Natasha Badhwar - Immortal for a Moment

Praise for Natasha Badhwar

Natasha Badhwar has a rare and beautiful ability to make the personal political, and the political personal. She communicates the wisdom of significant life truths through stories of everyday living. Harsh Mander, human rights and peace worker and author of Looking Away, Fatal Accidents of Birth, Ash in the Belly and others

The beauty of this book lies in its sentences. They are proof that one can communicate perfectly well without resorting to long-winded sentences. The shallow political dicourse of our times has confused our expressions and articulation. This book shows us how to simplify our language, and ourselves. Ravish Kumar, broadcast journalist, poet and author of Ishq Mein Shahar Hona (A City Happens in Love) and The Free Voice

Badhwar rescues relationships and circumstances from their literality to live in the poetic. Sumana Roy, author of How I Became a Tree and Missing

I find Natasha Badhwars writing insightful and deeply moving for what it reveals about being human. She doesnt look at parenthood or herself through a glossy filter, but with unflinching honesty. Amit Varma, columnist and host of the podcast, The Seen and the Unseen

Badhwar unfurls a gamut of emotions, allows forever to live amongst us an authentic cast of characters and voices; the little people in her world are discovering, growing, watching as we learn to unlearn our bulky, cumbrous ways. I think a reader will be forever grateful to Badhwar and them for giving us permission to unlearn, stumble, be bored, hungry, sulk, play hookey, eat ice cream. Aneela Zeb Babar, author of We are All Revolutionaries Here

The author writes with such self-reflexive vulnerability that you forget you are reading another persons writing. You feel your heart spill out on the page. Through tears and smiles, and a heaving and sinking heart the book embraces the reader, cleansing many heartaches and allowing one to celebrate unspoken joys. You recognise memories you had dumped away, you reclaim parts you had been too ashamed to include in your narrative of self. Kiranjeet Chaturvedi, Huffington Post

Her prose is lucid and heartfelt, and her voice, soothing and warm. The Times Of India

In her words, you will find comfort for your parenting fears and courage to override the beliefs that youve internalised while growing up. Her writing is raw, honest and relatable. Hindustan Times

Badhwars interests are eclectic: to reclaim the inner artist, to break down hierarchies, to occasionally get away with broken grammar. Tishani Doshi, The Hindu

story that doesnt shy away from the rifts, the tantrums, the silences, and the time it takes to learn how to be better at relationships. This is a complex, loving portrait of a family where it sometimes takes decades to give and to be able to accept the apologies, the explanations, and the peace that one has waited desperately for. Urvashi Bahuguna, Scroll.in

This sense of putting your heart out there and knowing that it is okay to do so filled me with awe. I am in awe of her because she shows her deepest scars, her fears and knows that that is the only way she can connect and know people better. Vivek Tejuja, The Hungry Reader

There is a Natasha in you, me and every woman listening to her hearts voice and trying to make a change to her immediate and not so immediate world. Read it to heal yourself, to feel more confident and open to sharing what you feel in this journey as a feminist, a career woman, an ambitious spouse and a vulnerable mother. Anjali G Sharma, Womens Web

Immortal for a
Moment

Natasha Badhwar

For my parents,
Trilok and Sudha,
and my brothers, Nitish and Manish.
I am because you are.

Theres no life that couldnt be immortal if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door.
As far as youve come cant be undone.

Wislawa Szymborska

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh)

Neither of us knew how to be married

N either of us knew how to be married. This was not dangerous in itself, although it did get us into many awkward situations. Left to ourselves, of course, we found it hilarious. Early in our marriage we would play house-house as if it were a childrens game in which we sometimes got to act like grown-ups. This is what saved us eventually.

To be honest, neither of us wanted to get married either. But again, it was awkward spending so much time in each others homes and trying to keep our parents convinced that we were really just hanging out innocently.

We were a little weird with each other too. He wasnt a boyfriend-type, though I must admit I was a real perfect girlfriend. On the other hand, when we did get married, I had no intentions of being anyones wife.

Before we were married, we would break up with each other regularly and repeatedly and I would always assume it was the end. Id feel sick and shattered and prepare to mope around for a while, watching too much television sitting too close to the screen and taking on so much work that I would crash with exhaustion.

He would usually call me in a day or two and try to set up our next date.

We cant meet, Id remind him.

I am coming towards your office in the evening. What time will you be free? hed ask.

We have broken up, I would remind him, trying to not let my voice break.

But he wouldnt get it. What does that have to do with meeting today, hed ask, as if I was being completely illogical. Just because we have broken up, doesnt mean we cant meet and talk.

And we would meet. Or text. Or e-mail. Or chat online. During one of the break ups, I turned up at his home in a village in east Uttar Pradesh with my news television crew. His mother hosted us and extended family members took us around, helping us get interviews and shots for a report on the upcoming elections. He and I sat up late admiring the moon from the inner courtyard till Ammi got out of her bed to ask us to go to our rooms and sleep.

We changed cities to get over each other. I went to Bhilai on a sabbatical from my TV job to teach a media course. He went to Bangalore to work for an IT startup. He got a work visa and accepted a job in Chicago.

True to form, he turned up in Bhilai to visit me when I was there. He was travelling from Morbi in Gujarat to Delhi and told me that he was coming to visit me because Chhattisgarh was on the way. My students and colleagues gave him a heros welcome even though they had never heard of him before. He bought me a silk saree from Bangalore. I helped him shop for Levis jeans and new shirts before he left for USA. He turned up at my documentary shoot again when I was in London a few weeks later, carrying heavy equipment and nursing my broken heart. He helped us carry our tripod and light kit all over the city. My colleagues loved him, of course.

I learnt something from the break ups. Because they seemed so final to me, and because each time I would decide to end the love affair with more firmness and determination, I got to experience how I really felt with and without him. I got to taste misery on both sides of the border of love.

I found out that he expressed love differently and he experienced the loss of love differently too. I did not know that this would remain a constant in our lives. I still expect that one day we will align on these parameters.