What emotion did you find hardest to write about—grief, love, or becoming?
Writing was my lifeline, a way to untangle emotions I couldn’t voice aloud. While grief and love are intertwined (one cannot exist without the other), the hardest poems to write were those about shame and the toxicity of a relationship’s demise. Shame carves a unique kind of silence; it asks you to bury your truth. To confront it on the page meant revisiting moments I’d rather forget, but also reclaiming the power they held over me.
Grief, in contrast, felt like an open wound raw but honest. Love was its shadow, a reminder of what made the loss so profound. And ‘becoming’? That demanded the hardest work of all: making peace with the past, not as a flaw or failure, but as a necessary thread in the fabric of who I am now. These poems are my alchemy, turning pain into something that breathes, that connects, that matters
· If “Remnants” were a song, what genre would it be?
A soulful fusion of blues and folk: with the raw ache of a midnight ballad and the quiet hope of dawn. Imagine the haunting melodies of Blues (for the grief, the shame, the weight of loss) woven with the storytelling grace of Folk (for the resilience, the love letters to memory, the journey toward light).
Some poems would be acoustic whispers like ‘The Void’ or ‘Echoes of Absence’ where silence between notes carries as much meaning as the lyrics. Others, like ‘The Gorgeous Paradox’ or ‘Love, Despite It All,’ might build into indie anthems layered with strings and a defiant, rising rhythm.
But always, always, a human voice at the center cracked but unwavering, like a hymn sung alone in an empty room. Because grief is never just one sound; it’s the whole spectrum of surviving.
· How did your work in brand storytelling influence the way you wrote poetry?
Kazuo Ishiguro once said that as a writer, he’s more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. That idea has stayed with me both in branding and poetry. In brand storytelling, I hunt for the transformational truth: the emotional core that connects a product to human aspiration. But with Remnants, I stripped away all artifice. No aspiration, no illusion just the unvarnished weight of grief, love, and becoming.
Brands often polish their narratives into coherence; poetry, for me, demanded the opposite. I let the contradictions stand the way shame coils beside resilience, or how love lingers like a phantom limb. My marketing instincts sharpened my ear for rhythm and clarity, but here, the ‘brand’ was the rawness itself. These poems aren’t stories I crafted for an audience; they’re the truths I told myself in the dark, when no one was listening.
Perhaps the only crossover is this: both branding and poetry rely on emotional alchemy. One turns truth into connection, the other turns pain into light
· Which poem in the collection feels most like “you”?
· Did writing this book heal something or reveal something?
All of these poems are fragments of my heart—some sharp, some softened by time but three are mirrors held up to my soul:
‘The Girl Who Feared Joy’ is my shadow self-laid bare. That trembling hesitation to embrace light, the instinct to brace for loss even in happiness it’s the anthem of a heart that’s learned too well how fleeting joy can be.
‘The Girl Who Loved Rain’ is my quietest truth. Like her, I’ve always found solace in storms, in the way rain washes the world clean and for a moment, makes even grief feel temporary. That poem is the child in me who still believes in renewal.
And ‘Ek Cutting Chai’? That’s the ritualistic, everyday me the one who stitches meaning into small things: steam curling from a cup, shared laughter at 6:30 PM, the sacred ordinary that keeps us alive.
Together, they’re a triad of who I am fear, faith, and the fragile rituals in between.
· Were there words you avoided using because they felt too heavy—or too light?
No. Poetry, for me, is the one place where language owes no apologies. If a word carried the weight of what I felt whether it was ‘grief’ sharp as shattered glass or ‘love’ soft as a bruise I let it stand. No softening, no censoring.
This collection was my vessel, not my filter. Even the ugliest truths shame, guilt, the hollow aftertaste of loss demanded their own vocabulary. And joy? When it came, it arrived in its purest syllables, unpolished and bright.
Some words hurt to write. But that’s how I knew they were right
· What role does silence play in your poetry?
Silence is the unwritten stanza in every poem the pause between words where grief pools, where loneliness echoes. It’s not an absence, but a presence: vast, deep, and deafening. In Remnants, silence speaks when words fail. It’s the hollow after a last goodbye (‘The Last Goodbye’), the unshed tears in ‘Echoes of Absence,’ the weight of a phantom limb in ‘A Cry for Help.’
Silence doesn’t just describe emptiness it becomes it. It screams. It tears. It’s the language of what’s left unsaid by lovers, by death, by the self we bury to survive. And yet, in that void, there’s a strange solace: the truth is loudest when nothing else speaks.
· How does your love for dogs shape your understanding of unconditional love?
Dogs are the living poetry of unconditional love, a love that asks for nothing, judges nothing, and exists entirely in the present. In their eyes, there’s no past to resent, no future to fear; only the fierce, unwavering now. If love has a purest form, it’s this: a paw on your knee at midnight, a head tilted at the sound of your tears, a joy so boundless it spills over at the mere sight of you.
In a world where human love often comes tangled with conditions, dogs remind me that to love is to give without expectation. They’ve taught me more about devotion than any philosophy, how it’s not about grand gestures, but the quiet constancy of showing up. When I write about love in Remnants, especially its rawest, most selfless iterations, it’s this kind of love I’m reaching for: the kind that doesn’t keep score, the kind that stays.
Perhaps that’s why grief for a dog cut so deep. They leave behind no unfinished business, no unsaid words just the echo of a love so whole, it becomes a mirror. To be ‘their person’ is to know you were loved exactly as you were. And isn’t that what we all ache for?
· Is there a line from the book you almost didn’t publish—and now are glad you did?
No – every word in Remnants arrived uncensored. These poems weren’t crafted; they happened, like blood from a wound or breath after drowning. When writing about grief, shame, or love, hesitation is the real betrayal. The lines that felt most dangerous, the raw confessions, the ugly truths are now the ones readers clutch closest. That’s the paradox of unfiltered art: what terrifies you to release becomes someone else’s oxygen.
· What would you tell someone afraid to confront their grief?
Embrace it fully, fiercely, the way you would love itself. Grief is not your enemy but the most unflinching teacher you’ll ever know. Let it sit with you in the quiet hours. Let it speak in its own time. You’ll discover a resilience in your bones you never knew existed, a strength that grows not despite the weight, but because of it.
This is the paradox no one tells you: grief carves hollows into us only to prove how much we can hold. It doesn’t shrink you it expands you. And one day, when you’re ready, you’ll realize the love that fuels your grief is the same love that will help you carry it.