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. Ibrahim Buriro 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. ∎ 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. ∎ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Photograph courtesy of Rahmat Tunio (2022). SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 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 IBRAHIM BURIRO is pursuing a Masters degree in Development Studies at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. He organizes around issues of ecology, particularly on the subject of the free-flowing Indus River, and has been active in the students' rights movement. Buriro belongs to a remote village in Sindh impacted by flooding. He writes in Sindhi and English. 12 Mar 2023 Dispatch Sindh 12th Mar 2023 Save Karoonjhar Zuhaib Ahmed Pirzada 19th Jul The Lakshadweep Gambit Rejimon Kuttapan 29th Mar It's Only Human Furqan Jawed 26th Apr Pakistan's Feminist Wave: A Panel Zoya Rehman · Amna Chaudhry · Tooba Syed 27th Sep On the Ethics of Climate Journalism Aruna Chandrasekhar 22nd Aug On That Note:

“If you truly believe someone is suppressing you, you can end up in jail for 15 years. So is there really a space for citizen journalism? I truly don't have an answer.” COMMUNITY Storytelling in Post-Aragalaya Sri Lanka “If you truly believe someone is suppressing you, you can end up in jail for 15 years. So is there really a space for citizen journalism? I truly don't have an answer.” Andrew Fidel Fernando · Benislos Thushan · Darshatha Gamage · Raisa Wickrematunge · Kanya D'Almeida The SAAG launch event for Vol. 2, Issue 2 in Colombo, on 7th May 2024, began with a panel introduced by Chief Editor Sabika Abbas. The panel, moderated by Andrew Fidel Fernando, discussed whether storytelling is possible in post-aragalaya Sri Lanka. How do artists and writers of all persuasions deal with the disappeared? How do we face a state that refuses to even let remembrance occur, particularly regarding the events of 18th May 2009, or Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day? How did the events of 2022, the aragalaya in all its optimism, and the sharp break that followed affect the nature of reporting, fiction, social media, and the work of youth tech organizations? The panel included: Kanya D'Almeida, an award-winning writer and podcaster Benislos Thushan, a digital storytelling enthusiast and lawyer Darshatha Gamage, a youth empowerment and development specialist Raisa Wickrematunge, Deputy Editor at Himal Southasian We can't even remember our loved ones. Even regarding May 18th, we simply don't have any war memorials for people to go and mourn, and no national initiatives. Before, people at least went to social media. now it specifically says if you use social media, if you talk against the military, guess what? You'll be put into prison for five years—or more. If you truly believe someone is suppressing you, you can end up in jail for 15 years. So is there really a space for citizen journalism? I truly don't have an answer. The SAAG launch event for Vol. 2, Issue 2 in Colombo, on 7th May 2024, began with a panel introduced by Chief Editor Sabika Abbas. The panel, moderated by Andrew Fidel Fernando, discussed whether storytelling is possible in post-aragalaya Sri Lanka. How do artists and writers of all persuasions deal with the disappeared? How do we face a state that refuses to even let remembrance occur, particularly regarding the events of 18th May 2009, or Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day? How did the events of 2022, the aragalaya in all its optimism, and the sharp break that followed affect the nature of reporting, fiction, social media, and the work of youth tech organizations? The panel included: Kanya D'Almeida, an award-winning writer and podcaster Benislos Thushan, a digital storytelling enthusiast and lawyer Darshatha Gamage, a youth empowerment and development specialist Raisa Wickrematunge, Deputy Editor at Himal Southasian We can't even remember our loved ones. Even regarding May 18th, we simply don't have any war memorials for people to go and mourn, and no national initiatives. Before, people at least went to social media. now it specifically says if you use social media, if you talk against the military, guess what? You'll be put into prison for five years—or more. If you truly believe someone is suppressing you, you can end up in jail for 15 years. So is there really a space for citizen journalism? I truly don't have an answer. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. Artwork courtesy of Hafsa Ashfaq. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Panel Colombo Aragalaya Storytelling Citizen Journalism Social Media Fiction Media Landscape State & Media Corporate Corporate Media Sri Lanka Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day War Memorials Post-Aragalaya Moment Narratives Complicating the Unity of the Aragalaya Optimism on the Local Level Youth Media Youth Tech Remembrance Mourning State Repression Social Media Crackdown Sentencing Laws Ranil Wickremasinghe Gotagogama ANDREW FIDEL FERNANDO is a journalist, senior writer at ESPNcricinfo , and the award-winning author of Upon a Sleepless Isle . BENISLOS THUSHAN is a citizen journalist, photographer, and lawyer. He is the founder of Digital Storytelling, which aims to empower citizen journalism in Sri Lanka, and the co-curator of Everyday Sri Lanka . DARSHATHA GAMAGE is currently the Head of Programmes at Hashtag Generation . He has worked on youth participation, preventing violent extremism, countering harm online, and elections. He has designed and implemented capacity-building programmes focused on critical thinking, digital media literacy, peacebuilding, and youth development. RAISA WICKREMATUNGE is Deputy Editor at Himal Southasian , based in Colombo. She formerly worked at the Sunday Leader and the digital civic media initiative Groundviews . Her work has been published in The Guardian and First Post , among others. KANYA D'ALMEIDA is a writer and reporter whose work has appeared in Granta, BBC Radio 4 , and the Bombay Review . She was formerly the race and justice reporter for Rewire.News, and regional editor for Asia and the Pacific for the Inter Press Service . From 2010-2015 she reported for IPS from the United Nations, Washington, Mexico, and Sri Lanka. She hosts The Darkest Light , a podcast exploring stories of birth and motherhood in Sri Lanka. 27 Aug 2024 Panel Colombo 27th Aug 2024 Hafsa Ashfaq is a visual artist, graphic designer, currently an editorial designer for DAWN . She is based in Karachi. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

"For most dissenters in Pakistan, whether it's a movement like the PTM, or journalists critical of the state, the first reaction of the state's representatives is to characterize them as traitors, or funded by foreign governments." COMMUNITY Progressivism in Pakistani Higher Education "For most dissenters in Pakistan, whether it's a movement like the PTM, or journalists critical of the state, the first reaction of the state's representatives is to characterize them as traitors, or funded by foreign governments." Nida Kirmani RECOMMENDED: Questioning the ‘Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality by Nida Kirmani (Routledge, 2013) RECOMMENDED: Questioning the ‘Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality by Nida Kirmani (Routledge, 2013) SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Interview Karachi Pashtun Tahafuz Movement Postcolonial Feminist Theory Feminist Organizing Progressivism Deniz Kandiyoti Lyari Sociology Mama Qadeer Refusal of Anthropology Anthropology Baloch Missing Persons Slums Dissent State Repression Statelessness Gulalai Ismail Matiullah Jan Lahore LUMS Urbanization Islamophobia NIDA KIRMANI is the Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at Brandeis University. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor. She is a leading feminist public intellectual who has published widely on issues related to gender, Islam, women’s movements, development, and urban studies in India and Pakistan. She completed her Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Manchester in Sociology. Her book, Questioning ‘the Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality , was published in 2013 by Routledge. She is currently working on on urban violence, gender, and insecurity in Lyari in Karachi, Pakistan. 27 Aug 2020 Interview Karachi 27th Aug 2020 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

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. Huzaifa Pandit 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. 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. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 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 HUZAIFA PANDIT is the author of Green is the Colour of Memory which won the first edition of Rhythm Divine Poets Chapbook Contest 2017 . He is the winner of several poetry contests like Glass House Poetry Competition and Bound Poetry Contest. Born and raised in Kashmir, his poems alternate between despair, defiance, resistance and compliance as they seek to make sense of a world where his identity is outlawed. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Kashmir on the poetics of resistance with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali and Mahmoud Darwish. His poems, translations, interviews, essays and papers have been published in various journals like Indian Literature, PaperCuts, Life and Legends, Jaggery Lit, JLA India, Punch and Noble/Gas Qtrly . 24 Jan 2021 Interview Kashmiri Poetics 24th Jan 2021 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

The Delhi-based Kashmiri musician & Ramooz frontman on how growing up in occupied Kashmir shaped his soundscapes through violence, and how genre experimentation and fluidity serve to address grief and trauma. COMMUNITY Kashmiri ProgRock and Experimentation as Privilege The Delhi-based Kashmiri musician & Ramooz frontman on how growing up in occupied Kashmir shaped his soundscapes through violence, and how genre experimentation and fluidity serve to address grief and trauma. Zeeshaan Nabi Living in Kashmir, in an atmosphere so accustomed to murder, rape, disappearances—it's directly affected the way I perceive and interact with sound. A loud thud might be an interesting sound for many. It's traumatizing for me. RECOMMENDED: Imtihan by Zeeshaan Nabi, Qassam Hussain ft. Denis Thomas ( Meerakii Sessions, Season 1, Episode 1, October 2022) Living in Kashmir, in an atmosphere so accustomed to murder, rape, disappearances—it's directly affected the way I perceive and interact with sound. A loud thud might be an interesting sound for many. It's traumatizing for me. RECOMMENDED: Imtihan by Zeeshaan Nabi, Qassam Hussain ft. Denis Thomas ( Meerakii Sessions, Season 1, Episode 1, October 2022) SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Interview Progressive Rock Kashmir Music Music Criticism Kashmiri Folk Music Contemporary Music Ramooz Dream Theater John Cage Ahmer Javed Experimental Methods Experimental Music Experimental Electronica Literature & Liberation Literary Solidarity Depictions of Grief Sound Occupation Genre Fluidity Genre Tropes Genre Intentional Audio Community Building New Artists Delhi Indian Fascism Zeeshaan Nabi is a composer, producer, educator, frontman of the band Ramooz, and founder of the label Meerakii Music. He is currently based in Delhi. 21 Dec 2020 Interview Progressive Rock 21st Dec 2020 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Since Manto's time, screenwriters have been battling studios that prioritise commercial interests, political imperatives, and profits over original, meaningful storytelling. SWA, the trade union for screenwriters, is at the frontlines of screenwriters chafing against the inequalities and wage theft that stifle artistic expression in Bombay's film industry. THE VERTICAL The Cost of Risk in Bombay’s Film Industry Since Manto's time, screenwriters have been battling studios that prioritise commercial interests, political imperatives, and profits over original, meaningful storytelling. SWA, the trade union for screenwriters, is at the frontlines of screenwriters chafing against the inequalities and wage theft that stifle artistic expression in Bombay's film industry. Nihira Saadat Hassan Manto, a luminary of Urdu literature, once embarked on a hunger strike. It was the early 1940s, and the writer was working for one hundred rupees a month under the Bombay-based film director and producer Nanubhai Desai . Manto asked Desai for pending wages and additional money to rent out a flat for his new bride and himself. Desai refused, and Manto resigned. In an essay on the film critic Baburao Patel, Manto wrote about the beginning of his hunger strike on the steps of Desai’s production studio. Later, with Patel’s help, he recovered a little more than half of his pending dues. The pay seemed too meagre for too little in return, with many of Manto’s scripts never even making it to production because of their radical nature. This isn’t just a story from a time when critics had enough muscle in the industry to wrestle producers into paying writers. It is also a story of precarity. It depicts the tenuous relationship between screenwriters and the screens they write for, neither of which are unique to Manto’s career nor an artefact of the past. This disempowerment is the reason why contemporary films feel ill-equipped to respond to urgent questions. Current industry conditions resemble that of the 1940s: financial backing for subversive cinematic concepts is hard to come by, especially without a major star. In a decidedly censorial political climate and hostile communal environment, writers increasingly face complicated legal and social backlash. Creativity is not incentivised. It’s a liability. The lack of creativity present in Bombay talkies during Manto’s tenure did not go unnoticed. Around the time of his hunger strike, the leading film magazine FilmIndia published a hit piece on the standardised format of Bombay cinema. It denounced “Indian screenwriters” as carrying “little originality” and producers as lacking “imagination completely.” An article edited by Baburao Patel declared that producers “imitate others too often.” For example, the “sensational success” of Pukar (1939) gave way to period dramas and historical fiction, and the popularity of Leila Majnu (1945) enabled the “rise of an epidemic of new love themes.” If a particular genre worked, the industry would churn out movies of the same cut until the fad petered out and a new concept supplanted it. Creative risks were scarce and, at best, sporadic. One could say the same of Bollywood today. With Dabangg (2010), a blockbuster peddling nationalist police propaganda, came a flurry of others like Singham (2011) and Simmba (2018). Hit sports biographical films like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) encouraged movies like Mary Kom (2014) and Dangal (2016). But what FilmIndia failed to highlight, like many other critics at the time, was the seeming inability of screenwriters to write meaningful scripts. Critics failed to connect Manto’s hunger strike to writers’ limitations in exploring their creativity. Production pressures, the absence of collective bargaining, and precarious working conditions kept writing stagnant. One organisation is gradually rebuilding collective strength despite entrenched resistance from the film industry’s top brass. The Screenwriters Association (SWA) , a formally registered trade union since 1960, represents more than 57,000 Indian screenwriters who work throughout the film industry. The union handles copyright protection, legal disputes about fair compensation, and more. Though it may not have been a vehicle for collective bargaining in the past, SWA may finally become a force to be reckoned with. Apart from its ongoing struggle for labour protections, the union has strived to become a space for mentorship. Public script labs, for instance, nurture new relationships that address inadequate diversity—especially caste—when it comes to who is allowed to write the films that make it to the floor. Anjum Rajabali, SWA’s Executive Committee Member and the renowned screenwriter of The Legend of Shaheed Bhagat Singh (2002) and Raajneeti (2010), is a major driving force for the union’s efforts. According to screenwriter Darab Farooqui, screenwriters “are all following his lead.” Rajabali is generous with his time, accepting interview requests from airports amidst ongoing health issues. His commitment to building the union is clear. The intensifying struggle for screenwriters’ protections resulted in the Minimum Basic Contract, which raised questions about whether screenwriters can be recognized as workers and the rights that should be afforded to them. Though film industries are subject to intense content regulation, they lag far behind in enforcing labour mandates. SWA’s proposed contract highlights the asymmetric dynamic between writers and production studios and pushes for major changes. In 1951, India’s first Film Enquiry Committee published a searing investigation into the conditions of cinema industries across the country. The report largely agreed with FilmIndia that “the creative activity of production” is too dependent on commercial requirements and lamented that writers end up “unknown even if they are competent.” An unnamed producer admitted to the committee that “we are trying to sell to the public something in a package.” The committee proposed separating financial investments from innovation but it was never implemented. Bombay studios continued to prioritise profit and loss, a calculation in which screenwriters had little to gain. The industry remains dominated by those who want to sell movies and those who can mobilise significant funds for its package deals. Bollywood’s highest-grossing productions released last year shored up combined investments of nearly 2,000 crore Indian rupees. Yet, a new survey has brought to light the intensity of wage depression felt by screenwriters. The 2,000 crore cake cuts only the thinnest sliver for the storytellers who bring in its base ingredients. Saiwyn Quadras, an SWA member and the writer who helmed films like the Priyanka Chopra-starring Mary Kom , shares that “non-payment of dues is a big thing. It happens to me even now.” Seasoned screenwriter and director Hitesh Kewalya says: “When you come to a city like Bombay as a young writer, you have to earn a livelihood. So, you take up two to three projects at the same time. Out of those, only one might actually happen. Even then, you might not get paid fully. It becomes a vicious cycle, and you end up exhausted.” Kewalya, with more than 25 years of industry experience and two hits to his name, including Shubh Mangal Savdhaan— one of the first explicitly queer Bollywood rom-coms—says the industry doesn’t encourage creativity. “It's like running on a treadmill, and if you're lucky enough, you might manage to pay your bills.” One key tactic deployed by studios is the percentage model. Scripts are evaluated on a per-draft basis, with pending dues for works in progress. This means huge portions of a writer’s income are dependent on producers’ approval of unfinished screenplays. As with film industries elsewhere but arguably at a larger scale, producers gauge scripts based on their perception of the content’s potential popularity and arbitrary predictions on the return on investment it would generate. It does not, however, provide any guarantee for writers’ wages. “You won’t know if a story works until you write it, and many times you don’t get to write the whole story,” Rajabali shares. How can a writer take risks with a script if their dues are tied up in its incomplete versions? If a script is rejected before completion, the writer may receive up to a third of their owed wages regardless of their efforts—which are not always translated onto the page. The work of writers is treated as disposable. Far more scripts get shelved than made. As a result, the union has demanded a minimum compensation of 12 lakh rupees for the delivery of the story, screenplay, and dialogue, along with mandatory credits for any screenwriter who has written at least a third of a script. These problems exist even in contracts with multinational corporations like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which together constitute a 35% audience share amongst OTT platforms active in the subcontinent. Quadras says that international entities, much like their domestic counterparts, view Indian writers as a “source for cheap labour.” Thus, the SWA’s call for work stoppage on American projects during the WGA strike was more than a show of solidarity. It signalled a pressing need to transform screenwriters’ relations with Indian subsidiaries of global streaming services and production studios like Lionsgate India and Disney+ Hotstar. According to Rajabali, contracts with foreign and domestic studios often come with a clause prohibiting screenwriters from consulting with or approaching the union. These clear attempts at union-busting mirror those of Hollywood’s Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The material connections between working conditions and labour resistance internationally, and the possibilities both engender for domestic cinema workers, are rife. There is little information on how WGA’s win could impact foreign subsidiaries held by AMPTP-associated companies. But the SWA believes at least a precedent has been set, and its proposed Minimum Basic Contract is geared towards leveraging this historic moment. Even the wrong colour can mean the death of a film in the current Indian context. Where some film workers believed streaming studios to be a window of freedom, recent Central regulations have pulled the blinds on that. Netflix’s cancellation of Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (2024) and the film’s removal of saffron, a colour popularly associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi, has not improved the film’s chances of being released in the country. The Tamil film Annapoorni (2023) elicited legal cases from two right-wing outfits based in Bombay for “hurting religious sentiments of Hindus” and led to its removal from Netflix’s India catalogue. The list of films officially and unofficially banned from being shown in cinema halls in different Indian states at the behest of right-wing political and vigilante outfits is even longer. There is justified fear, then, that government regulation could come to be a double-edged sword. It could work towards alleviating unfair labour practices, but it could also expand the broader pattern of state-sponsored Hindutva agendas. SWA is drawing contingency plans through the Minimum Basic Contract for these overtly political acts. Their proposal demands the removal of contract clauses that shift the responsibility away from producers and onto writers. Currently, producers are guarded against legal, political, and religious backlash, while writers are provided little to no protection from their employers. “Let’s say there’s a scene that shows a fight outside a temple. The studio’s lawyers will tell you to change it. Contractually, the writer is either obliged to change it or risk bearing the consequences on their own head. This is a clause we have to fight,” says Quadras. “And for that, we need collective negotiating power.” But most mainstream Hindi films today happily toe the government line, much as they did in another era of censorship: the Emergency. In June 1975, as a response to increasing worker agitations, internal problems in the Congress party, and legal challenges against her election, India’s two-time Prime Minister Indira Gandhi enacted a state of Emergency. State and national elections were suspended, dissidents were arrested, and trade union actions were brutally repressed. People trapped in poverty were forcibly sterilised. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Bombay cinema, amongst other industries, was unabashedly censored. Scholar Ashish Rajadhyaksha notes that conditional investments made by the Film Finance Corporation (now known as National Film Development Corporation ) during the early ‘70s petered out immediately after the Emergency. The state deepened its interests in media apparatuses and pursued a policy of highly restrictive censorship, impeding new-wave efforts like Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome . In Bombay, creative risk fell to the wayside and narratives critical of the public and private nexus vanished. The angry, young man, especially as personified by Indian actor Amitabh Bachhan, represented a specific kind of radical, working-class man, was retired from films. Instead, characters like the fantasy shape-shifting woman-cobra in Naagin (1976) and mythological warriors like those in Dharam Veer (1977) appeared in its place. Gandhi’s government bureaucratically chopped political satires or outrightly banned certain movies . Half a century later, the pattern repeats, albeit this time with a distinctly communal spin. The bulk of Hindi films released today consist primarily of majoritarian propaganda , safe’ biographical , mythological, or period movies . Creative and political risk has been rendered almost non-existent, but making choices that could be seen as either adhering to or being silent on the Hindutva narratives have not protected Bollywood from conservative calls for boycotts. Adipurush (2023), a film on the epic Ramayana , created by the self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist screenwriter Manoj Muntashir, elicited right-wing criticism and flopped upon release. Similarly, actress turned BJP politician Kangana Ranaut’s Hindi language film, Tejas, and Tamil language film, Chandramukhi 2 , did not muster enough to balance their budgets. Hindutva’s poster boy Akshay Kumar was also unable to bring supremacists to purchase tickets for Ram Setu (2022), an archaeological action film seeking to prove the existence of Ramayana , which prolific film critic Namrata Joshi has labelled as “a show of Hindu victimhood.” The race to appease Hindutva groups seems to be an unwinnable one. Still, some in the industry refuse to abandon the race. Despite the overwhelming web of financial and political struggles, screenwriters like Rajabali, Kewalya, and Quadras march on, and younger aspirants continue to join their ranks. “I am a storyteller. I don’t know how to do anything else,” says Kewalya. What can a screenwriter do? Where can their stories go? If such forces continue to helm decision-making, what becomes of creative integrity and freedom? Is the Hindi film industry doomed to creating “products” or “packages”? Can it transcend its confines? Can it deliver necessary stories—ones with substance, original voices, and honesty? The SWA might be slow-paced, but it is determined. It does not shy away from challenging the power dynamics that currently exist—on and off-screen—and it might just be the most hopeful response to the industry’s continued prioritisation of profit over people. Manto’s creative descendants have come a long way from striking at the steps of a studio. But they have an even longer way ahead of them. ∎ Saadat Hassan Manto, a luminary of Urdu literature, once embarked on a hunger strike. It was the early 1940s, and the writer was working for one hundred rupees a month under the Bombay-based film director and producer Nanubhai Desai . Manto asked Desai for pending wages and additional money to rent out a flat for his new bride and himself. Desai refused, and Manto resigned. In an essay on the film critic Baburao Patel, Manto wrote about the beginning of his hunger strike on the steps of Desai’s production studio. Later, with Patel’s help, he recovered a little more than half of his pending dues. The pay seemed too meagre for too little in return, with many of Manto’s scripts never even making it to production because of their radical nature. This isn’t just a story from a time when critics had enough muscle in the industry to wrestle producers into paying writers. It is also a story of precarity. It depicts the tenuous relationship between screenwriters and the screens they write for, neither of which are unique to Manto’s career nor an artefact of the past. This disempowerment is the reason why contemporary films feel ill-equipped to respond to urgent questions. Current industry conditions resemble that of the 1940s: financial backing for subversive cinematic concepts is hard to come by, especially without a major star. In a decidedly censorial political climate and hostile communal environment, writers increasingly face complicated legal and social backlash. Creativity is not incentivised. It’s a liability. The lack of creativity present in Bombay talkies during Manto’s tenure did not go unnoticed. Around the time of his hunger strike, the leading film magazine FilmIndia published a hit piece on the standardised format of Bombay cinema. It denounced “Indian screenwriters” as carrying “little originality” and producers as lacking “imagination completely.” An article edited by Baburao Patel declared that producers “imitate others too often.” For example, the “sensational success” of Pukar (1939) gave way to period dramas and historical fiction, and the popularity of Leila Majnu (1945) enabled the “rise of an epidemic of new love themes.” If a particular genre worked, the industry would churn out movies of the same cut until the fad petered out and a new concept supplanted it. Creative risks were scarce and, at best, sporadic. One could say the same of Bollywood today. With Dabangg (2010), a blockbuster peddling nationalist police propaganda, came a flurry of others like Singham (2011) and Simmba (2018). Hit sports biographical films like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) encouraged movies like Mary Kom (2014) and Dangal (2016). But what FilmIndia failed to highlight, like many other critics at the time, was the seeming inability of screenwriters to write meaningful scripts. Critics failed to connect Manto’s hunger strike to writers’ limitations in exploring their creativity. Production pressures, the absence of collective bargaining, and precarious working conditions kept writing stagnant. One organisation is gradually rebuilding collective strength despite entrenched resistance from the film industry’s top brass. The Screenwriters Association (SWA) , a formally registered trade union since 1960, represents more than 57,000 Indian screenwriters who work throughout the film industry. The union handles copyright protection, legal disputes about fair compensation, and more. Though it may not have been a vehicle for collective bargaining in the past, SWA may finally become a force to be reckoned with. Apart from its ongoing struggle for labour protections, the union has strived to become a space for mentorship. Public script labs, for instance, nurture new relationships that address inadequate diversity—especially caste—when it comes to who is allowed to write the films that make it to the floor. Anjum Rajabali, SWA’s Executive Committee Member and the renowned screenwriter of The Legend of Shaheed Bhagat Singh (2002) and Raajneeti (2010), is a major driving force for the union’s efforts. According to screenwriter Darab Farooqui, screenwriters “are all following his lead.” Rajabali is generous with his time, accepting interview requests from airports amidst ongoing health issues. His commitment to building the union is clear. The intensifying struggle for screenwriters’ protections resulted in the Minimum Basic Contract, which raised questions about whether screenwriters can be recognized as workers and the rights that should be afforded to them. Though film industries are subject to intense content regulation, they lag far behind in enforcing labour mandates. SWA’s proposed contract highlights the asymmetric dynamic between writers and production studios and pushes for major changes. In 1951, India’s first Film Enquiry Committee published a searing investigation into the conditions of cinema industries across the country. The report largely agreed with FilmIndia that “the creative activity of production” is too dependent on commercial requirements and lamented that writers end up “unknown even if they are competent.” An unnamed producer admitted to the committee that “we are trying to sell to the public something in a package.” The committee proposed separating financial investments from innovation but it was never implemented. Bombay studios continued to prioritise profit and loss, a calculation in which screenwriters had little to gain. The industry remains dominated by those who want to sell movies and those who can mobilise significant funds for its package deals. Bollywood’s highest-grossing productions released last year shored up combined investments of nearly 2,000 crore Indian rupees. Yet, a new survey has brought to light the intensity of wage depression felt by screenwriters. The 2,000 crore cake cuts only the thinnest sliver for the storytellers who bring in its base ingredients. Saiwyn Quadras, an SWA member and the writer who helmed films like the Priyanka Chopra-starring Mary Kom , shares that “non-payment of dues is a big thing. It happens to me even now.” Seasoned screenwriter and director Hitesh Kewalya says: “When you come to a city like Bombay as a young writer, you have to earn a livelihood. So, you take up two to three projects at the same time. Out of those, only one might actually happen. Even then, you might not get paid fully. It becomes a vicious cycle, and you end up exhausted.” Kewalya, with more than 25 years of industry experience and two hits to his name, including Shubh Mangal Savdhaan— one of the first explicitly queer Bollywood rom-coms—says the industry doesn’t encourage creativity. “It's like running on a treadmill, and if you're lucky enough, you might manage to pay your bills.” One key tactic deployed by studios is the percentage model. Scripts are evaluated on a per-draft basis, with pending dues for works in progress. This means huge portions of a writer’s income are dependent on producers’ approval of unfinished screenplays. As with film industries elsewhere but arguably at a larger scale, producers gauge scripts based on their perception of the content’s potential popularity and arbitrary predictions on the return on investment it would generate. It does not, however, provide any guarantee for writers’ wages. “You won’t know if a story works until you write it, and many times you don’t get to write the whole story,” Rajabali shares. How can a writer take risks with a script if their dues are tied up in its incomplete versions? If a script is rejected before completion, the writer may receive up to a third of their owed wages regardless of their efforts—which are not always translated onto the page. The work of writers is treated as disposable. Far more scripts get shelved than made. As a result, the union has demanded a minimum compensation of 12 lakh rupees for the delivery of the story, screenplay, and dialogue, along with mandatory credits for any screenwriter who has written at least a third of a script. These problems exist even in contracts with multinational corporations like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which together constitute a 35% audience share amongst OTT platforms active in the subcontinent. Quadras says that international entities, much like their domestic counterparts, view Indian writers as a “source for cheap labour.” Thus, the SWA’s call for work stoppage on American projects during the WGA strike was more than a show of solidarity. It signalled a pressing need to transform screenwriters’ relations with Indian subsidiaries of global streaming services and production studios like Lionsgate India and Disney+ Hotstar. According to Rajabali, contracts with foreign and domestic studios often come with a clause prohibiting screenwriters from consulting with or approaching the union. These clear attempts at union-busting mirror those of Hollywood’s Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The material connections between working conditions and labour resistance internationally, and the possibilities both engender for domestic cinema workers, are rife. There is little information on how WGA’s win could impact foreign subsidiaries held by AMPTP-associated companies. But the SWA believes at least a precedent has been set, and its proposed Minimum Basic Contract is geared towards leveraging this historic moment. Even the wrong colour can mean the death of a film in the current Indian context. Where some film workers believed streaming studios to be a window of freedom, recent Central regulations have pulled the blinds on that. Netflix’s cancellation of Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (2024) and the film’s removal of saffron, a colour popularly associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi, has not improved the film’s chances of being released in the country. The Tamil film Annapoorni (2023) elicited legal cases from two right-wing outfits based in Bombay for “hurting religious sentiments of Hindus” and led to its removal from Netflix’s India catalogue. The list of films officially and unofficially banned from being shown in cinema halls in different Indian states at the behest of right-wing political and vigilante outfits is even longer. There is justified fear, then, that government regulation could come to be a double-edged sword. It could work towards alleviating unfair labour practices, but it could also expand the broader pattern of state-sponsored Hindutva agendas. SWA is drawing contingency plans through the Minimum Basic Contract for these overtly political acts. Their proposal demands the removal of contract clauses that shift the responsibility away from producers and onto writers. Currently, producers are guarded against legal, political, and religious backlash, while writers are provided little to no protection from their employers. “Let’s say there’s a scene that shows a fight outside a temple. The studio’s lawyers will tell you to change it. Contractually, the writer is either obliged to change it or risk bearing the consequences on their own head. This is a clause we have to fight,” says Quadras. “And for that, we need collective negotiating power.” But most mainstream Hindi films today happily toe the government line, much as they did in another era of censorship: the Emergency. In June 1975, as a response to increasing worker agitations, internal problems in the Congress party, and legal challenges against her election, India’s two-time Prime Minister Indira Gandhi enacted a state of Emergency. State and national elections were suspended, dissidents were arrested, and trade union actions were brutally repressed. People trapped in poverty were forcibly sterilised. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Bombay cinema, amongst other industries, was unabashedly censored. Scholar Ashish Rajadhyaksha notes that conditional investments made by the Film Finance Corporation (now known as National Film Development Corporation ) during the early ‘70s petered out immediately after the Emergency. The state deepened its interests in media apparatuses and pursued a policy of highly restrictive censorship, impeding new-wave efforts like Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome . In Bombay, creative risk fell to the wayside and narratives critical of the public and private nexus vanished. The angry, young man, especially as personified by Indian actor Amitabh Bachhan, represented a specific kind of radical, working-class man, was retired from films. Instead, characters like the fantasy shape-shifting woman-cobra in Naagin (1976) and mythological warriors like those in Dharam Veer (1977) appeared in its place. Gandhi’s government bureaucratically chopped political satires or outrightly banned certain movies . Half a century later, the pattern repeats, albeit this time with a distinctly communal spin. The bulk of Hindi films released today consist primarily of majoritarian propaganda , safe’ biographical , mythological, or period movies . Creative and political risk has been rendered almost non-existent, but making choices that could be seen as either adhering to or being silent on the Hindutva narratives have not protected Bollywood from conservative calls for boycotts. Adipurush (2023), a film on the epic Ramayana , created by the self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist screenwriter Manoj Muntashir, elicited right-wing criticism and flopped upon release. Similarly, actress turned BJP politician Kangana Ranaut’s Hindi language film, Tejas, and Tamil language film, Chandramukhi 2 , did not muster enough to balance their budgets. Hindutva’s poster boy Akshay Kumar was also unable to bring supremacists to purchase tickets for Ram Setu (2022), an archaeological action film seeking to prove the existence of Ramayana , which prolific film critic Namrata Joshi has labelled as “a show of Hindu victimhood.” The race to appease Hindutva groups seems to be an unwinnable one. Still, some in the industry refuse to abandon the race. Despite the overwhelming web of financial and political struggles, screenwriters like Rajabali, Kewalya, and Quadras march on, and younger aspirants continue to join their ranks. “I am a storyteller. I don’t know how to do anything else,” says Kewalya. What can a screenwriter do? Where can their stories go? If such forces continue to helm decision-making, what becomes of creative integrity and freedom? Is the Hindi film industry doomed to creating “products” or “packages”? Can it transcend its confines? Can it deliver necessary stories—ones with substance, original voices, and honesty? The SWA might be slow-paced, but it is determined. It does not shy away from challenging the power dynamics that currently exist—on and off-screen—and it might just be the most hopeful response to the industry’s continued prioritisation of profit over people. Manto’s creative descendants have come a long way from striking at the steps of a studio. But they have an even longer way ahead of them. ∎ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Courtesy of Tara Anand (2021) SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Essay Bombay Screenwriters Association SWA Films Film-Making Labor Rights Trade Unions Directors Film Studios Radical Writers Saadat Hassan Manto Hindutva Minimum Wage Minimum Basic Contract The Legend of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Working Conditions Baburao Patel Nanubhai Desai FilmIndia Creative Labor Pukar Leila Majnu Genre Dabangg Singham Simmba Mary Kom Dangal Fair Compensation Copyright Protection Raajneeti Anjum Rajabali Film Enquiry Committee Bollywood Wage Depression Wage Theft Hitesh Kewalya Shubh Mangal Savdhaan Rom-Coms Police Films Action Films Sports Biographies Amazon Prime Netflix Lionsgate OTT Disney+ Saiwyn Quadras AMPTP Writers Strike WGA Monkey Man BJP Annapoorni Saffron 1975 Emergency Censorship Kangana Ranaut Tejas Ram Setu Namrata Joshi Labor Labor Movement NIHIRA is a freelance writer based in India. She is interested in South Asian media histories, particularly relating to labour and caste. 5 Aug 2024 Essay Bombay 5th Aug 2024 TARA ANAND is an illustrator and visual artist from Bombay, currently based in New York. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Mahrang Baloch was sixteen when her father was abducted one morning in December 2009. She soon became a leading voice amongst the students holding the state to task for enforced disappearances in Balochistan, in the tradition of women leaders of the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad. In 2017, her brother was abducted. Mahrang redoubled her efforts. FEATURES Mahrang Baloch's Struggle Against Enforced Disappearances Mahrang Baloch was sixteen when her father was abducted one morning in December 2009. She soon became a leading voice amongst the students holding the state to task for enforced disappearances in Balochistan, in the tradition of women leaders of the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad. In 2017, her brother was abducted. Mahrang redoubled her efforts. Shah Meer Baloch He slept with his eldest daughter in his arms on the night of December 11, 2009. They had spent the entire evening talking about a host of issues in Balochistan—from education to enforced disappearances. Take care of your mother and sisters, he told her. It was as if Ghaffar Baloch knew that it was his last night with his family. That year, Baloch had moved from Quetta to Karachi, a city in the province of Sindh, with his family, because his wife needed to be admitted as a patient at the Institute of Surgery and Medicine. “It has been a decade, but I still remember the color of the clothes he was wearing that night. We barely slept because we had so many things to talk about. I had a feeling that something amiss was about to happen. He passed by me with a sad smile as I stood at the door and watched him leave.” said Mahrang Baloch, the then 16-year-old daughter of Ghaffar Baloch. The following morning, Baloch was abducted on the way to the hospital by men in plainclothes. His abduction coincided with the growing momentum of the Baloch insurgency and as in the past, it accompanied a round of enforced disappearances, which have by now become the norm in Balochistan, the most troubled province of Pakistan. Baloch had joined the long list of missing persons from Balochistan. After Ghaffar Baloch’s abduction in 2009, his daughter Mahrang took to the streets holding banners and shouting slogans, a protest she continued for two years. Donning a traditional Balochi black chadar with strips of red and yellow, instead of a veil or scarf worn by women in Pakistan, Mahrang fully embraced her role as a student leader of the resistance movement. Many noticed her on social media, when she narrated the story of her father’s torturous disappearance in a video appeal that was carried by the online journal Tanqeed . https://vimeo.com/83642291 “Those five years of my life were the hardest. I was the oldest amongst my sisters, so I had to be strong for everyone. I would pray that my father would come back. There was a hope that he would be back. I kept on holding onto the hope that life would be normal again,” Mahrang said. “But that never happened.” Balochistan, plagued by tribalism and patriarchy, has remained male-dominated in the political arena, with the exception of a few women politicians such as Fazila Alynani, a parliamentarian from Balochistan in the 1970s, and Zubaida Jalal, currently the federal minister for defense production. With the enforced disappearances, Baloch men are vanishing from the political scene in Balochistan, creating a vacuum of sorts. To fill this gap, Baloch women have taken the responsibility of leading the movement against enforced disappearances, political and economic injustices, military operations, and the ongoing exploitation of Balochistan. This has transformed politics in the beleaguered province. Having seen their loved ones murdered and picked up over the years, the voice of the new generation of Baloch women and girls has sparked a non-violent revolution in the face of much adversity. But at the same time, there remain feelings of alienation and distrust with the state. Much credit for the political mobilization of the Baloch women can be given, rightly, to Karima Baloch, the first chairperson of the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-Azad). On December 22, 2020, Karima Baloch was found dead near Lake Ontario in Toronto, Canada, after being missing for a day. She is the second Baloch dissident to be found dead under suspicious circumstances in the countries they had sought exile in. Earlier in the year, the chief editor of the Balochistan Times, Sajid Hussain, was found dead in a river in Sweden, weeks after he had gone missing on March 2, 2020. Subsequently, Pakistani activists around the world demanded investigations into the suspicious circumstances surrounding both deaths. Many shared a 2017 video of former dictator Pervez Musharraf claiming in an interview that the Pakistani state would hound and capture dissidents wherever they might be. Such is the present state of the Baloch who have dared raise their voices against the injustices of the Pakistani state since the time of Partition. Karima was often singled out and criticised for her activism and political mobilization of women, particularly by online trolls, and some Baloch tribal and conservative men who told her to stay out of politics. But today, after her mysterious death, women are leading protests across the province. Among the women demanding an investigation into Karima’s death is Mahrang Baloch—who has been leading the movement against enforced disappearances and ongoing state oppression in Balochistan. As more girls came to join the Sept. 8, 2020, protest for solidarity, Mahrang Baloch, on the right and Sabiha Baloch, on the left, drag a carpet to sit on it near the Governor House, where they observed a hunger strike to demand amendments in Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) act for restoration of Bolan Medical College's quota system. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch. The Baloch Insurgency Ghaffar Baloch’s abduction in 2009 was the third time he had been picked up by security agencies. This era, 2009- 2013, in the troubled province of Balochistan, was marked by a state policy of ‘kill and dump.’ Alleged insurgents, nationalists, political workers, students, and activists—many of whom had been accused of “terrorism” by state agencies—were found dead after being abducted. The culprits? Most point the finger at the state. But naming them explicitly and publicly comes with a huge risk. Instead, people use euphemisms and nicknames that vaguely address the role Pakistan’s shadowy military agencies play in these disappearances. Many, with some dark humor, refer to the abductors as farishtey, or angels. Giving Balochistan’s issues a forum has had serious consequences. In late 2013 and early 2014, along with a small group of family members—mostly women—of missing persons, renowned Baloch activist 70-year-old Mama Qadeer, marched some 2,000 kilometers on foot from Quetta to Islamabad via Karachi to demand the release of missing persons. The record-breaking long march did not get the coverage it needed. With swollen feet, they reached Islamabad, but they were not heard, nor their demand of meeting with the government was fulfilled. Hamid Mir, one of the few journalists who gave the issue coverage by inviting Mama and the marchers on his talk show, later survived an attack by four gunmen in Karachi. Mir still carries two bullets from the attack in his body. In 2015, progressive human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud invited Qadeer to speak at a panel discussion at her cafe and bookstore in Karachi. Shortly after the event, as she was driving home, armed motorcyclists surrounded her car and opened fire, killing her. In 2012, the former chief justice of Pakistan outrightly accused paramilitary forces of spearheading enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Deputy Inspector-General Operations Balochistan Police, Hamid Shakeel presented CCTV footage of a private hotel, in which the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force stationed in Balochistan that is responsible for maintenance of law and order, can be seen picking up three people who went missing later. FC denied involvement in this case. In 2017, Shakeel was killed in a suicide bombing. Balochistan province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is not new to uprisings. The growing number of enforced disappearances can be traced to the Baloch insurgent movement that spread from the rugged mountains of the province to the coastal towns in Arabian Sea and permeated every aspect of Baloch social and political life since the earliest days of Pakistan’s existence. Soon after the inception of Pakistan in 1948, Prince Abdul Karim Khan, the brother of then ruler Khan of Kalat, took up arms against the merger of Balochistan with Pakistan. This was the start of the first round of insurgency. The movement petered out soon after but was followed by three more short-lived insurgent movements in 1958, 1962, and 1973. The insurgency is also driven by the ongoing exploitation of Balochistan’s rich natural resources. In the early 1950s, one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves was discovered in Sui, and by the mid-1950s , pipelines were laid down to supply major cities in other provinces. Since then, the central government has been accused by insurgents and local activists of taking Balochistan’s coal, gas, minerals, uranium, and utilizing them for richer provinces, particularly Punjab. The first signs of the most recent iteration of the Baloch insurgency were seen in the early 2000s, as the federal government developed a port city in the region. In May 2004, three Chinese engineers were killed in an attack in Gwadar, Balochistan’s coastal town at the mouth of Arabian Sea. Local nationalists had expressed opposition to the development of the region, saying that the benefits would bypass Balochistan and go to Punjab instead. Much of their ire was directed at the policies of the then military dictator Musharaff, who had strategically aligned Pakistan with the United States in the War on Terror, seeking to rid the Afghanistan-Pakistan region of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The United States was carrying out drone strikes in parts of Pakistan, and Pakistan’s security agencies began military operations across the country which led to numerous human rights abuses, including the arbitrary detention and arrests of suspected militants. Ghaffar Baloch was first abducted by security agencies in 2006. Four months later, on August 26, 2006, Nawab Shahbaz Akbar Khan Bugti, the former Governor and Chief Minister of Balochistan and chief of the Bugti Tribe, was killed in a military operation by Musharraf, who had once said about Bugti: “Don't push us. It is not the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time you won't even know what hit you.” These remarks were widely condemned by Baloch activists. Bugti was buried near Sui in a locked box and no one saw his body. News of his killing spread like a wildfire across the province. The towns and villages that were not part of the previous uprisings in 1948, 1958, 1962, and 1973 now actively took part in the insurgency. Residents from Pasni, the coastal region of Gwadar, and the provincial capital Quetta, blocked roads, burnt tires, and threw stones at government vehicles. Police stations, government offices, and shops were torched and damaged. Separately, students and political workers have continuously expressed their anger towards the seven decades long unjust and brutal policies of the state. A common saying in the street and classrooms was: Natural gas was discovered in Balochistan in the 1950s, Punjab consumed it in the 1960s, but to this date the people of Sui are devoid of gas. Only the provincial capital had gas. Mahrang has been speaking out against this unequal distribution of resources. She told me: “The people in the corridors of power never paid heed to the grievances of the Baloch and their national question. They always preferred the mineral resources of our land over our people.” The residents of Balochistan, particularly youth and political workers, lamented the Pakistani state’s approach towards their province and the Baloch. Many took up arms against the state and called for the independence of Balochistan from Pakistan. But not all nationalists backed the call for independence and preferred to demand provincial autonomy. The common denominator was that they were all against state oppression and the brutal rule of Musharraf. In 2008, the Baloch insurgency witnessed an upsurge, and several security personnel were targeted. Settlers in Balochistan, commonly referred to and perceived as Punjabis, were asked to leave the province, as the country’s most powerful institution, the army, was largely dominated by Punjabis. They were perceived to be colluders and enemies during the military operations to quash the insurgency in Balochistan. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2006, the entire province was in a war-like state. Sui was bombed. The Baloch insurgents not only targeted the state but also waged war against political workers, who campaigned for taking part in parliamentary politics to demand the rights of the Baloch nation, and common Baloch whom they suspected of working for the security agencies. In district Nazim Kech, Moula Baksh Dashti, who advocated using parliamentary politics to resolve the human rights crisis in the province, lost his life reportedly at the hands of Baloch insurgents. The insurgents were accused of picking up and killing people and became increasingly involved in abductions for ransom. As the insurgency gained momentum, the state responded with a counter-insurgency operation. Many people, regardless of their involvement in the insurgency, were forcibly disappeared. Anyone suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents, relatives or mere acquaintances who may have studied or met someone who later became an insurgent all shared the same fate: enforced disappearance. Some were abducted to pressurize insurgents and send a message that waging a war on the state meant that their loved ones were not safe. While no proper research has thus far been conducted on the proportion of violence carried out by the state in comparison with the insurgents, the state has always been believed to be more brutal against political workers and average Baloch citizens. Counter-insurgency tactics are not new to the people of this province. They have witnessed them before: in the 1970s during the democratically elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Under Bhutto, the army carried out numerous disappearances. The first missing person was Asadullah Mengal, the son of former chief minister of Balochistan, Sardar Attaullah Mengal, and brother of BNP chief, Akhtar Mengal, who was allegedly killed in an encounter in Karachi. Bhutto noted in his book Rumours and Realities that he did not know about Mengal’s murder and later he was told that he was buried near Thatta, Sindh. Even the armed forces had apparently forgotten where exactly they buried him. Decades later, during another PPP government, between 2008 and 2013, Balochistan was once again engulfed by war. Then president Asif Ali Zardari (son-in-law of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and widow of Benazir Bhutto) remained silent on the military operations and enforced disappearances and announced a development package for the province to ease tensions. But these efforts were too little, too late. The present-day insurgency has evolved from its early days, with more involvement from young middle-class, educated Baloch who don't hail from the tribal belt. Two months after the killing of Nawab Bugti in 2006, Ghaffar Baloch was presented in front of the court. The case continued for three years until he was released in 2009 due to lack of evidence against him. “The happiest day of my life was when my father was released. I remember all the time I spent with him vividly.” Mahrang says. “After his release he bought bangles for me which I wore on Eid. I was so happy that he was around. But the happiness was short-lived.” On July 1, 2011, the body of Ghaffar Baloch—carrying visible signs of torture—was found on a roadside in Lasbela district, some 300 kilometers away from Karachi. Mahrang Baloch and Sabiha Baloch (sitting on the right side of Mahrang), sit on a carpet along with other girls, staging a protest in front of the Governor House, Quetta, in Balochistan, while demanding amendments in the Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) Act and restoration of Bolan Medical College quota system. Students believe that the new act will hinder the progress of students from far flung areas of Balochistan to get admission at the university. Only students from Quetta (Balochistan's capital) would benefit from the admission policy without the quota system. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch Dissident Voices After her father’s killing in 2011, Mahrang Baloch slowed down her campaigning for the release of missing persons. When her brother, Nasir Baloch was picked up in December 2017, Mahrang says she realized that no one was safe. It was the turning point in her life. “I was again on the roads but this time it was for my brother,” Mahrang says with a grim smile, “The deputy commissioner of Quetta told me that I had two options. Either I should sit at home silently, or spend time on roads and eventually move to Europe for my safety. I decided I will remain on the roads and protest, but I won’t flee.” “I don’t remember when I stopped becoming an ordinary Baloch woman and became a Baloch woman activist instead,” she chuckles, as she looks back and thinks about all the turns that life took, “I felt it is important to use social media if I wanted to talk about the issues concerning Balochistan. I started using Facebook and Twitter after my brother’s abduction. The first tweet I put out was about my brother’s enforced disappearance.” Mahrang’s brother was released three months and 10 days after his abduction. His release marked not the end of her activism but the beginning. She started raising her voice for other missing persons. The local Pakistani media would not give them coverage, “so social media was the only platform left for us to bring our issues forth and pressurize the government,” she said. “Initially I did not know what to write and what not to write, I worked on choosing my words carefully.” Along with organizing on the ground, she mobilized protests through social media and became a vocal voice for the Baloch missing persons on various online networks. On August 13, 2020, Hayat Baloch, a student of Karachi University, hailing from Turbat, was killed by the FC in front of his parents. This incident sparked widespread protests across Balochistan. When a picture of Hayat’s parents weeping next to his dead body began circulating online, many Baloch social media users were divided on how to interpret the incident. Some argued that it was wrong to circulate the image out of respect for the family’s privacy. Mahrang in a tweet , cited the picture that sparked the Soweto uprising in South Africa. It shows a dying student being carried in the arms of a fellow student and accompanied by his screaming sister. She said that after seeing the image, Nelson Mandela had said “Enough is enough.” When her father had gone missing, Mahrang’s uncle had advised her to speak to the media in order to plead for his return. She would desperately watch news channels to see if there was any news about her father. “At the time, Pakistani news channels gave very little coverage to the issue of missing persons,” she says, “but now, even that little coverage has vanished into thin air.” The issue of missing persons has become an eternal part of Balochistan’s politics. In the general elections of 2018, Balochistan National Party’s (BNP) chief Sardar Akthar Mengal participated in the election promising to amplify the cause of missing persons. He joined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI)-led government at the center, under Prime Minister Imran Khan, after being promised that PTI would address Balochistan’s issue of missing persons, among others. That never happened. Mengal submitted a list of 5,128 missing persons in the National Assembly. The government was unable to fulfill their promises. Mengal finally broke his alliance with the PTI in April 2020, saying that even if the government had released 500 missing persons in the last two years, more than 1,500 others had been picked up. Mahrang Baloch talks to Mushtaq Baloch, a student at Bolan Medical College and also member of Baloch Students Action Committee (BSAC) who is observing a hunger strike on Sept. 8, 2020, near the Governor House and Chief Minister secretariat in Quetta for the amendment of Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) Act. Mushtaq fell unconscious but still continued the hunger strike after having an IV drip injected into the backside of his palm. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch. Students and Women’s Politics In 2019, Mahrang led protesting students of the University of Balochistan who had broken their silence on years of blackmail and threats by the university administration. Newspapers reported that for several years, officials in the university administration had been using footage from CCTV cameras installed around the university campus citing ‘security’ reasons while extorting money and sexually harassing female students. As a result of protests across the province, the university’s vice chancellor stepped down. “I realized as a woman that if they would not let us get an education then what really is left?” Mahrang asks. Further, she often found that she received little allyship in her activism from around Pakistan. “The response from feminists and women’s rights activists from other parts of Pakistan during our protests was not satisfying. Since the boots [i.e. security agencies] were involved in the scandal, perhaps that is why they did not speak up. It is rare for such mainstream groups to talk about missing persons and human rights abuses. Perhaps they do not care about what happens in Balochistan, just like most Pakistanis.” Many Pakistanis say they do not understand what’s happening in Balochistan. Just a few years ago, news rarely travelled out of Balochistan. The province is rightly called a “ blackhole for media.” But today, many, if not all incidents and news reach the people through social media. Mahrang adds “I believe they are intentionally silent, and that a fake sense of patriotism has clouded their minds, so they ignore everything, even human rights abuses.” Renowned Pakistani novelist, Muhammad Hanif, puts it in a candid way: “Balochistan is not remote just geographically but in our imagination as well.” Baloch women are often leading the movements advocating the release of their loved ones. Tribalism in Balochistan is one of the reasons women have often been confined in their activism and daily life. State institutions have supported and strengthened tribalism. The government has always preferred supporting tribal leaders because it is easy to control them in parliament. Since an entire tribe remains under the control of the leader, and the leader remains under the control of the establishment, the government is able to exert control at all levels of Baloch politics. "The Sardars [tribal leaders] and the establishment have a strong nexus. The establishment brings Sardars to the parliament and so the ongoing Sardari system remains one of the biggest impediments to the development of a middle class in Balochistan. Instead, political efforts should focus on ceding power to the local people," says Mir SherBaz Khetran, a research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Yet in dominant Pakistani political discourse, particularly among so-called intellectuals in cities outside the province, the Baloch are perceived as an illiterate nation. Mahrang believes that such perceptions have caused Baloch women even more suffering. “Baloch women have always been a part of the movement for rights against state oppression. This challenges the dominant narrative, but most activists have rarely supported that.” When Mahrang’s father was briefly released in 2009, he told her that she should participate in student politics and talk about what was happening in Balochistan and that she had to continue her activism for the women and other people of Balochistan. “He said I won't give you any advice; I want you to analyze things yourself and make your own narrative.” Alongside her activism, Mahrang Baloch is a medical student. Over years of protests and activism, she has made sure that her studies are not adversely affected. “Everything related to studies would always excite me. School has always been my favorite place. I never took education as a necessity or something I had to do, but rather as something I loved doing.” The government of Balochistan has also been divided over the current quota system in educational institutions, arguing instead that merit should prevail. Mahrang, however, is firmly in favor of quotas. She led protests to restore the quota system, and ultimately succeeded in doing so at Bolan Medical College (BMC). “There should be merit, but after providing equal educational opportunities to all students,” Mahrang says. “You can’t expect a student from a government school to compete with a student from an elite private school.” Last year, during her protests for the restoration of the quota system and amendment of the BMC Act, Mahrang and other students were asked to meet with Education Minister Sardar Yar Mohammed Rind, who was also one of Balochistan’s most influential tribal chiefs. Instead of seeking consensus, Mahrang says, the minister shouted at her in front of five other ministers. “He said if you women were truly [representing] our honor, you wouldn’t be out here protesting,” she recalls smiling. Mahrang says at the time, she had two options: either to ignore what he had said or respond to the misogynistic act. She chose the second option because what the minister had said was not just about her but pertained to all women. She told him that what he had said was wrong. As an employee of the government, he was responsible for solving their issues. He had failed to do his job. A clearly flustered Rind (the Education Minister) began to misbehave and told her to leave because, as Rind said, “respectable women don’t protest.” “I went to the protest area and I was disturbed. I wondered whether to talk about this in front of the media. I decided I must so that no one else, be it an elected or a selected person, does something like this ever again. I did not expect the positive response I got from the people of Balochistan for speaking up against the tribal chief and minister,” she says. Mahrang made history as the first woman to confront one of Balochistan’s most influential chiefs and hold him accountable for his job. As a result of consistent efforts, protests and hunger strikes by Mahrang and her fellow students, the government finally announced amendments to Bolan Medical College Act. They also assured students that the quota system would remain intact. As an activist, Mahrang feels tired and frustrated at times but the work she does brings her joy. “The real happiness lies in activism and talking about the rights of your nation and its marginalized communities,” she says. She calls herself a nationalist. “I fight for the rights of the people of Balochistan; the land I belong to.” She quoted a line from Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of The Earth : “For a colonized people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” Mahrang Baloch was first jailed in 2006 when she was a 13-year-old, protesting for the release of her father. When her uncle arrived to bail her out, she refused and said she would not leave jail until her father was released. Spending days protesting in August, having to sleep on roads and getting dragged and thrown into a police van—none of these hindrances deterred her from her activism. “I believe jail is not something new. It has more freedom, as I can read and spend time with myself in the prison,” she chuckles. “They cannot break me by imprisoning me. They would liberate me.” ▢ He slept with his eldest daughter in his arms on the night of December 11, 2009. They had spent the entire evening talking about a host of issues in Balochistan—from education to enforced disappearances. Take care of your mother and sisters, he told her. It was as if Ghaffar Baloch knew that it was his last night with his family. That year, Baloch had moved from Quetta to Karachi, a city in the province of Sindh, with his family, because his wife needed to be admitted as a patient at the Institute of Surgery and Medicine. “It has been a decade, but I still remember the color of the clothes he was wearing that night. We barely slept because we had so many things to talk about. I had a feeling that something amiss was about to happen. He passed by me with a sad smile as I stood at the door and watched him leave.” said Mahrang Baloch, the then 16-year-old daughter of Ghaffar Baloch. The following morning, Baloch was abducted on the way to the hospital by men in plainclothes. His abduction coincided with the growing momentum of the Baloch insurgency and as in the past, it accompanied a round of enforced disappearances, which have by now become the norm in Balochistan, the most troubled province of Pakistan. Baloch had joined the long list of missing persons from Balochistan. After Ghaffar Baloch’s abduction in 2009, his daughter Mahrang took to the streets holding banners and shouting slogans, a protest she continued for two years. Donning a traditional Balochi black chadar with strips of red and yellow, instead of a veil or scarf worn by women in Pakistan, Mahrang fully embraced her role as a student leader of the resistance movement. Many noticed her on social media, when she narrated the story of her father’s torturous disappearance in a video appeal that was carried by the online journal Tanqeed . “Those five years of my life were the hardest. I was the oldest amongst my sisters, so I had to be strong for everyone. I would pray that my father would come back. There was a hope that he would be back. I kept on holding onto the hope that life would be normal again,” Mahrang said. “But that never happened.” Balochistan, plagued by tribalism and patriarchy, has remained male-dominated in the political arena, with the exception of a few women politicians such as Fazila Alynani, a parliamentarian from Balochistan in the 1970s, and Zubaida Jalal, currently the federal minister for defense production. With the enforced disappearances, Baloch men are vanishing from the political scene in Balochistan, creating a vacuum of sorts. To fill this gap, Baloch women have taken the responsibility of leading the movement against enforced disappearances, political and economic injustices, military operations, and the ongoing exploitation of Balochistan. This has transformed politics in the beleaguered province. Having seen their loved ones murdered and picked up over the years, the voice of the new generation of Baloch women and girls has sparked a non-violent revolution in the face of much adversity. But at the same time, there remain feelings of alienation and distrust with the state. Much credit for the political mobilization of the Baloch women can be given, rightly, to Karima Baloch, the first chairperson of the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-Azad). On December 22, 2020, Karima Baloch was found dead near Lake Ontario in Toronto, Canada, after being missing for a day. She is the second Baloch dissident to be found dead under suspicious circumstances in the countries they had sought exile in. Earlier in the year, the chief editor of the Balochistan Times, Sajid Hussain, was found dead in a river in Sweden, weeks after he had gone missing on March 2, 2020. Subsequently, Pakistani activists around the world demanded investigations into the suspicious circumstances surrounding both deaths. Many shared a 2017 video of former dictator Pervez Musharraf claiming in an interview that the Pakistani state would hound and capture dissidents wherever they might be. Such is the present state of the Baloch who have dared raise their voices against the injustices of the Pakistani state since the time of Partition. Karima was often singled out and criticised for her activism and political mobilization of women, particularly by online trolls, and some Baloch tribal and conservative men who told her to stay out of politics. But today, after her mysterious death, women are leading protests across the province. Among the women demanding an investigation into Karima’s death is Mahrang Baloch—who has been leading the movement against enforced disappearances and ongoing state oppression in Balochistan. As more girls came to join the Sept. 8, 2020, protest for solidarity, Mahrang Baloch, on the right and Sabiha Baloch, on the left, drag a carpet to sit on it near the Governor House, where they observed a hunger strike to demand amendments in Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) act for restoration of Bolan Medical College's quota system. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch. The Baloch Insurgency Ghaffar Baloch’s abduction in 2009 was the third time he had been picked up by security agencies. This era, 2009- 2013, in the troubled province of Balochistan, was marked by a state policy of ‘kill and dump.’ Alleged insurgents, nationalists, political workers, students, and activists—many of whom had been accused of “terrorism” by state agencies—were found dead after being abducted. The culprits? Most point the finger at the state. But naming them explicitly and publicly comes with a huge risk. Instead, people use euphemisms and nicknames that vaguely address the role Pakistan’s shadowy military agencies play in these disappearances. Many, with some dark humor, refer to the abductors as farishtey, or angels. Giving Balochistan’s issues a forum has had serious consequences. In late 2013 and early 2014, along with a small group of family members—mostly women—of missing persons, renowned Baloch activist 70-year-old Mama Qadeer, marched some 2,000 kilometers on foot from Quetta to Islamabad via Karachi to demand the release of missing persons. The record-breaking long march did not get the coverage it needed. With swollen feet, they reached Islamabad, but they were not heard, nor their demand of meeting with the government was fulfilled. Hamid Mir, one of the few journalists who gave the issue coverage by inviting Mama and the marchers on his talk show, later survived an attack by four gunmen in Karachi. Mir still carries two bullets from the attack in his body. In 2015, progressive human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud invited Qadeer to speak at a panel discussion at her cafe and bookstore in Karachi. Shortly after the event, as she was driving home, armed motorcyclists surrounded her car and opened fire, killing her. In 2012, the former chief justice of Pakistan outrightly accused paramilitary forces of spearheading enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Deputy Inspector-General Operations Balochistan Police, Hamid Shakeel presented CCTV footage of a private hotel, in which the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force stationed in Balochistan that is responsible for maintenance of law and order, can be seen picking up three people who went missing later. FC denied involvement in this case. In 2017, Shakeel was killed in a suicide bombing. Balochistan province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is not new to uprisings. The growing number of enforced disappearances can be traced to the Baloch insurgent movement that spread from the rugged mountains of the province to the coastal towns in Arabian Sea and permeated every aspect of Baloch social and political life since the earliest days of Pakistan’s existence. Soon after the inception of Pakistan in 1948, Prince Abdul Karim Khan, the brother of then ruler Khan of Kalat, took up arms against the merger of Balochistan with Pakistan. This was the start of the first round of insurgency. The movement petered out soon after but was followed by three more short-lived insurgent movements in 1958, 1962, and 1973. The insurgency is also driven by the ongoing exploitation of Balochistan’s rich natural resources. In the early 1950s, one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves was discovered in Sui, and by the mid-1950s , pipelines were laid down to supply major cities in other provinces. Since then, the central government has been accused by insurgents and local activists of taking Balochistan’s coal, gas, minerals, uranium, and utilizing them for richer provinces, particularly Punjab. The first signs of the most recent iteration of the Baloch insurgency were seen in the early 2000s, as the federal government developed a port city in the region. In May 2004, three Chinese engineers were killed in an attack in Gwadar, Balochistan’s coastal town at the mouth of Arabian Sea. Local nationalists had expressed opposition to the development of the region, saying that the benefits would bypass Balochistan and go to Punjab instead. Much of their ire was directed at the policies of the then military dictator Musharaff, who had strategically aligned Pakistan with the United States in the War on Terror, seeking to rid the Afghanistan-Pakistan region of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The United States was carrying out drone strikes in parts of Pakistan, and Pakistan’s security agencies began military operations across the country which led to numerous human rights abuses, including the arbitrary detention and arrests of suspected militants. Ghaffar Baloch was first abducted by security agencies in 2006. Four months later, on August 26, 2006, Nawab Shahbaz Akbar Khan Bugti, the former Governor and Chief Minister of Balochistan and chief of the Bugti Tribe, was killed in a military operation by Musharraf, who had once said about Bugti: “Don't push us. It is not the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time you won't even know what hit you.” These remarks were widely condemned by Baloch activists. Bugti was buried near Sui in a locked box and no one saw his body. News of his killing spread like a wildfire across the province. The towns and villages that were not part of the previous uprisings in 1948, 1958, 1962, and 1973 now actively took part in the insurgency. Residents from Pasni, the coastal region of Gwadar, and the provincial capital Quetta, blocked roads, burnt tires, and threw stones at government vehicles. Police stations, government offices, and shops were torched and damaged. Separately, students and political workers have continuously expressed their anger towards the seven decades long unjust and brutal policies of the state. A common saying in the street and classrooms was: Natural gas was discovered in Balochistan in the 1950s, Punjab consumed it in the 1960s, but to this date the people of Sui are devoid of gas. Only the provincial capital had gas. Mahrang has been speaking out against this unequal distribution of resources. She told me: “The people in the corridors of power never paid heed to the grievances of the Baloch and their national question. They always preferred the mineral resources of our land over our people.” The residents of Balochistan, particularly youth and political workers, lamented the Pakistani state’s approach towards their province and the Baloch. Many took up arms against the state and called for the independence of Balochistan from Pakistan. But not all nationalists backed the call for independence and preferred to demand provincial autonomy. The common denominator was that they were all against state oppression and the brutal rule of Musharraf. In 2008, the Baloch insurgency witnessed an upsurge, and several security personnel were targeted. Settlers in Balochistan, commonly referred to and perceived as Punjabis, were asked to leave the province, as the country’s most powerful institution, the army, was largely dominated by Punjabis. They were perceived to be colluders and enemies during the military operations to quash the insurgency in Balochistan. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2006, the entire province was in a war-like state. Sui was bombed. The Baloch insurgents not only targeted the state but also waged war against political workers, who campaigned for taking part in parliamentary politics to demand the rights of the Baloch nation, and common Baloch whom they suspected of working for the security agencies. In district Nazim Kech, Moula Baksh Dashti, who advocated using parliamentary politics to resolve the human rights crisis in the province, lost his life reportedly at the hands of Baloch insurgents. The insurgents were accused of picking up and killing people and became increasingly involved in abductions for ransom. As the insurgency gained momentum, the state responded with a counter-insurgency operation. Many people, regardless of their involvement in the insurgency, were forcibly disappeared. Anyone suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents, relatives or mere acquaintances who may have studied or met someone who later became an insurgent all shared the same fate: enforced disappearance. Some were abducted to pressurize insurgents and send a message that waging a war on the state meant that their loved ones were not safe. While no proper research has thus far been conducted on the proportion of violence carried out by the state in comparison with the insurgents, the state has always been believed to be more brutal against political workers and average Baloch citizens. Counter-insurgency tactics are not new to the people of this province. They have witnessed them before: in the 1970s during the democratically elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Under Bhutto, the army carried out numerous disappearances. The first missing person was Asadullah Mengal, the son of former chief minister of Balochistan, Sardar Attaullah Mengal, and brother of BNP chief, Akhtar Mengal, who was allegedly killed in an encounter in Karachi. Bhutto noted in his book Rumours and Realities that he did not know about Mengal’s murder and later he was told that he was buried near Thatta, Sindh. Even the armed forces had apparently forgotten where exactly they buried him. Decades later, during another PPP government, between 2008 and 2013, Balochistan was once again engulfed by war. Then president Asif Ali Zardari (son-in-law of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and widow of Benazir Bhutto) remained silent on the military operations and enforced disappearances and announced a development package for the province to ease tensions. But these efforts were too little, too late. The present-day insurgency has evolved from its early days, with more involvement from young middle-class, educated Baloch who don't hail from the tribal belt. Two months after the killing of Nawab Bugti in 2006, Ghaffar Baloch was presented in front of the court. The case continued for three years until he was released in 2009 due to lack of evidence against him. “The happiest day of my life was when my father was released. I remember all the time I spent with him vividly.” Mahrang says. “After his release he bought bangles for me which I wore on Eid. I was so happy that he was around. But the happiness was short-lived.” On July 1, 2011, the body of Ghaffar Baloch—carrying visible signs of torture—was found on a roadside in Lasbela district, some 300 kilometers away from Karachi. Mahrang Baloch and Sabiha Baloch (sitting on the right side of Mahrang), sit on a carpet along with other girls, staging a protest in front of the Governor House, Quetta, in Balochistan, while demanding amendments in the Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) Act and restoration of Bolan Medical College quota system. Students believe that the new act will hinder the progress of students from far flung areas of Balochistan to get admission at the university. Only students from Quetta (Balochistan's capital) would benefit from the admission policy without the quota system. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch Dissident Voices After her father’s killing in 2011, Mahrang Baloch slowed down her campaigning for the release of missing persons. When her brother, Nasir Baloch was picked up in December 2017, Mahrang says she realized that no one was safe. It was the turning point in her life. “I was again on the roads but this time it was for my brother,” Mahrang says with a grim smile, “The deputy commissioner of Quetta told me that I had two options. Either I should sit at home silently, or spend time on roads and eventually move to Europe for my safety. I decided I will remain on the roads and protest, but I won’t flee.” “I don’t remember when I stopped becoming an ordinary Baloch woman and became a Baloch woman activist instead,” she chuckles, as she looks back and thinks about all the turns that life took, “I felt it is important to use social media if I wanted to talk about the issues concerning Balochistan. I started using Facebook and Twitter after my brother’s abduction. The first tweet I put out was about my brother’s enforced disappearance.” Mahrang’s brother was released three months and 10 days after his abduction. His release marked not the end of her activism but the beginning. She started raising her voice for other missing persons. The local Pakistani media would not give them coverage, “so social media was the only platform left for us to bring our issues forth and pressurize the government,” she said. “Initially I did not know what to write and what not to write, I worked on choosing my words carefully.” Along with organizing on the ground, she mobilized protests through social media and became a vocal voice for the Baloch missing persons on various online networks. On August 13, 2020, Hayat Baloch, a student of Karachi University, hailing from Turbat, was killed by the FC in front of his parents. This incident sparked widespread protests across Balochistan. When a picture of Hayat’s parents weeping next to his dead body began circulating online, many Baloch social media users were divided on how to interpret the incident. Some argued that it was wrong to circulate the image out of respect for the family’s privacy. Mahrang in a tweet , cited the picture that sparked the Soweto uprising in South Africa. It shows a dying student being carried in the arms of a fellow student and accompanied by his screaming sister. She said that after seeing the image, Nelson Mandela had said “Enough is enough.” When her father had gone missing, Mahrang’s uncle had advised her to speak to the media in order to plead for his return. She would desperately watch news channels to see if there was any news about her father. “At the time, Pakistani news channels gave very little coverage to the issue of missing persons,” she says, “but now, even that little coverage has vanished into thin air.” The issue of missing persons has become an eternal part of Balochistan’s politics. In the general elections of 2018, Balochistan National Party’s (BNP) chief Sardar Akthar Mengal participated in the election promising to amplify the cause of missing persons. He joined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI)-led government at the center, under Prime Minister Imran Khan, after being promised that PTI would address Balochistan’s issue of missing persons, among others. That never happened. Mengal submitted a list of 5,128 missing persons in the National Assembly. The government was unable to fulfill their promises. Mengal finally broke his alliance with the PTI in April 2020, saying that even if the government had released 500 missing persons in the last two years, more than 1,500 others had been picked up. Mahrang Baloch talks to Mushtaq Baloch, a student at Bolan Medical College and also member of Baloch Students Action Committee (BSAC) who is observing a hunger strike on Sept. 8, 2020, near the Governor House and Chief Minister secretariat in Quetta for the amendment of Balochistan University of Medical and Health Services (BUMHS) Act. Mushtaq fell unconscious but still continued the hunger strike after having an IV drip injected into the backside of his palm. Photograph courtesy of Mashal Baloch. Students and Women’s Politics In 2019, Mahrang led protesting students of the University of Balochistan who had broken their silence on years of blackmail and threats by the university administration. Newspapers reported that for several years, officials in the university administration had been using footage from CCTV cameras installed around the university campus citing ‘security’ reasons while extorting money and sexually harassing female students. As a result of protests across the province, the university’s vice chancellor stepped down. “I realized as a woman that if they would not let us get an education then what really is left?” Mahrang asks. Further, she often found that she received little allyship in her activism from around Pakistan. “The response from feminists and women’s rights activists from other parts of Pakistan during our protests was not satisfying. Since the boots [i.e. security agencies] were involved in the scandal, perhaps that is why they did not speak up. It is rare for such mainstream groups to talk about missing persons and human rights abuses. Perhaps they do not care about what happens in Balochistan, just like most Pakistanis.” Many Pakistanis say they do not understand what’s happening in Balochistan. Just a few years ago, news rarely travelled out of Balochistan. The province is rightly called a “ blackhole for media.” But today, many, if not all incidents and news reach the people through social media. Mahrang adds “I believe they are intentionally silent, and that a fake sense of patriotism has clouded their minds, so they ignore everything, even human rights abuses.” Renowned Pakistani novelist, Muhammad Hanif, puts it in a candid way: “Balochistan is not remote just geographically but in our imagination as well.” Baloch women are often leading the movements advocating the release of their loved ones. Tribalism in Balochistan is one of the reasons women have often been confined in their activism and daily life. State institutions have supported and strengthened tribalism. The government has always preferred supporting tribal leaders because it is easy to control them in parliament. Since an entire tribe remains under the control of the leader, and the leader remains under the control of the establishment, the government is able to exert control at all levels of Baloch politics. "The Sardars [tribal leaders] and the establishment have a strong nexus. The establishment brings Sardars to the parliament and so the ongoing Sardari system remains one of the biggest impediments to the development of a middle class in Balochistan. Instead, political efforts should focus on ceding power to the local people," says Mir SherBaz Khetran, a research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Yet in dominant Pakistani political discourse, particularly among so-called intellectuals in cities outside the province, the Baloch are perceived as an illiterate nation. Mahrang believes that such perceptions have caused Baloch women even more suffering. “Baloch women have always been a part of the movement for rights against state oppression. This challenges the dominant narrative, but most activists have rarely supported that.” When Mahrang’s father was briefly released in 2009, he told her that she should participate in student politics and talk about what was happening in Balochistan and that she had to continue her activism for the women and other people of Balochistan. “He said I won't give you any advice; I want you to analyze things yourself and make your own narrative.” Alongside her activism, Mahrang Baloch is a medical student. Over years of protests and activism, she has made sure that her studies are not adversely affected. “Everything related to studies would always excite me. School has always been my favorite place. I never took education as a necessity or something I had to do, but rather as something I loved doing.” The government of Balochistan has also been divided over the current quota system in educational institutions, arguing instead that merit should prevail. Mahrang, however, is firmly in favor of quotas. She led protests to restore the quota system, and ultimately succeeded in doing so at Bolan Medical College (BMC). “There should be merit, but after providing equal educational opportunities to all students,” Mahrang says. “You can’t expect a student from a government school to compete with a student from an elite private school.” Last year, during her protests for the restoration of the quota system and amendment of the BMC Act, Mahrang and other students were asked to meet with Education Minister Sardar Yar Mohammed Rind, who was also one of Balochistan’s most influential tribal chiefs. Instead of seeking consensus, Mahrang says, the minister shouted at her in front of five other ministers. “He said if you women were truly [representing] our honor, you wouldn’t be out here protesting,” she recalls smiling. Mahrang says at the time, she had two options: either to ignore what he had said or respond to the misogynistic act. She chose the second option because what the minister had said was not just about her but pertained to all women. She told him that what he had said was wrong. As an employee of the government, he was responsible for solving their issues. He had failed to do his job. A clearly flustered Rind (the Education Minister) began to misbehave and told her to leave because, as Rind said, “respectable women don’t protest.” “I went to the protest area and I was disturbed. I wondered whether to talk about this in front of the media. I decided I must so that no one else, be it an elected or a selected person, does something like this ever again. I did not expect the positive response I got from the people of Balochistan for speaking up against the tribal chief and minister,” she says. Mahrang made history as the first woman to confront one of Balochistan’s most influential chiefs and hold him accountable for his job. As a result of consistent efforts, protests and hunger strikes by Mahrang and her fellow students, the government finally announced amendments to Bolan Medical College Act. They also assured students that the quota system would remain intact. As an activist, Mahrang feels tired and frustrated at times but the work she does brings her joy. “The real happiness lies in activism and talking about the rights of your nation and its marginalized communities,” she says. She calls herself a nationalist. “I fight for the rights of the people of Balochistan; the land I belong to.” She quoted a line from Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of The Earth : “For a colonized people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” Mahrang Baloch was first jailed in 2006 when she was a 13-year-old, protesting for the release of her father. When her uncle arrived to bail her out, she refused and said she would not leave jail until her father was released. Spending days protesting in August, having to sleep on roads and getting dragged and thrown into a police van—none of these hindrances deterred her from her activism. “I believe jail is not something new. It has more freedom, as I can read and spend time with myself in the prison,” she chuckles. “They cannot break me by imprisoning me. They would liberate me.” ▢ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Mahrang Baloch, pictured here, was a medical student who, after the abductions of her father and brother, became an activist against enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Photography courtesy of Mashal Baloch. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reportage Balochistan Baloch Missing Persons Media Blackout Pakistan Baloch Insurgency Enforced Disappearances State Violence Military Crackdown Displacement Longform Gender Violence Histories of Revolutionary Politics Baloch Students Organization-Azad Military Operations Pervez Musharraf Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Karima Baloch Student Movements Baloch Student Long March Student Protests Student Solidarity March Journalism Baloch Students Organisation-Azad SHAH MEER BALOCH is a journalist who covers Pakistan for The Guardian . His work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, LA Times, Dawn, among others. He was awarded the 2020 Kurt Schork Award in International Freelance Journalism. 18 Feb 2021 Reportage Balochistan 18th Feb 2021 MASHAL BALOCH is a documentary photographer and filmmaker from Balochistan, Pakistan. Baloch is a trainee at DAP (Documentary Association of Pakistan) for their six month documentary training program called Doc Balochistan , supported by Berlinale Talents. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Diplomat and Baluch Hal . She has been awarded Pakistan’s largest-ever filmmaking grant, Stories From Southern Pakistan, by Patakha Pictures. Letter to History (II) Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur 9th Apr Letter to History (I) Hazaran Rahim Dad 3rd Apr Swat Youth Vanguards Manzoor Ali 24th Feb Chats Ep. 6 · Imagery of the Baloch Movement Mashal Baloch 28th Feb The Pakistani Left, Separatism & Student Movements Ammar Ali Jan 14th Dec On That Note:

Musician Ali Sethi in conversation with Associate Editor Kamil Ahsan COMMUNITY Syncretism & the Contemporary Ghazal Musician Ali Sethi in conversation with Associate Editor Kamil Ahsan Ali Sethi The Ghazal originated in Arabia in the 8th century. That's the funny stuff right? That in order to retrieve legitimate cosmopolitanism, we have to go back to a medieval multicultural moment. The Ghazal originated in Arabia in the 8th century. That's the funny stuff right? That in order to retrieve legitimate cosmopolitanism, we have to go back to a medieval multicultural moment. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Interview Music Ghazal Art History Historicity Syncretism State Repression Faiz Ahmed Faiz Khabar-e-Tahayyar-e-Ishq Siraj Aurangabadi Mah Laqa Bai Sensuality Metaphor Cultural Repression Art Practice Sound Poetic Form Performance Art Grief Raaga ALI SETHI is a Lahore-born writer and musician. He is the author of the novel The Wish Maker and a contributor to The New York Times op-ed page. Ali is also a classically trained vocalist. He made his singing debut on Season 8 of Coke Studio Pakistan and was featured on the soundtracks of Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013) and Sarmad Khoosat’s Manto (2015). In 2019 he performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. As of July 2018 he is working on a record with producer Noah Georgeson. 14 Oct 2020 Interview Music 14th Oct 2020 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

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. Natasha Noorani 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 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 SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 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 NATASHA NOORANI is a musician, festival director and ethnomusicologist from Lahore. Noorani has a diverse range as a singer-songwriter, playback singer and voice-over artist. While pursuing contemporary Pakistani pop music, she has also been training in khayal gayaki, and was awarded the Goethe Talents Scholarship in 2019. Her solo EP Munaasib is inspired by r’n’b, neo-soul, and prog rock. Noorani is part of the band Biryani Brothers, and has collaborated on recordings with Strings, Abdullah Siddiqui, Sikandar Ka Mandar, Talal Qureshi, Gentle Robot & Jamal Rahman. Noorani was featured on Velo Sound Station (2020), and has also recorded on soundtracks for the films Baaji (2019) and Chalay Thay Saath (2017). 5 Dec 2020 Live Lahore 5th Dec 2020 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

“As life moves to time elsewhere, in the cities of the world I’ve set out to leave behind me, things move to water, its flow. I do not fail to notice that both time and water flow—perhaps it is this that abets and causes motion?” FEATURES Dukkha “As life moves to time elsewhere, in the cities of the world I’ve set out to leave behind me, things move to water, its flow. I do not fail to notice that both time and water flow—perhaps it is this that abets and causes motion?” Sumana Roy “For a tear is an intellectual thing.” William Blake THEY are beating water. They are beating water with a hammer. I wake up with this sound in my ears. I yawn to be sure that I’m awake. I don’t know whether people yawn in their sleep. I don’t know many other things—whether the body wakes up before the mind, or whether it is possible to beat water with a hammer. But they’re beating water with a hammer. The ears must be the most alert part of our bodies? I’ve heard water speaking in different dialects before. From the sound of it being poured, I can make out how far water in a glass is from the brim; I hear buckets in neighbouring flats overflow; I hear leaking taps, disobedient drops falling to the floor from the mouth of a tap, unhurt; I hear sweat collect into drops; I hear saliva move inside mouths; I hear water breathe and sleep. But this is a different water. They are beating water . I walk out of my rented room. Outside, there’s the light, reluctant to announce itself as if it were a guest. The wind is just the opposite, seeking attention. Both invisible, invincible. What is visible is water—the river Teesta, swollen like an overworked muscle, twitching, like a nerve. But where’s the hammer? I look, but with my ears. There is the regular rhythm of water falling on water to the earth, where everything must collect. When I get out of bed—and from the dream where I was caged all night—the world is in motion. In towns and cities, that motion is triggered by time. Here, where I’ve come to escape time’s fundamentalism, it is not time that is causing motion, for water is the last of the revolutionaries, having managed to live indifferent to time. As life moves to time elsewhere, in the cities of the world I’ve set out to leave behind me, things move to water, its flow. I do not fail to notice that both time and water flow —perhaps it is this that abets and causes motion? There are no mirrors in this house, and so I do not see any humans. I do not know the antonym of ‘human’, but whatever it is, it is for this that I have come here. For me, the opposite of humans is water. It is perhaps because I feel related to water, related as in being a relative. Every time I’ve tried to say this to someone, they’ve dismissed or interpreted this as a ‘poetic’ reflection. I’ve seen doctors who’ve dismissed it as a phase—like teenagers who fancy themselves as their favourite crushes on their T-shirts— and others who’ve told me that there was nothing to worry about feeling like that, for humans are indeed composed mainly of water, more than three-fifths of us. But no one really understands. The drizzle has stopped though I can see its ruins—on leaves, floors, tarpaulin. That water can fall anywhere without breaking its bones is a slap to the superiority of vertebrates. I wonder whether water, if it were animal, would be mammal or aves. Are these raindrops eggs then, or corpses? I am water not because I long to flow. I am water because no metal, no air, no music, nothing can hold my sadness like water. Water fills a teardrop like air fills a yawn. The elements rush in when they sense emptiness. My fingers are on my face again. If water could leave fossils, I imagine that this is how they’d look—these marks coursing down my face. They disappear, but not the sadness. Perhaps it is my fossil. It might have all begun with dehydration. My days in the hospital were marked by the aloneness of being inside the womb of a dark room, but without the water of the womb that enables life. Bottles of saline water hung like benevolent angels beside me, keeping watch over my life. I could see them even in the darkness—the fluorescence of water inside a plastic bottle. I heard them coax life into me, drop by drop, as if I was being created anew. I lay on my back, my spine dividing the bed like a book, thinking of strangers—writers whose words still hadn’t left me, co-passengers whose words had stuck as spit does on walls. That is the thing about sadness—its extremism, its intrusiveness, that leaves space for nothing. Sadness changes us unrecognisably even as we appear the same to the world. Humans, after all, are not like the sky—one cannot tell the climate of feelings from its body and colour. Dark clouds do not appear like boils on human bodies to indicate sadness. It was hard to believe that it was crying that had left me dehydrated. Any piece of wood becomes sweet-smelling when left in the proximity of sandalwood: this is a saying in Bangla. Left beside water for days, hearing it trickle drop by drop into my body, I became an embodiment of that. The thought of organ transplants never left me, as if this water would replace my sadness, my body’s largest organ. I could not think of it as anything but water—it came out of me as tears, snot, and sweat, the last in moments of panic and anxiety, when I felt this fear would corrode everything. I felt it inside me as one does water, in its various states, moving inside me like water, me trying to push it out as if it were gaseous, but it was like ice, solid and heavy, territorial, refusing to move, immobilising me, every thought and action. I longed for a hammer that’d allow me to break it into pieces just like the ice-candy man scraped ice. I hoped for this new water from the drip to take its place, as rain cleans the air, to fill me with life as I imagined life should be: without pain. I thought of the agents of my sadness—those I’d loved, whose understanding had now disappeared. As if I’d suddenly turned into a foreign language. I imagined their sadness as well, even as I knew that it was different from mine. I saw theirs from the outside, and recognised it from their words and gestures. From the self-centredness that suffering brings, I understood only the obvious: if sadness were a species, I belonged to its phylum. Life with watercolour, I see now, was also a life with water. What I loved most about watercolour was what I loved most about water—its unexpectedness of flow and behaviour. Even after all these years, I couldn’t be completely sure how a dab of the brush would behave on the canvas. It could spread beyond my imagined prediction, or it could remain still, like the skin of a drying pond. That was how sadness settled inside me even though I still can’t tell whether the sadness was inside or outside. Watercolour changed my perception of language. Surface tension—the physical property of water that explained its behaviour on the canvas—I now saw only as ‘tension’. Paint I came to read and hear as ‘pain’. Like people, sounds and things and expressions had begun disappearing from my life. Cohabitation meant living with, living beside. My long history of living beside water, as it helped me understand the world on canvas, and then the interminable days of lying beside the relentless drip, reminded me of possible older lives—memories stored inside the gene, like a safe deposit that would remain unused until needed. My immediate ancestors had made a life in the alluvial plains of Bengal—my mother’s paternal family on the Gangetic delta, my father’s by the Padma. In this, they were related to the first humans who built settlements by the river. I hoped that that ancient sense of water, its blood and its carefree individualism, had trickled into me in some way. They had known water simply as water; as neighbour, not as something imagined , like ice or gas. This intimacy with water had marked their relationships—not just fluidity and flow, but a natural transparency and constancy. But the river was only a memory inside me—a human memory, of calls of fear by my great grand-people, of delight in its offerings, of the sound of splashing, of rolling abundance, and also of drowning. Why has the river stopped flowing after entering me? How have I become its station? There is nothing we own as deeply as pain. That is perhaps why we’re reluctant to let it go. I’m often unable to distinguish myself from my sadness. It is not like looking in a mirror, where I know I am related to the person looking back at me, who moves when I do, who walks away when I do. That sadness can have a body and breasts and fingers and a stomach that moves in all four directions is still new to me, even after all these years. For it is hard to imagine sadness. An infant might be able to imagine many things, perhaps even its hair blowing in the wind, but it can’t imagine sadness. Why am I sad? Trying to answer this question is like looking for a black stone from amidst a large pile of black stones—the answer is there, but not identifiable to me. If I knew which stone it was, I’d throw it far away, beyond the reach of the strength of my arms and the power of my eyes. I think of possible reasons for my sadness—I pile them together like those black stones. When they topple over inside my head, I arrange them differently, like books on shelves, but nothing helps. I only feel it inside me. Sometimes, I rub my chest as if sadness were a lump that would dissolve and melt inside me. But I can’t touch it. I feel that I’ve let sadness turn to god, the way god is invisible but everywhere. Like Hindu gods, sadness is also form-changing. The pestle pounding between my breasts transforms into a leech in my throat, and soon into water in my eyes. I touch the water and stare at it sometimes. For even though it might look like the same water, the sadness is always different. Like water, like god, like a caterpillar, it is always changing form. I struggle to remember why I was sad yesterday or why I cried all night last week. When I am exhausted by its ingratitude at my having given it a home to stay, I want to throw it out. Instead, I hide it from the world as if it were a secret love. I try to remember when I first made its acquaintance but I fail. It seems I’ve known it for as long as I have known my mother. Or life. Because I don’t tell anyone about it, I cannot seek their assistance. Once or twice, a friend who sensed the wildlife of my tears over the phone, says, ‘Maybe you should see a doctor? I have a friend who benefitted from…’ I struggle the most at that moment—her words are like a laxative inside my gut, they push my sadness out violently. My face is in my hands then—I have to hide my tears from the world. I have no idea why hiding my face seemed necessary at that moment. I am embarrassed. I feel guilty. I always feel guilty for being sad. Happiness missionaries are everywhere—on my bookshelves, in my phone, in notes I have copied and written to myself. Life seems to be only about joy, about participating in ananda, in pleasure, in happiness—everything we do ought to be directed towards that sole aim. Sadness is life’s outcast, and those like me are therefore life’s outcasts too. Why tears are more private than laughter, I don’t know. I will not be able to recognise my tears, in spite of having known them for so many years, ever since I was born. They are not like blood and its groups. If they were, we might have been able to know about the group that constituted the saddest people. When a friend asks what sadness feels like, whether it’s permanent, (‘Like paralysis?’), I try to think of an appropriate metaphor and fail—‘It’s like a niggling cough inside you. You feel it there, inside your chest, waiting to come out all the time’. Nothing helps. Nothing helps. For everything might have a language—some kind of language—but sadness doesn’t. It is pre-linguistic, and hasn’t evolved since then. That is another thing that I think about often. That sadness might be my only connect with my oldest ancestors. My body, with deposits of pollutants, might not be related to theirs, their reasons for joy must have been different from mine, but I think it is our sadness that makes us true relatives. I refuse to see a doctor. A friend says: ‘You must change a shoe that pinches’. It is not the fact of my sadness being compared to a shoe that irritates me. It is their assumption that sadness can be replaced. Everyone seems to have a vague idea about what that replacement might be, but they can’t be quite sure—a spare tyre replaces a similar tyre; will another kind of sadness replace this sadness? Sadness paralyses. It is because the water freezes. How does it move then? I pose this as an anonymous question to a suicide prevention website and someone writes back immediately. I imagine the responder to be a woman, and soon after, a machine. ‘Try origami—take paper and try to fold it into a shape that resembles your sadness. Write to us after you’ve done that. Being able to do that is half your work done.’ I recoil from the aggressive tone, this ridding of sadness now so integral to me, as close as a biological child. The annoyance passes, but the thought loiters in my consciousness. I bring old newspaper and turn to my fingers—they’ve fed and cleaned me all my life, won’t they bring me some calm if they can? Stars and birds, flowers and balloons—everything can be created from folding paper, so at that point it appears that this is how god created the world, merely by folding. I’ve only ever made boats before—folding squares into triangles and pulling them inside out gently until the likeness of a boat emerged. It was a surprise every single time—the genius of folds, of lines and planes, sticking without water’s glue. And yet, no matter how much my boat-making improved with practice, the tiny boat never managed to sail without capsizing. The thinness of paper, even with its softness, fails to find appropriate support in a partner like water, it being without a spine itself. Is sadness the paper I’ll have to fold into a boat, or the water on which the boat must sail? My heart feels like a boatman trying to boat on a dried river. I cry in the shower. Water washing water, as if water were excreta—the way I heard my grandmother say bishey bishkhoy, poison kills poison. Water runs over me, touching me in places where even light struggles to enter. I close the tap from time to time but cannot leave. Water is a magnet—I know I should leave for dryness, for warmth, but I stand there waiting for more water. I am aware of my aloneness, I feel like a seed. It was possible that all seeds are as lonely as the mango stone. Loneliness had turned them hard and unwelcoming of every kind of touch, whether of blade or tongue or teeth. The opposite of this was the papaya—seeds that were soft and silky and naughty, this joy coming to them from living in a commune inside: a hundred blackish seeds. That is why hair too is never lonely—it struggles for space, but is never in want of company. The heart, on the other hand, is completely alone. One heart, one penis, one vagina. But two breasts. Was there a moral in this? Was water as lonely as me? I wouldn’t ever know, so dependent was I on this body and its inability to migrate to anything besides itself. I hated my thoughts and wanted to be rid of them. In fact, I wanted to be rid of myself. I questioned all my thoughts and actions as if they were someone else’s, even an enemy’s. I did not realise that I was lonely—I did not understand that my loneliness had pitted me against myself. It was a surprise, what I had become—like a wet and fierce wind that carves rocks, so that what we see is actually the remainder after the tussle between stone and wind, I was now a leftover of my sadness. Sadness slows down everything—it survives on echoes, for everything returns over and over again. It stammers inside, trying hard to get out. It becomes like a port of the heart, and mind that they always return to. Compared to other emotions, its pace is slow—but slow only horizontally, for it moves southwards like water does through soil. Other emotions, like the roots of trees, feed on sadness urgently. They change immediately, for sadness is a powerful catalyst: it changes its surroundings without itself changing. I try to understand sadness through physics—taking away a piece of brick will result in exactly the same volume of air taking its place. The disappearance of a person leaves sadness that is far greater than the physical volume of the person. How does that happen? Science fails, I fail. To carry the size and weight of sadness that is bigger and heavier than one’s body; it was sadness that Sisyphus was trying to push up the mountain. I have this image: I’m standing at the top of a hill, about to jump off, but I can’t. I think it is sadness that glues me to the spot for sadness is an addiction. I’ve become a parasite to this sadness. I must remain alive to keep my sadness alive. I don’t know why they call it stream-of-consciousness. Lately, every time water from my paintbrush has leaked onto the canvas, that phrase has come up. Information doesn’t interest me—they are like nails that break for being too long, the fact of this phrase coming from William James’s revolutionary book. Did he actually mean stream of sadness when he said consciousness? Was he sad when he coined the phrase? But at times it doesn’t feel like a stream but a waterfall—water hurting water, sadness hitting sadness. I’m teaching my nephew to draw water. Next to him is a box of watercolours. We are rubbing water—with a brush, of course—on a blue tablet to produce blue water: adding water to produce water, a version of sexual reproduction as it were, humans producing humans, plants producing plants, like producing like. (That is the nature of reproduction: to produce versions of oneself. Only the sun is different. We, in all our varied forms, are its offspring, but we don’t resemble it.) The little boy takes the brush and pulls it from one end of the page to the other until its bluish stains mark the page. He promptly calls them water’s pimples. He’s angry when I laugh at his diagnosis. Scolded, I ask for a cure—water, he says, and pours the entire bowl on the page, and, of course, the drawing book. The flooded page is put under a patch of sunlight. There it dries unequally, crinkling, losing its flatness. We imagine land as we do water—flatness pleases us, it makes us feel powerful. Sharp undulations, prickliness, bristliness—they trouble us. This comes to us from our body which wants smooth surfaces; even a tiny grain of sand can keep us awake. The eye, like our back, seeks plain surfaces. There is aaram in looking at a straight line instead of jagged lines. But water is neither straight nor jagged. It is a moving line. The closest approximation of water’s movement on land is that of ants moving in a line, untouched by the push and rush of time. For many things move water—feet and machines, pumps and pipes, but time has no power over water’s movement. Time cannot move water, like it cannot move sadness. Another day we try again. This time land is sandwiched between two blocks of blue—water and sky. One of these he can see—and so it is not hard for him to be faithful: he looks outside the window, the blue sky is squatting there as always. He needs no tutoring, no demands are made on the imagination. Blue must be coloured blue. But water, silent in the bowl next to him, is colourless. Why must he colour it blue? It is a lie, he thinks. I try to paraphrase the Raman effect for him, but it’s like chanting a mantra to prove the existence of god. Water can be any colour, he says, and then demonstrates—dipping the brush into the colours one by one, letting it leak and dissolve into the bowl. Water collects all the colours. There’s nothing more accommodative than water. It is more elastic than even the human heart. ‘Making a bucket is a lot of work. Anything that holds water demands a lot of work.’ It is Rath Yatra, and I’m at a small fair that accompanies it every year. The fairs of my childhood are gone—clay, iron and tin toys have now been replaced by plastic. Almost everything squeaks, or runs on battery. I’ve come here to buy clay utensils—miniatures, toys for children. Utensils, fruits and vegetables, even houses with sloping roofs—most of these things don’t exist anymore, not even in villages. They are a part of folk memory, on their way to turning into nostalgia, a space as inert as a museum. This man sits in a corner. He is a remainder, and reminder, from an older time, when men trusted their hands, and when they blamed their poverty on destiny and not the government. In front of him are three kinds of things: kulo, boti, balti, the first for winnowing, separating grain from husk, the second a kind of flat bladed knife, used by sitting on the floor; the third is a toy tin bucket. For the bucket he asks for twenty rupees. Scared that I might bargain, he adds: "Anything that holds water demands a lot of work." It is folk knowledge that it always rains on the day of Rath Yatra. But there is not a cloud in the sky. That humidity which makes rain possible has landed on earth,. Around me is a blind crowd, blind because, like me, they do not know where we’re all going. We’re being pushed, and are pushing each other without will. We are sweating, we have become clouds. People are eager to touch the rope that pulls Jagannath and his siblings. It is endearing, this sacredness of a rope, how belief transforms the common into a thing of wonder. It is what love does too. I notice that the priest who’s sitting in the "ground storey" of the Rath is carrying a black umbrella. But the rains don’t come. It is as if we’ve become skies—water is flowing out of us relentlessly. The man’s words don’t leave me—how difficult it is to create anything that holds water. I kept thinking of god as the old man spoke, and how hard it must have been for him to design our eyes that hold tears. "Because you can’t carry water in everything after all." I’ve watched time lapses of water solidifying into ice. It is still a thing of wonder for me, for I was born into a household that did not have a fridge until I was seven. It was a magic machine. The magician P.C. Sorcar visited Siliguri almost every winter. We watched him cut human bodies into pieces and put them back together, the people, who were dead only a while ago now walked back to their seats in the auditorium. I thought of the fridge as akin to the magician—it could change unwieldy, liquid water into solid square cubes. But, like Sorcar, the fridge kept its technique hidden from me—it would freeze water only with its door closed. These time-lapse videos affect my body. I find that I swallow my saliva more often. I see water freezing into ice and I imagine this is how pain coagulates into sadness inside me. I remember looking at the icy peaks of the Himalayas from the balcony of my rented apartment overlooking Darjeeling’s Happy Valley Tea Estate. When I couldn’t see them clearly, I realised it wasn’t just my clinical myopia but the water in my eyes, which surprised me with its inexhaustibility. At first I dip just my head in the old iron bucket. It is cold—the water feels like metal, cold, solid, and resistant to any entry. When I force my head in, it tries to expel my head out of the bucket. I try again—I push my head in and then pull it out when the resistance seems too strong to bear. My head doesn’t learn to swim. One thing I take from this with some relief, even joy, is how water drowns out and distorts almost all surrounding sound. For a moment, perhaps because of the unexpectedness of the impact, it drowns out the sounds inside my head as well. I immediately begin thinking of this as a cure—this dunking my head in water every time sadness paralyses me. I remember my mother pouring water on my head and forehead to bring down my fever. I will trust in water too. Later, as the day wears warmer clothes, I walk to the river and sit on a rock. My feet enter the water. The river doesn’t push back like the water in the bucket. Head and feet—these are our extreme points, where tiredness accumulates the fastest. But how different the aches, and how different their cures. The water, even though it is colder than my body, as it mostly is when we meet in natural conditions, doesn’t seem as foreign to my feet as it did to my head. I do not know why. All my life I have allowed the water poured over my head to run to my feet. I read that the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end because of water shortage. Civilisations can end because of water. Can sadness end for the same reason? I am sleepy. Sleep feels like a pencil whose nib breaks every day. The history of hurt remains unrecorded. ∎ “For a tear is an intellectual thing.” William Blake THEY are beating water. They are beating water with a hammer. I wake up with this sound in my ears. I yawn to be sure that I’m awake. I don’t know whether people yawn in their sleep. I don’t know many other things—whether the body wakes up before the mind, or whether it is possible to beat water with a hammer. But they’re beating water with a hammer. The ears must be the most alert part of our bodies? I’ve heard water speaking in different dialects before. From the sound of it being poured, I can make out how far water in a glass is from the brim; I hear buckets in neighbouring flats overflow; I hear leaking taps, disobedient drops falling to the floor from the mouth of a tap, unhurt; I hear sweat collect into drops; I hear saliva move inside mouths; I hear water breathe and sleep. But this is a different water. They are beating water . I walk out of my rented room. Outside, there’s the light, reluctant to announce itself as if it were a guest. The wind is just the opposite, seeking attention. Both invisible, invincible. What is visible is water—the river Teesta, swollen like an overworked muscle, twitching, like a nerve. But where’s the hammer? I look, but with my ears. There is the regular rhythm of water falling on water to the earth, where everything must collect. When I get out of bed—and from the dream where I was caged all night—the world is in motion. In towns and cities, that motion is triggered by time. Here, where I’ve come to escape time’s fundamentalism, it is not time that is causing motion, for water is the last of the revolutionaries, having managed to live indifferent to time. As life moves to time elsewhere, in the cities of the world I’ve set out to leave behind me, things move to water, its flow. I do not fail to notice that both time and water flow —perhaps it is this that abets and causes motion? There are no mirrors in this house, and so I do not see any humans. I do not know the antonym of ‘human’, but whatever it is, it is for this that I have come here. For me, the opposite of humans is water. It is perhaps because I feel related to water, related as in being a relative. Every time I’ve tried to say this to someone, they’ve dismissed or interpreted this as a ‘poetic’ reflection. I’ve seen doctors who’ve dismissed it as a phase—like teenagers who fancy themselves as their favourite crushes on their T-shirts— and others who’ve told me that there was nothing to worry about feeling like that, for humans are indeed composed mainly of water, more than three-fifths of us. But no one really understands. The drizzle has stopped though I can see its ruins—on leaves, floors, tarpaulin. That water can fall anywhere without breaking its bones is a slap to the superiority of vertebrates. I wonder whether water, if it were animal, would be mammal or aves. Are these raindrops eggs then, or corpses? I am water not because I long to flow. I am water because no metal, no air, no music, nothing can hold my sadness like water. Water fills a teardrop like air fills a yawn. The elements rush in when they sense emptiness. My fingers are on my face again. If water could leave fossils, I imagine that this is how they’d look—these marks coursing down my face. They disappear, but not the sadness. Perhaps it is my fossil. It might have all begun with dehydration. My days in the hospital were marked by the aloneness of being inside the womb of a dark room, but without the water of the womb that enables life. Bottles of saline water hung like benevolent angels beside me, keeping watch over my life. I could see them even in the darkness—the fluorescence of water inside a plastic bottle. I heard them coax life into me, drop by drop, as if I was being created anew. I lay on my back, my spine dividing the bed like a book, thinking of strangers—writers whose words still hadn’t left me, co-passengers whose words had stuck as spit does on walls. That is the thing about sadness—its extremism, its intrusiveness, that leaves space for nothing. Sadness changes us unrecognisably even as we appear the same to the world. Humans, after all, are not like the sky—one cannot tell the climate of feelings from its body and colour. Dark clouds do not appear like boils on human bodies to indicate sadness. It was hard to believe that it was crying that had left me dehydrated. Any piece of wood becomes sweet-smelling when left in the proximity of sandalwood: this is a saying in Bangla. Left beside water for days, hearing it trickle drop by drop into my body, I became an embodiment of that. The thought of organ transplants never left me, as if this water would replace my sadness, my body’s largest organ. I could not think of it as anything but water—it came out of me as tears, snot, and sweat, the last in moments of panic and anxiety, when I felt this fear would corrode everything. I felt it inside me as one does water, in its various states, moving inside me like water, me trying to push it out as if it were gaseous, but it was like ice, solid and heavy, territorial, refusing to move, immobilising me, every thought and action. I longed for a hammer that’d allow me to break it into pieces just like the ice-candy man scraped ice. I hoped for this new water from the drip to take its place, as rain cleans the air, to fill me with life as I imagined life should be: without pain. I thought of the agents of my sadness—those I’d loved, whose understanding had now disappeared. As if I’d suddenly turned into a foreign language. I imagined their sadness as well, even as I knew that it was different from mine. I saw theirs from the outside, and recognised it from their words and gestures. From the self-centredness that suffering brings, I understood only the obvious: if sadness were a species, I belonged to its phylum. Life with watercolour, I see now, was also a life with water. What I loved most about watercolour was what I loved most about water—its unexpectedness of flow and behaviour. Even after all these years, I couldn’t be completely sure how a dab of the brush would behave on the canvas. It could spread beyond my imagined prediction, or it could remain still, like the skin of a drying pond. That was how sadness settled inside me even though I still can’t tell whether the sadness was inside or outside. Watercolour changed my perception of language. Surface tension—the physical property of water that explained its behaviour on the canvas—I now saw only as ‘tension’. Paint I came to read and hear as ‘pain’. Like people, sounds and things and expressions had begun disappearing from my life. Cohabitation meant living with, living beside. My long history of living beside water, as it helped me understand the world on canvas, and then the interminable days of lying beside the relentless drip, reminded me of possible older lives—memories stored inside the gene, like a safe deposit that would remain unused until needed. My immediate ancestors had made a life in the alluvial plains of Bengal—my mother’s paternal family on the Gangetic delta, my father’s by the Padma. In this, they were related to the first humans who built settlements by the river. I hoped that that ancient sense of water, its blood and its carefree individualism, had trickled into me in some way. They had known water simply as water; as neighbour, not as something imagined , like ice or gas. This intimacy with water had marked their relationships—not just fluidity and flow, but a natural transparency and constancy. But the river was only a memory inside me—a human memory, of calls of fear by my great grand-people, of delight in its offerings, of the sound of splashing, of rolling abundance, and also of drowning. Why has the river stopped flowing after entering me? How have I become its station? There is nothing we own as deeply as pain. That is perhaps why we’re reluctant to let it go. I’m often unable to distinguish myself from my sadness. It is not like looking in a mirror, where I know I am related to the person looking back at me, who moves when I do, who walks away when I do. That sadness can have a body and breasts and fingers and a stomach that moves in all four directions is still new to me, even after all these years. For it is hard to imagine sadness. An infant might be able to imagine many things, perhaps even its hair blowing in the wind, but it can’t imagine sadness. Why am I sad? Trying to answer this question is like looking for a black stone from amidst a large pile of black stones—the answer is there, but not identifiable to me. If I knew which stone it was, I’d throw it far away, beyond the reach of the strength of my arms and the power of my eyes. I think of possible reasons for my sadness—I pile them together like those black stones. When they topple over inside my head, I arrange them differently, like books on shelves, but nothing helps. I only feel it inside me. Sometimes, I rub my chest as if sadness were a lump that would dissolve and melt inside me. But I can’t touch it. I feel that I’ve let sadness turn to god, the way god is invisible but everywhere. Like Hindu gods, sadness is also form-changing. The pestle pounding between my breasts transforms into a leech in my throat, and soon into water in my eyes. I touch the water and stare at it sometimes. For even though it might look like the same water, the sadness is always different. Like water, like god, like a caterpillar, it is always changing form. I struggle to remember why I was sad yesterday or why I cried all night last week. When I am exhausted by its ingratitude at my having given it a home to stay, I want to throw it out. Instead, I hide it from the world as if it were a secret love. I try to remember when I first made its acquaintance but I fail. It seems I’ve known it for as long as I have known my mother. Or life. Because I don’t tell anyone about it, I cannot seek their assistance. Once or twice, a friend who sensed the wildlife of my tears over the phone, says, ‘Maybe you should see a doctor? I have a friend who benefitted from…’ I struggle the most at that moment—her words are like a laxative inside my gut, they push my sadness out violently. My face is in my hands then—I have to hide my tears from the world. I have no idea why hiding my face seemed necessary at that moment. I am embarrassed. I feel guilty. I always feel guilty for being sad. Happiness missionaries are everywhere—on my bookshelves, in my phone, in notes I have copied and written to myself. Life seems to be only about joy, about participating in ananda, in pleasure, in happiness—everything we do ought to be directed towards that sole aim. Sadness is life’s outcast, and those like me are therefore life’s outcasts too. Why tears are more private than laughter, I don’t know. I will not be able to recognise my tears, in spite of having known them for so many years, ever since I was born. They are not like blood and its groups. If they were, we might have been able to know about the group that constituted the saddest people. When a friend asks what sadness feels like, whether it’s permanent, (‘Like paralysis?’), I try to think of an appropriate metaphor and fail—‘It’s like a niggling cough inside you. You feel it there, inside your chest, waiting to come out all the time’. Nothing helps. Nothing helps. For everything might have a language—some kind of language—but sadness doesn’t. It is pre-linguistic, and hasn’t evolved since then. That is another thing that I think about often. That sadness might be my only connect with my oldest ancestors. My body, with deposits of pollutants, might not be related to theirs, their reasons for joy must have been different from mine, but I think it is our sadness that makes us true relatives. I refuse to see a doctor. A friend says: ‘You must change a shoe that pinches’. It is not the fact of my sadness being compared to a shoe that irritates me. It is their assumption that sadness can be replaced. Everyone seems to have a vague idea about what that replacement might be, but they can’t be quite sure—a spare tyre replaces a similar tyre; will another kind of sadness replace this sadness? Sadness paralyses. It is because the water freezes. How does it move then? I pose this as an anonymous question to a suicide prevention website and someone writes back immediately. I imagine the responder to be a woman, and soon after, a machine. ‘Try origami—take paper and try to fold it into a shape that resembles your sadness. Write to us after you’ve done that. Being able to do that is half your work done.’ I recoil from the aggressive tone, this ridding of sadness now so integral to me, as close as a biological child. The annoyance passes, but the thought loiters in my consciousness. I bring old newspaper and turn to my fingers—they’ve fed and cleaned me all my life, won’t they bring me some calm if they can? Stars and birds, flowers and balloons—everything can be created from folding paper, so at that point it appears that this is how god created the world, merely by folding. I’ve only ever made boats before—folding squares into triangles and pulling them inside out gently until the likeness of a boat emerged. It was a surprise every single time—the genius of folds, of lines and planes, sticking without water’s glue. And yet, no matter how much my boat-making improved with practice, the tiny boat never managed to sail without capsizing. The thinness of paper, even with its softness, fails to find appropriate support in a partner like water, it being without a spine itself. Is sadness the paper I’ll have to fold into a boat, or the water on which the boat must sail? My heart feels like a boatman trying to boat on a dried river. I cry in the shower. Water washing water, as if water were excreta—the way I heard my grandmother say bishey bishkhoy, poison kills poison. Water runs over me, touching me in places where even light struggles to enter. I close the tap from time to time but cannot leave. Water is a magnet—I know I should leave for dryness, for warmth, but I stand there waiting for more water. I am aware of my aloneness, I feel like a seed. It was possible that all seeds are as lonely as the mango stone. Loneliness had turned them hard and unwelcoming of every kind of touch, whether of blade or tongue or teeth. The opposite of this was the papaya—seeds that were soft and silky and naughty, this joy coming to them from living in a commune inside: a hundred blackish seeds. That is why hair too is never lonely—it struggles for space, but is never in want of company. The heart, on the other hand, is completely alone. One heart, one penis, one vagina. But two breasts. Was there a moral in this? Was water as lonely as me? I wouldn’t ever know, so dependent was I on this body and its inability to migrate to anything besides itself. I hated my thoughts and wanted to be rid of them. In fact, I wanted to be rid of myself. I questioned all my thoughts and actions as if they were someone else’s, even an enemy’s. I did not realise that I was lonely—I did not understand that my loneliness had pitted me against myself. It was a surprise, what I had become—like a wet and fierce wind that carves rocks, so that what we see is actually the remainder after the tussle between stone and wind, I was now a leftover of my sadness. Sadness slows down everything—it survives on echoes, for everything returns over and over again. It stammers inside, trying hard to get out. It becomes like a port of the heart, and mind that they always return to. Compared to other emotions, its pace is slow—but slow only horizontally, for it moves southwards like water does through soil. Other emotions, like the roots of trees, feed on sadness urgently. They change immediately, for sadness is a powerful catalyst: it changes its surroundings without itself changing. I try to understand sadness through physics—taking away a piece of brick will result in exactly the same volume of air taking its place. The disappearance of a person leaves sadness that is far greater than the physical volume of the person. How does that happen? Science fails, I fail. To carry the size and weight of sadness that is bigger and heavier than one’s body; it was sadness that Sisyphus was trying to push up the mountain. I have this image: I’m standing at the top of a hill, about to jump off, but I can’t. I think it is sadness that glues me to the spot for sadness is an addiction. I’ve become a parasite to this sadness. I must remain alive to keep my sadness alive. I don’t know why they call it stream-of-consciousness. Lately, every time water from my paintbrush has leaked onto the canvas, that phrase has come up. Information doesn’t interest me—they are like nails that break for being too long, the fact of this phrase coming from William James’s revolutionary book. Did he actually mean stream of sadness when he said consciousness? Was he sad when he coined the phrase? But at times it doesn’t feel like a stream but a waterfall—water hurting water, sadness hitting sadness. I’m teaching my nephew to draw water. Next to him is a box of watercolours. We are rubbing water—with a brush, of course—on a blue tablet to produce blue water: adding water to produce water, a version of sexual reproduction as it were, humans producing humans, plants producing plants, like producing like. (That is the nature of reproduction: to produce versions of oneself. Only the sun is different. We, in all our varied forms, are its offspring, but we don’t resemble it.) The little boy takes the brush and pulls it from one end of the page to the other until its bluish stains mark the page. He promptly calls them water’s pimples. He’s angry when I laugh at his diagnosis. Scolded, I ask for a cure—water, he says, and pours the entire bowl on the page, and, of course, the drawing book. The flooded page is put under a patch of sunlight. There it dries unequally, crinkling, losing its flatness. We imagine land as we do water—flatness pleases us, it makes us feel powerful. Sharp undulations, prickliness, bristliness—they trouble us. This comes to us from our body which wants smooth surfaces; even a tiny grain of sand can keep us awake. The eye, like our back, seeks plain surfaces. There is aaram in looking at a straight line instead of jagged lines. But water is neither straight nor jagged. It is a moving line. The closest approximation of water’s movement on land is that of ants moving in a line, untouched by the push and rush of time. For many things move water—feet and machines, pumps and pipes, but time has no power over water’s movement. Time cannot move water, like it cannot move sadness. Another day we try again. This time land is sandwiched between two blocks of blue—water and sky. One of these he can see—and so it is not hard for him to be faithful: he looks outside the window, the blue sky is squatting there as always. He needs no tutoring, no demands are made on the imagination. Blue must be coloured blue. But water, silent in the bowl next to him, is colourless. Why must he colour it blue? It is a lie, he thinks. I try to paraphrase the Raman effect for him, but it’s like chanting a mantra to prove the existence of god. Water can be any colour, he says, and then demonstrates—dipping the brush into the colours one by one, letting it leak and dissolve into the bowl. Water collects all the colours. There’s nothing more accommodative than water. It is more elastic than even the human heart. ‘Making a bucket is a lot of work. Anything that holds water demands a lot of work.’ It is Rath Yatra, and I’m at a small fair that accompanies it every year. The fairs of my childhood are gone—clay, iron and tin toys have now been replaced by plastic. Almost everything squeaks, or runs on battery. I’ve come here to buy clay utensils—miniatures, toys for children. Utensils, fruits and vegetables, even houses with sloping roofs—most of these things don’t exist anymore, not even in villages. They are a part of folk memory, on their way to turning into nostalgia, a space as inert as a museum. This man sits in a corner. He is a remainder, and reminder, from an older time, when men trusted their hands, and when they blamed their poverty on destiny and not the government. In front of him are three kinds of things: kulo, boti, balti, the first for winnowing, separating grain from husk, the second a kind of flat bladed knife, used by sitting on the floor; the third is a toy tin bucket. For the bucket he asks for twenty rupees. Scared that I might bargain, he adds: "Anything that holds water demands a lot of work." It is folk knowledge that it always rains on the day of Rath Yatra. But there is not a cloud in the sky. That humidity which makes rain possible has landed on earth,. Around me is a blind crowd, blind because, like me, they do not know where we’re all going. We’re being pushed, and are pushing each other without will. We are sweating, we have become clouds. People are eager to touch the rope that pulls Jagannath and his siblings. It is endearing, this sacredness of a rope, how belief transforms the common into a thing of wonder. It is what love does too. I notice that the priest who’s sitting in the "ground storey" of the Rath is carrying a black umbrella. But the rains don’t come. It is as if we’ve become skies—water is flowing out of us relentlessly. The man’s words don’t leave me—how difficult it is to create anything that holds water. I kept thinking of god as the old man spoke, and how hard it must have been for him to design our eyes that hold tears. "Because you can’t carry water in everything after all." I’ve watched time lapses of water solidifying into ice. It is still a thing of wonder for me, for I was born into a household that did not have a fridge until I was seven. It was a magic machine. The magician P.C. Sorcar visited Siliguri almost every winter. We watched him cut human bodies into pieces and put them back together, the people, who were dead only a while ago now walked back to their seats in the auditorium. I thought of the fridge as akin to the magician—it could change unwieldy, liquid water into solid square cubes. But, like Sorcar, the fridge kept its technique hidden from me—it would freeze water only with its door closed. These time-lapse videos affect my body. I find that I swallow my saliva more often. I see water freezing into ice and I imagine this is how pain coagulates into sadness inside me. I remember looking at the icy peaks of the Himalayas from the balcony of my rented apartment overlooking Darjeeling’s Happy Valley Tea Estate. When I couldn’t see them clearly, I realised it wasn’t just my clinical myopia but the water in my eyes, which surprised me with its inexhaustibility. At first I dip just my head in the old iron bucket. It is cold—the water feels like metal, cold, solid, and resistant to any entry. When I force my head in, it tries to expel my head out of the bucket. I try again—I push my head in and then pull it out when the resistance seems too strong to bear. My head doesn’t learn to swim. One thing I take from this with some relief, even joy, is how water drowns out and distorts almost all surrounding sound. For a moment, perhaps because of the unexpectedness of the impact, it drowns out the sounds inside my head as well. I immediately begin thinking of this as a cure—this dunking my head in water every time sadness paralyses me. I remember my mother pouring water on my head and forehead to bring down my fever. I will trust in water too. Later, as the day wears warmer clothes, I walk to the river and sit on a rock. My feet enter the water. The river doesn’t push back like the water in the bucket. Head and feet—these are our extreme points, where tiredness accumulates the fastest. But how different the aches, and how different their cures. The water, even though it is colder than my body, as it mostly is when we meet in natural conditions, doesn’t seem as foreign to my feet as it did to my head. I do not know why. All my life I have allowed the water poured over my head to run to my feet. I read that the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end because of water shortage. Civilisations can end because of water. Can sadness end for the same reason? I am sleepy. Sleep feels like a pencil whose nib breaks every day. The history of hurt remains unrecorded. ∎ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Artwork by Haris Hidayat Ullah for SAAG. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Essay Bengal Personal History Holding Water Epistemology Trauma Temporality Water Sadness Depictions of Grief Grief Essay Form Experimental Methods Banality William Blake Teesta Disaster & Language Intimacy & Disaster River Guilt Privacy Siliguri Loneliness Stream of Consciousness Watercolor Rath Yatra Memory P. C. Sorcar Darjeeling Himalayas SUMANA ROY is the author of How I became a Tree , Missing: A Novel , Out of Syllabus: Poems , My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories , among others. Her newest book is entitled Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries. She is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. 4 Jul 2021 Essay Bengal 4th Jul 2021 HARIS HIDAYAT ULLAH is an illustrator and a visual artist with works rooted in critical thinking, cultural phenomena and the absurd. He’s been involved with projects like Red Bull Radio, The Fearless Collective and has headed illustration workshops at the British Council Library, conducted art history workshops and exhibit at Rabtt. His collaborative initiative RTF Studio is shaping a diverse musical landscape. Additionally he has also been a speaker at TEDxGCU, where he gave his talk Navigating Through Self . Currently, he runs his artistic project called Lewanay delving into his surroundings, experiences and identity. Haris is also an Art Director in the fashion industry leading various editorial campaigns and visual storytelling. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

“The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” INTERACTIVE India's Vector Capitalism Model “The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” Anumeha Yadav One woman who works in the industrial belt outside Delhi, at a Korean electronics firm. Her husband fell sick, and she lost pay for every day that she attended to him in the hospital. This is somebody who had worked at the same company for nine years, and was still treated like a temp worker. Though she's directly hired by the company, the contractor claims it helped to get her hired, refused to provide pay slips. This is a very common story for working-class workers during lockdown. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity in June 2021, senior editor Sarah Eleazar spoke to labor journalist Anumeha Yadav, then based in Delhi, about India's response to the pandemic, the labor beat within a shrinking journalistic landscape, and how "vector capitalism" can explain the Indian state's neoliberal services and broad approach towards its workers in both the formal and informal sectors. Yadav discussed her reporting regarding how the government's bizarre decisions at the height of the lockdown made life untenable for workers and the impoverished across the board. Barring the government's public pronouncement that landlords should suspend rent payments, Yadav argues that the testimony of workers and unrest, as seen in movements such as the farmers' movement or the harsh conditions of Gujarat, shows how the government engaged in mass abandonment while trying to commercialize the biometric data of over one billion people, as opposed to trying to mitigate the crisis. Data harvesting was far more critical than work and living conditions and significantly more than preventative health measures, which were carried out in the most cursory ways. One woman who works in the industrial belt outside Delhi, at a Korean electronics firm. Her husband fell sick, and she lost pay for every day that she attended to him in the hospital. This is somebody who had worked at the same company for nine years, and was still treated like a temp worker. Though she's directly hired by the company, the contractor claims it helped to get her hired, refused to provide pay slips. This is a very common story for working-class workers during lockdown. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity in June 2021, senior editor Sarah Eleazar spoke to labor journalist Anumeha Yadav, then based in Delhi, about India's response to the pandemic, the labor beat within a shrinking journalistic landscape, and how "vector capitalism" can explain the Indian state's neoliberal services and broad approach towards its workers in both the formal and informal sectors. Yadav discussed her reporting regarding how the government's bizarre decisions at the height of the lockdown made life untenable for workers and the impoverished across the board. Barring the government's public pronouncement that landlords should suspend rent payments, Yadav argues that the testimony of workers and unrest, as seen in movements such as the farmers' movement or the harsh conditions of Gujarat, shows how the government engaged in mass abandonment while trying to commercialize the biometric data of over one billion people, as opposed to trying to mitigate the crisis. Data harvesting was far more critical than work and living conditions and significantly more than preventative health measures, which were carried out in the most cursory ways. SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Live Delhi Event In Grief In Solidarity Aadhaar COVID-19 Lockdown Labor Precarity Standards of Living Living Conditions Biometrics Commercialization Health Workers Health Low-Income Workers Labor Movement Karnataka Literacy Consent Investigative Journalism Ethics of Journalism Labor Reporting Food Subsidies Vector Capitalism Neoliberalism Essential Workers Accountability Production The Great Pause Pandemic Agricultural Labor Alienation Scrap Workers Caste Isolation Haryana's Industrial Belt Automotive Industry Assembly Line Newsroom Farmers' Movement Gujarat ANUMEHA YADAV is a journalist and researcher who works on labour, and the effects of social and economic policies on working-class and rural communities. Her work has been published extensively in The Hindu, The Indian Express, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Caravan , amongst others. 5 Jun 2021 Live Delhi 5th Jun 2021 X Marks The Ghost Azania Imtiaz Patel 15th Nov The Assessment of Veracity: COVID-19 Mutual Aid Organizing Riddhi Dastidar 5th Jun Protest Art & the Corporate Art World Hit Man Gurung · Isma Gul Hasan · Ikroop Sandhu 5th Jun Chats Ep. 7 · Karti Dharti, Gender & India's Farmers Movement Sangeet Toor 29th Apr FLUX · Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval on US Left Electoralism & COVID-19 Nikil Saval · Kshama Sawant 5th Dec On That Note:

Tarfia Faizullah's oeuvre is one of poetic attunement to how the temporalities of violence at various scales—be it the mass rape and torture of women in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 or the colonial plunder of cultural artifacts—are linked with crimes of intimacy at the most personal and private level. Eliding cliche, her work is connected by a searching fury at unjust banalities. INTERACTIVE FLUX · Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Tarfia Faizullah's oeuvre is one of poetic attunement to how the temporalities of violence at various scales—be it the mass rape and torture of women in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 or the colonial plunder of cultural artifacts—are linked with crimes of intimacy at the most personal and private level. Eliding cliche, her work is connected by a searching fury at unjust banalities. Tarfia Faizullah FLUX: An Evening in Dissent A selection of readings by Tarfia Faizullah served as a gentle, immersive break between panels. Faizullah read excerpts from her poetry collections Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam and the experimental poem Alien of Extraordinary Ability , which we published earlier that year. “ Is this a museum or a border? where there / is a border, does there need to be patrol? ” Faizullah muses in Alien of Extraordinary Ability , a startling and experimental work shifting slowly from a visa alien classification by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) federal agency to the vicissitudes of borders, abuse, and plunder simultaneously intimate and global: speaking with one voice, then with many, often within a single verse or phrase. Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" 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 FLUX: An Evening in Dissent A selection of readings by Tarfia Faizullah served as a gentle, immersive break between panels. Faizullah read excerpts from her poetry collections Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam and the experimental poem Alien of Extraordinary Ability , which we published earlier that year. “ Is this a museum or a border? where there / is a border, does there need to be patrol? ” Faizullah muses in Alien of Extraordinary Ability , a startling and experimental work shifting slowly from a visa alien classification by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) federal agency to the vicissitudes of borders, abuse, and plunder simultaneously intimate and global: speaking with one voice, then with many, often within a single verse or phrase. Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" 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 SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase Shebani Rao A Freelancer's Guide to Decision-Making Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Event Dallas Live FLUX Published Work Poetry Alien of Extraordinary Ability Seam Reading Bangladeshi Diapora Bangladesh Immigration Work Authorization Borders Visa TARFIA FAIZULLAH is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Tarfia is currently based in Dallas. 5 Dec 2020 Event Dallas 5th Dec 2020 Chats Ep. 9 · On the Essay Collection “Southbound” Anjali Enjeti 19th May FLUX · Poetry Reading by Rajiv Mohabir with Marginalia Rajiv Mohabir 5th Dec FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" Natasha Noorani 5th Dec FLUX · A Celebratory Set by DJ Kiran Darakshan Raja 5th Dec Alien of Extraordinary Ability Tarfia Faizullah 13th Oct On That Note: