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The 1:45 a.m. Affair

At 1:43 in the morning, I miss home. Not enough to call my mother, because well,  wouldn’t that be dramatic? Also, if I call her now, she will ask the same three questions she has asked me every day since I left: “Khaya?” “Padhai hui?” “Paise hain?” And I will say yes to all three. The reality is- I am hungry. I haven't studied. And I have absolutely no idea where my money goes. So I don't call. I lie down and stare at the ceiling. The fan is making that clicking sound again. Click. Click. Click. Three weeks now. My mother would have already called somebody, complained about the noise, complained about how much they charged, and then called them again because they hadn't fixed it properly. Here, I have simply decided that the fan and I are going to live with our differences. Outside, the rain has begun again. Water falls from the roof into somebody's bucket. Tip. A pause. Tip. Then three drops together. My roommate is asleep beside me,...
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If Memory Is Unkind

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  Things I pray I never forget with age: sitting in uni with far too many tabs open, three deadlines approaching, a half-written paragraph, and the completely delusional conviction that I will figure it out the thrill of finding a sentence in a book so good that I have to put the book down for a second the feeling of discovering a writer who says something I had felt for years but had never been intelligent enough to articulate the version of me who highlighted everything in my school textbooks how many versions of myself I have already been: literature student, editor, poet, theatre person, researcher, academic weapon on some days and academic victim on others, and so on… the fact that I once genuinely believed a bad grade meant the world had ended and then getting a score I never expected and realising — “Oh. Maybe I am actually good at this!” the ridiculous happiness after gulping down a well-cooked meal the exact feeling of laughing with someone until the conversation...
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