‘I wish I had known earlier’: Jerry Pinto on palliative care and making peace with death | Books and Literature News
Indian author Jerry Pinto keeps writing about the things people would rather forget about or supress in a box in the bowels of their mind. In Em and the Big Hoom it was a mother’s mental illness; in his translation of Swadesh Deepak’s memoir I Have Not Seen Mandu A Fractured Soul, the same subject was explored from the inside; in A Book of Light, he looks into what it takes to look after someone chronically unwell, and in his new book, A Good Life: The Power of Palliative Care (Juggernaut, 2025), takes him to a ward where people already know they are at death’s door. In this conversation, Pinto talks about the stories that have stayed with him, the people who keep India’s caregiving system running, and how writing about death finally eased his own fear of it. Excerpts: You open the book with the stark admission, “I wish I had known about palliative care earlier.” How did this realisation become the emotional engine behind A Good Life? A project like this needs an …