The book that changed my life

You know how people say they read a book that changed their life? I always thought that was hyperbole. Until I read psychiatrist Linda Gask's book Finding True North: The Healing Power of Place.

Someone I consider a mentor gifted the slim book to me during a turbulent phase when I felt the walls were closing in, and Linda's story of moving from a busy city in England to a remote corner of an island in Scotland stirred feelings in me that no book ever had. She writes about her mental health journey, the search for a 'better life', the joy of sighting hares in the garden and growing roots in a place 9 miles away from the nearest town (population: 8,000). And as I read her story, written in a style that made me feel like a confidante and not a distant reader, a fantasy started forming in my head. I wanted this life. I wanted to find myself in a place where my brain would have no preexisting associations. I wanted to tear up the big city mental map that had become oppressive and give myself a fresh start, away from Delhi's noise and pollution and stress.

We are worlds apart, Linda and I. I had always considered things like living in nature a first-world luxury. But the book gently encouraged me to at least try. Three years ago, my family (without whose support I wouldn't have dared to nurture this fantasy) made the biggest move of our lives – to a small town up in the mountains. We now live a less ambitious life. We are cut off from regular employment, which has meant making big lifestyle adjustments. But my heart starts to sing every time I trek back up after a trip to the plains. I am home.

I feel great delight in recommending the book, or better still, listening to Linda's story in her own voice. If you have similar fantasies (and the privilege to act on them), I hope you'll let the book will work its magic on you, that you'll get to build the life that you deserve.

Enjoy our (long) conversation.

Love,
Tanmoy

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Tanmoy: Thanks for joining me, Linda. I have a couple of extremely important questions to begin with. The first question is, the mug with the Virginia Woolf book cover that you mention in your book – do you still have it?

Linda: I do. But the handle broke when I moved here.

T: Oh no!

L: But I still have it.

T: Okay, that gladdens my heart. And secondly, any hare sightings yet this year?

L: Oh, yes, absolutely. Out in the garden, which you can see from here [turns camera towards a garden in the back], that is where the hares come.

T: Lovely.

L: We had a hare out there Sunday evening. I had a friend over, and she'd never seen a hare so close up in her life. It was wonderful.

T: Okay, great. Interview done, Linda. Thank you very much!

[Both laugh]

T: I have to tell you a story. Three years ago we moved from Delhi to a little mountain town in the south, thanks in no small part to your book. The first night we were here, our landlord's dog was going absolutely wild. It kept barking through the night. And the same thing happened the following night. So I walked up to the landlord and asked, what's up with this dog? Why does it keep barking? And with a completely deadpan face he said, "Oh, that's just because the bisons walk up to the front road sometimes. Don't worry, it's absolutely normal." And I said, "Sir. I don't believe in the word normal, but that is not normal."

L: Oh, I love that.

T: We are surrounded by tigers and leopards and bisons and all kinds of wild animals. So when I read about the hares in your book, I mean it is not quite as adventurous, but...

L: No, no, we don't have those kind of wild animals, but we do have birds of prey. We see owls, but mostly it's hares.

T: Okay. Now, let's get to your story. This move to a completely new place – I have often been told by my friends and other people to write more about it, and somehow I have guarded this experience very, very zealously. I feel like this is a sacred experience that I'm not ready to share too much of with the world. But at the same time there is a feeling that perhaps it will be cathartic for me to write about this. You say as much in your book. So I have to ask you, could you have made the move to Orkney and not written about it? Or are those two experiences fused in your imagination?