Tina Pocha

Tina Pocha

Born and raised in Bombay, India, to a Hindu mother and a Zoroastrian father, Tina Pocha is the quintessential outsider—neither of nor from any single place or culture, not mainstream nor maverick, ever feeling her way around people and situations that seem, at once, vaguely (impalpably) familiar yet never quite home. “Pick one!” they said, “You can’t be both.” Not grown up and child. Not scientist and artist. Not tender and resilient. Tina lived her life outside their boxes, in the interstices between what they knew and what she was, bracing herself against their cardboard walls. So she left. Left the limitations, left the misogyny, left the muzzle behind and traveled the world to swim hither and thither, not always upstream, but swimming, nonetheless, rarely floating, and more recently, happily, writing about these adventures (less Don Quixote, more Accidental Tourist), in verse.