Friends, on November 26, at 10 AM, I will speak at the Taipei Biennale on the topic: ‘The Writer as a Memory Maker’.
I will talk about the bloody birth of our nation in the wake of the greatest migration in human history which left 1 million dead and 14 million displaced. Yet, how as a nation we seem to be condemned to never learn from history. How our gestures of public history – museums – are shaped. How our discourses are built on excluding narratives of caste, gender, tribals, and minorities. How chasing the dystopia of material development, through corporate capitalism, we are ignoring the core strengths of our diverse nation. What then is our future? All these with special focus on Punjab. I will also discuss the draft novel I wrote in Germany – The Memory Maker – which is currently, justly, gestating.
I will share the video when available. Please read …
Tags: India, Memory, Migration, Pakistan, Partition, Punjab, Taipei Biennale, The Memory Maker
Friends, my review of Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s novel ‘Deep Singh Blue’. What struck me immensely about the writing was that it is without crutches, the writer creates and inhabits a world within language alone yet it is deeply rooted in the human experience. Kudos! Thank you Omair Ahmad for the opportunity.
‘DSB is a dark bildungsroman – a coming of age novel – about different types of unbelonging: in cultures, in the community, in the family, in relationships, in place and in time. The protagonist is lonely, immensely lonely, but the novel is not about loneliness or about an emotional or cultural pain. Instead, DSB explores the deep angst of being and a human’s relationship with the world.’
Please read …
Tags: America, Deep Singh Blue, Diaspora, Migration, Ranbir Singh Sidhu, Sikh, US