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15-06-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
‘Learning to Make Tea for One': Writer Andaleeb Wajid's memoir reflects quiet strength during losses
In her memoir of loss, Learning to Make Tea for One, Andaleeb Wajid writes, 'When 1st June arrived, I went to the hospital with a heavy heart once more. It was our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. I tweeted that he was on the ventilator instead of being home with us … I got a barrage of wishes from people, and many said they were praying for him to get better.' On June 3, Wajid's husband, Mansoor, breathed his last, one of the countless lives that were cut short by the brutal Delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that raged through the world, hitting India especially hard, in the summer of 2021. The memoir takes us right back to those dreadful months when Death played Russian roulette and people, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, were indiscriminately snatched away from our midst with barely a warning. The pandemic was a great leveller; none were spared, but not everybody was equally impacted. Within a space of a couple of days, Wajid, who herself had tested positive and was hospitalised, lost her mother-in-law and her husband, and life as she knew it changed forever. Learning to Make Tea for One traces Wajid's journey of navigating through devastating loss and coming to terms with a 'new normal' – a phrase we use quite casually but one that marks the truth of Wajid's life. Grief is hard to process and even harder to articulate, and this makes the labyrinthine journey of negotiating it a very lonely one. This is ironic because grief is a universal emotion, one that every single one of us encounters in some shape or form at some point in life. But each grief is different and so is every experience of it, making it a shared but ultimately a lonely experience. The truth of this was perhaps most evident during the cruel pandemic, as its very nature made it impossible for us to reach out to one another at a time when we needed to do so the most. Perhaps there was also a sense of futility that accompanied those worst affected and prevented them from reaching out because as Wajid reiterates, ultimately, they were in it alone. Wajid was surrounded by family, but as she remembers, the presence of familiar faces only heightened the absence of that one face she needed to see the most and was lost forever. Though Wajid writes about seeking help through grief counselling, perhaps for a writer, writing what must have been a painful reconstruction of the past, was possibly the best way of coming to terms with her irreparable loss. Writing as recovery Even as one turns the first few pages of the memoir, a couple of things stand out. The first is the surreal nature of those days of the pandemic when the most regular, natural order of things – the song of a cuckoo, buying groceries, a phone call from family or a friend, were the only sources of relief in troubled times. Wajid's narration vividly brings alive a time when words such as 'co-morbidities' and 'saturation' became part of our everyday vocabulary, and one constantly lived in a state of mental fugue. The memoir also depicts the state of denial that Wajid lived in through those days, and perhaps, in some ways, continues to grapple with, possibly as a survival strategy. The chapter titled 'Everything is Fine' underlines this fact and it is only after one comes to terms with Mansoor's death that the undeniable premise of this memoir is unequivocally articulated – something that Wajid is unable to state at the onset simply because of the immensity of her grief. The memoir tends to meander into the past, digress into anecdotes, mostly about ordinary, everyday things – the Friday ritual of making biryani, Mansoor's love for Tamil songs and branded clothes, their shared love for notebooks – but like a refrain, the memoir keeps returning to the inescapable days and moments leading to Mansoor's death. But it is also through these meanderings that Mansoor comes alive, and you get a glimpse of the person that he was, and the life that he shared with his wife, sons and his mother. Loss is not something Wajid is unfamiliar with, having lost her father at the young age of 12, and two heartbreaking miscarriages she underwent before she had her youngest. But in many ways, the memoir also suggests that loss is what initiated Wajid into her journey of becoming a writer. Women's writing across cultural and other divides has helped women recover a voice that is often silenced. Writing has therefore been a survival strategy adopted by women. Wajid does the same with her writing – the memoir illustrates how writing became a means of emancipation for a girl who was married young. It gave her a livelihood and a career that she could not have otherwise envisioned for herself. In one of her most widely read novels, More Than Biryani, a mother and daughter come to terms with the loss of the father and surviving without the privilege of education and financial independence. But unlike them, Wajid had both and the memoir takes forward the journey she had hesitantly embarked on. It's now a journey that includes several romances, award-winning books for young adults and even a novel that has been adapted for the screen. Beyond carrying on Writing about grief isn't easy, reliving trauma isn't easy, and it certainly isn't easy to let strangers read about it. But Wajid writes this memoir with searing honesty – she doesn't hesitate to talk about a marriage between two very different personalities and how they settled into an easy companionship, of being assuaged by various kinds of guilt and making her peace with them, of her privilege that allowed her husband to have the best possible medical care while hundreds were gasping for breath, her not having to deal with the minutiae of life till she was in a better space, and so on. There is also the danger in such a memoir of infringing upon the privacy of a person who is no longer around to consent to what is being said about him or her. But Wajid does it in a remarkably sensitive manner, sharing just enough about her husband to enable her readers to see him for the person that he was but never over-sharing. Similarly, one sees her and her children at their most vulnerable moments and yet those moments are described with a quiet dignity and not with melodrama. She makes no attempt to evoke a reader's pity. What emerges is a story of quiet strength, of people dealing with the worst hand life can deal but soldiering on, even reclaiming some semblance of joy and demonstrating a resilience that life has a way of squeezing out of you. Many years back, struggling with a personal loss, I had read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a thoughtful gift from a dear friend. There was much in there that helped me to understand my own grief, but the opening scene of the parents sitting down for dinner, opening a bottle of wine while their daughter lay in the ICU of a hospital, left me with a sense of disconnect. Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi's Loss continues to sit on my bedside table because while he so movingly writes about loss, he also perceptively shares that 'grief is not a record of what has been lost but of who has been loved.' But the real and raw feelings that Andaleeb Wajid's memoir evokes made it difficult for me to read it without tears blurring the print, but it also held out gentle hope that tomorrow will be better, that tomorrow one will live again, laugh again, even thrive. And this is what makes Learning to Make Tea for One an inspiring, even therapeutic read.
The Hindu
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Author Andaleeb Wajid reflects on love, loss and healing in her new memoir Learning to Make Tea for One
Bengaluru-based writer Andaleeb Wajid's latest book Learning to Make Tea for One is a deeply personal memoir. A look into her journey of navigating love, loss and grief, the book was launched at Champaca Bookstore on May 10. The event featured a conversation between Andaleeb and journalist Shrabonthi Bagchi during which the author read excerpts from the book and discussed her writing process. 'I lost my husband Mansoor, and mother-in-law during COVID-19. When you move on from sad memories, the pain begins to fade, but I wanted to hold onto it. There were so many things about my relationship with both of them which I wanted to keep alive.' Author of over 50 novels, Andaleeb shares that she began writing this book by reliving each memory and writing them down. 'It was a very painful process. I used to dread each time I had to open the document and add to the manuscript. I couldn't focus on it all the time, so I kept taking breaks and even worked on other stories simultaneously.' For the longest time, no one in her family knew that Andaleeb was writing a book on her journey of grief. 'But I wanted to somehow navigate through this without breaking down all the time, without giving up. I realised that there are so many patterns that one needs to break while you're grieving,.' she says. Tea time rituals The title of the book itself was a new habit Andaleeb struggled to develop after the passing of her loved ones. 'Though I didn't have a tea-time ritual with the both of them, every evening I would make tea for the three of us and that had become my default action — to always measure for three cups of tea. When I went back home for the first time after they had passed, I automatically began preparing tea like before, before I stopped and realised I wouldn't do this ever again — that I'd be making tea only for myself now on.' She added that writing this book helped her overcome grief and push forward in life. 'I've always been instinctive about writing; it provided me with a sense of control. When I write, I find a space to clear my thoughts about my life's experiences.' She said, 'I hope readers acknowledge their grief as they read this book. Over the years, I've learnt that no one really wants to talk about it, but I hope the book helps.' Learning to Make Tea for One is available online on Amazon and Speaking Tiger websites. The book is also available offline in bookstores for ₹499
Indian Express
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Writer's Corner: Bengaluru-based Andaleeb Wajid on embracing multiple genres, coping with loss, and how routine helps an author
Romance, horror, mystery, young adult literature – works in these genres usually form a solid chunk of any good bookstore's collection. But for Bengaluru-based writer Andaleeb Wajid, this is a brief description of the genres she has written in, adding up to dozens of books over the years. In her works, Bengaluru often makes its presence felt to readers who know the city. Speaking to The Indian Express, Wajid said, 'Almost all my books have a Bangalore connection, barring one or two. I have lived here all my life. I wanted to be authentic in what I write…so it made sense for me to write about Bangalore in that way.' Wajid added that she wrote on and off throughout her school and college years, getting more seriously into it in her twenties while writing short stories for the Deccan Herald's youth supplement Open Sesame. 'Then I got into writing short stories for adults, and a full-fledged novel, Kite Strings, which was published in 2009,' she said. While Wajid has authored several romance books and series, they sit alongside other works aimed at younger audiences, and even horror novels. Another set of books, the Aunty Millennial series, has Wajid's character Iqra as one of the newer entrants to Bengaluru's eclectic collection of detectives and mystery-solvers. 'I don't want to be restricted to one genre….experimenting in different genres helps me as a writer since otherwise it is very easy to become complacent in what you know is your forte. I enjoy the process of doing something that is outside my comfort zone.' Interestingly, the character Iqra first appeared in a romance series by Wajid before making it into another series as an amateur detective. More recently, she has come out with a memoir, Learning to Make Tea for One. 'My husband and mother-in-law passed away during the second wave of the pandemic due to post-Covid complications. My memoir was a way of making sense of the world as it was,' Wajid said. The book was officially released on Saturday. As far as her writing habits go, Wajid has a routine, which might explain how she has managed to come out with so many published works. She said, 'If I have a plan to write something on a particular day, I sit down after breakfast and try and write as much as I can. The process is about building a routine. I try not to stop unless something really important comes up. As soon as one book is done, I want to move to the next and keep writing.' When it comes to reading, however, her tastes are slightly different. Andaleeb Wajid is a fan of crime procedurals, though they are not something she feels equipped to tackle as a writer. At least not yet. She notes that reading, in general, should always be a writer's habit, noting, 'My advice to writers all over is to read a lot and write every day. It is the sort of thing that needs practice. You can't suddenly decide to write a book one day… I like to compare it to a tap that you don't use. The water will not flow as smoothly. You can't also say I don't want to read, I just want to write.'
Hindustan Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Author Andaleeb Wajid's upcoming memoir to explore love, loss, and healing
New Delhi, Author Andaleeb Wajid's upcoming memoir "Learning to Make Tea for One: Reflections on Love, Loss and Healing" navigates through grief and the many paths to living and growing with it. The book, scheduled to release in May, is published by Speaking Tiger Books. The author of the young adult novel, "The Henna Start-up", lost her mother-in-law and her husband Mansoor to COVID-19 in 2021. "Writing 'Learning to Make Tea for One' was not just about catharsis. It was also about remembering one of the worst periods of my life and reminding myself that healing/grieving is not the end, but a constant process. "I lost two very important people and I wanted to remember them, their quirks, the ordinariness of them that nevertheless completed my family. I wanted to celebrate them but also talk about my life as it is now," Wajid, who has published nearly 50 novels in the past 15 years, said in a statement. In the cruel summer of 2021, when India was throttled by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wajid lost her mother-in-law, and then just five days later, her husband, even as she was hospitalised with COVID herself. Wajid's grief struggled to find words as she returned to a home that was shorn of the love that had once inhabited it and was now empty, but for her two children. She finally turned to her writing to make sense of it all. She found herself wanting to tell the story of her life and her loss. In the memoir, according to the publisher, Wajid chronicles her family life, of growing up as a cherished daughter of a father whom she lost too early, her marriage, the happy companionship that marked it, and described the incredible joys and the unbearable pain of motherhood too. "In 'Learning to Make Tea for One', Wajid delves into the ways in which loss and grief can shape a life. She meditates on dealing with losing loved ones, coping with intense grief, and finding meaning in bleak times. Her book is as much the story of a brave woman of today, as it is that of a writer who seeks comfort in writing," said Sudeshna Shome Ghosh, executive publisher at Speaking Tiger. Wajid's novel "Asmara's Summer" has been adapted for screen as "Dil, Dosti, Dilemma" on Amazon Prime. The book, priced at ₹499, is currently available for pre-order online.
