Dia duit, people!
Someone at the literary residency I attended this summer in Ireland asked me if I found it difficult to write in first person. I was surprised at what I told the fellow writer. I said I found it the easiest.
I love first person.
Now, I want you to read this. This is a short piece from a memoir I have been working on. Well, it is no longer part of this particular memoir. It’s more like the million diary notes staring at me when I write.
I wrote this bit two years ago and didn’t know what to do with it. Then, on impulse (like always), I sent it to Honest Ulsterman, a literary magazine that has published literary greats such as Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon in the past. I am humbled that they accepted it.
Here you go: PUBERTY
A large part of this blog’s journey has been spent mulling whether it should stick to economic history and the serious nerdy stuff or it should go all out. Sometime last year, it changed and the more I go along, the more convinced I am. I have to be true to myself. Who am I? I keep asking. It turns out, I am none of my labels. I am very real atman that is observing the many sides of me and having fun with it. Discarding labels. Reinforcing the precariousness and evolving nature of our human existence. Embracing growth, taking risks, enabling new ways of seeing.
This is an economic historian’s blog who is also a writer and occasionally, a journalist, and a poet. People in academia often tell me, they don’t read memoirs, or poetry, or fiction. And, then I met a legend in economics who told me to keep doing all that I am doing. Here is a picture of us. I have interviewed Deirdre McCloskey. In the process of editing the six-hour interview and writing a piece as well. It will all get to you in due course.
(Selfie by me, November 2022)
In my research, I am in the process of studying corporate ownership in India for better part of the 20th century. I am very excited to see what this will lead to. Fingers crossed.
In the end, let me just say this now: You are my readers. I do not expect you to expect one part of me when I am sending you dispatches. This is my blog, and it shall have all of me, whenever it can. I genuinely believe, labels, silos and lack of diverse reading stunt growth. I hope you do too.
In the end, here is a quote I have been thinking about (stolen from the wall of my dearest Shriya Bhagwat):
“The OPPOSITE of COURAGE is not Cowardice; the opposite of courage is CONFORMITY. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.” Jim HighTower
Yours truly,
P.
econhistorienne.com 