India and the Indian: A Traitor's Testimony, and Séance in Kashmir

This essay is part of Firstpost’s ‘India and the Indian’ series, which examines the renewed idea of nationalism in vogue today, and what it means.

Read more from this series .

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A traitor’s testimony

by Malathi Maithri

I’m a traitor who speaks in her mother-tongue

I’m a traitor who eats beef

I’m a traitor who does not worship Hindu Gods

I’m a traitor who refuses to return to the old religion

I’m a traitor who loves a man of another religion

I’m a traitor who refuses to sleep with her husband

I’m a traitor who does not give birth to five children

I’m a traitor who refuses to kill her lovers

I’m a traitor who will not chant Bharat Mata ki Jai when a Dalit sister is paraded naked

I’m a traitor who declines to murder a brother in the crusades to save the cow

I’m a traitor who will not donate to fund a religious riot

I’m a traitor who will not scream for the deportation of those who embrace Islam

I’m a traitor who says do not destroy the forests

I’m a traitor who says do not destroy the mountains

I’m a traitor who says do not poison the seas

I’m a traitor who says do not loot the rivers

I’m a traitor who is against nuclear reactors

This is how I became a traitor

This is how I became anti-Indian

— Translated into English by Meena Kandasamy

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Illustration © Namaah K for Firstpost

Séance in Kashmir 

by Aditi Angiras

fractured like a plaster

frescoed into the valley

red like corridors

stained with lichens

the nights glow green

hope hides its wickerwork

in a kanger burning

like shikaras in the sky

the water is the vehicle

to hunchbacked histories

the florist delivers

old floating homes

to rows of white lilies

sharing coup and supper

with gentlemen deodar trees

the eyes of young boys

move black mirrors to stones

echoes stand silent

at street corners to watch

tanks turn transparent

spilled like a shiver

we wrestle their laughter

shuffle photographs

captured unfocused like

half-remembered dreams

ghosts jump into jackets

calibrated memories

listen in unspoken tongues

kohl smudged like a border

on the heads of praying mats

— From ‘A Map Called Home’