Author Chaitali Sen in conversation with Fiction Editor Hananah Zaheer. COMMUNITY Nation-State Constraints on Identity & Intimacy Author Chaitali Sen in conversation with Fiction Editor Hananah Zaheer. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Literary Solidarity 17th Dec 2020 Interview Literary Solidarity Bengali Internationalist Solidarity Black Solidarities Satyajit Ray Statelessness Colonialism Language South Asian Women's Creative Collective South Asians Against Police Brutality Abner Louima Anthony Baez Literature & Liberation Diaspora Identity Community Building Post-George Floyd Moment Immigration Race & Genre Short Stories Fiction Avant-Garde Form Avant-Garde Traditions Emancipatory Politics Experimental Methods Rabindranath Tagore Mrinal Sen Separatism Tamil Separatists Punjabi Separatists Rajiv Gandhi Separatist Movements in India Indian Diaspora Syria Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. I fight for a world without borders, but they're borders wrenched in reaction to colonialism, and fortified against the spread of English. It's interesting how capitalism homogenizes while making people want to put up walls. RECOMMENDED: A New Race of Men from Heaven: Stories (Sarabande, 2023) by Chaitali Sen More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

In New Caledonia, a collectivity of the French Republic, a mainland political ploy to subvert the indigenous Kanak people’s right to self-determination faced waves of protest in the summer of 2024. With liberal international institutions failing to enforce meaningful solutions, the Melanesian island’s struggle for liberation parallels global indigenous movements for sovereignty and exposes the settler-colonial logic of displacement and democratic dilution. · FEATURES Essay · New Caledonia In New Caledonia, a collectivity of the French Republic, a mainland political ploy to subvert the indigenous Kanak people’s right to self-determination faced waves of protest in the summer of 2024. With liberal international institutions failing to enforce meaningful solutions, the Melanesian island’s struggle for liberation parallels global indigenous movements for sovereignty and exposes the settler-colonial logic of displacement and democratic dilution. Mahnoor Azeem Untitled (2025) Digital Illustration Dissipated Self-Determination In 1853, the French established the Saint-Denis Church of Balade, the first Catholic church in the small archipelago of Kanaky, known more widely today by its colonial name, New Caledonia . Ten years later, France seized control of the land and began to subtly but substantially desecrate the identity of the indigenous Melanesian Kanak people for imperial gain. On September 10, 2024, more than 160 years later, the Church became the fifth Catholic mission to be burned in response to the ongoing political violence and electoral erasure waged against the Kanak people by the French government. “Some elements of the Catholic Church are regarded by some younger Kanak militants as being symbolic of French state repression,” said David Robie, a New Zealand author and founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network, in an interview with SAAG . He noted, however, that Protestant Christian denominations in the Pacific have been found to support Kanak freedom. This repression was never more evident in New Caledonia—so marked in its démodé political approach—than in May 2024, when the French government weakened the pro-Kanaky voter base beyond any point of electoral voice. A proposed constitutional amendment, approved by the French National Assembly that month, sought to alter voting rights in a way many indigenous Kanak people feared would further diminish their political representation. In response, mass demonstrations erupted in frustration and protest. The unrest resulted in a revised death toll of 14, alongside hundreds of injuries. Numerous businesses and vehicles were destroyed, with the looting and damage on May 16 alone amounting to at least 200 million euros . In response to the escalating violence, France declared a state of emergency in New Caledonia, laying the ground for a brutal deployment of additional police and military forces to restore order. Many movement leaders, including the notable Christian Tien, were extradited to France under charges of “ organized crime .” Ultimately, the French government postponed the provincial elections scheduled for December 2024 to December 2025, aiming to address the underlying issues and restore stability. But this was a clear act of democratic erasure, aimed at further denigrating the humanity of the island’s Kanak people. “Sadly, three decades of goodwill and apparent goodwill from Paris and all sides have dissipated unjustly,” Robie added, “flaunting the United Nations Decolonization Committee provisions.” This ideological reversion to the fundamentals of neoliberal democracy has enraged the indigenous Kanak people of New Caledonia. It also raises questions about whether France ever intended to grant them sovereignty. It has further highlighted the historical deception that undergirds the self-sustenance of settler-colonies in the modern world, perpetuating disappearance under the guise of citizenship and electoral democracy. Kanaky Remains A French Colony After nearly a century of French colonization, Kanak populations were granted citizenship and the right to vote after 1946. This granting is a turning point in every colonial enterprise’s teleology to clinch onto their sovereignty. Following a feigned investment in the population of the exploitee, a colonizer must decide what tools of population disappearance will be most palatable to the populations’ particular land and labor context. New Caledonia was essentially an autonomously governed territory for a generation after World War II—until another war spotlighted the strategic value of the archipelago’s nickel resources. The Vietnam War, an imperialist venture in its own right, brought the small island back into focus, and Charles De Gaulle decided the nickel profits were too lucrative an exploit to pass up. The Union Calédonienne lost its majority voter base in the years surrounding the Vietnam War, as an influx of mainland French citizens arrived to disenfranchise the Kanak by shifting the weight of the body politic towards mainland sympathy. In the company of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Western Sahara, Gibraltar, and other de jure-occupied “territories” throughout Oceania, New Caledonia remains one of the last standing administrative colonies in the world. It also shares with states like Algeria a history of exploitation characteristic of French colonial enterprises. The French overseas department-turned-collectivity is now at a political standstill, partially because the indigenous people people placed faith in France’s supposed goodwill efforts in the 1990s to pave the way for Kanak self-determination. The culmination of those efforts—the Nouméa Accord of 1998 —then enshrined into the French constitution a purportedly pragmatic approach to Kanak self-determination and the eventual establishment of New Caledonia as Kanaky. The accord stipulated that after 20 years, the people of New Caledonia would have three opportunities to vote for independence via referendum. David Chappell, a scholar on the modern revolutionary history of the Kanak people and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, told SAAG that while the Nouméa accord may be viewed as a successful negotiation following a period of intense Kanak rebellion, it was likely only ever an attempt to “delay decolonization.” In 2018 and 2020, the Kanak population, currently comprising around 40% of New Caledonia, fell just short of their goal. Between the first and the second referendums, their base grew by enough percentage points that movement leaders were optimistic about their imminent third chance at independence. “It was supposed to be held in 2022, but Macron moved it up [to 2021] at the last minute,” Chappell told SAAG . In response to concerns regarding a COVID-19 outbreak that had struck the island, particularly the Kanak community leading up to the vote, and given the mourning procedures of the Kanak people that often lasted up to a year, movement leaders demanded the referendum be postponed. None of these demands were taken seriously. An active Kanak boycott of the vote in tandem with many abstentions based on COVID-19 cautiousness thus manifested in low voter turnout. The election results, where only 43% of all voting-eligible New Caledonians participated and voted overwhelmingly in favor of staying with France, were immediately—and naturally—called into question. “The last [two and a half] decades had allowed pacification and progress on the path to decolonization,” French New Caledonian organizer Francis Sitel wrote to SAAG . “This is what was spoiled by the government's power grabs.” Beyond rejecting calls for a revote on the grounds of unfair voting circumstances, in May 2024, the French government decided the moment was opportune for a constitutional amendment granting voting rights to New Caledonians who arrived in the past two decades—in other words, those with weakest historical claim to the land. This decision, coming on the heels of the boycotted referendum that had already left the Kanak people scorned by France, has triggered a dramatic responsee—protests that have escalated to the brink of insurrection. This sequence of events has been entirely predictable and preventable,” Robie detailed. “However, the French state (under Macron) is completely tone-deaf and dogmatic in its responses to the indigenous Kanaks’ aspirations for independence.” New Leader, Same Strategy Today, New Caledonia remains one of the world’s top five nickel producers . The industry is crucial to the Kanak people’s future self-governance and sustenance, but it is clear that France is unwilling to relinquish control easily. According to Robie, Macron’s “rescue” initiative for the nickel industry was staunchly contested by the Kanak people, as it “favor[ed] the incumbent industry players and [did little] to spread the economy to support Kanaks.” However, South Africa has shown interest in reviving the nickel industry—what Robie called a “glimmer of hope—while France has seemingly taken the cue to venture for capital elsewhere. “France is interested in the 200-mile maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ),” Robie explained. An EEZ grants a country exclusive rights to exploit natural resources within 200 miles of its shores. Due to the former empire’s vast ownership of islands territories globally, France possesses the world’s second-largest EEZ. The same colonial strategy of buying time endures. Former Prime Minister Michel Barnier behaved in the same fashion: on 1 October , he announced that elections in New Caledonia would be postponed for a year while also halting the progression of Macron’s controversial constitutional amendment, which sought to grant voting rights to newly resident French nationals in New Caledonia. Superficial gestures of good faith towards self-determination continue to be paired with the deliberate stalling of liberatory legal processes, inevitably leading to repression and violence. “France seems to be hellbent on a militarist and repressive response to the unrest in New Caledonia,” Robbie added, “instead of a negotiated, peaceful attempt to build a consensus.” He denounced the French government’s cruelty in deporting and jailing pro-independence leaders accused of incitement, forcing them to await trial in metropolitan France—over 10,000 miles away from the support of their families and communities. “It is reminiscent of some of the worst excesses of French 19th-century colonialism,” Robbie noted, “and has severely damaged French credibility in the South Pacific region at a time when it is pursuing an Indo-Pacific security strategy.” Are there any liberatory legal procedures in a settler colony that can legislate independence amicably, in something like an electoral handshake? Colonial Anachronism Robie called the state-sponsored violence a “colonial anachronism” of this day and age. Yet this reality persists across countless other regions of the world, where dispossessed peoples must overcome endless obstacles to prove their voices deserve legitimacy in the democratic process—even as they are actively erased from claiming authority over their indigenous identity. Perhaps most relevantly, Zionism stands as a prime example of a revisionist historical enterprise that simultaneously operates as a democratic ethnostate—one that, through violence and displacement, diminishes an indigenous population to render it democratically negligible. For there to be a Jewish democracy in the land of historic Palestine, the Palestinians there must cease to exist. The initial mechanisms of this disappearance were manifest in the atrocities of the Nakba. But later, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a heavier emphasis was placed on the suppression of Palestinian political and social organizing. For example, Al-Ard , the first Palestinian party to attempt participation in the Israeli parliament (Knesset), was outlawed within years on fabricated and unfounded grounds. There could never be a fair playing field if democratically warranted self-determination is what one was after. It is even harder to accuse a state of engaging in the logic of elimination endemic to settler colonialism when it simply appears as though there are not enough indigenous people on this island in the Pacific—seldom making international headlines—for it to be a worthwhile pursuit. But proximity to the metropole should not be the criterion for concern over an indigenous group’s right to self-determination, or the pressure placed on the neocolonial state to secure that right—especially when it was, in effect, promised mere decades ago. As Dr. Chappell posed in conversation, “What if almost half the population of the United States, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand were indigenous? What kind of politics might result?” The logic of democracy—”one person, one vote”—negates the inviolable right of the colonized indigenous Kanak people to self-determination. Robie elaborates, “It merely ensures that the 'tyranny of the majority'—mostly imported French settlers—imposes its will over the Indigenous Kanak minority. French colonial policy has deliberately encouraged settlers from the metropole to migrate to New Caledonia to ensure the electoral disenfranchisement of the Kanaks.” Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, when it comes time to imagine solutions, few arise that are not at the behest of international institutions that have, in the context of the Kanaks, the Palestinians, and indigenous people around the world, fallen short in their ability to enforce international law or solidify paths towards self-determination. In Chappell’s words, “The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People gave them more ideas, but it allows only autonomy over resources and cultural rights for indigenous minorities—not independence from the territorial state.” Robie anticipated progress from a more localized approach of institutional action within the Pacific Island region. “The Pacific Islands Forum, Melanesian Spearhead Group, and the United Nations need to step up diplomatic and political pressure on France to change its course of action,” he said. "It is imperative," he argued, "for Paris to step back from its militarist approach and make a commitment to seeking a pathway for the Kanak self-determination aspirations.” The question remains: how much longer can France suppress Kanak self-determination before the façade of democracy collapses entirely?∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Essay New Caledonia French Republic Indigenous Kanak Indigenous self-governance Protest Liberation Sovereignty Colonialism Displacement Kanaky Melanesia Imperialism Political Violence Violence Identity Catholicism Church Electoral Politics Erasure French State Erasure State Sanctioned Violence Repression Militarism Militant David Robie Freedom Civilian Unrest Mass Protests Organized Crime Movements Neoliberalism Disappearance Administrative Colony Exploitation Oceania Self-determination David Chappell Revolutionary Revolution 17th Century Decolonization Independence Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 26th Mar 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Some strands of feminist organising in Pakistan are rethinking strategy, moving away from symbolic demonstrations that reinforce echo chambers, and towards quieter, more embedded forms of collective work. Women Democratic Front’s Behnon ki Baithak on 8 March 2025 was one such experiment, exploring how to hold space and cultivate political power through intimate modes of gathering, conversation, and reflection. THE VERTICAL After the March Some strands of feminist organising in Pakistan are rethinking strategy, moving away from symbolic demonstrations that reinforce echo chambers, and towards quieter, more embedded forms of collective work. Women Democratic Front’s Behnon ki Baithak on 8 March 2025 was one such experiment, exploring how to hold space and cultivate political power through intimate modes of gathering, conversation, and reflection. VOL. 2 OPINION AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Anita Zehra Fisted Rose (2025) Digital illustration ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Anita Zehra Fisted Rose (2025) Digital illustration SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Opinion Islamabad 19th Apr 2025 Opinion Islamabad Feminism Feminist Feminist Organizing Demonstration D-Chowk Pakistan Collective Women's Democratic Front Aurat Azadi March Jamia Hafsa No Objection Certificate Human Rights Violence Peaceful Resistance March Protest International Working Women's Day Visibility Repression Revolution Civil Society NGOs Leftist Movement Strategy Jalsas Assemblies Khwaja Siras Intersex Gender Studies Gender Equality LGBTQIA Transgender Community mera jism meri marzi my body my right Patriarchal Society Paternalism Care Work Domestic labour Economic Security Mobility Sustainability behnon ki baithak Poetry Storytelling Solidarity Endure Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. On March 8, 2020, I left D-Chowk feeling exhausted. After enduring stone pelting in broad daylight and the absolute chaos that followed, nothing felt like a victory. I did not even feel relief, just exhaustion. We later found out that the march had been infiltrated by random men—some nefarious, others your garden-variety voyeurs—and that many marchers were harassed. People did not leave the space feeling jubilant. Neither did I. It did not feel like the show was worth it. A year later, on the morning of March 8, 2021, we held our breaths as we watched a video of the Jamia Hafsa women preparing to march against us "shameless” women. "We will go wherever they go," they said, whether to the Press Club or D-Chowk. "This matter is beyond our tolerance." They spoke of their negotiations with the police, who had assured them that anyone attempting to leave would be arrested. They said they were not afraid of arrests. If Aurat Azadi March was to be allowed to proceed in Islamabad, no one could stop the Jamia Hafsa from taking to the streets and following us. "I urge my sons and brothers to join us, as they have before. These dishonourable, parentless, so-called free women must be eradicated." Ah, wonderful—now there would be men joining in to attack us too. Another year, another swarm of angry men? Thanks, ladies, but we will pass. In any case, we started preparing for the likelihood of violence, rummaging through a comrade’s house for Swiss knives, scissors…anything, really. One comrade came to the march armed with homemade pepper spray for everyone. Another attempted to teach us self-defence “kung fu” at double speed early in the morning, as if we were in a training montage. One (possibly me) suggested an alternative: a well-aimed handful of chaat masala straight to the eyes. We had not gotten a No Objection Certificate (NOC), despite having applied for one many weeks in advance. One parliamentarian had already backed out, saying she had no interest in showing up just to get smacked around by right-wing goons. Still, my phone would not stop buzzing. People kept calling, and I told them, with the utmost sincerity, to stay put until we made it to D-Chowk, hopefully in one piece. Especially if they were thinking of bringing kids along. My brother, of course, ignored all warnings and showed up anyway. Our self-defence team was primed for a confrontation, more prepared than ever. The police were there too, in full force, as if we were an invading army rather than a peaceful march. Eventually, against all odds, we made it to D-Chowk. The relief hit us so hard that we did the only logical thing: we broke into dance. Somewhere on the interwebs, there is still a video of us at D-Chowk, swaying to Dane Pe Dana like nothing else mattered. I watched it again just now and burst into tears. Because that singular, fleeting act of joy ended up costing some of us so much, we had to rethink our politics from the ground up. Marching on March 8th should be as routine as a cup of chai after a long day. International Working Women’s Day is marked worldwide with marches, so why have Pakistan’s Women’s Day marches been turned into battlegrounds ? How far behind are we as a society that the one day we step onto the streets, the one day we make ourselves visible, comes with a price tag of backlash and repression? Why can we not just march and call it a day? Instead, we strategise round the clock for our own safety, draft applications for NOCs, and negotiate with the state, particularly law enforcement agencies, just to set foot on the streets. Meanwhile, the Haya March exists for the mere purpose of opposing us, with no agenda beyond its reactionary rage, like an annoying younger sibling who only pipes up when you are about to do something interesting. At the same time, women within Islamabad’s left were deliberately targeted, some ensnared in legal battles that stretched on until October. Through it all, our male comrades offered unwavering support, standing by us when we could no longer stand on our own. Why do we glorify suffering in our movements as if it is a rite of passage? What good is injury when it leaves us too hampered to continue organising? When it stops us in our tracks? And after the march, who will take up the unrelenting, year-round work of organising to slowly build the collective strength of people, once the handful who are still committed to this work—whether through being silenced, forced to leave, or worn down—are no longer able to carry on? But all of that is water under the bridge. Revolution demands destruction sometimes: that we let go of what we once held dear. There is a time and place for confrontation. It has its own role, its own value. When the founding members of Women Democratic Front (WDF) held the first Aurat Azadi March in Islamabad on March 8, 2018 , it did not emerge out of nowhere. It was a conscious, years-long effort to move beyond the small, NGO-driven gatherings of “civil society.” My comrades wanted a visibly leftist demonstration shaped by the energy and people of the cities we were organising in, something that did not just make space but took it. There is plenty we oppose, and plenty of people who oppose us. But what do we stand for ? What do we want to build? The years 2020 and 2021 forced us to confront these questions head-on. Sacrifices were made. Fights broke out. Splintering happened. We criticised ourselves, and each other, in closed settings to the point of self-flagellation. Fingers were pointed; friendships were irreparably lost. It is gut-wrenching that all of us, individually and collectively, had to give something up. But if the world is already bursting at the seams, then breaking through is always going to be messy. One thing remains undeniable: we are responsible for and to one another. And if our politics is not rooted in care and love for one another, then what exactly are we building? We do not talk about strategy nearly enough, not just within the feminist movement, but across the left as a whole. When we organised two jalsas (assemblies) in 2022 and 2023 , the reflection of several years was at the forefront: women and khwaja siras are being murdered in this country with horrifying regularity. We cannot afford to pretend that how we organise does not have direct consequences for them. If I shout something from the stage, if I hold up a placard declaring what I believe, it will have a ripple effect, because we have become too visible to escape the backlash. We have already seen the consequences. Women in informal settlements, where some of us have spent years organising, are stopped from joining us. We know this has happened. Society reacts. Violence escalates. We have no choice but to prepare for it. There is no point in imagining feminist possibilities if we cannot imagine them with as many people in this country as possible. Mera jism, meri marzi (my body, my right), without question. I believe in this slogan with every fibre of my being and will defend it, loudly and unapologetically, for as long as I live. But there is still more convincing to do. And if we organise in ways that invite backlash so overwhelming that it peters out our voices, we risk losing ground. The movement we are building may serve us, but it can still fail countless other women. This is why building people-power is more urgent than ever. And we must do so in a way that honours our own time and energy, so that we can organise not just for a single day, but sustain the work year-round. We need solidarities that extend beyond those who already agree with us, because otherwise, we are only preaching to the choir. It is remarkable that women organise at all. There are not many of us, because life inevitably gets in the way. We are holding down jobs (I work two AND organise), running households, and managing domestic responsibilities. We are caught in the web of patriarchal restrictions, state paternalism, violence, care work, domestic labour, economic survival, and mobility constraints—you name it. We cannot outrun time, no matter how much we try. So we have to move at a pace we can sustain, as long as we remain politically committed. And we are done engaging on the state’s terms, done engaging on patriarchy’s terms. We need to be more opaque, not give too much away. This is where the act of rebuilding becomes all the more important. We cannot be afraid to start from scratch. We have to believe in our own staying power. For International Working Women’s Day 2025, WDF organised a “ behnon ki baithak ” after a year of stepping back and reflecting, instead of the march, in Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore. We were not expecting a huge turnout and did the best we could with the limited hands on deck, only for the crowds to surpass our expectations. People showed up (with men respectfully sitting at the back) because they felt they had a stake in the conversation. In Islamabad, women who did not know each other spoke in smaller groups and built new relationships beyond the ones their class restricts them to. In Karachi, whether they were new faces, WDF members, or the women of Malir, everybody spoke in a space they created lovingly for themselves. In Lahore, women sang feminist songs and read out poetry and stories to one another. It was not a march, not a mass gathering, not something that courted visibility. But it was a space we carved with intent, a nod toward what must endure. And we will go on building, piece by piece, until what is ours can no longer be undone. If you honour only one form of struggle, you are not honouring history, you are distorting it. You are flattening its depth, silencing its echoes, and erasing those who fought just as hard. The baithak was a reminder that feminist organising takes many forms, each with its own purpose and power. Marches have been crucial in asserting the presence of feminists across Pakistan, shifting public discourse, and making visible what the state and society seek to erase. But the work ahead requires strategy that extends beyond the moment: because political moments do pass and momentum has to, then, be built from scratch. Our conversations have to deepen, solidarities have to expand, and political commitments have to translate into continued, dogged, year-around action. The future of feminist organising in Pakistan lies in our ability to move between the visible and the unseen, the loud and the quiet, the streets and the everyday. What we build now must not only resist but endure.∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

"So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money." FICTION & POETRY The Cuckoo Keeps Calling "So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money." VOL. 1 SHORT STORY AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR "The Cuckoo Keeps Calling" by Hafsa Ashfaq. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 "The Cuckoo Keeps Calling" by Hafsa Ashfaq. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Short Story Translation 23rd Sep 2020 Short Story Translation Bengali Bangladesh Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya MODHU wakes up at dawn and says to his wife, “Say goodbye.” Modina clasps her husband’s hand and says, “Not today. Go tomorrow.” The cuckoo trills from the branches of the koroi tree. Modhu doesn’t know what it means when the cuckoo calls during a spring dawn. He lies back again. Now comfortable, he goes back to sleep. The next day at dawn, Modhu again asks his wife to bid him farewell. Again, his wife says, “Not today, tomorrow.” Modhu again lies down like a good boy. Sleeps comfortably. The cuckoo calls from the tree. Modhu doesn’t hear. He is sound asleep. The cuckoo grows increasingly desperate. Coo. Coo-oo. Coo-oo-oo. Modhu sleeps, he doesn’t hear. His wife Modina lies awake; she doesn’t hear either. But Mafiz hears the cuckoo trilling in this spring dawn. He is not unromantic. He breaks into song: Oh, why do you call to me so early in the morning, oh, little cuckoo of my life? Modina doesn’t hear Mafiz’s song. Mafiz exits his home and gazes at the three-way intersection, the road that people take to reach town. Mafiz doesn’t see anybody taking that road. He walks. He places his foot on the threshold of Modina’s yard and, in a muted voice, calls out, “Brother, Modhu, have you gone to Dhaka?” Modina shoos cows. “Hyat! Hyat, hyat!” “Hey, girl, why are you shooing me?” Modina picks up a wooden stool and throws it at Mafiz. Mafiz sniggers like a jackal and leaves. As he goes, he says to himself, “No matter how many times you cut me, or hit me…” Modhu wakes up hungry. Modina serves him rice and eats as well. Not freshly cooked, steaming rice. Old rice, with water added. As he eats, Modhu asks, “Isn’t there anymore panta-rice left?” Modina bites her tongue in shame. Which means that there is no more panta-rice left. No more, meaning that in Modina’s judgment, because she herself has eaten too much, the panta has been finished before her man’s hunger has abated. Hence, Modina’s shame, hence, her biting of the tongue. “Now I need to go to Dhaka.” Modhu needs to go to Dhaka for pertinent reasons. Modina asks, “Isn’t it hard to drive a rickshaw?” Modhu knows that this is Modina being tender. Modina knows that driving a rickshaw in Dhaka city is grueling. But working the fields was hellish torment, and the wages were poor—merely sixty takas a day. One day in the month of Joishthya, Modhu had almost died while weeding the jute fields belonging to the Mondals. There was no water in the fields, there were no clouds in the sky, Modhu’s back was burning to ashes from the sun, his throat was parched wood, he was desperately thirsty, he was running for water, the solitary plains had become the deserts of Karbala, in the distance, Bacchu Mondal’s new tin shed glinted in the sunlight, there was a new tube-well near the outer yard of the house, Modhu was running towards it, stumbling on the clods of earth in the hoed field, shouting “A drop of water for me, please!” But before he had reached the tube-well, Modhu had tumbled onto the ground, his eyes had rolled back into his head, he foamed at the mouth. Modhu almost died that day. No more, meaning that in Modina’s judgment, because she herself has eaten too much, the panta has been finished before her man’s hunger has abated. Hence, Modina’s shame, hence, her biting of the tongue. So Modhu traveled beyond Kalai, Mokamtala, Bogra, Sirajganj, across the Jamuna Bridge, to the city of Dhaka, two hundred miles away. There he pulls a rickshaw, earns a hundred takas a day, counts that money each night, again and again, can’t settle on one place where he can hide this money. This is how, day after day, for fifteen straight days, Modhu drives a rickshaw. In Kawran Bazar, twelve of these drivers live in a windowless room; with them live twelve thousand mosquitoes; the mosquitoes sing, suck the blood of all the Modhus, and the Modhus all sleep like the dead. At the crack of dawn, when the tired mosquitoes are each an immobile drop of blood, the Modhus wake up; nature calls them. They not only feel the thunderclouds rumbling in their bellies, they hear them as well. They go out in a group, pull the tabans covering their asses over their heads, and they show their naked dark asses in a row as they hunker down at the edge of the Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, or some of them in front of the Hotel Sonargaon gate. They wipe their asses with newspapers because there is no water; not only is there a lack of water to clean themselves, the Modhus don’t have water to bathe. For fifteen days straight, Modhu doesn’t wash himself; sometimes the odor of his own body makes him want to vomit, especially when the sun is strong and Dhaka’s skies and air cease to be. This is how it is, day after day, night after night. But what happiness, what success! When Modhu returns to Modina after fifteen straight days, there is at least fifteen hundred takas in his waist pouch. Which means that for at least a month, he neither thinks of Dhaka nor speaks of it. Modhu goes to Dhaka city. The watered rice is finished, there is no more rice left in the house, Modina sits emptyhanded by the derelict stove. A cuckoo trills in a tree; Modina doesn’t hear it, but Mafiz does. It has never happened that a cuckoo sings and Mafiz hasn’t heard it. When Modhu crosses the three-way intersection of the highway and goes towards the upazila town, Mafiz peeks from behind the house. He spots Modina sitting by the stove doing nothing and he begins to joke around. “Brother, Modhu, are you off to Dhaka?” Modina turns her head. Joyous, Mafiz says, “What’s up, Modina?” “What’s your deal?” Modina scolds Mafiz in a solemn manner. “You’re hankering for a beating?” “If you beat me with your own hands,” Mafiz says as he grins with all his teeth and comes forward fearlessly, “my life would be a treasure.” “Go home.” Modina is even more serious. “Do you want a job, Modina?” Mafiz coaxes her. Modina isn’t willing to listen to anything. She threatens Mafiz, “I’m telling you, go.” Mafiz tries to get angry and says, “I’m here to do you a favor without being asked, and you want to shoo me off like a cow?” Modina asks in a serious manner, “What favor?” Mafiz responds with mystery. “You’ll get money, wheat. Want a job?” “What job?” “Shooing goats,” Mafiz says and chuckles. Although he hadn’t intended to laugh. Modina is furious. “Go away, you bastard. You can’t find someone else to joke with?” Mafiz moves fast to try to control the damage and speaks in a very businesslike manner. “Not a joke, Modina, for real! No actual work involved, just shooing cows and goats.” “Explain clearly, what sort of job is this then?” Mafiz explains it clearly. “Haven’t you seen those trees planted on either side of the highway? Those trees need to be guarded so that cows and goats don’t chew them up. That’s the job. They’ll pay cash, they’ll also pay with wheat. You sell the wheat to buy rice. And with the money, you buy beef, tilapia…!” “Stop, stop.” Modina stops Mafiz and suspicion rolls across her eyes and face. She narrows her eyes, creases her forehead, and interrogates him. “Why would anyone give me this job when there are so many people around?” “Why, I’ll arrange it for you. I’ll grab the Chairman’s hands and feet and I’ll beg…” Mafiz pauses for no reason. He can’t find anything else to say. But his plan and his words are quite clear. Still, Modina wants to hear more about this job guarding trees and the means to getting it even more clearly. “Go on, why did you stop?” Mafiz laughs and says, “I will grab the Chairman’s hands and feet and beg: Uncle, give this job to Modina, you won’t find a girl as nice as Modina even if you look and look…” Modina howls with laughter. A cool breeze wafts across the ditch and disappears. From the branches of the koroi tree, a cuckoo calls. Mafiz glances towards the tree and looks at the cuckoo. Then he gazes at Modina’s face and says in a melancholy manner, “Do you know what the cuckoo is saying? Mafiz says, “The cuckoo is crying. It’s crying and asking, Where did my own little cuckoo bird go?” “What?” There is a smile on Modina’s face; she knows what Mafiz is about to say. Mafiz says, “The cuckoo is crying. It’s crying and asking, Where did my own little cuckoo bird go?” Modina laughs again. Her laughter enrages the cuckoo in the koroi tree. Mafiz speaks the cuckoo’s mind, “Why do you laugh like that Modina?” “What is it to you if I laugh?” Modina asks cocking her eyebrow like a flirt. “My ribs shatter to bits and my soul wants to fly away,” Mafiz says. Modina laughs, shimmying her whole body. Mafiz looks at the tree but the cuckoo is gone. It has been raining all day in Dhaka; as he pedals his rickshaw Modhu is pretty much taking a shower. After getting drenched all day, all the warmth had left his body. Modhu cannot fathom where his body is finding so much heat in the evening. He feels cold, his head hurts, and soon he begins to shiver. He rolls around on the floor in the dark room, and like a child, he moans, calling out to his mother. It isn’t raining in the village of Modhupur; the moon is visible in the sky and a cuckoo is singing in the branches of the koroi tree. Mafiz stands by Modina’s window, grasping the grill and whispering, “Modina! Oh, Modina!” Scared, Modina scrambles into a sitting position, and spits on her own chest to dissipate her fear, and Mafiz whistles in the air saying, “It’s me, Mafiz!” The power has gone out in Dhaka city. In the box-like room where Modhu rolls on the ground by himself, shivering and moaning, the darkness of hell has descended: Modhu thinks he is dying. In the village of Modhupur, through the gaps in the branches of the koroi tree, slivers of moonlight land on Modina’s window; outside stands Mafiz, like a ghost, and inside is Modina. Modina’s teeth can be seen white in the shadow of moonlight, her eyes are shining, and she is pretending to be angry with Mafiz, telling him she was going to complain to Modhu when he came back, and Modhu would grind Mafiz’s bones into powder and apply it to his body. Modina purses her lips in laughter as she talks, and Mafiz says that Modhu wasn’t coming back to Modhupur anymore, he was going to die in Dhaka. Mafiz tells Modina, “Our fortunes were written together. You have no choice but me, Modina.” Modina slides her arm through the window grill and shoves Mafiz in the chest. “Go home, you stray cow.” Mafiz grabs Modina’s hand in the blink of an eye and says, “You don’t know this, but I know it for sure, Modina. I have you written in my fate and you have me.” Modina feels that Mafiz has lost his head. As Mafiz goes back to his own house, he dreams that Modhu has died in Dhaka. “He’s dead, that bastard Modhu is dead,” says Mafiz, willing Modina’s husband to die as he walks home. Right then, in Kawran Bazar, Dhaka, Modhu is freezing and shivering, and he is calling out to Allah, saying, “Don’t take my life, Khoda. Let me live this time around. I’ll never come back to Dhaka in this lifetime.” The next morning Modhu recovers from his fever; he sees that there is no more rain, the sky is a shining blue, and the buildings are all smiling. Modhu forgets his promise to Allah, and that very afternoon he goes out again with his rickshaw. He recalls the bone-shaking fever from the night before and laughs to himself. That morning, Mafiz places his foot on the threshold of Modhu’s yard and calls out in a low voice, “Brother, Modhu, are you back from Dhaka?” But Mafiz knows very well that if Modhu is supposed to be back fifteen days later, there are still three more days to go. Two days before the day that Modhu is supposed to return to Modhupur, he drops off a passenger in the inner side of Gulshan-2 and goes to grab a cup of tea at a roadside stall. He takes two sips of his tea and turns around to find his rickshaw gone. At first, Modhu doesn’t believe it. He thinks maybe someone has hidden his rickshaw nearby as a prank. But no, it isn’t that simple. The rickshaw has disappeared, meaning seriously disappeared. Modhu goes to the rickshaw owner and describes the situation. The owner points towards Modhu and orders his people, “Tie up that fool.” Before the ones under order had begun the work, the owner himself landed a kick in Modhu’s belly. “You fucking nobody, where’s my rickshaw?” A grunt emerges from Modhu’s mouth, he doubles over and grabs his mouth with one hand. One of the owner’s followers runs over and, almost astride Modhu’s shoulders, he grabs Modhu’s hair, shaking his head and demands, “Say it, you son of a bitch, to which of your fathers did you sell off the boss’s rickshaw?” The boss screams, “First, do him over real good.” Modhu is made over almost into a corpse, and thirteen hundred and twenty five takas, meaning all his earnings, are taken away from him before he is handed over to the police. The police take Modhu to the station and hit him some more in the hope of getting some money, but they quickly realize that not only will no one show up with any money for his release, the owner and his men had already beat him so much that he might very well die in the police station. In which case, the newspapers will start writing about death in police custody, and all those poor-loving human rights organization folks will drum up a furor. The police think about all this hassle and push Modhu out of the station. Modhu can’t walk; he falls onto the street in front of the police station and moans. The police feel inconvenienced and annoyed at this; they load Modhu into the back of a pickup truck, and drive around the city, along this street and that, and they focus their flashlights here and there looking for a convenient spot in which to dump him. As they search, one of them has an idea. “Well, then,” he says to his colleagues, “whose fault is it that we’re going through all this trouble?” They drive the pickup truck with Modhu in the back to the Begunbari house-cum-garage of the rickshaw owner and roar at him, “You, pal, have murdered the suspect before handing him over to the police!” The rickshaw owner doesn’t seem perturbed by the roaring police; he goes inside and quickly returns with ten thousand takas. He tucks it into the hand of one of the policemen and says, “There’s no more cash in the house, saar. Just manage the thing, please.” One of the policemen grows angry. “Is this a joke!” The rickshaw owner doesn’t quite understand what his anger means; still, out of habit, he goes back inside and returns with another ten thousand takas. Then he gets a louder scolding, and a policeman even utters the words, “under arrest.” Therefore, the rickshaw owner goes back inside again, and when he is late in coming back out, the policemen look at each other with suspicion. But before they lose their patience, the rickshaw owner reemerges with a page from his check book. He says, “Saars, an accident just happened. It is my fault, but I don’t want the guy to die. Here, I’ve written out one hundred thousand.” The policeman stops him midway and says, “Pal, you want to survive, then show up at the station tomorrow morning with five hundred thousand in cash. We don’t do checks-fecks.” The rickshaw owner says, “What arrangements for the body?” A policeman answers, “That’s the big trouble right now. What to do with this dead body, we’ve been going around all night…pal, that five hundred thousand won’t cut it. We’ll have to take care of the journalists; we’ll have to take care of the human rights people. Make it six lakhs and be at the station by nine a.m.” But Modhu isn’t a dead body yet. On the floor in the back of the pickup truck, he lies flat on his back with his neck at an angle, peering at them like a weak, sick kitten. There is still a spark of life in his dying eyes. It was the end of night when Modhu was carefully laid down behind a bush in a corner of the Suhrawardy Gardens, from the police pickup truck. Silence descended once the mechanical noise of the pickup truck disappeared in the distance. The silence reigned for a few moments; then suddenly, someone blew on the mosque microphone, and in a voice deep like thunder, began the chant of Allahu Akbar. When the quivering notes of the azaan floated to Modhu’s nearly numb ears, his eyes opened slightly. In the distance, he saw a light tremble. He tried to move one of his hands but couldn’t. He tried to move his legs but couldn’t. Modhu tried to make a noise with his mouth; he forced himself to say, Allah! But Modhu’s voice didn’t echo in the wind. Modhu would die and Mafiz would have Modina forever—this is what is written in Modina and Mafiz’s destinies. Modina doesn’t believe it but Mafiz’s faith doesn’t have an ounce of doubt. But why Mafiz counts the days till Modhu’s return is something only he knows. Two days before Modhu is supposed to come back, which was fifteen days after his departure, Mafiz, once again, stands by Modina’s window and says that Modhu will not return. He is going to die in Dhaka; and because when poor people die that far away, their bodies never make it back, Modina will never see Modhu again. When Mafiz is telling Modina all this, Modhu is rolling back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness on the floor of the pickup truck in the streets of Dhaka. Modina protests the ill-omened, cruel words from Mafiz by scratching his chest and neck until he bleeds. But when Mafiz groans in pain, she covers his mouth with her hand and says, “Oh, does it burn?” When Mafiz sulks and wants to leave, Modina grabs his shoulder again and says, “Come tomorrow! The day after, he’ll be back home!” The next night, before the cuckoo sings in the koroi tree, three ghosts come to Modina’s house. They had whispered to each other as they came down the road that Modhu was gone. “Let’s go and eat Modhu’s wife.” These ghosts only eat people of the female gender; from age eight to fifty-eight, wherever they find a woman at an opportune moment, they eat her. These famous ghosts live in the upazila town; they came to the village of Modhupur after verifying and ascertaining the information that Modhu is absent, and truly they find Modina by herself in Modhu’s house, and when they find her, they begin to eat her. They take turns in eating Modina. After the first ghost, the second ghost, then the third ghost, then the first ghost again. While they eat Modina in turns, at some point, Mafiz shows up. Modina sees Mafiz and whimpers in the hope of getting some help, but one of the ghosts grabs hold of her nose and mouth so hard that not only any noise, even her breath cannot emerge from her. In addition, another ghost grasps her throat with five and five, ten fingers; Modina thrashes around, groans, her tongue lolls out, her eyes want to bug out. Seeing which, Mafiz, a single person, attacks the three ghosts; two of whom pick him up and slam him down on the ground; a grunt emerges from Mafiz’s throat, his eyes go dark; one ghost picks up a half-brick and smashes it down on Mafiz’s head; his skull opens up with a crack, and this encourages the ghost, so he begins smashing the brick down into Mafiz’s skull again and again. Right then, the cuckoo trills in the koroi tree. Ghosts don’t know what it means when a cuckoo sings in a spring evening. ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

South Asian Avant-Garde (SAAG) is a Literary Magazine seeking to speak to and from the internationalist South Asian left, and to find an activist approach to representation. ISSUE CATEGORY EXPLORE VOL. 2 ISSUE 1 PLAY INTRO VIDEO

“The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” INTERACTIVE India's Vector Capitalism Model “The Indian government has been pushing for health IDs with people's biometric data (Aadhaar). It was supposedly voluntary, but it was also required for food subsidies. Health spending in India was less than one percent in 2020—now, the government is commercializing its citizens' health data. Workers are made to work for data without meaningful consent. Many are not even told what they're signing up for.” VOL. 1 LIVE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Delhi 5th Jun 2021 Live Delhi Event In Grief In Solidarity Aadhaar COVID-19 Lockdown Labor Precarity Standards of Living Living Conditions Biometrics Commercialization Health Workers Health Low-Income Workers Labor Movement Karnataka Literacy Consent Investigative Journalism Ethics of Journalism Labor Reporting Food Subsidies Vector Capitalism Neoliberalism Essential Workers Accountability Production The Great Pause Pandemic Agricultural Labor Alienation Scrap Workers Caste Isolation Haryana's Industrial Belt Automotive Industry Assembly Line Newsroom Farmers' Movement Gujarat Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. One woman who works in the industrial belt outside Delhi, at a Korean electronics firm. Her husband fell sick, and she lost pay for every day that she attended to him in the hospital. This is somebody who had worked at the same company for nine years, and was still treated like a temp worker. Though she's directly hired by the company, the contractor claims it helped to get her hired, refused to provide pay slips. This is a very common story for working-class workers during lockdown. For our event In Grief, In Solidarity in June 2021, senior editor Sarah Eleazar spoke to labor journalist Anumeha Yadav, then based in Delhi, about India's response to the pandemic, the labor beat within a shrinking journalistic landscape, and how "vector capitalism" can explain the Indian state's neoliberal services and broad approach towards its workers in both the formal and informal sectors. Yadav discussed her reporting regarding how the government's bizarre decisions at the height of the lockdown made life untenable for workers and the impoverished across the board. Barring the government's public pronouncement that landlords should suspend rent payments, Yadav argues that the testimony of workers and unrest, as seen in movements such as the farmers' movement or the harsh conditions of Gujarat, shows how the government engaged in mass abandonment while trying to commercialize the biometric data of over one billion people, as opposed to trying to mitigate the crisis. Data harvesting was far more critical than work and living conditions and significantly more than preventative health measures, which were carried out in the most cursory ways. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

“I really got into organizing through the Palestinian solidarity movement. I co-founded my school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The same people who used to walk by me in the student union when we were organizing for an academic boycott—those same people have reached out to me since to say they wish they had gotten involved, that they feel differently now. Really, the Black Lives Matter movement opened a lot of people's eyes to the interconnectedness of state violence.” INTERACTIVE On Palestine in 2021 AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR “I really got into organizing through the Palestinian solidarity movement. I co-founded my school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The same people who used to walk by me in the student union when we were organizing for an academic boycott—those same people have reached out to me since to say they wish they had gotten involved, that they feel differently now. Really, the Black Lives Matter movement opened a lot of people's eyes to the interconnectedness of state violence.” SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Live New York Palestine Intifada Gaza Dissent Occupation Israel Apartheid State Power Methods of Resistance Mass Protests Anti-Israel Protests Black Lives Matter Students for Justice in Palestine SJP DSA Democratic Socialists of America Inequality Racial Justice In Grief In Solidarity Power Dynamics IDF NYPD IDF and American Police Departments Police Brutality Political Prisoners Refugees Anti-Zionism Dehumanization Islamophobia Dismantling Oppressive Structures Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Live New York 5th Jun 2021 There is a pervasive and commonly vocalized sense that the dire state of Gaza and the actions of Israel since October 2023 have created an unprecedented level of public support for Palestine. And perhaps the scale of public support—or, more accurately, its endurance—is indeed unprecedented. But in an interview from the SAAG archives held on 5th June 2021, NY State Assemblymember Zohran Kwame Mamdani shared his own feelings as a longtime SJP and DSA organizer for the Palestinian struggle, as well as in his political role, that with the uptick of violence in Gaza in 2021, he found immense positive signs of shift within society, the first instances of prominent politicians being on the backfoot with protesters and organizers, and other instances of what he had previously considered unthinkable. For Mamdani, much of the roots of this uptick in pro-Palestinian sentiment and the delinking of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism lie in part with the Black Lives Matter movement and the education of society writ large due to mass movements for racial and economic justice over the past decade, and longer. Mamdani and Naib Mian invoke the dichotomy that motivated the event for which they spoke— In Grief, In Solidarity . Mamdani’s sense of how power is and should be wielded, both inside and outside the “halls of power,” as it were, is held simultaneously with how deep the institutional roots between Israel and the US really go, for instance with the links between the NYPD and IDF’s brutal tactics, or most police departments in the US for that matter. This slice from our archive illuminates to a large degree that while change can feel faster than it is, histories of deeply grievous injustices and those of positive change are longer than we perceive them to be. Histories and ideas of collective action are invoked here, too: Mamdani’s idea of solidarity in action—whether deployed over a shipping container or outside a courthouse and wherever it may be—is deeply capacious. When Mamdani says that “we have not yet hit the ceiling of support for Palestinians,” he evokes a sentiment of today. Three years later, we still haven't. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

Despite the marketing of her debut novel "Gold Diggers," Sanjena Sathian did not set out to interrogate the model minority myth or the dynamics of class in the Indian-American diaspora. Instead, she began with the relationship of a mother and daughter. The world of an "uncritical and unthinking ambition" gradually began to assert itself in the narrative. INTERACTIVE Chats Ep. 10 · On Ambition, Immigration, Class in “Gold Diggers” Despite the marketing of her debut novel "Gold Diggers," Sanjena Sathian did not set out to interrogate the model minority myth or the dynamics of class in the Indian-American diaspora. Instead, she began with the relationship of a mother and daughter. The world of an "uncritical and unthinking ambition" gradually began to assert itself in the narrative. VOL. 1 LIVE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on SAAG Chats, an informal series of live events on Instagram. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Live Georgia 21st Jun 2021 Live Georgia Ambition Class Class Struggle World-building Fiction Debut Authors Debut Novel Upper-caste Rules Rule-breaking Immigration Cultural Narratives of Immigration Indian-American Exceptionalism Indian-American Diaspora Good Immigrant Novels BIPOC Audiences Explanation Immigrant Pressure Unconscious Identity Miranda July Vanity Gold Diggers Ruth Ozeki Latin American Literature Magical Realism Japanese Literature Alchemy Satire Fantasy Science Fiction Genre Genre Tropes Genre Fluidity Jhumpa Lahiri Zadie Smith Philip Roth Irreverence Diaspora Big History Revisionism Myth of the Model Minority Mythology Private Schools Gold Rush Eternalism Temporality SAAG Chats Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Writer and journalist Sanjena Sathian in conversation with Vishakha Darbha about rule-breaking, questions from her publishing team, whether explaining world-building came easily to the writing of her debut novel, Gold Diggers (Random House, 2021), what makes a "good" immigrant novel, and writing about the Indian-American diaspora in its own mythologies, complications, and exceptionalism. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Kashmiri poet Huzaifa Pandit in conversation with Nazish Chunara. COMMUNITY The Craft of Writing in Occupied Kashmir Huzaifa Pandit Kashmiri poet Huzaifa Pandit in conversation with Nazish Chunara. By abolishing Urdu, they are removing its historical significance... By pushing for the extinction of a language, you're pushing the extinction of a history and the sentiments associated with that history. Because in life the present is a function of the past. And so, by altering that past, they're hoping to alter the present altogether beyond the cognition. RECOMMENDED: Green is the Colour of Memory (Hawakal Publishers, 2018) by Huzaifa Pandit. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview Kashmiri Poetics Historicity Poetic Form Poetry Kashmiri Struggle Kashmir Faiz Ahmed Faiz Agha Shahid Ali Mahmoud Darwish PTSD Trauma Mass Protests Memory Language Diversity Urdu Resistance Poetry Metaphor Metaphoricity Raj Rao Varavara Rao Journaling Occupation Pune University Language Language Politics Hindutva Despair Defiance HUZAIFA PANDIT is the author of Green is the Colour of Memory which won the first edition of Rhythm Divine Poets Chapbook Contest 2017 . He is the winner of several poetry contests like Glass House Poetry Competition and Bound Poetry Contest. Born and raised in Kashmir, his poems alternate between despair, defiance, resistance and compliance as they seek to make sense of a world where his identity is outlawed. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Kashmir on the poetics of resistance with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali and Mahmoud Darwish. His poems, translations, interviews, essays and papers have been published in various journals like Indian Literature, PaperCuts, Life and Legends, Jaggery Lit, JLA India, Punch and Noble/Gas Qtrly . Interview Kashmiri Poetics 24th Jan 2021 On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

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Kashmiri homes and livelihoods are disintegrating, with major infrastructural developments and mining projects inducing landslides, disrupting water and electrical channels, and destroying agricultural trade in the region–all in the name of increasing Kashmir's connectivity. Impractical in scope, these infrastructural projects defy all recommendations geological researchers have urged developers to consider for decades: and the government is content leaving Kashmiris in unlivable conditions, so long as the homes are not yet one with the earth. · THE VERTICAL Reportage · Ramban Kashmiri homes and livelihoods are disintegrating, with major infrastructural developments and mining projects inducing landslides, disrupting water and electrical channels, and destroying agricultural trade in the region–all in the name of increasing Kashmir's connectivity. Impractical in scope, these infrastructural projects defy all recommendations geological researchers have urged developers to consider for decades: and the government is content leaving Kashmiris in unlivable conditions, so long as the homes are not yet one with the earth. Image courtesy of the authors. Asif in front of the ruins of his home (2024) Cracks in Pernote When Aasif Katoch returned home from work in the evening of April 25, he heard a loud voice from his cousin’s house, just over 100 metres away. “They were calling us urgently,” he recalled. “When we arrived, we saw cracks had developed in their house.” But before Katoch could begin to do anything about it, his children began frantically calling out to him from his house. He rushed back, only to see cracks starting to appear there too. “Within minutes,” he said, recounting the scenes of his house sinking, “we watched in horror as our homes which we built with hard work were damaged in front of our own eyes.” Katoch’s family isn‘t alone. Pernote village, seven kilometres from Ramban district in Jammu and Kashmir, became a disaster zone in April when 28 houses, including Katoch’s, were destroyed completely by land subsidence, affecting around 500 people . The road linking to Pernote village was severely damaged, cutting off connectivity. Cracks stretched several kilometres, disrupted electricity and water supply, adding more difficulties to the affected residents. Unmitigated Development is to Blame Since 2010, there has been an unprecedented rise in land sinking incidents near the national highway and railway tracks in Kashmir. Many attribute this increase to the rise in large-scale developmental projects , such as railway construction , widening of roads like the National highway , which links Ramban with Banihal, tunnel digging in the mountains , and hydro power projects, all constructed without proper precautions. For instance, around 12 hydropower projects are either constructed or are under construction in the Chenab region of Jammu. “One of the main causes of the increasing landslides in the region is unregulated developmental activity,” G.M Bhat, a Kashmir-based geologist, explained to us. “While landslides due to natural conditions existed before, human activities like mining have accelerated the frequency and severity of these incidents. The fragile nature of these mountains demands careful handling, yet we are doing the exact opposite.” For Bhat, the collapse of an 800-metre tunnel in Ramban on 19 May 2022, in which ten people died, should raise serious concerns. Recent land sinkings, like those in Pernote , he reasoned, are clearly the result of human activities, specifically poorly planned developmental projects. “We have been raising these issues for the last 30 years,” Bhat said, “with reports filed repeatedly. I can’t understand why the government continues to ignore our warnings.” The portion of a road in Pernote damaged after land subsidence. Courtesy of the authors. He blamed authorities for not involving experts and ignoring their warnings before starting work, saying the region has now become vulnerable to disasters due to excessive constructions. The residents also blame the construction agencies for land sinkage. “Since we live in a hilly area, rainwater used to flow naturally through canals and streams, eventually reaching the river at the bottom of the hill,” said Akther, a local resident of Ramban. Moreover, he added, during the extensive drilling for the national highway and tunnels, agency workers dumped tunnel waste near Chenab river banks, blocking these natural water channels. Despite raising concerns with the authorities, the residents were ignored. “As the waste blocked the streams,” Akther shared, “water began accumulating, saturating the land, making it unstable and unable to bear the weight of the mountain, which led to the sinking.” The situation worsened with the frequent blasts carried out during tunnel construction. The explosions were so loud that residents’ houses would shake, resembling powerful earthquakes. “We often rushed outside in fear that our homes might collapse,” Akther said. “The blasts were terrifying, and our children were left crying, traumatised by the repeated tremors.” In response to these concerns, the residents wrote to the District Magistrate (DM) in 2014, 2022, and 2023, highlighting that the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) was violating environmental norms by improperly dumping waste, blocking canals, and having a poor drainage system. Despite assurances of action from the DM, no visible steps have been taken. Now, the residents are taking the matter to court. “We feel neglected and unheard,” Akther expressed. “We want the authorities to fully compensate us for our losses and provide immediate rehabilitation, but they continue to ignore us.” Why is unprecedented development happening? Jammu and Kashmir has long been viewed as a region in need of better infrastructure. Poor road connectivity, especially in mountain areas like Pir Panjal and Chenab, has hindered trade and access to services for decades. Both these regions have undergone several development projects over the last decade, which includes tunnelling, road widening of NH 44 , construction of bridges, dams and railway lines to improve connectivity with the rest of India. For example, the new Katra-Banihal railway line and the widening of National highway 244 from two to four lanes is expected to be a game changer for the region's economy, as it will reduce travel time from Jammu to Srinagar and improve transportation for both locals and businesses. In 1999, Bhat explained that the local government invited a team of experts––including geologists, geographers, and landslide specialists from various countries––to Kashmir to study the Himalayas. “They warned that large-scale projects in the region would be extremely dangerous,” he said. A collapsed transmission tower damaged after land sinkage in Pernote. Courtesy of the authors. Since then, however, “massive developmental projects have been undertaken,” Bhat added, “with post-1999 projects being far larger in scale compared to those before that time.” According to Dr. D.P Kanungo, engineering geologist and landslide expert from Delhi, the “lithotectonic setup, rocks, and tectonics of the Pir Panjal range are extremely sensitive.” Any development in this region, therefore, must follow proper technical and scientific guidelines. “While I’m not opposed to development,” he clarified, “it’s clear that projects in the Pir Panjal region have not been carried out in a technically sound or scientific manner.” “Disrupting its fragile ecosystems can have fatal consequences,” Dr. Kanungo added, explaining why the excessive blasting for tunnelling is dangerous, particularly in these areas where the mountain range is young, still rising, and undergoing significant neo-tectonic activity. “When I visited the area, I saw that the work was being done in an unplanned way,” he noted. “Incidents like the land sinking in Pernote and cracks in nearby village homes could have been avoided.” The Detailed Project Report (DPR) outlines the scientific and technical methods to be followed, including when and how to support a cut slope. It also specifies where and how to cut particular rocks. However, our investigation revealed that the DPR is frequently violated and scientific techniques are often not followed on the ground, especially in the Himalayan regions. The Dangers of Improving Road Connectivity to Cut Travel Time The challenging terrains of the ecologically sensitive Chenab and Pir Panjal regions make travel difficult on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway, especially in the harsh winter months when snow and landslides frequently block the road. With the aim to decrease travel time on the Jammu-Srinagar Highway and increase connectivity to the Kashmir region, the government has spent almost 16000 crore INR to widen the two lane highway into four lanes. To date, 210 kilometres, including 10 tunnels, have been finished. The project, which will decrease travel time from 8 hours to 4-5 hours, is set for completion by 2025. Between 2010 and 2020, around 1750 people have died and more than 12,000 people have been injured in over 8,000 accidents on Jammu-Srinagar highway. “The construction of a four-lane highway on the Srinagar-Jammu route, in fragile areas, would be dangerous in coming years,” according to Bhat. “A two-lane road in sensitive zones, with four lanes only in the plains, would have been far more appropriate. Instead, we’ve made the mistake of widening roads and toe-cutting mountains, which has triggered land sinking.” As Raja Muzaffar Bhat, a social activist, noted, “construction in the Himalayas is incredibly challenging, hazardous, and complex.” For him, “building large four-lane highways and similar projects in such mountainous regions might be impractical and could have serious long-term consequences.” “The extensive tunnelling and mountain cutting required could lead to more frequent landslides and sinkholes, as well as negatively impact water systems,” Muzaffar Bhat warned. “These areas have unique geological and ecological characteristics, with intricate rock formations and small water channels that are easily disrupted.” Additionally, constructing very high pillars for bridges in earthquake-prone regions poses significant risks of natural disasters. In the last 10 years, the pace of construction of four lane highways, bridges, and tunnels has increased which has also increased landslides on the Jammu-Srinagar highway. According to the last data available, over 4,200 people lost their lives on Jammu-Srinagar national highway from 2018-2022 in the Kashmir valley. Locals are Losing Both Homes and Work Opportunities As construction continues, it is the locals living in these terrains who are paying the price for this development. Tunnelling through the mountainous areas of Pir Panjal and blasting for road expansions has led to the increase in landslides and land subsidence in these areas. The land subsidence of villages like Pernote is attributable to excavation of highways and other developmental projects. For residents of Pernote and several other adjoining villages, this development has come at a great personal cost. Families who lived in these areas for generations are now forced to abandon their homes and move to safer ground where they pay rent. “Where are we supposed to go?” asked Beer Singh, a Pernote resident. “We don't have any other lands and the government has not given us any answers.” Many families have been forced to live in nearby government buildings, rent out temporary shelters, or move in with relatives. “Our homes were everything we worked for,” Singh stated. “My whole earning was in that house.” As families grapple with the loss of their homes, the emotional toll is palpable. “I do not sleep properly at night,” Singh shared. “I keep thinking the wall will crack again and we won’t be able to escape.” Cracks visible in the house damaged after land subsidence in Pernote. Courtesy of the authors. Beer Singh is one of five brothers, whose parents are no longer alive. “We were doing well in life,” he said, recalling his land where he and his brothers cultivated pomegranates, tomatoes, and peanuts. “Farming was our livelihood throughout the year, and we sold our produce at good prices.” Living in a hilly area with a favourable climate, their crops were of high quality. "In our village, only a few people had government jobs,” he noted. “The rest relied on farming because it was profitable.” However, since the tragedy, only two or three families remain, and they live far from Singh and his family. “Now, no one comes to my shop because hardly anyone is left,” he said. “I sit here all day, unable to make sense of what happened.” The biggest issue, for Singh, is his loan repayments. He no longer receives any income and doesn’t have the money to repay his loan. After the land sinkage, many officials visited the area and promised compensation to residents of Pernote. Till date, however, these people have gotten nothing. "We were denied the initial compensation of 1,30,000 INR that others received, with the reasoning that our house had only developed cracks and hadn't collapsed entirely,” Singh shared. “However, the cracks are so severe that it's unsafe to live in, as no one can predict when it might fall.” The authorities initially issued a notice stating that the villagers would be given 10 marlas each and compensated for all damages caused by the disaster. However, the order was later changed, and they were told they’d receive only 5 lakhs INR and 1 kanal of land. As of September this year, it has been five additional months, and they still haven't received any compensation. Land sinking and landslides are not new The land sinking and landslide in these regions is not new; several incidents have been reported in the last decade. On February 1, 2023, for instance, a landslide hit Nai Basit hamlet in Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir, causing land subsidence that geologists attributed to the poor drainage system and continuous seepage from households and the movement of geological fault zones. The incident damaged 19 houses and caused a mosque with several structures to develop cracks. It forced many families to leave their homes and relocate to temporary shelters in a local government school. It also created panic in nearby villages of Ramban, where many houses had developed cracks. “It was all good until these projects started,” said Saqib, a local student. “We were living our life happily in these mountains. The government may increase the connectivity through these projects but it will make life miserable for thousands of villagers living in these mountains.” The unchecked development to increase connectivity within the Kashmir region has left residents like those in Pernote village devastated. With homes collapsing and lives uprooted, locals blame reckless infrastructure projects for these disasters. “I’m not opposed to developmental projects,” Bhat said, “but they must be carried out with proper environmental precautions and procedures.” For Muzaffar Bhat, too, it is necessary to follow sustainable development practices. “Unfortunately,” he noted, “recent political manifestos have largely ignored these environmental concerns.” Bhat suggested that if major development projects stop now, the Himalayas will likely stabilise in the next 50-60 years. “However, if these projects continue,” he warned, “the impending disaster will be unimaginable.” Specifically, the area falls in seismic zones 4 and 5, which are highly earthquake-prone. “If these projects continue and the mountains weaken further,” Bhat added, “even minor earthquakes could devastate the entire region, posing a severe threat to those living on the mountain slopes.” ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Reportage Ramban Demolition Kashmir Urbanization Development Connectivity Pir Panjal Infrastructure National highway Pernote village Pernote tunnel waste Border Roads Organization National Highway 44 National Highway 244 Katra-Banihal railway line Srinagar lithotectonic lithotectonic sensitivity Detailed Project Report Climate Change rock fracturing land subsidence Jammu-Srinagar Highway mountain toe-cutting forced migration forced displacement ecological displacement hill farming terrace farming Nai Basit Colonialism Colonization Gentrification Urban Development environmental decay environmental hazard Seismic zone 4 Seismic zone 5 earthquake Himalayas ecological disaster Cosmopolitanism Construction Colonial Boundaries Displacement Geology Mining Chenab River Chenab Valley Ramban District Jammu Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 2nd Dec 2024 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Megha Majumdar in conversation with Fiction Editor Kartika Budhwar. COMMUNITY On Class & Character in Megha Majumdar's Debut Novel Megha Majumdar in conversation with Fiction Editor Kartika Budhwar. VOL. 1 INTERVIEW AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the interview on YouTube or IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Interview West Bengal Politics 29th Sep 2020 Interview West Bengal Politics English as Class Signifier Hindutva National Book Award Longlist Debut Novel Humor Centering the Silly The Baby-Sitters Club Debut Authors Working-Class Stories Body Politics Queerness Trans Politics Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Bodily vulnerability is so crucial to confront with people who are shamed, opressed, and made to feel so aware of themselves—even with where they can stand in a street, or whether they can love. RECOMMENDED: A Burning by Megha Majumdar More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5