I have waited a long time to read No Straight Thing Was Ever Made – Urvashi Bahuguna’s essays on mental health – but now that it’s in my ...
I have waited a long time to read No Straight Thing Was Ever Made – Urvashi Bahuguna’s essays on mental health – but now that it’s in my palms, within reach, I find myself hesitating. I’m afraid of what the book bears between its covers, revealing things I’ve hidden in a box under the bed, of it hitting too close to home.
In late February, in the midst of a third national lockdown in the UK and a lingering winter chill in the air, I find myself drawn to it. I read it in the dark, on my phone, because on some days I can’t lift myself to leave the sofa and turn on the lights. On days like these, flipping page after page of a paperback seems daunting. And yet, my body craves a story. It seeks the comfort of this palm-sized gadget, and scrolls with muscle memory.
When I first read Bahuguna’s debut poetry collection, Terrarium, a couple of years ago, it shifted something inside me. Simply put, it made me fall in love with reading poetry again. I don’t mean one poem here, another poem there. It taught me to pause – to absorb poem after poem, to read a collection from beginning to...
