How do you picture the grief inside you? Even though it is just a five-letter word, the weight it carries is voluminous. For Vishnu (he/they), a clinical psychology trainee, grief is a cloud. “A cloud with tendrils seeping into every part of my body, beginning from my chest. And the tendrils themselves feel like the exposed pulp of an inflamed and decaying tooth,” they say. For Jag, a voracious reader, it is something blue, comforting, and familiar, like a pillow or a bean bag that holds her. Writer Azeefa Fathima dips in a bit of nostalgia to her memories of grief. For her, grief is a child-sized version, like Oswald the Octopus, a sad blob with a multitude of other emotions. Like Azeefa, Devi, a PhD Research Scholar, imagines her grief as a human. She says, “A small human inside a human that requires time and tenderness instead of avoidance and neglect. My best works have grown from the parts that have grieved the most. Maybe not the biggest tree in the garden but certainly one with the strongest roots.”
Even though all of them have pictured grief differently, what unites them is the way they sit with grief — finding comfort in the contained pages of fiction. Reading isn’t just another hobby for them. Azeefa starts her day with reading, while Jag uses it as an escape and a chance to live through others. For Devi, who designates herself as a “product of cosmic evolution that happens to love art, reading, and writing,” reading is a wonderfully simple yet profoundly complex process. She explains, reading is “a chance to explore yourself and the world through the experiences of those who have come to live and love before you, or even at the same time as you. Like a warm hand on a cold shoulder, it reminds you in varying degrees of subtlety and cruelty that you are never alone in what you feel.”
The arrival
The loss of someone, something, or an endless yearning — they are all encompassed in grief. When Vishnu’s dog Tintin, whom he describes as a special boy with unique traits, passed away, it was brutal for him. “It happened during the peak of COVID, and I could not find a vet from where I lived. I was reading Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto as well as listening to an album by Mono (Hymn to the Immortal Wind). It helped me feel deeper and process the feelings better,” he recounts. Later, when his grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he turned to the same medicine — reading. “I had eventually seen him become someone I didn’t know. Feelings of conflict were something that were navigated better through the book Mister God, This Is Anna by Fynn.” When Azeefa went through a breakup, she couldn’t make sense of it in any terms — theoretically, abstractly or emotionally. A devastating event like that throws your balance. And books were the only thing that sort of helped Azeefa. “There was a phase when I was reading a lot about relationships, love, and friendships, what it means to give and how it brings in a lot of expectations. Books like Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn and All about Love by Bell Hooks really helped,” she says. When she lost a friend of hers, she was coincidentally reading ‘A Little Life’ and it took her through that phase. Devi has sought the companionship of books during the lowest points of her life, as they have allowed her to heal. The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky helped her breathe through a time she was struggling to survive the loss of a part of herself. “Imagine falling apart into a million pieces and a book comes along not to fix you but to stay with you through it like a gentle hug. How beautiful is that?” asks Devi.
Reading list
The books that got Jag through grief include Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. She admits, “I felt seen, heard, hurt. I even felt angry.” She also recommends Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Given the politics of JK Rowling, Azeefa admits that she has stopped getting attached to the Harry Potter books. But she cannot deny the fact that Albus Dumbledore is a fictional character she holds so close. She shares, “He is that all-consuming figure or the larger-than-life figure that you can just look up to and think.” She also connects with Jude from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and Achilles from Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. “I was reading Song of Achilles post my breakup. The book talks about what love looks like and the extent to which someone can love someone. It helps you make sense of what love is or what a relationship means to you,” she says. Devi’s emotional support character is Charlie from The Perks of Being A Wallflower. She says, “Surviving the grief that followed a traumatic event was more difficult than the event itself. Encountering Charlie was a blessing in the sense that it didn’t stop the incessant rains but placed a roof over my head.” She also adds that Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games was the elder sister to her teenage self, when she looked up to her as a hero in the battlefield of emotions. Devi also recommends Looking for Alaska and Turtles All The Way Down by John Green, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Normal People by Sally Rooney. Azeefa pens down: It’s All In Your Head, M by Manjiri Indurkar, Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
The act of processing does not end with grieving. It is like peeling an orange. Reading strips the skin away, layer by layer, until nothing is left to hide behind. Some parts pinch, and the eyes water. But when you peel through the white pith, what is left are the tear-shaped, sweet segments. People turn out to find more nuances about themselves. Jag highlights and ruminates after she reads. It sometimes surfaces in her writings, too. She prefers to read while sipping coffee by the window or under fairy lights. When Azeefa reads something and it hits her hard, she pauses and thinks about it. She keeps rereading certain parts of the book. Her reading rituals include reading in the morning with a coffee or tea or any hot beverage. Devi usually picks out her favourite and relatable quotes and notes them down somewhere, either in a notebook or phone. She says, “I go back to them every now and then to remember the younger version of myself that had the courage to fight back, to make it possible for me today.” Devi doesn’t have a reading ritual, but she prefers a quiet environment, “so I could hear the characters and my own voice speak and cause a ruckus uninterrupted in my head.”
Vishnu doesn’t separate grief reading and general reading. “The only difference is that I might push myself a little further to read, and it feels like it’s both escapism and exploring the depths of emotion.” But for Jag, it is a search. “I try to find consolation and strength in words. I search for words that would understand me, that would make me understand my pain,” she says. Devi distinguishes reading and grief reading: “Grief reading connects you with characters in ways quite different from what general reading does. While the latter encourages and enables you to place yourself in someone else’s shoes, grief reading is when you and the character share the same flesh and bones.”
Devi also shares something interesting. “When a character feels relatable, we often feel the need for every little detail to match and go hand in hand as parallel lines. With the slightest difference, the mind goes, “Okay, maybe I’m more broken than this character. Maybe I’m more broken than any character ever was, or ever will be.” I’ve had to shut a book once to remind myself that the subtle nuances in human experience are what make each of us unique while still being threads of the same fabric of life.” Azeefa also admits that sometimes reading doesn’t work for a certain type of grief — “those (grief) related to families or relationships with parents, especially the relationship that women have with parents.” When his grief was too big to handle, Vishnu picked up comics, Manga, and other graphic novels along with music and movies.
However, none of these are prescribed necessities. Some psychologists might advise us to stay with light literature instead. There are different ways of coping. Readers reimagine, wander through fictional lands, and return with the wisdom of a hundred lives. Whether it is One Hundred Years of Solitude or A Thousand Splendid Suns, you hope to find your own sunshine, just like these people who found theirs in their favourite ink-blotted pages.