Book: Known TurfAuthor: Annie ZaidiPublisher: TranquebarPages: 296 pagesPrice: Rs250

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Call it a collection of reports from a journalist’s diary or snapshots from a personal album or a zooming in on the phantasmagoria that is India, Known Turf will appeal to different readers for different reasons.

For instance, anyone who has braved the railways without a confirmed reservation will get cathartic pleasure reading Zaidi’s graphic account of sitting on the corner of a seat, at a 45 degrees angle, with an RAC (Reservation against cancellation) ticket in a train to Lucknow. “That night I finally understood what it means to be a migrant in a big city,” she observes, finding in her uncomfortable journey a metaphor for the homeless.

“To have no place to sleep in peace because everywhere you look, all space is already taken. Booked. Bought. Taken over. Even the aisles were not mine to lie down in. They were public spaces; ‘common’ spaces. Whatever it is for, however ‘common’, it is not yours.”

From metaphors to reality — as a journalist establishing ‘her turf’, Zaidi has journeyed to the heart of India, to report on the unbelievably hard lives of villagers and tribals in uncared for regions. Several trips to the interiors of Madhya Pradesh made her discover  shocking infant mortality cases, the non-implementation of ‘Below Poverty Line’ projects, pathetically-run anganwadis, badly-executed ‘Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes’, and the tragic repercussions of displacement of forest-dwellers.

Writing about the latter, she concludes, “Displacement… is a very inadequate word that conveys nothing of its true meaning. Displacement is not about moving…(It) is about losing a river. Losing access to clean, safe, drinking water…losing land that is watered richly…losing the grass that your herds grazed on. Losing your cattle. Losing the milk that came from your cattle…losing honey and herbs…losing the right to protest when somebody in a uniform shows up to set fire to your home. What else was left to lose?”

Those involved with ‘development’ would do well to read this book. In stark contrast, is the cushy understanding that some prosperous, well-connected industrialists of Punjab have with the powers that be. Zaidi found, to her utter astonishment, that owners of stretch limousines escaped repaying the state crores of rupees by taking advantage of a cleverly-worded ‘One-Time-Settlement Scheme’ that allowed them to pay back only 10 per cent of the loans they had availed of. “Yet, their houses weren’t locked up and they didn’t have to go looking for community land to relieve themselves,” remarks Zaidi, caustically.

Equally moving is Zaidi’s search for her personal identity. “Since I watched Ramayan and Mahabharat every Sunday on Doordarshan, I knew more about Ram and Krishna than I did about mosques or Babar or even Mohammad. Nobody at home had ever said that one should know more about one than the other…Whenever I listen to the things people say about Muslims — filthy, uneducated, backward, lazy, dogmatic, violent, terrorists, unpatriotic — I think of my grandparents. My grandfather had been a freedom fighter and a poet…Ma and her siblings went to English-medium schools as long as he could afford it, and nobody was forced to learn Urdu or Arabic…Everybody read…Everybody argued passionately about everything. None of the women wore burqas…Nobody dropped out of school. Nobody killed anyone.

“And here we are now, living in a world where one half wants to kill you if you don’t were burqas and the other half thinks you deserve to die if you do.”

Displacement, religious dilemmas, the plight of Dalits in Punjab (some of whom are given opium husk as wages), Sufism, feminist movements, the battle for survival of the once-famed weavers of Benaras, or even the exquisite pleasure of drinking a cup of perfectly-brewed chai — Zaidi combines the skills of a sharp journalist, poetic genes and the virtues of a liberal upbringing to write on a range of subjects with accuracy, fervour and tremendous feeling.