My newspaper column for March is about women and fundamental freedoms

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LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 15: Members of the public protest against the The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Photo from the internet.

“…This month (and every other in my long career as a woman), I have despaired over the widespread murder of women. As I lament the loss of London’s Sarah Everard, the six Asian women gunned down in Atlanta, and the rising tide of femicide of the past weeks in India, I am gripped by a terrible déjà vu. We’ve all been here before; reassured by our leaders that they’ll take firm steps to protect women, we watch history repeating as they blithely fail. And like a cracked record I find myself railing against our mistreatment again; fitfully hopeful that speaking up might make a tiny difference…”

Please click on pic for my column in full.

My newspaper column for February is on sleep and its deprivation

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“…Now I count sheep, or my version of it — I decorate houses in my head. Not a thwarted interior designer, I have no clue why I do this. I suspect I’m looking for the perfect bed, with that gentle, form-hugging dip in the middle that will cradle me to sleep. Like fairy tale insomniac Goldilocks braving a den of bears to find sleep, I’ve tried this solution and I’ve tried that. But when all’s said and done, throughout my life, what’s worked best on restless nights is the soothing act of writing. Sometimes about sleep.”

Please click on the gorgeous painting by Van Gogh of his Bedroom at Arles to read my column in full.

My first newspaper column for 2021 is about the art of leaving

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“Trump may be an extreme example; of bad grace, ill intent, reprehensible actions, and orangeness, but it’s not just those we place on pedestals who make debacles of departures. In more modest ways, we’re all deficient in the art of leaving well. In my personal life, I’ve been hopeless. Not only do I not know 50 ways to leave lovers, I haven’t even mastered one…” Do click on pic for the rest of the article?

In my last newspaper column of 2020, I discuss autism

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I am autistic, but I didn’t know that before this year. In my last column of 2020 for newspapers Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, I write about this life-changing discovery for the first time, along with my love and concern for the young neurodivergents growing up in an inhospitable world. Please click on the image for the article. And the image, in fact, is an illustration for my children, scrawled one sleepy afternoon seven years ago, of their Mommy as Wolverine, long before these revelations had emerged. Juxtaposed here with its inspiration.

In my Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle monthly column, why we should do away with borders and nationalities

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Completing twenty years in Britain led to some introspection on borders, nationalities and the ties that bind us to different places, which I poured into my monthly column for top Asian newspapers Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle last month. Please click on the picture to read more. The photos are of me when I first arrived in the UK twenty years ago (on the left) and now (on the right).

My ‘spooky’ column for Indian newspapers in June

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it is a haunted world we live in right now. Our deserted public spaces are peopled by wraiths, not just of those who have tragically died in the pandemic, but all of us who have retreated from the world, living a shadow of the lives we once did.

The homes of those who live alone or in unhappy domestic situations are echoing wells of loneliness, and maybe even fear. Even in happy homes, the ghosts of extended family and visiting friends can still be seen flitting around corners.

In their passing on from our lives, though not from this world, they have taken on an otherworldly sheen. Our home in Sherwood forest, where the past incessantly rubs shoulders with the present, is now infested with them.

At least, that was the (im)possibility we were forced to consider when, as the summer progressed and lockdown laid root, our nights suddenly filled with voices…

(Please click on pic for rest of story)

Smells like a ‘cleanse’! Is it the virus or the State?

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As the coronavirus spreads across the planet, indiscriminately passing from person to person as viruses do, killing hundreds of thousands without heed to nationality as pandemics must, a strange pattern has emerged. A pattern of pernickety culling unknown to contagion…

(Please click on pic to read rest of Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle column. Cartoon from the net)