Tadow is HERE!
Bangalore Launch on Apr 13, and Delhi-Gurgaon on Apr 18
Hello, namaste, satsriakal, aadab!
Tadow is HERE, yes! Quite a metaphorical C-section it was!
It started with five random words. It was a seed thrown into the wind during my MBA days, when I was desperately looking for meaning beyond metrics. Back in Jan 2022, I asked people to send me five words. Anything, everything. They came back with their imagination. One hundred and sixty voices. And from their thoughts, I built these stories.
Tadow is a conversation or an intimate exchange. And somewhere along the way, it became a war cry. A celebration. A heartbreak. A mirror.
But let me not romanticize it too much, because the truth is, the journey here nearly wrecked me.
Writing Tadow while running Write Click, and working with VCs was like trying to paint a masterpiece while the house is on fire and your phone won’t stop ringing. Life overlapped. Dengue crept in. A few friends let me down hysterically, printers delayed orders, NotionPress fucked with my cover design at the 13th hour. Once my house-help asked me if I was running a wedding management company.
Wrote drafts in the backseat of autos, rewrote endings while waiting at clinics, and Zoom calls from messy kitchens because guests were coming and the Wi-Fi was strongest there. Designed the book cover, packed the parcels, labelled the boxes. I responded to trolls before brushing my teeth.
Back in September, there was one such day I cried on my keyboard. There were nights when the world felt too loud and my mind felt too quiet. There were moments when I felt invisible, just a tired brown girl trying to write flash fiction in a world that rewards only reels.
I am glad Tadow found a way.
Because I believe in stories. And I believe that truth doesn’t need embellishment.
This book holds stories about children with dyslexia. About hysterectomies and unspoken grief. About gender. About abuse. About belonging. About single mothers. About a girl who falls in love with a Mexican musician. About a boy on a train who survived because the Wi-Fi failed. About pets who undergo euthanasia.
Tadow is stitched with the lives of everyday people who do extraordinary things quietly. I guess, these stories will whisper truths you’ll remember at midnight.
Many think writing is just inspiration. But discipline is what carried me. Resilience. The messy, glorious, stupid, sacred kind of resilience.
I still have so many stories left in me. Stories that push against silence. Stories that smell like home. Stories that bite. Stories that hold your hand.
I refuse to stop telling them. I refuse to look away.
And if tadow has done even one thing, made you pause, smile, tear up, remember someone, it was all worth it.
I shall head to the Gurudwara now to seek blessings on my birthday and I hope these stories fetch the warmest of smiles in your eyes! :)
Here’s to the chaos, to the craft, to the courage!
Here’s to living in sentences. Yours, mine, and ours!
Writeously yours,