There are a few lines and phrases that especially stood out to me: the idea of setting up a momo stand— ‘Yes! That is something that is quite popular right now and which corporate slave hasn’t wondered the same while having street food? I wonder if I would be happier and better off owning a street stall rather than working a nine-to-five, LOL’
Muskaan has been working for over two decades with poor and marginalized communities of Bhopal. Gaanth brings together the narratives of three women who were little girls during the riots of 1992, which took place after the destruction of Babri Masjid. The stories are based on the authors’
Written by young writers, the stories are full of keen observations and lively details. We see the world through their eyes, endowing it with familiarity, attentiveness, compassion and often humour. The book doesn’t follow a main singular narrative. Instead, each story opens a door into the past, present and future that lives on in the oral accounts of the people of Khichdipur. Under the shadow of the monstrous landfill, we are introduced to the worlds existing in Khichdipur’s blocks—Dhobighat, Dairy Farm, Murga Mandi, Bangali Basti, and Indra Camp, etc.
A bustling urban basti greets on the first page. Intricately detailed roofs and fixtures, water tanks and antennas, herons perched on the pillars, the mosque top with loudspeakers and orange flying festoons leave one transfixed…
On a fundamental level, the book would push the young reader to question humanity’s invincibility and technological advancement in times of climate change, artificial intelligence and COVID-19. Though this book will not answer all the questions, it puts forth more complex questions for readers to follow and explore. It can be an excellent classroom book experiment with varied pedagogical methods for different age groups.
Regardless, the book’s framework still makes the following speculations possible.
First, even as the societal consensus around America’s ruling ideology of democracy, capitalism and freedoms has collapsed at home, the number of its takers internationally has dwindled, including within the West, as the rise of inward looking, nationalist and far-Right forces across the West indicates.