Here are some excerpts from Sourabha’s book:
“Look at us. So brashly, flagrantly and so shamelessly in
love with the world.
We are now this very earth, we’re water, we’re fire,
we’re the sky. We’re an ecosystem. We’re the world.
We’re the universe.
We’re everything. Everything is us.
And to that extent, we are nothing too.”
“In the face of an imminent end, it is both tragic and
tremendous how we persist to hold and hoard a few
moments with a love so acute and drastic.”
– Sourabha Rao, Silkworm Slumbers
Renowned award winning photographer and content head for Toehold, Santosh Saligram, aptly sums up her work, “She gives verbal form to the inexpressible and weaves immersive stories that transcend space and dissolve time.”
As I get talking to this millennial woman; an author, content whiz and travel writer. It is noteworthy how a young person like her used her personal trajectory and challenges to find her calling, turned her inner turmoil into something meaningful, did not given up when waylaid by responsibilities and went on to carve a space for her own self and identity as an business owner and then her passion; writer.
This 26 year old’s prolific writer transports you to another world with her play of words.
How did you find the writer in you?
I was born and brought up in the beautiful, laid-back city of Mysuru (Which I prefer spelling as “MYsooru”, as that's how much I love that place).
I was bullied in school, I had very few friends. Books had always been my companions. Thankfully, there were some truly inspiring teachers in school and my dad, who had a master's degree in English Literature and also had deep insight into Kannada literature, exposed me to the world of literature. I honed myself at both languages well.
After my parents moved from our native village to MYsooru, just over a year they separated and my father moved away from us. Suddenly, at 17 years of age I was bearing all responsibilities without any support. This changed everything for me.
I started scribbling everything into my diaries because suddenly I was alone with my mother who tried to take her life thrice. There was no time to even think, I realised that melancholy was luxury, too, when your next meal is in question.
The writer in me saved me from going insane.
Though I started with studying Arts for a year as I wanted to pursue higher education in literature, but circumstances compelled me to become financially independent. So I yielded to the idea of doing the 4-year engineering course and find a ‘secure” job right after my bachelor's degree. Which I did; after graduation, I worked in an MNC for 19 months. I was great at my IT job and it helped me pay off loans that my mother had managed to take for my studies. I worked hard to make enough money to clear all her debts and even those which my father had left for me.
But the calling was always writing. It was always burning within me. I knew it was time that I listened to the writer in me and return the favor to my own self.
It reached the boiling point and I started hunting for writing jobs. Then Flipkart happened, I passed all the tests for the Content Writer (on Books) post and quit my job at Unisys after a double promotion. Everyone around me told me that I am insane to leave a secure, well paying and high profile job, but I just knew this was my time as a writer.
My eventual dream has been Travel Writing and after 14 months with Flipkart, I got the best possible beginning I could: Toehold Travel and Photography. I have been working here for 15 months now.
And in between it all I wrote my book, Silkworm Slumbers.
What has been the biggest challenge in your life and how has it shaped you as a person and a writer.
My father abandoning us when I was 17. I began writing in anguish and slowly, as I struggled to build a life of my own. Calmness took a while to come to me.
I started a small student venture with Vikram Raju, who is now Data Scientist, (a very important friend who helped a lot) and this made me financially independent at a very young age. It was called “Paper Lilies”, we made greeting cards for various occasions and for no occasion at all, too. It did well in my hometown.
Writing did help there, too.
It helped me leave the house in which mom and I were working as caretakers for an old lady and move back to our own house. The turmoil and agony did leave gradually and writing became a beautiful expression; an immediate necessity.
Today, I feel fortunate to have found a work that helps me think about all life even as I dwell into human emotions in my own ways and marvel at them with wonder. Writing is taking newer dimensions as I get to write travel stories and about wildlife and natural beauty. And this is transforming my ways of looking at this world we live in wonderful ways.
What is your inspiration behind your book?
My father had come back into our lives, asking me to take care of him and it was a really hard time. Parallely, the guy I used to date walked out on me and I had to deal with what his family had to say about me being an outspoken woman.
I wanted to do something worthwhile with all this chaos in my life; something meaningful.
With timely help from Lakshmi Bharadwaj, writer and friend, and Megha Iyer, I published Silkworm Slumbers in March, 2016.
The book isn’t really based on a theme. It's the kind that you can just pick up and end up opening any random page. It has three sections: poetry, letters and random musings. The letters section, however, is almost semi-autobiographical. The rest, is pretty much summed up as “Poems, letters and musings that have led to this understanding, acceptance: without allowing my story to make haste for another beginning again, and without letting it slip out of its own skin in a hasty epilogue, live in the now. One day at a time. One day at a time. Everything else slumbers.”
I am grateful to everyone who supported me through it; my days of writing, publishing and the book launch. There are so many loved ones who helped me bring my book to life. My book has been doing well with my blog “Wheremindsmeet” followers, patrons and friends living across the globe.
Silkworm Slumbers liberated me.
What is your greatest strength?
Resilience, perhaps?
And not taking myself too seriously.
Love and gratitude for even being alive, for life, for the earth. Even when grief takes grip of me strongly, I let it work through me and let it go, instead of wallowing about it for a long time. In spite of all the grief and suffering, beauty still exists in this world, irrespective of our attention to it.
What message do you have for other women who want to follow their own calling?
I am still a learner; I make a lot of mistakes and am trying to figure out things like everyone else.
I just want to say that you are not alone in fighting even the most personal wars. We are all together in this, all of us. Be vocal about what you feel. Cynicism could be poisonous, strive for beauty and peace. Be intensely yourself, there's nothing worth giving up on that for.
We are humans and let's be just that: utterly human.