The South African Indian diaspora is one of the largest population of Indians outside India -ZP Dala
Channel: Orange City Literature Festival
Date: 24/05/2021

Zainab Priya Dala (South Africa) - The South African Indian diaspora is one of the largest population of Indians outside India In Conversation with Drishti Sharma

Zainab Priya Dala is a qualified physiotherapist, educational psychologist and full-time writer.
* Her debut novel, “What About Meera” was published in 2015 by Penguin Random House South Africa. The novel won first prize in the Minara Literary Awards, was longlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Awards, and longlisted for the Etisalat Prize, UAE. It was also named one of the Top Ten African Novels of 2015 by Afridiaspora.com.
* She has published short stories and articles in the literary fiction genre in various newspapers and magazines in South Africa, including The Natal Witness, Marie Claire, and Elle Magazine.
* She has been second prize winner in the 2012 True Stories of KwaZulu Natal.
* Zainab has also been published in the Sentinel Literary Journal, Nigeria, has been featured in Saraba Magazine, Nigeria, and won first prize in the Annual Short Story Competition, Texas, USA.
* She publishes opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Daily Maverick, The Post and The Guardian.
* Zainab has published an investigative journalism contribution to the book: “Chatsworth, The Making of a South African Township.”
* Zainab hails from the very world she richly describes in her novels. The rural sugar plantations, the tiny villages are the places of her history and lineage.
* Her second novel, entitled “THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOSS has acquired World English rights, and was published in 2017 by Pegasus, New York on 4 July 2017 in the United States and United Kingdom.
* The novel has also been published in India and South Asia by Speaking Tiger Books
* The novel has been mentioned as one of the top twenty reads of 2017 by the New York Public Library.
* She was awarded an Honorary Fellow in Writing, International Writers Program, University of Iowa (2016)
* Zainab has worked with an Iraqi writer based in Seattle on the translations and script for a short film that was presented at the 2017 Dubai International Film Festival
* Published poetry anthology entitled The Goodwill Manor (2018). MicroMega Publishers
* Published essay collection “What Gandhi Didn’t See: being Indian in South Africa” (2018). Speaking Tiger Books
* Zainab was the key stakeholder in securing UNESCO City of Literature Designation for Durban, thus securing mentorship from all member cities internationally. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief of the Inaugural Edition of The Durban Review, Women’s Anthology Series entitled “Drumbeats: Writings from Women of Africa”

The biggest test, I think, I confronted was arranging the evident and bogus security of being an Indian instead of a Black kid, and viewing a large number of my locale acknowledge the Trilateral System, which was a methods conceived by the decision of White government to give a spot in Parliament to Indians, could see that the Indian people group were being given more advantages and admittance to fundamental human requirements when contrasted with the Black people group, and this injustice conflicted with my developmental thoughts of popular government.

It maddened me that numerous Indian individuals profited and lapped up these presents and enhanced themselves on a misguided feeling of decency. I felt that we were deceiving Nelson Mandela by our complicit acknowledgment of this better life, and when he was delivered, I trusted that the battlegrounds would be leveled. Yet, the further test at that point came for me when I saw that injustice appeared to again raise its head in that, once more, every Indian was being painted with a similar brush and taken a gander at by the Black people group as go getters and sell-outs.

South African-Indians today are truly changeable, as per the climate. They have consistently figured out how to keep a social personality that is firmly Indian, and with that comes religion. At the point when we are out there in social circumstances and working environments, we have built up this capacity to be chameleons, and fit ourselves into the mixture that is contemporary South African culture. However, in their own networks and homes, they are profoundly Indian in their lives and practices. It resembles we have these two lives, and we are continually zigzagging all around these two universes.

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