“The idea of home is always a fragile one”: an interview with Tishani Doshi

Poet and dancer, Tishani Doshi’s latest book, Small Days and Nights, narrates the story of Grace (half-Italian, half-Indian), who moves from the US to India, owing to the passing away of her mother. Her life unravels when a house is bequeathed to her, in a village by the sea, and she meets Lucia, a sister, she never knew she had. While Doshi’s last book, Girls are Coming Out Of The Woods, was a poetry collection that evoked feelings of resilience, fear, pain and wonder, her latest novel takes the reader deeper into the realms of familial relationships, loss, endearment and rebirth of emotions that get buried through time and distance.

Tishani Doshi and I about her latest book, the journey authors make with their characters, and what it means to be a writer in times of shifting identities, displacements and finding stillness through it all:

In Small Days and Nights, the protagonist, Grace, returns home after spending years away, only to realize that the idea of home was never a place, rather a feeling she had not made peace with, her journey unfolds back from where it started. What is your idea of home?