One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul

She subtly hints at the dichotomy between her former self, in which she believed appearance and outcomes where the very meaning of life, and her present self, where she has come to peace with the journey, and the things that truly matter.ĭelicately slipping mentions of her father into many of the essays, Koul gives the reader glimpses into her personal meaning of life. One Day We’ll all be Dead raises a question humans have been debating since the beginning of time: In the end, what really matters? Koul plays with the issue in recounts of her run-ins with date-rape drugs, anxiety over the age of her significant other, and the destructive lives of former college friends. Readers will surely find delight in Koul’s fearless take on controversial topics, turning experience to meaning. With wit, gusto, and authenticity, Koul traverses through her murky father-daughter relationship, all-too-relatable accounts of embarrassing teenage years, the pain and magic of Indian weddings, and more, allowing these moments to gracefully guide her to a heart-warming finale centered around family and purpose. Agent: Ron Eckel, Cooke Agency.In this distinctive set of essays, Scaachi Koul delves into the rough waters of racism, sexism, rape culture, and relationships, bringing her readers to the surface just long enough for them to catch their breath. She includes a surprisingly sympathetic judgment of misogynist internet trolls and a polemic against rape culture that contains the unfortunate phrase “the first time I was roofied.” The specifics of Koul’s life are unique, but the overarching theme of inheritance is universal, particularly the vacillation between struggling against becoming one’s parents and the begrudging acceptance that their ways might not be so bad. There is an occasional essay of sheer slapstick, as when Koul describes getting stuck inside a coveted garment in a boutique dressing room (“I flew too close to the sun with this skirt,” she remarks sadly), but she also reflects poignantly on race, sexism, and body image issues. She discerns the “shadism” of India’s caste system and its more benign cultural quirks, like every woman being given the title of “aunt” (“Mom, why do you have forty sisters? Was your mother a sea turtle?”).

She provides insight into the experience of traveling to her parents’ homeland, undergoing the inverse of their assimilation, and the conflicting desire to maintain and amend cultural traditions (for example, she dislikes weeklong wedding celebrations with alcohol restrictions).

Simultaneously uproarious and affecting, the personal essays in Buzzfeed contributor Koul’s debut explore the nuances of life as a first-generation Canadian with Indian parents, from phobias, guilt trips, and grudges to the drama of interracial dating.

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul