Hi Ravleen, this was wonderful to read! I really love the way you weaved together poetry, colour, and metaphor in each snippet, and how each snippet has its own distinctive essence, yet the three of them also come together in such a special way through their juxtaposition.
The first snippet reminds me of what Leo Tolstoy said, that "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".
The ending of the second snippet about the presence and absence of colour in daily living really resonates too - it's exactly how I felt living in the UK, and I discussed this idea with friends from other cultures who lived there too, about how the colours of our origin cultures seemed to disappear and get sapped up in the grey / black / navy blue palette of the UK.
And I was so moved by the third snippet, especially these lines - "Daadi’s hands thinned to a dust that brushed our foreheads when we kneeled at her bedside" and "As she receded she became more and more like a monument we’d visit. Reverence and dread pooling in our hearts when we touched her. The passage of each night slowly cooling her face to the blankness of a sarovar." The colour and emotiveness carried in these lines is incredible.
Thank you so much for sharing your words, and I'm so looking forward to reading more of your writing!
Hi Suyin, thank you so much for the generosity of your close reading and response to these snippets! You've brought my attention to elements that I was subconsciously channeling but hadn't even articulated for myself, which is so incredibly helpful for any future development or spin-offs of these pieces.
That's such an evocative description of living in the UK, the image of the sapping away of color. I can relate living in the rainy Pacific Northwest, where somewhere in the thick of the winter months, people kind of crouch into the hues and temperatures of the season. I have only visited the UK, but it seems to fit this description so well. There is also something about living in northern climates where the grey season arrives and stays put for a seeming eternity. The idyllic romanticism of early-season rain eventually, over the accumulation of weeks and months, changes into a bleakness that creeps into everything. It feels so alien to my bones sometimes, as if my body knows that comes from sunnier roots.
Hi Ravleen, I’m so glad that you found it helpful, especially for developing these pieces in the future. I would love to read any expansions on these pieces - they are so poetic and poignant!
And absolutely, I can’t agree more with how you described grey rainy climates somehow seeping into people’s beings over time - I found it also influences societal personalities and cultures! I’m really feeling the difference now that I’ve moved from the UK to Portugal. I’m curious too if you’ve had the experience of spending time living somewhere with a warmer climate and felt the difference?
Hi Ravleen, this was wonderful to read! I really love the way you weaved together poetry, colour, and metaphor in each snippet, and how each snippet has its own distinctive essence, yet the three of them also come together in such a special way through their juxtaposition.
The first snippet reminds me of what Leo Tolstoy said, that "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".
The ending of the second snippet about the presence and absence of colour in daily living really resonates too - it's exactly how I felt living in the UK, and I discussed this idea with friends from other cultures who lived there too, about how the colours of our origin cultures seemed to disappear and get sapped up in the grey / black / navy blue palette of the UK.
And I was so moved by the third snippet, especially these lines - "Daadi’s hands thinned to a dust that brushed our foreheads when we kneeled at her bedside" and "As she receded she became more and more like a monument we’d visit. Reverence and dread pooling in our hearts when we touched her. The passage of each night slowly cooling her face to the blankness of a sarovar." The colour and emotiveness carried in these lines is incredible.
Thank you so much for sharing your words, and I'm so looking forward to reading more of your writing!
Hi Suyin, thank you so much for the generosity of your close reading and response to these snippets! You've brought my attention to elements that I was subconsciously channeling but hadn't even articulated for myself, which is so incredibly helpful for any future development or spin-offs of these pieces.
That's such an evocative description of living in the UK, the image of the sapping away of color. I can relate living in the rainy Pacific Northwest, where somewhere in the thick of the winter months, people kind of crouch into the hues and temperatures of the season. I have only visited the UK, but it seems to fit this description so well. There is also something about living in northern climates where the grey season arrives and stays put for a seeming eternity. The idyllic romanticism of early-season rain eventually, over the accumulation of weeks and months, changes into a bleakness that creeps into everything. It feels so alien to my bones sometimes, as if my body knows that comes from sunnier roots.
Hi Ravleen, I’m so glad that you found it helpful, especially for developing these pieces in the future. I would love to read any expansions on these pieces - they are so poetic and poignant!
And absolutely, I can’t agree more with how you described grey rainy climates somehow seeping into people’s beings over time - I found it also influences societal personalities and cultures! I’m really feeling the difference now that I’ve moved from the UK to Portugal. I’m curious too if you’ve had the experience of spending time living somewhere with a warmer climate and felt the difference?