Cover Story | Freedom Issue 2022
Ten Mutually-Contradictory Counterfactuals
Poem
Akhil Katyal
|
11 Aug, 2022
(Illustration: Saurabh Singh)
1. In 1959, the country’s capital moves to Bangalore.
2. Mountbatten dies of dysentery in his second week in Delhi.
3. Ambedkar lives for another thirty years.
4. Thomas Roe gets nothing from Jahangir.
5. Zia’s plane crashes in ’77 instead of ’88.
6. The RSS ban is never lifted.
7. Manto stays put in Bombay.
8. They stop Indira from declaring the Emergency.
9. Godse misses all his three shots.
10. The crowd gathering around Babri is dispersed.
About The Author
Akhil Katyal is the author of Like Blood on the Bitten Tongue: Delhi Poems and co-editor of The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia
More Columns
Ishaan Khatter Goes Global Kaveree Bamzai
Inside the Gilded World of Bae in Mumbai Kaveree Bamzai
The Angel of History Makarand R Paranjape