Translated short fiction: Malka Begum is not impressed by what she sees on a trip to Delhi

“Good sister, let me come in too.”

The voice was heard from the veranda and, wiping her hands with the hem of her kurta, a girl came into the room. Among all her acquaintances, Malka Begum was the first to have sat in a train, and what was more she had travelled all the way from Faridabad to Delhi for a day. All the women from her neighbourhood had gathered to hear her tell the tale of her journey.

“Ai hai, come in if you must. Frankly I am tired of telling this tale over and over again. May Allah forgive me if I am lying but I must have told it hundreds of times by now. I sat on a train and travelled from here to Delhi. When we reached there, we met some wretched Station Master who was known to him. He left me with the luggage and disappeared with his friend while I sat there, wrapped in my burqa, atop our belongings.

“There I was in my wretched burqa and then there were all those God-awful good-for-nothing men! Men, in any case, are awful creatures and when they see a woman sitting alone they begin circling around her like birds of...

Read more