Before and after darkness

Book review - No Straight Thing Was Ever Made: Essays on Mental Health

In her essay, “Two Deer in the Headlight”, included in the book under review, Urvashi Bahuguna recalls the disintegration of a romantic relationship and her response to it: “For the first year after we split up, I went to workshops and writing retreats. Everywhere I went, I described my life (in essays, poems and free-writes) in a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. It was how I thought of myself — half in the before (still defined by being with you) and half in the after (still figuring out all the possibilities that being without you opened up). What I learnt in