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Reviewing Verghese's books and how it altered my reading experience

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  I recently finished reading two of Abraham Verghese’s books and something in me has shifted. It took me days to come out of the universe that Verghese so meticulously creates in these books. The stories are not connected. The characters, settings and timeline are entirely different, but the way Verghese writes, connects you to the soul of each story. ‘The Covenant of Water’ spans three generations starting with the marriage of a twelve-year-old girl with a forty-year-old man in the early 1900s. Set along the shores of the Indian ocean, the novel follows a cast of unforgettable characters, each carrying a story to tell, a heartbreaking story of love and loss and separation and fleeting moments of light and love. And in all that these characters live through; water becomes a thread binding them together. Towards the end, comes a revelation so devastating that it makes you want to close the book, sit and stare into nothingness as your heart dem ands time to recover from what has jus...
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The story of my ectopic pregnancy because that's just what it is!

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Almost a year ago, I survived a life threatening medical emergency. Let me just put it out straight. I had an ectopic pregnancy rupture and by the time I checked into the hospital, it was already too late.  So this was last December. Argentina was playing the world cup semi-final that night. I had a lower abdomen pain since 3 in the afternoon with slight spotting and I clearly ignored the symptoms. I went to see a gynaecologist after school who casually remarked that it could have happened because I had taken a pill. She advised me to get an ultrasound done but this wasn't my regular gynaecologist so I wasn't keen on doing an USG and thought that I could wait for one more day until my GYNAEC came back. So I again ignored the symptoms and went home to take some rest. I was a bit alarmed when the pain didn't subside even after I took a painkiller. It was only around 10 at night when I finally decided to go to the hospital again. Just to be 'on a safe side'. 🙄 Even wh...
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Kamala

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My name is Kamala. My father named me after the flowers he'd grown in our terrace, in an aluminum bowl that my mother used for washing clothes. Kamala grows in mud water, usually pond water but my father, who loved plants and gardening, grew Kamala in our terrace. He took pride in every petal that unfolded and he loved to show it off to our guests. He was proud of the Kamala he grew in a bowl but never so of the child, his own. So when I returned home from literacy classes one day when I was 7 years old, he told me that I never needed to go back to study. I cried, refused to eat for days, begged and pleaded to my mother to talk to my father to send me back to class. They didn't budge. I was 12 years old when I was married off to a 16 year old boy who lived in our neighborhood. My husband ran a small shop in Patan. He sold threads and buttons and scissors.  I gave birth to my first child at home, a daughter, when I was 14 years old. I lost three of my children to unknown disease...
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The Magical Door

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The Magical Door It was Monday. I had set an alarm for 6:30a.m. but I only woke up at 7:15a.m. after snoozing the alarm clock thrice. The small, narrow window in my one bedroom apartment hardly let any sunlight in, thanks to the massive gurudwara right in front of the only window in my apartment. On weekends, I’d always draw the curtains close and sleep in until late in the morning. The room would always be dark and the gulli that I lived in was also very quiet and far from the hustle-bustle of the main chowk.  I woke up and checked my phone to see what time it was and hurried off to the toilet to get ready for the day. I lived in an old building and the apartment I shared with my best friend was converted from a terrace into a shabby living space by the miser landlord and rented out to young, miserable college girls like me who had no source of income and survived on petty pocket money sent by our parents. The place was livable in a sense that it protected us from the rain and ani...
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Just a kiss!

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It was 7p.m. when she reached home. She unlocked the door to her apartment and hung the key on the keyholder above the shoe rack. She carefully put her shoes in the bottom shelf of the rack and took out her indoor slippers from the top. She put her handbag on top of the coffee table and went to the kitchen. She washed her hands before she put a cup of water to boil on the stove. She added a spoon of tea leaves. She opened the door to the verandah and went out to pick some mint leaves from the flower pot. She rinsed the leaves and put it into the water boiling on the stove. She poured the tea into a mug and carried it to the living room. She lay a tea coaster on the table and put the mug on top of it. She unbuttoned her pants and unclipped her bra and sighed as she sat down on the couch. She looked around and closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy the taste of mint in her mouth and silence surrounding her. This was a rare moment for her.  Usually, she picked up her son from his schoo...
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Lessons I learnt when my child got sick with pneumonia

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During our family trip to Jhapa back in December 2020, chora was diagnosed with pneumonia and had to be hospitalised for about 5 nights in a community hospital in Birtamode. I was scared, shocked and more than a year later, I am finally gathering some courage to look back at the whole event and refelct on many life lessons that the whole eposide taught me. Let's begin with how our day exactly started on the day of his hospitalisation. Chora woke up mulitple times at night but had no fever. I remember at one point telling my husband that he was breathing very fast. He was fussy but otherwise, he had no other alarming symptoms. He had a runny nose the day before and that was that. He woke up in the morning and vomitted all the milk as soon as he finished drinking it. His respiration wasn't normal and we took a tempo and rushed to a local community hospital. The hospital had one pediatrician and around 20 to 30 patients waiting outside. It was crowded, people weren't wearing m...
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Letters to my son: Part 3_About Hard work

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 Dear Chora, You are soon turning 3 and the most adorable thing you say these days is 'I love you'. You love to hug us tight and tell us that you love us. I wish you always learn to tell everyone you love how much you love them. I am writing this letter about labor today. I hope that I am able to teach you how important hard work is and that there is no alternative to hard work in life. Somebody very close to us, when he was a kid, would come home from school, keep his dirty clothes in place, wash his hands and feet and complete his homework before he'd do anything else. He'd always put in his best efforts into his work and I always wished that I'd be able to raise my kid to do the same. The level of commitment that he showed for every task he performed was awe-inspiring. Hard work doesn't necessarily mean toiling hard physically. It means to respect our work and our responsibilities towards it and to do it sincerely most days of our life. Of course, we all have...
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