I try to keep politics off this blog. That’s the common advice, isn’t it? Not to alienate potential readers by being overtly political. It’s like bringing politics up at dinner parties or with family. There’s something unsavoury about it. Rarely does consensus come out of political conversations unless you are talking to like-minded people. But… Read More Them and Us
I’ve not posted here for a while. I had lost my way. Sometimes the only thing to do is to retreat into your shell, hide away, let the storms of fear and despair pass. Maybe I’m still lost, but it helps to turn up to a blank page, to coax the swirl of words inside… Read More On Fear and Love
My stomach swells from beneath the swirl of bathwater I sink until every inch of me is pressed to the white enamel internalising hearing the drum of my heartbeat eyelids closed, imagining multiplying cells and spirit the newly forming life inside the walls of my red womb I already love you more than myself, this… Read More Tiny You
Yesterday was Mother’s Day for many people. While in the UK it is celebrated in March, such is the reach of Facebook, that I twitched at the thought my mum might think I had forgotten to make a fuss of her. I’m ambivalent about commercial days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. Even… Read More Rejecting Perfection: On the Ideal of Motherhood
I’m Muslim, did you know? You might have guessed, from how I look I suppose. I once was interviewed by a woman, who after I got the job, confided in me that she could almost always tell someone’s religion after speaking to them for five minutes. I wonder if she could tell also that I’d… Read More On Difference, Compassion and the Right to Speak
I’ve fallen in love with many places in my time. The shadows underneath the dining table, where I used to hide by my grandfather’s feet. The house where I grew up in Streatham, opposite the pebble-dashing business. Charles Bridge in Prague in the early hours of the morning before the tourists arrive. The Arts Centre… Read More A Meditation on Place and Roots
I was going to start this post – my first of the year – by wishing you a happy new year, but that seems trite, because, well, David Bowie died today. I hate the feeling as we age that the people we love are not immune to death. And because I cannot be trite, I… Read More Mortality Versus Potential
With the summer behind us and the kids back at school, I’m getting into the groove with the novel again. The second act of The Voyeur is going to be submitted to my online writer’s workshop over the next month. Initially, it felt unfamiliar to be diving into my novel again: the peril of taking… Read More My Roots in India
It is past midnight. My husband is snoring next to me. He has to wake in four hours to leave for a business trip. He sleeps despite the glow of my laptop and the sound of my fingers darting across the keyboard. I write, warming my cold feet on his calves. It’s one of those… Read More Write Although You Feel Small
It’s only been a year and we are going home. We thought it would be two or even three. Three years away from the red and blue lights of London, the estates, the winding streets of terraced housing, the tube, the grit. I was ready to leave at the time. London had become like a… Read More Coming Home: Thoughts on What Makes a Home
Today I feel lost and broken and sad. I’m sitting in the conservatory of the house we rent in Geneva. The doors are open and a light breeze is playing with the hem of my dress. The sky is a blue blanket dotted with wisps of cotton. I want to fly into it and disappear.… Read More Coping with the Tide of Life
It’s 18 months since I first started blogging. I started this blog as an antidote to a fiction-hating friend. I was unable to convince him of the merits of fiction, and a few weeks later I wrote my first words here. It was my penance for being such a weak defender of something that has… Read More My 2014 Blogging Year in Review
My love for you is burned onto the pages of my journal It pools in the grooves where my pen has pressed The past in a capsule Let me savour the man I knew – the one hidden by cares I’ll hold the memory of us on my tongue and let it mellow there In… Read More Loving You
Christmas is over five weeks away and I just bought myself a present. I grew up in the UK and my Indian parents would bring a plastic Christmas tree down from the loft. It was small. Fast forward thirty-three years and I am married to a German. Christmas is celebrated on 24 December with a… Read More Dear Santa: the Best Kind of Present
It’s a horrible habit, isn’t it? Waking up and before you’ve even stretched to reach for your phone on the nightstand. I do it daily, scanning the news headlines and social media before my eyes have even focussed. It’s the sort of action which removes you from your physical environment and throws you into the… Read More A Smoking Gun and a Plea not to Jump to Conclusions
I’m it! Thank you Graham Milne for asking me to take part in the ‘Why I Write’ blog hop and for providing a balm for me on what had been a tough day with your honeyed words. For those of you new to Graham’s writing, check him out on Twitter, at his blog or Huff Post.… Read More Why I Write
It is a joy to lose myself in fiction most days and sometimes it is a relief. Today, it just felt like frivolity. A blanket of darkness has settled on the world stage. It feels as if social structures are crumbling around us, yet still we carry on with our daily lives as if in a… Read More Violence and Complicity
It’s been almost two weeks since the children and I arrived in Geneva. J had been living with a tiny amount of rented furniture in what was to become our new family home. It felt odd at the time he said, imagining what the house would feel and sound like when it was filled with… Read More Hello New Life
The clock has just struck noon and I can hear the spin cycle of the washing machine downstairs. Its rhythm and the summer heat are lulling me into a state of relaxation. It’s humid here in my parents’ living room. Their house pulses with heat even when the radiators are off: a blessing in winter,… Read More Farewell London: A New Story Awaits
When I was pregnant with my daughter a little over four years ago, I remember my mum bringing up religion with my husband, who is an atheist. ‘The moment you see the baby born, you’ll hear hallelujahs, I’m sure of it,’ she said, only half teasing. ‘You can’t witness something so magical without believing in… Read More Divinity and Self-Expression