India
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Seven Almonds
The first thing my parents bought when they earned money in America was a giant bag of almonds as a talisman for success.
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Textbook Crisis in India Turns Violent
A massive delay in textbook printing in India’s southern state of Kerala has led to accusations of corruption in the government education ministry and violent protests. Government officials suggested schools print the books themselves, but for low-income areas this solution is…
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Why Muslims Felt Excluded in India
Part of [Gandhi’s] genius was he was able to broaden out the appeal of the independence movement…But the way he did it was by using Hindu iconography and stories, mythology…He was personally very unprejudiced about this..But for Muslims, ordinary Muslims,…
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How to Read and Write Indian Literature
Anyone who simplifies a nation’s discourse misreads that nation. When you’re reading the texts of a recently created nation like India, which was only founded in 1947, you must know the political, historical, and linguistic backdrop, or you will miswrite…
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The Throwaways
Nazir lies buried in the mind’s forbidden faraways, on the margin of the village graveyard, obscured by nettle.
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Here Everything Is Possible
My mother died suddenly at a dining room table, in the middle of a wonderful meal, surrounded by a large, extended family that loved her. One minute she was completely immersed in the world—talking, laughing, eating—and the next minute she…
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In India, the Onion Is No Laughing Matter
In India, an onion shortage means more than just a few lackluster dinners. It’s a cipher for a whole dictionary of political and cultural meanings, as Karolle Rabarison found out while living there: It’s no new trick for political parties…
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The Rumpus Interview with Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Pakistani writer Musharraf Ali Farooqi discusses his new novel, Between Clay and Dust, how translation has informed his writing, and why the slender book took ten years to write.
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Pulp Fiction from South India
But as I turned over the glossy, hardbound book in my hands, the seductive, bespectacled young woman with jasmine in her hair and an unusually large revolver in her hand beckoned with a look that both allured and mystified. What,…
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Pioneer Women
My own mother bought our clothes at the mall. She didn’t allow pork in the house and mostly cooked curry. The saris she wore didn’t require needlework. Growing up in Wyoming, Nina McConigley longed for an authentic pioneer life like…
