SARIS and a SINGLE MALT
Sweta Srivastava Vikram
From the World Voices Series
Modern History Press
Ann Arbor • London • Sydney
Saris and a Single Malt.
Copyright © 2016 by Sweta Srivastava Vikram.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 978-1-61599-294-2 paperback
ISBN 978-1-61599-295-9 eBook
Distributed by Ingram (USA/CAN/AU), Bertrams Books (UK/EU)
Published by
Modern History Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vikram, Sweta Srivastava, 1975- author.
Title: Saris and a single malt / Sweta Srivastava Vikram.
Description: Ann Arbor, MI : Modern History Press, [2016] | Series: World voices series
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011526| ISBN 9781615992942 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781615992959 (epub, PDF, Kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Mothers--Death--Poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3622.I493 A6 2016 | DDC 818/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011526
For Mummy—wherever you are, I am sure the place has good whisky and a beautiful collection of saris.
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
FLIGHT
Friday, May 30, 2014
Destination
JFK: Terminal 4 Airport Lounge
Wait for Me
Looking for Signs
Fifty Minutes from New Delhi
Serendipity
Indira Gandhi International Airport: New Delhi
FIRE
May 31, 2014
Why Didn’t You Wait for Me?
Crashing
It’s Not Easy
Noise
Conversations with Mumma
SARIS and a SINGLE MALT
Ode to Mumma
GRIEF
June 1, 2014
Does Grief Wear a Color?
I Write
Forever Courage, Beta
Namaste
Time Changes Us
The Final Note
Afterword
About the Author
Foreword
There are few books like Saris and a Single Malt in which the loss of a mother, a homeland, and the self come together in a sustained elegy. Traveling the arc of grief, Sweta Vikram’s collection begins with tragic news and continues from there, in real time, as she brings us along on her journey to India to her mother's cremation. Many poems about loss are written after an endured silence, when words just won't come, but in Saris and a Single Malt, Vikram sits us next to her on the long flight ‘home,’ and we hear her cry. We are with her as she is breaking. And we break. It is a privileged and painful journey. Raw and powerful.
Saris and a Single Malt
—Justen Ahren, Director Noepe Center,
Author of A Strange Catechism