Mom's The Word by Impish Lass Publications

A short story written by me was cordially featured in a beautiful anthology dedicated to mothers by Impish Lass Publications (Mumbai, IN) in 2021.

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I was brought up by parents who could never really express their own true feelings to each other, to themselves, or to anyone. They had a difficult relationship that I was a witness, and a lot of times a part of. For years and years, this emotional disability of theirs often found itself weighing me down and unloading its blame and responsibility on me. It pretty much crippled me as well and made me incapable of understanding my own feelings and expressing them. I grew up being a people pleasing teenager, adolescent and young adult, who thought his only responsibility was to make everyone he came across feel good, even at the cost of his own feelings. I still struggle with that, the only difference is that I am much more aware of it now. Writing is the only tool I found that could crack this dam of emotions within me, most of which were not my own, and let the water break out.

That is why my work is so intense, so rebellious, so aggressive in its approach despite my topic being that of love. Its an outburst, a volcanic eruption of sorts. I guess that whole cumulative effect of my childhood where I learned to keep my emotions within, and my current quest for unlearning that, is what influences me the most. To Those Who Gave Birth To Time is a short story dedicated to my mother, and to me as an adolescent struggling to live a stable life in the city of Mumbai.

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