Vartika Rastogi is an Indian writer and bookseller currently based in London. Her work has previously appeared in The Alipore Post and The Cardiff Review, and her reading desk is in perpetual overflow.
Though this account is full of wounds, losses, and hardships, the Sonia who emerges herein speaks of them with the kind of sinewy, bracing directness you would expect of a complete stranger sitting across from you at the bar.