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.
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