IRA MATH­UR

An­daleeb Wa­jid be­gan writ­ing Learn­ing to Make Tea for One dur­ing In­dia’s sec­ond COVID-19 wave, af­ter the pan­dem­ic moved through her house­hold dur­ing the holy month of Ramzan and claimed the lives of her hus­band and moth­er-in-law. The book emerged when words failed. Grief had made speech im­pos­si­ble, and mem­o­ry felt splin­tered. The book was Wa­jid’s way of walk­ing through grief rather than be­ing frozen in it.

“As some­one who talks a lot, I found my voice dry­ing up,” Wa­jid writes. “I found it more and more dif­fi­cult to con­nect to peo­ple ver­bal­ly. It was both­er­some to ex­plain what hap­pened to peo­ple on the phone.” She with­drew. “I want­ed to be left alone.”

The need to record re­mained. “I al­so want­ed to tell the sto­ry of what had hap­pened.” Wa­jid un­der­stood that grief would not re­main fixed. “I knew that even­tu­al­ly, the grief would dis­si­pate and change in tex­ture.” Ac­cu­ra­cy mat­tered. “I want­ed to make sure that the mem­o­ry stayed true, and the on­ly way to do that was to write about it.”

Wa­jid, who has pub­lished near­ly 50 nov­els in the past 15 years, work­ing across young adult fic­tion, ro­mance, hor­ror and con­tem­po­rary writ­ing, says, “I write for many rea­sons–to make a liv­ing, to ex­press what I’m feel­ing, but to al­so process my emo­tions.” Writ­ing clar­i­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. “Some­how, writ­ing about it makes things clear­er in my head, and I feel like I un­der­stand my­self bet­ter.” Emo­tion be­comes ap­par­ent on­ly af­ter it is set down. “Most times, un­til I’ve writ­ten down some­thing, I don’t quite know that I felt a cer­tain way.”

“It’s a bit like scratch­ing the top lay­er of some­thing to find some­thing in­ter­est­ing un­der­neath.” What ap­pears is not guar­an­teed to com­fort. “The new lay­er might not be fun or ex­cit­ing, but it’s there nev­er­the­less.”

Learn­ing to Make Tea for One: Re­flec­tions on Loss, Love and Heal­ing (Speak­ing Tiger Books, 2025) records ex­pe­ri­ence close to the event. “The things I ex­pe­ri­enced in those two months would soon be­come a mem­o­ry,” Wa­jid writes. The book holds those weeks in place.

Ex­cerpt­ed from Learn­ing to Make Tea for One: Re­flec­tions on Loss, Love and Heal­ing by An­daleeb Wa­jid (Speak­ing Tiger Books, 2025)

It had all start­ed with a swab up our nos­trils.

When my el­dest, Sa­boor, de­vel­oped a fever at the end of April, I told my­self it couldn’t be COVID. I was con­vinced he was go­ing to be fine, but still, be­ing cau­tious, I quar­an­tined him in his room and re­duced his con­tact with oth­ers. I told every­one it was prob­a­bly a reg­u­lar fever.

But on the sec­ond day or so, I gave him some noo­dles to eat, and he took it from me, then bent his head and sniffed the plate. He looked up at me. “I can’t smell any­thing,” he said.

The thud I felt in­side was so huge that it eclipsed every­thing else in that mo­ment. I told Man­soor fran­ti­cal­ly that maybe Sa­boor had COVID. Man­soor dis­missed my con­cerns, say­ing there was no way he could have got the in­fec­tion, but I couldn’t take such a lais­sez-faire at­ti­tude. I booked a home test, and some­one came home to take the swab for the COVID test.

Our worst fears were con­firmed some hours lat­er. He had test­ed pos­i­tive. I was be­side my­self with wor­ry. As a ba­by, he’d al­ready been in the NICU for 15 days be­cause his lungs weren’t work­ing when he was born. I fo­cused on get­ting him bet­ter and mak­ing sure he was tak­ing the med­i­cines.

This was dur­ing Ramzan, when the sec­ond wave was al­ready rag­ing around us. Then, as I felt the first tell­tale signs of a fever and all kinds of ex­haus­tion seep­ing in­to me, I couldn’t be­lieve this was hap­pen­ing. I got my­self and the rest of the fam­i­ly test­ed. My moth­er-in-law and I both test­ed pos­i­tive.

I de­cid­ed to have her quar­an­tine with me in my room. I post­ed a jokey tweet say­ing that she con­stant­ly com­plained about every­thing in my room, right from the way I’d arranged the bed to ask­ing me ques­tions about why the maid didn’t clean the bath­room any bet­ter.

I was even wary of open­ing my wardrobes with­in her sight be­cause she would take one look at the mess and give me yet an­oth­er lec­ture about keep­ing every­thing in or­der. Or she would of­fer to arrange my clos­et her­self. Her wardrobe, af­ter all, was noth­ing short of a work of art. Sa­rees arranged in neat rows, fold­ed just right, pet­ti­coats on one shelf, blous­es on an­oth­er. Me? I didn’t know which du­pat­ta went with which sal­war.

I took her good-na­tured rib­bing in my stride and told her that she was free to do up my wardrobes once she got well. The sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion hadn’t sunk in­to her. Once, I woke up in the mid­dle of the night to see her emerg­ing from the bath­room to make wuzu be­cause she want­ed to read the Qu’ran. I told her that it was the mid­dle of the night and she could do it the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

That’s one thing every­one ex­pects about quar­an­tine, but no one re­al­ly knows un­til they’re fac­ing it–sit­ting in your room day in and day out gets old very soon. Thank­ful­ly, I had my lap­top with me, but I found my­self dis­in­ter­est­ed in do­ing any­thing. I didn’t have the en­er­gy for it.

When Man­soor de­vel­oped a fever, I in­sist­ed he test him­self and Azhaan again. When his re­sults showed up as pos­i­tive, I sent away Azhaan so all of us could walk around the house, since we were all in­fect­ed. But it did lit­tle to ease the wor­ry. We were all too ex­haust­ed, cough­ing con­stant­ly, and the loss of the sense of smell was mak­ing me feel strange and in­ept.

On the ad­vice of a rel­a­tive who was a doc­tor, we de­cid­ed to get our chest CT scans done. The CT scan would give us a bet­ter idea about the state of our lungs, which were af­fect­ed the most in the Delta vari­ant of COVID that we all had. Man­soor drove us to the scan­ning cen­tre one by one. The num­bers that had stayed with me for so long elude me com­plete­ly now, ex­cept that I re­mem­bered my score was the high­est at 12, while Man­soor’s and my moth­er-in-law’s was five or so. A high score meant that the dis­ease was more se­vere.

This wor­ried me, but with the fool­ish op­ti­mism of some­one who con­stant­ly post­pones wor­ry­ing, I de­cid­ed it was fine. The main thing was that both of them had low­er scores, and giv­en their health his­to­ry, it was im­por­tant that they be bet­ter soon­er than me.

When would this night­mare end, I thought. We all had to get bet­ter so we could look back on this pe­ri­od with a shud­der and move on with our lives.”

–End of Ex­tract

Wa­jid’s nov­el As­mara’s Sum­mer was adapt­ed for the screen as Dil, Dosti, Dilem­ma on Ama­zon Prime. In 2024, her young adult nov­el The Hen­na Start-up won the Neev Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val Award and the Cross­word Book Award and re­ceived an ho­n­ourable men­tion at the BK Awards.

Ira Math­ur is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, a Guardian Me­dia colum­nist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion.

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