Hi, my name is Harsimran Kaur. I live in Singapore with my husband and ten year old daughter. Simbattuta comes from a part of my name combined with that of Ibn Battuta, a well known traveller of his time. You could call it aspirational thinking.

An MBA by profession, I moved on from managerial work after about eight years in five different jobs. Don’t raise your eyebrows, people in telecom jobs moved around a lot in those days. After that I dabbled in a few things, travelled, did some things I won’t write about, others that I have written about and then had my daughter. Not for lunch, I mean I gave birth to her. Now, I spend a part of my day working with languages, and other parts doing yoga, sipping tea and gossiping with my best friend Shumile, reading, chatting on the phone with my mom, lunching with Netflix, and general housekeeping. I would have loved to add writing to that list, but even though I am a self-published author of a children’s picture book, and am in the process of putting together a travel book, I don’t have a daily writing discipline. I could pin the blame on Whatsapp, but basically it’s escapism.

Coming back to languages, I love studying and teaching them. Especially those of north India, and beyond to the north and north-west, national borders notwithstanding. I am always excited to discover connections between words from different tongues and am equally excited to share them (Find me on instagram@simbattuta). For example, the word for rabbit in Hindi is khargosh which is made up of the Persian words, khar meaning donkey, and gūsh meaning ears; therefore an animal with ears like a donkey. Or, that the Doabi Punjabi name for watermelon, hadwānā, is the same as the Persian word for it, haidwaune.

I self-taught Urdu a few years ago, motivated by the idea of not letting it die with my grandfathers. I also self-taught Punjabi which, interestingly, is my mother tongue but my parents never bothered to speak it with us. In the past I have taught it to Indians, a Briton and an Icelander. My mainstay however, is French which I speak assez fluently and teach to kids in India as well as a few international school kids in Singapore. And that brings us to Hindi, which is not my favourite, but I enjoy teaching it in an unconventional style with a focus on the science behind the alphabet and the syntax. My one and only student at the moment is a German drama teacher who moved to India recently. In the past I’ve  taught it in a Singaporean preschool and online, to kids of varying ages.

Now, the travel. I like it unconventional, with a dash of danger, especially through the Himalayas of northern and northeastern India. And then I like to write about it, which takes a lot of self-coaxing due to the self-confidence issue I spoke about earlier. That’s where ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes comes in handy.  According to her, every woman (or man) has a natural, instinctive, intuitive self and when she’s in touch with this inner ‘wild woman’ she uses her precious flashes of inspiration and unmindful of public opinion, gives them form in the outer world. I don’t claim to be in touch with my inner wild woman but I thought the reverse might also work—if I let myself write, it might just open the door for me to trust and heed my intuition more.

This blog started out with this intention but over time I realised I didn’t want to put all of my hard work out there for free. So if you’re interested in reading them, you’ll have to cough up some and buy my book that should hopefully be out this year. In the meantime, if you’re a fan of picture books with illustrations that pull on the heartstrings, or you have kids aged 3-7, go ahead and buy mine called ‘No Guests Yet’ on Amazon India (https://www.amazon.in/No-Guests-Yet-Harsimran-Kaur/dp/9355933177). If you’re an Indian who’s spent all or even some of their childhood in India, there is a chance you won’t be disappointed.