We owned two copies of the book. But there was no way I was going to say no to this gift, this talisman that hadred unbidden. Especially because, most appositly, The sender’s name was mary – Mary Verghese. Through Her, I Felt a Renewed Connection To Mary Beton-My Mary Carmichael, The Marys WHO Walk in and Out Of A room of one’s ownWhose radiant prose and logic I had learnt to love, first as a literature student, then an apprentice-torto, and finally, a Teacher of Critical Thinking. Indeed, so powerful was it impact on my life, that, even today, when I walk across the campuses, I feel a mix of guilt (is there a beadle no one and tomorrow me am not allowed to? Can Raise, In Minutes, An Army of Feminists to Stare Him Down).

A couple of weeks ago, my editor asked if I would write a piece around women’s day for her.

I retrieved the slim, elegant edition mary had sent me, covered carefully in celophane, from the bookshelf. “It is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write …” Own Circumstances Had Changed. I said yes to my editor.

I think of myself as a writer even thought that I haven ‘written much in the last two years. Not a shred of fiction; A smattering of personal essays-Though I Doubt That Two Short Essays and One Semi-Long Essay Can Constitute a “Smattering”; Two book reviews; A spot of academic writing; And in my translation, I am so shockingly behind that character appears in my dream, ghosts trapped between their two worlds.

I have a today in the house.

And if the distancing quality of the previous statement is to make a point, you must know that it fails on both countries. The Toddler is mine. And its qed only semes to suggest a banal truism: Women with small children can write.

But every year in my body opposes that thought. There must be writers with small children who are so disciplined that they write. There are Cartainly Women With Small Children Who Do So Many Other Difference Jobs – They Cook and Run Labs, Analyse data and Write Legal Briefs, Come Up With Copy for Soap and Deliver Soap, They Swab. They Report from War-Torn Areas, they act. My mother had had only six weeks of material leave and had gone back to her college, to teach young men engineering, before her scar hadled.

There is, for me, some comforts in the collection of feminism. And so, counterintively, I feel much better if the failure is my own: I have a starter and I can’t write.

My Husband sets up my laptop. Privileges Cushion My Material Life and – At Least Theoretically – Safeguard My Work. Other bodies have cushied masha, other arms have cradled her – when I have sat up sendback on my students’ essays. Apparently, you need a village (I am grateful to the villagers; I am also, occasionally, sharply jealous).

The problem is elsewhere. To write, one needs to pursue thought to the ends of the earth and back to the page; To lay out a line of words, and, through them, Imagine many different possessibilities, many different outcomes. Then delete them all, they have left slight impressions on the page, the dust of their elision persisting, like the gentle shadows, the words you will eventually let stand.

To be a writer, you need a great deal of stamina.

Across the locked door, I heart a little giggle. I hear the squeak of small shoes. The squeaks now become a symphony, she begins to race, will she fall?

Everyone falls, I expect my husband to say calmly. He is already out the door.

Instead of writing in the morning as woolf would have, when one’s energy is un-depbated, when it is possible that much can be made of day, I potter around. While the mountain of unfinished tasks increases an inch, I find great delight in a new word she has learn. Cinnamon.

If you think of the location of the room is the problem, I have tried to put 60 km and a two-hur-time-peak-peak-travel better between us, when I hide in my college library, to write. But halfway through the pursuit of an elusive idea, I still hear the giggle, the squeak, the cry.

I unlatch the door of the room in my head and I step out. Some days, like today, I am about to step back in.

I pick out another line of words. The black letters become Green Birds and Fly to Through the lock door, while I live at my desk.

Roy is a Delhi-based author and Assistant Professor at Ashoka University. Views are personal