My Life-Giving Ganges

Jameela Nishat (b.1955) is a significant presence in contemporary Urdu literature and has published three collections of poetry Lava (2000), Lamhe ki Aankh (2002) and Lams Ki Sawghat and has edited Inkeshaf, an anthology of Deccan women writers.

Her poems are so revolutionary that she first chose to be published in Urdu-English (Lava). Her second book, Lamhe ki Ankh, published in Urdu has been translated for the first time in Contemporary idiom by Hoshang Merchant, a sensitive poet in his own right and known for his translation of women's poetry.

Born in 1947 to a Zoroastrian family in Bombay, Hoshang Merchant was educated at St. Xaviers College, Bombay, Occidental College, Los Angeles and obtained his Ph. D. from Purdue University, Indiana. He is the author of 13 collections of poetry. He has written In-discretions: Anis Nin and was the first person to edit an Indian gay anthology Yarana: Gay Writing in India.

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