Andaleeb Wajid is back at her mother’s house, this time for a month. It is Ramzan—the month of fasting. She logs in from her refuge—the desk in her peppermint green room. A romance writer, love is her business. In 2021, she spent six months in her room writing happy endings, even as she dealt with the other side of the four-letter word she has based her career on—loss.
“Everything kind of changed,” says Wajid, who is currently promoting her trilogy, Jasmine Villa. “My mother-in-law and I got admitted together [with Covid-19], and my husband the next day. I recovered. My mother-in-law and husband did not. They both passed away.”
Robbed of her ever-after—a promise in her books— Wajid continued to script it for others. Five days after her husband passed, she went back to her novel Loving You Twice. “The only stable thing was that moment when I would sit down to write,’’ she says. “I just felt that whatever happens in the world, the one thing that would be with me is my writing. That is still a place where I have a certain amount of control over things.”
When she was not plotting perfect scenarios, she tweeted her way through her pain. Her story became symbolic of the grief that engulfed everyone. Wajid wrote poignantly about her pain, offering a window to her devastation. “I sometimes think about how my husband would react,’’ she says. “He was this joking sort of person. He would be like, ‘Look at me. I made you famous’. He could flip it like that.”
Denne historien er fra April 23, 2023-utgaven av THE WEEK India.
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Denne historien er fra April 23, 2023-utgaven av THE WEEK India.
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Pressure Points
Author and MP Shashi Tharoor and motivational speaker Gaur Gopal Das on how to find healing and meaning in today's world
War Over Wounded Earth
For the BJP andthe Congress, the ravaged farmlands of Vidarbha represent a cxitieal battleground in their larger struggle to win Maharashtra
Say no to continual elections
Following the recommendations of a high-level committee led by former president Ram Nath Kovind to streamline the widely scattered schedule of national, state and local elections, the Union cabinet has reportedly approved two constitutional amendment bills for likely introduction in Parliament. Predictably, the return of the ‘one nation, one election’ issue to news has set off a flurry of objections by several opposition leaders.
Fabulously, fashionably funny
The third season of the Karan Johar-produced Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives dropped on Netflix, but articles criticising the show appear in some news site or the other almost daily. If it is so bad, why keep writing about it? And if it is so bad, why would the superpowers at Netflix, who are harder to meet than the prime minister, commission the show season after season?
All in the family
The Chitaras have been passing down the secret art of Mata Ni Pachedi through generations for more than 400 years now
Raise a toast to Vidya Balan
Vidya Balan is a New Year baby. At 45, she is aglow in the most beautiful way, having won the hearts and admiration of countless fans across the world, who watched the supremely talented actor take a public tumble on stage at a high-profile promotional event recently, sharing the platform with no less a dancer than the eternally graceful Madhuri Dixit.
Death no bar
Being alive is not a legal requirement to be elected president of the United States
The Lotus POTUS
You should visit us one of these days— there is so much excitement in our USA! No, I don’t mean the famous USA—the Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association of Mumbai.
RAY OF HOPE
Actor and cancer survivor Lisa Ray talks to oncologist Dr Jame Abraham about inner strength and her surrogacy journey
LEVERAGE AI TO ENHANCE WORK
AT THE WEEK Health Summit, Siddharth Bagga, head (retail, CPG and health care), Google Cloud, elaborated on the significant work that Google has been doing in health care through artificial intelligence (AI).