I think I had been telling my story in almost every book as every writer does in some way I feel. Our own life is always embedded in the way we process experiences and the lens through which we see the world and consume emotions. But for Everything Changes, there was a significant part of my personal and professional life that I was ready to give away for public consumption and also I saw it as a medium for readers to be inspired by and perhaps find strength and peace in. I have been asked why a memoir at age 45 - but the thing is, maybe this is the first of more personal narratives. And this is just the beginning of a deeply introspective and healing personal catharsis.
I start from my childhood which is an integral part of my emotional debris and then follow up to the year I fled Kolkata to escape the mayhem being caused by an emotionally abusive and physically violent first relationship to my first year working as a trainee in journalism in the hard, cold city of Delhi, my second romantic relationship which almost bore fruition as marriage to its abrupt and cruel end to my year moving away from the protective cocoon of my home and parents to Mumbai and the adage of Editor being added to my name, at age 25. Then comes the seeds of my first book being sown in a frenzied newsroom to a time shift and me almost losing my life to Covid in 2021 - a present day relationship which almost gutted me to my life now in the shadow of the peace I chose to make with my own life, post performing the funeral for my biological father, whose suicide scarred me and my mother irrevocably to the introduction of my foster sister into our lives and how I decided to once again, try and piece back my brokenness, and look at my own fractured past and my personal resilience as a compass to finding back myself.
In writing a memoir, one cannot obviously narrate every single anecdote and there is a veritable sense of sifting through one's memories and while maintaining a safe distance, also feel close enough to tell the story as it happened. So, it was hard to know where to draw a line and where to pour one's heart out - I think what is the deciding factor is the sense of balance in doing this exercise and how to maintain a sense also of the narrative arc so that the reader is engaged and like a fellow traveller on the journey.
A novel is fiction and things while being rooted in one's experience are cast into an imaginary mould and plot most of the time, while writing a memoir to me was more on the lines of speaking my truth, but casting into a structure which felt like a movie in some way. Perhaps, a biopic at best, where the story that I am telling has to hold the reader's interest and feel like a journey that they are on with me - to be able to make my personal experiences that are deeply intimate, relatable to a larger audience, who hopefully by the end of the book can see themselves as the protagonist or feel that they have also in some way, lived the same truth. The truth as clichéd as it sounds is stranger than fiction and as a writer, it was my attempt that I can both hold up a mirror to myself and the reader.
This line, 'everything changes,' was spoken twice in my life. Once by a colleague when I was a journalist in Bangalore and was at a crossroads in my life, after a life threatening accident, just after a devastating break up had plunged me into a dark abyss of self-doubts and sadness. And cut to the present - my little sister Sreelekha who once again and unconscious of the past, used this line on me to motivate me to pick up the pieces of my life, at a time when I was at my lowest, and seeking for a light at the end of the tunnel. The title of this book went through several changes from Transit Lounge, Bad Blood, More Than A Daughter - but I finally felt that Everything Changes captures most eloquently the storms in my life, my search for my personal truth, my self-discovery and awareness and the sense of just going on, however harsh the blows dealt by life.
