Party of one

What does loneliness look like to you? Stories written by Geetanjali Shree, Jeet Thayil, Annie Zaidi and a host of others, for a new anthology, explore the politics, textures and eternal nature of solitude

- Anesha George

Growing up the only child of a single parent in Udaipur, Priyanka Sarkar remembers playing games she made up herself. As a young adult, she says, a “quiet ache” of isolation hovered at the margins of her life.

Then the pandemic hit. She spent two years in Gurugram, “a city of loneliness”, caring for an ailing uncle. “Loneliness, at this point, became an intense, inescapable feeling,” says Sarkar, 42.

Once the world opened up, she began working as an editorial consultant and translator with Sahitya Akademi in Delhi. But the echoes of this other, emptier world stayed with her.

Finally, in 2023, she approached the editor and translator Semeen Ali, then an editorial assistant at the Akademi, to ask if she would like to put together an anthology on loneliness. The idea intrigued Ali, 41.

“We're conditioned to internalise these emotions rather than speak about or share them. I knew it would be a challenge, but an exciting one,” she says.

And so the two women found themselves inviting poets and writers to share their experiences of it. The result is Writing from the Solitary (Yoda Press and Simon & Schuster; December 2025): 23 stories, essays and poems, most written for the collection.