Lucknow (Women’s Feature Service) – Nasreen, 32, does not have a second name. A few years ago she had no income either. All that this purdah-clad mother-of-four had was a little experience in stitching. Like countless other Muslim women from conservative homes in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, Nasreen, too, was forbidden to step out of her home. Despite living in crushing poverty she was not allowed to look for work to chip in and make things better. For a long time she struggled on but when it became a matter of life and death, Nasreen decided to take some tough decisions. “I decided to defy everyone in my family and grabbed the first job that was offered to me,” she says.

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In her Urdu short story, “Ujli Subah Ka Anjam,” (The Fate of a Bright Morn), author Ayesha Siddiqui concerns herself with a woman who wakes up fresh and sparkling but due to wrongs suffered by her during the day, becomes a wreck by the time the sun sets.

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Little girls and dolls are synonymous. They are the best of friends all over the world except perhaps in Jaunpur in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In Jaunpur, these dolls meet a horrifying fate at the hands of little boys.

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