The Song of Kahunsha

Anosh Irani was born and brought up in Bombay, India, and moved to Vancouver in 1998 to become a full-time writer. He is the author of the acclaimed novel The Cripple and His Talismans . His first full-length play, The Matka King , premiered at the Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver, in 2003. His new play, Bombay Blac k, was produced in Toronto in 2006 by Cahoots Theatre Projects and received the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play. In an interview with The Georgia Straight , Irani discusses how the Zoroastrian Parsi community he lived in was affected by the riots: "One night the Muslims and Hindus had a street fight right outside the gates of our compound. At one point, they wanted to burn down a gas station which was right next to one of the buildings in which people of our colony lived, so people had to beg and say, 'Look, if you burn this gas station down, the buildings will explode. And we are not part of this violence.' Luckily, people listened, which is quite rare." He goes on to express his admiration for the street children of Bombay and their ability to look beyond their dire circumstances: "A lot of these street children, when you talk to them, they have dreams. They are very poor. They live in grinding conditions, but they have very large dreams: some of them want to become doctors and find cures for diseases; they want to become movie stars, singers, dancers; some want to join the police force and bring about real change. They are all about change, because they know that if they don’t hope, if they don’t create some kind of dream, survival for them is going to be very difficult."

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