Aap kahan thi tab se...?

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its colour.

The dishwasher is a peculiar appliance. Though it helps reduce the burden of manually washing each dish, cup, and spoon by hand, one must still load and unload each item by hand. It feels like a metaphor for the way connection plays out. You meet someone. You talk on text, maybe a call, in person. But until you find the rhythm that weaves you both together, it is a step toward the other, one at a time...

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Maybe that’s what all storytelling is for. To let us practice being human before life requires it. We don’t just watch movies and plays, we don’t just read books; we try them on. And when reality finally arrives, we recognize the shape of it. Our hearts have already practiced.

“We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’”