| CARVIEW |
At some point in your life, you realise
your cupped hands can only hold so much water
even as the ocean of life stretches ever before you
filling the horizon with what may be.
You desperately hold your palms together
even as the water seeps between your fingers
and pray that you can taste the ocean
in this small handful of water.
It has been over seven years since I started The Clean Copy. For most of that time, I felt uneasy claiming that I ran a small business. Instead, I felt like a freelancer who subcontracted to other freelancers. ‘The Clean Copy’ did not have an identity of its own; it was synonymous with my professional identity. I saw myself as an editor first; the business part was merely an afterthought — a makeshift solution to enable me to take on far more work than reasonable for one person.
I’m a big fan of process-oriented goals. I may not have a destination in mind, but I have a strong sense of direction. I still do not have a solid vision for TCC in terms of ideal workforce size, financial ratios, or turnover. Instead, my vision has always tended to be a bit loosey-goosey, based entirely on what I find most enjoyable: building a team of highly competent editors with similar values to do work we take pride in. While the details regarding where and how this team would operate have been fuzzy, the values have always been clear:
Every year, we’ve been working on introducing systems to stabilise our workflow — financially and operationally. We’ve experimented with project management tools, chat bots, professional communication platforms, online ads, social media marketing, various quality control protocols, coworking offices, and different payment structures. In most cases, we returned to the simplest viable option. Many editors joined our team, some stayed a short while, and many have left. With some, it was a productive and enriching experience, with a few becoming good friends, with others, things simply did not work out. Clients too came in all sizes and shapes, from large MNCs with small blogposts to struggling PhD students with huge dissertations. Through constant and minute iteration, we evolved to build a reputation in a niche that I had no idea existed when I first started: editing academic (primarily policy) research in the social sciences, primarily the energy, environment, economics, and climate space.
Seven years of walking this path, we’ve come a long way. Over the last year, while my attention has been scattered between multiple family health crises, two households packed and moved, a wedding, and a pet lost and found again, TCC has continued to thrive. Because I could no longer look at every document that passed our doorway, the team scrutinised every word and comma. Clients wrote to the team instead of me directly. I didn’t check my inbox for a whole three weeks (I know, shocking!) TCC began operating as a business beyond my individual contribution. After seven long years, the whole was finally bigger than the parts. Without too much fanfare, I had morphed from freelancer to small business owner.
In a world awash with a new AI platform every month, running a small business can feel like you’re operating on a different timescale entirely — five years is barely enough to scratch the surface, and a decade passes in the blink of an eye. Somewhat by accident, I’ve founded a business that fits the shape of my life. I’ve found a group of people who believe in the same things I do. Who can step in when I need to step away. And I’m grateful to all those who took a chance along the way and made it possible. I don’t know where we are headed, but I do know the direction: towards building a team of highly skilled editors who do good work we can take pride in.
When I die, I want my books
to contain explosions of flowers.
Bougainvilleas, hibiscus, and lantanas
marking the passing of seasons —
here is where I walked with my nephew
that summer when he was five years old
and still thought I was the coolest person ever.
Here is where an ex and I walked, early spring,
when I realised that fondness was not enough,
and I’d rather have love or nothing.
Here are the bougainvilleas from that afternoon
when I was so alone I thought I would die
but I didn’t and made tea instead.
I went out that afternoon looking for something,
and found it in this sprig of riotous purple
these flowers that bloom for no reason
except that they are alive.
It was a lesson in selfishness: why not take
comfort from the the world –
the wet nose of the neighbourhood dog
the arrow head of birds in flight in a blue afternoon sky –
when it gives so much so freely?
These dried flowers crowding between pages
marking the passage of a life as transient as their own –
may I be remembered as a life warmed by the same sun
and nourished by the same earth.
Tea is my most reliable friend.
Suddenly confronted by an empty house on a Friday night,
I can count on tea to bring warmth,
reminding me that though a great many things may be wrong,
a cup can hold a symphony of floral, citrus, and vegetal notes,
and curiosity is a good enough reason to keep going.
On afternoons when it feels like my mind wants to be anywhere but here,
away from this body, this moment in time, this material reality,
aswirl with imagined futures and painful questions from the past,
Tea is most often that stout friend who gently but firmly
leads me back to the present, turning my attention away
from what is ideal, towards what is important.
On some days it is just about companionship.
Watching the street corner from the balcony
as the monsoon clouds gather overhead,
Perched above people going about their daily lives,
Tea is that everpresent but silent friend
who witnesses the passing of my hours as I witness theirs.
Someone once told me a long time ago
that unlike the Minotaur I walk in a maze
of my own creation. Doubt and guilt
raise walls that veer off in strange angles,
lines of thought endlessly loop back on themselves,
and every fork in the road is relived
a thousand times after, and a million times before.
But as I get older, I find that the maze is losing relevance.
The future is no longer a path with infinitely branching possibilities;
it is a hill up which I roll the consequences of my past actions.
There is no “correct solution” leading to sunlight and accolades—
you just pick a direction and keep going, wondering
what surprising guest the next turning will bring.
Legends are full of people who surrendered
to their art their work their family their country their cause
laying down their lives at the altar of something
believing if not whole heartedly but adequately.
There are others who are masters of standing still.
Tall like trees and as nourishing
content to feel the afternoon sun strike their faces
the soles of their feet burried deep in the earth they call home.
But some of us live feels perpetually imbalanced,
years spent in the moment between tumble and
impact, slipping sliding lurching grasping
but hands closing on nothing.
But tell me, what is dancing but imbalance mastered?
There is some beauty too in swerving ducking turning changing,
and in that lurching from mistake to possibility
seeking meaning but finding grace.
My favourite time of day is the hour before dawn
when the sky lightens implausibly while
the last stars stand resolute, defiant
and the strident calls of birds
combine with the rumbling of late night heavy
traffic, the rummaging of early risers, and
the scrapping of the broom of the tea master.
The ticking of clocks,
which seemed so loud only an hour ago,
is subsumed by this urban dawn chorus.
The city is slowly coming to life,
and I, having reached the farther shore of the long dark,
solitary in my small vessel but not alone,
retire to rest.
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