This Time Next Month

The launch of my memoir

Around this time, four years ago, I was just another regular writer, hounded with ideas, trying to make sense of a world that had once again gone under lockdown. And then, one by one like dominoes, all my family members got Covid, and life was never the same again.

In the span of two months – May and June – everything changed for the worse. And I put it down in a piece for Scroll here. I mostly talked about how my writing kept me sane. But it got me thinking about the idea of writing something longer, something that explored my grief, that made it possible to look back on what we went through, in a way that didn’t diminish what it had been.

Kanishka Gupta of Writer’s Side had encouraged me to write that article for Scroll, so I went to him again, and asked him if he’d be interested if I wrote a memoir. It’s taken three years from the time we decided to do it, but the memoir is finally ready to launch next month, InshaAllah.

Learning to Make Tea for One is one of the most difficult books I’ve written. Everything is heartfelt, everything is true, and some of the chapters made me cry so much, I couldn’t go back to writing the memoir for months. The idea of opening that file made me sad and I started dreading it. But as each month passed, as each year toned down the grief, I knew I had to do it. I knew the memoir was a space for me to keep my grief. To look at it as it was. As it had been.

I finished writing the memoir on June 3, 2024, the 3rd anniversary of my husband’s death. I hadn’t planned on doing it but that was how it happened. And now, a year or so later, here we are.

I’m pasting below an excerpt from the memoir. Please do preorder it if you feel like reading it. However, it will be available in bookstores as well soon. And there are plans of a book launch in Champaca next month on 10th. I will keep you posted on social media.

Prologue

The Koel Sings

Rain battered the window. Outside, everything had turned green and fresh. As the rain slowed, I could hear a koel calling out loudly. It seemed like a serene moment as I stared outside the open window, sipping coffee, but I was in a COVID ward, in a much-coveted hospital room, and the coffee was watery, and my thoughts chaotic. Behind me, my mother-in-law was sleeping on another hospital bed. I checked on her every now and then to make sure the BiPap device was fixed properly to her face. At a time when hospital beds were scarce, we had managed to get not one, but two beds for us, in the same room and for that, I was thankful.

Pre-monsoon showers in May were common in Bangalore. We were used to the skies darkening, rain pelting us suddenly, only to disappear soon enough, leaving hardly a trace of it. The month of May has always held important memories for me. My husband Mansoor and I got engaged on 5 May 1996, and married the following year, on 1 June. For most of my life, these two months have seen celebratory moments for us. I had no idea then that May and June 2021 were going to be devastating for me, in ways I hadn’t imagined possible.

While the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic roared on unchecked across the country in 2021, we thought we would evade it like we had done with the first wave in 2020. But unfortunately, my son Saboor first contracted COVID at the end of April. From then onwards, all of us fell like dominoes. My mother-in-law and I both tested positive soon after that. When the test results came in, we tried to follow what everyone else was doing—taking painkillers and getting rest and hoping that COVID would leave on its own.

But Mansoor tested positive soon thereafter and although he seemed healthy, it was overall very worrisome. We decided not to try going to hospitals, not when it was like a madhouse out there with the lack of oxygen and beds. The Delta variant of the virus in 2021 was more aggressive than what we had seen in 2020, and reached us before we even realised how. With two lockdowns behind us, we hadn’t thought that things could possibly get worse.

We checked temperatures and oxygen saturation levels a few times a day. When my mother-in-law’s oxygen levels started dipping and her BP began to fluctuate, we knew we could not stay away from the hospitals. She needed professional care.

Before that, she and I had been quarantined together in my room. One day, as I was combing her hair, she keeled over to the side and fainted. Given her blood pressure and her coronary history, with her multiple stents, I tried to convince her that she needed to get admitted in a hospital. But she’d never stayed alone in a hospital before. The very idea for her was inconceivable. Even now, she didn’t want to be alone. So, I decided to get admitted along with her, even though my oxygen levels were relatively stable.

We both got admitted to the COVID Ward of Jain Hospital on May 5th, and I thought that was a nightmare. Little did I know what else awaited me at the end of the road. While I was given oxygen for just a day, she was on it continuously and even a few minutes without the BiPap would make her oxygen levels plummet.

The night we got admitted, I could hardly sleep. At first, we had not been allotted the same room, and I was not sure where she was and how she was doing. Worry darted about in my head for my older son Saboor and for Mansoor who were at home. Saboor was recovering from COVID but Mansoor was getting worse. The following day, his condition worsened and he got admitted to Sakra Hospital, roughly 18 kilometres away from where we were. It had been the month of lockdowns and bed and oxygen scarcity and I was just grateful we got beds in time and were being treated. But the pressure inside my chest didn’t ease.

We were being treated. We had access to oxygen. We were going to be fine, I told myself. My mother-in-law got moved to the same room as me the following day and we were both relieved to have each other’s company. She called out to me, asking what the time was. I checked my mobile and told her. I had no idea what was going on in her head until she called out again. When can we go home, she asked me.

March turned out to be a wonderful month. I won the Best Children’s Author for Fiction at the Auther Awards held in Delhi on 21 March. The award was for The Henna Start-up of course! And it was a wonderful opportunity to meet folks in Delhi, especially my editors. Here I am with two of them – Tina Narang (Harper Collins) and Sayoni Basu (Duckbill).