Shivangi > Recent Status Updates

convulsing at the images we are presented with

translator's note has all my heart :"))))

the last story did not work for me at all, i am perhaps not the right audience for it. I suppose it would make sense if Banu wrote it for an audience, believing she could sow seeds of such thinking... but the undertone of passivity really repulsed me at some point, which is a reaction worth interrogating. it feels lacking, perhaps. Not that this cannot be a real story, but unsure what the reader is to do with it.

Arabic teacher and Gobi manchuri... feels like Banu's story. T and I have often laughed about Blr's obsession with the dish and was very loudly amused at the initial parts of the story, and then shocked at how deceptive appearances can be. why are men.

shroud is... "900 chuhey khaa kar billi hajj ko chali".

A taste of heaven had some delightful writing on the most common story of desi households - simple explanations of women's anger, that bursts like a volcano and takes everyone by surprise. Second half does take one by surprise, as Bi-Dadi emerges from silence and erasure, and lapses into a tragi-comedy that one does not see coming.

Soft whispers is such a sweet portrait of a childhood, if only superficially. In revisiting a memory drenched in emotions of all kinds, Banu also opens it up for us by giving us an unfiltered narration of events. Certain small details added such depth to this nuanced representation,
"Ammi contorted her face, wrinkled her nose, and tried to scold me for my laziness with her eyes".

High-heeled shoe lost its plot for me. Naseema's trope wore me out fairly quickly, and although the story unfolds layers of familial relationships panning out the way they do, it does not finish its trail of thought? Arifa's story emerging from the periphery does jolt the reader, but it does not lead anywhere? not even the kind of thud that most other stories so far have.