What I liked about Past Lives is that it wasn’t spectacular. It wasn’t just a tale of two people separated by circumstance and agonizing over it, the ‘what-could-have-been’ lingering in the air like the scent of a lover who’s walked away. Nor was it that film about that connection that fundamentally changed you and you spend the rest of your life searching for. (I still love you, Linklater)
At first glance, Sonia Faleiro’s narrative non-fiction story titled The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing is about the chilling deaths of two young girls in Budaun district of Uttar Pradesh in 2014. As one reads further, though, we realize that it is about much more — deep-seated patriarchy, caste dynamics, failing state institutions, and a larger-than-life media. Through the story of the death of the 14 and 16-year-old cousins, named Padma and Lalli Shakya for the sake of the book, Faleiro provides us with an in-depth understanding of crime in rural north India. Her four-year-long investigation with striking attention to detail and over a hundred interviews is telling of her journalistic background.
It wasn’t until I read a well-meaning comment by a friend on my recent Instagram post that I realized what had been missing from my life lately – writing. She said she hoped I continued visiting new places and writing about them, except I hadn’t been writing. Not unless you count academic papers and the occasional news article as writing. It reminded me of a time when a fundamental aspect of my experience with new places, feelings, and people used to be my penchant for putting it into words. I didn’t remember the last time I did that. As someone who intends to make a living out of writing, the thought that I had probably lost the ability did scare me.
