Writing that transcends

‘A community of mortals’: a headline written to snare. The story it led me to, though, is so powerful that I am delighted to have been snared. 
Alexandra Zelman-Doring’s tale of her husband’s heart attack and the hours that followed is the runner-up in the Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize for 2013. It is personal and universal, anecdotal and data-based. Above all, it is moving, but also wise. 
Several sections of the essay stay with me, but none more so than this line: “Borne on the brink of the music, it came to me: human beings endure impossible things.” We certainly do.

PS: Another powerful read is Raghu Karnad’s essay on Indians who served in the British army during the second world war. The essay, which melds the personal with the general, was runner-up in the prize for 2012.

Back

It’s been three months and a bit. Attribute the absence to the curveballs that life throws up occasionally. Staying away wasn’t easy. Writing happened though, but elsewhere. In TOI Crest for one:

The Truman show, in Kerala

It's a little past 7. 30 on a Monday morning. A woman in a green sari is vigorously dusting a large glass-topped table stacked with files. She pauses for a moment to straighten the chair behind the desk, before continuing to clean the table. It is an early morning ritual that happens in offices across the country every working day.
What makes this dust-busting exercise different though is that it is happening in the office of the chief minister of Kerala and anyone in the world can view it by logging on to www. keralacm. gov. in (Read the rest here)

The curveballs have been straightened out — sort of. And regular programming is set to resume very soon. Perhaps, even later today.