Vultures

Gujarat 1964. The agrarian system of renewable annual contract mandates fulltime labour on the houses and farms of landlords. In these bleak circumstances Iso a tanner by birth graduates from being a child labourer to an adult serf on the estate of Mavaji. His life is one of humiliation hunger and drudgery and the only respite comes in the form of Diwali Mavaji's daughter. Between them exists a physical relationship that is shrouded in secrecy shame and fear. Even as Iso creates distance between them a chance encounter turns to violence and tragedy and he faces the brutal sword of caste patriarchy. Based on the blood-curdling murder of a Dalit boy by Rajput landlords in Kodaram village in 1964 Vultures portrays a feudal society structured around caste-based relations and social segregation in which Dalit lives and livelihoods are torn to pieces by upper-caste vultures. The deft use of dialect graphic descriptions and translator Hemang Ashwinkumar's lucid telling throw sharp focus on the fragmented world of a mofussil village in Gujarat much of which remains unchanged even today. About the Author Dalpat Chauhan is a veteran Gujarati Dalit writer waiting to be discovered by the non-Gujarati readership academia and world literary cultures. Chauhan's work unfolds at the intersection of social and literary movements that the Dalits of Gujarat waged in 1970s and 80s. While his activism led him to actively associate with the Gujarat Dalit Panthers (1974) and Dalit Sangharsh Sangh (1982) the radical little magazines likeKalo Suraj (The Black Sun)Akrosh (Outrage) andSarvanam (Pronoun) that he edited served to pioneer the Dalit Literary Movement in Gujarati. Between 1982 and 1985 when Gujarat burned with anti-reservation riots Chauhan brought out anthologies of Dalit Poetry little magazines and investigative booklets that condemned atrocities on Dalits and questioned Government reports on them. Due to his untiring literary activism Gujarati Dalit literature could chalk out a radical literary manifesto in 1987 sealing the boundaries of its definition and functions for future generations of Dalit writers.Hemang Ashwinkumar is a bi-lingual poet translator editor and critic working in Gujarati and English. His poetry and translations have appeared in places likeWorld Literature TodayIndian LiteratureNew QuestCerebrationKitaabMaple Tree Literary SupplementMarg The Four Quarters MagazineIndian Cultural ForumThe Beacon Out of PrintGuftuguMuseindia etc. read in literary festivals like HLF SIWE Piccolo Museo della Poesia etc. and translated in Maithili Italian and Greek. Hemang has rendered into English the literary works of a number of eminent Gujarati writers like Gulammohammed Sheikh Himanshi Shelat Nazir Mansuri Mona Patrawala Babu Suthar Dalpat Chauhan Kanji Patel Piyush Thakkar Manisha Joshi Rajesh Pandya Rajendra Patel etc. He has also rendered world poets like Forough Farrokhzad Mahmoud Darwish Adam Zagajewsky Abdellatif Laabi and others into Gujarati. From Indian languages he has brought into Gujarati works of Arun Kolatkar Dilip Chitre Nabarun Bhattacharya Varvara Rao Hemant Divate and other contemporary Marathi poets. He has published around twenty-five academic research papers guided five doctoral research students and completed three research projects funded by different funding agencies. He works at Central University of Gujarat.