Jostling with Borders: Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

Abstract

Anita Rau Badami masters the art of ambivalence in her writing. Through a performance of uncanny in-betweenness indebted to Bhabha’s “politics of polarity,” the narrative spins its way from comedy into mongrel degeneration. The unsuspecting reader slowly comes face-to-face with a lot more than s/he bargained for: a carnival of horrors composed of South Asian communalism and global terrorism, all of which turn up on his front doorstep demanding recognition.