Raghav Rao's Blog, page 2

In Memoriam: Dr. Jaylina Store

On February 3rd, my grandmother, Dr. Jaylina Store, passed away, in her home in the company of her daughters, leaving a cavernous void in our hearts. She led a full life, passing at the age of 94. A gentle and remarkable woman, I never once heard her raise her voice. I can hear, still, her tinkling laugh.

She became a doctor at a time when few Indian women could aspire to such ambitions, graduating from Grant Medical College in Bombay.

Earlier this week, on Feb 12th, we immersed her ashes in the Arabian Sea, taking a small boat out from the Gateway of India. Later, I realized that Mahatma Gandhi, too, had his ashes immersed in the Arabian Sea, on Feb 12th, exactly 77 years before. A sign to me that her soul is in exalted company. She actually met the man himself in her youth, an incident that she recalled to me with clarity though she would have been just a teenager at the time.

My grandmother lost her husband when he was in his forties, leaving her to raise four daughters. This period of her life, I think, came with many challenges.

For years, her home, Springfield was a light and airy sanctuary for many of us. I walked there — it was only five minutes away from our house — several times a week. I think back on it with a sense of gratitude. We watched movies together — Wait Until Dark and Roman Holiday and How to Steal A Million. We played Scrabble. She was even goalkeeper and let me fire the ball at her from close range, never complaining, always laughing.

She was interested, always, in spirituality and, at the time of her passing, I know she’d expended a great deal of thought on the subject of death. She was pre-deceased by several siblings and her grandson, my cousin, Krish. She left this world in a state of equilibrium with it. There was no unfinished task on her mind.

One of her brothers was an unfortunate passenger on TWA 903 and died when it crashed in Egypt in 1950. This was a regular flight route at the time, Bombay - Cairo - Rome - New York and her brother was on his way to college in America, to MIT, and was so young, only seventeen. I recall her telling me about the devastated reaction in the family home to the horrible news. It’s a great tragedy when a youthful energy, on the cusp of life, is snuffed out. Many families with untimely deaths must endure this pain. She endured it many times in a single life.

Though I miss her, I feel joy when I think of Ajji. She contended with the vagaries of life with a dignity that will be admired by all those who knew her. May she rest in peace.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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To live outside the frame of time

Interstellar

I came to know the movie Interstellar first through its beautiful soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. Its “Main Theme” I purchased as piano sheet music to play. I was living in New York when the movie came out. There were a lot of posters up at bus stops: a desolate and dark landscape of space with Anne Hathaway or Matthew McConaughey in a space suit. At the time I thought it was a funny casting.

This past weekend I watched it for the first time when it became available on Netflix, and it was stunning. The grand visuals accompanied by the rolling crescendos and dark resonating chords of the musical scores, the poignant human stories, and dialogue that hit home. As an aside, I am amazed at the depth of Matthew McConaughey’s acting skills. I associate him with rom-coms, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and The Wedding Planner, and the Lincoln car commercial. The two most recent works with him that I’ve seen have held a different tenor altogether, the other being True Detective.

A scene from the movie. The space ship Endurance, a blip of light as it flies by Saturn.The unstoppable force of time

At the center of the plot is the passage of time and the futility of trying to control this. Matthew McConaughey’s character “Coop” leaves his two children behind to be raised by his father-in-law, their only remaining living relative. He does so in the hopes of locating a new planet for humans to live on, specifically a place for his children. The Earth is literally dying, unable to sustain any crops except for corn, which will soon also become unsustainable.

I was drawn into the pain and regret that he experiences as his voyage into space inevitably extends further and further into the lives of his children while he remains youthful and unchanged. To hurtle through space and time is to be preserved in his youth relative to his children’s aging back on Earth. There is a moment in the movie, he is visibly anguished as an exploratory trip onto a planet ends in tragedy and not much else. One hour on the planet was equivalent to seven years on Earth. His children have aged 23 years in what was three hours for him. One of his companions, Dr. Brand played by Anne Hathaway retorts with frustration, “I screwed up, I’m sorry! But you knew about relativity.”

Life in measures of texture rather than time

This week I was sitting with a patient who shared feelings of grief and regret around the loss of time in a toxic relationship. They spoke of loss of time in a way akin to loss of life. It evoked for me Coop’s desperation for his mission to succeed so that he could return home and try to recoup the decades “lost” with his children. That slippery feeling of time indifferently passing by with no rewind or back button.

It stirred up wonderings about how to conceive of life outside the measure of time, what would that look like. I think about the many patients-clients I have seen with similar regrets of looking back and wishing they had done something different, a feeling of life lost. Yet if there is anything I have learned in my work, it is that a life “well-lived” or a “good life” is not how we may see it depicted in our culture through advertisements and media, through teachings in school, and through what is implicitly or explicitly communicated growing up in our family contexts. Life is often depicted as a kind of linear progression against time, of reaching milestones that are understood in terms of happiness, contentment, acquisition of material goods and comforts, and health and longevity.

I think about an alternate measure of life to be the richness and textures of life, rather than these milestones that hold an implicit judgment as markers of a good life.

In recent years I have come into a realization that my life is not a sacred thing to be protected from discomforts. Rather life is about discomfort, the inevitability of this and other greater experiences such as grief, loss, pain, anguish, disillusionment, and alienation. There are experiences that may not resolve in a lifetime and continue on as part of the fabric of one’s life. Such experiences do not impinge on what would otherwise be a “perfect” life, they are the richness that composes a life. There is not necessarily a reason for why they happen, they simply are.

I comment sometimes to Raghav of what it would have been like to have had an alternate life like that of Jimi Hendrix. A short life with intensity of experience and undoubtably with different textures that I will not experience in my own.

Life in the measure of love

I paraphrased a quote from Dr. Brand that moved me. The team must make a high stakes and very difficult choice. They have enough fuel only to visit one of two remaining planets that may be hospitable to life. Dr. Brand is in love with the scientist who initially voyaged 10 years ago to one of these planets in hopes of finding a life-sustaining environment. She still harbors the hope that they can be reunited against all odds and makes this heart-wrenching plea of why go to this planet over the other.

“Maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory. Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful. We love people who have died. Maybe it’s an artifact of higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”

At least for me, so much of what I wonder about of life comes back around to love and connection. That to be human is to be born for love (borrowing words from Dr. Bruce Perry here). I felt inspired by this idea of love as transcendent of time and space, and will continue to reflect on this and carry it forward with me.

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Reflections on India Tour + The Year 2024

In my hotel room after the first day at the Bangalore Literature Festival, I became filled with a sense of dread. The day had been a massive success, a career highpoint, moderating a panel featuring Booker Prize-winner Kiran Desai among other major authors, speaking to a full-house at a panel dedicated to MISSY, signing books and taking selfies with readers. I spent the day inhabiting the image of what I thought a writer at a Lit Fest looked like. Beyond that, I’d shared the day with loved ones and reconnected with old friends. I couldn’t ask for more. Still, I couldn’t shake this dread. The festival, big as it was, felt like a pageant that would shortly end, leaving dust and a clean-up crew recycling the guides and pamphlets. Ultimately, I feared it was all meaningless mutual back-patting. I was wrong, of course, but didn’t know it then.

The next day, I went to a lovely bookstore, Champaca, to do a signing but also, to attend a lecture on Krishnamurti delivered by my high school Economics teacher, Rajan Chandy. It was an excellent lecture, beginning first with what causes violence but extending outward to what causes inner conflict. In my last year at Rishi Valley, Rajan had been my dorm master (house parent, we call them) and I admired him greatly (and I continue to do so). In the light of this lecture, the dread from the previous day first became clarified and secondly dissipated.

The lovely Champaca book store.

Sometimes, I mistakenly think that getting what I want will satisfy me. But the chasing of accolades is an exercise of the self’s attempt to assert itself. If I can let go of that need, the fear dissipates and what’s usually left is the best part —- taking pleasure in the company of other people!

From then on, I was able to shed my personal concerns and actually enjoy the Lit Fest!

I connected with wonderful people supporting a culture of letters in Bangalore. These people represent the best qualities of the city — laidback, intelligent, funny. I’m thinking of the festival organizers — Mr. V. Ravichandar and Srikrishna as well as Subodh Sankar from Atta Galata and his team of volunteers. And, also, the delightful and witty Lavanya Lakshminarayan, author of Ten-Percent Thief and the new Interstellar Megachef. But there were many others, too.

Here are some of the highlights of the wider tour:

In addition to connecting with Rajan and his wife Anu, I also re-connected with several of my high school English teachers (Sid Menon, Usha Palat akka, Jyothi akka), all of whom cultivated my love of literature.

At the Bangalore Literature Festival, a number of current Rishivalley students attended my events and bought books and even took one for the school library, a place that means a lot to me.

At the marvelous Apparao Galleries run by the generous and classy Sharan Apparao in Chennai, we had a lovely event surrounded by art. After, over a glass of wine, I got to enjoy the company of the incredible George K whose life story and art are both awe-inspiring

My Bombay events were full-circle moments as I got to give public talks, meet readers and sign copies at two book stores that I frequented growing up, Kitab Khana and Crossword Kemps Corner. The latter, in particular, was my local bookstore and I can’t tell you how many hours I spent there.

Missy at Crossword Kemps Corner, my childhood bookstore.

Lastly, I got to spend a lot of quality time with my parents and brother and his fiancée. My family and friends and wider community filled every venue with their love and support. I sold out at several events because they sent initial whatsapps, then follow-up whatsapps, and then confirmation whatsapps. It really takes a team.

2024 has been a year where many of the things that I wanted so desperately and for so long finally materialized. I’m grateful to my publishers Hera in the UK and PRH in India as well as my agent Priya Doraswamy.

Also, stay tuned, because I anticipate being able to share good news re: my US rights in the not-too-distant future. Yes, America, Missy will soon be legally recognized on her adopted soil, too!

Pics from the Chennai event!

For help with the publicity for this India tour, I want to thank all the venues and their bookseller teams (Kitab Khana, Bangalore Lit Fest, Champaca, Apparao Galleries, Crossword, all the interlocutors and co-panelists, Anushka Jasraj, Kiran Desai, Amit Chaudhuri, Romesh Gunesekera, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Janani Kanan, Reema Gehi, Vibha Kamat). Also the DGH team and Rachna Kalra. Thank you also to the Penguin Team, Vineet and Prateek. And also a thank you to Manohari V. And to my family & friends who showed out in force).

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Here’s the India pre-order link.

Consider Supporting Climb Malawi Boulder Gym

While I was at the Bangalore Lit Fest, I had a wonderful conversation with my friends Siddharth K and Karishma Tiwari. They were telling me what an interesting place Lilongwe, Malawi is at the minute and how they’re enjoying living there. I hope I can visit soon. In the meantime, they have a fundraiser to improve the infrastructure at their climbing gym. Leisure and Recreation mean a lot to me. If so inclined, please join me in supporting their cause. Here’s a link to their gofundme.

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[Book Promo] India Events for MISSY in December + SONALI BENDRE!

I’m really pleased to share that later this month, I’ll be doing several events to promote Missy in a few major Indian cities including the Bangalore Literature Festival where I’ll be moderating a panel that includes Booker Prize winning author Kiran Desai as well as Amit Chaudhuri, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, and Romesh Gunesekera. Personally, I’m most looking forward to my event at Crosswords Kemps Corner because that the preeminent bookstore from my childhood; I spent countless hours there just standing in front of shelves reading entire books.

Here’s a full calendar of events:

Also, in massive, massive news for all Bollywood fans, Sonali Bendre of ‘90s Bollywood fame, announced yesterday that MISSY will be Book of the Month for her bookclub!

sonalisbookclub A post shared by @sonalisbookclub

I have had some other recent media in case anyone’s interested in a listen. Thank you for continuing to buy and review MISSY. It means the world to me!

Interview on Youtube (57:34) with Pigeonhole, the online, interactive bookclub.

Podcast appearance on The Write and Wrong Podcast

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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A Seminal Assassination In Midtown Manhattan

Yesterday, a man shot Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare outside of the Hilton in midtown Manhattan. I’ve seen the video. The gunman walks up coolly, weapon equipped with a sizable suppressor. The gun jams after each shot fired but the gunman is nonplussed as Thompson reels away from the impact. He clears the chamber and recommences shooting. Later, with inspired street-craft, he rides an ebike from the city’s bikeshare program into Central Park. I venture he had a change of clothes in his backpack. He could have easily hopped over a low wall in Central Park, made his way to a major station, and been out of state within a few hours of the shooting. I suspect he’ll get away even though there will be immense pressure on NYPD to catch him.

Screenshot from the video.

But……don’t expect sympathy or support from the public.

So far, online, from what I’ve seen there is UNILATERAL sympathy for the assassin. No one is uttering the usual platitudes. Think of the wife. Think of the kids. There is no sympathy, only dark humor, only thinly-veiled commentary on how, even if this CEO didn’t necessarily deserve it, he’s not the least deserving murder victim either.

This is because it’s easy for people to understand what might have driven this anonymous gunman to this course of action, to picture the gunman as one of the 100 million Americans with medical debt. Perhaps it drove him to financial ruin, to homelessness. Perhaps he perceives that the insurance industry’s callous denials of coverage cost the life of a loved one. Because he’s a maskless everyman, we are all free to create the backstory of this vigilante, to invent a Jason Bourne.

It’s not like UHC committed a crime and got a light slap on the wrist and this gunman punished them because the regulators failed to. No. The general public feels that the company itself is exploitative. This everyman, people think, was exacting retribution for precisely what the company does legally to enrich its shareholders. UHC has the highest % (32%) of denied claims among major health insurers, a metric that directly correlates to profitability which is what CEOs are measured on. This makes the gunman’s actions look well reasoned, logical. You can even say ‘just’ according to a brutal vision of justice, not a legal one, but still an understandable one.

I can imagine a media counter-narrative, asking how Brian Thompson, a hardworking innocent man, can be so dehumanized? Are the American people so callous, so bloodthirsty that they now support vigilante killings?

Firstly, people are de-humanized in a number of ways. One way is downward; when a person experiences homelessness, they are often dehumanized by passersby who are inured or form baseless value judgments. But people can also dehumanize people ‘up’, too, and when CEOs, make 200 times the median wage of their own workers, they also lose their humanity in people's eyes. We shouldn't have have any pearl clutching about this. Inequality will create dehumanization.

The counter-narrative will likely continue. It might say: This wasn’t even a vigilante killing! Brian Thompson committed no crime, they will say!

But people have been paying premiums. And these companies have been denying them coverage! Literally denying them what they have paid for. Isn’t that a crime? Even if the courts don’t deem it so? And this man, along with other leaders in his industry, led the strategy behind that crime, even if it has legal imprimatur.

Don’t believe me? This is from ProPublica: Refusing payment for medical care and drugs has become a staple of their business model, in part because they know customers appeal less than 1% of denials, said Wendell Potter, who oversaw Cigna’s communications team for more than a decade before leaving the industry in 2008 to become a consumer advocate.

So it’s part of the health insurance business model and this man was responsible for the business model. I myself have experienced blood-boiling anger talking with medical providers who have had to waste precious time in review with insurance companies, dickering with pencil-pushing claims deniers on why the so-called unnecessary medicines or procedures were in fact necessary!

Everything I’m saying is in the Zeitgeist. People are not fussed about this murder. And that’s because everyone, almost, in America, Democrats and Republicans, want universal healthcare. But because of special interest capture, Dems have repeatedly refused to play this winning hand. (I can’t get into that here but it’s maddening).

Even if tomorrow we find out that the gunman was involved in a love triangle with Brian Thompson, I still think my point will stand. So long as this culprit remains at large, remains a mystery, we can all understand WHY someone might take this drastic action. More than that, it represents wish fulfillment, fantasy enactment, and a sense of whole-making justice, even if it is of an old-fashioned kind. He did it gracefully, too, skillfully, like Jason Bourne, which itself is empowering for the 100M Americans who have seen the healthcare industry strip away their dignity, their capacity for self-empowerment. He will remain a hero to many. I’m certain of it. No matter what we learn about him or what is said about him later.

I don't know what the legacy of this moment will be. But it is definitely a moment and it's something to pay attention to.

PS: A little bit later this morning, I also have a book promotion post going out. It will be incongruous with this one. But that’s marketing, I guess.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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Why can't I stop clicking articles about whales?

This is a newsletter primarily about exercising discernment in a media-saturated world. I urge readers to not let devices control their attention. But I need to come clean. Sometimes, when I open Chrome on my phone or other device, its algorithm feeds me articles about whales, and I can’t help myself, before I know it I’ve clicked.

Here’s a smattering of whale articles that I’ve clicked in the last six months:

Oct 29 -Where have all the sperm whales gone? Scientists think they know / Earth.com

Sep 28 - Drone footage reveals orcas hunting unexpected prey off Chile for first time | The Independent

September 6 -"Russian spy" beluga whale that was found dead "had multiple bullet wounds," animal rights group says / CBS News

August 3 - A humpback whale in Washington state is missing its tail. / AP News

July 15 - Creature that washed up on New Zealand beach may be world's rarest whale — a spade-toothed whale / CBS News

July 12 - The sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet' revealed by AI / BBC News May 10 - Visited Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York / WaPo

Why? I’m not a cetologist! I like animals but I wouldn’t put myself in the top 25% of animal lovers. I do like whales. They are magnificent with enormous brains and evoke mystical wonder. But still, why when I see an article about whales, must I click it? The interesting moment precedes the click. I don’t ask myself, ‘Why am I clicking this?”

It’s instant. I click. Then, I may think, “Why did I just do that?”

But cognition arrives late.

Krishnamurti, I believe, was right; thought is overrated. We think we have control over our emotional responses. Our prefrontal cortex would like that to be true. I’d go a step further, our collective belief in cognition, in our ability to reason our way through the world, is dangerous because it’s incongruent with reality.

If you aren’t familiar with my relationship with the ideas of J.Krishnamurti — read this.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to give in to impulse on occasion and read a clickbait-y article from Earth.com entitled: AI helps humans have a 20-minute 'conversation' with a humpback whale named Twain. (SPOILER: Researchers sent a recorded humpback “contact” call into the ocean using an underground speaker. A humpback approached their boat and responded matching the intervals of the call). No meaningful dialogue was had.

But back to my point re: the limits of cognition vs. the Internet and News media.

The amygdala is part of the visceral brain stem. It is important for emotional regulation. Critically, it is part of the limbic system and therefore it is difficult to control it with cognition. You can use cognition to some extent but it requires a lot of training. It responds better to physiological control — controlled breathing, cold exposure.

Since I’ve been clicking whale articles, I’m fed more of them, naturally. It’s a burden to my impulse control to resist their song. I’m not going to splash my face with water every time Chrome throws up a whale link.

Impulse control is governed by the amygdala.

No matter how strong of a thinker you believe yourself to be, the amygdala is operating below the level of cognition. The algorithms and the news media are targeting the amygdala. It’s not an admission of weakness to say that we have limited control in our response to stimuli. It’s fact.

We have to try (and I do try!) to limit the stimuli because managing our response to them is very hard.

There’s a lot more to say on this subject. In fact, I intend to write a piece (with appropriate distance) on elections as battles between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex but I’ll stop there for now. I’m waging a long war on cognition. For too long, I’ve reified it. This is just one salvo in that long war.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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My Bookshelf - Reader’s Digest

The Dopamine Cookie Tin:

Before I get into the main content of this newsletter (brief blurbs on 10 of my favorite books), I want to document a personal failure. This is a newsletter primarily about exercising discernment in our information-saturated age. I must admit that I failed at proactively managing my information diet in the lead-up to the election. I was unhealthily addicted to reading the polls like tea leaves. I found myself greedily reaching into the dopamine cookie tin — the Internet — to “stay informed” but pretty soon, I was back to watching mind-numbing Youtube videos of deranged street interviews while queuing up true crime podcasts while playing chess. I exaggerate of course but the point is stimulation seeking leads to more stimulation seeking. Now, I’m trying to put the dopamine cookie tin on a higher shelf. I know what I need to do in my communities, in my personal and professional life. Very little has changed in that regard. First, I must slow down. An excellent way to slow down is in the company of a good book.

Reader’s Digest - Me & My Shelf

I loved Reader’s Digest as a kid; I remember tattered copies were frequently passed around in the dorms in Rishi Valley and we’d lie on our beds during “rest hour” (the hour after lunch) and read aloud their clean yet quaintly funny jokes. I particularly loved their true stories submitted by readers. Reader’s Digest and the Chicken Soup series were perennial favorites amongst us. So was MAD magazine and Tinkle, to be perfectly honest. We were gluttons for anything. Now, I’m honored to be featured in the print issue of Reader’s Digest (India).

Just came out in the Nov 2024 issue of Reader’s Digest (India)

The story is ‘Me & My Shelf’ and it’s basically ten books that I can’t live without / have influenced me / that I recommend to everyone. It was a pleasure to compile this list and I’ve shared it in full below. If you’re in India, please go outside and buy a Reader’s Digest copy and support that venerable institution.

My Shelf:

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl - Roald Dahl

There’s few things we love more than a twist and Dahl, known for his quirky, dark children’s fiction, is an exceptional crafter of a nasty twist. Spare, artfully constructed, and often cruelly funny, many of its stories are unforgettable guilty pleasures.

The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers - Sarnath Banerjee

This graphic novel occupies a shelf in my heart because, with school friends, I adapted and staged it as a play. Adapting a text allows for deeper intimacy; my copy is annotated to tatters; apocryphal moments, “the dark armpits of history” are illuminated; this Kolkata story is for all urbanites; how we drink our cities in vignettes like cups of chai.

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Growing up in India, I read mostly Indian and British authors but Toni Morrison captures the central fissure running through America, the painful, enduring, tormented legacy of the enslavement of countless people of African descent. A heartbreaking book whose lines float off the page.

The Snow Leopard - Peter Mathiessen

Journeys, like books, present an external conflict but are always about an internal conflict. Not long after losing his wife, the author embarked on a two-month journey in Tibet as part of an expedition to film the elusive snow leopard but of course, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s about more than that.

The Simoqin Prophecies by Samit Basu

The fantasy genre is replete with binaries but there’s nothing simple about this witty, gag-filled, spoofy fantasy. Twenty years after its original publication, it has lost none of its zip. In fact, its twists, values, flips and flops, are more glorious. If you haven’t, you must read about these asurs, pashans, vanars, and manticores!

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

A novella, written late in life, by a longtime professor of English, is a story of two brothers who grew up fly-fishing in Montana. It’s an important reminder that, while, yes, representation certainly matters, words, artfully arranged, can bring meaning to anyone, even a young boy in India in a hot room under a non-functioning fan.

Born for Love by Dr. Bruce Perry & Maia Szalavitz

It’s not often that you can say a book changed your life; here, a renowned child psychiatrist and a journalist together examine the long-term effects of loving or withholding love from children. For me, it reframed our purpose on the planet and how best to allocate our time.

The Remembrance of Earth’s Past (Trilogy)- Cixin Liu

This series imagines Earth’s response to encountering an alien civilization with such magnificent scope that only a great mind could even attempt such a thing. The result, for me, was a story that made me feel like a kid again, reading under the sheets with a torch until the batteries ran out. Whenever an outsider approaches, more than them, it’s the people around us that we learn about!

The Legends of Khasak - O.V. Vijayan

Lyrical, suffused with syncretic magic that is wholly Indian, Khasakkinte ittihasam is dripping poetry in English, how good must it be in Malayalam? Uniquely, the book has been translated by the author himself; I’ll take this book over any of its contemporaries, the great Latin American works of magical realism.

The Karla Trilogy by John Le Carré

These three exceptional novels, published collectively as an omnibus, are the work of the master of the spy novel at the height of his powers; beyond the high-stakes games of nation states, inside each one of us, is an inner war. We fight ourselves as much as our enemies; I open it weekly and each time learn a new lesson.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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For My New York-Based Readers

If you’re in New York this coming Saturday, please consider attending my event at the International House in Morningside Heights. I’ll be discussing Missy in conversation with Professor Makarand Paranjape. It’s a joint discussion that features another debut author, Nishanth Injam, who is a lovely person and a deep thinker. I was moved by his collection of short stories, The Best Possible Experience. He has limpid, precise prose and there is a depth of feeling, often grief and longing, in each of his stories.

Literary Festival 2024 | Saturday, November 9 | 3:00 - 3:50 PM

This event is part of the Indo-American Arts Council’s 2024 Literary Festival. It is free to attend.

Event Details:

Date: Saturday, November 9

Time: 3:00 - 3:50 pm EST

Location: International House, 500 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027

Worth repeating. It’s free to attend. RSVP here in case the room fills - Link

Hope to see some familiar faces and meet new ones!

Also, don’t just come for me! Harini Nagendra, author of the Bangalore Detective Club Series is speaking, too. My kickass agent Priya Doraswamy is on an industry panel with an accomplished editor.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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A changing of seasons

Autumn’s arrival

For me that feeling of fall begins with the shortening of days, followed by the cooling weather. I’m pulled into coziness. I add more layers to the bed: a thick blanket and eventually exchange the summer quilt for the winter duvet. Ceiling fans are turned off, windows closed inch by inch, and heat turned on. I wear socks again to work and to bed. I wear my favorite fuzzy pair and it is one of the moments I relish most in this seasonal transition.

I am watching a lot of movies to pass the time. Over the last couple weeks I’ve watched Midsommar, Psycho, The Birds, and every movie from the Scream franchise (such a fun throwback). I have been especially captivated by Midsommar. There are many movies that use trauma-driven plots, although none to such nuanced and exacting realism and impact as Midsommar. I experienced a range of uncomfortable and disquieting emotions, not unlike what I experience in my work as a trauma therapist. The film felt familiar. It captured the incredible complexity of the presentations of trauma at the individual level and how that interacts with a community built on trauma and darkness.

Captivated by Midsommar

I missed Midsommar when it first came out in 2019. It is directed by Ari Aster who directed Hereditary, which is next on my list to watch. After watching Midsommar on HBO Max, I then watched a stunning 7-hour film analysis of it on YouTube. The analysis indisputably showed how the artistry of the film and its psychological narratives are inseparable.

Midsommar opens on a frigid winter cityscape. Dimness and remoteness characterize the indoor scenes as the protagonist’s life is shattered in the first ten minutes. The film quickly jumps seasons to summer and a cast of characters traveling to Sweden. The brightness and color of the shots are filtered, rendering surreal the sky and open landscape. That sense of remoteness persists as they make their way to an isolated community. The midnight sun of summertime adds to the surreal quality.

I was enthralled by the psychological journey of the protagonist, Dani, played by Florence Pugh. She suffers the horrific loss of her family in the bitter winter and is in a dissociated haze in the many months that follow. Her partner is a dud, a non-committal guy indifferent to the traumatic emotional wounding she has experienced. He is half out of the relationship. When they arrive to the commune of the Hårga, the threads of Dani’s trauma and grief become intertwined with the sinister dynamics of the cult.

The film exquisitely grasps the elements of trauma. Dani is intensely wounded and vulnerable. Her emotional dependence on the middling boyfriend is painful to witness. The indifference of her friends (if you could call them that) towards her well-being is mirrored by the cult’s. There is trauma reenactment in the bystander effect as no one intervenes — no one has ever properly intervened in Dani’s life. However, to be in the lair of the cult is to be in a house of mirrors. Their alternating indifference and predation are distorted in the reflective surface and present as compassionate community and emotional holding. There is a vivid scene where Dani’s grotesque and out-of-control grief is literally mirrored by the group of Hårga women who collectively kneel in front of her, faces similarly contorted, and scream in pain in mimic of hers. It is chilling.

As in any horror movie, there a general idea of what is to come. The sun never sets, yet that does not stop people from meeting quite gruesome ends. The wide shots of verdant forest, flowering fields, open sky, and blue-grey, craggy cliffs evoke the sublime and contribute to a sense of disorientation and dread. Ari Aster proceeds to take every possible narrative thread to its terrible end as explained in the YouTube video linked above. Any logistical and societal issue that an isolated and remote cult may bump up against is addressed.

Midsommar conjures that quality of hyper-realness and disorientation of trauma. Aural and visual perceptions are sharply juxtaposed, furthering confusion. Time is sped up and slowed. There is a feeling of being without or outside of time. There is hyper-vigilance and not knowing where the danger will come from. The film moves into an blood-thirsty and satisfying ending as Dani experiences frightful catharsis. The viewer wonders what will happen to her now that she is bound to a group that will ultimately annihilate her.

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Please Review and Rate MISSY:

MISSY (India) | Missy (UK)

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon.

The best online retailers for are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from Raghav directly at a discounted rate.

Records Broken - CAF & Homelessness

Two things were reported but not sufficiently connected in roughly the last month:

In America, the amount of Civil Forfeiture exceeded all civilian theft and burglary combined. (Source)

Homelessness is projected to be at its all-time-high in 2024 with more than 650k people in America living unhoused. (Source)

In my own city of Chicago, doing hard, thankless, high-quality work was Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts who put together a report called ‘I Don’t Know Why I Am Here - Observations from Chicago’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Courtrooms.’ - LINK.

So Grateful For These Organizations And The Work They Do

My American readers have no doubt received their ballots and looked at the list of judges and speculated on what their day-to-day looks like. Please skim through the report. You will learn how judges contend with suffering, confused people. These aren’t criminals. These are regular people pushing their way through a tangle of towing fees, storage fees, and obscure, punitive ordinances. Let me remind you, this is not criminal forfeiture that takes place after a conviction. This doesn’t require convictions or even charges. This is the government taking ownership of private citizen’s property if that person has been suspected of a crime.

When we as a society allow law enforcement to keep the proceeds of this type of asset forfeiture, we are incentivizing them to go out and “scout” for vehicles and assets to bolster their own budget. There’s a perverse incentive and we’re naive if we think it will not be abused.

Laws written to recover the assets of kingpins like John Gotti are used to take vehicles away from people struggling to make a living.

In America, with its car-centric infrastructure, taking a car from someone is like taking their pants and expecting them to go to work. It’s infuriating, it’s wrong. Take their car and you have fast-tracked them to losing housing.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing and talks of constitutionality and due process. In the May 2024 Supreme court ruling on CAF, Kavanaugh wrote: “The Constitution requires a timely forfeiture hearing; the Constitution does not also require a separate preliminary hearing.”

Whatever, mate. He, and, a lot of us, frankly don’t want to see what’s plainly there.

Law enforcement, facilitated by legislators and by extension, us, steals more from Americans than burglars and robbers. More people on the brink will not be able to go to work, to make mortgage and rent payments, to fight against foreclosure and eviction, and will end up as people experiencing homelessness where they will then be perceived as having “failed” rather than as having been sinned against.

I’m not a lawyer; I’m not a data scientist. But I know that 1) & 2) are related. I know that we are punishing people for poverty, not for criminality, and that is wrong.

Please Review and Rate MISSY:

When will I stop asking my readers to help me out? Probably never.

The algorithm is a fickle master. Even if you just click the following links, without buying anything, even if you’re from a different country, it helps the overall algorithm.

MISSY (India) | Missy (UK)

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; nothing could be further from the truth. Every review helps me and my agent improve our pitch to US publishers.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly at a discounted rate. Here’s the India pre-order link.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.