Who am I? 

 

There was no cable TV, let alone the internet in the 1980s, in Bombay, India where I grew up. It was a childhood spent rolling with dogs in dog-hair-matted carpeting and weekends with fallen coconuts and nothing to do. The only thing I was interested in as a child that was also (at the time) applicable to an academic pursuit was stories - so I studied English literature at college. During an introduction to prosody, for the first time in my life, a teacher said to me they weren’t sure and asked my opinion. We were discussing the poetry of e.e. cummings:
 

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

​

I was until then unaware that you could drop the lowercase, do away with full stops at the end of sentences, and still be taken seriously, or that a teacher was allowed to say they didn’t know / care what I thought.
 

I won an ‘important’ poetry prize during these undergraduate years and figured perhaps I could write for a living. I then collected a Master’s degree in Fiction and spent my 20s publishing a surfeit of features, book reviews, interviews, travel stories, editorials, and opinion pieces in magazines, newspapers, weekend supplements, and websites. I soon realised writing was a terrible way to make a living, but a great way to feel alive.

In the early 2000s, online blogs happened and I started one in which I described myself this way: ‘Tara Sahgal, writer. Herbivorous, crepuscular, and often arboreal’. On it I highlighted the nonfiction writing I was proud of, and for the first time, some of my poetry and short stories too. I don’t think anyone read it. I didn’t really care. Finally, I could publish whatever the hell I liked, with no middleman. A decade or so later, following a dry spell, on a fresh new blog, I wrote: “My ‘writerly’ life has been punctuated by what I can only describe as a ‘pregnant pause’ Here, I am born-again”. Soon after this declaration, I threw in the towel. From the blog, I quote: “My reason for being a writer who doesn't write used to be writerly - pure laziness. Now it's because I have two kids under three. Sheer exhaustion has superseded ennui and the truth is I have no choice but to pause all else. I have a feeling though, that I'm gathering ammunition. I will be back.”
 

"Ah, yes. Writing. When? Where? How? That's the problem. You can have a life or you can do some writing, but not both at once, because although life may be the subject of writing, it is also the enemy." 
- Margaret Atwood, Burning Questions.
 

I didn’t realise how long it would take to be back. But. Here I am. Locked and loaded. With a whole lot of living under my belt.
 

This is a bio I am satisfied with (for the moment): writer / mama / “I yam what I yam” / “I contain multitudes” / earthling.

 

~ T