a simple dream
dear reader,
it’s been more than one year since my book came out. I think about it rarely - I tell myself it’s more important to be a reader rather than a writer - and I’m also brain-deep in writing something else, which leaves little room for self-aggrandizing. but I wanted to take a second to tell you thank you, if you have read my book or given it some time, thank you so much. it means so much more to me than I can say: that I stayed with a feeling through revisions and seasons and you gave it some time. thank you so, so much. if you want to write in to talk to me about ‘the worlds within you,’ I am always happy to listen and talk back.
it seems that december comes around every time with a false promise, a piece of gold which, upon closer inspection, is just foil. the holiday season lingers as if we have forgotten january is coming. but it will come. my family is currently trying to pack in as much enjoyment as they can in these few days of holidays, as if it is a sweater that just won’t fit into a suitcase. the roads are emptier; the weather is cooler; everyone’s circadian rhythms are being screechily forced to slow down.
I will slide into my 30s in the new year, and I hope, pray, cross my fingers I am a little bit wiser than I have been in my 20s. I hope that I can focus on what matters, and that everything else disappears into a fine dust - important enough, but unobtrusive. I hope I can be there for people and myself at the same time. I hope I can find what I love and learn about it until I feel I have come out onto the other side. I hope I can value myself without needing to mentally list out my good qualities first. I hope I can excel - not the school-song definition of excel, but cross through to a level of existence where everything is of a higher quality and calibre. I hope I can stay myself, whatever that may mean. I hope I chase that quality time the way you chase the sunset with your desperate camera at the end of a day at Marine Drive. I hope against hope that things get better, and gentler, for you, too, lovely reader.
Today’s Interview
From my interview with the wonderful, expressive, incredibly kind journalist and author Shreevatsa Nevatia:
“The psychotic patient strapped to a bed, or the depressed friend who can’t get out of one, is often asking questions we all do — “Who am I? What am I doing here? Does God exist?”
Some Sides
Rouge by Mona Awad; Yellowface by R F Kuang; When I Hit You by Meena Kandaswamy — for different reasons, these are some of the books I read this year that I can’t get out of my head
‘yes yes I do like you. I’m afraid to write the stronger word.’ Alison Bechdel on Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf’s letters
love,
shreya