The enigma of leaving

A figure in Giorgio de Chirico’s 1914 painting, The Enigma of Departure, stands as if caught between two worlds.

- Pranavi Sharma

The viewer, who sees only his shadow, cannot guess if he is leaving or arriving. The stillness of that moment holds both possibility and fear. This image feels like the right place to enter A Stone Thrown in a Pond, a collection of essays, stories, and poems about departures and leaving edited by Ritu Menon, writer, founder-director of the publishing house Women Unlimited, and co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist press.

Leaving is something everyone does, but we don’t often stop to consider how differently it unfolds for each of us. Sometimes you walk out the door and never look back. Sometimes you are pushed out. Sometimes you stay in place while the world leaves you behind. This book explores all those possibilities.

There are different kinds of leaving: of partners, of parents, of cities, of ideas, of ways of life. Then, there is also the eternal leaving: death. Each piece in the collection complicates the idea of leaving, which happens sometimes with longing, sometimes with anger, sometimes even with humour.