· COMMUNITY Interview · Pakistan The Pakistani Left, Separatism & Student Movements Activist Ammar Ali Jan in conversation with Kamil Ahsan. Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. We worry too much about divisions within the left. It can be very productive if people engage in a decent, intellectual conversation. Actual disagreements shouldn't be repressed for the sake of some mythical unity. Editor's Note: Throughout the Baloch student long march & the #PashtunLongMarch2Karachi , the Pakistani state cracked down on activists—including Ammar Ali Jan—and continues to. This conversation took place in September 2020. A detention order for Ammar Ali Jan was issued in late November 2020. It was far from the first time he had faced detention, intimidation, or threats from the state. Granted pre-arrest bail, the detention order was lifted in December by the Lahore High Court, with LHC Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan saying: “In Pakistan, influential people will not let their rivals to move freely by misusing ‘detention orders’." SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Pakistan Student Movements Baloch Students Organization-Azad Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement Student Solidarity March Baloch Student Long March Pashtun Tahafuz Movement Shehri Tahafuz Movement Zaigham Abbas Universities State Repression Repression in Universities Partha Chatterjee Subaltern Studies Karl Polanyi People's Solidarity Forum Neofeudalism Neoliberalism Constitutionalism Pashtun Long March Trade Unions Electoral Politics Elections Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 14th Dec 2020 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 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:

“We looked at all these old EMI vinyl album covers. I remember listening to the song and thinking: 'This song is pink.'” INTERACTIVE Natasha Noorani's Retro Aesthetic Natasha Noorani “We looked at all these old EMI vinyl album covers. I remember listening to the song and thinking: 'This song is pink.'” Natasha Noorani released “Choro,” the first single from her new album, on 24th May 2021. She first performed it unplugged for SAAG's previous online event, FLUX . As part of In Grief, In Solidarity , Noorani discussed what inspired the music video's aesthetic with SAAG advisory editor Senna Ahmad, with whom Noorani collaborated on “Choro.” For both, it was a risk, a labor of love, and a long-awaited collaboration—each of which speaks to how Noorani chooses to provoke and pay homage to Pakistani pop music in equal measure. Watch to hear more about their vision, how the pandemic affected the shoot of the music video, their numerous inspiration boards, their shared love for the music of the eighties and nineties, Urdu typography, and more. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Lahore Music Contemporary Music Retro Aesthetics Nostalgia Typography Contemporary Pop Pakistani Pop Music Video Homage Cover Art In Grief In Solidarity Fashion Haseena Moin Selfies Embroidery Color Art Practice Visual Art Collaboration Vinyl Urdu Music 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). Live Lahore 5th Jun 2021 On That Note: A Dhivehi Artists Showcase 5th JUN Protest Art & the Corporate Art World 5th JUN FLUX · Natasha Noorani Unplugged: "Choro" 5th DEC

The acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani's glimpse into the history of South Asian-American feminist art and activism, particularly with the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, speaks to the labor and creative organizing of feminist artists starting in the 1990s. INTERACTIVE FLUX · Jaishri Abichandani's Guided Studio Tour Jaishri Abichandani The acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani's glimpse into the history of South Asian-American feminist art and activism, particularly with the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, speaks to the labor and creative organizing of feminist artists starting in the 1990s. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent As part of Flux: An Evening in Dissent, Abeer Hoque took a guided tour with the acclaimed artist-activist Jaishri Abichandani who showed us her famous Feminist Wall, replete with its history of feminist activists and activism. She also gave us an exclusive look at the piece Kamala's Inheritance (2021 Sculpture Wire, foil, epoxy, MDF, stone and paint). Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading 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 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Brooklyn FLUX Art Practice Feminist Art Practice Sculpture Asia Pacific Arts Initiative Painting Swati Khurana South Asian Women's Creative Collective Ceramics Art Activism Art History Politics of Art Feminist Spaces Feminist Organizing Mimi Mondal Yashica Dutt Prachi Patankar Dalit Feminist Activists South Asia Solidarity Initiative SASI SAWCC Rage Kidvai Thanu Yakupitiyage Bad Brown Aunties Section 377 Menaka Guruswamy LGBTQ Movement Pramila Jayapal Nayomi Munaweera Personal History Portraits ACT UP Ismat Chughtai Mahasweta Devi Breast Stories The Quilt Lihaaf Abortion Goddess Abortion Speaking about Abortion Bodily Autonomy Indus Valley Artifacts JAISHRI ABICHANDANI has intertwined studio and social practice, art and activism in her career, founding the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) in New York (1997) and London (2004). Abichandani has exhibited internationally including at P.S.1/MoMA, the Queens Museum of Art, and Asia Society in New York, 798 Beijing Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial in China, IVAM in Valencia, Spain, and the House of World Cultures in Berlin. She served as the founding Director of Public Events and Projects from 2003-06 at the Queens Museum of Art, where she organized Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now, Queens International 2006: Everything All at Once , and curated Her Stories: Fifteen Years of SAWCC . In 2017, Abichandani engineered a collaboration between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Asia Society and the Queens Museum to organize a three-day national convening of South Asian American artists, academics and curators; along with the exhibition Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions , in which she was a co-curator and a participating artist. In 2019, Abichandani organized a trilogy of exhibitions to inaugurate the Ford Foundation Gallery: Perilous Bodies, Radical Love, and Utopian Imagination centered the visions of BIPOC artists. Abichandani’s work is in the Burger Collection, Asia Art Archive Collection, and Saatchi Collection. She has been a resident of LMCC’s Process Space residency and an honoree of the Brooklyn Arts Council and ASHA for Women. She was awarded grants by the FST Studio Projects fund and the Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2021. Live Brooklyn 5th Dec 2020 On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

As Pakistan's militarized disappearance of everyday Baloch civilians continues, the vitality of the community in the age of social media has come to be preserved through “dossiers of memory”—online archives housed in tweet threads and on Facebook groups. These archives are tools of resistance—declarative visual pleas to local and global audiences that affirm the presence of the disappeared Baloch and connect their struggles to worldwide movements against enforced disappearances. As Pakistan's militarized disappearance of everyday Baloch civilians continues, the vitality of the community in the age of social media has come to be preserved through “dossiers of memory”—online archives housed in tweet threads and on Facebook groups. These archives are tools of resistance—declarative visual pleas to local and global audiences that affirm the presence of the disappeared Baloch and connect their struggles to worldwide movements against enforced disappearances. Sameen Agha, My House is on Fire (2021). Marble & mixed media on canvas. Artist Balochistan Noor Bakhsh · Qasum Faraz · Sajid Hussain 5 Mar 2025 th · THE VERTICAL REPORTAGE · LOCATION Who is Next? “Now that I have cleaned the dust from my son’s photograph, where should I keep it to find some relief? Wherever I place it, I feel as though the photograph is looking at me and talking to me.” These are Nako (Uncle) Mayar’s words, shared in a Facebook post on 19 December 2023. Nako Mayar first caught public attention when his photographs and videos went viral during a sit-in protest in Turbat , held against the extrajudicial killing of Balach Mola Bakhsh by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) in November 2023. He was later seen participating in the “ Long March against Baloch genocide ” to Islamabad, organized by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The public were deeply moved by the sight of this elderly man holding a picture, crying, cursing, lamenting, and pleading—showing the photograph to everyone who visited the sit-in or sat near him to express solidarity. “Look how handsome my son is”, he would say. These visuals of Nako Mayar were shared widely on Facebook and Twitter, making Baloch people aware of his plight. Nako Mayar, holding a framed photograph of his disappeared son, Fateh, during a protest. Image courtesy of the author. Nako Mayar hails from Zamuran, a sub-Tehsil of Buleda in district Kech, nearly 70 kilometers south of Turbat city. He spent most of his life as a shepherd, relying on subsistence farming. After the 2006 assassination of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti during a military operation in Kohlu Dera Bugti—which ignited the current and fifth wave of the Baloch nationalist movement—however, the political situation in the region deteriorated. As military operations intensified in the B-areas (rural areas policed by Levies and Frontier Corps) of Balochistan, Nako Mayar migrated to Tehsil Buleda, district Kech to escape the violence. Buleda, more populated and equipped with slightly better facilities than Zamuran, offered relative safety compared to the isolated, violence-stricken rural areas. Additionally, military operations often targeted remote villages, forcing residents to move toward more concentrated settlements, where they could be easily monitored and controlled. In Buleda, he continued to live a modest life, relying on his goats and sheep. His son, Fateh Mayar, was a diligent student who attended school in the mornings and taught English at a local language institute in the evenings. Fateh earned his pocket money from teaching. According to Nako Mayar, his son Fateh was forcefully disappeared from Turbat Bazaar on 14 June 2023, when he went for Eid shopping. This incident completely altered Nako Mayar’s life, transforming him from a free and independent shepherd into a political subject. In many of the videos shared on social media, Nako Mayar can be heard saying, “My son is innocent. He doesn’t even have a Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC). He’s still a child, less than 18 years old.” One of the most poignant lines he often repeats while looking at his son’s photograph is, “I am cursed for giving my beloved Fateh an education. If you come back, I will not let you study. If he had been a shepherd, maybe nobody would have cared about him. I am seventy years old, and he is my only son. My son used to go to school in the morning and to the language institute in the evening. He is not involved in any kind of anti-state activities. His records are clear—they can check the school and language institute attendance. If he were involved in any such activities, how could he have taken his relative to the Frontier Corps camp doctors when he was stung by a scorpion? This should not happen to anyone.” He continues, “If the tyrants do not give me justice, may God hold them accountable. Oh God, question these tyrants on my behalf.” The story of Nako Mayar and his son Fateh is not just about personal tragedy but is emblematic of a much larger human rights crisis faced by countless families in Balochistan. Fateh is just one of thousands of young Baloch, predominantly students, who have been forcibly disappeared by Pakistan’s military and paramilitary forces. In his search for justice, Nako Mayar is one of many family members who tirelessly protest outside press clubs, march along roads holding photographs of their missing loved ones and engage in social media campaigns led by political organizations such as the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) and the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC). They demand answers and the safe return of their sons, husbands, and brothers. Central to their struggle are the photos they hold. These photos, once treasured as personal memories, have now become powerful symbols of protest, keeping the stories of the disappeared alive. More than just reminders of the past, these photos break the silence that surrounds enforced disappearances, turning personal grief into a powerful act of public resistance. In Nako Mayar’s case, the photos of his disappeared son, Fateh, have become much more than just images. They represent a father’s grief, his unbreakable resilience, and his refusal to let his son’s story be forgotten. These photos draw people in, making them feel the weight of Fateh’s disappearance and compelling them to engage with his story. The photographs are not just keepsakes. They are reminders of the love families still hold and the pain they endure. Every time Nako lifts Fateh’s image at a protest or posts it online, he is refusing to let his son’s story be silenced. He is fighting against the state’s efforts to erase Fateh’s memory. These photos demand answers, pushing families and communities to keep speaking up for those who no longer have a voice. They push the stories of their loved ones out of the darkness, out of prison cells, and into the public eye. The fight for visibility and justice has also found its way into the digital realm, where families and activists have created virtual archives, to ensure that the stories of the disappeared are neither forgotten nor ignored. Social media platforms have become crucial sites for preserving these memories and amplifying their resistance. The “Voice for Baloch Missing Persons” (VBMP) Facebook page is a digital archive created by families to record the stories of their missing loved ones. Since its formation in 2009, VBMP has documented thousands of cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Faced with a lack of attention from national and international media, families and activists have turned to social media to share their stories and gather support. Photograph from a sit-in camp near the Quetta Press Club. Image courtesy of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) Facebook page. Beside the Quetta Press Club, VBMP maintains a permanent camp where portraits of the missing are displayed prominently. These photographs, larger than typical ID photos, are arranged in rows. The camp, lined with these images, serves as a powerful reminder of the families’ pain and their relentless demand for justice. Each day, VBMP’s page posts updates, counting the days since its encampment began and marking the time that families have spent waiting for answers. Digital platforms have also become vital tools for connecting the local struggle in Balochistan to a global audience. By using hashtags like #ReleaseAllBalochMissingPersons on digital sites, families are not only reaching out for local support but also appealing to international human rights organizations and diaspora communities. These posts, shared repeatedly, create an online archive of pain and resistance, reinforcing the community’s presence in digital spaces even as they are marginalized in physical ones. Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) emerged in 2020 after the killing of four-year-old Bramsh Baloch’s mother, allegedly by one of the local death squads believed to be operating under Pakistani military intelligence. This devastating event sparked new waves of protests, with BYC leading numerous demonstrations, including the Long March against Baloch Genocide in 2023 and the Baloch Raji Muchi in 2024 . These events, led by Baloch women, brought attention to the suffering of the community, calling for basic rights and an end to state violence. Every year, on October 4, the family of Shabir Baloch —one of the many forcibly disappeared activists—launches a campaign, demanding answers. For his wife, Zarina Baloch, and his sister, Seema Baloch, the fight is not just for visibility but for recognition, acknowledgment, and the hope of bringing Shabir back home. This year on October 4, Zarina Baloch and Seema Baloch, launched a protest campaign demanding the whereabouts of Shabir Baloch. Zarina, Shabir’s wife, is often seen at protests, both in person and online, holding a placard that reads, “Am I married or a widow?” Zarina Baloch holds a sign with the words, “ Am I married, or a widow? " Image courtesy of X. Shabir Baloch was born in the Labach district of Awaran. He began his political journey as a student activist and was later elected as the Information Secretary of the Baloch Students Organization, Azad chapter (BSO-Azad). The BSO was banned by the Pakistani state as a terrorist organization due to its radical separatist stance on the issue of Baloch liberation. Shabir was arrested by the Frontier Corps while visiting Gwarkop, a village seventy kilometres far from Turbat city in the Kech district, with his wife, Zarina, during a raid on 4 October 2016. Along with Shabir, twenty-four other Baloch were detained in the raid, but all were eventually released—except for Shabir. Since then, his whereabouts remain unknown. “It was less than two years into our marriage when Shabir was abducted,” Zarina says. I still hear our laughter echoing in our bedroom when we were together.” For the past eight years, Zarina and Shabir’s sister, Seema, have been searching for justice. On 12 October 2016, Zarina went to the police station to file a report, but the authorities refused to register her case. In November 2016, she filed a petition in court, hoping to find her husband. Zarina and Seema brought Shabir’s case to the attention of international organizations like Amnesty International and the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, but they received no response from the Pakistani government. The Pakistan Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances also took up Shabir’s case but failed to recover him. Instead, according to the Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB), the commission intimidated and harassed Shabir’s family during the hearings. On October 4, 2024, HRCB tweeted , “On one occasion, a justice on the commission told Seema not to attend any more hearings. When she insisted, he remarked that if she was not a woman, she would have been kicked out of the office.” This is the struggle faced by every mother, sister, and wife of men, forcibly disappeared in Balochistan. These women protest and march tirelessly, often breaking down mid-speech while demanding answers, overwhelmed by panic attacks and grief. They find themselves navigating complex and indifferent government institutions. When they go to police stations to file their cases, they are refused. When they knock on courts’ doors, they are given endless dates for hearings without resolution. They work to have their loved ones’ names added to the lists of human rights commissions, but nothing changes. Instead, they are met with harassment, intimidating calls from authorities, and false assurances. Each day, the size of their case files grows thicker. With each passing year their hope and determination remain unwavering despite the system’s continued failure to deliver justice. One such file belongs to Saira Baloch—a plastic folder filled with photographs of her brothers, Asif and Rasheed. They were both arrested by Pakistani security forces at Zangi Nawad, a picnic spot in District Noshki, on 31 August 2018. Saira explains that while the security forces initially acknowledged the arrest, they later denied it. It has been six years since, and the family has received no information about the alleged crime, whereabouts, or legal basis for their detention. A folder with images of Asif and Rasheed. Image courtesy of X. Salman Hussain, an anthropologist, describes these files as “dossiers of memory.” It is a personal archive containing photographs, National Identity Cards, First Investigation Reports (FIRs), police complaints, court hearing dates, and handwritten notes from relatives. Personal notes often detail the dates and locations of abductions or provide outlines of speeches that families deliver at protests. The caption of one of Saira’s posts on X captures the essence of these memory dossiers, “Our happy life has been imprisoned first in pictures and then in files. Our wishes, dreams, and desires to live are locked inside this file. Will he (the disappeared) ever be able to come out of these torture cells and files?” T hese personal archives are much more than collections of old photos and documents, they are records of dreams, struggles, and resistance. When families share these photographs alongside their personal notes, they turn the images into powerful reminders of those who are missing, keeping their stories alive. With no physical remains to mourn, they use photographs to fill the space between life and death—where the missing is neither fully gone nor truly present. Sharing these photographs on platforms like Facebook or X is not just about raising awareness—it’s a way of saying, “We’re still here, and we will not be silenced.” Each post is a reminder that the state has failed to provide answers, yet these families will not stop demanding justice. For many relatives, searching for their missing loved ones has taken over their entire lives. Most of their days are spent protesting on the streets or sharing their stories online, refusing to let the world forget. By sharing these images, families also reclaim control over who is seen and remembered. Kashmiri and Palestinian scholars have called this a form of “counter-visuality,” where images serve as a tool to resist erasure and assert presence in spaces where they are denied. When a loved one disappears, families do not just lose a person, they lose part of their identity. They exist in a painful state of limbo, caught between being present and absent, struggling to find answers. Roles like wife, widow, parent, or child no longer fit. Instead, they become new political subjects, voices of resistance, marching in protest or campaigning on social media. Relatives who were once viewed as powerless victims have turned into powerful voices speaking out against state violence. This phenomenon extends beyond Baloch women, who have become symbols of resistance against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Similar movements can be seen around the world. In Argentina, the Organization of Mothers of the Disappeared (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo) was formed in 1977, marking the first public protest against military rule. To this day, every Thursday, the Madres march around the Pirámide de Mayo in the center of Buenos Aires. In Guatemala , tens of thousands of people were disappeared during the 1960-1996 civil war between the military and leftist guerrilla forces, leading to enduring grief and activism by the families left behind. Likewise, in Jammu and Kashmir, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) continues to fight for justice and accountability for those who have vanished under state-sponsored repression. In each of these cases, women have used public grief and emotional expressions—such as weeping and mourning—as powerful political tools, transforming fear into collective resistance against state violence. These movements against enforced disappearances have given rise to influential political figures such as Estela de Carlotto, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Parveena Ahangar and Mahrang Baloch. Every time a new story of disappearance is shared online, the community holds its breath, wondering, “Who is next?” This question echoes through every gathering and protest, a reminder that the pain of enforced disappearances is far from over. A young girl at a protest holds up a frame with the question “Who Is Next?” Image courtesy of X. Who’s Next by Qasum Faraz translated by Sajid Hussain (2013) Life is a poster pasted on the city’s walls. With the passage of time, It changes the names and photos emblazoned on its chest. Some days it’s Allah Nazar, Some days it’s Abdul Nabi. On every remorseless road of time and occasion, On every square, The wind distributes bits of my self- Like pamphlets. There is a strike tomorrow: All the shutters in the market will drop their gaze. Time and space will become one in the din of rallies. The day and the night, The month and the year, Will wear the same colour. Every letter on banners, placards, and foreheads, Will march along with a sea of its own. Who knows what will happen then? I, as a character of a global story, Stand at a distance and think: “For whom?” Someone, from behind, puts a hand on my shoulder, And whispers, “Life is a poster pasted on the city’s walls.”∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 NOOR BAKHSH belongs to Balochistan. He is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at York University. He has worked as a visiting and ad-hoc lecturer in various public and private universities in Balochistan. He is interested in the anthropology of violence and resistance; enforced disappearances, politics of photographs; digital activism, and hashtag ethnography; South Asia; Baloch and Balochistan; and Balochistan and Pakistan. QASUM FARAZ is a Balochi poet and the author of several poetry collections. He is an assistant professor of English literature and a critic. SAMEEN AGHA lives and works in Lahore. Working across sculpture, painting and installation, her practice explores the emotional landscape of the home and its social and physical attributes as they intersect with gender and self-identity, and confronting the complexities of loss, belonging, and remembrance. She is the recipient of the 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Agha received a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2016. Essay Balochistan Pakistan Civilian Activism Archive of Absence Resistance Resistance Movement Enforced Disappearances Disappearance Militarism Protest Extrajudicial Killings Counterterrorism Department Long March against Baloch Genocide Baloch Yakjehti Committee Zamuran Buleda Kech Shepard Subsistence Farming Assassination Kohlu Dera Bugti Baloch Nationalist Movement Rural Policing Violence Monitoring Turbat City Turbat Bazaar Childhood Computerized National Identity Card Education Levies and Frontier Corps Human Rights Human Rights Violations paramilitary Military Occupation Voice for Baloch Missing Persons Memory Grief Public Space Photography Justice Visibility Social Media Facebook X Quetta Press Club Baloch Raji Muchi 2024 State Sanctioned Violence Baloch Students Organization BSO-Azad Liberation Gwarkop Amnesty International United Nations Working Group Intimidation Security Dossiers of memory Anthropology Counter-visibility Erasure State Erasure Who is Next? Qasum Faraz Sajid Hussain Poetry Translation 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:

· COMMUNITY Interview · Dallas Authenticity & Exoticism Author and translator Jenny Bhatt in conversation with Editor Kamil Ahsan. Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. Often when we get invited to public arenas, we end up having to talk about immigration, or discrimination—and we never really get to talk about craft. RECOMMENDED: The Shehnai Virtuoso and Other Stories , the first substantive English translation of the Gujarati short story pioneer, Dhumketu (1892–1965 .) The first book-length Gujarati to English translation published in the US, translated by Jenny Bhatt. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Dallas Diaspora Short Stories Debut Authors Writing After Loss L.L. McKinney Gujarat Riots Gujarati Modi Kuchibhotla Hindutva Paratext Authenticity Exoticism Desi Books Internationalist Solidarity Literary Solidarity Community Building Translation Affect Personal History Perspective Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 4th Sep 2020 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 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:

WEB DESIGNER Ammar Hassan Uppal Ammar Hassan Uppal is a professional designer and web developer based in Lahore. WEB DESIGNER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

· INTERACTIVE Live · Georgia Chats Ep. 9 · On the Essay Collection “Southbound” The debut essay collection "Southbound" explores evangelical Christianity's marriage with extremism & contemporary Georgia politics, published soon after the state was flipped blue by the efforts of many grassroots organizers, including the author. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. In 2021, activist, journalist, and author Anjali Enjeti published her new essay collection Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change , as well as her debut novel The Parted Earth . In May that year, she discussed the former, and briefly the latter, with Kamil Ahsan, on Instagram Live. The twenty essays of her debut collection tackle evangelical Christian extremism, white feminism at a national feminist organization, the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the South, voter suppression, gun violence and the gun sense movement, the whitewashing of southern literature, the 1982 racialized killing of Vincent Chin, social media’s role in political accountability, and the rise of nationalism worldwide. Here, Enjeti discusses the bargain between evangelical Christianity and fascism in the United States, as well as her efforts as a grassroots organizer for They See Blue in Atlanta, Georgia. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Live Georgia Georgia Politics Atlanta Georgia Senate Races 2020 US Election AAPI Communities COVID-19 Debut Authors Community Building Activist Media Literary Solidarity They See Blue Raphael Warnock Immigration Cultural Narratives of Immigration Identity Inheritance Essays Public Space Michigan Geography Essay Form Authenticity Mapping Essayistic Practice Social Change Class Class Struggle Stories in Dialogue Gender Religion Writing about Recent History Borders Perspective United States Temporality Space Time & Space Coalition Building Churches Complicity White Supremacy Brownnes Evangelical Christianity Diaspora Nationalism Internationalist Solidarity Internationalist Perspective Nayomi Munaweera Sejal Shah Non-Chronological Form Anger Automotive Industry Vincent Chin Ronald Ebens US South Activism Organizing Electoral Politics Anti-Racism GOP Republicans Democratic Party SAAG Chats Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 19th May 2021 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 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:

“Cultures of Chittagong Hill Tracts and other indigenous peoples are still marginalized in Bangladesh, in mainstream cultural practices. They're made invisible. And there is a kind of appropriation too. A Chakma dance is danced by Bengali dancers.” COMMUNITY Bengali Nationalism & the Chittagong Hill Tracts “Cultures of Chittagong Hill Tracts and other indigenous peoples are still marginalized in Bangladesh, in mainstream cultural practices. They're made invisible. And there is a kind of appropriation too. A Chakma dance is danced by Bengali dancers.” VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Chittagong Hill Tracts 9th Dec 2020 Interview Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh CHT Indigeneity Chakma Chakma History Indigenous Art Practice Indigeneous Spaces Politics of Indigeneity Language Diversity Language Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Kaptai Dam Bengali Nationalism Jumma Communities Jumma Chakma Communities Shaheen Akhtar Militarism Military Crackdown Shomari Chakma International Mother Tongue Day Intellectual History Postcolonialism Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Researcher Kabita Chakma in conversation with Advisory Editor Mahmud Rahman talked about her own experience writing and translating in Bangla and Chakma, as well as the longue durée history of the Chakmas and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, particularly after the formation of CHT as a district in 1860. Colonial cartographies split the Chakma population between countries, districts, and states between Tripura, Assam, Mizoram in India, Burma, Bangladesh, and their global diasporas. How robust, Mahmud Rahman asks, is the readership of Chakma texts? RECOMMENDED: "Muscular nationalism, masculinist militarism: the creation of situational motivators and opportunities for violence against the Indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh" (International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2022) by Glen Hill & Kabita Chakma More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

For decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. For decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. Untitled (2025), photograph, courtesy of Zainab. Artist · FEATURES REPORTAGE · LOCATION Devotion by Design LOCATION AUTHOR . AUTHOR . AUTHOR . 9 Oct 2025 th . Letter from our columnist . Just before the adhan , the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar falls silent. It’s a kind of alive stillness: dust caught in thin shafts of light, pigeons tracing circles above carved wooden beams, the scent of rosewater clinging to the air. A grandmother slips off her shoes, adjusts her scarf, and finds her place behind a screen. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t need to. She is present. There are corners few will notice—small, improvised spaces, where women have long made room for their faith. A balcony, a stairwell, a curtained-off alcove. Not designed officially for them, but quietly claimed. Presence is shown in the architecture: evidence in memory, use, and need. Often engulfed in enforced silence. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Now, many of those spaces are dissipating. Not with drama, but with a quiet inevitability. They are being renovated, restricted, and forgotten. As they go, much more goes with them: a sacred closeness, a map of devotion embedded into spaces that never needed to be drawn. What happens when these corners vanish—slowly, without notice? What remains, and what do we lose, when the unseen are no longer there to hold us? For generations, women in Kashmir have prayed in spaces not exactly meant for them. There are no signs pointing the way. No architectural plans name them. And yet, they have existed: a narrow balcony overlooking the men’s hall, a partitioned corner behind a curtain, a small side room warmed by years of whispered prayer. These spaces emerged out of necessity, shaped by repetition, softened by devotion. A woman stepping quietly into the same corner her mother once did. A rug folded and stored in the same place. There is a lingering scent of attar left behind after someone leaves. To call these spaces makeshift misses the point. They were not oversights or design flaws. They were formed as quiet forms of agency. Women marking sacred ground where none had been offered. Through repetitive use, these praying women carved out a spiritual geography in physical presence, even if it was never named on paper. This “soft architecture”—made of cloth, memory, and movement—held emotion, belonging, and belief. It was never grand yet it was deeply felt, and that made it sacred. “I’ve been coming here since I was a girl,” Khalida, 62, says, settling her shawl as she looks toward the old wooden veranda. “We didn’t ask where to go. We just came, Taeher hot-pot in one hand and prayer in the other.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Prayers at Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. She remembers the quiet corner where women sat, shaded and separate, behind a rug gently hung like a veil. They would whisper duas , share warmth, and provide a hot-pot of yellow rice to men and women emerging from the prayer hall. This is no duty, but an offering, as presence. “They knew we were there.” Now, she says, the rug is gone. The veranda feels emptier. “I still bring the Taeher sometimes. But fewer women join. Fewer remember. And the ones who come now… no one tells them where we used to sit.” Her voice lowers. “It’s like the prayer still wants to happen, but the place for it has been folded away.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. What Was Quietly Taken In recent years, something has quietly shifted in Kashmir’s mosques and shrines. Renovations arrive with good intentions—modern tiles, repainted walls, new security protocols. But somewhere in that process, the delicate architecture of women’s prayer has begun to disappear. Spaces that were never formally named are now unwittingly removed. A balcony closed. A staircase sealed. A corner now considered “not appropriate .” The change didn’t come from malice. Many men don’t even know what’s been lost. These spaces were inherited, almost invisible. And that’s exactly why they vanished so easily. In the name of order, safety, or religious propriety, these deeply intimate spaces and all they hold continue to slip away. This isn’t just about bricks or curtains. It’s about memory, and how softly it can be erased when decisions are made from above, by institutions that speak of faith but forget the textures of it. In Kashmir, where both men and women carry centuries of devotion, such forgetting doesn’t feel neutral. It feels like an inflicted absence. An empty silence that once held meaning. Outside the city, in the shrines of Kashmir’s valleys and hills, something still lingers. At Baba Reshi, the mood is less structured, less policed. Here, women walk freely, light lamps, tie threads to latticework, and stir food in sacred kitchens. Their presence is visible—not formal, but felt. There’s a small, designated space marked “for women,” in which they move with familiarity. Women sweep the floors, offer prayers aloud, and tend to the rituals that anchor belief. These gestures are often seen as care rather than acts of worship, but it is worship too. Unlike the city’s polished mosques, rural shrines seem to breathe with memory. The freedom they offer, however, is fragile. It survives because it is overlooked, rather than because it has been protected. Space for women’s religious practice can be claimed, precisely because it remains informal, invisible, almost domestic. The erosion is uneven. In these peripheral places, the edge holds on to what the center forgets. And yet, even here, one wonders—what happens when these quiet practices no longer go unacknowledged, but become regulated? Echoes of a time gone by. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Sadiya, 27, walks through the narrow lane leading to Jamia Masjid with ease. She has been coming here since she was a child, led by her mother’s hand. She doesn’t pray in the main courtyard, but she doesn’t mind. The women’s section—tucked to the side, with the mounted TV broadcasting the Mirwaiz’s sermon—still feels sacred to her. “It’s quiet. Sometimes too quiet,” she says with a small smile, “but when the waaz begins, something shifts. It feels like we’re part of it, even if we’re not seen.” She acknowledges that the space isn’t perfect. It’s separate. Small. Often unseen. But she doesn’t see it as absence. “We’re still here,” she says. “We still listen. We still feel.” What keeps her coming is the sense of continuity. Her mother sat here, and maybe one day, her daughter will too. “I know it could be better. But I also know it’s not lost. Not yet. And as long as we come, it won’t be.” At the Threshold of Memory I have never stepped into these rooms. Not because I wasn’t curious, but because I know I shouldn’t. My place, as a man, is not inside. Listening, watching, remembering what is said and what is not. These spaces—drawn in cloth, carved into routine—were never mine. And yet they’ve shaped the way I understand prayer, presence, and the politics of space. I have learned to read absence, to hear what disappears without announcement. In a culture where so much is held in gesture, to stand at the threshold is not passive. It’s a kind of responsibility. In the shadowed alcove of a shrine, a woman lights a stick of incense. The smoke rises slowly, curling into the dimness. Its scent—rose, ash, something older—fills the air. Behind her, a small child leans against her mother’s shoulder, half-asleep, her breath matching the rhythm of the prayer whispered beside her. Nothing is said aloud. But something sacred passes between them: tender, private, deeply alive. These are not moments most people would record. They don’t fit neatly into architectural plans or ideological doctrines. Instead they carry what no institution can replace: faith that lives in touch, in memory, in the soft persistence of presence. Even as walls are rebuilt and policies redraw the shape of sacred life, these quiet devotions continue. A rug tucked behind a staircase. A prayer whispered behind a curtain. What disappears from sight won’t always vanish. Some spaces move inward. Into memory, into gesture, into breath. Writing may be a way to resist forgetting. Because even when a room is gone, what it once held can still remain—in scent, in story, in the hush that follows prayer. I write about these corners with careful attention. To me, this means knowing the difference between witnessing and claiming. I carry these stories not as evidence, but as echoes of things fading not yet gone. In Kashmir, where so much has already been taken, documenting is more than just recording. In writing, I honour what remains, to make space for memory when physical space no longer allows it. … Every Friday, Shabir takes a break from his carpenter work—like many self-employed men in Kashmir—and drives with his wife and two daughters, Azra and Ajwa, to the Baba Reshi shrine on his scooter. It’s not just routine; it’s a rhythm of devotion, held in the quiet folds of family life. “Friday is for slowing down,” he says. “For prayer. For being together.” When they arrive, Shabir takes Azra, the younger one, with him into the shrine. “She’s still small,” he smiles. “She watches me closely, tries to copy every movement.” Ajwa, now nine, goes with her mother to the courtyard, to tie threads, to pray, to go into the small women’s prayer room when they find it open. “I’ve never gone in, and I won’t. But I know it’s a place of peace…for them.” He doesn’t speak of fairness or rights. Just presence, and memory. “My daughters will remember this. That they belonged here. That faith wasn’t something they had to find. It was already waiting for them.” ∎ Woman with a Tasbeeh , Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Shared faith, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Friday prayers, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. At Khanqah Urs, Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. A child’s whisper, Aishmuqam Shrine, Islamabad. Courtesy of Zainab. Woman praying at Chrar, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Daan Levun, Babareshi, Baramullah. Devotees perform age-old ritual of coating a stone oven with clay soil, believing that their prayers shall be fulfilled. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence II, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. The walls that stood the testament of time. Courtesy of Zainab. Walk by faith, Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Testament of a collective history, Charar-i Sharif, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Inherited resilience. Zoya with a friend, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Photo Essay Kashmir Mosque Worship Devotion Femininity Prayer Ritual Sacred Space Future Generations Generational Legacy Memory 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 decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. · FEATURES Photo Essay · Kashmir For decades, Kashmiri women have charted holy ground in the hidden crannies of otherwise patriarchal spaces of worship. As verandas sit bare and prostrations disappear, their presence teeters on the edge of erasure, vulnerable to the slow forgetting of time. Yet many women remain resolute: as long as memory endures, so too will the spaces they carved that never called for recognition. Untitled (2025), photograph, courtesy of Zainab. Devotion by Design Just before the adhan , the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar falls silent. It’s a kind of alive stillness: dust caught in thin shafts of light, pigeons tracing circles above carved wooden beams, the scent of rosewater clinging to the air. A grandmother slips off her shoes, adjusts her scarf, and finds her place behind a screen. She doesn’t speak, she doesn’t need to. She is present. There are corners few will notice—small, improvised spaces, where women have long made room for their faith. A balcony, a stairwell, a curtained-off alcove. Not designed officially for them, but quietly claimed. Presence is shown in the architecture: evidence in memory, use, and need. Often engulfed in enforced silence. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Now, many of those spaces are dissipating. Not with drama, but with a quiet inevitability. They are being renovated, restricted, and forgotten. As they go, much more goes with them: a sacred closeness, a map of devotion embedded into spaces that never needed to be drawn. What happens when these corners vanish—slowly, without notice? What remains, and what do we lose, when the unseen are no longer there to hold us? For generations, women in Kashmir have prayed in spaces not exactly meant for them. There are no signs pointing the way. No architectural plans name them. And yet, they have existed: a narrow balcony overlooking the men’s hall, a partitioned corner behind a curtain, a small side room warmed by years of whispered prayer. These spaces emerged out of necessity, shaped by repetition, softened by devotion. A woman stepping quietly into the same corner her mother once did. A rug folded and stored in the same place. There is a lingering scent of attar left behind after someone leaves. To call these spaces makeshift misses the point. They were not oversights or design flaws. They were formed as quiet forms of agency. Women marking sacred ground where none had been offered. Through repetitive use, these praying women carved out a spiritual geography in physical presence, even if it was never named on paper. This “soft architecture”—made of cloth, memory, and movement—held emotion, belonging, and belief. It was never grand yet it was deeply felt, and that made it sacred. “I’ve been coming here since I was a girl,” Khalida, 62, says, settling her shawl as she looks toward the old wooden veranda. “We didn’t ask where to go. We just came, Taeher hot-pot in one hand and prayer in the other.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Prayers at Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. She remembers the quiet corner where women sat, shaded and separate, behind a rug gently hung like a veil. They would whisper duas , share warmth, and provide a hot-pot of yellow rice to men and women emerging from the prayer hall. This is no duty, but an offering, as presence. “They knew we were there.” Now, she says, the rug is gone. The veranda feels emptier. “I still bring the Taeher sometimes. But fewer women join. Fewer remember. And the ones who come now… no one tells them where we used to sit.” Her voice lowers. “It’s like the prayer still wants to happen, but the place for it has been folded away.” Women in prayer, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. What Was Quietly Taken In recent years, something has quietly shifted in Kashmir’s mosques and shrines. Renovations arrive with good intentions—modern tiles, repainted walls, new security protocols. But somewhere in that process, the delicate architecture of women’s prayer has begun to disappear. Spaces that were never formally named are now unwittingly removed. A balcony closed. A staircase sealed. A corner now considered “not appropriate .” The change didn’t come from malice. Many men don’t even know what’s been lost. These spaces were inherited, almost invisible. And that’s exactly why they vanished so easily. In the name of order, safety, or religious propriety, these deeply intimate spaces and all they hold continue to slip away. This isn’t just about bricks or curtains. It’s about memory, and how softly it can be erased when decisions are made from above, by institutions that speak of faith but forget the textures of it. In Kashmir, where both men and women carry centuries of devotion, such forgetting doesn’t feel neutral. It feels like an inflicted absence. An empty silence that once held meaning. Outside the city, in the shrines of Kashmir’s valleys and hills, something still lingers. At Baba Reshi, the mood is less structured, less policed. Here, women walk freely, light lamps, tie threads to latticework, and stir food in sacred kitchens. Their presence is visible—not formal, but felt. There’s a small, designated space marked “for women,” in which they move with familiarity. Women sweep the floors, offer prayers aloud, and tend to the rituals that anchor belief. These gestures are often seen as care rather than acts of worship, but it is worship too. Unlike the city’s polished mosques, rural shrines seem to breathe with memory. The freedom they offer, however, is fragile. It survives because it is overlooked, rather than because it has been protected. Space for women’s religious practice can be claimed, precisely because it remains informal, invisible, almost domestic. The erosion is uneven. In these peripheral places, the edge holds on to what the center forgets. And yet, even here, one wonders—what happens when these quiet practices no longer go unacknowledged, but become regulated? Echoes of a time gone by. Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Sadiya, 27, walks through the narrow lane leading to Jamia Masjid with ease. She has been coming here since she was a child, led by her mother’s hand. She doesn’t pray in the main courtyard, but she doesn’t mind. The women’s section—tucked to the side, with the mounted TV broadcasting the Mirwaiz’s sermon—still feels sacred to her. “It’s quiet. Sometimes too quiet,” she says with a small smile, “but when the waaz begins, something shifts. It feels like we’re part of it, even if we’re not seen.” She acknowledges that the space isn’t perfect. It’s separate. Small. Often unseen. But she doesn’t see it as absence. “We’re still here,” she says. “We still listen. We still feel.” What keeps her coming is the sense of continuity. Her mother sat here, and maybe one day, her daughter will too. “I know it could be better. But I also know it’s not lost. Not yet. And as long as we come, it won’t be.” At the Threshold of Memory I have never stepped into these rooms. Not because I wasn’t curious, but because I know I shouldn’t. My place, as a man, is not inside. Listening, watching, remembering what is said and what is not. These spaces—drawn in cloth, carved into routine—were never mine. And yet they’ve shaped the way I understand prayer, presence, and the politics of space. I have learned to read absence, to hear what disappears without announcement. In a culture where so much is held in gesture, to stand at the threshold is not passive. It’s a kind of responsibility. In the shadowed alcove of a shrine, a woman lights a stick of incense. The smoke rises slowly, curling into the dimness. Its scent—rose, ash, something older—fills the air. Behind her, a small child leans against her mother’s shoulder, half-asleep, her breath matching the rhythm of the prayer whispered beside her. Nothing is said aloud. But something sacred passes between them: tender, private, deeply alive. These are not moments most people would record. They don’t fit neatly into architectural plans or ideological doctrines. Instead they carry what no institution can replace: faith that lives in touch, in memory, in the soft persistence of presence. Even as walls are rebuilt and policies redraw the shape of sacred life, these quiet devotions continue. A rug tucked behind a staircase. A prayer whispered behind a curtain. What disappears from sight won’t always vanish. Some spaces move inward. Into memory, into gesture, into breath. Writing may be a way to resist forgetting. Because even when a room is gone, what it once held can still remain—in scent, in story, in the hush that follows prayer. I write about these corners with careful attention. To me, this means knowing the difference between witnessing and claiming. I carry these stories not as evidence, but as echoes of things fading not yet gone. In Kashmir, where so much has already been taken, documenting is more than just recording. In writing, I honour what remains, to make space for memory when physical space no longer allows it. … Every Friday, Shabir takes a break from his carpenter work—like many self-employed men in Kashmir—and drives with his wife and two daughters, Azra and Ajwa, to the Baba Reshi shrine on his scooter. It’s not just routine; it’s a rhythm of devotion, held in the quiet folds of family life. “Friday is for slowing down,” he says. “For prayer. For being together.” When they arrive, Shabir takes Azra, the younger one, with him into the shrine. “She’s still small,” he smiles. “She watches me closely, tries to copy every movement.” Ajwa, now nine, goes with her mother to the courtyard, to tie threads, to pray, to go into the small women’s prayer room when they find it open. “I’ve never gone in, and I won’t. But I know it’s a place of peace…for them.” He doesn’t speak of fairness or rights. Just presence, and memory. “My daughters will remember this. That they belonged here. That faith wasn’t something they had to find. It was already waiting for them.” ∎ Woman with a Tasbeeh , Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Shared faith, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Friday prayers, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. At Khanqah Urs, Khanqah-e Moula, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. A child’s whisper, Aishmuqam Shrine, Islamabad. Courtesy of Zainab. Woman praying at Chrar, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Daan Levun, Babareshi, Baramullah. Devotees perform age-old ritual of coating a stone oven with clay soil, believing that their prayers shall be fulfilled. Courtesy of Zainab. Making presence II, Babareshi, Baramullah. Courtesy of Zainab. The walls that stood the testament of time. Courtesy of Zainab. Walk by faith, Hazratbal Shrine, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. Testament of a collective history, Charar-i Sharif, Budgam. Courtesy of Zainab. Inherited resilience. Zoya with a friend, Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. Courtesy of Zainab. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Photo Essay Kashmir Mosque Worship Devotion Femininity Prayer Ritual Sacred Space Future Generations Generational Legacy Memory Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 9th Oct 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 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:

"So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money." FICTION & POETRY The Cuckoo Keeps Calling AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR "So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money." SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Short Story Translation Bengali Bangladesh Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Short Story Translation 23rd Sep 2020 Translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya MODHU wakes up at dawn and says to his wife, “Say goodbye.” Modina clasps her husband’s hand and says, “Not today. Go tomorrow.” The cuckoo trills from the branches of the koroi tree. Modhu doesn’t know what it means when the cuckoo calls during a spring dawn. He lies back again. Now comfortable, he goes back to sleep. The next day at dawn, Modhu again asks his wife to bid him farewell. Again, his wife says, “Not today, tomorrow.” Modhu again lies down like a good boy. Sleeps comfortably. The cuckoo calls from the tree. Modhu doesn’t hear. He is sound asleep. The cuckoo grows increasingly desperate. Coo. Coo-oo. Coo-oo-oo. Modhu sleeps, he doesn’t hear. His wife Modina lies awake; she doesn’t hear either. But Mafiz hears the cuckoo trilling in this spring dawn. He is not unromantic. He breaks into song: Oh, why do you call to me so early in the morning, oh, little cuckoo of my life? Modina doesn’t hear Mafiz’s song. Mafiz exits his home and gazes at the three-way intersection, the road that people take to reach town. Mafiz doesn’t see anybody taking that road. He walks. He places his foot on the threshold of Modina’s yard and, in a muted voice, calls out, “Brother, Modhu, have you gone to Dhaka?” Modina shoos cows. “Hyat! Hyat, hyat!” “Hey, girl, why are you shooing me?” Modina picks up a wooden stool and throws it at Mafiz. Mafiz sniggers like a jackal and leaves. As he goes, he says to himself, “No matter how many times you cut me, or hit me…” Modhu wakes up hungry. Modina serves him rice and eats as well. Not freshly cooked, steaming rice. Old rice, with water added. As he eats, Modhu asks, “Isn’t there anymore panta-rice left?” Modina bites her tongue in shame. Which means that there is no more panta-rice left. No more, meaning that in Modina’s judgment, because she herself has eaten too much, the panta has been finished before her man’s hunger has abated. Hence, Modina’s shame, hence, her biting of the tongue. “Now I need to go to Dhaka.” Modhu needs to go to Dhaka for pertinent reasons. Modina asks, “Isn’t it hard to drive a rickshaw?” Modhu knows that this is Modina being tender. Modina knows that driving a rickshaw in Dhaka city is grueling. But working the fields was hellish torment, and the wages were poor—merely sixty takas a day. One day in the month of Joishthya, Modhu had almost died while weeding the jute fields belonging to the Mondals. There was no water in the fields, there were no clouds in the sky, Modhu’s back was burning to ashes from the sun, his throat was parched wood, he was desperately thirsty, he was running for water, the solitary plains had become the deserts of Karbala, in the distance, Bacchu Mondal’s new tin shed glinted in the sunlight, there was a new tube-well near the outer yard of the house, Modhu was running towards it, stumbling on the clods of earth in the hoed field, shouting “A drop of water for me, please!” But before he had reached the tube-well, Modhu had tumbled onto the ground, his eyes had rolled back into his head, he foamed at the mouth. Modhu almost died that day. No more, meaning that in Modina’s judgment, because she herself has eaten too much, the panta has been finished before her man’s hunger has abated. Hence, Modina’s shame, hence, her biting of the tongue. So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money. This is how, day after day, for fifteen straight days, Modhu drives a rickshaw. In Kawran Bazar, twelve of these drivers live in a windowless room; with them live twelve thousand mosquitoes; the mosquitoes sing, suck the blood of all the Modhus, and the Modhus all sleep like the dead. At the crack of dawn, when the tired mosquitoes are each an immobile drop of blood, the Modhus wake up; nature calls them. They not only feel the thunderclouds rumbling in their bellies, they hear them as well. They go out in a group, pull the tabans covering their asses over their heads, and they show their naked dark asses in a row as they hunker down at the edge of the Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, or some of them in front of the Hotel Sonargaon gate. They wipe their asses with newspapers because there is no water; not only is there a lack of water to clean themselves, the Modhus don’t have water to bathe. For fifteen days straight, Modhu doesn’t wash himself; sometimes the odor of his own body makes him want to vomit, especially when the sun is strong and Dhaka’s skies and air cease to be. This is how it is, day after day, night after night. But what happiness, what success! When Modhu returns to Modina after fifteen straight days, there is at least fifteen hundred takas in his waist pouch. Which means that for at least a month, he neither thinks of Dhaka nor speaks of it. Modhu goes to Dhaka city. The watered rice is finished, there is no more rice left in the house, Modina sits emptyhanded by the derelict stove. A cuckoo trills in a tree; Modina doesn’t hear it, but Mafiz does. It has never happened that a cuckoo sings and Mafiz hasn’t heard it. When Modhu crosses the three-way intersection of the highway and goes towards the upazila town, Mafiz peeks from behind the house. He spots Modina sitting by the stove doing nothing and he begins to joke around. “Brother, Modhu, are you off to Dhaka?” Modina turns her head. Joyous, Mafiz says, “What’s up, Modina?” “What’s your deal?” Modina scolds Mafiz in a solemn manner. “You’re hankering for a beating?” “If you beat me with your own hands,” Mafiz says as he grins with all his teeth and comes forward fearlessly, “my life would be a treasure.” “Go home.” Modina is even more serious. “Do you want a job, Modina?” Mafiz coaxes her. Modina isn’t willing to listen to anything. She threatens Mafiz, “I’m telling you, go.” Mafiz tries to get angry and says, “I’m here to do you a favor without being asked, and you want to shoo me off like a cow?” Modina asks in a serious manner, “What favor?” Mafiz responds with mystery. “You’ll get money, wheat. Want a job?” “What job?” “Shooing goats,” Mafiz says and chuckles. Although he hadn’t intended to laugh. Modina is furious. “Go away, you bastard. You can’t find someone else to joke with?” Mafiz moves fast to try to control the damage and speaks in a very businesslike manner. “Not a joke, Modina, for real! No actual work involved, just shooing cows and goats.” “Explain clearly, what sort of job is this then?” Mafiz explains it clearly. “Haven’t you seen those trees planted on either side of the highway? Those trees need to be guarded so that cows and goats don’t chew them up. That’s the job. They’ll pay cash, they’ll also pay with wheat. You sell the wheat to buy rice. And with the money, you buy beef, tilapia…!” “Stop, stop.” Modina stops Mafiz and suspicion rolls across her eyes and face. She narrows her eyes, creases her forehead, and interrogates him. “Why would anyone give me this job when there are so many people around?” “Why, I’ll arrange it for you. I’ll grab the Chairman’s hands and feet and I’ll beg…” Mafiz pauses for no reason. He can’t find anything else to say. But his plan and his words are quite clear. Still, Modina wants to hear more about this job guarding trees and the means to getting it even more clearly. “Go on, why did you stop?” Mafiz laughs and says, “I will grab the Chairman’s hands and feet and beg: Uncle, give this job to Modina, you won’t find a girl as nice as Modina even if you look and look…” Modina howls with laughter. A cool breeze wafts across the ditch and disappears. From the branches of the koroi tree, a cuckoo calls. Mafiz glances towards the tree and looks at the cuckoo. Then he gazes at Modina’s face and says in a melancholy manner, “Do you know what the cuckoo is saying? Mafiz says, “The cuckoo is crying. It’s crying and asking, Where did my own little cuckoo bird go?” “What?” There is a smile on Modina’s face; she knows what Mafiz is about to say. Mafiz says, “The cuckoo is crying. It’s crying and asking, Where did my own little cuckoo bird go?” Modina laughs again. Her laughter enrages the cuckoo in the koroi tree. Mafiz speaks the cuckoo’s mind, “Why do you laugh like that Modina?” “What is it to you if I laugh?” Modina asks cocking her eyebrow like a flirt. “My ribs shatter to bits and my soul wants to fly away,” Mafiz says. Modina laughs, shimmying her whole body. Mafiz looks at the tree but the cuckoo is gone. It has been raining all day in Dhaka; as he pedals his rickshaw Modhu is pretty much taking a shower. After getting drenched all day, all the warmth had left his body. Modhu cannot fathom where his body is finding so much heat in the evening. He feels cold, his head hurts, and soon he begins to shiver. He rolls around on the floor in the dark room, and like a child, he moans, calling out to his mother. It isn’t raining in the village of Modhupur; the moon is visible in the sky and a cuckoo is singing in the branches of the koroi tree. Mafiz stands by Modina’s window, grasping the grill and whispering, “Modina! Oh, Modina!” Scared, Modina scrambles into a sitting position, and spits on her own chest to dissipate her fear, and Mafiz whistles in the air saying, “It’s me, Mafiz!” The power has gone out in Dhaka city. In the box-like room where Modhu rolls on the ground by himself, shivering and moaning, the darkness of hell has descended: Modhu thinks he is dying. In the village of Modhupur, through the gaps in the branches of the koroi tree, slivers of moonlight land on Modina’s window; outside stands Mafiz, like a ghost, and inside is Modina. Modina’s teeth can be seen white in the shadow of moonlight, her eyes are shining, and she is pretending to be angry with Mafiz, telling him she was going to complain to Modhu when he came back, and Modhu would grind Mafiz’s bones into powder and apply it to his body. Modina purses her lips in laughter as she talks, and Mafiz says that Modhu wasn’t coming back to Modhupur anymore, he was going to die in Dhaka. Mafiz tells Modina, “Our fortunes were written together. You have no choice but me, Modina.” Modina slides her arm through the window grill and shoves Mafiz in the chest. “Go home, you stray cow.” Mafiz grabs Modina’s hand in the blink of an eye and says, “You don’t know this, but I know it for sure, Modina. I have you written in my fate and you have me.” Modina feels that Mafiz has lost his head. As Mafiz goes back to his own house, he dreams that Modhu has died in Dhaka. “He’s dead, that bastard Modhu is dead,” says Mafiz, willing Modina’s husband to die as he walks home. Right then, in Kawran Bazar, Dhaka, Modhu is freezing and shivering, and he is calling out to Allah, saying, “Don’t take my life, Khoda. Let me live this time around. I’ll never come back to Dhaka in this lifetime.” The next morning Modhu recovers from his fever; he sees that there is no more rain, the sky is a shining blue, and the buildings are all smiling. Modhu forgets his promise to Allah, and that very afternoon he goes out again with his rickshaw. He recalls the bone-shaking fever from the night before and laughs to himself. That morning, Mafiz places his foot on the threshold of Modhu’s yard and calls out in a low voice, “Brother, Modhu, are you back from Dhaka?” But Mafiz knows very well that if Modhu is supposed to be back fifteen days later, there are still three more days to go. Two days before the day that Modhu is supposed to return to Modhupur, he drops off a passenger in the inner side of Gulshan-2 and goes to grab a cup of tea at a roadside stall. He takes two sips of his tea and turns around to find his rickshaw gone. At first, Modhu doesn’t believe it. He thinks maybe someone has hidden his rickshaw nearby as a prank. But no, it isn’t that simple. The rickshaw has disappeared, meaning seriously disappeared. Modhu goes to the rickshaw owner and describes the situation. The owner points towards Modhu and orders his people, “Tie up that fool.” Before the ones under order had begun the work, the owner himself landed a kick in Modhu’s belly. “You fucking nobody, where’s my rickshaw?” A grunt emerges from Modhu’s mouth, he doubles over and grabs his mouth with one hand. One of the owner’s followers runs over and, almost astride Modhu’s shoulders, he grabs Modhu’s hair, shaking his head and demands, “Say it, you son of a bitch, to which of your fathers did you sell off the boss’s rickshaw?” The boss screams, “First, do him over real good.” Modhu is made over almost into a corpse, and thirteen hundred and twenty five takas, meaning all his earnings, are taken away from him before he is handed over to the police. The police take Modhu to the station and hit him some more in the hope of getting some money, but they quickly realize that not only will no one show up with any money for his release, the owner and his men had already beat him so much that he might very well die in the police station. In which case, the newspapers will start writing about death in police custody, and all those poor-loving human rights organization folks will drum up a furor. The police think about all this hassle and push Modhu out of the station. Modhu can’t walk; he falls onto the street in front of the police station and moans. The police feel inconvenienced and annoyed at this; they load Modhu into the back of a pickup truck, and drive around the city, along this street and that, and they focus their flashlights here and there looking for a convenient spot in which to dump him. As they search, one of them has an idea. “Well, then,” he says to his colleagues, “whose fault is it that we’re going through all this trouble?” They drive the pickup truck with Modhu in the back to the Begunbari house-cum-garage of the rickshaw owner and roar at him, “You, pal, have murdered the suspect before handing him over to the police!” The rickshaw owner doesn’t seem perturbed by the roaring police; he goes inside and quickly returns with ten thousand takas. He tucks it into the hand of one of the policemen and says, “There’s no more cash in the house, saar. Just manage the thing, please.” One of the policemen grows angry. “Is this a joke!” The rickshaw owner doesn’t quite understand what his anger means; still, out of habit, he goes back inside and returns with another ten thousand takas. Then he gets a louder scolding, and a policeman even utters the words, “under arrest.” Therefore, the rickshaw owner goes back inside again, and when he is late in coming back out, the policemen look at each other with suspicion. But before they lose their patience, the rickshaw owner reemerges with a page from his check book. He says, “Saars, an accident just happened. It is my fault, but I don’t want the guy to die. Here, I’ve written out one hundred thousand.” The policeman stops him midway and says, “Pal, you want to survive, then show up at the station tomorrow morning with five hundred thousand in cash. We don’t do checks-fecks.” The rickshaw owner says, “What arrangements for the body?” A policeman answers, “That’s the big trouble right now. What to do with this dead body, we’ve been going around all night…pal, that five hundred thousand won’t cut it. We’ll have to take care of the journalists; we’ll have to take care of the human rights people. Make it six lakhs and be at the station by nine a.m.” But Modhu isn’t a dead body yet. On the floor in the back of the pickup truck, he lies flat on his back with his neck at an angle, peering at them like a weak, sick kitten. There is still a spark of life in his dying eyes. It was the end of night when Modhu was carefully laid down behind a bush in a corner of the Suhrawardy Gardens, from the police pickup truck. Silence descended once the mechanical noise of the pickup truck disappeared in the distance. The silence reigned for a few moments; then suddenly, someone blew on the mosque microphone, and in a voice deep like thunder, began the chant of Allahu Akbar. When the quivering notes of the azaan floated to Modhu’s nearly numb ears, his eyes opened slightly. In the distance, he saw a light tremble. He tried to move one of his hands but couldn’t. He tried to move his legs but couldn’t. Modhu tried to make a noise with his mouth; he forced himself to say, Allah! But Modhu’s voice didn’t echo in the wind. Modhu would die and Mafiz would have Modina forever—this is what is written in Modina and Mafiz’s destinies. Modina doesn’t believe it but Mafiz’s faith doesn’t have an ounce of doubt. But why Mafiz counts the days till Modhu’s return is something only he knows. Two days before Modhu is supposed to come back, which was fifteen days after his departure, Mafiz, once again, stands by Modina’s window and says that Modhu will not return. He is going to die in Dhaka; and because when poor people die that far away, their bodies never make it back, Modina will never see Modhu again. When Mafiz is telling Modina all this, Modhu is rolling back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness on the floor of the pickup truck in the streets of Dhaka. Modina protests the ill-omened, cruel words from Mafiz by scratching his chest and neck until he bleeds. But when Mafiz groans in pain, she covers his mouth with her hand and says, “Oh, does it burn?” When Mafiz sulks and wants to leave, Modina grabs his shoulder again and says, “Come tomorrow! The day after, he’ll be back home!” The next night, before the cuckoo sings in the koroi tree, three ghosts come to Modina’s house. They had whispered to each other as they came down the road that Modhu was gone. “Let’s go and eat Modhu’s wife.” These ghosts only eat people of the female gender; from age eight to fifty-eight, wherever they find a woman at an opportune moment, they eat her. These famous ghosts live in the upazila town; they came to the village of Modhupur after verifying and ascertaining the information that Modhu is absent, and truly they find Modina by herself in Modhu’s house, and when they find her, they begin to eat her. They take turns in eating Modina. After the first ghost, the second ghost, then the third ghost, then the first ghost again. While they eat Modina in turns, at some point, Mafiz shows up. Modina sees Mafiz and whimpers in the hope of getting some help, but one of the ghosts grabs hold of her nose and mouth so hard that not only any noise, even her breath cannot emerge from her. In addition, another ghost grasps her throat with five and five, ten fingers; Modina thrashes around, groans, her tongue lolls out, her eyes want to bug out. Seeing which, Mafiz, a single person, attacks the three ghosts; two of whom pick him up and slam him down on the ground; a grunt emerges from Mafiz’s throat, his eyes go dark; one ghost picks up a half-brick and smashes it down on Mafiz’s head; his skull opens up with a crack, and this encourages the ghost, so he begins smashing the brick down into Mafiz’s skull again and again. Right then, the cuckoo trills in the koroi tree. Ghosts don’t know what it means when a cuckoo sings in a spring evening. ∎ 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 Next Up:

· FICTION & POETRY Short Story · Translation Two Stories "There was no one else in the four-berth compartment. I was comfortable. Somewhere near the Andhra-Orissa border I woke up and found everything dark. The train wasn’t moving either. Pitch dark. You couldn’t see anything out of the window." Artwork by Ibrahim Rayintakath for SAAG. Mixed media. Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha Cold Fire I WILL bring you the brochure and some other reading material. But if you simply watch this video, it’s about ten minutes long, it’ll be clear once you’ve watched the whole thing… this model of Akai VCR that you’ve got is my favourite too. This is the one we normally use at work. Yes, coffee, please… I was up very late last night… a new kind of elevated furnace is being used in village crematoriums these days, primarily through NGOs… the body’s put on a slightly raised surface like a stretcher and then placed on the iron furnace along with the wood… the ash that gathers beneath is a sort of bonus. People collect that stuff… I’ve seen it happen in Labhpur, close to Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s home. They offer training in Gujarat on this sort of thing. The concept is fine up to the village level. I’m switching on the VCR then sir. Some snow on the screen to begin with. Then the name—‘Cold Fire… which you have been waiting for. You had to wait eighty-four years for the fall of Communism. And in just six years you’re getting Cold Fire, whose elegance, whose exclusive company, only you or others like you deserve.’ Mr. K.C. Sarkar, owner of three tea estates, watched Cold Fire at work. Dressed in a dhoti and kurta, with sandalwood marks on the forehead, the body was laid on a coffin-like box. The lids opened, drawing the body in. The lids closed. The digital lights glowed. ‘Ten minutes later.’ The lights had been red all this while. Now the blue lights glowed instead. At the bottom, near the feet, a door opened, and two gleaming urns emerged. One was labelled ‘Ashes’, and the other, ‘Navel’. The lids opened. There was nothing inside. It was just like before. Polished, spick-and-span. Nagarwalla had told Mr. Sarkar about it at the club last evening. - I’m sending a young man to you tomorrow, KC. Fascinating! I’ve gone and booked it for myself. A lethal name too—Cold Fire! - I tried a vodka from Czechoslovakia once. Back in the Communist era—now of course the Czechs and Slovaks are different nations. That vodka was named Liquid Fire. Is this some kind of new liquor? - No sir. This is the ultimate spirit—it’ll make you a spirit. - Send him to me then. - I’ve ordered some chilled beer. Would you like some? - Beer after sundown? He was a pretty bright young man. His cologned cheek was permanently dimpled in an engaging smile. - How did you people come up with such a novel product? What prompted you? He began to stir a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. - I’ll explain, sir. Look, in the post-Communist world, the difference between the upper and the lower strata of society has taken on an absurd dimension. Every aspect of life—be it education, be it childbirth, be it transport—is different for them. For instance, if an affluent senior citizen like you needed to go on a vacation today, if you wanted to go to a coastal resort, your choice, even if you wanted to go somewhere close by, would be the Maldives or Seychelles, not Puri or Digha. If you have a vision problem, obviously Geneva would be preferable. But this form of existence that you enjoy, this free, superior, and magnificent lifestyle, is completely inconsistent with your funeral. For that, it’ll be the same filthy crematorium that everyone else goes to—Keoratala or Nimtala or Kashi Mitra or Siriti… horror of horrors! Have you had to visit a crematorium recently, sir? - Not exactly recently. Last year, when my father-in-law’s brother… - If you were to go now, you’d find it even more horrifying. For example, we have to visit the crematorium quite often on official work. Just the other day, about a week ago, what a horrible sight we saw at Keoratala. Three furnaces blazing. The area where they burn the bodies on wooden pyres had no corpses. A gang of criminals drinking and smoking grass. Meanwhile, six bodies were waiting upstairs for the furnaces. Four more downstairs, outside. And on top of all this, it was raining off and on. A hoard of ruffians with each of the bodies. You can’t imagine. - Practically hell, you’re saying. - I haven’t seen hell, sir. But I can’t imagine anything more hellish. One of the bodies was of a drowned man—decomposed. One was a BSF jawan shot dead by the ULFA. The rest were all old men and women from slums or lower-middle class homes, one was middle-aged, seemed to be a political goon, a group of people were shouting those typical Communist slogans, and in the middle of all this—chanting priests, all the paraphernalia of cremation, flowers—a couple of yards away the cot, mattress and quilts blazing—a bunch of urchins on the prowl, dogs, drunks, people weeping, body fluids oozing out from corpses, incense, prayers… - Oh my god, even your description is making me queasy. - Naturally. But whatever you may say, whether you book a Cold Fire or not, that’s your decision, I cannot imagine you amidst all this. Excuse me sir, I’m probably getting a little emotional… - Oh no, you are absolutely right. Since everything in my life is exclusive, why shouldn’t my funeral be that way too? If this frail body must burn just once, let it burn in style, don’t you think? Moreover, this can’t be thought of as a mere gadget. It’s a family asset if you come to think of it. - Right sir. People can buy Cold Fire for business reasons too. The very concept of cremation and funerals will change. - Have you read the Gita? - Yes sir, we had to take special training on thanatology. We had to read the Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead as part of theory. May I say something, sir? - Of course you may. Go ahead. - Do you believe in rebirth, sir? - I don’t exactly know, but this Cold Fire makes me think redeath might be a better idea. - This observation of yours is very philosophical, sir. Should I book one for you then, sir? - Of course. Wait, let me get my cheque-book. I think I can get hold of at least half a dozen other clients for you. - Thank you sir. I don’t have words for my gratitude. A large vehicle delivered Cold Fire to Mr. Sarkar’s residence the very next day. Family, friends, and relatives all showed up to take a look. It was certainly something to marvel at. Just that Mr. Sarkar’s ancient gardener and servant quit their jobs. The rare feat of being the first person in Calcutta to be cremated by Cold Fire was achieved by the famous gynaecologist Chandramadhab aka Chandu Chatterjee. Just the previous night he had hosted a lavish party at the Taj Bengal to celebrate his grandson’s first birthday. Scotch had flowed like water. The very next day stunned and grieving friends watched as Cold Fire was switched on at precisely eleven o’ clock in the morning, and the blue lights glowed at ten past eleven. The door near the feet opened and two gleaming urns emerged. One containing the ashes. The other, the navel. The whole thing was captured on video. Two hundred and thirty units of Cold Fire have been sold in Calcutta so far. ∎ The Gift of Death SOME people’s lives are so dreary that in the process of putting up with the tedium they don’t even realise when they just die. When you think about it, they seem to be under a cloud of doubt even after death. In that respect, few people are born as lucky as me. Whenever I get fed up of things, something inevitably happens to revive my spirits. But you can’t say this to too many people. Friends and relations all assume I’m grinding out an existence just like them. Hand-to-mouth. Brainless sheep, the whole lot. But then it’s best for them to think this way. Else they’ll be jealous. They’ll look at me strangely. I don’t know how to cope with envy. I’m afraid of the evil eye too. Good and evil—that’s what makes the world go round. The first thing I have going for me is my amazing contact with lunatics at regular intervals. Chance or fate, it just happens. An example or two will help me explain without creating problems on the business side. But it’s best not to tell the psychiatrist my wife took me to. Suppose she changes my pills? Just the other day this man—gaunt, half-dead, looks like one of those people who can fly—got hold of me. Had two terrific schemes, he said. He’d sent the details to every world leader. Two of them had replied so far. Both Thatcher and Gorbachev had praised his ideas. He’d be talking to both of them soon. He was flying out next month. I sat down to hear of his schemes. The first one was to build a projection jutting out from the balcony of every apartment in all the high-rise buildings coming up these days. Something like a diving board at a swimming pool. He would make a couple of prototypes to begin with. Once the government had approved enthusiastically, it would be added to the building plan, without having to be added on later. Apparently it was essential for people to have such high spots nowadays to stand or sit on. Without railings, not very large. It was for those who wanted to be by themselves. People were chased by thousands of things these days. He was being chased by the chief minister, by scientists, by the prime minister. The police commissioner too. Also by the Special Branch, the Criminal Investigations Department, and the Research & Analysis Wing. That was when the plan struck him. A slice of space—but outside the building. Speaking for myself, the idea appealed to me too. Entirely possible. But because I lived in a single-storied house inherited from my father, I didn’t give it too much thought. His second scheme was not exactly a plan—it was more of an adventurous proposal or proposition, though it was closely connected to the first scheme. He would stand as well as walk on the wings of a mid-air aircraft. He wanted to demonstrate this practically. Today’s youth would regain their courage if they saw him. The youth needed dreams, for the alternatives were drugs, cinema, and HIV. He wanted to perform this feat on an Indian Air Force plane. He had written it all down in detail. There were diagrams too. All of it gathered in a thin plastic folder. He kept these documents in a file tied up with a string. He wanted to know if I could help him with the second idea in. Whether I knew an Air Marshal, for instance. When I said I wouldn’t be able to help him, he requested me to pay for a cup of tea and a cigarette at least. I did. I have met several such insane people, in different shapes and sizes and with different behaviours. I have seen people who have gone mad with sudden grief. I’ve encountered not a few suicides too. Before killing themselves, some people develop a half-mad detachment. I’ve come across such people too. But then I’ve also run into not one but two cases where there wasn’t a whiff of insanity. Both of them used to spend time with mystics. One of them used to go to Tarapith, that den of mystics, every Sunday. The other was embroiled deeply in office politics. Both hanged themselves. All of these incidents are true. The age of making stories up has ended—why should people believe me, and why should I bother to make them up, either? Some of the lunatics and suicides I’ve seen were tragedies of love. But this isn’t the time for stories about women. Although the first person whom I told the story that I have eventually decided to recount here was my wife. A woman, in other words. And this was what led to all the quarrels and demands. For what? That I must see a psychiatrist. I was an able-bodied man—why should I abandon the business I ran and go see a doctor for the insane? She paid no attention. Her brothers came. Collectively they forced me to see a woman psychiatrist. What an enormous fuss they made. But it turned out to be a good idea. Very pretty. Western looks. And matching conversation. Very cordial. I liked her so much that I told her the story too. For years altogether now I’ve been taking the tiny white pills she gave me, thrice a day. Sometimes I take a blue one too. It gets wearisome. I get annoyed. But I like the woman so much that I can’t help trusting her. I try to tell myself that I’ve recovered from an illness. Not that I’m ill. The story that all this preamble leads up to is not about lunatics or suicides, however. In fact, it’s been three whole years. I was returning home by train from Madras. I have to travel indiscriminately on business. To save money I travel second class on the way out, but on the way back I give in to my longing for luxury and inevitably buy a first-class ticket. There was no one else in the four-berth compartment. I was comfortable. Somewhere near the Andhra-Orissa border I woke up and found everything dark. The train wasn’t moving either. Pitch dark. You couldn’t see anything out of the window. Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I realised that the train was standing at a small station somewhere. A deep indigo night sky. Hints of low black hills. A few lonely stars. People moving about. The glow of torches. Getting off the train, I heard that a goods train had been in an accident. It would have to be moved and the line, repaired. Only then would our train resume its journey. Almost without warning, the lights came back on. I went back to my compartment. At once I discovered that someone else had entered in the darkness. The man was—not probably, but almost certainly—not a South Indian. His appearance and way of talking made that obvious. In his forties. Fair, well-dressed, handsome. Slightly greying hair. His fine shirt and trousers, gleaming shoes and the tie around his neck gave him the appearance of a successful salesman of a multinational company. I wasn’t entirely wrong, but I still don’t know the name of the company or how big it was. So big that it was almost mysterious and obscure. After some small talk both of us lit our cigarettes. He was the one to offer his expensive cigarettes. When I asked him whether he wouldn’t mind a little whiskey, he said he didn’t drink. So I drank by myself. There was no sign of the train leaving. Neither of us spoke for a while. Almost startling me, the man suddenly said: Keep this business card of ours. Might come in useful. The card was black, made of some kind of paper with the feel of velvet. On it, an address in an unsettling shade of bright yellow. Nothing else. A Waltair address. Nothing else on either side of the card. Neither the name of a company, nor a phone number. - That’s not our actual address, mind you. You have to take a roundabout route to reach us. But when you write to us add your address with all details. Our people will certainly get in touch with you. It may take a little time. But they will definitely meet you. - What exactly is this business of yours? Seems to be some sort of secret, illegal affair... But then you’ve got business cards too—strange! - Look, our company doesn’t have a name. No name. We help people die—you could say we gift them death. Of course, it isn’t legal, but... - You mean you murder them. - Absolutely not! Murder! How awful, we aren’t killers. It will be done with your full consent. Different kinds of death, in different ways. You will choose your method, and pay accordingly. You want to die like a king? We can do it for you. We will fulfil whatever death wish you might have, no matter how unusual. You’ll get exactly what you want, just the way you want it. But yes, you have to pay. I had a long conversation with the man thereafter. I’m recounting as much of it as I can recollect. As much of the strangeness as actually penetrated my whiskey-soaked brain in the anonymous darkness of the station. As much as I’ve been able to retain three years later. His position was that, for a variety of reasons, each of us harbours a unique death wish within ourselves. That is to say, a pet notion—and desire—of how we’d like to die. Like a romantic, someone might want to leap from a mountain into a bottomless ravine on a cold, misty evening. Others want their bodies to be riddled by bullets. Yet others, to be charred to death in a fire. Someone else wants poison in their bloodstream, so they they begin with a slight warm daze and bow out as cold as ice. Some want to be conscious at the moment of death, while others prefer to be halfway to oblivion. One person wants to be strangled to death. Another is keen on being stabbed. Some people wish for death in a holy place, the sound of sacred chants ringing in their ears. But wishing doesn’t guarantee fulfilment. No matter what, the majority of deaths are uninteresting, drab, and dull. This company meets the demand for such deaths, fulfilling its clients’ death wishes. I remember some parts of the salesman’s pitch verbatim. - There’s a theoretical side to this too. Our R&D is extremely strong. You’ll find non-stop research underway, not only on the practical side of death, but also on other aspects, covering data from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Thanatos Syndrome, Indian thoughts on death, Abhedananda, and Jiddu Krishnamoorthy to the latest forms of murder, suicide and clinical death. Forget about India, no one in the world is engaged in this sort of business. It wouldn’t even occur to anyone. We’ve been told of a few small-scale attempts in Japan, but this isn’t a matter of automobiles or electronics, after all. They may have their Toyota and Mitsubishi, but those poor fellows still can’t think beyond hara-kiri. All those bamboo or steel knives—so primitive. Not at all enterprising. Incidentally, do you know which country has the most suicides in the world? - Must be us. - No sir, it’s Hungary. Magyars are incredibly suicide-prone. They offered access to all kinds of death. They would fulfill even the most intricate and virtually impossible proposals. A man from Delhi had always imagined dying when his jeep skidded on an icy mountain road. It was organised. If you wanted to die of a specific disease, their medical team would check on its feasibility. But they would not engineer someone else’s death on your request. You could only arrange for your own death through their services. I learnt a great deal from the conversation. Apparently, many people lived such bewildered lives that even though they had a vague idea of how they’d like to die, they could not express it clearly. The company had a choice of pre-set programmes for such clients. The most regal of these was the ‘record player’. A gigantic record player was set in the ocean at a distance. A huge black disc was set in it, the disc of death, turning at thirty-three and one third revolutions per minute. The record player was placed on a rig similar to an offshore oil-drilling platform. You had to get there on a speedboat. The fortunate man desiring death was made to sit on a chair over the spoke, shaped like a bullet or a lipstick, reaching upwards through the hole at the centre of the record. The record-player played an impossibly tragic melody—Western or Indian. ’s Aisle of Death, or the wistful strains of a sarengi, as you wished. Several thousand watts of sound enveloped the client in a trance. Revolving on the surface of the ocean along with the record, he was also transported to a place beyond the real and the unreal. When the music ended, the stylus entered the glittering space in the middle of the record with the sound of a storm, striking the man a mighty blow that ensured his death even before his body hit the water. His head was either torn off his body or pulverised. As soon as the corpse fell into the sea, hundreds of sharks swam up at the scent of blood. This was a very expensive affair. Very few people could afford it. Till date, not more than two or three people had heard the symphony of death. - Who are they? - Excuse me, but clients are more important to us than even god. We cannot possibly divulge their identities. Although we are practically friends now, you and I. Do you remember how Mr. ____ died? You should. - How could I not remember. Such a horrible plane crash! - It was a plane crash all right, but that was what he wanted. - But what about the other passengers? Surely they didn’t want it. - Sorry. It’s prohibitively expensive. Because there are other victims. - But they were innocent. - Innocent! My foot! In any case, there’s nothing we can do about it. None of them told us to kill them. But if they insist on taking the same flight, what are we supposed to do? Moreover, this was his choice. Yes, choice. We made all the arrangements to fulfil his request, using the money he paid us. - But. Why did he do this? - He had got rid of Mr. ____ the same way. Not through us, of course. Lots of innocent people had died on that occasion too. So he wanted a similar death. - How many more such cases have you handled? - Numerous. But why should we tell you about all of them? Can all such cases be talked about? Should they even be talked about? We offer many services. We sell suicide projects, for instance. Not as expensive. Lots more. Let me just tell you this, all the famous people who have died recently—from the Bombay mafia leader being gunned down to the Calcutta film star who committed suicide with the phone in his hand and forty sleeping pills in his stomach—it was all our doing. And then there are always the political leaders. It’s very easy to help them—all of them prefer a heart attack. - So you people help only the famous? Give them the gift of death, that is. - We’re still trying to consolidate our business, you see. The company’s a long way from breaking even. But yes, pride in our performance is our major capital at present. Later, of course, we’ll have to think of the economically weaker classes too. To tell you the truth, poor people are much more trouble. The bastards aren’t even sure whether they’re alive in the first place, how can they be expected to think of death? And besides, they’re unbelievably crude. - What about those even lower down—miles below the poverty line—beggars? - Impossible! Last year our R&D people studied the death wishes of beggars in three metropolitan cities—Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Their findings were—how shall I put it—silly and delightful. Childish demands. - Such as? - In most cases the image involves eating. For instance, some of them want their limbs, heads, and bodies to be stuffed with meat, fish, butter and alcohol till they explode. They desperately want liquor. Then again, some of them wanted god to take them in his arms at the centre of Flora Fountain in Bombay. Infantile, and so naive. - But you have to say they’re imaginative. - That’s true. They’re bound to, since they’re human beings. But yes, we get a lot of valuable ideas from children. Just the other day our R&D unearthed a fascinating story from an American newspaper. - Tell me, please. - A boy, you know. About twelve. Somewhere near Chicago. The fellow had dressed up as Batman. He was Batman constantly, jumping from roof to roof with a pair of wings clipped on. No one took him seriously. Even the girls used to laugh at him. Child psychology, you see. So none of you can recognise Batman, he said. One day he was found in a deep freezer, frozen after several days in there. You’d be astounded at the kind of cases there are. Batman! Actually it’s not like I don’t drink. Pour me a strong whiskey, will you? What’s this whiskey called? Glender! Oh, it’s Scotch. I’ve never heard of this brand. I had poured a few whiskeys. For the salesman. And for myself too. After I had poured several, he had left like Batman, swinging and weaving. I had weaved my way to bed too. The train had started moving. I could still hear his voice ringing in my ears... - But yes, there’s a grand surprise in death, especially in accidental death—a thrill that we never deprive our clients of. Say someone has booked a death to be run over by a car. But not all his efforts will allow him to guess when, where, or on which road he will die. The virgin charm of sudden death will always remain. Who was this man? What company did he represent, for that matter? The gift of death—the idea couldn’t exactly be dismissed out of hand. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t been able to do it for three years. Secondly, don’t we have our own visions of death, after all? Would it be fulfilled in this one life, in this life? For instance, I have a specific sort of death wish of my own too. But then the death by record player is very expensive. Naturally. I live with doubts and misgiving like these. These things lie low when I take my pills regularly. When they raise their heads, I visit the psychiatrist. She changes the medicine. Blue pills instead of white. In the darkness of power-cuts I pull that man’s black business card out for a look. The disturbing yellow letters are probably printed in fluorescent ink. They glow in the darkness. I don’t mind showing the card to anyone who gets in touch with me. You can check for yourself by writing to them. It might take a little time but their people will certainly get in touch. You can be sure about this. They will definitely meet you. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Short Story Translation Bengali Posthumous Stories in Dialogue Anarchist Writing Fyataru Magical Realism Working-Class Stories Language Violence Communist Slogans Banality Andhra-Orissa Border Class Rebirth Philosophical Fiction Philosophy Criminal Investigations Department Research & Analysis Wing BSF Crime Choosing Death Suicide Tibetan Book of the Dead Rachmaninoff Mafia Metropolitan Bombay Calcutta Madras Delhi Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 6th Oct 2020 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 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: