Gunjan Pant Pande
From the very first line of the memoir, “Memory is a strange beast…” to the last words, “Fireflies burst into flames,” Everything Changes by author, columnist, activist, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu holds the reader enthralled. It’s a mix of the tone, pace and non-linear narrative of this “bracingly frank” poetic monologue that makes the author’s lived experiences a seamless photomontage of vivid events “unravelling several aspects of her childhood, family life, friendships, intimate relationships and career as a journalist.”
Talking about the process of memoir writing in an interview, the award-winning novelist said the purpose of story-telling was to, “hold the reader’s interest… to be able to make my personal experiences that are deeply intimate, relatable to a larger audience, who hopefully by the end of the book can see themselves as the protagonist or feel that they have also in some way, lived the same truth.” And that is exactly what Everything Changes succeeds in doing as it fluently negotiates the narrow by-lanes of mental health spectrum merging with the complex highway of omnipresent heteronormative patriarchy meandering glibly into the one-way streets of profound self-discovery and individual growth.
Deeply inspired by Kamala Das, Anais Nin and Sylvia Plath, Sreemoyee’s no-filter tome delves deftly into a host of taboo and highly misunderstood issues ranging from grief counselling, widowhood, intimate partner violence, self-marriage, prude shaming and female orgasm to teenage angst, menstruation, PCODs, sex-ed, endometriosis and clinical depression. In an era of situationships, it also introduces the reader to Gen Z concepts of breadcrumbing, gaslighting, ghosting, friend zoning, love bombing and anxious attachment – all fascinating facets of today’s graphic relationship prism.
Indian society, Sreemoyee highlighted while talking about her latest literary offering “is still too afraid, unsure and ashamed to acknowledge mental health as a looming health crisis, and suicide as more than an accident or crime.” An emotion she felt deeply as a little girl growing up in the shadow of her biological father’s suicide.
“Simply surviving, answering the invasive questions society imposes on survivors, the resultant blame game, the sweeping assumptions and subsequent allegations that the wife of the deceased must be responsible for his mental anguish.(P 8)”
An acclaimed essay on emotional intelligence said “our pain serves us. It is a crucial, guiding force,” just by “shifting our goals from wanting to transcend pain to aiming for a more neutral emotional PH.” Perhaps Sreemoyee has done just that in this arduous tale of “rebuilding one’s life over and over again” as a single woman tackling the highs and lows of her professional ride and myriad relationships; all the while desperate to “break free from the prison of her memories” and the underlying need for social/male validation.
The nostalgic exploration of romance and womanhood was inspired by the author’s desire to “give away for public consumption” a significant part of her life so that readers could feel inspired and “perhaps find strength and peace” in her triumph over decades of inner conflict.
“Memories bear no guarantees, there are only gates to enter, none to exit. Memories like prison guards of war, hold time hostage. (P1)”
The looming presence of her absent father is a recurring theme throughout the narrative even though the author admits “I had no memory of my biological father.” The word ‘late’ prefixed in her passport, school and college certificates, in conversations, “among nosy relatives, at boisterous birthday parties, at lavish family weddings and in my mother’s pensive silences” led her to crave someone to protect her and fix things for her in her growing up years. Such was the power of one man, she said, “who shaped our destiny both through his presence and his absence.”
Sreemoyee’s lucid description of her relationship with her mother too is as awe inspiring as intriguing especially “where I witnessed my mother being infantilised, her only role being that of a daughter, a dutiful primary caregiver who remains answerable regarding her whereabouts to her aging parents, sharing each detail of her adult life as the proverbial lokhi/bhalo meye (good daughter).”
Her own realisation that maybe she too held her mother to a fundamentally flawed promise to only “be a daughter, single mother and a dead man’s wife,” was an eye opener.
As for the title, she explained at the Calcutta launch of her book that Everything Changes captured “most eloquently the storms in my life, my search for my personal truth and the sense of just going on, however harsh the blows dealt by life.” The book, in a nutshell therefore “encapsulates my strong determination to persevere and to forgive and make peace with my past.”
This, after having spoken to survivors of suicide, studied men and mental health as part of the detailed research for her labour of love – her memoir is her latest offering after having delved very successfully into other forms of creative expression including fiction, non-fiction and feminist erotic verse. Everything Changes is a tale of her personal evolution from a lost teenager lying about her father being in the USA to the Facebook speech years later “proudly introducing Baba by his full name” for the very first time and talking openly about his battle with schizophrenia.
In a similar manner, the author also tries to understand the whole purpose of a woman’s life by posing very pertinent questions throughout the book.
As a daughter: How does she ever repay her debt of gratitude to her parents? With marriage? Motherhood? A well-paying job? Looking after them as they age? Her whole life for the sake of another – how much sacrifice is deemed enough? (P36)
As a lover: Does a girl risk losing an interested suitor if she sets her boundaries and has her own standards of sexual gratification? (P73)
As a single woman: Were we taught to keep our mouths shut and never protest loudly, create a scene or raise our voice because it made the aggrieved seem attention seeking, crazy, loud, overly dramatic or over sensitive?(P139)
Being a woman in her full power, Sreemoyee eventually overcame emotional manipulation determined as she was to be ‘fearless’, to learn to unlearn, to forgive, to have renewed faith by seeing “every failure as a miracle. Every disappointment, a redirection” every crashing dream as the slate being “wiped clean, again, offering an opportunity to know and accept myself, not as I wished, but as I was.”
A journey as she acknowledges “is more than one woman’s story” and when it finds resonance with many readers, a Sreemoyee confident in her own skin proudly concludes:
You are not alone.
We are not alone!