Friends, sometimes it happens almost magically that you discover a person from a completely different geography and connect with them through a primordial tribal kinship of experiences, thoughts, and practice.

I met Cristina Vidrutiu through the Schloss Solitude Blog and discovered her work with illness narratives. We conversed and she asked me questions which made me probe my own practice as a writer – shed light on what I am trying to do with my life. Upon seeing them published, I can now say that these answers are my credo as a writer.

Thank you Akademie Schloss Solitude! You make possible these wonderful connections.

Please read …

Tags: Akademie Schloss Solitude, illness, madness, Sepia Leaves, Writer

Friends and friends of ‘Sepia Leaves’, the most common response that I got from readers who were or had been care givers has been: ‘Thank you. We did not know we had a story.’

Now, Jerry Pinto has gathered many stories of care givers, loved ones of whose are behind the pale and brought out a collection named ‘A Book of Light’. The collection features harrowing yet moving, even empowering, stories—about the terror and majesty of love; the bleakness and unexpected grace of life; the fragility and immense strength of the human mind.

My own story in the collection is called: ‘My Mother’s Breast’. It is the sequel to ‘Sepia Leaves’. This is the story of my mother’s death. I wrote it within days of her passing away in 2007. It has taken this long to find a home. I am very satisfied that it appears in this collection – in solidarity with all of us who battle many demons which are grounded beyond the narrow myopic discourses that rule our society.

Please bless. Please order and share among loved ones.

See more here…

Tags: A Book of Light, Jerry Pinto, madness, My Mother's Breast, Speaking Tree

Friends, in the end of March I got Sukant Deepak’s call when I was driving to Barnala. He said he wanted to talk with me. I was very curious because India Today had never spoken to me. A few days later, Jasdeep Singh and I were on his Bullet mapping the dry SYL canal when we found ourselves in Ambala. We met Sukant.

The interview tilts towards the immediate because I am mid-project but then that is how it is: ‘On the surface, it might be about faultlines, but deep down, all the miles accumulated are a hunt for identity and sense of being.’

Please read here …

Tags: identity, India Today, Jasdeep Singh, madness, Punjab, Sukant Deepak

Very happy that Sepia Leaves lives on and on. Nirupama Dutt covers it as part of the three important texts on mental illness in India. Others being Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto and Echoes in the Well by Belinder Dhanoa. The article made the lead story in The Hindu Literary Review.

Please read …

Tags: Belinder Dhanoa, Echoes in the Well, Em and the Big Hoom, Jerry Pinto, madness, Mental Illness, Nirupama Dutt, Sepia Leaves, The Hindu Literary Review

It is uncanny how Jerry Pinto and I had so many similar flashpoints in our account of our loved one’s mental illness. Review of his book here.

Tags: Jerry Pinto, madness

Came across this article on a friend’s post: the use of madness. If this can be a result of madness, I would rather be this. What trust! What ability to be and let go of inhibitions! And then zoom … That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger

Tags: cycling, madness

When I was writing Sepia Leaves I was concious that Rourkela was an artificial place built entirely out of the dream of one man – Jawaharlal Nehru – and with no sense of history because a lot of people, the tribal communities living there, were wiped out to create the town.

Reading Sanjitha’s review clarified the thought to me a little more. How do you describe a display window located in the midde of a marquee? She said Rourkela is ‘little India’, the kind you see when you travel abroad. In Sepia Leaves you are travelling within India, across the dreary plains of Orissa, into a place outside, into madness, into Rourkela, the display window of India.

See review here: Businessworld.in

Yes, Sepia Leaves does not do what most books on India do. Exoticise India. That is because it is located in exotic India, gone mad

Tags: businessworld, exotic, madness, review, Sanjitha Rao Chaini