The last time I spoke to her before she died she was sobbing on the phone.‘I can only see darkness, I can only see darkness,’ she cried. ‘I can’t see any light.’ And I, being me, silently tearing on the other side, unable to say anything, frozen, trying desperately to […]

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights […]

There is nothing more beautiful than when people talk about what they love.

Once, my mother phoned the man we buy the chickens from and she said, ‘Hello, is this the chicken?’ And years later, years and years later when all my sisters are already married, when I have grown up, when abajaan is already gone, every now and then, we say the […]

She said, ‘It’s intoxicating to be around someone so alive.’

Once there was a moment when we didn’t say anything. We kept looking away. And I didn’t know what to say. And yet everything was said. The important things anyway. The important things always find a way to be said. Somehow. And then I went away. I walked to my […]

At this year’s Writing for Liberty Conference in Cape Town, renowned journalist and poet Antjie Krog gave a keynote speech that helped me with so many questions I’ve been grappling with when it comes to writing, identity and how to navigate the space of how to write the other. What […]

You sold me down the river.

I keep replaying the moments above Bhatpura in my head. The promises we made. Kids shouting. Setting sun between trees. Names carved in stone. A fistful of chinar leaves in the air.