Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Meera Ganapathi about her book How to Forget: A Book of Short Steps And Long Walks, longlisted for The Wise owl Literary awards (2026)

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Meera Ganapathi about her book How to Forget: A Book of Short Steps And Long Walks, longlisted for The Wise owl Literary awards (2026)

 

Congratulations on being longlisted for The Wise owl Literary Awards 2026 (Poetry). Thank you for taking time out to speak with The Wise Owl. 

RS: The act of walking anchors your book—fifty-five walks across cities, memories, and emotional landscapes. When did walking first reveal itself to you as both a narrative device and a way of thinking, remembering, and making sense of the world?

 

MG: Before I began writing ‘How to Forget’ I had approached walking as an act of movement and observation, purely because so much of writing happens while strolling, pacing and dreaming. But as I got deeper into making the book I came to realise that walking is in fact held within our bodies as evidence of everything we’ve known- details of people we’ve met, of physical changes we’ve undergone, of emotional upheaval, of gender, identity and geography. This idea revealed itself to me because I was expecting a child and the way I walked had altered to accommodate a very physical and emotional change and I knew that I will never again walk as I once used to. And this seemed true of every stage in our lives, the way we walk indelibly reflects the ways in which we’ve evolved. 

RS: How to Forget promises forgetfulness but leaves the reader with a deep, quiet remembering—of places, people, textures, and selves. Was this irony intentional, or did the book reveal its true impulse to you only as it took shape?

 

MG: The title was added after the book was written and it is based on a poem in the book. It seemed apt because the book is heavy with remembrances that I long to let go of but only with some trepidation. Grief in particular is a conundrum. In the beginning you are doomed with too many memories but eventually you are going to lose all of them- the timbre of a voice, the scent of rooms and places will all fade and this seems more ominous to me. I long to forget but I would be even more deeply bereft without memory. 

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RS: Your pieces hover beautifully between poetry and prose, sometimes stretching into a single sentence across a page, at other times opening into lyrical reflection. What freedoms did this refusal to be bound by form give you as a writer, and what risks did it demand you embrace?

 

MG: I wanted the book to unfold like a walk, with pauses, detours, lingering conversation and pauses to take photographs. The book is also laid out in that manner, like the beginning of a walk when we are often introspective, until the world distracts us and we take note of our surroundings, the landscape then absorbs some of those thoughts or makes us forget them, until we meander towards the end where there isn’t a conclusion so much as a feeling we’re left with. I liked the idea of the book having an undecided pace but I was afraid of it seeming a bit fragmented and therefore hard to hold on to. Interestingly though, I’ve found that every reader finds a way with the book. Some tend to read it in one quick burst and then come back to it and take their time with it. But many linger and read it over time in no particular order- which isn’t something I’d anticipated but I now realise is a beautiful way of giving meaning to the idea of a walk unfolding within the book.

RS: Your book is rooted in distinctly Indian sensory worlds—the Nilgiris’ tea estates, city streets, food simmering in chilli oil—yet its emotional register feels universally intimate. How do you approach writing the local so it resonates beyond geography, without diluting its specificity?

 

MG: Thank you, I feel so nice to hear that. Perhaps, the only uniquely Indian theme in the book is walking alone as a woman at night which is a kind of dread that only Indian women have known intimately. But most of the other themes, be it rage, grief, or longing, are universal. Adding the specificity of place, taste, scent and sound is a manner of documenting but I often think when an experience however unique is conveyed in all its truth, it becomes relatable. I was reading a lot of Annie Ernaux, a lot of Sebastian Barry while writing the book. I could always relate to the essence of Barry’s stories of abandonment or loneliness but in Ernaux’s very specific writing- which reminds me of tersely taken photographs- I could belong. I once watched a documentary about women with gap teeth called ‘Gap-toothed women’ by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling and I could relate deeply to the odd mixture of insecurity and pride the subjects in the documentary feel because it's disarmingly honest. There are prawns in chilli oil but the poem is ultimately about being cooked for which is a very special gift to have as an adult and whoever has known it, will understand. 

RS: Memory in this book feels both personal and communal, as though individual lives are stitched into a larger human fabric. How do you negotiate the line between autobiography and collective experience?

 

MG: This is such an interesting question. I did think there were only two ways to write the book in the beginning- one by collecting others’ experiences or else by documenting my own. But walking is not a private act, it involves and includes everything in its orbit. So when I write about walking in the Nilgiris it’s impossible to not write about the state that we walk in, which is determined by the human-animal coexistence in the area- you can walk within a certain time frame and a certain area and that feels one way to me and another to the elephants that occupy the night. Many of the communal experiences are also specifically those of women walking because this was very important to me. In some ways I wrote as many women gathering their experiences which mirrored my own. The book is communal and personal because in India, we hardly ever walk without knocking our elbows into someone else’s. 

 

RS:   There is a gentleness in How to Forget  that feels almost radical in ‘the sound and fury’ of a noisy, hurried, chaotic world. Do you see this book as an offering of resistance—to a fast-paced world, and regimented frameworks of thinking and being? What do you hope readers will carry with them after they’ve taken these walks with you?

MG: I think this is because of the nature of walking itself. It is an act of resistance, in remembering trees as landmarks and noticing and holding onto everything transitory and fleeting. If it feels gentle I think it is because I wrote about everything small, shaky and uncertain inside me. The current politics of the world seem absurd and the future seems ominous and the only way to feel solid is to watch ants and worms go about the business of living with the same gusto they always did. I hope the book leaves every reader with the desire to walk and pay attention to every seemingly insignificant detail. 

RS: What Next? Are you working on another book?

 

MG: I am spending some time just learning until I feel ready to write a book. Hopefully there will be one soon. :)

Thank you Meera for talking with The Wise Owl. We wish you the very best in all your literary pursuits and creative endeavours.