Delhi Noir
Page 26
madarchod: motherfucker.
mai: female domestic worker.
mai-baap: mother-father; colloquial, benefactor.
mandir: temple.
marg: street.
masala dosa: south Indian dish consisting of a thin rice-flour pancakes wrapped around potatoes.
Mataji: Mother (respectful).
matthi: salty fried snack made of flour.
mixie: blender.
muhalla: neighborhood.
mundu: cotton garment worn around the waist; akin to a lungi.
namaste: Hindu greeting of respect; literally, I bow to you.
namkeen: salty snacks.
neem: Azadirachta indica, a fast-growing tree in the mahogany family.
Narmada Bachao Andolan: An NGO that opposes the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built on the Narmada River.
nimboo: lime.
niwas: residence.
NRI: nonresident Indian.
nullah: large open drain; stream.
paan: betel nut.
paise: monetary denomination less than a rupee.
pakora: snack fried in chickpea flour batter.
pallu: end of a sari.
PCO: public call office; a place to make local phone calls.
prasadam: edible Hindu blessing.
pudiya: twisted pieces of paper that are used to store small things.
pucca, pukka: full, complete; certain.
qawwali: form of Sufidevotional music.
randi: prostitute.
rangbaz: colorful character.
rehvaasi: resident.
roti: bread; food.
rudraksha: berries from a Elaeocarpus ganitrus tree used to make special prayer beads.
SHO: station house officer.
saab, sahab, saheb, sahib: a superior; during colonial times, a white man; South Asian term of respect meaning sir, master, or lord.
saaf karo: clean it up.
saali: wife’s sister.
saas: mother-in-law.
sabzi: vegetable.
sabziwallah: vegetable seller.
salaam: Muslim greeting.
salwar: baggy pants.
sandow: sleeveless undershirt popularized by the early-twentieth-century strongman Eugen Sandow.
Sardar: man who practices Sikhism.
Sardarni: woman who practices Sikhism.
sari: female clothing garment consisting of five yards of fabric.
satya: truth.
shaitan: devil; colloquially, naughty.
shamiana: large, often luxurious tent for a celebration.
shikar: hunt.
shradh: in Hinduism, the name of the ceremonies performed by relatives of the dead.
sidey: sidekick.
surahi: round earthen pitcher with a long neck.
tandoor: drum-shaped clay oven.
thakur: landowner.
thana: police station.
theek hai: it’s okay.
thulla: traffic policeman; fat slob.
tiffin: container in which a meal can be packed.
vaid: practitioner of ayurvedic medicine.
veshya: prostitute; whore.
wala, wallah: suffix indicating an association with some type of activity.
yaar: friend; dude; man.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
OMAIR AHMAD is the author of a novel, Encounters, a novella, The Storyteller’s Tale, and a collection of short stories, Unbelonging. He studied at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and has worked as a journalist and policy analyst.
HARTOSH SINGH BAL trained as an engineer and a mathematician before turning to journalism. He is coauthor of A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel and is currently working on a travelogue set along the Narmada River.
NALINAKSHA BHATTACHARYA has published three novels and some short fiction in India and the U.K. A civil servant by profession, he has lived for more than twenty years in R.K. Puram, where his story “Hissing Cobras” is set.
SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY is the author of Diksha at St. Martin’s and Patna Roughcut. He studied English Literature at Zakir Husain and Hindu Colleges in Delhi University (1993–98). In 2007, he held the Charles Wallace Fellowship in Creative Writing at University of Stirling in Scotland. He currently lives in Delhi and works in the publishing industry. “Hostel” is taken from his forthcoming novel, Dayscholar.
RADHIKA JHA, born in Delhi in 1970, is the author of Smell and The Elephant and the Maruti. She has received the Prix Guerlain and writes and performs Odissi dancing. She has also worked for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, where she started up the Interact Project to educate children of the victims of terrorism in different parts of India. She now lives in Tokyo with her husband and two children.
RUCHIR JOSHI, a writer and filmmaker, lived in Delhi from 1997 to 2007. Joshi’s first novel, The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, was published in Britain, India, Australia, and France to critical acclaim. His films include the award-winning documentaries Eleven Miles, Memories of Milk City, and Tales from Planet Kolkata. Joshi is now taking a break from Delhi and spending his time between Calcutta and London.
TABISH KHAIR was born and educated in Bihar, the Indian state that provides Delhi with much of its “migrant labor.” He has worked as a staff reporter for the Times of India in Delhi, and he continues to visit the city regularly. A poet, novelist, and critic, Khair’s latest book is the novel Filming: A Love Story.
PALASH KRISHNA MEHROTRA was educated at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and Balliol College, Oxford. He has two forthcoming books—Eunuch Park, a story collection, and The Penguin Book of Schooldays, an anthology—and is currently working on a nonfiction book on India called Th e Butterfly Generation. He writes a column for the Delhi tabloid Mail Today.
MEERA NAIR grew up in five different states in India before coming to America in 1997. She is the author of Video: Stories, which won the Asian American Literary Award in 2003. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and NPR. She is currently finishing a new novel. Her earliest memory of Delhi is of a predawn bus ride. A fellow traveler, shaken awake, let loose a string of Punjabi profanities. He was about five.
MANJULA PADMANABHAN, born in 1953, is a writer and artist who lives part-time in Delhi. Her books include Hot Death, Cold Soup, Kleptomania, Getting Th ere, This Is Suki! and Hidden Fires. Harvest, her fifth play, won first prize in the 1997 Onassis Award for Theatre in Greece. She has illustrated twenty-four books for children including two of her own works, the novels Mouse Attack and Mouse Invaders.
UDAY PRAKASH writes poetry, fiction, and journalism and is also a filmmaker and translator. He has published four collections of poetry, eight collections of short stories, and three books of essays. His latest work to be translated into English is a novella entitled The Girl with the Golden Parasol. He began living in Delhi in 1975 and stayed there until 2005, when he moved to nearby Ghaziabad.
HIRSH SAWHNEY has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Time Out New York, and Outlook Traveller. His parents migrated from Delhi to New York in the 1960s, and he moved to the Indian capital’s Green Park area in 2005. He splits his time between Delhi and Brooklyn and is working on his first novel.
IRWIN ALLAN SEALY is the author of the novels TheTrotter-Nama, Hero, The Everest Hotel, The Brainfever Bird, and Red, and a travel book, From Yukon to Yucatan. He is at work on a narrative poem set in Fatehpur Sikri, a conversation with the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Sealy is a graduate of Delhi University and lives in the foothills of the Himalayas.
MOHAN SIKKA currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. His story “Uncle Musto Take a Mistress” was published in One Story and won an O. Henry Award. He spent part of his childhood and teenage years in Delhi, where he lived in various railway colonies, including the one adjoining Paharganj depicted in his story “Railway Aunty.” Sikka is completing a story collection and planning a novel.
Also available from the Akashic Books Noir Series
PARIS NOIR
edited by Aurélien Masson
&
nbsp; 300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
All original stories from Paris’ finest authors, all translated from French.
Brand-new stories by: Didier Daeninckx, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Marc Villard, Chantal Pelletier, Patrick Pécherot, DOA, Hervé Prudon, Dominique Mainard, Salim Bachi, Jérôme Leroy, and others.
“Rarely has the City of Light seemed grittier than in this hard-boiled short story anthology, part of Akashic’s Noir Series … Th e twelve freshly penned pulp fictions by some of France’s most prominent practitioners play out in a kind of darker, parallel universe to the tourist mecca; visitors cross these pages at their peril …”
—Publishers Weekly
TRINIDAD NOIR
edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason
340 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Robert Antoni, Elizabeth Nunez, Lawrence Scott, Oonya Kempadoo, Ramabai Espinet, Shani Mootoo, Kevin Baldeosingh, elisha efua bartels, Tiphanie Yanique, Willi Chen, and others.
“For sheer volume, few—anywhere—can beat [V.S.] Naipaul’s prodigious output. But on style, the writers in the Trinidadian canon can meet him eye to eye … Trinidad is no one-trick pony, literarily speaking.”
—Coeditor Lisa Allen-Agostini in the New York Times
HAVANA NOIR
edited by Achy Obejas
360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Leonardo Padura, Pablo Medina, Carolina García-Aguilera, Ena Lucía Portela, Miguel Mejides, Arnaldo Correa, Alex Abella, Moisés Asís, Lea Aschkenas, and others.
“A remarkable collection … Throughout these eighteen stories, current and former residents of Havana—some well-known, some previously undiscovered—deliver gritty tales of depravation, depravity, heroic perseverance, revolution, and longing in a city mythical and widely misunderstood.”
—Miami Herald
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of Shamus Award, Anthony Award, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award; finalist for Edgar Award, Pushcart Prize.
Brand-new stories by: Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Ellen Miller, Nelson George, Nicole Blackman, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, and others.
“Brooklyn Noir is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can’t believe you haven’t read an anthology like this before. But trust me—you haven’t … Th e writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come.”
—Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards
LOS ANGELES NOIR
edited by Denise Hamilton
360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*A Los Angeles Times best seller and winner of an Edgar Award.
Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Diana Wagman, and others.
“Akashic is making an argument about the universality of noir; it’s sort of flattering, really, and Los Angeles Noir, arriving at last, is a kaleidoscopic collection filled with the ethos of noir pioneers Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
ISTANBUL NOIR
edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler
300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Müge Iplikçi, Behçet Çelik, Ismail Güzelsoy, Lydia Lunch, Hikmet Hükümenoglu, Riza Kiraç, Sadik Yemni, Baris Müstecaplioglu, Yasemin Aydinoglu, Feryal Tilmaç, and others.
“Istanbul straddles the divide of Europe and Asia, and its polyglot population of twelve million seethes with political, religious, and sexual tensions, as shown in the sixteen stories in this strong entry in Akashic’s noir anthology series … A welcome complement to the mostly historical mysteries set in Istanbul.” —Publishers Weekly
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOOKS
Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009 www.akashicbooks.com, info@akashicbooks.com
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $12 to each book ordered.)
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
PART I: WITH YOU, FOR YOU, ALWAYS
OMAIR AHMAD
Yesterday Man
RADHIKA JHA
How I Lost My Clothes
IRWIN ALLAN SEALY
Last In, First Out
RUCHIR JOSHI
Parking
NALINAKSHA BHATTACHARYA
Hissing Cobras
PART II: YOUNGISTAN
MOHAN SIKKA
The Railway Aunty
SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY
Hostel
MEERA NAIR
Small Fry
PALASH KRISHNA MEHROTRA
Fit of Rage
HARTOSH SINGH BAL
Just Another Death
PART III: WALLED CITY, WORLD CITY
HIRSH SAWHNEY
Gautam Under a Tree
TABISH KHAIR
The Scam
UDAY PRAKASH
The Walls of Delhi: (Translated from Hindi by Jason Grunebaum)
MANJULA PADMANABHAN
Cull
Glossary
About the Contributors