Writing, Memory and Phases of Life

When I set out to write 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐦𝐮 𝐊𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐲𝐚, I didn’t think of it as “a book.” It began as fragments of scattered memories, moments, and emotions that lived inside me. The challenge lay in giving them form.

What helped was breaking my life into phases:

🧒 Childhood

👧 Growing up

🏫 Boarding School

👩‍🎓 College

👩‍💼 Adulthood

Each phase carried its own moments, colours, joys, and quiet griefs.

From there, things started to take shape. A memory would rise, and instead of telling the whole story, I would distill it into an image, a line, a rhythm that carried its essence. Piecing those fragments together slowly became a collection, not linear like a story, but layered like memory itself. It was like building a larger-than-life jigsaw puzzle from the center. The center being my mother and how much she has loved me.

The process revealed that we often live life in phases, but we remember it in moments. A day, a scene, a fragrance, a conversation. And poetry, for me, was the bridge between the two.