Some writers chase stories. Others wait for life to hand them one that refuses to leave. Ankita Jose belongs to the latter group. Her debut collection, Where Love Used to Live, is built from the emotional residue people leave behind, the echoes that stay long after the door closes, the silence that becomes a permanent houseguest, the routines that continue long after the person who inspired them is gone.
What this really means is the book isn’t just about loss. It’s about what remains.
Where Love Used to Live moves through different shades of departure: friendships that dissolved without a fight, loved ones lost without warning, relationships that drifted apart even while both people were trying to hold on. Jose’s poems treat these moments not as dramatic collapses but as quiet, irreversible shifts that change the way a person moves through the world.
She writes with a precision that doesn’t look away from truth. In In Case You Were Hungry, a child reaches out to an absent father with a gesture so small and tender that it cuts deeper than any grand declaration. In Why I Looked Back, she captures the ache of falling for someone who was once simply a friend. And How This Friendship Ends lays bare the slow, painful clarity of realising that the only way to survive a relationship is to walk away from it.
Here’s the thing: the strength of this book isn’t in its drama, but in its restraint. Jose’s voice is steady, the kind that trusts readers to sit with what hurts. Her poems ask a simple question: what happens after the moment of loss, when the world goes on but something inside you doesn’t?
The answer she offers is measured and honest. Love doesn’t vanish. It redistributes itself. It lingers in the habits you keep without thinking, the words you speak without noticing, and the person you become even when the one who shaped you isn’t around to see it.
This clarity is what earned her the 2025 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award. It’s also what makes her debut impossible to forget.
Jose’s own story explains the depth of her work. Originally from Kochi and now living in Bangalore, she writes next to a small desk where her cat insists on keeping her company. Her journey to authorship wasn’t abrupt. It was built slowly, in notes, scraps, reflections, and years of looking at life closely enough to understand how deeply ordinary moments can cut.
Her next project, a novel titled In Memory Of…, continues her examination of grief and its afterlives. If her poetry is any indication, the book will look at loss not as an interruption, but as a transformation.
Where Love Used to Live isn’t just a debut. It’s a mirror held up to the quiet places where love settles after life has rearranged itself.
- Book Title: Where Love Used to Live
- Awards: 2025 Winner of the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award
- From: Bengaluru, India
- Instagram: @a_jose_pages
