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.