Indian Literature
In the molten golden hour, a row of Santhal tribeswomen dance in an open field. Arms interlocked, they bounce as one centipedal body to the beat of a dhol, cymbals, and a purring bamboo flute. The musicians wear flowers in their turbans, while the dancers don expressionless metallic masks that impart an otherworldly timbre to the pastoral scene.
One afternoon during the Holy Month, I have that indistinct but unmistakable sensation that I am being followed.
Sea of Poppies is a miraculous book about even more than the 19th-century opium trade, which is an exciting tale in and of itself, fraught with voracious greed, power-mongering, and racism.
Vikram Chandra’s Bombay shimmies with contradiction, seduction, and trouble.
I sometimes wonder whether Zia Jaffrey has a sixth sense, a sort of x-ray vision that gives her deep brown eyes the ability to penetrate the hearts of others.
Cries Majnoon:
Beloved you are not here
Calcutta is a dead weight on my heart: / I must destroy her before I go.
My birth was at the bottom rung of the Western Ghats
at a distance of three rolls only from the boiling
The Turnaround
Bombay makes me a beggar.
I don’t know if he is still needed / Or not / But he is coming back,
