For our October 2024 Brownbag event, Religious Studies is excited to welcome Zara Chowdhary to read from and discuss her recently published memoir The Lucky Ones. Open to all!
Date: Friday, October 18th
Time: 12:15PM – 1:15PM
Location: Religious Studies Conference Room (Bradley Memorial Building Room 332), 1225 Linden Dr. Madison, Wisconsin, 53706.
About The Lucky Ones: THE LUCKY ONES is a moving memoir by a survivor of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India that delicately weaves political and family histories in a tribute to her country’s unique Islamic heritage.
In 2002, Zara Chowdhary was sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India’s fastest-growing cities, when a gruesome train fire claimed the lives of sixty Hindu passengers. The country’s long-simmering Hindu-Muslim tensions ignited into a three-month violent siege across Gujarat. One day, Zara was a bright teenager preparing for her school exams and making plans for her future, and the next she found herself under lockdown at home with her family, fearing for their lives as Hindu neighbors, friends, and members of civil society transformed overnight into bloodthirsty mobs. The chief minister of the state at the time, Narendra Modi, was later accused of fomenting the massacre, and yet a decade later, rose to become India’s prime minister.
THE LUCKY ONES entwines lost histories across a subcontinent, examines forgotten myths, prods at family’s secrets, and gazes unflinchingly back at a country rushing to move past the biggest pogrom in its modern history. With stunning clarity, we witness the violence through Zara’s teenage eyes, and how she and her family struggle through while locked down in their home for months. Zara also weaves in her present-day perspective as she uncovers what really happened across Gujarat in those horrific weeks and tells the stories of victims—stories that have become legendary among Indian Muslims even as they’ve been suppressed by Hindu nationalist political forces. With Modi poised to win re-election and the “world’s largest democracy” hurtling toward cacophonous Hindu nationalism, these stories need to be heard.
About the Author: Zara Chowdhary is a writer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin. She has an MFA in creative writing and environment from Iowa State University and a master’s in writing for performance from the University of Leeds. She has previously written for documentary television, advertising, and film. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her partner, child, and two cats.