‘Some silences begin long before we remember choosing them’
She speaks when she has to.
She writes what she cannot say.
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MEET RANMI
Thirteen-year-old Ranmi Marella stopped talking years ago. Not completely. She speaks when she has to, writes when she can, and has convinced herself that silence is a choice. The problem is, she cannot remember choosing it.
When her family moves to Hyderabad, everything speeds up. The city is louder, the school unfamiliar, and people rarely behave as logically as science does.
So Ranmi writes to Sh, the name she gives her diary. Sh gets the questions she cannot ask anyone else, and all the things about people that don't quite add up.
Just as Ranmi begins to find people and places where she might belong, an ordinary moment makes her freeze.
She doesn't know why. Only that something about it feels familiar.
Soon, the questions Ranmi has always asked about the world begin to turn towards herself.
Some stories are about finding your voice.
This one begins by asking what a voice really is.
I have always been interested in questions.
The ones the child within us wishes to ask, the ones the adult version stops them from asking. And particularly the ones we learn, somewhere along the way, not to say aloud.
Dear Sh grew from that space.
Ranmi doesn't lack a voice. If anything, she has too much happening inside her: observations, facts, contradictions, humour, questions, and an endless attempt to make people behave as logically as the world in her books.
This is her diary.
But perhaps, somewhere inside it, you will recognise a question of your own.
A NOTE FROM AUTHOR
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The Thinking Room is a space for observations, everyday contradictions, and the questions that often begin with something small I noticed.
Sometimes reflective. Sometimes curious. Sometimes simply thinking aloud.
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