Journalist Vinita Deshmukh’s new book Grieving to Healing released

Vinita Deshmukh (Source: Twitter/Vinita Deshmukh)

JOURNALIST, RTI activist and author Vinita Deshmukh recently released her book — Grieving to Healing — in the city. The book, she said, was her way to cope with the sudden loss of her husband Vishwas to cardiac arrest in January this year.

She said, “Whenever I was overpowered with sorrow, I channeled it into penning a poetry, which I wrote on the go on my tablet phone. I thought I would write five or six poems but ended up writing 33 and after that I could write no more. My fingers just stopped.”

About the day her husband died, she said, “We were going up the Parvati hill and had sat on our bench, as we usually did. I looked around to say something to him and he was already gone. Initially, Vishwas’s death was such a shock that my mind kept walking, umpteen times a day to the spot where it had happened. I kept reliving that moment, so much that it became the main corridor of my thought, 24×7.”

“The book is part autobiographical, and part prescriptive — a chapter in the book is dedicated to what helped me overcome my grief,” she added.
She said, “…I realised my book could help a lot of people going through the same experience, so I began scripting prose to give my poetry a reference.”
“In India… We are told that, if we mourn, the soul will not be set free… However, in my experience, grieving is a natural consequence of your loss and suppressing it is unnatural…,” she said.

She has written two non-fiction books — To the Last Bullet and The Mighty Fall. First was the story of Assistant Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte who was martyred during the 26/11 terrorist attacks. The Mighty Fall, meanwhile, was based on Deshmukh’s investigations related to then President Pratibha Patil’s post-retirement home ‘scam’ and Dow Chemicals setting up an illegal manufacturing unit in Pune under the garb of a research centre.