Blogger's book

Independent People: Swathi Sasidharan

When newly-married Swathi Sasidharan arrived in Ireland back in 2005, the first thing that hit her on the journey from Dublin to Athlone was the chilling wind, the green fields with cows and no people! Coming from highly-populated Kerala, a state in India which is actually bigger than Ireland, that was not something she was used to!

Just 26, and finding her feet in a new country so faraway from home with a completely new culture, she turned to blogging, for something to do and as a way to make sense of her new life. It turned into an informal diary of sorts as Swathi detailed her everyday struggles in her new home, with everything from how to to deal with constant drizzle to the driving test, or finding a way to pronounce Irish names correctly, or more domestic matters like burning the kitchen or the confusion about which bin to put out are all covered in a really honest, open and often witty manner.

It was a definite culture shock initially, she agreed, saying the vastly different climate was, and still is, difficult to get used to, as well as different language, accents and slang, although there were plenty of funny moments along the way where terms in India and words here had different meanings and she was unwittingly the butt of some jokes until she figured it all out.

In one blog post, she described her first encounter with hurling. The stick was a “real handy weapon” whereas she thought the game was an “actually a fight”. Much to her amusement she discovered Gaelic football used hands and legs, and when she asked a colleague about the pubs and the words to describe getting drunk, her colleague bought her a book titled 'Irish pub-language'.

“If nobody had commented I would have stopped the blog. But suddenly, people stumbled on it, there were comments and reaction,” Swathi, who lives in Monksland, recalled.

Effervescent company, she is chatty and bubbly, with a keen eye for observing the similarities between cultures as different as India and Ireland. Tea drinking is one, she explained, adding that she has even started making it and enjoying it the Irish way, rather than the more complicated Indian version.

“I feel at home here now. Even if I go home, I don't feel safe there to be frank. The freedom I get here I don't get there. Freedom is very important,” she stressed, adding that she also loves the manners of Irish people, the facts that they are rules on our roads and the social side of people in Ireland.

A computer engineer by profession, Swathi started working in Ericsson alongside her husband Sanjeevan, also a computer engineer, in May, 2006, and that opened up new talking points for her blog as she mused on working life, the different personalities, interaction with colleagues, and driving, which comes up again and again in her blogs.

Her passion is writing and the blog gave her a voice, something she modestly said is not polished but it is true to her and full of real emotion.

“Everyone can understand it, one way or another we are all ex-pats,” she said of the appeal of her blog posts, a selection of which have now been published in a new book 'Raindrops on My Memory Yacht', the title for which referenced her idea of “scattered droplets of memories”.

It was a nice “surprise” to see 30 of her columns in book form, thanks to the help from friends and admirers back home who helped to get her book published, something Swathi is hugely thankful for.

She also paid tribute to her husband who was very supportive taking care of the household while she put the book together. “If not for him, nothing would have happened,” she said candidly.

Almost 14 years on from the new bride's initial observations of Irish life, Swathi's life has evolved and changed as she found her place in Irish society. She is now a mother to two girls Aadu (7) and Annu (4) who she said are fully Irish and proud that Mummy is now a writer.

“My kids don't know anything about India, they don't know the language. They just know their grandparents. They're very Irish. I try to tell them you're Irish citizens of Indian origin but no way. They will understand in the future,” she said wisely, adding that they pop up in a weekly online column she does entitled 'Raising Irish kids by an Indian mother' and in her two Facebook blogs, one in English and the other in her native Malayalam.

The Monksland resident got another boost recently when the book, dedicated to her beloved grandfather, who fostered her great love of reading and writing, was the recipient of the prestigious FOKANA 2018 literary award from the Federation of Kerala Associations in North America. That was a shock to Swathi who had not sent the book in, but a friend had submitted it and there was plenty of attention in the media back home in Kerala and other parts of India as a result.

She modestly tells me “this is not a perfect book” but it is her truth. “They are just some old torn pages from a 26-year-old Malayi woman's diary, who has become an ex-pat. She has her flaws. Just bear with her,” she added in her introduction.

“I want to pass a message to women in India that no matter what age you are, no matter what you do, no matter how many kids you have, if you have a dream in you, don't let it die off. Work on it and it will come off,” she ended.