Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Ira Math­ur in the pre­sen­ta­tion of her mem­oir, Love the Dark Days, at the Jaipur Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val.

Tere­sa White

A cou­ple of years back, I lost a friend over a book. The au­thor of that book has con­sis­tent­ly apol­o­gised to me for be­ing the source of that lost friend­ship. As if it could pos­si­bly be her fault. As if the lost friend had ever re­al­ly been a found friend.

A much-loved team mem­ber at my for­mer em­ploy­er would of­ten say, “On­ly you, Tere­sa, would have friend dra­ma over a book.” Be­ing no longer em­ployed means that I can now live more keen­ly in­to that friend dra­ma and fol­low the au­thor and her re­cent­ly re­pub­lished book across a cou­ple of con­ti­nents.

The ob­jec­tive of this big jour­ney is to bear wit­ness to her pre­sent­ing her new edi­tion at the pres­ti­gious Jaipur Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, her re­turn to the land of her birth and where the grip­ping mem­oir starts.

Ac­tu­al­ly, our jour­ney start­ed over a week ago when we left our hus­bands at Pi­ar­co Air­port and braved the At­lantic cross­ing, armed with some books and glass­es of bub­bly (she’s a tee­to­taller and I en­joyed be­ing a bad in­flu­ence).

I was grap­pling with Wise Women, a fine col­lec­tion of Eu­ro­pean folk­lore and fairy tales on “hag­i­tude” as re­told by Ang­harad Wynne. The ac­com­pa­ny­ing so­cio-psy­cho­log­i­cal in­fer­ences and in­sights prof­fered by the main au­thor, Sharon Black­ie, were not so fine. Oh well.

Ira was de­light­ing in her read, The Hus­band. This is a nov­el trans­lat­ed from French by an im­per­fect vi­ra­go of a nar­ra­tor whose con­fab­u­la­tions re­mind­ed me of some of the fam­i­ly sto­ries sur­round­ing my pre-menopausal grand­moth­er.

All that was be­fore my time, and she, con­trary to pop­u­lar views on women’s men­tal health, showed more mea­sured equa­nim­i­ty in her long post-menopausal years. In oth­er words, the years that I knew and loved her. Ira reads on a Kin­dle, and I ain’t lucky with that, so I will have to get a hard copy when I re­turn to Lon­don.

We part­ed in Lon­don as we both went off to en­joy some daugh­ter time, meet­ing up once for din­ner with Ira’s Lon­don crew. We got back to­geth­er with her hus­band, Imshah, and flew to Del­hi. For me, this is the stuff of buck­et lists.

We are, there­fore, back at the books again. Ira and Imshah are shar­ing a book on the fu­ture of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. It has been of­fered to me to dip in­to. But I would rather cry. Hav­ing said that, Ira is telling me that Chat­G­PT is quite emo­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent, that one can type in any dra­ma one is in­volved in and ask about the oth­er per­son’s POV and mo­tives, and be giv­en per­fect in­sight and ad­vice (as­sum­ing peace­ful res­o­lu­tion is what you are af­ter).

We will give it a go when we ar­rive in In­dia and are once again WWW-con­nect­ed. Per­haps I can ask about peo­ple who cease be­ing friends with you over a book.

On the first part of the flight, I com­plet­ed An­nie Er­naux’s Sim­ple Pas­sion. Ira and I have a writer friend who, hav­ing greed­i­ly gob­bled up a cou­ple of Er­naux’s books (her words), in­clud­ing this one, had to lie down for an hour.

I can see why.

Erneaux tells the read­er with­in the first 250 words or so: “It oc­curred to me that writ­ing should al­so aim for that—the im­pres­sion con­veyed by sex­u­al in­ter­course, a feel­ing of anx­i­ety and stu­pe­fac­tion, a sus­pen­sion of moral judge­ment.”

Ira is al­ways nag­ging me to write, and I tell her that I am a lover, not a fight­er, a read­er, not a writer (Have you any idea of the bac­cha­nal that is a bunch of tal­ent­ed and not-so-tal­ent­ed writ­ers swim­ming around the Caribbean Sea?) So, I make Ira read this first part of the book. I want to know if this de­scrip­tion res­onates with her and if this is a new lens that I can ap­ply to the writ­ers at­tend­ing Jaipur’s fa­mous lit­er­ary fes­ti­val.

If it rings true to her, per­haps it is a pur­suit that I should con­sid­er in my se­mi-re­tire­ment. Giv­ing not too much change, she re­sponds with an “I need to read that book.”

Love the Dark Days was the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion and has re­cent­ly been re­pub­lished by the In­di­an pub­lish­ing house, Speak­ing Tiger Books.