Reviews & Musings

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.