Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 130: India
Winter 2015
For a long time – too long – the mirror that India held to its face was made elsewhere. ‘What writer about the country would you recommend I read?’ first-time travellers to India would ask, and in the later twentieth century the answer was still Forster or Naipaul or even the long-dead Kipling. In fiction, that changed with Rushdie. Now it has changed in all kinds of non-fiction. Narrative history, reportage, memoir, biography, the travel account: all have their gifted exponents in a country perfecting its own frank gaze.
From this Issue
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A Double-Income Family
Deepti Kapoor
When Mrs Mehra leaves Delhi she retires in one of ‘the vast new satellite townships on the eastern fringes of the metropolis’.
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Shunaka: Blood Count
Karthika Naïr
‘Shyama, Sister, why / the need for dazed allegiance / to men?’
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Shoes
Anjali Joseph
‘Like scraps of leather, oddly shaped, things from life, people and sayings and objects, found themselves spliced together.’
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English Summer
Amit Chaudhuri
‘What am I doing in London? And what’ll I do once I’m back in India?' Amit Chaudhuri on identity, youth and nostalgia.
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Gandhi the Londoner
Sam Miller
‘On 29 September 1888, an Indian teenager with a mild case of ringworm and a fine head of hair sailed into the Thames Estuary.’ Sam Miller on Ghandi's time in London.
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The Ghost in the Kimono
Raghu Karnad
Deep in the dense volume of Delhi’s history Raghu Kardad investigates ‘the remarkable, untold story of the Japanese in the Old Fort’.
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Sanjay Nagar Blues
Anjum Hasan
‘motorcyclists like to howl / and dogs drop bulging bags of garbage / from their mouths when they see other dogs / they want to mount’
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Othello Sucks
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Younger Daughter’s declaration that ‘Othello sucks’ prompts a conflicted response from Father.
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Breach Candy
Samanth Subramanian
‘There are clubs like the Breach Candy Club all over the Indian subcontinent: relics of the Raj, institutions that were set up as bolt-holes for the British, where they could retreat to row or swim or play cricket or race horses.’
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Annawadi
Katherine Boo
In 2007 Katherine Boo travelled to Annawadi – a slum built on Mumbai Airport land – to document the lives of the families living there.
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Vinod Kumar Shukla: Two Poems
Vinod Kumar Shukla
‘The truth is, though no one says it, / They’re all worried about their children.’
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Sticky Fingers
Arun Kolatkar
‘Selecting the right kind of a tomato was crucial for the scam to work.’
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Rain at Three
Tishani Doshi
‘Rain at three splits the bed in half, / cracks at windows like horsemen blistering / through a century of hibernation.’
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The Wrong Square
Neel Mukherjee
‘Something as fundamental to intelligence as counting was eluding him.’
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Ghachar Ghochar
Vivek Shanbhag
‘That single moment’s intensity hasn’t been matched in my life before or since. A woman who I didn’t know has chosen to accept me, in body and mind.’
