Book Preview: Kiriti Sengupta’s ‘Rituals’
By Mosarrap H Khan
In Rituals, Kiriti Sengupta does an intriguing job of distilling wisdom from the dross of our daily life, a necessary condition for the possibility of poetry and living.
Why is Rahul Gandhi, the dynast, failing to shore up the Congress?
By Mosarrap H Khan
Rahul Gandhi appears more as a curiosity factor, than a real impactful politician. Feudalism adds glamour and piques curiosity. But curiosity is not the same thing as impact. For someone to have real impact, identification matters, relatability matters. For all his megalomania, Narendra Modi is relatable to a large segment of India’s population, often young, technocratic Indians.
Book Review: Linda Ashok’s ‘whorelight’
By Mosarrap H Khan
Ashok’s poems work best when the depiction of violence is etched in minimal language, disembodied, like a hand across the shoulder, as if with the deft touch of a painter’s single brush-stroke.
Babri Mosque demolition 25 years on
By Mosarrap H Khan
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the demolition of Babri Mosque, let me assert that the calamitous events on 6 December, 1992, have crippled Indian Muslims irreversibly just when many Muslims seemed ready to take off like their Hindu counterparts.
An excerpt from Shankha Ghosh’s Partition novella, ‘The Rows of Areca Nut Trees’
By Shankha Ghosh
It was Dwadashi, the Twelfth Day of Durga Puja. Today Neelu and others would leave. Since morning, he was lying down quietly in the attic. Something so terrible had happened yesterday and still no one could figure it out. People were silent in the house.
Book Review: Sudipta Mitra’s ‘Pearl by the River: Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s Kingdom in Exile’
By Mosarrap H Khan
Mitra’s book depicts the pathos of a deposed king, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, who had to leave behind his beloved Lucknow and recreate his dream abode on the banks of the Hooghly in Calcutta (now, Kolkata).
Travel to the Forests of North Bengal: Sevoke and Gorumara
By Prasun Banerjee & Mosarrap H Khan
Travels to the forests of North Bengal in Sevoke and Gorumara
As a ‘Muslim’, do I have to always react?
By Mosarrap H Khan
While I concur with the anger and anguish that these pieces convey, there is something that makes me uncomfortable with them, not least because of my own supposed ‘secular-liberal’ belief. What worries me is the authors’ unwillingness to turn a critical gaze to their own subject-position – their ‘Muslim’ identity – the ground from which they launch these critiques.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 