From the best-selling author of My
Seditious Heart and The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a...pressing dispatch from
the heart of the crowd and the solitude of the writer's desk.
The chant of
"Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of
the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the
Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions
on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.
Even as Arundhati
Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a
chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but
all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more
terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international
borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern
world to a halt like nothing else ever could.
In this series of
electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the
meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.
The essays include
meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role
of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.
The pandemic, she
says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness
and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the
human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.