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; due; 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.