Here’s a story for you. Sometime in 2020, I had a meeting by the beach in Chennai with one woman who I thought was a friend but never was. It was a weird, discombobulated meeting, one of skirting around edges, and one where I returned feeling I hadn’t said anything I wanted to. I tried […]
Sometimes love is just this. I have gone through about 2 years now of seeing the greatest love of my life, my mother, in pain. Relentless, unremitting pain. I have seen someone who makes me laugh with her curiosity, who taught me to see the world, to embrace the world with wide-eyed wonder, under house […]
We are soulmates.Until we aren’t. Best friends.Until we aren’t. We match. Unmatch. Swipe. Block. Casually fling away people the way we uninstall apps. Where is love in the middle of it all? This messy appendage that comes with not just the placid lakes but the boiling lava of a burning volcano? Who are we without […]
It was about 9:45 am. The weather in Mumbai had been pleasant until 9 am. But now, the sun was out. Anyone who has run a marathon will tell you that the last 5 km are the most excruciating. That is when your mind plays tricks. It colludes with a broken body. It whispers that […]
It’s early Sunday morning. One of our clients wants to “talk.” I am nervous. We had a bit of an uncomfortable discussion around payment on Friday. I call them. She picks up. “I want to say that we are truly sorry. We allowed our biases to creep in. We talk so much about biases, but […]
Let me tell you a story. A travel story. In 2003, I was teaching Spoken English in a tiny city called Lianyungang, China. It was the first time I was in a foreign country. Living by myself. Teaching a language I wasn’t confident speaking. And had narrowly escaped the confines of a Chinese prison. (A story […]
My left knee throbs as I write this. It reminds me of its existence, a sudden flare-up of a pain I have been managing for 1.5 months now. Pointed stars of pain. I am used to it, but the thing about pain is that it always hurts. In 3 days, I will run my first […]
A few years ago, I had a book soulmate. I connected with this person in a way I never had with anyone else over books. Words. We wrote long emails over books. Read together. Mused over words. Fell in love with melancholy. The person wasn’t to stay in my life, however. She didn’t just carry […]
When Mondays meant saris… My first job after graduating was as a teacher at Jain International Residential School. There were many other firsts: It was my first time as a teacher. Studying a paper called ‘Teaching English as a Foreign Language’ can in no way prepare you to meet a bunch of raucous 5th graders. […]