Title: Homes Without Windows
Author: Chandu Maheria
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Juggernaut
Cost: Rs 699

Gujarati writer Chandu Maheria’s new book Homes Without Windows (Juggernaut), translated into English by Hemant Ashwinkumar, is an honest account of what it meant to grow up as a Dalit boy in the working-class suburb of Rajpur in Gujarat. We learn how several Dalit families left their villages after independence to settle in parts of Ahmedabad. Through 11 essays, Maheria helps readers draw a brief history of caste politics in Gujarat: from aggression in schools of the Khadol village in the 1960s, to the anti-reservation riots and the growing consciousness of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s ideology across the state in the 1980s.

The writer explores the dynamics of caste politics in context to the ideologies of national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Ambedkar