![]() It was common for them to stop us, check our identity cards, ask questions. During the 80s and the 90s, the first two decades of my life, the army was present almost everywhere. Later, when I moved to Delhi, I was shocked how my friends, both young men and women, would talk comfortably to members of the security forces, asking for directions, or other random questions. When we reached, they were already asleep and my aunt, who heard the sound of leather shoes on the road next to the house approaching her house, started to cry, calling for help from the neighbors. They wrapped up the day as early as possible. My aunt’s family couldn’t even afford power and relied on kerosene lamps. Dinner was served early, about an hour after sunset. Kerosene oil lamps were only for those who wanted to study after dinner. During those days, the electricity supply was erratic in our village, and since kerosene oil was expensive, people tended to sleep early to save it. was also very late as per village standards during the mid-nineties. It was winter, so the sun set quite early. My father took me and my younger brother to the village one evening and due to some delays in the bus schedule, we had reached very late. I was perhaps less than ten years old when this incident happened. I think it is a great example of the presence of the military and the presence of fear of Indian security forces in the minds of people because of merciless counter-insurgency measures. Can you describe, for a Western reader, the extent of the military presence in the daily lives of the Assamese people?Īruni Kashyap (AK): There is a poem in the collection called “Fake Boots,” and it is based on a true incident. Naheed Phiroze Patel (NP): Your poetry collection ( There Is No Good Time for Bad News, 2021) describes in beautiful, heartbreaking detail what it means to live under an insurgency, under the duress of prolonged state violence. ![]() He also writes in Assamese, and his first Assamese novel is Noikhon Etia Duroit (Panchajanya Books, 2019). He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, Athens. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Catapult, Bitch Media, The Boston Review, Electric Literature, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from Northeast, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others. ![]() He won the 2009 Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship for Creative Writing to the University of Edinburgh, and his poetry collection, There is No Good Time for Bad News (Future Cycle Press, 2021) was a finalist for the 2018 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and 2018 Four Way Books Levis Award in Poetry. He has also translated from Assamese and introduced celebrated Indian writer Indira Goswami’s last work of fiction, The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar (Zubaan Books, 2013). He is the author of His Father’s Disease (Context/ Westland Books India, 2019 Flipped Eye Books, UK) and the novel The House With a Thousand Stories (Viking/ Penguin Random House, 2013). Aruni Kashyap is a poet, essayist, book critic and translator.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |