looking back... and looking forward

its 4:48 pm and the rain pelts down clearing and cooling the air. i woke this morning to see my daughters bedroom door wide open. the bed neatly patted down, clifford and galtung, her red dog and peaceful shark lay cuddling on it. i miss her. this is the first year we've not been in the same city for new years. yet i sense her with me.

the doorbell just rang and a drenched man delivered 30 gorgeous red roses. One for every year of our married life together. this is the first year in a long time that my husband and i haven't fought on our anniversary. i think we may have been done with our battling through the year and have arrived at this unexpected, pure, calm day of togetherness.

2012 was a turbulent year for our little family as we worked deeply on our relationships. we surfaced our decaying corpses and all the deadness we had caused each other over time. it wasn't planned and it wasn't pleasant but in the end it was a gift. it was an exhausting year. many times i wished to go away someplace far away from them. but something incessantly pushed each one of us in different ways to get to the very core of the bonds between us. if we were not family and bound together would we still want to be with each other was a question we asked ourselves again and again. over and over we challenged each other and confronted our own murky shadows. sometimes i wondered how we survived our microscopic self inquiry.

today we are lighter beings. the healing may not be complete but the imbedded knives have been eased out and the gaping holes in us are beginning to close up. the best testament to our year of work was apparent in our last conflict of the year on christmas eve - even as we felt sad, betrayed and not understood by each other, we called ourselves each others best friends. 

it was also a year of living authentically on a personal level for me. i seemed to detach from everyone and particularly myself. most days i felt excruciatingly alone as i floated through a dense, merciless fog not knowing who or what i was. many days i felt i was a vapour, a very disturbing feeling. a friend sent me a beautiful sufi story about that. about water flowing happily till it reached a desert and the water realising that the only way to keep flowing and cross the desert was allow itself to change and become a vapour. last year was a very arid desert in the inner years of my life.

its hard to share this here on an open blog. i feel raw. i am not sure why i am choosing to do it - perhaps to remind myself that the seemingly empty year was really very full. perhaps to share my struggles with other families and individuals who are wandering through such fogs.

i feel that i have arrived back into my body on this last day of the year with a broader knowledge about my purpose in this life. the warrior knows again what she will die for and what is worth living for. the owl able to sense the unseen and the unsaid more easily. and i also know and hopefully am beginning to accept that these knowings are temporary and may disappear anytime.

now i look forward to 2013. 
and a warm happy new year to everyone who drops by on this page today. may your 2013 be filled with light, joy, good fortune and and deep living.

i dare to dream...

i hit the darkest hour of my long inner night yesterday and woke to the news that the gang rape survivor died at 4:45 am this morning.

i have been struggling to find some light over the last ten days. i have wanted so desperately to let go of the heaviness that has stuck to my being like some sticky, erosive, viscous liquid. but no matter what i did it clung to me. yesterday in the most absurd of ways i suddenly found hope and i am beginning to dare to dream again...

my daughter will be leaving tomorrow for her second term of field training in her masters course in peace and conflict transformation. since she was in high school she has wanted to work with gender violence in india. this impending separation also added to our heaviness but we created an easy day for ourselves, eating dumplings at din tai fung and just walking around. we talked a lot all day. we spoke about skewed hindu myths and the appalling patriarchal attitudes in india that we had grown up with. disgusted and angry we brainstormed things we could do to bring change. our warrior spirit strengthened as we supported each other but we were low despite it all.

I came home only to read a report where a woman scientist had said that the police could not protect everyone and if girls walked outdoors at 10 pm with their boyfriends such things would happen. she blamed the rape survivor and said that if the girl had submitted to the men they would not have beaten her and she would not have ruptured her intestines. i felt that the world had truly gone mad. my spirit tumbled into an endless abyss.

that evening i watched 'mona lisa smile'. i am not a fan of julia roberts but crazy as it sounds the film and her character in it provided a inner turning point for me...

the year was 1954. women were finally allowed a college education but roberts arrived at wellesley to find that these smart, feisty women were still just biding their time in university till somebody proposed to them. any break from the expected dreams and roles for women was judged harshly. as i watched the women in the film struggle to define who they were, question repressive traditions and to fully know their dreams and desires i felt great admiration. i owe my current freedoms as a woman to women like them who fought against the corsetted gender roles they were strapped into then. the women's rights movement has come a long way indeed.

...and sadly it still has a long way to go. but it is because of the efforts of such women in the past that i can live the way i do. i thought, maybe those women too felt hopeless at times the way i do today but they laboured on. a small hope appeared as i realised this and before it disappeared i grabbed it and held on tight.

i dream that - 30 or 40 years into the future things will be different. it will no longer be a woman's responsibility to protect herself against molestation and rape but a mans shame if he did rape. i dream of that day when women will walk free everywhere at any time of night and men will be more whole and not need to dominate and despoil women. I dream of women truly owning their bodies, their sexuality, their reproductive rights and the space around them.

not only india but the entire world is talking about gender violence after this gruesome rape. but this is not the first time this year that the word rape has widely appeared in the media. earlier this year we watched the US elections and heard republicans make ridiculous statements about women's bodies and rape. We laughed at them and we were shocked. I wondered how anyone could truly believe that when rape is 'legitimate' a woman's body shuts down and cannot conceive.

i dream that forty years from now men will no longer make such statements. i choose to believe that the efforts women and men of india are making today to change the statistics of rape and conviction in india and will result in a different land. things are what they are today because of generations of patriarchal values being cemented into the fabric of our culture. but i believe that these will crumble to our efforts and we will live in a future where indian women will have justice and hope.

crime shows and the real world?

there is something that i have been struggling to put down on 'paper'. because its so deep and vast and there is so much to say i've been twisted up in knots. but today i think i need to make a start.

my daughter and i love watching crime shows - particularly criminal minds, special victims unit and medium. what we love most is that at the end of the hour we have the satisfaction of knowing that the perpetrator of the crime has been convicted. justice appeals to the warrior in both of us.

but in real life and particularly india and with regards to crime against women this rarely happens. even now as i am glad that the survivor of the delhi gang rape  is at Mount E struggling for life i look for and find no specific news about the perpetrators of the crime. i read lots of generalisations from political parties about fast track justice and needing to focus on making india safe for women but no news and and no plan of action. i wonder if these rapists too will slip through and escape punishment. giving other indian men the idea that they too can get away with it.

i read somewhere that a rape is committed every 54 mins in india, thats about 27 in a day and 9,700 in a year. thats just the reported ones.

while i was growing up in bombay i remember getting the message that if i was molested it was my own fault. i was responsible for making sure i wasn't raped. i am not sure who or where this message came from but i remember it clearly. i suppose it came from the patriarchal collective and the way women were portrayed in hindu myths and stories and from my mother telling me how not to dress. i don't believe this anymore but unfortunately even now most women and men in india believe it.

a woman raped will feel so ashamed and guilty that she will not tell even her family about it. but men will boast about it. in many areas of india a woman cannot report the crime because of fear of being raped again by the police. a man will make a video clip about it and post it. and the police instead of using it as evidence to convict the man will laugh along with the perpetrators. 'men will be men, why was she out at this hour' they will say.

i am trying to really understand what this says about the future of my culture and country.

this is heavy. i am heavy but i really dont want to be. i want to shake it off and move into a lighter more joyous space in the last four days of this year.

singapore has a gender equality index of 26. its a safe place. but the other day my daughter was walking home at 10:30 pm and a car with some youth passed by. they yelled out at her, 'hi sexy.' disgusted she turned to the car and saw it was a bunch of indian men. i really don't understand what is wrong with indian men - why do they behave in this creepy way? my daughter grew up in bombay and knows how to handle this but we wondered what a singaporean girl would have felt. would she be angry, paralysed, traumatised? my singaporean friend tells me she is scared of travelling alone in india because of the way men behave.

when my daughter talked to a german man about the gender violence in india  he said it is the same everywhere, all cultures are based on patriarchy. but it is not the same everywhere. delhi is one of the least safe cities for women in the world. bombay fast turning into a nightmare. this rape has brought out the horror stories, created a space where women can speak and are heard. but the statistics of rape and absence of conviction are terrifying. and men who claim to understand and sympathise still carry within them the deep imprints of sexism.

the death penalty is no deterrent for crimes against women especially when justice takes more than a decade to be meted out. as much as i feel castration is a fit punishment, it is primitive and i fear will not solve the problem.

feels a bit hopeless.

we need some really creative thinking to turn the tide. to make men not women feel the shame.

this is more a topic for a thesis or book than a blog post and i have been barely able to represent a fraction of the thoughts, feelings and analysis going through my mind and body. and unlike the crime shows i watch - resolution has eluded me. no answers emerge yet - maybe all i can do is let it stay within me and hope that some out of the box ideas will begin forming.


later in the day - OMG, i cant believe i wrote this 'quiet' post when all i wanted to do was scream

circling

end of year gnawings get stronger as the day approaches. i look back over my 2012 and feel disappointed. i feel i circled and circled and haven't moved along. i know i have strayed away from some imaginary path i was on. but who is to say that this straying too is not just part of the path and the plan? 

are our lives part of some grand plan? what plan is this where we struggle to eat, drink and chase some dream sent to us through our tv's about the ideal life - which is never ideal because somebody always has something we don't - even if it only that imaginary family in the tv ad?

i stopped wanting things that those ads sell. yet i have more clothes in my cupboard than i need and still have days when i have nothing to wear. and i have grand insecurities and fears.

what i want most is to find why i came here to this earth in this body. to know where my life with all its strayings and wrong turns is leading me. there is no goal, some say, the path is the goal. then is just this searching really the goal? 

its hard though to believe that. i see so many people who seem to be living their purposes, doing exactly that one thing that they are perfect for. are those people more evolved souls? souls that have searched for lifetimes for their purposes and then arrived one day on this earth and very early in life begun to pursue what they are meant to do and be?

not me. i seem entrenched in heavy, dark, confused energies. it feels like there have been a few years that i have lived some purpose but only a few. are the rest wasted years? is the time a butterfly spends in the pupa stage wasted time? my fathers spirit once came to me and said 'don't be afraid to waste your life.' 

but i am afraid. afraid to lie dying and feel that all i have done in this life is circled. rilke's words come to me now giving me some solace

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

perhaps my circles are widening, covering more space. perhaps my inner space grows too and yes, all i can do is give myself to this one today and maybe one day i too might know who or what i am meant to become. 

a moment of emptiness

the high point of my week was two hours of training in the dojo yesterday.

my mind was twisted into tense knots thinking of delhi and what it is to be a woman in that city. singapore is such a safe city. all day i tried to focus on work but thoughts would bubble up and then the tiring rage. the heavy feeling of looking at the needed change, a change so huge that it was hard to comprehend and know what the first step might be. How do you change a culture of domination and aggression to one of nurturing? i was tired of reading analysis - we indians are excellent at analysing what's wrong with our country but suggestions of processes for change are few. i wanted my mind to shut down.

i walked along the ecp and the sky and sea soothed me. but the oppressive pain in the front of my head would not leave. i began training and my mind had to relax its hold as i focused on my body and my movements. after the junbi undo we did more than hour of hojo undo interspersed with bag work. hard punches and kicks. i hadn't been sleeping well for days. i was exhausted. i kicked and kicked more. i thought i would drop, my head reeled and my pressure felt strange. suddenly i wasn't in my body anymore but it was performing the actions - relentlessly. i was out of myself and felt i could go on forever. i couldn't hear what people were saying to me and my eyes were out of focus. but finally for a while my mind emptied.

such moments of emptiness are peak experiences. sometimes through intense pain and exhaustion something lets go and for a moment you know that nothing else is important except that moment. everything disappears but that moment. a perfect moment that will soon disappear too.

the thoughts and heaviness are back. but i want to grapple with them.

what's ahead?  a lot of out of the box thinking and hard work - to first be the change i want to see and then facilitate it in my land.

is this the world we co-created

i feel an increasing helplessness and disconnection from reality. i want to scream. and scream again.
pounding of gaza in november, shooting in connecticut, gang rape in delhi.
i read people's posts on fb, i scan the links they share to find some answers, relief, hope.
questions and analysis and groping for some way out. they like me are lost i - or perhaps i project my lostness on them.

i can't believe that this is the world i live in.
the pain, the violence, the pain.
were we not supposed be be living in a different world?
everyone chasing their individual dreams.
where have our collective hopes gone?
is it really ok that i have a decent life when most of the world lives in poverty and hunger?
i don't really know how to be happy in this world.
we are all connected - i can't help but feel their hunger.

tomorrow is the end of the mayan calendar. some say that the world will end, others say that the world as we know it will end. that we will be lifted into some higher plane. when all we as a world have done is chase material goodies how would we be lifted to a higher plane?

is this really the world we co-created. if there is a god and we are his children - he must be sitting drunk somewhere while we, his children hurt each other and destroy our home. universal social services should be paying him a visit. but raging against a god i do not believe in makes no sense.

none of the analysis and the whys and hows of the past make sense. i grope in the past in our cultural roots and the twists and turns we took as a race for answers to the evils of today. meaningless dissection.

the flickering hope i feel comes from those dreamers and doers - educating the girl child in india, protesting the building of nuclear plants, hugging trees and saving forests, meditating for world peace in solitary caves. i love those people. here in this city i volunteer and touch the life of some lonely, sad soul. but i feel frustrated and depressed for i yet i do not know how to be part of the large change i wish to see in our world. my life in bombay was easier for it gave me many opportunities to be involved in larger social shifts. but today here i am -  still seeking.

dry state

the writer has hit a very dry state. words have withered, shrivelled and shrunk into a trickle. its painful. insights arrive and there is no way to describe them. i close my eyes and let my body and soul feel the insights, then the writer wants to express them and she finds a parched desert. 

a voice says, 'let it go. words will return soon.' another says, 'you are a writer, write. everyday. no matter how depleted words are. it is your chosen practice.'

one of my sensei's once said to me that when something is a way of life you do it everyday and throughout the day. you train in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. like breathing, i thought. no matter how laboured during a chest infection i still breathe. 

before he said this to me way of life had a different meaning for me. i used to think that when i practiced whatever truth was embodied within something, not just while performing certain actions but all the time, when i lived the essence of that thing every minute and in every aspect of my life - then it became a way of life. but i liked sensei's definition. it was simple to understand though hard to follow. it also led me to the deeper essence without my brain twisting itself in crazy ways trying to define way of life - insisting that i needed to define its meaning before i tried living it.

so i decide to write everyday no matter what. that relentless inner critic says, 'but what makes you think what you are writing in this dry state is good enough for others to see. this is a blog not a personal journal. you should only put out finished, polished products here.'

an artist i once knew told me that no piece of art is ever finished. it goes on evolving within the artist but at some point the artist decides to exhibit it. he said he allowed people into his workshop to wander through the works in progress. the raw, very far from perfect pieces. it takes great courage to do that i had responded. he taught me about vulnerability. something i then used in my practice as a conflict facilitator.

some posts are so rough i cringe when i read through them. yet i choose to publish them. unsure right now whether that means i don't respect my reader enough?

relationships - 1

i am most grateful for the relationships in my life and particularly the close ones - husband, child and a handful of friends in this city, and elsewhere. yes, they support me and push me to follow my dreams. but more than that they are the ones who show me my darkness and hold my head steady so my eyes can face and explore that blinding darkness. through the pain in their eyes or disapproval on their faces i know i have become - temporarily - just what i hate in others.

yes, i am grateful to have these relationships. people who themselves are sometimes owls and sometimes warriors.

but these relationships haven't just happened. they have been achieved through hard work and a desire to really see beyond the surface. to speak our truths about each other and to know that the other while hurting really is just speaking a truth that i dare not see myself. what is even harder is to have the courage to tell the other what i see about them especially when they are still hiding it from themselves. not everyone wants to know these truths - so grateful for the people in my life who do.

my closest relationships really help me know myself. some people sit in quiet meditation and gain this knowledge. for me people are easiest way to know myself.

and sometimes when these relationships turn empty or monotonous - it is an unbearable, restless state. to name them as such is heartbreaking. to just walk away tempting. but to get beyond and truly connect again and yet again is what i seek.

years of willingness to trust and be betrayed and forgive have borne the fruits of finding enough such relationships to nourish me to work on finding more. 

the end of the year

2012 dragged heavily through scattered days. i just want this year to end. it makes no sense to feel that the dense and difficult energy i feel belongs not to me but to 2012. it makes no sense that i believe that it will disappear with the year and a new easy, light energy will fill up my days.

i look back at 2012 and find that i cannot recall any highs. i found the writer in 2012 - an exciting new undeveloped energy. i finished the first draft of my first novel in august and for a bit, maybe a month, i felt terrific. but then the high faded and as i tackle the revision and the rewrite i find the flow of words disappearing into underground aquifers too deep to reach.

as the year ends i both tend to get anxious about digging those wells to tap the ground water and being content allowing moments to flow as they do in, sometimes deep and sometimes frivolous, connection with others. but in the mornings when i am alone and the day looms ahead the pressure to find those inner springs builds into dull headaches that feel stony hard.

thats when i sit paralysed staring at the empty white space. or i quickly pull on sneakers and head for a run. sweating away the petrification, loosening the inner stiffness but also losing the essence of something precious imbedded in that unyielding rock that my mind has turned into. i wish that i allow myself time to remain with the impenetrable hardness soon.

but not today. again take the easy way out and head outdoors. 

reaching out

yes, the warriors been dormant too long. her nature almost lost.
i have forgotten what it feels like to really burn. burn in the fires of passion and rage. rage can be destructive but it can be such a cleansing energy. clearing away the debris and making space for the new. if i dont rage at what really matters things accumulate within, slowing me down - making me heavy and dense.
i dont want to merely blow off steam but stand strong and express the things i feel strongly about.


there are some spaces i just cannot imagine. i can imagine killing to save my family or to save another life. i can imagine the inner space of a person who kills the perpetrator of a crime because justice has been denied her. what if someone murdered your child after torturing him horribly for days? what if he didnt repent and you felt he would do it again. would you kill? would you risk going to prison or facing the death penalty for that?
playing god some would say or an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. me, in principle i believe in reconstructive justice. that every criminal needs the chance to change. but if it were my child  - what would i do?
and if i did nothing except pray to god how would i live the rest of my life?
yes, the warrior is figuring out her beliefs about life and death and who decides.

the owl is wondering what kind of intense emotion it would take to pick up a gun and kill kids in a school, people on the streets, in a cafe. i have trouble entering that space. i cant imagine what feelings lead to such hopeless killing. it must be so tormented. how long does it take for such a painful emotion to ferment into a killing rage. and where are all the people gone who would take notice of that lone persons anguish? are they also in pain?

i, myself do believe that our world would be better without guns in it. but more than that i believe it would be better if we stopped and asked each other - including the sad stranger on the seat next to me on the bus if they were ok. often i see people in pain - their furrowed faces, tense eyes and mouth and crumpled bodies - i find myself wanting to reach out but stop myself. i feel i would be intruding on their private space. maybe they would appreciate some kindness from a stranger?

the warrior is also thinking of what courage it would take to simply reach out to the next sad stranger.

transformation

transformation...

when a transformation is physical it is easily visible. but how does one track transformations that are inner?
there was a time when i didn't need to answer that question. i knew. even when nothing was visible i felt it. now confused and disoriented i wonder often. how will i know?

the city is less strange than it used to be. its a city i can lose mySelf in. a pleasant and unpleasant feeling. its a city where sometimes i yearn for deeper connections like i never yearned before. its also still a city where i feel i am not living the life i want to live. hearing a long time resident of this city say the same made me feel - relieved i guess. we are still seeking the life we want to live?

a worry gnaws me. i don't know where it comes from but it is visible - in the tensed muscles of my forehead, the circles under my sunken eyes. the lips that turn down and need reminders to turn up. its harder some weeks to really find the smile under all that anxiety. the breath that comes easily and breathes itself. i don't know what the worry is. something from a distant future that grips me.

i think i am transforming but i cannot track it. the butterfly is a completely different life form from the larva, the pupa. the pupa, the still stage - it looks still at least - but more is going on then at the very cellular level. the butterfly is nothing like the caterpillar. most butterflies die is a few weeks. a few weeks of free spirited flying and creating. in some ways the easiest energy to be.

sometimes i don't value the pupa enough. sometimes i love it the best.

i think i am a caterpillar today. feeding frenzy. no i am the observer. a scattered one though.

the warrior is finally figuring out what she will die for, what she will kill for. at one time she knew these things but forgetting and remembering is good.

its been a while

Its been a while since I created this.
The owl and the warrior. Two energies, two inner personalities that want to be known. Yes, i know them just a bit yet.
The warrior is dormant. The warrior maybe going through a crisis of faith.
The owl is quietly understanding himself.

The warriors crisis of faith. Is it the tiring, ailing body that the crisis comes from or is the crisis creating the illness in the body. The spirit ails. It has no goals. Temporarily feels without a passion - even martial arts feels like a drag.
I drag myself to the dojo. Once there i am happy, most of the time.
My partner says I am more ill than I let on and its natural to feel this way.
I wonder.
I can't remember the last time I felt without passion. If someone asked what i would die for... erm.. besides family and friends I would say I don't really know...
But in some ways i know what outrages me.
Inequality, War, Violence, Innocence crushed by greed, hunger, poverty, greed
All very vague yet, very diffuse...
Once I was clear what motivated me. Now i don't know.