Writing is hard
From the ages of about 7 to 22, I was a prolific writer. Much of what I wrote seems unreadable to me now, but it was an activity that brought much joy into my life. The past decade has been less about writing (although I do plenty of it at work) and more about reading and consuming.
Writing has gotten a lot harder and because it got harder, I shied away from it. And just like an underused muscle, my writing skills have atrophied. This publication will help rebuild my writing muscle and you, my dear readers, are my unsuspecting guinea pigs!
What is The Third Space?
I’ve always struggled with questions of identity. As a son of immigrants from Tamil Nadu who was born and brought up in the cosmopolitan haven of Mumbai, I straddled two worlds - one that belonged to a conservative Tamil family that values stability and tradition, and the other that was unashamedly Mumbai - where one tends to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
I can’t easily answer a simple question - “What’s your mother tongue?”. I spoke in Tamil with my family, read and spoke in English soon after I joined pre-school, learned Marathi through 9 years of school and spoke Hindi everywhere else. In short, I learned to “code-switch” before I even knew what that meant. To complicate things, I moved to the US after college and spent 15 years chasing the American dream before folding up my tent and relocating to Canada in 2024.
But through all these years, I have never really left one space for another. I realized that I inhabit a rich, messy, and creative confluence of all the spaces I have ever belonged to.
This is what the sociologist Dr. Homi Bhabha (no, not that Dr. Homi Bhabha) calls The Third Space - the complex 'in-between' where our different identities, cultures, and ideas meet and create something new.
Think about the “work voice” you often adopt on Zoom calls before a gentler version takes over to talk to your toddler who has thrown her plate of food to the floor. Or the part of you that talks to colleagues in an American or British accent before instantly switching to an Indian one when your old friend calls. We all inhabit our own Third Spaces.
What do I write about?
I am loathe to pigeonhole myself into any specific area and I read widely on several topics including history, AI, parenting, movies, urbanism, energy, climate, sociology and economics. What I hope to do is examine connections between seemingly unrelated topics and talk about them from my unique vantage point. All I want is for my posts to surprise and delight you. I have some posts in the pipeline and I can’t wait to share them with you!
What I’d love from you
All I ask is for your support as I get back on the journey of writing. Please subscribe to this newsletter and if you think it would add value to someone else’s day, please share it with them. If you have any questions or criticisms, please leave a comment. I promise to look through them and respond. And if you like something I wrote, please let me know! I thrive on external validation and it will only encourage me to write more often.
Thank you all for coming along on this journey!
This totally transported me back to the golden days of blogging on Blogspot! I’m so glad you’re back on your writing adventure!