Muntazir Imam

Journalist & Author

Muntazir Imam is an Indian journalist who is working with the editorial team of Gulf Today in Sharjah. Prior to joining the newspaper in 2007, he was an assistant editor of Page3 Tabloid in Delhi. He began his journalistic career in the mid-1990s in Bihar and wrote extensively for The Indian Nation, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph (Kolkata) and many other dailies and periodicals. He has covered numerous events of social, political and cultural importance. On one occasion, the External Service Division of All India Radio also broadcast his story. The Rashtriya Sahara (English Magazine), India Today – Hindi and Mid-Day, New Delhi also carried his stories in the late 1990s. Muntazir Imam has a master’s degree in English literature from Magadh University, Bodh Gaya. He gained his matriculation from V.M. High School, Gopalganj. Born and brought up in a remote village of Bihar, Muntazir Imam has observed the vibrancy of the region closely. His rural background exerts a great influence on his way of thinking.

The story begins in the early 1980s. Some readers of the Indian subcontinent may find in the pages of it the story of their villages. To feel the pulse of one such village, one will have to grow there. And not all the places are like the villages of my novel. A few years ago, in Munger, a news anchor distorted the name of a big leader, who is not less popular than all the existing top leaders of the subcontinent. This suggests that the practice of distorting the names still continues. When such a big leader, who lives in the hearts of tens of millions of people, is not spared by the prejudiced mind, what about the ordinary folks of the lowest strata of the society?

The early 1980s in a village called Dalmapur is seemingly perfect. But decades since the country attained its independence, vestiges of untouchability and caste-based discrimination still remain. Twelve-year-old Aryali, born in a family of cobblers, is not spared from the prejudices. As an illiterate boy belonging to a lower caste, his name is constantly distorted. He is forced to respectfully address boys of the same age as ‘babu’, the name he secretly wishes for himself. Amid poverty and struggle, with his parents and grandparents wishing him to be an expert cobbler soon, he is doing all that he should while keeping aside all that he wants. But a chance discovery of an old, tattered book, which stirs something deep in Aryali’s heart, followed by an unfortunate situation that forces his family to move to a town called Jaihind, might change the direction of his life forever. After all, isn’t that the need of the hour? Change. Jaihind Made the Cobbler a Novelist is a story that gives a voice to the lowest strata of our society and appeals to our conscience, emotions and need for betterment. This book is a voice of those downtrodden proletarians who are subjected to all sorts of humiliations. Big writers dwell mostly in cities, and for this reason none has touched this appalling practice in their books. It is a biting satire on a serious social system. Aryali, the main character of the novel, becomes a role model for all those whose names are vulnerable to distortion.