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Bread,Cement,Cactus (ब्रेड सिमेंट कॅक्टस)
घर म्हणजे नक्की काय? आणि त्याला जोडली गेलेली आपलेपणाची भावना म्हणजे काय? एखाद्या परिसरात अल्पसंख्याक म्हणून वावरताना या संकल्पनेपुढे भलतेच प्रश्न उभे राहतात. काय आपलं आणि काय परकं याचीच संदिग्धता लागून राहते. त्यातून स्वतःची ओळख निर्माण करण्याचा संघर्ष आणखी गुंतागुंतीचा होतो. अ‍ॅनी झैदी अशाच एका प्रश्नातली गुंतागुंत मांडत स्वतःचं आयुष्य मांडतात. आपल्या वडिलोपार्जित गावापासून, गुन्हेगारीसाठी कुप्रसिद्ध असलेल्या प्रदेशात, त्या आता राहत असलेल्या मेगा-सिटीपर्यंतचा हा प्रवास आहे. झैदी अल्पसंख्याक म्हणून आपलेपणाच्या भावनिक निकडीबद्दल आणि इतर समुदायांकडून मिळणाऱ्या तुसड्या वागणुकीबद्दल मांडणी करत स्थलांतरितांच्या जगण्याबद्दलचा एक सूक्ष्म दृष्टीकोन प्रदान करतात.
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Unbound- 2000 Years Of Indian Women's Writing
Profound, exhilarating, haunting, angry and meditative, Unbound is a collection that will shatter stereotypes about women's writing in India. Unbound is a collection of some of the most significant writing by Indian women over the past two thousand years. Divided into eleven sections, it encompasses writing on various aspects of life-spirituality, love, marriage, children, food, work, social and individual identity, battles, myths and fables, travel and death. While many of the pieces are commentaries on the struggle that women undergo to overcome obstacles - social and political - all of them showcase the remarkable creative ability of their creators. The term women's writing has often been used to limit and stereotype the work of women writers. But it also has a larger and more constructive meaning and that is the sense in which it has been used to inform and describe the context of the book. As Annie Zaidi explains in her introduction - women bring to their writing the truth of their bodies and an enquiry into the different ways in which gender inequity shapes human experience. Selected from hundreds of novels, memoirs, essays, short story collections and volumes of poetry that were either written in English or that have been translated into English, the pieces in this collection include the most distinctive and powerful voices from every era. There are verses from the Therigatha, written by Buddhist nuns (Circa 300 BCE) and writing by poet-saints like Andal, Avvaiyar, Lal Ded, Mirabai, modern classics by writers like Ajeet Cour, Amrita Pritam, Arundhati Roy, Attia Hosian, Bama, Bulbul Sharma, Irawati Karve, Ismat Chughtai, Kamala Das, Krishna Sobti, Mahasweta Devi, Manju Kapur, Mannu Bhandari, Mrinal Pande, Nayantara Sahgal, Pinki Virani, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan, Romila Thapar, Sarojini Naidu, Saudamini Devi, Shivani and powerful new voices from our time like Arundhathi Subramaniam, Nilanjana Roy, Nivedita Menon.
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Gulab
It is a warm summer day, and Nikunj is at the Muslim cemetery attending the burial of Saira. Saira is his true and long-lost love whom he had been looking for since the time of the earthquake. He had been on the look-out for her even though he has been married for a long time, and was not sure what he was going to do about it when he found her. Summary of the Book Nikunj is attending the burial of the love of his life, Saira. However he does not understand what Usman and Parmod are doing at her funeral. He did not know who Mumtaz and Gulab were though they seemed to have taken claim over Saira’s resting place. The book is an offbeat love story as it is between a living man and a dead person. It cannot be possible that they could ever have any kind of future together. We all know that ghosts cannot have children. However, this is questioned in this book. If ghost can walk through walls and reclaim bodies for themselves, then they can also cover that body with scars and marks. The possibilities in the afterlife are infinite. About Annie Zaidi Annie Zaidi is a writer from India. She has had her collection of essays short-listed for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2010. The collection is called Known Turf: Bantering With Bandits and Other True Tales. She has also had many of her essays, poems and short stories appear in many anthologies.
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Love Stories # 1 to 14
urious villagers stopped to stare at this shameless man and woman whose fingers were wound in each others hair, and whose lips were stretched with impossible smiles, and faces were glowing like warm red wax in the late afternoon. But after a minute or two, they too walked away, because looking at the two any longer became unbearable. A woman who wont let the shadow of death disrupt her love life, another who falls irrevocably in love with a dead police officer, a devoted wife who steps out twice a week for Narcotics Anonymous meetings, friends who should have been lovers, the woman who offers all her pent-up love to a railway announcers voice ... Annie Zaidis stories are at once warm and distant, violent and gentle and, above all, untroubled by cynicism. This is a look at love, straight in the eye, to understand the alluring nature of the beast.