Ma is Scared

<p>Born in 1978 Anjali Kajal is a short story writer originally from Ludhiana Punjab. Kajal has been writing short stories for over twenty years. her first story Itihaas (History) published in 1999 in the renowned Hindi monthly magazine Hans and went on to be translated into several other languages. her stories have since been published in popular literary magazines and one Sailab has been adapted for the stage. Anjali's stories tend to explore women's lives and caste-based discrimination in India. <br><br>Kavita Bhanot is a writer researcher translator teacher and organiser. Her fiction non-fiction and academic writing has been published widely including the influential essay Decolonise not Diversify. She is the editor of three short story collections. including<i> Too Asian not Asian Enough</i> (2011) along with <i>Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation </i>(2022). <i>Ma is Scared</i> her translation of Anjali Kajal's stories won a 2021 Pen Translates Award. her first novel won the third prize in the SI Leeds Literary Prize. She founds and directs Literature Must Fall and Jaag: Panjabi and Pahari-Pothwari Language and Literature Festival. Kavita teaches Creative writing at Birmingham University.</p> <p>An anxious mother waits for her daughter to return from work while deflecting comments from judgmental neighbours. A chance encounter with an old college friend triggers the memory of a cruel trap once set for a young student just because of her caste. In the middle of a lecture on the legacies of sexual abuse a woman feels the weight of a whole lifetime suddenly pressing down on her.<br><br>The stories in Anjali Kajal’s debut collection draw us into the lives of ordinary women in Northern India making us realise quite how rarely we witness these experiences from Dalit points of view.<br>Whether combating the caste-based disdain of colleagues at work or in the classroom or enduring the new blows that the pandemic landed on Dalit communities Anjali’s characters find a resilience and a<br>dignity that we can all learn from.</p> <p>These stories are about small normal and tender things in women’s life in India. In India this small isinvisible normal is abnormalised and tender is mocked. In their own ways these stories arerevolutionary.’<br>— Yogesh Maitreya</p>