Traitor translated by Rakhshanda Jalil

traitor

Originally written in Urdu as Ghaddaar by Krishan Chander The air in August 1947 was laced with poison. The overcast monsoon skies spelt doom. The wind though laden with moisture caked the skin and parched throats dry. Little did the people of an undivided India know that a cataclysmic event would rip their lives apart […]

Indian Literature Post Independence: A throwback

A shift from Indian to Western, more magazines, and the inclusion of a semi-modern reality – Indian literature post independence bloomed from a black and white canvas into a multi-coloured billboard of different genres and styles, both entertaining and enabling. In a previous post, we spoke to some of our grandparents and the stories they […]

I’m So Hacked by Gautam Mayekar

In I’m So Hacked, a regular worker in a software company by day, @v! moonlights as a hacker. He takes sadistic pleasure in “hacking” people; not just their computer, but their very being. Every twitch, every minute facial expression is a clue and @v! prides himself on being able to hack people with ease. Despite […]

A Requiem in Raga Janki by Neelam Saran Gour

The first thing that intrigued me about the book was its title; I thought that Janki is the name of an actual “raga” and started searching for it. It was only then that Google informed me there is no Raga Janki in the music tradition. Rather, this book is based on the life of Janki […]

Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi’s Small Days and Nights is the latest addition to her much-admired oeuvre of poetry, dance and fiction. In this book, she spins the tale of two sisters. Grace is a woman in her mid-30s who leaves behind a husband, a house and a life in America to return to her roots and redeem […]

Poetry & more: Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal

Circus Folk & Village Freaks, poet and now author Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal’s debut work of fiction, is an interestingly told, engaging and outright fun set of stories that talk about the ‘others’ in our society. The Pune-based poet, of both the written and the spoken word formats, spoke to Purple Pencil Project about the journey […]

Creating a New Category: Audiobooks In India

The last year has seen momentous growth in the literary sector – there was a new Literary Prize, record adaptations with companies like The Story Ink entering the foray. However, the highlight of the year was the boost that the audiobooks in India saw. Audiobooks are not exactly podcasts, although the widespread acceptance of the […]

Yashodhara by Volga

I first learnt of Yashodhara when I was in standard seventh. We were studying a play in the Hindi class, titled “Siddhartha ka Grih Tyaag” (Siddharth Leaving his House). It was there that Buddha’s wife got a name and became more than the wife he had left. She became an individual, with her own identity. […]

Circus Folk and Village Freaks

The Story Somewhere in India lies a few mythical villages that strive to be as “normal” as possible. Weirdos and freaks (of course, the Circus Folk & Village Freaks) are ostracized, shunned by friends and foes alike, and made to fit in or rid the village of their presence. Many of these freaks find their […]

The parallel worlds of animals and humans in The Silence of the Hyena

The Silence of the Hyena

Book: The Silence of the Hyena Stories and a novella Author: Syed Muhammad Ashraf Translated from the Urdu by: M. Asaduddin and Musharraf Ali Farooqi The Silence of the Hyena, originally written in Urdu, consists of eight short stories and a novella. Two translators have brought these stories to English, and is a simple read that […]