"When we emptied my father's flat after his death, a crowd descended. They rushed away the cupboards and chairs, his shirts and socks. Ragpickers took the rusted appliances. A young woman, the guitar. I remember my father practising Greensleeves over and over. Or did I make that up? It was raining, but my eyes stayed dry. No time for tears that's how fast an empire is dismantled. Another landscape gone."
"I was already writing about loneliness, about Sonia and Sunny, who meet on the night train to their respective grandparents' homes, journeying into their past the past being a kind of home to us all. I was already sensing the restorative depth of their bond, as well as its fragility. Sonia and Sunny's relationship unfolds over years and continents across the United States, Italy, Mexico, India."
The father's flat is emptied after his death as a crowd takes cupboards, chairs and clothing while ragpickers remove rusted appliances; a young woman takes the guitar. Rain falls but tears do not come; the scene marks the rapid dismantling of an empire and the loss of a landscape. Sonia and Sunny meet on a night train to grandparents' homes and forge a fragile, restorative bond that unfolds across several countries. Their meetings and separations map loneliness as national, racial, gendered and religious rifts, shadowlands of nightmares and a longing for vanishing nature. Loneliness also becomes sought solitude and artistic peace.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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