All you really want, when you get into the messy, highly guarded, ruthless world of writing, full of mostly unwarranted ego and an editor who hates you, is for someone to read you. Anyone, really. Of course you want to write for yourself, but you want someone else to agree with you. You want one person to read you and change their mind because of your logic, or your wit, or even by chance, you know? Anyway, it happens. 

So you can imagine what it felt like to work next to a giant who really had already conquered every mountain within sight, multiple times, the only woman columnist at Nation for quite a long stretch, a whistleblower extraordinaire, a prolific writer and culture commentator, and that strange and otherworldly combination of someone who didn’t give a fuck, and simultaneously cared so so, in fact, too too, much for this country – with a big glass of red wine in hand. 

I was extremely privileged to work around and with Rasna Warah, and even though her unassuming demeanour made you think she wasn’t aware of who she was, I was always aware, and in perpetual awe. To have breathed the air after her? To have the blessing to walk on a path she forged with her searing pen? And now, to commemorate her for eternities to come, in her life to come, in whatever halls of Valhalla writers are allowed to go to, probably arguing all the way? I can only say thank you to her. RIP, Rasna. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.