Mridu Khullar

I’ve often seen writers complain that their family members don’t like being named, identified or even mentioned in their work. I’ve always been unable to understand this, since luckily for me, my family and friends not only enjoy it when I write about them, but keep nudging me to do so even when I really, really don’t want to.

Take my brother for instance. The first time I set up my site, he looked (no, searched) around, stared at me weird and said “Yeah, but where’s my picture? Don’t you want the world to know that you have a handsome brother who’s very much available?” The boyfriend still thinks the piece I wrote about us is the best thing I’ve ever written (other than the dedication in my book, of course) and will proudly show it to anyone who hasn’t seen it twenty times already. My dad’s famous for bragging about his daughter-who-writes and handing out copies of my published articles to interested strangers (some of them I never get back, which is why he’s no longer allowed to do this) and several of my friends will fill in happily when I’m in desperate need of sources.

And you all know about my mom, don’t you? I’ve talked about her so many times in my newsletter editorials that she’s almost semi-famous now. (And yeah, she’s still hell-bent on making me learn how to cook! The-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named-even-though-you-know-his-name-anyway and she have been bonding. That’s never good.)

Of course, I’m a writer, so I take as much advantage of this fact as I can. Some of my best writing has come from my personal experiences, and I’ve been able to write about them freely and without reservations. Sometimes my family and friends like what I write, sometimes they’re embarrassed by it and sometimes they wonder if they’ll ever be able to show their faces in public again. But they don’t care what I write about them, coz they know I love ‘em anyway.

And even though Nikki, the best friend, is complaining now that the only reason I’ve agreed to spend the ten days before her wedding with her is because I’m doing a story on it (and she may be right about this), she’s secretly quite excited that her pictures and interview may make it to a glossy magazine. The mom’s probably reading this smugly and going “She wrote about me… again” and the brother’s shaking his head and thinking, “Why has she still not put up a picture?” (I’m on it, bro).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 at 11:08 pm and is filed under The Life of Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.