Her pages were filling up with the lyrics of the songs she learned. She was practising ornamentation, Alankaar, in Khambavati. 5. In August, Ustad Jahan Khan brought her voice down to a lower pitch by half a note. She sang all her songs without the accompanying harmonium . The discovery amazed her and surprised everyone. She was not very satisfied with her voice at that pitch. The next day her teacher tried out the old raags at the new pitch, with only the tanpura . Every note was in tune. He will teach me morning raags in the morning ( she writes) and come in the evening to teach me evening raags . 6. After trying out several raags in Khayal, Ustad Jahan Khan struck upon Dhrupad, which her husband liked very much. She started to learn Raag Durga in the Dhrupad mode, with the Khamach rhythm; unusual and rarely recognised. She sang with the pakhwavaj , a single, two-faced drum, instead of the usual paired tablas . Eri mai nand kunwar eri mai nand kunwar eri mai nand kunwar maaa-aai nand kunwar maa-aai nanda Her voice throbbed and soared. 7. When a blister appears on the first forefinger (she writes) it is a sign that you have achieved the perfect pitch. One hour a day should be set aside, sacredly, for the practice of taans and sur sadhan: the art of song. 8. Her children will remember the concerts in the garden on nights lit up by flares or by the moon, they remember the songs and remind her of them, when she sang what, and even the words and melodies. They sat around her as she sang, or listened from the open window. They learnt her songs like the grey African parrots in their aunt’s big cage, half-understanding the words; they delighted her by singing raags in the bath, but when she persuaded them to take formal lessons all but her middle daughter would run away. They will remember her favourite book: The Lady of the Lotus , illustrated with classical miniatures: a story from her native Malwa, of Baz Bahadur and the poet-singer Roopmati, whose melancholy verses their mother set to music and sang. Years later, her son will find her a copy of the book she lost in transit, and find some of those verses. But it’s a new edition. Had I but known what pain with love would come, had I but known Jo main aisa jaanti preet ki ye dukh hoe I would have banished him by beat of drum, had I but known Nagar dhandora peetti preet na kariyo koe Did the rain fall that year of 1963? None of them remembers now: they think it never came. They remember, though, all the years she longed for rain and missed her native Malwa, and how she exulted when it finally fell. 9. After trying her voice out in several pitches, Ustad Jahan Khan brought it back to the original note. He said he’d been worrying over it for days. 10. So, what did it mean to you, the singing? Her son will ask her as he transcribes, and reads back to her the words of her diary. She remembers it all, the rooms, the faces, the applause, the ecstasy and the fall. Expression, she will reply, and release. The poetry in the music is thought, and through singing I expressed those thoughts. Sometimes late at night, the lady of the lotus will sing to herself, those songs, of rainfall, separation and exultation. Later, her son, who never wanted to, will also sing to find release. But one night, he will stop mid-song, terrified of the audience around him and the failure of his voice, and swear he’ll never sing on stage again. He will exchange the ecstasy of music for the dry solace of thoughts; he’ll write, but he inherits from her the pursuit: of austere phrase, soaring note, throbbing pulse, blistered forefinger. 11. She abandoned the diary with a final, terse entry. 23rd Nov 1963. Dinner at Khan Sahib’s house. Music after dinner. Sang Darbari. No exhilaration after singing. After this, there are only poems, wedding songs and musical notations. Dove 1. OFTEN on those long afternoons in the old house in Badayun when sunlight spread golden carpets on the stones and the older women had taken in the washing and the children were tired of playing hopscotch in the open courtyard or leaping from balcony to balcony, the girl would go to the terrace and shelter in a stone pavilion with a novel or write couplets in a notebook and then, as if she’d invited it over, the dove would begin to call her from a tree, and its call would lie like a shadow on her skin, but she never saw the bird that gave her invisible company. 2. For years after she left and crossed borders and moved houses in Karachi then Lahore and then Pindi and back to Karachi, and was known as the country’s queen of melancholy verse, she thought her invisible friend had abandoned her. Yes, but once in a top floor bedroom in a tall empty house in an Islamabad paralysed by strikes and demonstrations against a corrupt regime, as she stood looking out of a window at a flowering jacaranda, she heard the dove’s call from the tree’s upper branches, and she wondered how its plaintive song could ever have seemed to her to be the harbinger of joys to come. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork by Prithi Khalique for SAAG. 3D motion and interaction design. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Short Stories Karachi Raaga Generational Stories Stories in Dialogue English Urdu Language AAMER HUSSEIN was born in Karachi in 1955. He began his literary career as a short story writer and reviewer in the mid-’80s, writing in both English and Urdu. He is the author of story collections Mirror to the Sun (1993), Turquoise (2002), Insomnia (2007), 37 Bridges (2015), Hermitage (2018), andd Zindagi s pehle (2020) . He is also the author of two novels, including the acclaimed Another Gulmohar Tree . His work has been widely translated in many languages including Spanish, Arabic, and Japanese. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, and is currently based in London and Karachi. Short Stories Karachi 25th Nov 2020 On That Note: مادری زبانیں 18th OCT Two Stories 6th OCT Inventing South Asia 2nd SEP