Reviews & Musings

In early 2023, I made a quiet decision that did not feel significant at the time—I chose to stop reading casually, and to start reading with intent, turning towards artists I had long admired, not just to understand what they created, but to sit closer to the question of how and why they created at all.  They were not confined to a single world. They came from everywhere—writers, yes, but also singers, lyricists, filmmakers, actors—voices that had shaped something within me long before I knew how to articulate it. And what I sought in them was not inspiration in the shallow, fleeting sense, but something far more demanding: a deeper encounter with creativity itself, with the discipline it requires, the solitude it enforces, the identity it constantly unsettles, and the quiet, often invisible love that sustains it despite everything.  The process, I realised very quickly, could not be rushed. It refused to remain “reading” in the conventional sense. It became slower, heavier, a...

This month, I am carrying Difficult Pleasures by Anjum Hasan into our mentoring circle.  Not as an expert, not with answers, but with open hands. It feels like the kind of book you don’t really read alone. You sit with it. You breathe with it. You let it rearrange the furniture of your heart. All through our interactions, I keep thinking about how strange and beautiful it is to guide a room through grief while still learning its language myself. 

Quotes (From the preface)  “All theories of writing are bogus. Every writer develops his own method or lack of method and a story comes into being for some unknown reason anyhow.” – R.K. Narayan   “I liked to be free to read what I please and not be examined at all.” – R.K. Narayan  Both these lines stayed with me long after I finished the book. They feel almost like a permission slip to read freely, to write instinctively, and to not over-intellectualise the act of creation. Coming back to Narayan now, while consciously trying to study writing, felt ironic and grounding at the same time.