Sukhada Tatke
@sukhadatatke
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Reading | Writing | Reporting | sukhadatatke @gmail .com Essays/features: @The_Rumpus @Lithub @AJEnglish @WiredUK @FiftyTwoDotIn Fiction Fellow @AsiaSpeaks , '22
Edinburgh via Bombay
Joined July 2011
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So elated to have an essay in my dream pub
@lithub
on why we should read the forgotten essayist Lewis Thomas. His hope and optimism are infectious, his prose a river that sings. I hope my piece urges you to engage with his work - it's an infinite pleasure.
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Before asking Indian journalists why they are reporting this carnage, ask why this carnage is happening. In solidarity with each and every reporter on the field bearing witness and continuing to work in spite of it all✊
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If anyone significantly over the age of 35 sees this tweet, please do answer this question: What life advice would you give your 35-year-old self? Asking for my 35-year-old self.
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There's a beautiful, rather untranslatable Marathi term: "hakkacha maanus". A person who will drop everything & come for you, whether you ask them to or not. Someone you have a claim on, who's rightfully yours, whom you call your own, your very own. Do other languages have this?
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Does anyone have tips on how to become a morning person? This question is not for those who are naturally morning persons, but for those who made a conscious effort to change their habits. Only serious answers please.
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How does the rest of the English speaking world manage without the Indian use of "only"? Difficult only.
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Unpopular opinion - reply to messages, call back when you see a missed call, check in on those who check in on you, do what you say you will do, for god's sake. Has this pandemic taught us nothing about how our loved ones can be snatched away from us overnight, without warning?
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@arti_agarwal
Hello lady. How do you manage to carry so much darkness within? Come out, get some light. The world is a nice and colourful place, just like the one portrayed by Surf Excel.
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I had some thoughts about Modi's visit to Houston. His divisiveness, i think, is the antithesis of the pluralistic idea of Houston. I wrote this for
@TexasObserver
and woke up to brickbats and hate like never before. Howdy!
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This is not true. I got to India in March and there was zero screening.
We started screening entry into India from mid-January itself, while also gradually increasing restrictions on travel. The step-by-step approach has helped avoid panic: PM
@narendramodi
#SAARCfightsCorona
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This is for Indian journalists who've lost their jobs. If any of you consider freelancing,
@BhavyaDore
and I will be very happy to share whatever little knowledge we've gathered re. writing for international publications. Please feel free to DM/ email either of us. Email in bio.
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No country is a bigger threat to India than India itself.
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Hello from Bombay, where I came three months ago for three weeks. 🙋🏾♀️
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I have always loved writing letters, but this one for
@AJEnglish
was the most difficult to write, not least because I know I will never get a response.
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TIL: The Yagán language (an indigenous language from Tierra del Fuego) is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most succinct word.
Mamihlapinatapai: a look shared by two people, each hoping the other will do something that both desire, but are unwilling to do.
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Mr Sandeep WhoeverTheFuckYouAre. I was blissfully unaware of your existence until I saw you justify violence in the name of love. But now that I have the misfortune of knowing you, let me tell you a few things. Because assholes like you deserve to know. (Thread)
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To say that this has been an incredibly bleak and distressing year for me would be an understatement. So I'm glad that it has also been punctuated by joys such as this - the universe tries to balance things out, I guess. Most grateful for this honour. Thank you so much!
Congratulations 𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐚 𝐓𝐚𝐭𝐤𝐞 (
@sukhadatatke
) | 𝐅𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐰𝐨 (
@FiftyTwoDotIn
) for winning the
#RedInkAwards2023
Category :
#Science
&
#Innovation
(PRINT)
Story link:
Title Sponsors: 𝐙𝐞𝐞
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If you still have grandparents, please record their stories when they reminisce. I regret every day that I didn't, that I let chunks of history saunter past me without having had the presence of mind to record them. The foolish faith of the young in their ability to remember...
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Hi
@WesternRly
. A homeless kid was sitting on the floor by the ticket window at Khar station, bothering nobody. But the ticket seller threw hot tea in his direction to drive him away. Luckily it didn't hit him. Please sensitise your employees, teach them to treat people decently!
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"Never has the disjuncture between physical time and emotional time been so pronounced." For
@Mint_Lounge
i wrote about -- what else -- this strange, strange moment. Please read.
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My father died 34 years ago, which is why I was so moved to wake up to a msg from a friend who had set a reminder that it was his birthday today. Friends who remember important dates are so very precious - never let them go.
Sharing an old essay of mine.
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The almost-lovers from the past in both Past Lives & Three of Us could easily have wreaked havoc in the present with their intimations of love & passion, leaving a trail of horrendous damage. Instead, they slip in gently, and stay with only care in their hearts - likely forever.
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I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two —
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.
-- Langston Hughes
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25 years ago, my mom and I stood in line at a temple to see if it was true, if Ganapati was drinking milk. This July, I passed by that temple and wondered: what exactly down that day, and what led to it? I tried to piece it together for
@FiftyTwoDotIn
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Career update: I've joined
@IPPRScotland
(and the larger
@IPPR
family) as their new Media and Impact Officer. Very excited to work on social and economic justice and everything else that makes Scotland a fair place for all. I'll continue to write, edit and report as a freelancer.
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Thread: My husband recently posted about his rejections on LinkedIn, saying we shouldn't only talk about our successes and triumphs. Inspired by him, I'd like to share that I did not get shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for a piece I poured my whole self into.
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Germany has gone absolutely nuts - the cognitive dissonance is alarming both at government and individual levels. My German friend summarised the situation perfectly and I think everyone should read it.
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Thrilled to be back on
@FiftyTwoDotIn
, this time with a story of a scientist whose radical discovery will remain forever tied to a remote, mysterious island. Reporting this taught me that it's never too late to go back to learning the basics of science.
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"It’s easy to be dazzled by old cities, which carry the monumental weight of their kaleidoscopic pasts. But what of the younger, coming-of-age ones?" I took a while to say goodbye to Houston. This essay also marks the end of my
@TexasMonthly
journey.
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Surely I am not the only one who writes to family members in one language (English) but speaks in another (Marathi)?
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The one second after I open my eyes in the morning is perhaps the only moment I feel some sense of calm these days, before reality hits me. Thereafter, the minutes and hours just weave into each other and get wiped out by the dread of what's happening.
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This past weekend, I left my home in Bombay after half a year. But since this is 2020 and anything is possible, I didn't return to our home in France, which I had left for three weeks in March, but to a beautiful new city we will now call home. Hello from Edinburgh!
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10 years ago today, my now husband & I arrived at the appointed hour at the marriage registrar's office, witnesses in tow, & almost didn't get married bec ALL STAFF WERE OUT ON ELECTION DUTY. Many phone calls later, the registrar came & bound us legally together AFTER office hrs.
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This is a friend's friend. He is fighting for his life in Dubai. Insurance isn't covering post-Covid charges. His wife just lost her job, his own future is uncertain. They have two little kids. Could you please consider contributing/ RTing?
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If you don't have friends a decade or two (or three) older than you, please rectify the situation. Why deny yourself easy-dynamic friendships of loving mutuality that are (largely) free of demands & expectations? Bonus: you can live off someone else's wisdom and experiences.
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PSA: I have nothing to do with the cyclone. Any resemblance to my surname is purely coincidental. CC
@BhavyaDore
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What a surprisingly fulfilling word I came across today! Hope it makes your day too.
Redamancy: the act of loving the one who loves you, a love returned in full.
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Nobody looks happy anymore, my mother says after every market run. Worry is indeed writ large on everyone's faces. But I try to protect her. I remind her that even if people smiled, we wouldn't know because of the masks. And so we pretend that eyes don't mirror our truest selves.
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Actually it's only saffron when it's served in shrikhand and biryani. Otherwise it's just sparkling polarisation.
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I am so delighted that my story on South Asian women in beauty salons in the US found a home in this beautiful
@cwwriters
digital magazine. Here's to the fierce women who make up the invisible immigrant workforce in the States. Please read?
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@tushtuuu
Hahahaha. For all you know, she thinks *you* don't know what's happening and is trying to protect and distract you.😃
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I have had exactly 2983 followers for weeks now. And I hate odd numbers. Who are these 17 people who don't want to make a sad girl happy?
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Just as I prepare to go home for my annual (bi annual?) visit and start getting excited about all the great food I'll eat and all the precious people I'll meet, this beauty stops me in my tracks and asks: "you're leaving ME?"
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OH EM JEE
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Wrote about why I came home to vote this year. The essay includes some garden variety NRI nostalgia - but not for mangoes. For
@scroll
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Ever since i learned to swim five years ago, I dreamed of swimming in a lake. Today, I swam in a lake. Dreaming small, realisable dreams is quite a lovely thing.
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Is there a webinar on the basic commandments of journalism such as:
- Thou shalt not take thyself too seriously.
- Thou shalt not insert thyself in every story.
- Thy story is always bigger than thyself unless thou art the story.
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It took me two years of living in France and one year of living out of it to kind of begin to understand my country-in-law. For
@AJEnglish
I tried to unpack what France's republican ideals mean to immigrants and minorities.
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Is "don't act smart" an Indianism? Everytime I tell my husband that, he says: "Why is it a bad thing to be smart in india?" Emm, he has a point there 🤔
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"Casteism doesn't exist" -- brahmins
"Things are not so bad for black people anymore" -- white people
"Women have everything these days" -- men
"Wait, what are you all talking about? Is there a problem?" -- white men.
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Just wanted to share this perfect Büche de Noël my husband (and his mother) made for me to give me a taste of a "traditional French Christmas". When I saw him carving the log I thought, is there a greater joy than receiving and giving love in abundance? In such joyful abundance?
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A reminder that many of the "great" men we worship strut around the world as heroes even as they casually unleash their callous cruelty upon those they claim to love. So many women's lives destroyed by stony-hearted, selfish geniuses with feet of clay, so much damage..
They say she was Saraswati incarnate, but she never performed for an audience because her husband couldn't bear to be second best.
A story that plays out even today.
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“I am old, and I cannot walk [uphill] that much. So I take care of housework, like making churpi [yak milk cheese] and supervising my grandchildren. If required, I go up in the summertime.” This photo essay on
@PARINetwork
is beautiful
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Don't know if people still use Twitter but putting this out there. Happy to have received the Polestar Award for my
@FiftyTwoDotIn
story Man of Culture, yesterday in Chennai.
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Dear Americans who froth at the mouth at any mention of affordable healthcare and education, hope you hold your government accountable for the trillion dollars of taxpayers' money - and more - it threw away to destroy a beautiful nation and its people.
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Yesterday it struck us, my husband and I, that we might actually be staring at a longer and more painful distance than we imagined, with neither of us welcome in the other's country. But love is greater than viruses and borders ❤️
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"If home must go up in flames, I want to be ash." I wrote about grief and fear for
@AJEnglish
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Every now and then, mum throws a fit. Says everyone's out and about, only you don't let me go. I want to use reason, but she just doesn't get it. So I scream "you're grounded!" Today, she just stormed out. Let her get home. I'll show her who's boss. Parenting is bloody hard.
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My grandfather used this trunk to store his magic paraphernalia: ropes, playing cards, hats etc. After he passed on, the trunk gathered dust and rust. My mother decided to revive it and create some magic of her own. It's now transformed into a teapoy/ table/ divan if you will :)
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The Indian government has made it incredibly hard for journalists to access basic information that should be in the public domain. For
@gijn
I wrote about how our superb journalists have been pushing back government control during this pandemic.
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No biggie. Just John Oliver casually mentioning H-Pop and making
@kunalpurohit
fully deserving of ALL the praise coming his way.
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Laapata Ladies was so great! Even greater was returning to this beautiful building, which used to be stuffed to the gills with people at one point, and now all that's stuffed inside are memories of happy moments in simpler times.
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I want us to live again, live like we'll live forever. I want us to have that arrogance again. I want us to be our regular, small, pathetic, conceited, generous, warm and wonderful selves fearlessly out in the world again. I just want us to be us again. 😔
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This Diwali feels calmer, more restorative than last year's, and yet it's impossible to shake off the gloom. So many losses, so much grief - both individual and collective, and we haven't even begun to heal. May we all find our way back to light. Happy Diwali!
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Glad for the glad tidings. Very grateful.
Presenting
#RedInkAwards2023
#Shortlist
for Category :
#Science
&
#Innovation
---
𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐚 𝐓𝐚𝐭𝐤𝐞 (
@sukhadatatke
) | 𝐅𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐰𝐨 | 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞
---
---
Title Sponsors: 𝐙𝐞𝐞
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A few weeks ago, feeling completely lost and deflated, I wrote on a whim, to a writer I hugely admire, seeking guidance. I had only spoken to him once before in a professional setting. I don't know why I thought he would even reply, but he did! And he suggested a phone call!
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Does Marie Kondo have suggestions on how to declutter mind space uselessly occupied by landline numbers that no longer exist, birthdays of friends who are no longer friends, minor but indelible details about people no longer in your life?
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Having seen Normal People and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and having read almost everything on them, I can say this is the best essay. "Great sex is not orgasm upon orgasm so much as agreement upon agreement, through looks and gestures & breaths and talk."
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For
@atlasobscura
I write about a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, and how he painted its horrors.
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@narendramodi
The need of the hour is for you to step up and say there will be no nationwide NRC, that you will stop the assault on minorities, that you will safeguard the idea of a secular, multicultural India. But no, you won't do it because the focus will be back on unemployment & economy.
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At a time when collective and familial mourning has been rendered impossible, obituarists have been honouring the dead by distilling the fullness of life to readers. For
@WiredUK
i write about what it means to be an obituary writer during a pandemic.
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Interviewed someone in person today, for a story, after 14 months. Had forgotten how fulfilling these interactions are.
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Dear Diary,
Today i learnt from my new best friend, a cheewala, how to dismantle a nation. His country is burning but he's focusing on me. He's better than Soochin, Veerot, even Swami Vivekamunand. Great man. Wonderful man. Best Hindu man I have met.
-- Dolaand Trump
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A
#MeeTooIndia
harasser has the godawful temerity to call his accuser a "femnazi", *and* has a ready audience for his hallucinatory vitriol. If you're still worrying madly about how those "poor men" are being boycotted, sit down please.
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I realised just now that 2000 was 22 years ago and this makes me want to go to bed because what is the point of anything? Why is time? Ugh
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Reading the ever so great Cavafy is like sailing across oceans you have never known but think you have.
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Hi
@RobGMacfarlane
. My husband gifted me *The Lost Words* for Christmas & I can't thank you enough for coming out with such a beautiful book. It sits by our bed and we flip through it every night. These lost words are the only words that comfort in this world filled with loss. ❤️
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Thank you so much
@soniafaleiro
and
@taniajam
for this marvellous opportunity! Very excited but also sightly nervous to embark on this journey.
CLASS OF 2022: SUKHADA TATKE
@sukhadatatke
is an independent reporter and writer from Mumbai, India. She writes on books, culture, immigration, belonging, history and social justice. Sukhada is working with mentor
@taniajam
on Late Fee, a collection of short stories.
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Three years ago,
@Outlookindia
asked me to write an essay on the sea. I obviously wrote about that seaside city far away in which my heart perennially resides. Call it 'An Immigrant's Lament' or a 'Love Letter to Bombay/ Home'. The essay is now online.
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I thought I understood English... until I moved to Scotland. Can't even do groceries without being terrified of having to speak to people in this foreign language.
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"The loss of income overnight has plunged one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups into the depths of anxiety and deprivation." I wrote about the impact of the lockdown on sex workers for
@AJEnglish
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Do we never ignore red flags? Do we never understand things only in hindsight? Do we never believe versions that align with the stories we tell ourselves, often despite evidence to the contrary? Do we never blindly and wholeheartedly trust, only to have it broken?
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I find myself returning to Raymond Carver's 'Late Fragment' every December, mostly by chance. I return to it at other times, too, but it somehow assumes a deeper meaning at the closing of a year, when voluntarily or not, we end up taking stock of our small lives.
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When a historically oppressed community rises against state-sponsored violence, it's not violence or retaliation. It's self-preservation and self-defence. It's not a level playing field that you get to play judge. Enough of your feeble attempts to defend the status quo.
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Perhaps the only good thing to come out of having your closest friends spread across the world is that at least one of them is awake at any given point. It's reassuring that the sun is always out in some part of the world, the part that is home to someone or the other you love.
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@PhadkeTai
But kindly refrain from singing "my heart it speaks a thousand words I feel eternal bliss" in the heat of the moment.
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People have been messaging to say they caught glimpses of Edinburgh on One Day and thought it magical. So we walked along our favourite stretch - by the Water of Leith, in our old hood - to rediscover that very magic that would set our hearts aflutter in our early months here ❤️
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Remember Paul Kalanithi and Nina Riggs who wrote memoirs of their final years, before dying of cancer? So their spouses met, fell in love and are building something together. What an incredible story of finding hope and love from the very dregs of tragedy.
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The search for sugar that wasn’t produced by slave labor led the British to another faraway colony: India. But was Indian sugar ever free? Not really. I explored the sugar boycott debates from the 1790s to the 1820s for
@bethejuggernaut
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Not so long ago, the end point of this pandemic was nowhere in sight, and yet, the first vaccines rolled out today. Thinking of the millions who died before there was any hope of light. Thinking of their loved ones watching these scientific leaps 💔
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@Yuyutsoo
@arti_agarwal
Please get an education in history, religion and geopolitics. And leave
@khanumarfa
alone.
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Love, forgive, save money, travel, drink water, moisturise, exercise, eat well, sleep well, have sex, be selfish, be selfless, focus on health, take that leap, invest in friendships, read, don't waste time... Thank you SO much for all your responses. It's wisdom for the ages ❤️
If anyone significantly over the age of 35 sees this tweet, please do answer this question: What life advice would you give your 35-year-old self? Asking for my 35-year-old self.
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"It is this idea of India as an inclusive, pluralistic place, this symbol, this image, that is worth saving, with a little ink on the finger." Travelling to India, for the love of India, was the best decision I made this year.
Wrote about why I came home to vote this year. The essay includes some garden variety NRI nostalgia - but not for mangoes. For
@scroll
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Husband's away. Calls to talk about his hectic day, which includes travel, meetings, giving a talk, missing me, and asks about mine.
"Not much. Wrote 2OO odd words."
"Uh oh. That's all?"
Hours later, he finds 'Poem for my Lover' (yes, I suck at titles) in his inbox & calls again.
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