Q.1 What inspired you to share your personal journey as a COVID patient with the world?
I have seen that many pieces of writing, many masterpieces emerge directly or in a guise, out of personal association – happy, sad or a mixture of both, which life actually is. My husband shared a brief write up of mine on my COVID experience in a social group with 20,000+ members, in the year 2021. There was a tremendous response, each one appreciating the positivity in it. I am just quoting one: “It is amazing how reminiscing deep-rooted attachment to a place so close to heart during sickness from a dreaded disease could steer the path to recovery. The narrative gives an account of how you fought back, with the soul-steering memories of Digboi. It should provide a guiding light to many…”
Yes I diverted my thought from sickness to old memories and associations. I was encouraged by my family members to record my experience in details, which might benefit others, at least to an extent.
Q.2 How did your perspective on life change as you went through the illness and recovery process?
As the only daughter of my parents – rather the only girl child in my parental family with one younger brother, I was rather pampered, and hardly encountered any hardship in any respect, till COVID struck me and the world. I realized life cannot always be a bed of roses for me – calamities can come in the form of death and diseases anytime, if not from any other quarter. Disease or no disease, death is a calamity common to the living world; it is the leveler. As long as we live, we have to be materialistic to a certain extent but detached to a greater extent – ultimately we are dust or ashes.
Q 3. Given the complex publishing process in India, what was your experience with us?
The experience with Paper Towns was hassle-free and enriching. This was my second project with them and I did not try any other option.
Q 4 Describe your writing process.
Of the four components of LSRW skills, writing comes last. My maximum emphasis has always been on “R” i.e. reading. My writing process is a bit erratic. Whenever I feel like, I scribble something – there is no routine activity as such and I admit I’m a bit lazy and cannot stick to one thing continuously. Often I quote from poems and authors as I often discover, whatever thought comes to my mind, is already penned by someone else. Thus I often have quotations in my writing, without adding new or extra words from me, which would not be that ‘apt’ like the words already written earlier.
Q. 5 Are there specific messages or feelings you hope your readers take away from your story?
All the implicit messages are messages of survival and hope in a world strewn with diseases and other destructive forces. We cannot step the calamities altogether – these appear and reappear through ages and we must learn to live with death as we cannot eradicate it with any corona vaccine. I have tried to maintain a light, humorous tone in the dance of death.
Q6 Describe a lesser-known aspect of Monideepa.
Alongside writing, I have continued my passion of handwork. I sketch, paint and embroider in my spare time. All the cushion covers, table cloths, wall hangings at my home are hand embroidered by me. As a child I also won Shankar’s painting competition.
Q 7 Do you think these fantastical experiences were a result of the illness, or were they something you had already explored in your imagination?
In my bash with coronavirus, my childhood, adolescence, youth, old age – everything were stitched together and the tight stitching completes our life cycle. Illness took me back to the world of childhood fantasies and I cannot deny, I’m imaginative to an extent. But my dreams were true at that point of time – with trembling fingers I jotted the points in my dreams, in the thick of my illness.
The few stories or whatever they are, cater for a 10/11 year old, an adolescent, a youth as well as an old one and I was all four during my COVID days.
Buy The Book: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9361853724
Connect with the Author: https://www.instagram.com/shatarupak/
