Munaeem's Blog

My grandfather never came to Pakistan. When partition split the subcontinent in 1947 and my father crossed the border to build a life in what would become a new country, his father stayed. The land in Bihar held him. He tilled it until the end, died on it, and was buried in it. He never left India. He never left the farm. My father graduated from Patna University, built a career, raised a family in Karachi. But he carried that image his whole life: his own father, back in Bihar, still farming the same stubborn soil, in a country that was no longer his. I grew up with that story at the edge of every conversation. I did not fully understand what it meant then. I understand it now. And what I understand troubles me deeply. A piece by [Neha Timande](paste her URL here), published recently on Medium, brought the Beed hysterectomy crisis to wider attention. These were women in Maharashtra's sugarcane belt removing their uteruses before harvest season to stay employable. Her reporting was...