Father

My father was born ten years after the Partition but growing up in a refugee family means knowing in your bones that a cataclysm can turn your world upside down in a heartbeat. Maybe that’s why he’s so meticulous about living - curating his eclectic collection of music, savouring thoughtfully composed meals, animatedly annotating his books, walking every morning but enjoying his dark chocolate after dinner each night - striking a paradoxical balance between being vigilant and yet fully alive. An admirable reconciliation of opposites that I’ve come to cherish even more these days. Here he is at 23, on his honeymoon in Chail, a photo to be paired with the one I posted of my mother a few weeks ago.

Indus Chadha believes we cannot exist or be understood without stories and spends much of her time reading, writing or listening to her five-year-old daughter, Amara, tell them. She earned a BA from Smith College with a major in the Study of Women and Gender and a minor in English Language and Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

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