he darkness my voice disappeared into that day, reading my poems onstage, could to some extent be medicated away (I was put on antidepressants); it could be partially explained without reference to racism or the intergenerational terrors which, like a set of rogue genes, get passed down from Tamil parents to their children. My counsellor suggested my mother was overattentive to me as an infant. As soon as I declared a need – maybe, even prior to this, before baby Vidyan began to cry – she rushed in to placate me. As a result, I never learned to entrust myself to the darkness which, should I only hold out, would conjure her, a duration in which I might learn to self-soothe. Instead I came to feel that, without an immediate response, I must be alone.