‘Stories are all that people have, stories that rarely breach the frontiers of family and religious community’
The political partition of India caused one of the great human convulsions of history. Never before or since have so many people exchanged their homes and countries so quickly. In the space of a few months, about twelve million people moved between the new, truncated India and the two wings, East an…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Urvashi Butalia is the co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist press. She shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘What did our government mean by asking us to mourn for these deaths in America?’
‘Feminist movements everywhere in the world are born of the particular political and economic realities of the places where they exist.’
‘Ice gets into the sea in two ways: it falls in from calving glaciers, or it forms during the winter. Both kinds are spectacular.’
‘They told her a thrush came into the house / and fell asleep by the TV.’
