Anindita Sengupta

I felt inadequate and a little afraid, without quite knowing why.

Was it her toughness? Her anger? Her warmth? Was it the timbre of her voice? Or the whiplash of her patience? Was it the strength of eyes? The weight of tears? The lines on face or hands? Was it her otherness? Or sameness? The particularities of her life? Or the universalities of ‘their kind’? Was it the imagining of rejections so vast and so wide that no earth can swallow them? (more…)

(Dearest) Hajira,

I am writing to inform you (regretfully) that you will never be a doctor. Today, when I came to your house by chance (because you saw me passing on your street and I will always remember how I heard a delighted “hi” – you were imitating what I had said while meeting and leaving last time – and looked up and there on the rooftop, your energetic, eager, bespectacled face) and met your brother and asked him if you would work later, he shook his head quite firmly and said that it was out of the question. (more…)