Reading Time: 2 minutesBook editor Mili Das interviewed me about Cobra Orchard. She asked about the outlines I never wrote, characters I refused to label, and why the men in my book are so quiet. Her questions made me think long and hard on how Cobra Orchard came to life.
Reading Time: 4 minutesWronged by everyone, they remember everything and have never once apologized. The family narcissist isn’t pretending to be the victim. They believe it completely. Households often bend around such a person causing the suffering to spread instead of being eliminated.
Reading Time: 2 minutesEveryone pretends the wedding joins a bride and a groom. It doesn’t. An intercultural marriage joins two different ways of living, and the woman usually pays for the transition. The smaller problems that lie waiting beneath the surface. No amount of preparation is sufficient to prevent them.
Reading Time: 3 minutesSecrets don’t die with the person who kept them. In fact, they begin to rise from the graves that kept them safe. How do families cope with truths that arrive unannounced to threaten their well-being? The dead don’t have the answers to the realities that outlive them.
Reading Time: 2 minutesA book editor wasn’t sure about Cobra Orchard. Three women at the center, a book that looked women oriented. Then she read it, and gave it 5 out of 5.
Reading Time: 3 minutesDo you still carry a version of yourself that was decided by someone else? Were you too young to understand this at the time? Has this childhood label stuck to you like superglue? The burden of these verdicts often scar a person for life.
Reading Time: 3 minutesHurt people hurt people is the sentence Indian families reach for after someone does something inexcusable. Notice how it’s never aimed at the person committing the offence. A wound explains the behavior. It never hands over permission to pass down the hurt.
Reading Time: 4 minutesWe read to entertain ourselves and often to learn. Women read thrillers not just for the blood and gore, but to find answers to questions they were never allowed to ask out loud. When instinct and survival find space on a page, there are eyes eager to find them.
Reading Time: 3 minutesAsk an Indian parent and they will deny it. Ask their children and the answer takes two seconds. The favorite child is never announced; only subtle hints are dropped. What does this ranking cost the one who receives it, and the one who doesn’t?
Reading Time: 2 minutesForgive her. She’s your mother. Family is family. This advice never arrives when the harm is done. It arrives when you start talking about it. Who does forced forgiveness actually protect, and what does obeying it cost the person carrying the wound?
