Ready to let go

 December 24, 2020

 

It’s a strange kind of morning. Dark and cloudy but still. The last few mornings, winds have banged doors shut and blown in all kinds of stuff into the apartment. I have found unpleasant bits I’d rather keep outside on the living room floor. But the breeze has felt good to my body and head. Like it is blowing through and clearing, sloughing, shaking free deeply lodged toxins. So I have kept the windows wide open.

 

I woke this morning and felt in my body that slight lightness that I have become aware of over this week. My efforts to map the year have shifted something. I drank tea and lowered myself into the lightness. It felt like sinking into a warm bubbly bath of hope and confidence. I got out a sheet of paper and drew a month wise map of this year.

 

January had begun with JNU violence. I travelled to India. It was a hectic and abundant whirlwind of work, friends and training. Then back here in February I felt myself really settling into the year. Clearing a 1000 emails related to financial stuff, that my sister had let build-up, was the focus of the month. Meanwhile Delhi elections with all the hate speech — Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma, Adityanath, Shah, Modi — unfolded against the hope of Shaheen Baug and of the student protests. March I finished, completely finished, Boiling Frogs and sent out a few queries. Back in Delhi violence had broken out and the bias nature of the Delhi Police’s investigations and arrests shock-numbed me. The Madhya Pradesh Govt toppled. Yes, the first three months were busy, profuse, intense. 

 

The next three months were a sudden drop into the emptiness of a deep chasm. I followed the stories of the migrants walking in India. I didn’t hear back from anyone about my query. I wrote one story that got published but mostly I couldn’t read or write, and like the protagonist of the one story I wrote I paced my apartment while I offered up my study to the spouse who worked from home. A month later he insisted I take it back but I still couldn’t do any meaningful work. Drawing and online karate and self-training sustained me through this churning time. 

 

Over the next quarter I did taxes for me, my sis, mum and daughter. I tried and failed to sort out financial stuff, got deeply depressed and didn’t know how to pull out of it. A friend asked me if I was suicidal. The first rumblings against the Farmers Bill were voiced. We trained outdoors and then finally in small groups in the dojo. Online gasshukus were offered. I still couldn’t read or write (though I found this blog and began writing here), and the net around me felt tighter, the fog thicker and heavier and utterly hopeless.

 

Efforts to throw off the fog in the last quarter of 2020 led to moments of seeing. Tata Lit Fest and before that Singapore Writers Fest, probably inspired me to commit and sort of do nano. I began reading again. The last online Gassuku with Sensei Nakamura at the odd hour of 3-6 am felt impossible but I knew my passion for learning anew. I did two tonglen meditations for my sister who’s had a difficult year caring for my mum by herself. She had developed severe body symptoms because of the stress and I was worried. Whenever I have done tonglens for someone specific I have felt in my body the most severe body symptoms the person was experiencing while the person had felt the same easing. I got quite sick but she got better. The farmers poured to the borders of Delhi and that astonishing sight completely lifted me out of myself.

 

The year was more than a leaden wasteland with few bubbles of energy. I feel the shape of it, and I could still look for and find the details of it. But I am now done with going back and digging at it to mine the gems of meaning. I did a meditation this morning where I drew into myself the healing earth and ‘heaven’ energies. I visualised them dissolving the toxins within me. I feel poised to take that leap into the dark — despite the vaccine the year feels uncertain and unplannable — of 2021. E.L. Doctorow said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' There are patches of life too which can only be navigated this way.

Wasteland

 December 15, 2020

 

I’ve been trying to find the shape, the image, the form of my 2020. Wasteland is what comes to mind. But for a while I haven’t been able to describe it further. I’ve had years that felt like wastelands before too – a nuclear wasteland, a war torn wasteland, an environmental disaster, or even simply an arid desert. None of these describe this year. All of them have more character, dynamism and potential than this year has been. 

 

So today, I began drawing the wasteland— a semi-urban area, small badly maintained buildings, litter strewn around, no people, rocky ground with a very thin layer of top soil. I drew a frame around it and within a stick figure going in circles, figures of eight, straight lines, zig-zags. Sometimes ambling, sometimes running — but confined within it, unable to leave the picture. 

 

Yes, this is the image of this year for me. And yes, I haven’t been able to leave the frame or grow anything, or put down roots of any kind because of the hard ground. It has been barren and devoid of hopes, of life. 

 

The picture reminded me of my Saturday morning walk to our terrace dojo at the Waterloo Centre. I get off at the SMU bus-stop, I cross the pristine lawn where a smattering of early risers are doing Tai-chi or stretching and doing light exercises, sometimes a little girl is holding her parents hands and taking gleeful steps, someone is jogging, or people are just sitting around chatting. I cross Bras Basah street and the walk on Waterloo street is different. Not many people, small lost-seeming buildings, messy sidewalks, and the centre itself needing maintenance (which I think it is getting). Our space, with stained dusty tiles, at first makes me sigh and say, ‘anywhere but here.’ Then we start training and around me/us I feel a bubble of strong, happy joy that lifts me above the wasteland.

 

In the wasteland of this year karate has been the only bubble of clean sanity, of hope and renewal. Strangely covid has not taken karate away, but instead made online trainings with senior Sensei’s available. Trainings that rejuvenate, inspire and make happy the dull, everyday-ness of this year. Something to look back on with pleasure. 

 

Thinking further I see the external and internal factors that kept me within the frame. I see that I need more than a bubble that bursts, once I finish training, and drops me back into that frame, to keep going. I need to find ways to expand the frame, to leave it, and perhaps to grow something even on rocky ground. 

 

The year hasn’t been an hibernation. A hibernation for me implies a time of rest and integration with new life after. This year has been devoid of that feeling. It has been a meaningless wandering through the same landscape, fighting fires repeatedly. It has been these constant fires also that have prevented still contemplation and growth. I’ve got into the habit of waking, and first fighting fires, making sure they are out for the moment, before trying to do the work my body and soul call. But the fires exhaust me and all I want to do after is rest. Maybe the wiser strategy would be to let the fires burn and do the work first. 

Tempest at the end of 2020

 December 11, 2020

Things happened since Monday that made me lose my peace. I felt the structures I had carefully built through November fly apart, while I tried desperately to hold them together — unsuccessfully. It got worse on Wednesday after an unfortunate interaction with the spouse and then an inner darkness broke loose. I tried to not externalize it but by Thursday I felt I just wanted to claw my head and my gut apart and release that pressure that was threatening to detonate a bomb within. I couldn’t bear that feeling.

It got worse as the day proceeded and even a stint on the treadmill did nothing to calm me. I did explode at the spouse for something that perhaps needed challenging, though not in the way I had done. I forced myself to go collect my blood report and see the doctor. I even bought the inks and notebooks I had planned to do, but without any joy. Later at home, I refrained from opening that gorgeous Malbec as I was worried that if I opened it, I might drink it all, but I did binge watch Netflix till midnight. I filled my waterman with one of my new inks and I immediately hated the colour, regretted the purchase, and wanted to fling the bottle at the wall. It took all of my remaining control to refrain from doing that. 

 I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I wanted someone to make it better and was angry that nobody could.

 I fell asleep and woke feeling drained, exhausted, limp and peeled raw.

 But I could finally identify the process I was going through. Loss and grief. Specifically a 9-stage grief process —

• Hope —Tormented Hope.
• Anxiety —Anguished Apprehension.
• Depression —Angst-Ridden Sadness.
• Denial —Confused Rejection.
• Pain and Guilt —Agonizing Self-Blame.
• Anger and Bargaining —Bitter Resentment.
• Acceptance —Practical Relief.
• Depression —Second Round of Sadness.
• Reverie and Revival — Renaissance.

—  And I had woken this morning to acceptance. Also the grey ink wasn't as terrible as it had been last night.

 I was/am grieving many things but mostly I realise the loss of 2020. As I slipped into December I felt an urgency to make the year feel meaningful. To end it with having something concrete to show for the year which had disrupted every hope and plan I  — and many or most of us — had made for it. For me that last hope took the shape of a draft of the book I had begun working on in November, but which had stalled completely. 

 This year has been hard. Harder for many others than it has been for me. I have been listening to others talk about the difficulties about this year — from getting medical appointments for what would be emergencies at any other time (yet not in these covid times — someone told me that they were only getting an appt to fix a broken molar in march), to losing work as free lancers and worrying about survival. 

 I don’t know how many times I had hoped that covid would magically ebb, that the virus would have had enough of us and leave, and we could all emerge from devastation. I also remember the times I felt overwhelming anxiety that it would never be done with us. I saw many who managed to negotiate this time so much better than I did and I felt bitter resentment. I blamed myself and others for my failures. And I bounced between these stages not even realising that I was until they amplified themselves over the last two days and broke to something akin to relief this morning. Relief of recognition perhaps? 

 I also saw that the book I tried to work on in November — the story of a twin who loses her brother — is my attempt at working out some of the loss I feel about losing mine, not to death but to a painful separation. I am stuck in the state of denial and numbness around that. I can’t write that book till I try to work through the processes of grief around this or perhaps allow myself to use the book to feel them fully. 

 I don’t know how the next weeks will unfold. I know I have been through a tempest that tore apart some veil within that clouded my ability to know. I still feel the other states — anger, shame, anxiety, depression — along my edges, though I am at a temporary state of relief. I hope the knowing of what is going on will help me be gentle with myself at this year-end. 

 I don’t know if others are feeling such states and would love to hear how your year has been. 

Farmers Bandh December 2020

 December 8, 2020

 

I’m watching the farmer’s bandh during work breaks. I feel a swell of pride at how well organised the farmers are. I feel proud at the peaceful nature of their protest despite provocation of water canons, tear gas, barbed wire, and being demonized by right wing media. Today too though they have stopped all traffic, ambulances and health services are let through smoothly. I also feel waves of fear when I see the unfolding story.

 

Supporters of the Modi government have been saying that the farmers are being misled by political opposition, but when I hear the farmer unions speak, they seem clear about the laws and how they are likely to affect them. They have been called rigid by supporters of Modi. The government is now saying they will amend the laws, but the farmers want them repealed, then hold new talks where the farmers can provide inputs. The farmers initially were happy to have them amended, some securities added etc. That was months ago. But they were ignored till they began marching to the capital. Now they are angry and want nothing less. 

 

The ruling BJP launched a counter-attack against the opposition (and the bandh) yesterday, accusing them of engineering the protests for political gains. The famers have categorically denied this. They refuse to let any parties speak on their platforms. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Congress, when it was in power, was in favour of privatising the agriculture sector but was now opposing the move to score brownie points with farmers - who represent a hugely powerful voting group. This may be true. Political parties switch sides. Old BJP stalwarts like Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley said the same things, when they were the opposition, that the opposition is saying now. But if the congress had already proposed these reforms then they aren’t as revolutionary as the BJP have been claiming, are they? Also farmers did not protest then but they are now. This is the issue that needs to be dealt with instead of bringing up history.

There are interesting stats about how many laws have been sent to parliamentary committees in the last several parliamentary sessions. These committees give parliament and public to give their opinions about proposed laws etc. The number of bills sent to these in 2014-2019 were 25% - down from about 80% in the previous session. The number sent to committees in the present session is zero. In a democracy this is shocking.

The government is stalling. They haven’t really proposed any amendments. Meanwhile they are trying to divide the protestors and defuse this protest. The Haryana famers have caved. A law student has filed a PIL to remove the farmers from the borders and send them to the place the govt had offered them. A place far from anywhere where their presence will become invisible and one that they feel will be an open jail. I don’t know what will happen. I really hope the farmers can stand together and get what they deserve. 

 It is also scary to see so many of them together during these covid times. There are old people, women and children also there. It is wrenching to see the children studying while sitting-in at the borders of Delhi. I pray for their health. 

 

The PM hasn’t spoken to them though they have been camped out in the cold for 13 days. He has made appearances on TV and claimed they are misguided and have nothing to fear. He will be laying the foundation stone for the new parliament building on the 10^th. He has time to do this. There are pleas in the supreme court that oppose the building of this Central Vista. Despite these pleas which haven’t been ruled on the center wants to lay the stones. And unbelievably so, to me, the court has allowed this move. 

 

I am hearing a story that the CM of Delhi has been placed on house arrest and MLA’s going to meet him have been beaten up. The police have denied it. I want to stay here and watch this day unfold. I want to know what is going on. My mind and spirit are there but I have to take my body to a meeting. I feel a lot about this and wanted to write despite having just a bit of time.