A sipper for Father Stan!

 November 30, 2020

 

It is the last day of November and time to put nano behind. I think I have clocked in a mere 30,000 words and am still floundering with the story, so can’t call it a success. Yet I am satisfied. I wrote 20,000 words in the first two weeks which reassured me that I could still do it. And the writing provided further thought on the things haunting me and which I wanted to think and write about. 

 

Two or three of these things are the following — farmer protests in India, the Stan Swamy sipper and straw story, and the love-jihad bullshit. But not just these of course. The barely reported J and K elections, where BJP candidates roamed around campaigning, but the opposition was prevented from doing the same for security reasons, is also is on my mind but since it is barely reported about I find it hard to find news around it. 

 

I am interested in hearing the different voices around the issues that pre-occupy me. The sweeping scapes of the farmers moving and being stopped at borders like they were doing something illegal are surreal. The farmers seem clear enough about why the new laws are not in their favour. But they have been thwarted in their quest to negotiate them and in this last march to the capital they have been tear gassed, water cannoned, met with trenches and barbed wire, as well as offered a place to protest far from anywhere and which they see as an open jail. The Delhi Police did ask the Delhi government to allow Delhi stadiums to be used to jail the farmers so it makes sense that they would react this way to Amit Shah’s condition for talks. The BJP asks why it is only farmers of opposition states who are protesting? They have been incited by the opposition and they are possibly Khalistani’s, they say. They are blamed for blocking trains and national highways and inconveniencing citizens. They are patronized and treated as idiots who do not think for themselves. These same people who grow our food and due to whose efforts, the GDP is not more negative than it is. Meanwhile Mr Modi as if oblivious to all that is going on said, in his maan-ki-baat, that these reforms had opened opportunities for the farmers and met their long-pending demands. The protesting farmers I believe said, ‘Who asked for this, we didn’t?’ I won’t be surprised if soon some might be booked under UAPA, the BJP’s favourite weapon since 2018, and the narrative again made favourable for the BJP.

 

Which brings me to Stan Swamy. 83-year-old man with Parkinson’s who was booked under UAPA and jailed. His ‘trending’ story begins with him submitting an application for a straw and sipper, as he is unable to drink without these, on November 6^th. The NIA (National Investigation Agency) requested 20 days to reply to it. Now at the end of November the 473-word reply says that the NIA never confiscated the straw and sipper and this application is mischievous. It says it is the prison authorities who should be looking out for this and the NIA have nothing to do with it. It took them this long to say this, sigh. Inefficiency or just malice? But not new this attempt by National agencies to paint Maharashtra institutions in a bad light, is it? Still sore about not being in power there. And last I read about this story is that the sipper and straw have been provided. The BJP can now say you activists are naughty for spreading false stories. And further, activists should be ashamed for making noise about this, but not protesting the jailing and mistreatment of Arnab Goswami. Nothing new about being told whom and what to protest, right?

 

But I hope that really Stan Swamy has his straw and sipper and warm clothes. For in these Kafkaesque twists and turns it is impossible to know what the real story is now? And shouldn’t we all just keep very quiet till we know what it is? Familiar this is too. Flood the space with so many narratives that one is kept busy untangling the threads to find what could be the truth. Typical BJP SOP. A Singaporean friend suggested that we send the NIA a straw and sipper. I think it’s a fab idea. Shall we flood the NIA and the jail with them?

 

After writing this I am much too tired to write about love-jihad. The saffron face of Adityanath stirring this up keeps spooking me in odd moments though. That man is a menace to India. 

 

I am interested in the rise of the BJP, in its new face with the Modi-Shah couple, with the way it can spin narratives, and how Modi magic has mesmerized even intelligent people I know. How so many are willing to give up a secular and wide identity for a narrow Hindu nationalistic one. I think these will find their way into my story, set between 1970 and the present. I am reading a lot of papers on the BJP, and history of this time. It all is fascinating. I also read a book called the ‘Lucifer Effect’ which discusses how systems turn ordinary people into torturers and murderers. It starts with the Stanford Prison Experiment and talks about Nazi’s, Rwanda and other genocides and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. It is scary how quickly people can turn into their darkest possible identities when acted upon by system forces. I worry for India sometimes.

 

I have a plan for December. I have given myself permission to spend two weeks reading whatever I want to in all the spare time I have. Then I hope mid-December I might see more of the story I have begun to explore and start to write it again.

Nano progress - 3

 November 19, 2020

 

This morning I woke wanting a different kind of day from the one I was supposed to follow. Thursday is the one day of the week with nothing planned, the day when I can catch up on the nano word deficits — and that was indeed the plan. But as if to give me what I wanted, a different day, a few unexpected stresses cropped up this morning. A part of me gleefully declared that nobody could be blamed for being distracted or not writing with so much going on, and I gave myself up to addressing the problems that had cropped up. Besides these issues and dynamics were fodder for the book I convinced myself. 

 

Many hours later I feel drained and guilty. And not guilty too. I did need a break from relentless writing, with my red-tinged, burning eyes so close to my words that I couldn’t see the whole picture. And I do need to see it, particularly because though I have two stories I want to write I don’t know whether they fit together or whether I am forcing them together. Without looking up, looking away, seeing askance even, I couldn't know, could I? And being 25,000 words into the story I needed to before wasting more days or energy on the story.

 

An inner critic scoffs. Lazy, that’s what you are, it says. You don’t have the stamina to do the month of writing. Ya, ya, I’ve heard you say that you’ve done it before. But you don’t have it now, do you? You are a quitter.

 

And part of me hangs my head in shame. I am a quitter, it agrees.

 

I can tie my mind up in knots for hours debating both sides of this —

One needs distance to craft the story well.

Writing is more than mere spewing of words for days on end.

                                                                                                You are a quitter. 

                                                                                                You don’t have it anymore. 

— for I do believe both sides of this issue, but I need to choose. I need to do one thing and forever lose the chance to do the other. I can keep writing and risk having to throw almost all of it away, and lose ten more days of this month, days I can never get back, but if I do this I will prove that I still have the stamina to do it. Or I can examine what I have and decide its value, lose a writing day or two and not end up anywhere close to the 50,000 target.

 

25,000 words in I do need to decide if it is worth diving further in. And it is easier to just wake up and keep typing for days on end than to look at the work objectively and see its worth, or lack of. 

                                                                                                You are a quitter.

Nano is useful, nano is good. But I need to do my own version of nano.

                                                                                                You are a quitter.

I need to read some things too before continuing. I need some history and I need some group psychology. I need to read Shakespeare and learn about demagogues.

                                                                                                 Mere excuses to quit.

 

I was telling a friend yesterday about this. Being an artist he agreed that I needed to step out and see things. He also said to stay with the stories and not give up on fitting the two together. That some part of me knew they did fit, and it would be hard work to make them fit effortlessly but subtly. 

 

It is 3:22 pm. I haven’t done any writing on 'unnamed'. I have solved some problems, drunk cups of tea and eaten a cookie or two. But my head hurts — like it is overloaded. I know that whatever else I am doing, I am also thinking of the two stories and the amount of research and reading I might need to do to continue writing and blending them smoothly. It’s not what I know how to do yet. 

Gym break overdue. 

 

nano progess — 2

 November 12, 2020

 

I’ve missed the blog. I still don’t understand the purpose of writing here, but it holds something in me steady when I feel adrift. I’m glad I found it in the initial days of the pandemic where it helped me examine the degree of ‘un-normalness’ I felt, which in turn helped me live the best I could with it.

 

 I’ve been sprint writing for nano on weekdays, but I am already 4500 words behind. I am questioning my commitment to continuing. The first week was perfect. I managed 11,600 of my 12,500 goal. It was heady to rediscover, after the too long dry spell, that I could sit at a desk and the words would appear on the page. The week one sprint served its purpose to get back into the flow of writing and also have a story arc magically reveal itself. Characters were added from the initial central three to five more friends and I realised that one of the threads I wanted to explore was friendship. But once the story arc was there, I felt a need to step back, to examine the parts and see what really wanted to be said. I started asking myself if quantity was the goal or quality. That wasn’t it better now to try to shape up some scenes and locations and dig deeper into the feeling life of the characters and the world they lived in. I wondered if just trying to get the words out would fulfil those things. 

 

I suppose with those questions in mind week 2 has been slower. I’ve started a new file to explore feeling states and my own enduring friendships. I found that there were two friendships that I have stayed connected to, or re-connected to after a break, no matter where in the world I or the others were. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the first time I met both was in a dream group. I say not surprisingly because most of us in the dream group were there to seriously understand ourselves, to dig and drill and find the essence of us. Most of us were willing to sit in that fish bowl with mirrors on all sides and accept all facets of ourselves. Remembering the details of how I met them brought a smile and a feeling of warmth, and I called the one I had not been in contact with for a while, immediately. I found her in a state of lostness for someone in her family, an elderly and so high risk person, had been diagnosed with covid. It was good to be with her in that moment of vulnerability. This friendship had grown through the most painful and vulnerable part of both our lives. 

 

The other I maintain a regular email connection with. She is someone who I became friends with because of working together on a shared passion, that of trying to create a world that accepts all its diversity, but the personal connection only grew because of the need of seeing ‘the other’ within ourselves. One of the criteria of an enduring friendship definitely is this desire to have friends who will show me the parts of me I cannot see, and in turn have a need to see those parts in themselves. Another is to take whatever the friendship throws up and be curious about what it is saying about ourselves. 

 

Exploring these connections may be a distraction or may be a necessary part of understanding the book that wants to be written. Meanwhile another distraction also appeared. A friend told me about Velaquez’s painting Las Meninas. I looked at the painting and I couldn’t stop looking, It's a painting that still mystifies, which many have written about. I googled and read some of what has been written but it was not enough to explain the feelings and questions it evoked in me. I still am exploring those, but the feeling, the desire to create something like this painting pulls me into facing my deepest fears that I am not adequate. 

 

I may indeed be inadequate. I may indeed fail, but giving up on trying is not an option. 

Nano progress — 1

 November 4, 2020

 

So, I began nano without really knowing too much about my story or having a plan. I saw on some writing groups I am in, how writers plan for nano. They have their characters fleshed out and have an outline of what they will write daily. Chapter plans etc. all ready. I had none. Not even a beginning, a story arc, POV — I only knew the story would feature these two women. I also knew I couldn’t write on weekends so would have to write 2,500 words a day during the week to finish the 50,000 words. 

 

I started a new word file on Monday morning and named it unnamed. I took a leap of faith and began typing. I wrote 700 words that must have come from somewhere in the unconscious where this story had been brewing. The POV was first person. Day 1, day 2 and day 3 are now done. I have 7,500 words. I have a vague story arc and know vaguely the emotions that will govern certain parts of the story. The first 700 words showed that the narrator has a difficult decision to make but I don’t yet know what she will do. 

 

It is magical though how more characters emerged that I hadn’t thought about at all. School friends, with entangled relationships that go through closeness and distance. I guess besides the main themes of money and power, I am writing about friendship.

 

Sometimes I feel despite having lived 60 years on this earth I don’t really know much about friendships. Where do we learn about them? In school, through books we read, or films we see, or living through authentic friendships or unpleasant ones too? I don’t know why but there are still so many questions about what makes a friendship good or bad or a friendship at all. Does one have rules about how to negotiate friendships or does one use their instincts and their pulls towards people? How does one negotiate those edges of getting closer, revealing more, trusting? How does one talk about those times when one feels let down, betrayed, forgotten? I tend to plunge in and then use my instincts. I try to express the range of feelings I have about the friendship in a meta way, but I have been wrong at times about whom to trust and not been able to express some feelings at times when I fear that the friendship, or perhaps the person, is not strong enough to take it. 

 

I am also laughing at myself right now, that once I finished my 2500 words for the day, to take a break from the writing, I decided to write a blog post. Really funny, isn’t it? I used to watch these films about students at Dance Academies. I guess I love watching movement and rhythm. I always wondered why their way of relaxing after a grueling day of dance was going to a bar and dancing some more or taking a class of a more contemporary or ‘looser’ form of dancing. Now I am doing something similar. 

 

But I will read a bit now — a war novel that I am halfway through — and then take myself to the gym. The US election coverage is open on one of my tabs. I want to write a short note weekly about my progress at nano. I don’t know if I will be able to keep up this word flow or I will finish the month. But right now it feels like grace acting in my life that I have this opportunity to just write for a month. Lucky I do feel.