Annie Zaidi's Blog, page 26

A film about Indian women and books

I made a documentary film last year. It took a year and a half. It's out, DVDs available through the producer, PSBT. Here's the promo:






Here's a piece about it in The Hindu:

“This film is not about identity or self-definition as ‘writers,’” Zaidi says. “It is trying to look at women’s rights, concerns and freedoms, as reflected in literature. Identity is a very fluid and contextual

A birthday card that gave me the creeps

Here's something I wrote about my great discomfort with the state having absolute access to my data with zero accountability or guarantees about how it would be used and by whom:

The year before, nobody called on my birthday. This year was better. Friends remembered. I even got a birthday card. But it turned out to be from neither friends nor family. It was from Mr Representative. Mr

Remembrance

I wrote this short comic about how to deal with the loss of friends made in a virtual age, when social media delivers so much of our friendship and our news to us:





http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news...

Wrote a review of the novel 'Kalkatta' for Mint recently....

Wrote a review of the novel 'Kalkatta' for Mint recently. Here's a bit that lays out some of my impressions:

Each character represents some aspect of Kolkata and the lives of its citizens—rich, middle class and poor—and while so many different shades may have added up to a broadly representative portrait of the city, they do not add up to a richly layered story. The touch-and-go treatment most

A brush with Radio with Pictures

One of the more interesting things I did in 2015 was adapting a graphic short story for Radio with Pictures. They do a combination of animated artwork, sound design and radio - which is basically good, old-fashioned oral storytelling with some sound effects. I had Mandy Ord as a collaborator and it has been a lovely, lovely process, as well as the start of a new friendship. 


It all began, of

नये साल की पहली सुबह

नये साल की पहली सुबह में एक चौराहे के टिकोण पे बैठे हैं चार आदमी और पाँचवा खड़ा है, हाथों में अख़बार यूँ लिए जैसे वक़्त की चादर ओढ़ने जा रहा हो।

नये साल में एक टैक्सी-वाला इनकार करता है और दूसरा तैय्यार हो जाता है, मगर स्टेशन के क़रीब जाम देख के उतार देता है मंज़िल से ज़रा दूर।

नये साल में एक बूढ़ी औरत दामन फैलाए स्टेशन की सीढ़ियों पर बैठी मिलती है, नज़रंदाज़ क़दमों की महफ़िल के बीच भी, बाहर भी।

नये साल

Show motor vehicles their place

The Delhi state government led by Arvind Kejriwal has come up with a plan to reduce traffic congestion and ease the air pollution - it will permit only even or odd numbered license plates on cars on alternate days of the week. I was not sure if they had a plan viz the actual enforcement of such a rule, so I wrote this: 

If the cops cannot - or will not - stop a clearly visible car in a cycle

Pakad, pakdaai, padakwa

A piece in which I'm chewing on the idea of 'jungle raj' or the law of the jungle, how and when it applies depends on what kind of animal you are, I suppose.



Here's an extract that mentions the other kind of kidnapping that used to happen in Bihar:




In Bihar, there was another twist on the kidnapping theme - a tradition called "pakadwa vivaah" whereby men were kidnapped and forced into a

Space

Take this man, crushed cane in the city's slick machinery:





Read the whole comic here: http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news...

Please go, if you can

Extract from a recent letter to Uddhav Thackeray:



A group of Indians had been invited to participate in a
social media summit. Reporters covering the event often asked: “So, how does it
feel to be here?”




Uddhav ji, I had to tell the truth. Karachi looked quite like
Bombay/Mumbai, except that most of the signs, hoardings and graffiti on walls were
in the Urdu script. The air, the smells,