Some Kind of Prose

Renuka Rajesh Nanavati   I’ve been thinking of the best way to write an ode to the wonderful woman that was my mother for days now. It’s taken me a whole year and I still haven’t done a very good job - because she was truly one of a kind, and it’s hard to describe her in just words. You had to know her to know.  Every single person who knew her, even briefly - friends, family, her Bhakti group ladies, our maids, staff, neighbours, even the vegetable seller and our tailor - were heartbroken. No one could believe it. How could this happen?  My mother was a strong believer in God’s plan. Maybe it was God’s plan - maybe it was written in her stars.  Everyone loved her. I think I didn’t grasp the extent of how loved she was until now - her family, her friends truly loved her - she was the youngest and she was everyone’s favourite. Favourite cousin, favourite fifi, favourite bhabhi, favourite masi, favourite friend.  She was the kindest, most religious, most simple, most beautiful person you

Some songs are music, and some songs are poetry. Vienna is poetry.  Billy Joel's Vienna is the kind of song that you just fall in love with, much like you fall in love with a person. I could listen to it over and over again and never tire. Every single word of this song speaks to me on an absolutely granular level. It may have been written for another generation, but its message is everlasting - across ages and generations.  Too many of us fall prey to ambition too early on in life.  You're so ambitious for a juvenile  Ambition can change your life in the best of ways. Ambition gives you something to live for. Ambition can also make you feel like nothing you ever do will be enough.  You've got so much to do And only so many hours in a day Have you ever stopped to list down all the things you do in a day? Apart from basic survival, how much of what you do is for the sole purpose of feeding into your ambitions and goals? When was the last time you did something just because? 

Innumerable writers have espoused the idea that the best way to forget your problems, is to lay on the grass under the starry night sky and just stare. Stare at the twinkle-dotted expanse of nothingness till you slowly begin to realise the magnitude of the universe that you live in, and the sheer insignificance of all that ails you. The pain of your problems seems to pale in comparison to the night sky.  I, of course, live in Mumbai. A city where a patch of grass clean enough to lay on and an unadulterated view of the night sky are rare commodities. So I have to make do with heart-reacting relatable posts on Instagram and Facebook. You know, the ones that say 'I wish I could just shut off my phone, drive to the beach, forget everything, and just listen to the sound of waves crashing.' Which is also pretty much impossible in Mumbai because every beach is downright cacophonous.  But these things happen when you least expect them to. On a very rainy Saturday morning, I happened to

I inherited my love for books from my father. I have fond memories of him coming home with a bag full of second-hand novels for me - Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, other classics I can't seem to remember anymore. I devoured these books within days of getting them. I was told I wrote beautiful essays in school, and I think that is mostly because of how much reading I did.  As I grew older, I started writing for fun, and not just for school. Over the years I've amassed a lot of experiences - good, bad, lovely, ugly. I find that my life experiences inform a lot of what I write about. For years, I kept my writing to myself, occasionally sharing it with a friend or two. I'm a very private person, and what I write feels almost like an extension of my being - a part of myself that I'm not quite sure I want to share just yet.  Over the last few weeks though, I've started to feel like I'm carrying a sort of burden in my heart, and I want to let it all out. Mayb