One of the stories mama told me started like this: she and khalammi had taken the car out for the first time, khalammi a nervous driver behind the wheel, mama riding shotgun. At one point, the car grazed another man’s car, and immediately stalled. A crowd gathered while the girls sat petrified with horror, and… Continue reading Of Khalammi
In May of last year, a month after I wrote a blog vying never to date men again, I went out to lunch with a young, white, teacher named Sam. He was cute but a little idiotic-looking, sported a cane in the way certain men flash fancy car keys, and had a habit of doing… Continue reading Of England, a Year On
It has been three months since I moved into my little flat, perched on top of a closed beauty salon, a flat I fell in love with from the moment I first stepped into it and saw the way the light dappled the wooden flooring in the living room, and the way the spaces of… Continue reading On Living Alone
Some thoughts, a year on. The primary way I seem to have dealt with things is that I have locked almost all the memories of my mother in a tight strongbox inside my chest – to open it is to release so many thoughts of her, all of which cause me so much pain. It… Continue reading More on Grief
Every year I list and detail a bit about the books I’ve read. I had a resolution in 2016 to read more women and subcontinent authors, and I think I followed it for most of the year. However, after my mother passed away in September and I decided to move to england, I realised I wouldn’t… Continue reading Book List – 2016
I broke up with my last boyfriend just over a year ago. He was a nice boy; in fact, a bit too nice – so much so that I wanted us to get married. (I don’t believe in doing things by halves). His small but rather immovable disagreement on the matter lead to us eventually… Continue reading Of singleness and the reluctance to mingle
I recently restarted my occasional smoking habit. Some days after, my psychology professor asked us all to write a story from the perspective of an object. I didn’t have much time to complete the task, or much brainpower to devote to it, so I just picked a cigarette as my object. The result was rather nice… Continue reading Of Cigarettes
I’ve been packing recently, and in the hoards of stuff I’ve dug out, there were a couple of VHS tapes from my childhood. The most significant is one my mother recorded when I was about a year old. In it, I am a shorn-headed brown-skinned little precocious gabbler, getting quite beaten up by her elder… Continue reading Of Mama, and Baba
It was in the staff takeaway shop that I saw a tray of red velvet cake slices and felt a deep sadness that I couldn’t even understand until much later, when I remembered that my mother had asked me to get her a piece some days before she died. That is how the grief appears in… Continue reading Of Grief.
As most of you know, I consider myself a writer and like most writers, I dream of one day publishing a book. Despite harbouring such dreams, I haven’t actually tried to write a book of my own yet, much less begin the arduous process of publishing one. I have, though, been freelance writing since the… Continue reading The Advantages of Freelance Writing
Mellow Creativity 