The Unfinished Heart
A Memoir
Now seeking an agent and publication. See Chapter Outline below.
The tap-tap, tap-tap of a spinning wheel. Cries of goats, laughter of women carrying grass on their backs, down the steep gorge in the Himalayas where I was born. Idyllic, no?
No.
I went from there to a dark, gloomy room in Innsbruck, Austria. I went from being a toddler learning the traditions of my mountain tribe to being thrown around an apartment, beaten, bruised, broken.
The Epilogue brings us to Ireland…
How?
A twisted, drug addicted mother and a sexually abusive father might well have been the starting point of this 140k word memoir, but instead we begin this tale of hardship in a tiny Indian mountain village, high above the Monsoon clouds. Allow me to pull you in with tales of traditions and music about the ancient Gaddi people I hail from.
The tale spins itself through the trials of a traumatizing childhood, in which I lose not only my baby brother, but one secure home after another, one family after another, only to be eventually washed up in the boring Austrian countryside. As teenagehood arrives, so does alcoholism and further trauma.
It culminates in tragedy when I am pulled into prostitution, and taken to far away Innsbruck to live in almost complete isolation until my liberation in 2012.
The tale refuses to cease, however, as I move to Ireland, following a whirlwind romance that turns sour, then bitter, then dangerous.
The end is melancholy, as it must be. But there is a tremendous sense of hope. And the knowledge that the next chapter might still bring something beyond the sadness.
This is a journey that is defined by the generation I am from: it’s a millennial’s story, and yet nothing like it. I am reminded of Desert Flower, of WILD, with moments that could well be plucked from Love Eat Pray.
Chapter Outline
Chapters 1-4: A mystical, magical land… a mountainous region of Northern India, and a wild childhood filled with snakes hiding in crevices, dark nights that bring the roars of wild animals, the ever present tap-tap, tap-tap of a spinning wheel spinning Himalayan goat hair into rope. And drugs, addiction, a baby brother who dies in my arms.
Chapters 5-9: An Austrian upbringing. As I was dragged away from India, as I was assimilated into my upper class Austrian family, I lost my roots, I lost my sense of self, but gained a love for literature.
Chapters 9-10: Teenagehood arrives, and with it, the wildness that once was mirrored in my surroundings is laid bare in my character. These are the rock ‘n’ roll years, the band t-shirt years, the going-to-a-gig-without-your-mom-knowing years.
Chapters 11-14: I am groomed, made ready, and like a lamb to slaughter, I drag myself to the depths of human depravity: into prostitution. I am taken away to far off Innsbruck to live in isolation, to be abused, to be raped, to be broken. But the end comes as surely as the new day: liberation awaits and I am set free.
Chapters 15-End: My 20s. I have children, I move to Ireland, I settle into a mundane life. But… mundane was never going to work for me, now, was it? There is adventure yet to be had, even as 2020 throws a wrench into everything.