The first thing that strikes me about Neha Dixit is the warmth in her voice. A calm, comforting tone that makes me let down my guard, lean in and have an honest conversation—an essential skill for an investigative known for her courageous reporting on politics, gender violence, religious divide, extrajudicial killings and human trafficking. For Dixit, however, it doesn’t seem like a professional requirement.
Instead, it’s a genuine reflection of her empathy and understanding towards the people she writes about. Over the 17 years spent working as a journalist covering urgent, sensitive issues, Dixit has won multiple national and international like the 2016 Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person in India, the 2014 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism and the 2011 Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism from the European Commission. The bouquets haven’t arrived without the brickbats.
But unlike the harsh criticism that most writers consider the insurmountable bane of their profession, Dixit fields rape and death threats almost every day. When she speaks, however, I sense the commitment of someone who believes in working towards the future she envisions rather than talking about it. We connect over Zoom a few days before the launch of her debut book, (published by Juggernaut Books), the real story of an anonymous Muslim woman trying to survive in a progressively divided nation.
I am in Lucknow at the moment, a city known for its Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb—a blend of Hindu and Islamic cultures—where both Dixit and I were coincidentally born. My effusive praise of our shared is cut short when the journalist apprises me of her love-hate relationship with the city. She enjoys the famous chaat of Lucknow but resents its restrictive mindset.
“Like most good girls from good families, I had a set routine growing up: home to school, school to home. There was only the occasional family outing,” she recalls. Which is why Dixit’s desire to study literature in Delhi was met with shock and, subsequently, the argument that she would never get married if she did not have a professional degree.
“In simple terms, become an engineer or a doctor, get , produce children and coerce them into repeating the cycle.” Dixit persevered in her decision and ultimately secured permission to study literature in Delhi, landing a job at a major media house once she graduated. Her decision to relinquish the safety net of a full-time and go freelance was triggered five years later, during the Nirbahaya case in 2012.
At 26, she found herself burning the midnight oil as she put together incisive pieces around sexual violence as a byproduct of the patriarchy, class, caste, religion and location. While on assignment, Dixit encountered the women working in Delhi’s sweatshops, engaged in labour-intensive jobs like rolling agarbattis, making genda phool malas, shelling almonds or hand-washing denim for meagre wages. “As I spent more time with them, I discovered that their struggles went beyond individual incidents of oppression or sexual violence.
They were surviving as nameless, faceless migrant workers in a city that offered them little support or sympathy,” says the writer. This realisation planted the seed for her recently launched book, which spotlights the invisible lives of India’s neglected female workers. During her research, she met several female home-workers from Dalit and Muslim communities, many of whom were victims of violence linked to caste, class and religion.
Syeda was one of them. During conversations with Syeda, most of the information Dixit culled out was non-linear and hazy. Syeda was clear that her life’s purpose was not to get revenge or justice for the wrongdoings she had been dealt but to survive the day.
Stories unraveled bit by bit as they started exchanging experiences. Once, when Dixit told Syeda about an attempted break-in at her house, Syeda advised her to forget about it and move on. It was a reality check for the journalist, who sensed that acknowledging and discussing it was a luxury Syeda didn’t have.
She had to carry on, no matter what happened to her or those around her. It took Dixit around ten years of research and conversations with close to 900 people to bring the book to life. Sieving through these real stories of struggle, oppression and borderline contempt from society to create a narrative required patience and practice.
While her experience with writing long format features helped, as a first-time , Dixit’s routine evolved over time. She tried a few tips she found online but none worked and she had to come up with her own method that she describes as “athletic sprints” of thinking and writing. Her process involved immersing herself in research material, followed by periods of silence and self-isolation culminating into intense writing sessions with Mirchi, her beloved cat, for company.
As you make your way through the book, you realise that while it is Syeda’s story you are reading, Syeda could be anyone. She could be your domestic worker who stitches sequins on saris once she reaches home to make extra . She could be the woman who sells flowers at the signal during the day and packages dry fruits for a multinational company at night.
The X in the title of the book denotes the anonymity in this multiplicity. It means that although Syeda’s experiences are unique to her, they also represent many others like her who lose their identity to unacknowleged toiling. is a call to pay attention.
How much thought do we really spare for those living in homes scattered around the pavements of our cities? To those bringing up their children under a fly over? Where do they ? How do they shower? Where do they go when they are forced to move? These questions seldom cross our minds as we go about our lives. As you dive deeper into Syeda’s world, you also start accepting the complexities of being a woman. All , across class and religion, have a spectrum of unique problems, but priorities differ.
For someone like Syeda, the daily struggle of putting food on the table takes precedence over everything else. “All these conversations we’re having about equality and secularism won’t work if we don’t look at them through the lens of caste, class and gender. If people are still struggling to get one meal after working 16 hours a day, then all these talks are useless,” Dixit points out.
Ultimately, a strong debut by Neha Dixit, urges the reader to recognise the people behind everyday products and understand the systematic neglect they face. “Pay attention to how things come to us. decorations, health food and string lights are are all made by underpaid female home-workers.
The first step is to start noticing.” A not-so-big ask from a journalist who has dedicated close to two decades to bringing marginalised stories to mainstream conversation..
