Zeyad Masroor Khan was four years old when he realized that an innocent act of clicking a switch near a window overlooking the street could trigger a riot. As the distant thud of a crowd grew closer and calls for murder rent the air, he got his first taste of growing up in Upar Kot, a Muslim ghetto in Aligarh.

Khan’s world was far-removed from the Aligarh of popular imagination-of poets, tehzeeb and the intellectual corridors of the Aligarh Muslim University. His was a city where serpentine lanes simmered with violence, homes fervently prayed to dispel the omnipresent fear of a family member turning up dead, and the soft breeze that blew over crowded terraces carried rumours of a bloodthirsty mob on the prowl.

In his coming-of-age memoir, Khan writes, with searing honesty and raw power, about the undercurrents of religious violence and the ensuing ‘othering’ that followed him everywhere he went.


Format Inbunden Omfång 312 sidor Språk Engelska Förlag HarperCollins India Utgivningsdatum 2023-12-06 ISBN 9789356998247