Anita Rau Badami is the author of Tamarind Mem, The Hero’s Walk, Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?, and, most recently, Tell It To The Trees. Born in India, she now calls Montreal home. Badami will be guest editing The Afterword all this week.
After spending the last 100 years inside my small cave of a room, buried under paper, unwashed dishes from way-past-midnight snacks, books, pine-cones, shells, paint rags, pebbles, clothes, jars of dead flowers, seed catalogues, and other objects that are so furry with dust I can no longer identify them, I have become a snarling, shaggy grouch. My mother has stopped phoning me because I never respond, my sister has given up on leaving snippy messages asking whether I remember her existence or whether I still exist myself. I have been absent – from my life, this planet and real people. I live in pyjamas and my son’s discarded t-shirts eating whatever my long-suffering husband leaves outside my door. I am rarely seen outside the house and the occasional time when I emerge blinking in the bright light of day my neighbour and once-upon-a-time close friend cannot recognize me.
Full report here National Post
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