The 81st publication of PenThrill titled, “Things that grow on us” written by Lum Shaiza was released amidst an intimate gathering of family and friends at Café Dalgona in Pune on October 8. The book was formally released and dedicated over prayer by Junita, a friend of the author while her childhood best friend read from the book.
Lum Shaiza, the author is from Ukhrul and co-manages a bookstore called “Prologue Bookstore” as well as a library called ‘Prologue Library’ in Ukhrul. “Things that grow on us” is a gathering of poems and verses reflecting the passage of time through the ages the author has outgrown.
“While putting this book together, I thought of my mother diligently putting photographs of our family together in photo albums. Each photograph she saves away, each poem I write down, becoming a portal to a time, a feeling, that will quietly slip away from our fickle memories. Letting go and yet, in our own ways, holding the past dear to our hearts, even the worst of times”, Shaiza expressed in the prologue of the book.
Stating that these are writings on coming of age, Shaiza noted, “the flush of experiencing complicated and complex emotions for the first time, and the struggle of it.”
The writings in ‘Things that grow on us’ is also about love and its many forms, and about both the fragility and the resilience of family bonds. “It is about the communal residentship love and friendship takes up in our memories. It is about nostalgia, laughter, weeping, cheering, and yearning,” said Shaiza.
But above all, she remarked that the book “is a celebration of life for all the ordinary but much-cherished experiences of our days, even the ones we’ll forget. It is about the things that grows on life, on us.”
Divided into three categories, ‘Age Matters’ talks about growing up, ‘Sweet Sorrow’ on discovering love, and ‘Dear Life’ talks about people. In growing older, the author also said, “we find that love was always there, even before we ‘fell in love’ the first time starting right from our mother’s womb.”
“There will always be more of it, more to it than we’ll ever know in one lifetime. So let love, all kinds of it, grow on you. Heaven is where things grow,” she added while asking readers to read the book till it grows on them, and develop one’s own meaning to it.
The book was dedicated to author’s parents, whom, she remarked, ‘are the mountains she comes home to’.
