प्रो. सत्य पी. मोहंती से रश्मि दुबे भटनागर और राजेन्द्र कौर की बातचीत मूल अंग्रेजी से अनुवाद: राजशेखर पाण्डेय  यह साक्षात्कार अक्टूबर-नवंबर २०११में लिया गया था. दोनों साक्षात्कारकर्ता अमेरिकी विश्विद्यालयों में साहित्य के अध्यापन से जुडी हुई हैं : रश्मि भटनागर पित्त्सबर्ग विश्विद्यालय के मानविकी केन्द्र में विजिटिंग फेलो हैं तथा राजेंदर कौर साऊथ एशियन […]

Translated by Lakshmi Holmström Malathi Maithri Perish her intellect: cruel is her servitude* Her grandmother once carried her husband to his mistress’s house, in a basket. As for her father, he had a family in every village; he’d set off on visits driving his fine bullock cart. Her husband, not to be outdone, would rape […]

Freedom is one of those words. As the cornerstone of our conception of democracy and of modernity itself – or simply as the easiest answer to what so many of us think we aspire to in our political and personal lives – we ought to know exactly what we mean by it. But freedom is […]

  “Kar-e-jahan daraz hai…” (Long and complicated are the affairs of the world.) – Iqbal.     Munni apa felt pleased today. She generally regarded herself as the only sane person in her family. And she let everyone know this. “Hmmph, this family! They cannot control their temper. I have suffered all my life for […]

कभी-कभी कुछ बातें कहनी ही पड़ती हैं चाहे वह कितनी ही कठिन हों. और कहने की मुश्किल किसी तरह से कम नहीं होती बात कह देने से, क्योंकि जो कहा जाना है उसका अस्तित्व ‘कहे जाने में है–‘कैसे कहूँ वो बात जो कहे जाने में ही है! कहने की इस मुश्किल को समझते हुए कुछ […]

ये शब्‍द, बलात्‍कार, मेरी जिंदगी में पहली बार कब आया? मैंने कब जाना कि ठीक-ठीक इसके  मायने क्‍या हैं? ठीक-ठीक याद नहीं. तब मैं शायद कुछ बारह साल की रही होऊंगी. शहर में एक गैंग रेप की घटना हुई थी. अखबार में पहले पन्‍ने पर बड़ी-सी खबर थी. उस दिन मां ने मुझे मेरे उठने-बैठने-चलने […]

Even from the third floor we could only see the walls around the hostel and the twisted barbed wires like cacti upon them.  To see the road and the vehicles, the trees lining that strip of asphalt, the shops and the shopkeepers, we had to be on the terrace – and the terrace was off […]

Dubai’s memory is the memory of other places.  Hardly anyone is from the city (and those who are hardly meet those of us who aren’t), one simply lives in it, and because of the passports and visas that say who we are and keep us tied to mother countries we only saw during summer vacations […]

Translator: Ujjwal Gupta The wise and gifted of Persia used to say that if Allah had written the Koran in Persian rather than  Arabic, He would have passed off Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi’s Masnavi as the Koran. I doubt if any other country has heaped such fantastic praise upon a poet. Maulana Rumi was a devotee. […]

On Facebook, we are all freedom fighters. * Rare is a woman who likes wearing bras. At university, where professors behaved like the patrol police in making sure that we got the various discourses on “Home”, sociological theories having turned Post-colonial literature into a version of Home Science, I revolted in my own private way […]