I bought Aruni Kashyap’s collection There Is No Good Time for Bad News because the title put words to the experience of living through 2020. The near-constant state of anxiety, of living in the pandemic, of feeling helpless when confronted by the horrors committed by state security forces as with the murder of George Floyd, and with the awareness of the constant torture inflicted by Israeli forces on the people of Palestine.

Amidst this hopelessness, I have also felt energized by the transformative power of bearing witness. The video of George Floyd murder sparked a global movement against racism and police brutality. More recently, video testimonies of Israeli brutality have fueled wider support for Palestinian freedom from state-sanctioned violence. Still, there are places where the earth is wet with blood spilled through state-sanctioned violence, places where, despite the ubiquity of technological penetration around the world, many stories of state-sanctioned violence never come out.

Aruni’s homeland, the Indian state of Assam, is one such place, where news from home comes only “If the wind chooses to carry it / against the wishes of the media, governments.” (more…)

— 4 days ago