Posted inFirst Person
A Literary Guide to Surviving a Separation
I started a book club while undergoing a painful split with my partner. But line by line, paragraph by paragraph, the books helped me put my life back together.
Posted inFirst Person
Life on Stutter Island
When you’ve lived with a lifelong stutter, everyone around you seems to have immeasurable patience.
Posted inFirst Person
Lessons in Joy from My Autistic Son
I’d hoped that my child, diagnosed with severe autism could be mainstreamed, could be like other children. We didn’t know it but this relentless hope was killing us.
Posted inFirst Person
How Delhi Power Cuts Shaped Our Childhoods
Anyone who has lived in Delhi of the 1980s and ’90s, will remember the legendary load-shedding power cut that used to be a way of life – and how it characterised our adolescent days. Power cuts were to Delhi what traffic was to Mumbai.
Posted inFirst Person
Healing in the Age of Agitation: How the Constant Protests and Tension in Delhi Affected My Mental Health
For students of JNU, the past couple of months have been full of despair. The protests meant we had to give up on our routine student life. Then on Jan 5, masked goons attacked us. The horror of that day lingers on. I’ve had sleepless nights and after a point could not bear to see images of bleeding students.
Posted inFirst Person
40 Till I Die! How I Plan to Take the Pressure Off Middle Age
As I near my 40th birthday, I have realised that I am neither the sort to go crazy with champagne, nor be forlorn and regretful. So I’m celebrating “The Year of Magical Doing”, where I prioritise writing letters, reading short stories, collecting recipes – basically, doing everything I loved as a kid.
Posted inFirst Person
Why Leaving Campus Reminds Me of an Amicable Divorce
Graduating from college, if you’ve lived on campus, is like a bittersweet parting, like a divorce. You love its positivity, but you know it’s over. You know that everything has an expiry date.
Posted inFirst Person
Forty Going on 14: How to Live With Your Parents as a Single Adult
Two years ago, my parents returned from their longish stint in the Middle East to move back in with me. Ring out the eggs and maggi, ring in the idlis and paranthas. How would it feel to live with my parents after eight years of living alone?
Posted inFirst Person
How I Found Joy in My Insignificance After 15 Days of Vipassana
I signed up for 15 days of self-imposed silence to break a powerful addiction called “The Need for Control”, a subset of the much-maligned FOMO. After vipassana, I realised that the fear of missing out, is an inherently egotistical fear, with the belief that our existence matters so much that missing out on something is a travesty.
Posted inFirst Person
I Was Born a Hindu and I Went to Jamia. What Will You Label Me?
“Jamia is a hot-bed for radicalising kids.” When I went to study at Jamia Millia Islamia, my family contended with several deep-seated biases. But that is not the Jamia I know. The Jamia I know is full of grace and tact; a place where students will come out and clean the road at the end of a protest, even after teargas shells have been lobbed.