Rukhsana Nazeen

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will creatively express the experiences of the everyday impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bidar through a series of Afsaanche - very short, paragraph length stories in Urdu – and its digital exploration in the audio format. Rukhsana Nazeen is the Coordinator for this project.

Rukhsana is an Urdu writer and homemaker living in the old city of Bidar, in Hyderabad-Karnataka culturally known as the Dakkhani region. Since 1992, when the publisher Mashriqi Dulhan in New Delhi published her short story Muskura Uthi Hayaat, she has published works in a range of literary and colloquial forms including  four authored books (Afsaanvi Majmua), 25 Taviil-mukhtasar Afsaana (Novelette), 150 Afsaane (short stories) and 30 Afsaancha (very short stories). Rukhsana has studied till the seventh standard at Gawan Primary Urdu School, Bidar, and has been exploring Afsaanche in ‘aam Urdu’ which can be accessible to a wider readership. Although new to the English language and digital technologies, as the Coordinator of this project, Rukhsana will take the help of her son Junaid Mehsan and her artistic collaborator Shreyas Srivatsa, Director and Network Co-ordinator of Living Labs Network, a place-based research organisation with a regional focus on Dakkhani region, working out of Bidar and Bangalore. Given her experience is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

Afsaancha has recently emerged as a literary art form in Urdu. As very short stories, they are not more than a paragraph in length. (While Afsaancha is the name of the literary form, its plural is Afsaanche.) This form emerged in Urdu literature as a result of the short attention span of the readers due to the information boom on the internet. Thus this project is an exploration in language and semantic economy at a time of distracting media environment. It can also be seen as a resistance by the literary arts against the tyranny of the accelerated visual media, including mobile screens.

This project will derive elements for the stories from social media, local newspapers, personal encounters and experiences from the civic society organisations. Through these stories, Rukhsana wants to unearth the untold narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic, that include humanitarian actions, ill-equipped systems, disruptions to everyday life, vaccine hesitancy and so on. As the pandemic is not over, the explorations in Afsaanche will be a reminder to invoke emotions of kindness and compassion among the readers as well as give them hope. The project will also explore making audio podcasts of these stories to make Urdu literature available to the listeners who understand spoken Urdu, but cannot read the language. This digital endeavour will also open up possibilities for writers in Bidar and other small towns.

The outcome of the project will be the series of Afsaanche and podcasts. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the Afsaanche and the audio files of the podcasts. Project funds will pay for honorarium, professional fees, website domain and hosting.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to foreground explorations in a new literary form in Urdu from the Dakkhani region, its experiments with the articulation of hyperlocal everyday experiences in Bidar of the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic; and use of audio technology to make literature more accessible.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.