I wrote a book…
Hello to my medium family. I did something I planned to do since a long time, writing a book. It was as daunting as it sounds. Before I begin to talk about the book, let me thank you all, the readers of my medium post, who encouraged my story-telling abilities, who motivated me to write.
Staying true to my style, my book is of the genre narrative non-fiction.
From my previous medium posts, you can deduce that, I write stories and they always stem from my personal experiences.
Back in 2020, I wrote a post on Alopecia and how the disease plays heavy on one’s emotional and mental state. In that article I also mentioned, my balding day was nearing.
21st June 2022, was my balding day. Exactly a year later, I made a public announcement of my book through social media. My book speaks about what happened next after my balding day. The book is titled Baldversary — a portmanteau (blend in simple words) of two words, bald and anniversary.
The book is a collection of short stories. These stories emerged from my personal experiences of navigating life as a bald woman.
Sharing an instance from my experience that isn’t recorded in the book. The one after which I have strongly given thought to my dressing sense. It is one of many such instances.
It was a cold November night. I was on the Thivim station in Goa. I was dressed in sweatshirt and a jeans. I had my backpack on me. The railway platform was not crowded. At the far end was a food stall. I walked up to it. The stack of spicy banana chips caught my attention. I could not resist. I walked closer to the stall. The man on the counter asked me, “What do you want Sir?”. SIR, that word echoed in my ears. A gamut of emotions were erupting in my heart, yet concealed by the calm posture I kept. I was like a volcano that sits dormant on the surface even though there is thermal activity happening within. This wasn’t the first time, I was assumed to be a man. I was tired of the misrepresentation that now regularly came my way. Tired but not too tired in a way that it still affected me. I had always dressed the way I was dressed that night. Never before was I addressed as a man, never when I had a head full of hair, but it happened very often after I was bald.
Calmly, I said “Chips”. On hearing a woman’s voice, the shopkeeper realized that he had incorrectly assumed my gender, he corrected by saying, “10 rupees, madam”. I gave the money, picked up the chips packet and started walking towards my luggage. The moment I turned, I heard a chuckle exchanged between the man behind the counter and another customer who was present at the shop during this entire exchange.
Many such moments have lead me to introspect in my lone moments of quietness, to struggle with self-image, to understand what it means to be me with a new physical identity.
In my book, #baldversary, I open a window to let you in on my world.
You can find the book on Amazon.
