Ideas emerging

 October 27, 2020

 

Just four days to nano, to November. I'm not anywhere close to making a decision about which story to try to write. Added to the list of the two ideas I already had, is a third now – memory-essays about my journey in karate so far. That would be the easiest perhaps as it is real, it happened and all I have to do is remember, write, reflect, write. Fiction needs characters and a plot from nothing, perhaps not nothing – perhaps from a seed of something felt, experienced, believed, remembered.

 

One story, the one about friends seeking psycho-spiritual knowledge but choosing different paths which leads to a strain on their relationship feels more like a short story right now. But for the other characters and strands are emerging. Different types of power, money and lack of, greed, harmony or lack of, are the threads. I see them in the desires of the two main characters —one wanting power and wealth at all costs. The other willing to give them up for relationship and harmony. I see them in the Macro they are situated in — political power, control and wealth at the cost of peace, equality, freedom etc. The supporting cast of characters — a father, a maid, a mother, a friend, are also becoming more than mere outlines. Words they might say, the way they might look, the attitudes and beliefs they might have are clarifying. But can I find the sequence of events and begin the draft in four days? Still not sure. 

 

Yet this feeling, of something appearing out of nowhere, a fleeting wisp of an idea that flashed in the corner of my eye but was gone though I quickly turned my head to catch it, leaving me feeling limp and hopeless on Friday, is finally moving to the centre of my vision — that feeling is breathlessly up-lifting. Phew, what a mouthful of a sentence. Even I lost track of the beginning before I got to the end of it! This idea-let is still amorphous and fragile but now I can hope that it will settle into something more if I leave it suspended for a few more days in the solution I’ve created in my mind with increasingly desperate ruminations, over endless cups of tea, in the last ten days. Sigh. I will be drinking more cups of tea in the next days for sure. 

 

Not even sure I will have the time this November as the schedule is suddenly speeding up. I'm nervous, thinking of how the interaction with the outer world might increase next month after all the fairly solitary time. A part of me is wanting more action, activity, mingling. I want to be outdoors without a mask, on a flight without a mask, walking the streets without a mask, discussing things without a mask. But the mask is here to stay for a quite a while yet, so unsure where I will be next month.

 

I decided to buy another drawing course on Udemy. They had a sale. The two I bought in the beginning of the pandemic helped me relax and deal with the burgeoning uncertainties, and I improved my drawing skills a bit, though it was frustrating because I couldn’t always go outdoors and practice like the instructors suggested we do. My first lesson in the new one was shading using nine different pencil values. It felt so soothing to do that. Pencil on paper. I like the B pencils the best – 3B, 4B and even 6B. 

 

But November will be here so soon. Bihar elections are heating up, more chaos will follow. Then it will be December and then 2020 will be over. I feel it was just January a week ago. Do you feel that? Interested in what the end of year reflection I do will be like. Hmm…

Building a new practice

 October 20, 2020

 

I’ve been trying desperately to resurrect a serious writing practice, and revive one of my manuscripts — the one I feel very passionately about. Neither is going very well. 

 

Forming of the writing habit is being resisted forcefully. Any plan, schedule, structure I build up is sucked away daily like a spider-web by a vacuum cleaner. Things I think would take an hour take twice as much, and I wonder if I have slowed down so much or lost the ability to estimate times for projects. Besides that, phone calls, other emergency tasks, noisy renovations in the flat above, the haze that clogs my nostrils, and the news that just needs to be heard… basically anything, tears down any timetable I build. Last week I had to, just had to, empty, clean and re-organise two of the bookshelves I mainly keep my books on. Though if I am honest, I have to admit that my books have occupied all the bookshelves in the apartment. I don’t know if this is why the spouse only reads ebooks now… hmm…

 

As for the manuscript — like anything one has worked on for a while, three years on and off in this case (ya, a lot of interruption — two deaths in the family, rescuing a feral cat, daughters marriage, ill-health, and surgery) is hard to revise. I just can’t get into a beginner’s mind state, or simply a new reader’s state, and dispassionately look at the work. What exists, the way it exists, has too strong an impression in my body and mind. Other eyes are definitely needed here. Sometimes I almost want to give up and move on to another piece of writing, which would be easier, fresher etc. etc. etc. Yet the pull to complete and put this one out into the world is an obstacle to new thought. Or so it is with me and this book. 

 

I worked longer over my first books. A fantasy with a 35-year-old female protagonist. I have a completed book 1 and a draft for book 2. It was the series I learnt how to write with. It taught me how to create multi-dimensional characters, build plot, conflict, dialogue, write immersive description etc. Each time I got stuck with one of these aspects of novel writing I took a course or read a craft book. So I wrote those books over five years. But when book 1 was rejected about 21 times, often for having a protagonist older than 16 or 18, I was able to move one. The current book, about the devastating impact of therapeutic abuse is more important to me. It is an issue that is not yet being discussed much, and I really want to get the book out. I hope it starts conversations around this problem. Oh Universe, are you listening?

 

I so want to do Nanowrimo and churn out a new draft this year. Despite how my book on therapeutic abuse occupies my mind I have two ideas I might want to explore. Both are about relationship — one explores a manipulative relationship too, but between equals, and the other friends seeking spiritual wholeness but following very different paths, and the clashes between them. Both set within the current political climate of India. Neither seems to be a book length idea though, so I don’t know. I am running out of time to finish the prep to start nano. 

 

I had a conversation with a writing coach and talked about these two pulls — to keep working on the current manuscript till it finds a way out and pottering with new ideas. She suggested I do both and I liked that. I decided to start my writing day (two days a week right now) with the revision and in the afternoon have fun with new ideas. Somehow it hasn’t worked. I seem to like binging on one thing, but also feel guilty just faffing with new ideas unless I have some ‘actual work’ done first, and sometimes I struggle to find ways to work on the revision. So I do nothing. 

 

The coach also suggested I tie my practice with my already present, fairly disciplined, karate training. She thought that an existing, focused and regular, practice would help built the new. Well, all it has done so far is mess up my karate practice. 

 

A week or two ago a friend posted a stairway on FB. Each step had a person with a different level of determination, or lack of, for a task. I was on step 3. I want to do it but… New habits are hard to form, I guess. I need to keep going one step up at a time — though my personality is more the kind to speed up the stairs, yet age related slowing makes me the tortoise in this race with myself.  

Another rant

 October 17, 2020

 

It’s a rare Saturday morning at home and I’m trying to re-discover the fine art of going nowhere. Because really there is nowhere to go. It’s an extremely hot day, with hazy air, but all the construction noise has quieted, I have eaten a yummy kimchi omelette, and I feel indulged.

 

I watched another debate about the withdrawal of the Tanishq ad. These debate shows are frustrating. The same stuff is bandied around and questions that could take the issues deeper are not asked. Though even just debating the issues to a depth on a tv show feels pointless in the current political climate when values are determined by mass trolling. But there were a couple of points made that went past without much unpacking that still linger for me. 

 

The first was about cancel culture. The point made was that liberals, along with the help of corporations, have been getting away too long with cancel culture. Their own bhasmasura (demon who had been granted the power to turn anyone he touched on the head to ashes) has now come back to haunt them as social media has allowed the masses to voice their opinions. His point being that at first only the liberals, a very small minority, had voices – has this really been the case? And now everyone does, and we finally hear the dissenting voices, those dissenting against the liberal viewpoints he meant. Of course, he didn’t say that this army of trolls has been deliberately created by think tanks and IT cells to support the ruling BJP. He didn’t say that the PM and HM follow these accounts. 

 

In any case, I didn’t understand what he was saying. Mainly because I don’t get how this ad supports cancel culture? I mean the ruling party does propagate communal hatred, but I don’t get how the ad was shaming that? Unfortunately nobody probed this, or maybe everyone understood his point?

 

And the second point in the debate was made by a man who said, if the ad had shown both sides then it would have been ok. The trolls wouldn’t have been upset then. At first, I didn’t get this either. What both sides? As he spoke further, I understood he meant communal tension was the other side that should have been shown. It is a reality in India and the world.

 

So really, are ads now supposed to show communal hatred? Are products to be sold through creating disharmony? Or am I totally missing what he meant?

 

But if all of us who talk about communal harmony have to also show the other side then shouldn’t those who talk about communal hatred show the other side too? Shouldn’t the BJP besides calling Muslims, infiltrators, illegal immigrants, terrorists etc. also call them peaceful, loyal citizens of India and more.

 

Though, this insistence on what else we liberals should protest is not new. Whenever we raise our voices about anything the ‘whataboutery’ starts. 

 

Of course, BJP followers — ones who normally post a fair bit about political issues — have remained silent on this, as they have on the absurd Ayodhya verdict, on the indignity of Hathras, lawlessness in UP, the mess of the economy. Instead they still post about Sushant Singh Rajput, about music or food, and other less significant things. Their silence on these issues helps the strong voices of the trollers in establishing a new India. 

Apologise for being secular.

 October 15, 2020

 

I feel like I am constantly working to contain anger. Unexpressed anger is exhausting, so I am tired all the time. I also wake with free floating anxiety and fear, disproportionate to what is actually going on in my life. I think I am hitting the ‘second wave’ of covid internally. It is about the uncertainty of things because of covid changes in the world and not knowing when it will end. When covid first came on the scene I felt unusually stressed and unable to work. Then I adjusted but I had placed a time stamp on it internally. I thought after 6 months things would be different or at least we would know more. But scientists still seem to be floundering and we don’t know how long we will be living under restrictions. 

 

The anger is about India and the goons running India. It is also about the people who support these goons. It is mostly about how both the goons and their supporters keep calling India a democracy. So much is going on in India but the same people who constantly posted about Sushant Singh Rajput, or comment on racism in the US, and Trump’s rightwing populism won’t speak about the atrocities at Hathras. The shutting down of democratic procedures and the disrespect of human life there. Yes, people have a right to talk and comment on whatever they choose, and they choose to be silent on these matters. It says something about the kind of person you are, who you choose to be, doesn’t it? 

 

The latest thing that is bugging me is the Tanishq jewelry ad and the saga around that. It was an ad about a pre-birth ceremony for a pregnant Hindu woman married into a Muslim household. There are many messages from that ad that I don’t particularly love but it is a sweet ad that promotes inter-religious mingling and celebration of adopting each other’s customs. Of course the rightwing goons had a problem with this ad. It was heavily trolled, employers of the company received threats, and the company decided to withdraw the ad. Even after it was withdrawn a goon went into a Tanishq shop in Gujarat and demanded an apology from the owner. He also demanded that the apology should go viral. The apology was for making a secular ad which hurt the sentiments of Hindus. Seculars have been called sickulars for quite a while now. The apology was also posted outside the shop. The police downplayed the threat saying that there was no physical threat just a request. BFS!

 

What can I say except Trolls and Goons are running my country. It is natural to assume all those not outraged by this are in collusion with it? Sure, if most of the people don’t want to remain secular, then say so. And stop calling India the largest democracy in the world. At least have the guts to admit that what they want is the Hindu Rashtra the goons they support are moving the country towards. The mirror image of Muslim countries they despise. 

 

One of the debate shows I watched had an adman who said that an ad reflects the values of the company. Beyond the product it also shows what the company stands for. The product was jewelry, what they stood for was communal harmony and celebrating diversity. 

 

On the show, one of those supporting the trolling and the withdrawal of the ad said, ‘Why is it that a Hindu woman is shown marrying a Muslim man. Why didn’t they show it the other way around? A Muslim girl in a Hindu household.' That statement needs a ton of unpacking, doesn’t it? But I’ll leave that for another post as I have to rush right now. 

 

When is it not I don’t know, but right now definitely, urgently, a time of pondering our values and what we stand for. 

Weekend online karate — a note

 October 5, 2020

 

I don’t know why but the online black belt gasshuku this weekend felt very special. It’s been a time where I’ve felt very tumultuous internally — agitated, vulnerable and strangely alone. Not my family relationships, but many others feel fragile. I think it’s because everyone has been churned by the pandemic, everybody has had changes to deal with, and is just finding their way around. In the midst of that the gasshuku felt familiar and rooting. 

On day one seeing Sensei Higaonna in his dojo, a solid place where I have felt the grounding energy of years of serious practice by seniors, was a moment that suddenly brought my scattered self, back into my body. And then the six hours of training, focused around kata, brought a quietness that has been gone for a while. 

 

This morning I woke tired as I had barely slept ten hours over the last two days. But I felt light and hopeful. I felt like if this exists in the world then the world will be ok. There are many things in the world that bring to it an ‘ok-ness’ when things feel like they are falling apart. I began writing in my journal and found myself musing about what kata means to me and though I have a growing list of things to be done I felt compelled to write this note. 

 

Karate, and especially kata, is one of the hardest things I’ve learnt in my life. I used to think music was, but kata was even harder. In a group lesson I was always the one facing in the wrong direction or stuck in the last position after the count to move to the next. Even those that had joined after me learnt the steps and passed me by. It was humiliating and many have sniggered at me or told me that perhaps karate was not the thing for me. I remember how I couldn’t master the last move in the first kata despite having been in the dojo for a month. In the first camp I attended in Lonavla, I was the most junior, despite my white hair, and also the slowest to learn anything. I remember Sensei Mistry pulling me up at dinnertime one evening and right there in the cafeteria trying to teach me that impossible last move. He almost succeeded. This state of being the last to learn the moves has continued on, and perhaps one of the reasons I love kata so much is because it is so challenging for me.

 

It to me it is an attempt to perfect the self via the body, and the movements of the body. It puts me in a state where I surrender my always active mind to something else. I bring the body into focus and let go of all there is in the mind. It is a state of lack of control while attempting to find perfect control. When I do a breath focused meditation something shifts in the mind and kata has a similar effect. I am definitely one of those that believe that kata contains inner self-defense structures and if practiced regularly these structures become imbedded in the very body, become a new dna. In that sense it changes the body and the entire self just like meditation changes the mind and the self. If I was a poet I would write an ode to kata today. Not sure why this weekend brought this sudden gush of love for kata. Perhaps the detail and attention with which the Senseis taught their sessions re-ignited my beginners passion.

 

When I attend any training or read an article, even if I learn one new thing, I feel the effort was worth it. This weekend it was a cascading waterfall of learning. New ideas, new possibilities of creating new training drills from kata bunkai seem graspable. The owl and the warrior feel satiated. 

Worst day of 2020

 October 1, 2020

 

I wish I was someone else today. Someone who could express what I feel in words. Like Pablo Neruda has done with --

 

‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

 

I can feel his loss, his grief, his pain. I want you to feel mine. I want you to feel the pain of the girl, the brother, the mother, those down-trodden and caste-away. I wish I could make you feel it. 

 

Yesterday send shock waves through me. 

 

Yesterday a low-caste girl who had been gang-raped by four upper-caste men two weeks ago was cremated, at night, by policemen of Uttar Pradesh without the consent, or presence, of her family. I watched her mother cry and beat her hands on the ground pleading for them to let the family keep the body and cremate it in the day as Hindu custom dictates. I watched her brother speak in a broken voice, ‘I don’t know if it was my sister. I don’t even know if there was a body.’ I watched a horde of policemen stand and prevent people from coming close to the cremation area. I watched them lie and say that the family had agreed, that someone from the family was present. I watched it again and again. I needed to feel it deeply. I cried. I am crying as I remember and write this.

 

The dark night... a pyre... policemen forming a cordon, yelling at the villagers who get close... the crying mother... an officer coldly refusing to answer a pleading voice asking why and on whose orders they were doing this... the brother who didn’t see his sister before her body was burnt... the district magistrate saying he had permission from the family... an official saying that the post-mortem showed no evidence of rape, or broken bones... the mother saying she was naked and there was blood on her vagina and her back was broken... another family member saying they were receiving death threats, we will go to jail but shoot one or two of you before we go...

 

The girl had been cutting grass in the fields when the four men, whom she later identified while on a hospital bed, grabbed and raped her, they broke her back and strangled her. Her tongue was found cut—from being caught in her teeth when they strangled her—and bleeding too. She lay in the general ward of a hospital while the family begged for treatment. She was later transferred to another hospital, but she died. 

 

Do you remember the film A TIME TO KILL? A 10-year-old African American girl was raped by two white men, strung up, used as target practice and then tossed into a ravine. Do you remember what it took to get justice? What threats were made, and violence perpetrated against the lawyers fighting the case? Do you remember what you felt? 

 

Same dynamic. Low-caste and female in Uttar Pradesh India, where 60,000 women are raped annually and horrible things are done to dalits. 

 

I know this, i do. Yet the scenes of the cover-up, the hasty cremation shattered me. Yes, the night was shattered, and lightning tore apart the sky. 

 

But that was not all that happened. In a 28-year-old case where a mosque had been destroyed after a prolonged campaign of hate, all the accused were acquitted. I had watched it on BBC in 1992. It was a pivotal moment in my life, in the life of my country. Before and after not the same. My head aches and I am too numb to express the shatter, the rage, the explosive waves of pain when I read the news of this verdict and saw the jubilation of the perpetrators, and the joy with which one of them spoke of taking on other mosques now. 

 

There was ample evidence, gathered by CBI, other recordings, a commission of inquiry – all insufficient to show the conspiracy. The ‘blatantest’ of blatant lies. But a country, 1.3 billion Indians, accepts and is happy—at least that’s what one of the accused said, ‘all of India is happy.’ Silent collusion. Brainwashed, blind, allowing injustice, feeling no shame. 

 

September 30, the worst day in 2020. So far. I do wish I could make you feel all that I feel.