Neerja Mattoo Boeken

For the first time, The Mystic and the Lyric brings together the classic work of four women poets from Kashmir who have shaped its literary imagination: Lalded, Habba Khatun, Arnimal, and Rupa Bhavani. These women inhabit not just the collective memory of Kashmiris and Kashmir but are part of the land’s living oral tradition. Folk singers begin their performances with Lalded’s vaakhs (quatrains). Arnimal’s pain of unrequited love and Khatun’s complaints about her in-laws are ironic wedding vatsans or songs. Bhavani’s sites of meditation are now shrines where her vaakhs are chanted in annual celebrations. Central to the shaping of both the mystic and the lyric traditions of Kashmiri poetry, the work of these poets is unknown outside Kashmir. In this collection, Neerja Mattoo’s elegant translations introduce new readers to the beautiful living oral tradition of Kashmiri lyric poetry and give these revolutionary women the recognition they richly deserve.  

The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told spans almost a century of work by some of the finest writers of short fiction in the language. The storytellers included here range from the earliest practitioners of the craft of short story writing-Dinanath Nadim, Somnath Zutshi, Ali Mohammad Lone-to more contemporary writers like Dheeba Nazir. Some stories in this collection are realistic dramas that hold up a startlingly clear mirror to society, such as Sofi Ghulam Mohammad's 'Paper Tigers', or lay bare the pain of losing one's homeland, as Rattan Lal Shant does in 'Moss Floating on Water'. Then there are others like Ghulam Nabi Shakir's 'Unquenched Thirst' and Umesh Kaul's 'The Heart's Bondage', that look beyond the exterior and focus on the complex inner lives of the women of Kashmir. Selected and translated by Neerja Mattoo, the twenty-five stories in this volume, all born out of the Kashmiri experience, will resonate with readers everywhere.