13th November 2020 Dear Anand, Happy Diwali. I have a dull throb in my heels this evening as I sit down to write to you. They say as women grow older they start turning into their mothers. I’m about 3000kms away from Suruj this Diwali but I can’t shake her out of me (despite promising myself when I was young that I will never ever … Continue reading Dear Anand | 13th November 2020
22nd October, 2020 Dear Anand, mianhamnida. Of every apology in all the languages around the world, I think the Korean mianhamnida (미안합니다) is the most beautiful word. It doesn’t have that crassness of a sorry,the curtness of a perdón orthe piteous of a mujhe maaf kardo.No. It’s first part mian pronounced as bian breathes off your lips as if it’s coming straight from your heart; … Continue reading 22nd October 2020 | Dear Anand
6th September 2020 Dear Anand, Has it really been almost 7 months since the world went into a shutdown? Some days I wonder had we both known then whether you and I would have chosen any different. I have spent many a long hours in the past 6 months dreaming of alternate scenarios to roads I didn’t take. I suppose pretty much everyone else around … Continue reading 6th September 2020 | Dear Anand
23rd August 2020 Dear Anand, Not all goodbyes we get to say. Sometimes we miss our colleague’s farewells, don’t realise our favourite cafe in town has closed down, run away from home in the middle of the night, don’t make peace with a dying loved one. In hospitals around the world right now there are some patients taking slow, halting breaths in intensive care units … Continue reading 23rd August 2020 | Dear Anand
14th August 2020 Dear Anand, Sometimes I feel like I’m on a small boat in the middle of a calm, sparkling ocean. For miles in every direction all I can see is light; caroming on the water. Because it’s so still, my boat hardly moves, it just lulls away most days in the sun. I can no longer see the shores where I had left … Continue reading 14th August 2020 | Dear Anand
31st July 2020 Dear Anand, Today I went to get a haircut. My new hip hairdresser who I have just started trusting with my whole head and whose now started to fully charge me for that trust, twirled around to show me her latest hairstyle. Giddy with excitement, she flashed an edgy undercut. In line with salon protocol I told her just how greaaat she … Continue reading 31st July 2020 | Dear Anand
July 26th, 2020 Dear Anand, You once asked me being the atheist you are, if anyone’s really seen God living inside worship houses? I’m neither a Muslim nor a Christian but I might have bowed in more mosques and churches than Hindu mandirs. Whether it was the Basilica and Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced in Lima or Stephansdom in Vienna or the La … Continue reading 26th July 2020 | Dear Anand
24th July, 2020 Dear Anand, Did you know the kavi who wrote the lines “..zindagi aur kuch bhi nahi teri meri kahaani hai”, his name is Santosh Anand? (I know right). He wrote this around 1971-72 and it so widely resonated with people of every age then. Even today it still does. Perhaps because it’s hope explained in the simplest, kindest of words. It’s irked … Continue reading 24th July 2020 | Dear Anand
Where is Shyamni? 