I love Elena Ferrante, Muriel Spark, Roger Federer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leicestershire, Jhumpa Lahiri, Isabel Allende. I love Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Hanya Yanigihara. I love fresh green peas, sucking on limes, food that tastes 'good and home'.

I love artist couples (we're the best), morning writing, hot black coffee. I love brown skin, the short stories of Manto, Chekov, and Tagore. I love Kalidasa, Arun Kolatkar, everyone who posts Sufi quotes online. I love wise words, The Gita, and watching Netflix with snacks from the fridge on day two of my period.

I love Nina Simone, #PastaGrannies on YouTube, gram flour, Janis Joplin, intersectional feminism, having a twin brother, talking to house plants. I love wandering through the streets of Berlin with no map and no goal. I love loitering, jhumka earrings, the vegetable patch in my papa's garden. I love meditation, my mother's folk tales and every single item in her kitchen. I love my two baby nieces and the way the eldest says my name all soft and lovely.

"Gram flour, je t'aime." 

"Gram flour, je t'aime." 

I love chai and gathiya, pudla, rose-flavoured turkish delight, West London, the Williams sisters, Parle-G biscuits, Sylvia Plath, women's relay races, cucumber and ketchup sandwiches, those engaged in anti-racism work, Shakespeare and Marlowe and Issa Rae in Insecure, khandvi, handvo, Adichie's books, my sister's clothes, my sister's jewellery, my sister's shoes, Donna Tartt, Jean Rhys, Juan Rulfo, Arundhati Roy. I love Sara Ahmed, Zora Neale Hurston, Isabel Allende, Amrita Sher-Gil, that crazy app that shows you all the constellations in night sky. 

 

I love a decolonised curriculum, brand new stationary, bell hooks, Satyajit Ray films, listening to the rain, mucking about, wrinkles on women, laughing until you snort, testing boundaries, those two real friends I've known since childhood. I love the Paris Climate Agreement, my sister and sisterhood, unusual trees, picnics in the woods, henna patterns, travel. I love writing and re-writing because stories are prayers and songs and my way of thinking. 

Loitering.

Loitering.

Testing boundaries.

Testing boundaries.

Mucking about.* My pal Sailesh Vadher clicked these in Bombay.

Mucking about.

* My pal Sailesh Vadher clicked these in Bombay.