Mona Dash, "Map of the Self"

Mona Dash is an award-winning author based in London. Her work includes her memoir A Roll of the Dice, a short story collection Let Us Look Elsewhere, a novel Untamed Heart and two collections of poetry, A Certain Way and Dawn Drops. She has been published in various journals and more than thirty-five anthologies. Her short stories have been listed in leading competitions such as Asian Writer (winner), Bath, Bristol, Fish, to name a few. She has been shortlisted, and more than once, in various literary awards such as Eastern Eye ACTA, SI Leeds Literary award, Eyelands Literary Award (winner for Roll of the Dice), Tagore Literary Prize and Novel London.  Her short story "Twenty-five years" was presented on BBC Radio 4 and the title story of Let Us Look Elsewhere was included in Best British Short Stories 22. She also works as a business leader in AI for a global tech company. More details on her website here and you can also follow her on Instagram at @monadash_ 

Map of the Self is her newly published collection of poetry.

About Map of the Self, by Mona Dash
Map of the Self is a poetic atlas for anyone seeking home — within and beyond themselves.

In this new collection of poems, Mona Dash traces the intricate landscapes of identity, belonging, and human connection. She explores memory, language, and the shifting borders of selfhood and then explores how the self is shaped and reshaped in relation to others: in love and loss, in intimacy and estrangement, in family and society.

Whether navigating the dislocations of diaspora or the quiet revelations of everyday life, Dash writes with a voice that is both intimate and expansive. She invites the reader to walk alongside her, to pause at key moments along the way, and perhaps to reimagine parts of their own story.

You can read more about Map of the Self on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read three sample poems from the collection. 

From Map of the Self

Implications

Born and raised an Indian; not living in India
                                                 implied: not Indian
 

now British, not born in Britain 
                                                 implied: not British
a mother, working full-time
                                                 implied: not a mother
a sales manager, a mother 
                                                 implied: not a sales manager
a woman, a mother
                                                 implied: not a woman
an engineer, a poet
                                                 implied: not an engineer
 
In becoming more than I was meant to
                                                 implied: a sense of erosion
Venn-diagram like I seek 
                                                 implied: commonalities 
finding intersectionality 
                                                 implied: a pinpoint

 
Turmeric

On shop shelves, flavours of peach and turmeric, in little Kefir shots
Cranberry seeds and turmeric, masks and masques in recyclable pots
           Some love yellow milk, drink an aphrodisiac in a tall glass
           steam fish soft in thin gravy, liquid gold on shining white rice
 
Turmeric tastes on the tongue, lingering in infinite swirls
like Jazz, Renaissance, the Beat, a turmeric rage grows 
           in homes, health shops, the patents, the recipes, lotions
           on skin everywhere, in all its fine avatars

But I remember it on my mother’s fingers, her tiny nails
bitten to the quick, haldi, turmeric stains on the nail bed and folds
           from mixing fish-heads, pumpkin flowers with turmeric
           Yellow stains left on handles and plates and clothes

like on this scarf, her fingertips, yellow dots, from far-away home.
 

Drown

You didn’t say a thing.
You didn’t do a thing.
Those curious eyes watched.
Not sure why,
not sure what they thought.

I drowned. I struggled. 
Thrashing as the water rose
in waves and whirlpools
I sank, you watched
You who had said, water
fall in, feel it, let go!
I did,
And you let me down.

The moon, your friend, is glistening low
It doesn’t let me see the shore
But somewhere a lighthouse glows
Surely it will carry me through to morning
When at last the daylight shows.

Mona Dash, "Let Us Look Elsewhere"

Mona Dash is the author of  A Roll of the Dice : A Story of Loss, Love and Genetics (Linen Press, 2019) winner of the Eyelands International Book Awards for memoir, and the very recent, Let Us Look Elsewhere (Dahlia Books, June 2021). Her other published books are A Certain Way, Untamed Heart, and Dawn-drops. Her work has been listed in leading competitions such as Novel London 20, SI Leeds Literary award, Fish, Bath, Bristol, Leicester Writes and Asian Writer. She has been widely published in international journals and more than twenty anthologies. A graduate in Telecoms Engineering, she holds an MBA, and also a Masters in Creative Writing (with distinction). She works  in a global tech company and lives in London. www.monadash.net

About Let Us Look Elsewhere, by Mona Dash

A young boy refuses to ferry his boat. A woman orders a British accent to fit in. A lover sends messages into the void.  

Disconnection and desire go hand in hand in this powerful collection.  From the bustling streets of Mumbai to the glitz and glamour of Vegas, and the everyday streets of London, these beautifully observed stories explore human frailties and triumph.

This is a collection of fourteen short stories, many of which were listed in various short story competitions and an earlier version of the entire collection was also shortlisted in the SI Leeds literary award. 

The settings are in turn exotic, remote and also familiar; and whether it is in the Arctic region, or a little village in Odisha, there are two themes stitching the stories. Firstly, multiple and diverse identities, the travesty of belonging and feeling like an outsider: many of the stories explore situational belonging and identity, such as 'Natural Accents,' 'Golems of Prague,' 'Temple Cleaner,' 'The Sense of Skin,' 'Boatboy.' Though 'Boatboy' is different, as it is the only one based on a real incident in history.

Desire, passion, sensuality, especially of women: this is the second theme running through the collection. The women in the stories are trying to find themselves, often through love, intimacy; they are sometimes rebelling against the spaces they have been forced into. This exploration into the complexity of a woman’s mind and her often ambiguous secret world is explored through the stories like 'Lovers in a Room,' 'Secrets,' 'Watching the Aurora,' 'Inside the City,' 'Formations,' 'Fitted Lids,' 'That which is unreal,' 'Why does the cricket sing?'

You can read more about Let Us Look Elsewhere on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample from the collection.

From Let Us Look Elsewhere

From 'The Sense of Skin' 

I watched Ana sleep, her mouth open, the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder poised to fly. Her skin, lavender soapscented, paper-dry, dolphin-cold. I spooned her and she continued sleeping. 

The morning had been busy, with several animals to do. Foxes, rabbits, minks; tool sharpened, inserted into the skin like a needle, taken off like a sock, skin discarded like clothes. We’d learnt from our fathers and uncles who worked on the farm and came home in the evenings, their breath like ice, to the crackling fire in the living room. They brought back pelt that was slightly damaged and unfit to be sold, so we always had warm rugs, furs on our mothers’ and aunts’ shoulders. They brought back cold cuts of rabbit to pickle or eat with coarse dark rye bread. Here in Ostrobothnia, the scent of skin was always alive. 

At home, in the evening I filleted the fish, scales collecting on the blade, while Ana watched me, lips parted, teeth uneven like small pebbles. Ana loves animals, she’s the kind who walks other people’s dogs, rehomes straggly cats and lets spiders spin webs in dark corners of the house. 

‘Do you skin your animals alive?’ she asked, her bright green eyes trying to hide her disgust. It wasn’t the first time she had questioned, or the first time I’d explained.

‘We look after our animals. They die peacefully before we skin. Besides, live animals fight back and can hurt with sharp 6 claws, their fur could get damaged.’ 

‘Over-fed, then slaughtered and skinned. Nice.’ 

‘Have you been talking to the Oikeutta eläimille again?’ 

‘I don’t need to talk to animal activists. Don’t you think I know? Those Arctic foxes in small cages. You ever seen the fear on their faces?’

‘It’s not that bad at all.’ I was sure she had been talking to someone.

‘I went for a walk the other day, over to your cousin’s side of the farm. The poor foxes, they don’t even howl anymore. Scared to silence. They can smell the scent of dying skin.’ 

‘I can take you for a tour if you want. Please don’t walk around like that on your own.’ She worried me for an instant, I needed to be careful about what she saw.