who am i?

i had many ideas in the shower today but unfortunately they all faded away like dreams that disappear when the alarm rings. i am still in a gathering phase and though earlier this year i wanted to sprout and  tried hard to, i know now that i just put myself back as i was not ready. yesterday i did an interesting exercise from deena metzgers book 'writing for your life'. it was about autobiography. take five mins and write your autobiography. re-read and see what major areas you have omitted. write again for five minutes only those outtakes. and write it again and again and again. put the story away and look at it later. i looked at it today and i wanted to write about some insights here but instead i got pulled into doing something else i had seen in her book. and this is what emerged.

right now i am in transition. i volunteer, i write, i do karate and try to find the hidden path. before that I was a conflict facilitator trying to figure out ways to make prejudice disappear. i wanted to work with psychological and emotional violence in large groups. during that time i was also a karateka  who first visited the dojo because of a dream. before that i did yoga and vipassana meditation and worked on my dreams every day. i studied process work found soul friends and grew as a world citizen and a human. before that I was a teacher of environmental studies in a school where electrical failures were a symbol of a space badly needing restructuring. before that i was a teacher of physics in the same high school i was a student at earlier. one of my students gave me card that said that my way of teaching physics was mind altering and i was happy. but during that time I also was a student of psychotherapy and got boiled like a frog in a slowly heated pot. before that i was a student of education who was bored into a mindless stupor by sitting in large classrooms and often escaped to the pub downstairs and drank beer instead. before that i was a human rights activist who wanted to understand the ‘truth’ and bring powerful political parties to justice. before that i got pneumonia and watched Bombay burning during the riots and felt my social consciousness awakening. before that I was numb and self absorbed and didn’t even know it. before that i was a mother, unfortunately not a very good one. Before that for a while i was nothing, a drifter trying to find my spot on this earth. i was a friend, a sister, a wife, a daughter, a lover during this time too. before that i was a student of physics at the university of michigan and i found my partner and married him. Before that for a year i was a student at st. xaviers college in bombay and hated it and cut more classes than I attended and was reprimanded by the department head. before that i was a student at the jb petit high school for girls where I was the best in my class at math and physics. I thought i wanted to be an aerospace engineer. i read science fiction and dreamed of living on a space ship and meeting alien races. before that i lost my father and changed my identity and became the class brat but made some new friends. during that time i ran about wild, climbed trees, disappeared into our back garden and pushed everyone away. before that i was just beginning to feel rebellious and began confronting my mother and teachers whenever i could. before that i was introverted and shy and till the third grade nobody even noticed me and i had very few friends. i hid under the bed and read adventure stories and comic books of superheroes. before that i hated school. before that on my first day of kindergarden i clung to my kashi bai and wept. before that i have very few memories but one clear one is about letting the parrot out of its cage because i hated caged things. photographs of long hair tied in plaits, a squint and a worried frown.

autobiography in reverse. in one paragraph. it tells me a lot about who i am or was or might be.

try it out?