On the Self

Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home
By Alok Bhalla
OUP, Rs 395
Fiction about the partition in India and Pakistan,” Hindi writer Krishna Sobti says, “has made an attempt, despite the enormity of the horror it describes, to preserve essential human values.” For Indians, Pakistanis and — though the east is not really addressed in this book — Bangladeshis, trying to understand the essence of their national identities demands staring straight at Partition. Those violent days of 1947 were for decades thereafter swept away from public discourse. In the past many years, as the bitterness fades and Partition instead becomes a binding socio-political inquiry, there has been a tendency to underestimate the role played by fiction in allowing bitterness, hurt and longing to gain an outlet, right from the immediate aftermath of Partition. Bhalla talks to six Indian and Pakistani writers of fiction: Intizar Husain, Bhisham Sahni, Sobti, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Kamleshwar, and Bapsi Sidhwa.

Speech and Silence: Literary Journeys
by Gujarati Women Translated by Rita Kothari
Zubaan, Rs 195
Excerpts from diaries and fiction to show how women have over the last century internalised the socio-political dynamics beyond their homes and workspaces, and then distilled them into fiction.