Anoop Judge | Author · Writing Instructor · Former T.V. Host​

Why I Write?

I was raised in a middle-class family in New Delhi, India where education was key, fresh pomfret fish for dinner was a treat, and budget-conscious holidays in hill stations defined our summers. As a young girl, I was expected to apply myself at college, get a job that would allow me to be financially self-reliant, get married, and have kids—in that order.

Given this worldview, “writing” was a bourgeois activity, encouraged by my mom, who was an avid fan of Reader’s Digest and Harlequin romances.

Dressed For A Kill

Yay!!!!

Yippeee!!!

My short story titled Dressed for a Kill was recently published in Rigorous journal. This story is excerpted from my novel (The Awakening of Meena Rawat) to be released on May 27, 2021 by Black Rose Writing press.

Click on the link below for the story:

Pandemic Life Musings . . .

At the start of the pandemic, my twenty-four-year-old nephew who’d come home from Los Angeles to check in on how my husband and I were doing (given our dangerous age bracket, he’d said) went out and bought two gallons of Arrowhead pure distilled water.

He is three months overdue for a haircut so that his hair looks like a black mop as he stands with his hands on his hips, and when he smiles, he looks almost radiant. I turn sparkling eyes on him, beaming a Tom Cruise worthy smile at his thoughtfulness. Inwardly, I cringe. My American nephew is used to purified water from a water filter pitcher. I’ve grown up with water bursting from a rusty tap in a kitchen with twenty-year-old appliances, the pictures of Guru Nanak and Pandit Nehru hanging on the wall, the remains of a cockroach that was pounded on the head still to be cleared from the gaping drain hole.

Displaced And Out of Step . . .

The lilting music tumbles and washes over me. Is it Beethoven or Bach? I wouldn’t know, even if I tried. I’ve never been a classical music type of person. Give me Frank Sinatra or the young musician my daughter’s crazy about—Billie Ellish, I think her name is.

They play these kinds of calm, soulful tunes in these high-end spas, all soft voices and padded steps. It’s all a facade really. Just like Biden’s unexpected but salient victory in the polls last week. I voted for Bernie Sanders, but if Joe Biden gets the nomination, I’ll cast an unwilling vote for him. Not that it matters. Trump is expected to sail into office for a second term. Darn those blue-collar states again—the middle-class belt fighting against the jobs going abroad.

Going Away

All the arrangements have been made. The suitcases are stowed in the trunk of the limousine that’s come to whisk me and Daddy away for ten days. I perch on the edge of my seat, my legs pressed neatly together as I mentally scroll through my checklist.

Did you remember to pack the canary yellow outfit for the mehndi, the fuchsia lehenga for the sangeet, the organza red sari for the wedding, the gold Kanjeevaram sari for the reception?

Check.

Something inherited I will not pass on . . .

This love of clothes, it’s a cursed thing. Everywhere I look there are cabinet drawers, boxes, plastic bags, canvas sacks, more cardboard boxes, and sundry junk drawers overflowing with outfits for every season and every reason—pastels, brights, neutrals, whites, blacks, reds, and every color in between.

Take, for example, my decades-long obsession with animal print. I have animal print in every style—in a flowy maxi dress, a knee-length dress, a jumpsuit, a romper, a Manish Malhotra gown; even a bikini or two in ubiquitous animal print.

Anoop Judge is a blogger and an author, who’s lived in the San Francisco-Bay Area for the past 27 years. As an Indian-American writer, her goal is to discuss the diaspora of Indian people in the context of twenty-first century America.