Very many years ago, when I had just started my Liberal Arts education, I was bad at everything. I could manage just enough derivation, integration, knew enough about IC engines, reproductive organs, and ventricles to save me in a Maharashtra board sort of emergency. But I was mightily unprepared for anything that could not be studied right off a book with questions and answers at the back.

In that era, I took a class called ‘reading the classics’. It sounded fairly fitting to my skill-set – reading, I knew I could do. For our final exam, I was to make a presentation about what stuck with me over the course of the 4-5 months. I had read books like Wuthering Heights, Mahabharat, Daddy Long Legs, Tess of the d’urbervilles, Le Miserables in that class. I had read about the lives of their authors and pondered about the situations that made them write. I could make a presentation about that or their writing styles, the political situations, and how it influences narrative. I remember worrying, and not much has changed in how I deal with uncertainty. A night before the exam I realized what I wanted to talk about.

I made a presentation about the women in these books Judy, Draupadi, Gandhari, Cathy, Fantine. I did not know I was a feminist then. I talked about their emotions, their immense strength and accomplishment of what they wanted, no matter through loss and suffering; how only they could have done it. That was my first good presentation. I started with stutters and broken thoughts but eventually passionately spoke about these women who bent cultures for me to inherit, who were at some point my alter egos and at some of my friends. It was the start of an era. Now I am older and smarter. I have read my Morrisons, Zadie Smiths, Chimmimandas and lived as their characters. If I had to make a final presentation of my life, I would title it “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and nothing would have changed about the presentation, it would still only have quotes.

She was by nature a sunny soul-She opened her heart to those who could use it- beyond personal luck, there are geographic and historic luck- She burned too bright for this world- Please be thinking about me. I want to be thought about.

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