Bread, Cement, Cactus
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David talks to the writer Annie Zaidi, winner of the Nine Dots Prize, about her remarkable memoir of life in India and the search for identity. It's s story of conflict, migration, belonging and the idea of home. We also discuss what home means for Indians now the country is under lockdown and Annie tells us how life is in Mumbai.
*The sound is not great, we are sorry. It is nicer to listen through speakers than on headphones*
Further Reading and listening:
Annie Zaidi's book
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/bread-cement-cactus/75DCB40487D5CD8DCB772761555CF10C
Nine Dots Prize
Annie Zaidi speaks to Qudsiya Ahmad, Head of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press India
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/gallery/video/nine-dots-prize-winner-annie-zaidi-indian-society
Guardian article about the Indian migration caused by lock-down
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name's David Ransman and this is Talking Politics. Today's extra episode is with |
| 0:09.1 | Annie Zaidie. She's a writer based in Mumbai and she has just won the Nine Dots Prize with a |
| 0:15.8 | remarkable book about home, belonging and identity in India. |
| 0:27.1 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, |
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| 1:17.9 | Just before I talk to Annie, I want to say a little bit about the nine dots prize, I should declare an interest. I am one of the judges. It's a prize that asks a question, and this |
| 1:23.5 | year the question was, is there still no place like home? To enter, people have to write a |
| 1:29.6 | 3,000 word essay, and the winning entry gets to turn that essay into a book. All of the essays |
| 1:36.1 | are anonymous, so we don't know when we're judging it, who it is who's going to win. And it |
| 1:41.1 | turned out that the winner this year, for her essay about her life in India is the |
| 1:46.2 | writer Annie Zaidi based in Mumbai. I called up with Annie last week. We asked her to turn off her |
| 1:54.5 | fan while we recorded this. It's really hot there. So she opened the window. I'm sure you'll |
| 2:00.5 | understand that there's a little bit of |
| 2:02.1 | interference, but most of it is the noise of Mumbai outside, the birds and the tuk-tooks and the |
| 2:07.8 | street life. Annie, maybe we should start by you telling people where you are, what situation |
| 2:14.4 | you're in. Literally, where are you, where are you sitting? I am sitting in my mother's |
| 2:20.8 | apartment in Mumbai, or rather on the outskirts of Mumbai. It's a little outside Mumbai, this place. |
... |
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