Back to America

A return is a splendid thing. But not always. And not when it is to the divisive immigrant-wary country that the USA has become today. It is indeed a change from the 2011 Obama era, when things weren’t so scary and we weren’t asked to carry our ID at all times! Nevertheless, circumstances have brought me back to the place where I learned how to write as an undergraduate, where I was first introduced to close reading, and the place that kindled my love for Literature and poetry. I now live in the Bay Area, where I regularly smell achaar, hear Indian-American children playing in the playground, and where P and I have friends with whom we drink tea every weekend. On Instagram, I enjoy baby reels, poetry by Kunjana Parashar, Harry Potter content, and dance reels. Life is good.

Leaving England has been an experience, and I’ve had some trouble with my thoughts and feelings in the last year. After a life-altering surgery in 2024, I struggled with some emotional issues and am still learning to cope with my feelings in a healthy way. Poetry helps, as usual, and I’ve been giving invited lectures at places that have helped me share my PhD research with those who are interested. I have also begun using AI, just out of curiosity and have opinions, predictably, regarding what this means for writing and research. But that is another blog post in itself. I have, of course, decided to blog more actively again, simply because I need to keep writing. Coming out of my PhD, I feel like I’m not writing enough.

The other thing I’ve been doing (apart from research-related things that I can’t reveal yet) is editing my second poetry book. It’s coming along well, but I’m still not satisfied with some of the poems. They don’t feel complete or substantial quite yet. But they have potential, and I’m hoping to embellish the impoverished ones to a semblance of healthy appearance and substance.

I have, of course, been reading a lot lately, and in this post, I’m going to do a non-review of a book I recently read. I say non-review because they are mostly just opinions on the book, rather than a detailed and balanced review. For that, you can see my bookstagram at @athirareads. So, let’s see, shall we?

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Possibly the first Sally Rooney book I came close to enjoying, Intermezzo is a tale of grief and intimacy. I liked the modernist touch to the novel, and both the protagonists (brothers) derive comfort from intimacy. Their dynamics with their partners are oddly framed due to age and the past making for emotional conflicts even as they grow ever closer. The open ending is characteristic of the way Rooney writes, as if she adopts incidents from her characters’ lives to reveal emotional blockages.

What I didn’t like about the novel was that none of the characters were particularly likeable, and I didn’t feel any investment in their well-being. As a reader, I enjoy stories where I’m invested in a character’s well-being and they turn out to be resilient in the face of trauma or chaos. Rooney’s characters were rounded and well-developed, but I didn’t feel close to them, even as they got closer to each other. I felt like an outsider the whole time, as a reader, looking into the complicated intimacies of the characters. As a novelist, Rooney is a bestselling author and one of the most celebrated writers of our time. If her style is likeable, it is perhaps because of our tendency to ‘look into’ other people’s lives in the age of social media, feeling like an outsider and not a friend or well-wisher invested in them.

Did you read Intermezzo or any other Sally Rooney book? What did you think of them and her style? Do leave a comment!

I’ll sign off with this today, but next time, let’s return to discuss some poetry. I’ve been reading Louise Glück and W.H. Auden and am yearning to frame my thoughts into words on how I like their poetry. Until then.

Anger

Sip a lime tea.

Try staring at the beach– it might help. Your anger is restless, not your soul.

With the help of your mind, know your anger has reasons. Deal with the reasons.

With no shame, embrace the anger. Make sure you move past it.

Life in the UK

In my life, the only thing I have enjoyed doing is travelling to places and collecting souvenirs. For some time now, I have been happy with where I am. There isn’t much to say except that I listen to myself slurping tea.

Thinking of this country’s history, I am happy that I have arrived here at the right time. I have been to Warwick, Brighton but my trip to Cambridge was blocked by a beautiful genie from heaven.

But the good thing is that the architecture of the castles reminds me of clouds, brown branches of almost-dead trees and black grains of sand. There are books on the bookshelf and some postcards that I forgot to send to some dear friends. Clearly, I like holding onto things I like.

Ironing clothes takes out a lot of energy.

All I can say is that the temperature is just right, and spring is almost here.

On Mary Oliver’s ‘Blue Horses’

Blue Horses: Poems (2014) by Mary Oliver

I return to Mary Oliver’s ‘Blue Horses’ with reverence. The collection was discussed in a book club meeting I attended only last week. It alerted me to the sheer variety of ways in which Oliver approaches the world with tenderness in this collection. So here I am on a Sunday morning, with the laundry calling out to me, returning to the poem ‘Such Silence’ with these memorable lines:

What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots / than reason. / I hope everyone knows that.

These sentiments so often capture our human need to believe in something above reason. This need for enchantment is what Oliver addresses adequately in this book. The biggest downside of the Enlightenment tradition has been that enchantment was left in the darkness, hidden and to be forgotten. I believe it was Roald Dahl (or is it CS Lewis?) who said something similar about magic, but Oliver’s sentiment is not about hidden magical worlds. But it is precisely about hidden magic worlds, hidden plainly in sight in the vicinity of humans, among the mangroves, the swallows, the owls and even the pebbles in her room. Especially the pebbles in her room. And the way in which this magic “has deeper roots” than reason, that human asset that supposedly sets up apart. Oliver is not just being a vitalist here but asserting the primacy of magic over reason from the perspective of a nature lover. She seems to be saying that the Enlightenment has not struck at the deeper roots of magic and that if we search in the right places, we will still find it. For her, the right places are where the owls hoot, the mangroves dream about flying up to the sky, and the pebbles drink water, i.e. anywhere.

Mary Oliver writes like she wants to be read by a carefree person in love, with nature, with the self, with another. But her writing is so heartbreakingly beautiful because it comes from a place of love, even in loss. Consider these lines from ‘Little Crazy Love Song’:

A gull broods on the shore/where a moment ago there were two./ Softly my right hand fondles my left hand/ as though it were you.

The softness of these lines is unparalleled. Something about them makes you want to hold the poem itself and comfort it with a hug. It is not a love song for those who rejoice in the presence of the beloved but the anticipated return of the beloved who is already lost. A love song for the lost love.

There are many other things that are memorable about this collection: the vitalistic conversations with the biotic and the abiotic, the ambiguous fascination with tropical climes and the frequently hinted at mysterious process of being acclimatized to it, the defensiveness of explaining the eccentricity of the speaker in a poem (or in life to a bunch of friends) and the overarching thread of relating to the natural. In all its cyclical normality, life and death are represented plainly without anxiety, with an acceptance and even an eagerness that is unnerving to read.

Oliver in this collection is patiently waiting for time, or the end of time, itself:

I eat up a few wild poems/ while time creeps along/ as though it’s got all day.

While waiting, she consumes wild poems, drawing an equivalence between boldly worded ideas with soft wild berries. And that is how she sees every poem: the softness and the wildness connecting it to what the natural is for her.

P.S.: I have much more to say about this book. When time allows, I will frame it into an essay and hang it in some corner for you to read.

On Loving and Losing Weekends

I recently read the meandering meditations of Rebecca Solnit in her book A Field Guide To Getting Lost. A set of personal essays seeking the meaning of being lost, losing valued places, people and times, and on the sense of being lost in thoughts as well, the book was perfect bed time reading. What does one lose when we sleep? Apparently, during REM sleep our body is temporarily paralyzed which is why we do not move in reality even when we might move in our dream. We are truly lost to ourselves in the night-time, perhaps in a dark cavity filled with symbolism— of desires, dreams, fears and ambitions. What else could explain dreams? Weekends are, I think, the night-times at the weekly level.


It has been a little more than a year since I began my PhD research. Delving into the most darkest dystopias for my research, I have a newfound appreciation for everything simple and bright. How absolutely wonderful that we still have trees! Sunlight! Rain! To think that there could be worlds where there are incessant acid rains, surrogate slaves and a constantly spying government, or a perpetual motion machine that goes around a frozen world, is now just – work. When you take up a long-term project such as this, it is inevitable that it creeps into your time outside work, as well. I have found myself wondering about a possibility or an idea, even a brainwave that restructured an entire chapter, when I am least expecting it– such as in the middle of the night or when I am folding laundry. That is the process.


One day off a week is a useful system when doing a PhD. This has mostly meant that I am losing my weekends to research. One could argue that the post-pandemic flexibility in work timings has made it rather common for weekends to not be the relaxing time they once were. Given that weekends are indeed social constructs, it is only realistic that a global pandemic could also erase the social emphasis on weekends, just as it did with the expectation of working in offices. Could it be that we are witnessing the end of weekends? Or, is it just me?


As a child, weekends for me meant time spent at my ancestral home with grandparents and cousins. Every Friday evening, my parents would drive my sister and me to my father’s house in rural Kerala, a one hour drive away from the mild bustle of Calicut city. My grandfather, adamant as he still is, would open the gate himself and our car would be parked. My grandmother would insist that I wear at least a necklace, or that my sister wear a bindi. My grandfather would ask about school. After the cursory tea and seasonal snacks, my sister and I would slip away to my cousins’ house next door to announce our arrival.


Growing up, visiting my relatives meant being back in the thick of the action. There would be political arguments between my uncles and my grandfather, heated discussion on what someone implied at a recent social event, a nostalgic foray about the past and some quiet afternoon siestas. Those weekends were what I looked forward to after long weeks at school. During the summer, there would be extended time spent with my grandparents. My cousins and I would be busy building our little makeshift hut in the backyard. It was our private hangout complete with a mini-fan, a mirror and some magazines. The perfect getaway from the adults.
By the time I was in high school, these visits began to get harder to schedule. I had weekend tuitions and my sister had her dance classes. My cousins seem to grow quite rapidly during our time away. Weekends were now already a semi-free time with extra demands from school. But that also came with excitement in tuition classes and other events. In college at Buffalo, weekends meant trips to get Indian food. The best haunt was a Pakistani restaurant called Zaiqa with excellent naan sprinkled with sesame seeds. It was on the way to Niagara Falls which meant my friends and I also visited the tourist haunt every other weekend. I consider myself lucky to witness the roaring majesty of the waters of Niagara, to hear it thunder down. You always hear it first before you see it.


Now, weekends are just time to catch up on chores. To do laundry. To plan meals. To order groceries. To buy cat treats. To cook fancier dishes. To read just for pleasure.


Maybe I already lost my weekends to adulthood even before research happened. Or maybe it all just happened at the same time.


But is it not hopeful that for centuries now, humans have just collectively agreed to have two days off a week from work? I know there are exceptions – obviously – but it just says something about humanity that we follow this norm across cultures. It is simply indicative of our collective need to rest. To recuperate. To just be.


I hope this is not the beginning of losing weekends. I like to think that back home there are kids playing cricket on the grounds and closer to Leeds, families having picnics out in the parks. I like to think that some child somewhere is excited to visit their cousins during the weekend. That some teacher somewhere is glad to take a hike and get away from the classroom. I also like to think that at some point, I would enjoy my weekends just as they are, chores and all. I hope you do too.