Annie Zaidi's Blog, page 23

Some body poems

I've written a few poems around the theme of the body over the years. Some of them have been published by Antiserious, a literary journal devoted to things that are actually quite serious, but through a not very serious approach.

Here is one, and the rest can be read in the link below:
Dream: Blackbird

Your hair is big like a preying bird’snest. You do not bother to smileas I sit there like a

On consent and colleagues

I wrote this about sexual consent in the context of colleagues, with a few helpful tips for people (men in particular) who are attracted to someone at the work place and want to act on their desire. 





"Let me also say that I'm well-acquainted with the messy mish-mash of fear and hope that is the human heart. I know people often seek to meet a crush using work as an excuse. "Bahaane-baazi",

Mayawati's Purse

मायावती के जुड़ी एक बात है जो मुझे थोड़ा परेशान करती है, उनके पुतले के हाथ में टंगा वो लेडीज पर्स.

जहां इतने नेताओं के पुतले बनते हैं तो उनके हाथ में फूल माला होती है या किताब. कभी हाथ उठा भी रहता है मानो देश की जनता को संबोधित कर रहे हों. तो क्या मायावती के पुतले के हाथ में कुछ और नहीं हो सकता था? कोई ऐसी चीज जो संवैधानिक हक या आजादी का प्रतीक हो?



आगे पढ़ने के लिए फर्स्टपोस्ट हिंदी की 

Gulab, now in Tamil

Gulab, a novella I wrote that was published two years ago by Harper Collins India, has been lucky enough to find a Tamil publisher in Anangu, an imprint of a journal devoted to feminist themes and literature.

I am very pleased, of course. Cannot find a link where people can buy online yet but will update as soon as I can. In the meantime, here's the cover:

एक छोटा सा लेख, औरत और जिस्म के बालों के सन्दर्भ में

हिंदी में अब ज़रा और आत्म-विश्वास के साथ लिखने लगी हूँ।  कविता या नाटक लिखने में कभी कोई ख़ास हिचक नहीं हुई मगर, हाँ, गद्द्य लिखते हिचकिचाती थी।  अब नहीं।  उम्मीद है, कॉलम अब नियमित रूप से लिखती रहूँगी।

ये रहा एक छोटा सा लेख, औरत और जिस्म के बालों के सन्दर्भ में:

वैक्सिंग से केवल लड़कियों की देह के बाल ही नहीं टूटते

http://hindi.firstpost.com/culture/

Of the pavement

I've started a new column for The Hindu focused on the road. Here's the first:




There’s a phrase in Hindustani, ‘paidal-haal’. A pedestrian state of being. It is a metaphor, but it doesn’t suggest ordinary or unimaginative as it does in English usage. ‘Paidal-haal’ implies vulnerability and difficulty, a reduced state. Who, after all, chooses to go on foot if he can afford a set of wheels?

From the mud pits

Wrestling is a sport I've gotten interested in and have been following for over a year now. I wrote two longer essays around wrestlers, especially in north India. The first was about how the sport has evolved and is riding a new wave public attention, and the second was about girls and sport, with some interviews with female wrestling champions.


The reason I'm so interesting in wrestling in

Some poems

Five
conversations I can no longer bear to have in person




(i)




Remember
what a bugle meant?

Flag
pennant colours




remember?




We
grew up watching the same films,

you
know what I’m talking about: a battlefield




shields
snug against shields, swords tingling

with
unshed blood and bones stiff with knowing

they
could lie bleaching under a foreign sun

and
if there was any loving

Wheels on my mind

Last year (summer of 2016), I had the good fortune of travelling abroad the Deccan Odyssey, a train that travels around Maharashtra to sites of artistic and historic significance such as Ajanta and Ellora, and also to two wildlife reserves, Tadoba and Pench. An essay about the experience was written for Conde Nast India. A brief extract here:


How many years did it take to just prepare the mud

Announcing the inaugural Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation

Today is my grandpa's death anniversary. This year also marks his birth centenary.



Ali Jawad Zaidi was born on March 10, 1916. He was many things, many good and wise things, but I see him as a thoroughly modern man. He was sensitive, erudite, hard-working and always trying to move the world in tiny degrees through his scholarship, his gentility, his innate goodness. He was a man open to