A Procrastination Post

 June 24, 2025

Yes, this is a procrastination post. I am supposed to be working on the first draft of a personal essay for an anthology around rituals that a friend invited me to contribute to. I did make a start but then went down the rabbit hole of both researching rituals and remembering my abhorrence of them while growing up. Time disappeared as I chased these threads and I emerged a bit richer but with knowledge unconnected to the task at hand.

Over the last twelve days my procrastination has mostly taken the form of endlessly watching news about what now is being called the 12-day War. Hopefully the ceasefire will hold and I will get back the space and time I spent following it closely, trying to watch/read different kinds of sources — left, right, Israeli, American, (I didn’t find specifically Iranian ones), and some I think which were funded by China. I’d love to spend time today drawing a large sketch showing which source said what. Frankly at the end of it all I don’t know how much who suffered and whose goals were met to what extent as in times of war not revealing these things is strategy. 

Do you know exactly who achieved what? Does the fact that at the end of it I don’t know much is that I wasted tons of time and mental space over the last twelve days? I am wondering if I learnt anything at all about the outside world or even how my mind works or why I couldn’t stop trying to track what was going on. 

What I do know is that I saw Iran as the underdog — something that shook me. Trump called Iran the bully of the Middle east and at some other time I would have agreed so for me to perceive the Ayatollah, religious, women and others oppressing, regime as an underdog was weird. Over the weekend my spouse and I had several arguments where I was supporting Iran, and he was taking them apart. I kept screaming, I agree but look at it in this context. I understood the complexities of whom and when you support something or condemn something at a very minute level and the non-black-and-whiteness of things. I guess as a teenager I wanted things to be starkly good or bad, take one side against another and the grey nuances only bloomed as I matured but still there are black-white moments in life despite ripening in wisdom.

Lately I have been doing things at the very last minute whether it is submitting applications to courses I'd like to attend or replying or acting about ‘urgent’ bank messages. I spent the time I had hoped to be working on the essay doing the above. And now I still am not writing the essay though I submitted the summary on time with the caveat that the content will hold but I am likely to restructure the flow. I am instead thinking of how I detested religious or cultural rituals as a child. I saw them as rituals of oppression and of discrimination — against girls and women of course but also lower castes and classes too. I do understand that rituals can also be forms to reinforce identity or foster social cohesion and the age-oldness of them carries an ancient energy that brings moments of depth and gravity. 

The only religious ritual that I enjoyed as a child was the walking around the raging fire on the eve of Holi, cheering the story of Holika and the Narasimha Vishnu avatar, and celebrating the joy of colours the next morning. In the ritual essay I hope to write I want to focus on the Joyo no Kane Japanese ritual performed on New Year’s eve which for me was transformed into a 108 kata ritual at the end of year and the connectedness it brought one year when I especially needed it. 

The other struggle in my life has been between my knee and me. Maybe that should be my knee and I since this is the subject not object of my struggle. But then perhaps it is the object. I am examining the struggle between my knee and me, but I can also say that — My knee and I are in conflict with each other. In any case these days I often see my knee as something separate from me that I examine, curse, analyse, disown, nurture, and mostly cry about. Since January this year my right knee has been a constant attention grabber even when I’d rather it be like my sweet, functional, docile left knee that does what it is supposed to. As a believer that chronic symptoms are a messenger of change I do think about the knee in those terms too, and I am planning to work deeper on it with a process therapist but I already also do know the direction this right knee is asking me to go in. I just am unable to accept the change it is calling for and as I don’t accept it acts more autonomous and screams for even more attention. In previous times when joints tried to assert themselves, I always calmed down their nuisance value with anti-inflammatories but after I contracted covid or took the vaccines my stomach has also decided to become fragile and react to attempts to use them. I am in a 'Cold War' with my body.

So next month I will be focused on attempting to integrate the changes the knee is shouting for. It is scary business, but I see no other choice now. More on it later. 

I missed writing but I also didn’t know what to write about for a long time as I felt empty of everything but my knee and some other crises in my life and in the lives of loved ones. Also I think I no longer want to write the way I used to but I don’t know how I want to write anymore. A time of transition(s).

Setback(s)

May 13, 2025

            It’s been one of those weeks, one that sometimes feels like a month and at the same time feels like a heartbeat. India attacked Pakistan, Pakistan responded, and Indian media went berserk and ‘attacked’ Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Islamabad. It was embarrassing watching India being joked about by other countries. Then Trump tweeted about a ceasefire, and both India and Pak insisted the other had capitulated. Trump tweeted again, acting like a school marm with a stick, and threatened, you can’t get any trade unless you stop your war. Most Indias were pissed with him and some Indians also wondered why our PM wasn’t telling him to get lost, but our PM was lost himself until last evening. 

            The PM made a 20-minute speech at 8 pm IST last evening. Most of what he said had been said before. He did tell us India will not be blackmailed by nuclear threats or threats of trade. He did say India-Pak was a bi-lateral issue, but he didn’t clearly tell Trump to get lost and some of us wondered why. India had stood against bullies before. 

            I watched a discussion about his speech during which the speech was praised as powerful. One person even said it was the most powerful speech ever made by any politician and I was like, dude, were you born yesterday or do you think the rest of us were. Anyway, it felt like Orwellian doublespeak, which left me wondering if had missed something ‘powerful’ in his speech and if I should replay it. Later before I slept, I was pleased to watch another press conference where the person brought up the unanswered questions that I had been left with. Like last week I was relieved that someone had spoken what I had been feeling. Lesson one of this week was to trust my gut and sing my tunes even when the world was blasting other noise.

            In the behind the scenes stuff during this week a big one was about China assisting Pakistan during this mini-battle — many say that they were using Pak to test their defense equipment against Western made defense equipment used by India. The Chinese equipment did well, and the share value of the arms company rose. I wonder if that is one reason the ceasefire happened. China seems to have gained in field tests as well as economically and I wonder if the terrorists that killed the civilians in Baisaran were funded by China. They haven’t yet been caught or killed, and I hope they will be soon — preferably caught so there is a chance to find out who sent them. 

            Meanwhile most of us could get on with our insignificant lives or let me amend that and say that I got on with my own insignificant life and struggles. Lately I have been feeling down as I feel like I have been going in never ending circles with some problems in my own life, but I had been feeling that I had made some progress towards healing my knee and ankle. But in that urgency to feel a forward movement, I rushed and pushed, and suffered a major setback there. This set off a period of gloom and brain fog and paralysis (which was particularly easy to slip into under these circumstances where the threat of a nuclear war hung). Today I am emerging from five days of level 8 pain with the second lesson of this week, a big lesson, that at this age any gains in body healing will have to be slow and steady, and pushing beyond limits is daft. I’m sad but it is what it is. 

            This morning, I woke low and saw several people had sent me the same forward — about the PM’s speech and what a precedent Operation Sindoor had set. I almost didn’t get on to the monthly call I have with a group of writer friends, the Prosers, I had met during an online class. Part of me wanted to wallow and I was convinced the Americans wouldn’t possibly get what I was feeling. But I got on the call and everyone was in a slump. A person was angry because her very rich boss was ‘instantly’ closing the company she works in. She had to figure out her life in a heartbeat. Another works in environment and under the new Trump regime was worried about her job. Both hoped they would write a million-dollar book and be worry free. I did too. Another was sad because her best friend’s dog was in ICU, and the last of the group didn’t attend because he was going through a mini-nervous breakdown. All of us are worried about him. We spoke also about the importance of being kind to everyone during these times. I’ve been an hermit lately so the authentic social contact even with others who were also in a slump felt reviving.

            So yes, three big lessons this week on a personal level. The first two mentioned above to trust the gut, and let healing find its own pace. The last was, get on those calls and don’t cancel those one-to-ones with people you trust as authentic relating is also healing. 

            A calm beat amidst setbacks on so many levels. Breathe easy and love yourself. 

An Unpopular Opinion

May 8, 2025

            Yesterday I woke to news of India’s operation Sindoor against Pakistan. I wasn’t surprised. A friend in NY had sent me a message on Tuesday night about mock drills (for what to do in case of an attack by Pakistan) in different Indian states. Did you know about this? she had asked. Yes, I had replied, India is readying to attack and I actually think it might be tonight itself. 

Indians had been baying for blood, and apparently India had the right to respond militarily (which means with violence) to the terrorist attack which killed 28 people at Pahalgam. The international community, world leaders, had said it was allowable, while also advising caution. This last bit was laughed at by Indian citizens because most countries do not show caution while avenging attacks on their soil but advocate it for others. 

            So, I wasn’t surprised. But I was sad. I didn't think one measured, focused attack would be it. 

            What did surprise me yesterday morning was a video of survivors from Pahalgam that was making the rounds. Family members of those killed were saying how at peace they felt that the death of their spouse, father, son, had been avenged. All those killed in Pahalgam had been male, and the widows had been left to tell the tale. Thus the name chosen for the attack was operation Sindoor. Indoor being the red powder a married Hindu woman wore in the parting of her hair after marriage. A practice many Indian women do not adopt anymore. 

I did wonder about how quickly this video had been put together — I saw it at 8 am and the attack was apparently completed at 1:40 am.  I also wondered if I would have been satisfied with 'revenge' and stop asking for accountability. But I pushed that unpopular and ‘un-Indian’ thought aside. I was supposed to be jumping up and down praising our army and the government. I think our army is pretty good despite the attrition effect some recent policies by the government has had on it. 

            The fear of what next, and many other confusing thoughts paralyzed me, I wanted to talk to someone but there was nobody to talk to. So I did what I often do, put aside the tasks of my day and began reading independent media articles and the comments by readers below. I was surprised by the number of comments made on the Operation Sindoor articles by Pakistani male profiles. Most of them claimed the operation had been a failure for India as Pakistan had shot down five Indian jets. One man had written, Wait for Operation Suhagraat. Beware Indian girls. Threatening rape as an act of war. At once I replied, What a disgusting comment. The women of India are not scared. 

            What followed surprised me the most. The man who wrote that comment didn’t reply. Perhaps he didn’t need to. Radical Hindu men who have I have exchanged comments with in the past ganged up on me. Calling me cryto (apparently it means a fake Indian profile in troll lingo), falsely showing patriotism, calling me a Pakistani profile, labelling me a converted Hindu so not Indian, an agent of Pakistan etc. And I saw this happening to several others who previously had criticized the government but were now obviously speaking for India. The were people whose opinions often matched mine. It was horrifying that the Hindutva radicals were still interested in trolling fellow Indians. It shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. For some reason I had felt at that moment our differences would not matter. 

            Beyond this attack of fellow Indians by Indian trolls, there was complete symmetry in the voices of extremists from both sides. War cries which involved a fair amount of targeting of women (rape threats) as collateral damage, and of course of completely annihilating the other. 

            Disturbed and filled with heaviness I pulled on shorts and headed to the gym. I pushed my body to a limit I haven’t for a while (since my injuries), even doing things I had been advised not to do. No it wasn’t self-sabotage but a testing of how well the body was healing. I needed to not feel 'injured' anymore. Later as the blood flowed within my limbs along with the high from exercise hormones, my thoughts became more manageable. Two or three thoughts dominated. 

            Operation Sindoor. The name itself icked me out, but Indians seemed to love it. So apt for an operation to avenge the deaths of husbands, many had said. Count me out please, I had felt, then, Am I the only one feeling this way? Today a woman, expressed what I had been feeling, on her Facebook profile. Her post spoke of how the name reeked of the trappings of traditional, patriarchal Hinduism. Not all of us live in that paradigm, she said. I felt relief at hearing her voice and I came to a blank screen to express these unpopular views. 

            Himanshi, a survivor, wife of a naval officer had expressed an unpopular view. Her photograph that had captured the nation, been the face of mourning for the nation, a photo of her sitting on the grass beside the body of her new husband, a picture of grief immediate and intense. The photo had been appropriated by the trolls as the face of terrorism in the name of religion, Islam obviously, and been used to fuel attacks on Indian Muslims and in particular Kashmiri Muslims. Himanshi said, NO. She said she wanted peace and unity. She didn’t want Indian Muslims attacked. 

            She was mercilessly trolled. She was called an inauspicious woman, a woman who brings on the death of her husband, it was said that she frequented the hostel of Kashmiri students and had lost her virginity to a Muslim, she was called a Pak sympathizer, her love for her husband was questioned — it’s been only five to seven days since she got married. The government didn’t speak up for her though the same woman Lalita Ramdas, also a navy wife, whose post had inspired me to express my feelings had written to her privately, and stood up for her publicly.

            For the current Indian government and the trolls supporting them this was about narrative. Reclaiming it. Diverting any questions about accountability. Apparently, there had been intelligence about a possbile terrorist attack in Kashmir and PM Modi had cancelled his visit there because of ir. But they had chosen not to tell the tourists and neglected to amplify security. There is a new VVIP culture in India that doesn’t think ordinary citizens are worth protecting. Now I wondered, who would have the courage to question the government on this? The opposition had stayed silent before, the media (except for a few) had stayed silent, our voices — minority voices —couldn’t be heard. But now once India was at war could be go back in time and ask why that the original attack even happened? 

            Some media persons (whom I had previously considered intelligent but now consider cowed to the government) had called Pahalgam an inflection point. The first time Islamic terrorists had checked the religion of the victims — if they were circumcised, if they could recite the Kalim — and then killed them. But was it an inflection point or were these Islamic terrorists merely using Hindu terror tactics? We had read these reports, so many that perhaps it had become normalized. Kill him,  he is circumcised, he is Muslim. Say Jai shri ram, oh you won’t, then be lynched. The inflection point had come came years ago but those whose voices were supposed to call this out had ignored it out of fear, out of wanting to stay within the government narrative. But now this act of religious Islamic terrorism is called the inflection point. The thing we cannot tolerate. 

            And my last unpopular opinion for today — did India really have no other options?  I am not a military or strategic expert but there are options I see. We had international sympathy, we could have used it and called for international investigations of those terrorist sites in Pakistan occupied Kashmir that we targeted yesterday. We could have called for the extradition of the masterminds, insisted on international sanctions against Pakistan. We could have been a true world leader, been unique in the way we responded, shown the world a different way. But we took the route most trampled. Violence to avenge violence. 

            I didn’t realize it, though the number of books on my top shelf on non-violence, mediation, waging a non-violent struggle, about a force more powerful, should have clued me in that I am a pacifist. I do not believe in war as a way to resolve disputes. It is the easy way, the popular way. This baying for blood is primitive and we as humanity need to evolve beyond it. 

            This is an inflection point for me of sorts. One I have been sensing for a bit. Time perhaps to get off this train I am on. 

Rage

April 2, 2025

I don’t know if this happens in your country but a few weeks ago a comedian in India was targeted by Hindutva, religious far-right, groups for a joke he made about a political leader. A gang of hooligans trashed the comedy club the show was held in while police stood by allowing them to damage private property. The comedy club announced it would shut down. So effectively the hoodlums prevented the club from running their business. I wonder what the business owners will do to make a living now, how will they support their families. I wonder what they may be feeling

These Hindutva gangs have done this before. They have even halted comedy shows before they happened often because the comedian was Muslim, in fact one Muslim comedian spent some time in jail for a show he did not even perform because the Hindutva gang thought he might insult the Hindu religion during his show. 

            Does it happen in your country? Preventive arrest, vandalism, both with Police complicity, for a comedy show? Some Indians, mostly political leaders, their followers, and their troll armies, have lost their sense of humour and Hindutva gangs operate with impunity in my country.

            Later the comedian received hundreds of phone calls threatening him and his family. But when a court granted an interim anticipatory bail order until April 7, and the police could not arrest him, the police summoned the audience of the show for questioning. A person expressing outrage about this on an independent media article on Facebook asked, will they be spared if they did not laugh at the joke?

            It’s funny—not—that now in India we are told which jokes to laugh at. 

            The ruling party leaders regularly thrash the opposition, our previous PM’s, and even the freedom fighters who got our independence, and their political mates laugh loudly. These are the jokes we are allowed to laugh at. They are not funny—I mean even if I supported their party I would find those ‘jokes’ vile. They are misogynistic (calling women leaders bar dancers or prostitutes), insulting (calling opposition leaders names that demean), dehumanizing (calling Muslims termites or baby producing machines etc.). On social media the ruling party trolls abuse those of us who voice a different opinion and then add laughing face emojis. I asked one yesterday why they laugh at their own statements. He told me to stop crying and added a gif with a crying woman.

            It is not funny. It is a slide into an Orwellian state. Does this happen in your country?

            I have been waking up and falling asleep with terrible headaches. I realized a day or two ago that I am in a constant state of rage. There is rage about some personal stuff relating to some things that my family is going through. There is rage because I was informed about some disrespectful and dismissive things someone had said about me. Most of the rage though is about things happening in the world. Trump’s tariffs, the way Ukraine has been cornered by Trump and Putin, the IDF and their assault on Gaza, the stoked islamophobia and rise of fascism in India. My rage levels, on a scale of 1-10, would be close to 50. 

            This quartet/poem by Lemn Sissay comes to mind.

            I am the bull in the china shop

            With all my strength and will

            As a storm smashed the teacups

            I stood still. 

            I don’t think this was written as a rage poem, perhaps a poem about paralysis or restraint, or being mislabeled? But the imagery of the bull in a fragile space and a storm smashing teacups conjure up a destructive force that leaves one devastated. I feel devastated daily. 

            Yesterday I had coffee with a friend I hadn’t met in years. While catching up when I admitted how obsessed I was about going-ons around the world, she asked, but doesn’t that leave you angry? Don’t you want to withdraw from the news just to cope? 

            I said softly, I’ve tried and but like an addict I keep going back. 

            Some other things are not going so well too. My ankle and knee are healing much too slowly, and I truly am like a bull on a rampage, and the china shop is my home, and the teacups smashed are my spouse. I hate myself once the rage calms and I see the destructiveness with which I have used words. I wake hating myself, I am in tears as I reach out to touch my spouse in tenderness. What use is an apology when I behave the same way later that evening? And the rage could well be a coverup for depression. Rage momentarily makes you feel an adrenaline rush; depression is just a heavy, low state. One is directed outward and the other inward, but both damage the body and mind and relationships.

            The comedian, not a very popular or well-known one or as far as I know even a rich one, was asked to apologize by the political party in question, but he refused. A popular and influential, and I believe rich, actor from Mollywood made a film with a political message critical of a violent event that the ruling party was involved in. Hindutva gangs trolled and threatened him. He bowed down and made twenty-five cuts to his film. 

            I’m not sure the comedian I am writing about is funny, but he had understood what is going on in India. How free speech is controlled with violence. How violence is used to shut down what the ruling party does not want. How people, what they speak, feel, and laugh at are controlled. Is the comedian merely being stubborn or is he standing up the way all of us should do? I admire the fact that he won’t back down and fear for what these Hindutva gangs will do to him or his family. I fear for his life and the lives of his family. 

            This is the New India, Hindutva spokespeople say. We are brazen and bold and we don’t fear wearing our civilizational values written in blood on our outerwear. Apparently, Hindutva groups around the world are tying up with other extreme right Islamophobic and racist groups to protect and project their civilizational values to the rest of us. They organize and propagate. I sometimes imagine a fascist world where those who would rather not be so cower and stay quiet to stay safe. 

What do the rest who are not hard-core rightists do? Some sigh and say those values are not so bad and besides I’m part of the mainstream, so I won’t be persecuted. Then perhaps add, just don’t make such jokes, eh. Some of us think that the values we believe in, based on equality and inclusion, do not need work to remain stable, and will always be the guiding light for civilization. We are wrong, they are dying and like the right-wing groups seek other right-wing groups we need to seek and work hard to keep the values we want alive. We need to work together towards the world we want to live in. 

            How is freedom of speech allowed or controlled where you are? How does one start a non-violent movement to stand up for it? Perhaps if I can figure this out my rage will ebb.

A Long Personal Winter

March 27, 2025

            The last two weeks have passed in a blur. The previous one very heavy, because of health-related turbulence that my cat and human family and I were going through, accentuated by strong political happenings at many levels — including the impending Singapore elections. This week the blur has been due to busyness and attempts to un-crease last week’s anxieties. Within the hectic schedule though there were two emotionally intimate lunches with friends, one that I have known for twenty-seven years and the other for seventeen. Both strong women that have made tough life choices and whose search to be true to themselves has been the driving factor for the choices they made, particularly in their forties and beyond.

            The late thirties or early forties is the time that many of us begin to look at our lives and contemplate if we are where we want to be and if we are who we want to be. For me it was the early thirties when feelings of being in the wrong life, the wrong body, began to disturb my everyday normalcy. Then a severe bout of pneumonia that overlapped with nation altering religio-political events opened doors into new paths. Perhaps those doors would have opened and closed without me noticing them if it hadn’t been for the pneumonia that had halted the life that was then. Stepping through the door was like stepping into a new being. What of the old did I keep I am not sure, but because I took risks and allowed the disturbances to amplify rather than attempt to suppress them I emerged from chrysalis to adult. And the changes, exhilarating and scary kept coming at a pace perhaps too quick to properly integrate. While some might say I polished my facets and got to know each side, others might say I became a rolling stone that proverbially gathers no moss. 

Well, who wants moss, right. I just looked up the meaning of that idiom — a rolling stone gathers no moss — and an explanation tells me that a person who doesn’t have roots in one place will not gather wealth or status or responsibilities or commitments. Hmm… It is true that I haven’t gathered the first two, because I rolled and rolled with every change — whether it was to do with change of country or career, but I do have plenty of the second two. I wish I could take those — feeling responsible and committed to the lives of others — less seriously. A chapter and meditation in the Kornfield book did focus on recognizing that you are not responsible for the choices and life somebody else leads. But I am a human, deeply tied to this world, while aching to be free of it, and this kind of compassionate detachment is hard.

Moss makes rocks slippery, it can look pretty in some places, but it can also feel like neglect and stagnation. So, I don’t want moss. I truly don’t care about accumulating wealth though it would be nice to feel secure about some things. I don’t care about status because when I look around, I see the crazy things a person does to retain it. That feels like prison to me.

I am bored with myself right now. From the thirties until a few years ago I had become very good at listening to myself and following the changes that wanted to surface. Since 2022 I have felt an increasing dampening of the voice within and have struggled to know where the next door is. I covered up the pain of this separation with my inner voice with busyness — like moving homes — but I understood over these last two weeks of heaviness, blur, and a couple of clear afternoon conversations where this inability to see the next doors might have begun. 

In 2022 a huge external event split me. The karate organization I belong to split, and I made a choice that felt like amputating some of my limbs. I process emotional pain by writing but I didn’t write about it fully, afraid of betraying something, someone, myself, if I wrote — even if I didn’t show the work to anyone else. And as I closed the door to examining that part of my life deeply, I seemed to have also shut of my ability to examine everything I did deeply. Closing of sensitivity to one side of yourself sometimes chokes off everything, doesn’t it? And so, my life force stagnated and my ability to listen to that within me that points me towards new inner seeds dulled and disappeared until life was a continuous freeze, a winter of sorts for too many things.  

Though every season has its own purpose, and the retreat and dormancy of winter is needed for restoration, one cannot endure any one season continuously and must know when to allow the thaw. Winter is cold, mono-toned, and time may pass slower during it. Nature has the wisdom to hibernate and be ready, but I passed the time restless, expending more energy than I needed to. I know I am at another edge or threshold of life, maybe one that many go through in their sixties, but due to temporary snow blindness I am unable to sense the path beyond. I am beginning to write about that time, 2022, now and face the unpleasant emotions that have swirled around creating a prison of sorts. May that facilitate a new spring.