Lakshmi Iyer's Blog, page 48
April 5, 2018
These Little Girls Of Mine
She stands in her batik printed dress, the silky fabric clinging to her body as she strikes a pose for me. I click and I am taken aback by the young woman staring back at me in the photo. I turn the phone off and suggest that she wear a Capri pant underneath. Year over […]
April 2, 2018
Yale Writer’s Workshop
Early this year, I applied to the Yale Summer Session for Writers called the Yale Writer’s Workshop on a whim. I figured I’d decide how to manage to go there *if* I got in. Late March, I received word that I was accepted. I agonized over it for a week before caving and registering for […]
March 30, 2018
Of Saying Good Bye
The sky is endlessly grey as we drive back home from the airport. The children are squabbling at the back while Saathi concentrates on the road. I am ostensibly looking at my phone but my head is trying to wrap itself around the fact that the world now does not contain my father in law […]
March 10, 2018
On Dying, Death And The After
The past couple of weeks have been rough. As forty-somethings wedged in the middle, little kids on one end and the aging parents on the other, we have seesawed between caretaking for both, sometimes continents apart. A routine phone call had us scrambling to find tickets for Saathi. He waited at the hospital where his […]
February 28, 2018
Of Kinship And Blood Ties
I feel the anxiety in the stomach, in the way I zone out while driving, in the blur of familiar landscapes, in the music that hardly registers in my brain. A few months ago, my children and I had DNA tests done. It was mostly an exercise to figure out what ancestry we each had. […]
February 17, 2018
Triggers
My eyes are crusty when I wake. In the dim light of dawn, I scrub my face and realize I have been crying. The kind of heaving, sobbing, heavy crying, deep in the throes of sleep. I went to bed thinking of my father in law who is recovering from an infection. Somewhere in my […]
February 13, 2018
Love In The Times Of Middle Age
Anniversaries have this way of inspiring reflection on who we were, who we are now. Each year as the week of Valentine’s day comes around, Saathi and I talk about the day we met and how we decided in a couple of hours that we were to be partners in life. I don’t think I […]
February 10, 2018
To Friends And Friendship – Thank You!
I am strolling through the aisles of my local grocery store looking for that small something to attach to the cards my daughters have worked on meticulously over the last weekend. A bag of pink M&Ms catches my eye. I calculate I should have enough in two bags and add it to my cart. “What […]
February 2, 2018
Parenting: A Guilt Trap?
It was 1:30 PM, that time of the day when I prioritize napping over everything else when the phone rang. The caller id flashed a familiar number. I paused, considered letting it go to voicemail and then picked it up. We spoke about a great number of things but the bulk of our conversation was […]
January 29, 2018
Book Review: Love, Hate And Other Filters
I started following the author Samira Ahmed on Twitter a while back when her book was yet to be published. I followed her through the preview of her cover art and the eventual publication date. The premise of the book is that of a teen figuring out her place in the world amid islamophobia and […]
