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Time of India
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Andaleeb Wajid: Writing Her Way Through Tragedy & Grief
Andaleeb Wajid is a hybrid author, having published nearly 50 novels in the past 15 years Excerpts from the interview: Q. It's such a moving book. How did you find that space in yourself to write it? A. I really didn't know whether I would be able to write it. When I started, I wasn't sure because I don't usually write non-fiction. And trying to write something so deeply personal wasn't easy, especially because it took me back to that time. Most people tend to move away from painful periods in their lives, and that was true for me too. I didn't want to dwell on it, but at the same time, I felt my grief needed somewhere to go. That's why I decided to write this book. Q. Could you give us a sense of what the book explores? A. So it's a memoir. And a lot of people, when they hear that, especially without knowing the backstory, find it a little odd because I'm not that old. You're expected to reach a certain age before reflecting on your life. But this book reflects on just three months—though while writing, it naturally drew from earlier memories, even childhood. It wasn't planned. Especially the parts about my father—they simply came, and I let them be. The memoir, Learning to Make Tea for One, is about the second wave of Covid in 2021. I was hospitalised along with my mother-in-law, while my husband was admitted elsewhere. I survived. They didn't. It's been four years. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 백오피스까지 맞춤 제작… 콜렉션비, 고도몰 커스터마이징으로 입점 브랜드 관리 고도화 NHN COMMERCE 더 알아보기 Undo I consider myself lucky and privileged to have had the chance to heal, thanks to my remaining family. The book makes them relive all of it. I also wrote it to preserve what happened and show who they really were. They had big, unforgettable personalities, and I wanted to honour that. The writing wasn't cohesive; it took me two years. I wasn't even sure what the point was at first. 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.' I'm hoping I'll feel that way about the memoir too—that my hand was guided by those who are no longer here. Q. Despite experiencing that pain and revisiting those months, you were able to write about the past. Do you think being a storyteller helped you find clarity or distance in the midst of that emotional chaos? A. I also think it was a very difficult book for my editor, Sudeshna, to edit. You can't just say 'fix this' or 'change that' when it's something deeply personal. Most of the edits were about clarifying things or fleshing out certain parts. But I could tell it was hard for her too, because, as I mentioned earlier, everyone approaches this book very subjectively. I'm happy it has served its purpose for readers. In the early days after my mother-in-law and husband passed away, people—not my immediate family, but visitors—reacted as though a terrible disaster had struck. And while that compassion was genuine, at times it felt tinged with pity, as if they wondered how I'd go on. Of course, my life has changed, but many things remain the same—I still write, I attend lit fests, I hope to win more awards. This book was a way for me to tell people what really happened, how it unfolded, and how I survived it. That survival is partly because of who I am, but also a reflection of my privilege—which I fully acknowledge. I had my mother, my brothers, my sister, my children. They held me up. Writing this book was a way to put it all down—not to be done with it, but to turn what I was carrying into something shared. Q. And that was during the pandemic, a time of collective grief all around us. So it wasn't an ordinary moment. Do you think that made the experience of writing and sharing this story even more complex? A. I'm completely aware of that. I knew people who went through similar losses—at least two members gone from a single family. It wasn't unique to me. But I felt I was able to articulate my grief, and I should—for those who can't. I don't mean that in a lofty way, but that's the response I've received from readers. Some said it helped them contextualise their own grief. I understand what you're saying about people offering condolences. I think if I had to visit someone, I'd just sit with them, give them space to grieve. In my case, not many people came at the time because we were still under lockdown. We didn't have the usual deluge of visitors. Those who did come later—some of their reactions felt odd. Of course, what happened was terrible, and I know they meant well, but some responses made me want to withdraw even more. That's why the four months and ten days of iddat felt like a pause from real life. I wasn't expected to meet people, which I appreciated. The repetition—of telling the story, being asked what happened, or even being questioned, 'Shouldn't you have been more careful?'—I didn't have to face that as much. That period, from the end of April onwards, was the most painful time of my life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Q. One can take it in stride and say, 'Oh, this was the pandemic, it was happening everywhere—so what?' But when it happens to you, it is unique. There's a hard stop to that relationship, forever. A. I think what happens is that many of us—even I'm guilty of it—don't fully grasp something until it happens to us. You think, 'Thank God it didn't happen to me.' You don't say it, but it's there. And that's human—you don't want to be touched by that kind of grief. But at the end of the day, I'm the one alone with my grief. Even though it's part of a larger statistic—one among thousands who died—it still feels deeply personal, unfair, and unreal. Sometimes, I find it hard to believe we've lived four years without them. Q. 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. Those were the things I had to put down in the book. I didn't think about how my family would react. But those who've read it have been appreciative. They said it gave them insight into what I went through, and that has meant a lot to me. Q. What has the impact been on you and your sons, in particular after writing this memoir? A. My family didn't really know I was writing this book until a few months ago. I didn't know how to explain it to them. Eventually, I told them it was being released, and when the author copies arrived, they saw it. My aunt read it, and my sons read it just before the launch. Not everyone is emotionally expressive—no one really wants to talk about their feelings. I had shown the manuscript to my brother while writing it. He read half and said he couldn't continue. He lives in Malaysia and still hasn't read the full book. Interestingly, many of my cousins and relatives have read it. It does feel like a bit of an invasion of privacy, but this is what I chose to share with the world, so I can't complain. It is what it is. I think it's good that my kids read it. They had a different perspective. My younger son never saw my husband after that day—we were all quarantining with COVID, and he was the only one who wasn't infected. My brother took him away to keep him safe, and he didn't see either of them again until the funeral. So as hard as it was, I think it was important for him to read it. There's so much in the book about who they were—not just about what happened, but about the lives they lived before. I think this is something both my sons will treasure.
Scroll.in
15-06-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
‘Learning to Make Tea for One': Writer Andaleeb Wajid's memoir reflects quiet strength during losses
In her memoir of loss, Learning to Make Tea for One, Andaleeb Wajid writes, 'When 1st June arrived, I went to the hospital with a heavy heart once more. It was our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. I tweeted that he was on the ventilator instead of being home with us … I got a barrage of wishes from people, and many said they were praying for him to get better.' On June 3, Wajid's husband, Mansoor, breathed his last, one of the countless lives that were cut short by the brutal Delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that raged through the world, hitting India especially hard, in the summer of 2021. The memoir takes us right back to those dreadful months when Death played Russian roulette and people, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, were indiscriminately snatched away from our midst with barely a warning. The pandemic was a great leveller; none were spared, but not everybody was equally impacted. Within a space of a couple of days, Wajid, who herself had tested positive and was hospitalised, lost her mother-in-law and her husband, and life as she knew it changed forever. Learning to Make Tea for One traces Wajid's journey of navigating through devastating loss and coming to terms with a 'new normal' – a phrase we use quite casually but one that marks the truth of Wajid's life. Grief is hard to process and even harder to articulate, and this makes the labyrinthine journey of negotiating it a very lonely one. This is ironic because grief is a universal emotion, one that every single one of us encounters in some shape or form at some point in life. But each grief is different and so is every experience of it, making it a shared but ultimately a lonely experience. The truth of this was perhaps most evident during the cruel pandemic, as its very nature made it impossible for us to reach out to one another at a time when we needed to do so the most. Perhaps there was also a sense of futility that accompanied those worst affected and prevented them from reaching out because as Wajid reiterates, ultimately, they were in it alone. Wajid was surrounded by family, but as she remembers, the presence of familiar faces only heightened the absence of that one face she needed to see the most and was lost forever. Though Wajid writes about seeking help through grief counselling, perhaps for a writer, writing what must have been a painful reconstruction of the past, was possibly the best way of coming to terms with her irreparable loss. Writing as recovery Even as one turns the first few pages of the memoir, a couple of things stand out. The first is the surreal nature of those days of the pandemic when the most regular, natural order of things – the song of a cuckoo, buying groceries, a phone call from family or a friend, were the only sources of relief in troubled times. Wajid's narration vividly brings alive a time when words such as 'co-morbidities' and 'saturation' became part of our everyday vocabulary, and one constantly lived in a state of mental fugue. The memoir also depicts the state of denial that Wajid lived in through those days, and perhaps, in some ways, continues to grapple with, possibly as a survival strategy. The chapter titled 'Everything is Fine' underlines this fact and it is only after one comes to terms with Mansoor's death that the undeniable premise of this memoir is unequivocally articulated – something that Wajid is unable to state at the onset simply because of the immensity of her grief. The memoir tends to meander into the past, digress into anecdotes, mostly about ordinary, everyday things – the Friday ritual of making biryani, Mansoor's love for Tamil songs and branded clothes, their shared love for notebooks – but like a refrain, the memoir keeps returning to the inescapable days and moments leading to Mansoor's death. But it is also through these meanderings that Mansoor comes alive, and you get a glimpse of the person that he was, and the life that he shared with his wife, sons and his mother. Loss is not something Wajid is unfamiliar with, having lost her father at the young age of 12, and two heartbreaking miscarriages she underwent before she had her youngest. But in many ways, the memoir also suggests that loss is what initiated Wajid into her journey of becoming a writer. Women's writing across cultural and other divides has helped women recover a voice that is often silenced. Writing has therefore been a survival strategy adopted by women. Wajid does the same with her writing – the memoir illustrates how writing became a means of emancipation for a girl who was married young. It gave her a livelihood and a career that she could not have otherwise envisioned for herself. In one of her most widely read novels, More Than Biryani, a mother and daughter come to terms with the loss of the father and surviving without the privilege of education and financial independence. But unlike them, Wajid had both and the memoir takes forward the journey she had hesitantly embarked on. It's now a journey that includes several romances, award-winning books for young adults and even a novel that has been adapted for the screen. Beyond carrying on Writing about grief isn't easy, reliving trauma isn't easy, and it certainly isn't easy to let strangers read about it. But Wajid writes this memoir with searing honesty – she doesn't hesitate to talk about a marriage between two very different personalities and how they settled into an easy companionship, of being assuaged by various kinds of guilt and making her peace with them, of her privilege that allowed her husband to have the best possible medical care while hundreds were gasping for breath, her not having to deal with the minutiae of life till she was in a better space, and so on. There is also the danger in such a memoir of infringing upon the privacy of a person who is no longer around to consent to what is being said about him or her. But Wajid does it in a remarkably sensitive manner, sharing just enough about her husband to enable her readers to see him for the person that he was but never over-sharing. Similarly, one sees her and her children at their most vulnerable moments and yet those moments are described with a quiet dignity and not with melodrama. She makes no attempt to evoke a reader's pity. What emerges is a story of quiet strength, of people dealing with the worst hand life can deal but soldiering on, even reclaiming some semblance of joy and demonstrating a resilience that life has a way of squeezing out of you. Many years back, struggling with a personal loss, I had read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a thoughtful gift from a dear friend. There was much in there that helped me to understand my own grief, but the opening scene of the parents sitting down for dinner, opening a bottle of wine while their daughter lay in the ICU of a hospital, left me with a sense of disconnect. Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi's Loss continues to sit on my bedside table because while he so movingly writes about loss, he also perceptively shares that 'grief is not a record of what has been lost but of who has been loved.' But the real and raw feelings that Andaleeb Wajid's memoir evokes made it difficult for me to read it without tears blurring the print, but it also held out gentle hope that tomorrow will be better, that tomorrow one will live again, laugh again, even thrive. And this is what makes Learning to Make Tea for One an inspiring, even therapeutic read.
The Hindu
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Author Andaleeb Wajid reflects on love, loss and healing in her new memoir Learning to Make Tea for One
Bengaluru-based writer Andaleeb Wajid's latest book Learning to Make Tea for One is a deeply personal memoir. A look into her journey of navigating love, loss and grief, the book was launched at Champaca Bookstore on May 10. The event featured a conversation between Andaleeb and journalist Shrabonthi Bagchi during which the author read excerpts from the book and discussed her writing process. 'I lost my husband Mansoor, and mother-in-law during COVID-19. When you move on from sad memories, the pain begins to fade, but I wanted to hold onto it. There were so many things about my relationship with both of them which I wanted to keep alive.' Author of over 50 novels, Andaleeb shares that she began writing this book by reliving each memory and writing them down. 'It was a very painful process. I used to dread each time I had to open the document and add to the manuscript. I couldn't focus on it all the time, so I kept taking breaks and even worked on other stories simultaneously.' For the longest time, no one in her family knew that Andaleeb was writing a book on her journey of grief. 'But I wanted to somehow navigate through this without breaking down all the time, without giving up. I realised that there are so many patterns that one needs to break while you're grieving,.' she says. Tea time rituals The title of the book itself was a new habit Andaleeb struggled to develop after the passing of her loved ones. 'Though I didn't have a tea-time ritual with the both of them, every evening I would make tea for the three of us and that had become my default action — to always measure for three cups of tea. When I went back home for the first time after they had passed, I automatically began preparing tea like before, before I stopped and realised I wouldn't do this ever again — that I'd be making tea only for myself now on.' She added that writing this book helped her overcome grief and push forward in life. 'I've always been instinctive about writing; it provided me with a sense of control. When I write, I find a space to clear my thoughts about my life's experiences.' She said, 'I hope readers acknowledge their grief as they read this book. Over the years, I've learnt that no one really wants to talk about it, but I hope the book helps.' Learning to Make Tea for One is available online on Amazon and Speaking Tiger websites. The book is also available offline in bookstores for ₹499
Indian Express
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Writer's Corner: Bengaluru-based Andaleeb Wajid on embracing multiple genres, coping with loss, and how routine helps an author
Romance, horror, mystery, young adult literature – works in these genres usually form a solid chunk of any good bookstore's collection. But for Bengaluru-based writer Andaleeb Wajid, this is a brief description of the genres she has written in, adding up to dozens of books over the years. In her works, Bengaluru often makes its presence felt to readers who know the city. Speaking to The Indian Express, Wajid said, 'Almost all my books have a Bangalore connection, barring one or two. I have lived here all my life. I wanted to be authentic in what I write…so it made sense for me to write about Bangalore in that way.' Wajid added that she wrote on and off throughout her school and college years, getting more seriously into it in her twenties while writing short stories for the Deccan Herald's youth supplement Open Sesame. 'Then I got into writing short stories for adults, and a full-fledged novel, Kite Strings, which was published in 2009,' she said. While Wajid has authored several romance books and series, they sit alongside other works aimed at younger audiences, and even horror novels. Another set of books, the Aunty Millennial series, has Wajid's character Iqra as one of the newer entrants to Bengaluru's eclectic collection of detectives and mystery-solvers. 'I don't want to be restricted to one genre….experimenting in different genres helps me as a writer since otherwise it is very easy to become complacent in what you know is your forte. I enjoy the process of doing something that is outside my comfort zone.' Interestingly, the character Iqra first appeared in a romance series by Wajid before making it into another series as an amateur detective. More recently, she has come out with a memoir, Learning to Make Tea for One. 'My husband and mother-in-law passed away during the second wave of the pandemic due to post-Covid complications. My memoir was a way of making sense of the world as it was,' Wajid said. The book was officially released on Saturday. As far as her writing habits go, Wajid has a routine, which might explain how she has managed to come out with so many published works. She said, 'If I have a plan to write something on a particular day, I sit down after breakfast and try and write as much as I can. The process is about building a routine. I try not to stop unless something really important comes up. As soon as one book is done, I want to move to the next and keep writing.' When it comes to reading, however, her tastes are slightly different. Andaleeb Wajid is a fan of crime procedurals, though they are not something she feels equipped to tackle as a writer. At least not yet. She notes that reading, in general, should always be a writer's habit, noting, 'My advice to writers all over is to read a lot and write every day. It is the sort of thing that needs practice. You can't suddenly decide to write a book one day… I like to compare it to a tap that you don't use. The water will not flow as smoothly. You can't also say I don't want to read, I just want to write.'
Hindustan Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
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.
