Author Andaleeb Wajid's upcoming memoir to explore love, loss, and healing
New Delhi, Author Andaleeb Wajid's upcoming memoir "Learning to Make Tea for One: Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing" navigates through grief and the many paths to living and growing with it.
The book, scheduled to release in May, is published by Speaking Tiger Books. The author of the young adult novel, "The Henna Start-up", lost her mother-in-law and her husband Mansoor to COVID-19 in 2021.
"Writing 'Learning to Make Tea for One' was not just about catharsis. It was also about remembering one of the worst periods of my life and reminding myself that healing/grieving is not the end, but a constant process.
"I lost two very important people and I wanted to remember them, their quirks, the ordinariness of them that nevertheless completed my family. I wanted to celebrate them but also talk about my life as it is now," Wajid, who has published nearly 50 novels in the past 15 years, said in a statement.
In the cruel summer of 2021, when India was throttled by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wajid lost her mother-in-law, and then just five days later, her husband, even as she was hospitalised with COVID herself.
Wajid's grief struggled to find words as she returned to a home that was shorn of the love that had once inhabited it and was now empty, but for her two children. She finally turned to her writing to make sense of it all. She found herself wanting to tell the story of her life and her loss.
In the memoir, according to the publisher, Wajid chronicles her family life, of growing up as a cherished daughter of a father whom she lost too early, her marriage, the happy companionship that marked it, and described the incredible joys and the unbearable pain of motherhood too.
"In 'Learning to Make Tea for One', Wajid delves into the ways in which loss and grief can shape a life. She meditates on dealing with losing loved ones, coping with intense grief, and finding meaning in bleak times. Her book is as much the story of a brave woman of today, as it is that of a writer who seeks comfort in writing," said Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, executive publisher at Speaking Tiger.
Wajid's novel "Asmara's Summer" has been adapted for screen as "Dil, Dosti, Dilemma" on Amazon Prime.
The book, priced at ₹499, is currently available for pre-order online.
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But I now feel it did what it needed to. Readers tell me they don't just empathise with me—they reflect on their own grief. And that's something I didn't expect, but I'm grateful for. Q. What is in your mind the definition of a memoir? A. I've always felt that even when writing fiction, you need to have lived the world a certain amount to write about it. Even with my first novel—you've read it—I was writing about what I knew. I had limited exposure, and that naturally led me to a niche no one else was writing about. With memoir, I always thought it was about a life well lived—and I wasn't sure I'd lived that life. That was one of my concerns. The idea of a memoir usually brings to mind someone much older, reflecting on a long life. That was my understanding of what a memoir should be. Q. Did you find any particular struggle in writing non-fiction? A. I think with non-fiction, it's mostly about applying research to a topic and making it interesting for the reader—and I find that quite boring. I really enjoy writing fiction, so non-fiction isn't something I usually like to approach. But this was different because I put so much of myself into it. That made it very difficult to write. When I write fiction, I do include parts of myself, but they're small. This book took huge chunks of me. It was meant to be healing, but at the time, it didn't feel that way. I've only read it during the final round of edits—I haven't gone back since. Maybe in a few months, I'll be able to look at it with new eyes. What's interesting is that when I write fiction—this might sound fanciful—I often feel like there's an external hand guiding me. I'll return to the work months later and be surprised, thinking, 'I don't remember writing this—but it's good.' 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The conflict around how men are allowed to move on, start fresh, and live their lives, while women are expected to take each day as it comes and simply keep surviving—do you think this still shapes how we experience grief and recovery A. This thought has been with me long before Covid. I used to joke with my husband: 'If something happens to me, your family will get you remarried.' And he'd joke back, asking, 'How do you know?' I'd say, 'Because that's what families do. They think men can't survive alone.' And during COVID, I saw that play out. So many husbands passed away—and I don't think any of the widows have remarried, or even considered it. It made me think about how easily society decides to replace women, how replaceable we seem. Listening to one woman talk about this really ruined my evening. I came home and felt incredibly low. Most days I'm okay—I've stopped crying all the time. But that day, I couldn't stop. I couldn't even rationalise it—it just triggered something in me. 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