Dear Friends,
Here is a short author interview by Amazon to go with the recent essay available as an e-Book: Bravado to Fear to Abandonment: Mental Health and the COVID-19 Lockdown
It tells us the reason I wrote the piece: ‘As someone who was clinically diagnosed with depression twice, Mr. Sandhu is no stranger to mental illness. He has also been a caregiver to mental illness sufferers, and that has prompted him to center his next story on the mental health aspects of the current pandemic.’
Please read more here …
Tags: Abandonment, Bravado, COVID-19, fear, India, lockdown, Mental Health
Dear Friends,
A few months back when the longest lockdown in the world was imposed on India, it disrupted all our lives, jobs, social securities. While the economic devastation would be a sphere many would look at from various angles, I was interested in how the lockdown affected our mindscapes. What does the lockdown augur for us as individuals and as a society? Here is my essay as an e-Book available on Kindle for India users. It will be available for foreign readers in the coming weeks.
Bravado to Fear to Abandonment: Mental Health and the COVID-19 Lockdown
Tags: Abandonment, Bravado, COVID-19, fear, India, lockdown, Mental Health
The national discourse does not get a simple fact: when two Punjabis meet, they hug as a way of greeting each other. It does not get it that former cricket stalwarts Imran Khan and Navjot Sidhu seek to re-write history.
Please read more here …
Tags: Imran Khan, India, Kartarpur Sahib, Navjot Sidhu, Pakistan, Punjab
For 71 years now, in spite of how New Delhi and Islamabad define the relationship between India and Pakistan, the Sikhs have been making the prayer to unite with their Gurdwaras. The desire to go to Kartarpur Sahib has been a sigh of the people of the Indus Valley Civilization, a plea for peace in a sub-continent divided by the one of the most militarized borders, a soulful cry not only of the Sikhs but also of around 12 crore people of different sects, affiliations, who believe in the name of Nanak.
Please read more …
Tags: Imran Khan, India, Kartarpur Sahib, Navjot Sidhu, Pakistan, Punjab
Friends, here is a peek into history, into the life of perhaps pre and post partition and Independence Panjab’s tallest leader’s life – Master Tara Singh. The following review is published in The Book Review, Volume XLII, Number 3, March 2018.
Book: Master Tara Singh in Indian History : Colonialism, Nationalism and the Politics of Sikh Identity
By J S Grewal
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2017, pp.776, Rs 2595.00
Please read here …
Tags: freedom, India, Master Tara Singh, Pakistan, Punjabi Suba
Friends, while looking for something else I found this article that sort of summarises the various social media posts on the idea of #NotInMyName in the country. My post also finds a mention. I am glad we are archiving, if only we could as a society now not suffer memory losses.
Please read …
Tags: #NotInMyName, bhakta, Eid, India, Junaid, lynching
Friends, on November 8, 2016, the Indian Prime Minister made 1.3 billion of us citizens of the nation foreigners in our own country. Our high denomination currency notes were declared no longer legal tender. I was to travel to Taipei for a talk and could not get Dollars in the banks.
My quote on Facebook was picked by Your Story and Anil Lulla interviewed me. Please read …
Tags: Demonetization, Dollars, India, legal tender, Prime Minister
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, it is a pleasure that Akademie Schloss Solitude invited me to write for another edition. This time a digital Atlas. The questions were:
Q: Would you say that your (artistic) practice is political?
A: Yes, it is. For me, the unspoken personal is political. I write to give voice to subjects our society likes to brush under the carpet – give voice to the marginalized. My intention is to find ways to restore human dignity through language.
Q: If so, how would you describe its political dimension?
A: I believe writing is a space where it is possible to honestly dissect the self and the violence of the society around us. My books are coming-of-age testimonial fiction.
Then they carried an excerpt from my current writing. Please read here …
Tags: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Homing Pigeons, India, Pakistan, Schloss-ghost
Dear friends, greeting for the new year. I know, there has been a one and a half month drought on thee site. I was not writing publicly. Today there is a minor flood: two articles. This one is on how we as a nation of audiences deal with threats to our country. I feel we become angsty because we do not trust systems. For that, I feel the blame lies with those who are supposed to run the systems. Please see the next one too.
Please read …
Tags: French, IAF, India, Paris, terror attack