2020, was an epoch of its own that changed us all.
We began the year in comfort. Comfortable in our own routines and chaos that left us far removed from our own truth and in most instances, the realities of others. As the year progressed, ‘normalness’ was disrupted.
Category: Blog
How to Talk to Your (White) Partner About Race
How, and how often should you talk to your partner about race? This piece looks at how to navigate these difficult conversations, in light of the BLM movement in America.
Never Let Me Go: Revisiting Ishiguro in the Pandemic
Anahit Behrooz revisits Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go in the light of the recent pandemic.
After he leaves: a poem on love under lockdown
A poem by Bee Asha that explores how our awareness of physical touch has changed in lockdown, our inner anxieties left untold and the dramatic reactions that can come from such an unprecedented situation.
On Having a Portfolio Career
3+ On Having a Portfolio Career by Krishan Coupland So. What do you do? It’s a question so common that […]
Old fears, new loss: Anxiety and PTSD during the pandemic
I go to the bathroom to splash my face, prolonging the inevitable. Instead, I curl up on the bathroom mat and let out short gasping sobs. An old acquaintance comes again. Some other distant part of me wishes someone had informed Anxiety about social distancing.
I became an Auntie on Gorgie Road
My excuse for forgetting birthdays has always been that I’m busy. In the world before, I travel for work. I live between several countries, am part of several extended families on three continents. I remember the A5 format menu plan sellotaped to the wall in my mother’s kitchen. She ran her busy constituency office from the cane chairs arranged on the front verandah of our house, but the menu plan was the core structure by which she organised our lives. I came to believe when I’d learned every dish on that list my mother’s work on earth would be done. So naturally I refused to learn how to cook.
Highland Midges 1 – 0 Me
It’s funny, how my parents usually know that it’s raining in Edinburgh before I do. They are avid weather app users and will provide daily weather reports during our WhatsApp calls. My mum will exclaim “it was so warm today in Datca; we couldn’t leave the house to even go to the beach!” She’ll then follow the exclamation with a timid and consolatory tone, telling me that they’ve already checked the weather for me…
The History of Rummikub: Vignettes from my local shop
Rummikub is a 4-person game played with 106 tiles, somewhere between the card game rummy and mah-jong. It’s a loud game, as the tiles are usually made of hard plastic and make a satisfying sound when they’re mixed. The game was invented by a Jewish man from Romania called Ephraim Hertzano as a work around a gambling ban, since playing card games were forbidden in Romania during the 1940s. Rummikub is one of my favourite games.
Geographies of cooking (or how I learned how to cook adobo in Scotland)
Before moving away from home, my cooking skills were limited to frying everything, and of course, cooking rice. I lived on takeaways, meals out with friends, and free food at my parents’. Food was functional, cooking was a chore.
