Does connection and community alleviate loss to some extent? How do you gauge the measure of loss?
Absolutely, many studies point to the role of community support in bereavement. But equally, certain kinds of people mend when they are alone.
The bereavement process is individual and unique to each person. I make room for mindful grieving in my life - I don’t look at grief as separate from the essential nature of life or as an emotional impurity. Grief is the tax we pay for the privilege of being alive.
In your book 'Loss', the writing is pared down and luminous. How did you gather the insight that was required to describe times of grief, erasure, loss and also being in the depths of pain?
The pandemic broke when the book was to be published. I was stuck in a small rural village for over 12 months. In these months, I edited Loss all over again. The pandemic proved how little we need to live - I wanted to bring this same 'pared down' quality to my life. I was inspired by the works of Louise Bourgeois and Zarina Hashmi, detailed without being decorative. I am indebted to my editors Udayan Mitra, Mark de Silva, Bron Sibree - they made the book the small, concise thing it is right now.
Loss may be read as that of one's identity. When one loses a person, does that mean a part of self is lost with them? And if so, how may one reinvent oneself?
Absolutely, when someone dies we lose not only the person, but the person we were because of them - that information is lost forever. Death transforms the living. Perhaps a crisis allows us to re-enter everyday life again with deepened clarity for how short life is, and that the real measure of time is only what you do with it right now; this is how our identity changes, when we become truly conscious of our time on this planet as brief.
'To write was to help someone else erase some part of their pain'. How did this kind of writing help the writer transmute their pain?
By taking stock - by measuring the worth of life with words. A cold, clear-eyed assessment of what has been lost also reminds ourselves of what remains - the dog by your side, the rain on your windowpane. Life colludes to give you companionship at a time when you can feel entirely abandoned. Look through the eye of the despairing needle - there is hope staring back at you, I promise.
Does one ever truly get beyond loss to a celebration of what the gaping hole it leaves is replaced with?
I would say that the only real celebration is a soulful recollection of the person - in your memory of them, they are always alive, and this is a remarkable knowledge to hold on to when you believe they are entirely gone. Memory is the aspic for time spent together.
You write that through loss you have found an expansiveness in which your intuition is now formidable. Do you feel it is necessary for an individual to go through a particular experience to engage the intuition in such a manner?
Loss - and solitude - certainly made me sensitive; I am lucky I have strong intuition now, I guess it comes from being still until you can finally hear yourself, and hear all the things that live in relationship to you. My friends call me 'a good witch' - but why not a bad one, I ask. Bring out the cauldron and put your demons on boil.
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Pages: 112
Price: Rs 499