This is my newsletter #49: Rochi Zalani

Hello, dear reader, I have forgotten what it is like to write without a writing brief, an outline, a target audience, and copywriting formulas. The freedom to write here is scary and exciting and jittery and relieving.

Eeek. 

Let me start over: I am Rochi and I am a writer that still shivers in admitting that I’m a writer-writer, you know?

Photo and diaries by Rochi

‘This is my newsletter’ began in the year that will soon be a metaphor: 2020. Like everyone else, my pandemic world was also….uncertain (I’m sorry, I know you’ve heard that word way too many times now). 

I turned to some things for rescuing me. Here’s hoping they’ll heal you a bit too. 

Things that saved me in a pandemic 

I got the virus in the second wave and so what literally saved me was Fabiflu, Doxycycline, and Dolby650. If you don’t know what these are, boy, you’re lucky. But since the pharmacy isn’t selling a drug for the soul yet, I turned to some things that are “supposed to” truly matter:

Poetry: I loved poetry way before the pandemic but 2020 made poems my coping mechanism. The Orange by Wendy Cope and Stages by Herman Hesse are some of my favorite poems. I can recite it by heart to you — try me!

Books: I cannot stop recommending Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. It’s a total banger. Read it. Please. Pretty please? The quirkiest book I read that succeeded in distracting me from the pointy pandemic was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. If nothing works, there’s always Jane Austen. 

Videos/series/comics: I love YouTuber and writer Christy Anne Jones and her videos are peaceful enough to lull my worries a temporary rest. Dinos and comics is funny, truthful, and thank-goodness-I’m-not-the-only-one soothing. Also, This Is Us and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are a blessing to television. 

Find more of these things-that-can-save-you-recommendations in my weekly newsletter. 

Who even are you, though?

I hate it when I read a newsletter and don’t learn about who the writer really is. Let’s not do that here, alright? 

So, here’s is a little bit more about me: I’ve been reading since I was 10. A year later, the little girl in me learned that books don’t arrive in the world by magic — they are written by actual “people” (whaaaatt?) Since then, I’ve been writing about everything. No, really. From the too-hard chocolate chip cookies to the null nagging nihilism — I’ve scribbled about it all.

My first poem — I guess I wrote at 10

Now, at 21,

do you remember a past where you didn't write?

No, no I don't. How horrible would that be?

The first time my tiny self, with her will to explore found out that books are written by "people" not magic, she was hooked

She was astounded with a mouth as wide as Earth

Writing became my solace, my escape, my shifting pronoun, my distraction.

Almost by accident,

by chance, by a stroke of wild luck,

I was molded into a mud of words

at a very, very young age

I'm the most wealthy to own this lottery

for when I want to distract or when I need to vent — who is there but words?

It is restless too — do you know what is sleeping but not resting?

Yes, that.

— excerpt from “Love Letter to Writing”

I’m one of the many who graduated in the pandemic. But I’m one of the few who’s thankful for it. I did my bachelor’s in psychology but decided to skip the master’s because — a) I was rejected from the college I desperately wanted to go to (thank God!) and; b) I didn’t want to go to any other college remotely. So, I decided to give the whole “adulting” thing a shot (well, almost). 

Photo and the Hakuna Matata+cat wallpaper by Rochi

I did it — got a decent job that made me realize how much I hate decent jobs, earned some money that I could spend on buying big books, and paid a few grocery bills. 6 months later, in a menstrual frenzy of true emotion, I quit. And never looked back.

(It wasn’t that I didn’t love psychology and my decent job. I loved them both. But, they just weren’t….writing)

So, um, hello again, I am Rochi, a writer (still don’t buy it myself), and you?

Now to the fun stuff

Here are some random facts about me:

• I can eat Rajma Chawal (kidney beans with rice) every day of the week and still savor it equally in every meal — the Rajma is free of diminishing returns, trust me. 

• My name is really Rochi (not Ruchi, not Rosy, not anything else). I am an oops-baby who’s named after her brothers — (Ro)hant and (Chi)ntan. Clever, no?

• I speak too fast and have been asked to “slow down” in debates, public speaking, and day-to-day conversations. Please read my writing in 2X ifyouwanttohearhowIsound. 

What the pandemic made me do 

Apart from the usual I-quit-my-job-and-followed-my-passion story (which is always a lot more complex, messy, privileged, and biased than how people tell it), I also began a very bookish newsletter with 104 sweet friends that I forced into subscribing.

Photo by Rochi

I come every week on here and talk about poems (some of which are mine too, shhhh), books, the “WWW of the week” (a tiny curation of my favorite links on the web), and funny comics/tweets. 

It has now grown into a family of 600 (and I don’t even have that many friends to force into subscription)! I must be doing something right. I think. 

Join us, k?

I also started posting book rants and opinionated essays on my fancy website. The pandemic brought a violin as in my life and I broke its weak-ass E string too many times before learning how to tune stuff without breaking stuff (a lesson for life, huh). 

I still play only the 6 notes I’ve practiced 10000000 times. Not going so well, I’d say.

It was a violin evening and there were casualties

It wasn’t easy to “do” anything in the pandemic, I know. I was caught so often in the blatant “be-productive-utilize-your-time-do-online-courses” lie like everyone else on the internet for many months. 

I coped with it by *real* self-care (sue me, industries) involving some non-hustle rest. Did I mention a social media detox? It’s part of the package, I guess. 

Saying Ciao — not so soon!

If you’ve made it till here, you really like me (wink, wink). Or you just have great attention in a TikTok-run world (how??)

Anywho, I am sure you’ll enjoy the newsletter I write/curate/weave-poetically every Thursday — read a few before officially handing me your digital home address. Won’t misuse it, promise. 

Ok, fine. Pinky promise. I hate spam as much as you. 

I also use social media erratically — @rochizalani on Instagram and @rochi_zalani on Twitter.

Slide into my DMs with cutesy animal videos, funny comics, and so-true-it-hurts tweets. I’ll tell you about books, send you my Hakuna Matata-and-cat wallpaper, and write you a poem. Cool?

Hope we meet again soon, 
Rochi