Academic journey
Sangeeta V. Rai decided what she wanted to be while she was still a pupil. She had a teacher whose way of explaining things — patient, repeated, never hurried — she has described as the thing she wanted to be able to do herself. She married before she could, and it was some years later, with her husband's encouragement, that she resumed her studies, completed an M.A. and a B.Ed., and took a teaching post. She has called that first job the first step of a flight.
In the classroom she taught her own subject and the craft periods alongside it, showing children how to make things and, when the school needed someone to speak, finding that she was not inclined to decline. She wrote her own lines into what she presented. The applause was the first evidence that the writing was worth something to anyone but her.
Two things then changed the shape of the work. The first was Reiki, which she learned from a friend and in which she now holds three levels; she credits it with changing how she thinks, and specifically with teaching her to forgive and to step away from what cannot be forgiven. The second was Covid-19. Watching people confined in their own homes and unable to help one another gave her, for the first time, both an unbearable subject and the hours in which to write about it. Her first poem was about the pandemic, and her daughter put it on YouTube.
The channel, which carries her name, began as Hindi grammar lessons for children studying online, explained as simply as she could manage so that anyone could use them. Poems and stories followed. So did Facebook, where her verse was read by an editor who asked whether she would like a book of her own — a question that she says gave her wings.
Her first collection, "मेरे ख्यालों का मेला" (Mere Khayalon Ka Mela, "A Fair of My Thoughts"), was published by Hamruh Publication. Having grown up in a joint family and married into one, she writes about relationships in their proper complication: parents, siblings, sisters-in-law, school days, old friendships, the sweet and sour together. The word "fair" in the title is the argument — that these things arrive mixed and crowded, and are best presented that way. Her second collection, "मेरे अल्फ़ाज़" (Mere Alfaaz, "My Words"), followed in the same year, ranging across life, language, the customs of the world and the discipline of staying cheerful.
She has since worked with Vaidik Prakashan, contributing to several volumes and serving as editor of collections on mothers and on fathers. She was invited to write on the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and contributed to "मेरे लेखन का सफर" (Mere Lekhan Ka Safar, "My Writing Journey"). She continues to appear each month in the publisher's Aviral series. Throughout, she has kept teaching — and each year pays the fees of a student who cannot, and covers the cost of the school picnic for children who would otherwise stay behind.
