I have always collected stories.
Not the triumphant kind. Not the neat,
redemptive arcs that resolve themselves into something reassuring. I seem to
gather the sad ones—the stories of vulnerable people, of quiet suffering, of
lives suspended in difficult in-betweens.
I don’t seek them out with any sense of
pleasure. There is no satisfaction in someone else’s pain, no secret relief
that their life is harder than mine. That’s not it.
If anything, I grew up believing the
opposite—that noticing suffering was a kind of virtue.
I was an idealistic child. The sort who
instinctively sided with the underdog, who believed fairness mattered, who
thought the world could—and should—be better. That instinct shaped my choices.
It nudged me toward studying law. It helped me justify staying away from the
corporate world and choosing instead what felt like a more meaningful, socially
conscious path.
But if I’m honest, I need to ask: beyond
feeling moved, what did I actually do?
Looking back, I can trace this habit to my
childhood dinner table.
We told stories.
Not about ourselves, necessarily—but about
others. Someone’s misfortune. Someone’s hardship. Someone’s bad turn in life.
These stories were shared, examined, discussed. They became a kind of social
currency—a way of making sense of the world, perhaps even a way of expressing
empathy.
My parents were, in many ways, deeply
compassionate people. They helped others within their means. They treated
people with dignity. They showed kindness not as performance, but as practice.
They walked the talk.
But somewhere along the way, I absorbed a
quieter lesson: that talking about suffering was, in itself, meaningful.
That bearing witness—retelling, reflecting—was
a form of engagement.
And maybe, sometimes, we let that be enough.
In college, I flirted with the idea of
becoming an activist. I joined the rural development cell. I imagined a life
that pushed against systems, that questioned norms.
But there were boundaries—spoken and unspoken.
Would my father have accepted a life that
veered too far from the expected path of stability, marriage, children?
Probably not. Activism, in its rawest form, belonged to “someone else.” We
could admire it. We could discuss it. But living it was another matter.
So we stayed where we were—talking about
inequality, about injustice, about how things should be different.
Without quite knowing how to make them so.
After marriage, something shifted.
My husband did not like sad stories.
He avoided films with unhappy endings. He did
not want to dwell on real-life misery. And so, our conversations adjusted.
Dinner tables became lighter, safer. We spoke about pleasant things. We chose
sitcoms, upbeat podcasts, romantic comedies.
We curated a life that, for the most part,
avoided prolonged engagement with discomfort.
Except, of course, when the world made that
impossible.
During COVID, there was no escaping it. The
news was relentless. People were dying—everywhere, all the time. Suffering
broke through the carefully constructed filters of our daily lives. To the point where Covid took his life.
And yet, even then, I have returned—quietly,
almost instinctively—to comfort. The
truth is: I have had freedom.
Freedom to act, to engage, to step into harder
spaces.
And more often than I would like to admit, I have
chosen the easier path.
I have not gone to protests.
I have not gone all in with casues in any sustained way.
I have donated, but not consistently enough to create real impact.
I have mostly stayed adjacent to change, not
fully inside it.
And yet, the stories have never left me.
With my mother and my sisters, they remain
central. If one of us hears something—a difficult story, a troubling
situation—we share it. We collect them, almost instinctively. Sometimes these
stories aren’t even about people we know. They are stories of stories—secondhand,
thirdhand—passed along because they moved us.
As if telling them keeps them from
disappearing.
Today, in London, visiting my daughter, I
heard three such stories. Of “immigrant”
distress in varying forms.
They came from a priest I visit on Sundays. He
lives in a homeless shelter in London and manages a small temple. I bring him
food; he shares what he sees.
A quiet exchange.
Today, there were three stories.
The first was about a young man staying
temporarily in the temple. He had come to the UK on a study permit, completed
his education, and then experienced a psychotic break. He has schizophrenia
now. He cannot work. He has a visa, but no life he can meaningfully inhabit.
His family is in Sri Lanka—his mother and
sisters—watching him from afar, urging him to stay because at least here he has
access to healthcare and some support.
So he sits.
In a small room.
Sleeping. Waiting. Existing between systems.
Frozen in time.
His only consistent connection: FaceTime calls to a distant home.
The second story was about a couple who had
overstayed their visit visa.
Eighteen years ago.
They are still here—without status, unable to
leave. They have a child in India, raised entirely by grandparents. That child
is now eighteen.
They have never held him since he was born.
They have watched him grow up through screens.
And now, after nearly two decades, they are
trying to bring him to the UK on a study permit—so they can finally meet their
own child.
It is difficult to know where to place
judgment in a story like this.
What does sacrifice look like?
What does abandonment look like?
And when do the two become indistinguishable?
The third story was about a woman in her
mid-sixties.
She had worked all her life. She had endured
an abusive marriage since her youth—arriving in London only to be beaten,
controlled, diminished. She raised two sons.
Her husband died.
The house was left to the sons.
And they turned her out.
She now lives in a homeless shelter—depressed,
exhausted, untethered from the very life she built.
I came home carrying these stories.
As I often do.
And I found myself asking—again—the question
that has lingered quietly beneath all of this:
What is the role of a witness?
Is it enough to listen, to feel, to retell?
Or does collecting stories create a
responsibility I have not fully stepped into?
Because stories, especially the sad ones, have
a strange power.
They can move us.
But they can also sedate us—if we
mistake emotional response for meaningful action.
I don’t yet have a clean answer.
Only this uneasy awareness:
That I have spent a lifetime gathering stories
of suffering—
And I am still figuring out what to do with
them.
