Known Turf Bantering With Bandits And Other True Tales

Known Turf is a collection of essays that slides between
genres, moving from reportage to travel to memoir
and back. The author recounts her experiences as a
reporter covering stories as diverse as the decline of the
dacoit in Chambal, hunger, female foeticide, and the
seeming resurgence of Sufism in Punjab. She goes on
to explore starvation, particularly amongst a primitive
tribal community in Madhya Pradesh and weavers in
Uttar Pradesh, and the ugly failures that permit such
extremes of hunger in a nation that is more than able to
feed itself. The discovery of desperate poverty in Punjab
comes pegged to an explosive caste dynamic that has
caused much religious controversy in recent times.
The book is unflinching as it makes the connections
between economic, crippling social disempowerment
and the moral pressures that make for a society where
millions of girls are killed at, or before, birth.
However it is the stories of humble folk—tortured by
hunger, discriminated against for reasons of caste, or
gender—that linger.
The stories span a massive range from little
bus and road journeys with engaging portraits,
to child hunger, debt, bondage, untouchability,
religious tension and conflict
and crimes against women. Above all, it is the
quality of the story-telling that grips you.’
–P. Sainath

About the Author
Annie Zaidi’s first collection of love poems, Crush, was
published in 2007. Her work has been anthologized in
21 under 40, a collection of short stories. She is a professional
journalist and lives in Mumbai