Goodbye 2021

Dec 31, 2021

Two nights ago I had this dream…

I was in a car, sitting in the front seat. We were on a very narrow road, both sides of which was water. The road and the water stretched endlessly. The driver was sitting tensed at the wheel. One wobble, one wheel going off, and we would be in the water. I worried that we wouldn’t be able to push the car back up. My spouse in the back was sleeping peacefully.

 

I have been living this dream over the last two or three weeks. Finishing up the revision of Boiling Frogs. I had said in a post some weeks ago that I’d allow myself till CNY to finish but I decided to chase a finish in 2021. I’ve kept my head in my laptop, afraid that any looking up, any indulgence in anything else would miss the goal. I’d fall in, or out, or off, and never finish. 

 

It’s been tense, tiring, and I’ve stretched myself and then stretched again. I’ve startled awake in the middle of the night thinking of the chapter I’ve been working on, wondering what the characters are feeling or doing. I’ve had to breathe, tell myself that I needed to sleep, and I could go back to them in the morning. I’ve had to follow the in breath and out breath, again and again, till I fell asleep.

 

And my spouse, who has been forced to take days off due to company policy, has  provided the calm, and the nutrition, I needed to keep going. He’s cleaned, cooked, and laundered, (and slept too) so I could keep looking at the road.

 

On this last day of 2021 (which so many of us are happy to kick in the butt) I have finished the revision. 

 

I don’t know when the stretched me will unwind, relax, and be able to feel normal. The next week is one to faff, and get that haircut, do the blood test, check in with the eye doc, read a book a day, laze in cafes, and reflect. Also look up and take in the news from India. I have peeked at it, but I couldn’t really look away from the road ahead and risk falling into the water, vaster than any ocean I know. 

 

And finally my waking and sleeping dreams have revealed the images or energies of the last two years. 

 

2020 began with me having a ton of plans, blueprints. I put in foundations and even built a bit overground, in the first months, but then covid halted the construction. I waited — alert, ready to re-start, sure that I would be able to — blueprints and tools in hand. 

 

I don’t know when I dropped them. And began that descent into lethargy, apathy, hopelessness. Not seeing family added to it.

 

Then in 2021, vegetation grew over what I had built. The construction decayed and became an overgrown ruin. 

 

Until sometime in June or July when something snapped. The 27-day blog challenge was a few steps, maybe even a floor, upwards from the deepest, darkest dungeons I had sunk into. That construction I had begun in 2020 still couldn’t be restarted but I couldn’t stop creating either. Then challenging August was filled with ill health.

 

Nevertheless, in the last four months of the year the shift towards rigour, strength, and perseverance, towards reclaiming those lost bits of me, continued. Almost near the goal yesterday I panicked because I couldn't get one chapter, the second in the book, right. I reached out to writer friends for feedback. 

Oh and I had a training goal too, which I completed. But too tired to elaborate now.

It has been a self-absorbed time and I hope to emerge now. 

 

Goodbye 2021. 2022 is uncertain — for all of us. But in this transition between the two there is a reset. 

 

Happy New Year to everyone. May all your dreams manifest in 2022. May all beings find peace.

 

Revision Blues and Other Miscellanea

December 15, 2021

My eyes and head are heavy after four hours of revising, especially since I feel dissatisfied with the work. Yesterday I did more in just three hours and felt accomplished and hopeful after. Today I came upon some rough chapters that need more re-structuring and the work slackened. I feel despondent. 

 

But that is not the worst of it. The worst is that the book sounds worst and worst every time I read it. I have no objectivity about it. I am sitting here on the black futon in my writing room and trying to think of the nice things people who read the book said about it. But all that comes up in my mind is—what makes you think you know how to write a novel, revise a novel, or even know if a novel, any novel, is any good?

 

Hmm...

 

Last week I had crept away one afternoon and sat two hours in the library café. It was raining outside, and the light was grey and soft. There was a bunch of men chatting loudly at one end of the café but the tables in the cafe are spread over a large area and I found one at the other end of the high-ceilinged room. It was quiet and slow, and my mind began self-loosening some of the shackles that I keep it in, so it doesn’t wander helter-skelter all day. One of the things I began thinking of was how the pandemic had diluted the intensity or even taken away my passions, but amplified my obsessions. Passions release happy energy; obsessions just make me miserable. I cannot remember ever feeling before 2020 the listlessness I had felt for most of the year. Later in the week a friend I had brunch with asked me how I survived the depression I had sunk into in 2020. Luckily one passion survived through and kept me afloat. I mean karate ofcourse.

 

I have been trying to explore the energies of this year. In many ways it was worse than 2021 as since the beginning of the year, until at least September, my health issues and stress levels were astronomical. The year began with plodding, sinking, awareness-blinding energies. But that 27-day blog challenge I set myself in the middle of the year changed my relationship to them. I see today that when I lose my words, I also lose my ability to hope. I don’t know how I can remember this in the future during times I feel lonely and despairing.  

 

I had wanted down time during the last two weeks of the year. Chatting with or emailing friends, sitting in the library café and journaling about the year, training but slowing down a bit there too, and most of all organizing my bits and books. It all feels a huge clutter right now, a clutter that keeps me awake at nights as I haven’t yet resolved the tension between my inner minimalist and my materialist. The minimalist energy is rising strongly — perhaps an effect of the pandemic where so many of us realized how little we need to live well. 

 

I remember that in August too I had wished for a month with a lot of time to slow down. It hadn’t been so. It was filled with doctor visits, tests and exhaustion The end of the year is similarly chaotic and the exhaustion is colossal, but something has shifted. I can’t fully identity the subtle change in energy. Not light and hopeful yet. Still a lot of swirling fear and uncertainty. But pockets, occasional small pockets, where the mind finds rest. 

 

It began raining as I wrote. The wind blows, the doors bang. Time to switch to my other passion, the one that carried me through the pandemic.

 

 

Not Procrastination

December 6, 2021

 

Do you ever feel like you need to study all the materials available on something and only then sit down and do it? Like at times, I’d love a manual on life to read, and then after I finish it I could live my life. 

No, that’s silly. Any manual on life would be so complex with ifs, and buts, and ands, that it would take all the moments from birth to death to read it, leaving no time at all to live it. But sometimes I have felt, and have heard other writers ask, do you ever feel like you need to read all the craft books on writing for a while, and only then start the writing? I guess we ask this because it is often hard to make that mind transition from reading about new skills to writing new raw material. And writers have to create their own raw material, their zero-eth draft. Perhaps not all writers feel it, but some of us do.

 

I haven’t begun reading my draft yet. I felt frustrated all weekend because I was blocked about reading it. This morning I remembered something I had written a few months ago when I was stuck while trying to start my re-write. I had said that maybe I can’t do it because there are things I need to learn yet. 

 

That was an Archimedes in the bathtub moment for me. I had the glimmering of  this on Saturday morning post karate. Often, I take a bus to the library after training. I return books, browse through the stacks, and sit at the back and read poetry or bits of memoir. On Saturday I pulled two craft books, that someone had recommended, off the shelves and sunk into one of the soft black armchairs. I looked at the sections on revision. They both had tips which felt useful so, despite already having an overwhelm of books to read, I borrowed them.

 

One I placed on my bedside table and this morning I opened it to the chapter on revision. Of course, like all revision advise this one too talked about character. This one too had the familiar questions—

What does this character want and to what lengths will she go to get it?
What obstacles stand in the way and what is at stake if the protagonist fails?

How will the protagonist change in the pursuit of this desire?

 

And no matter how many times I revisit these questions for my three MC’s, I discover new things about them. Today I decided to ask myself these questions.

 

There are many things I want but if this was a novel and not life, I would only focus on one or two of them while developing the plot. Getting my book ready to send out to agents and supporting my karate students for their dan gradings, are the top two things I want. Interesting things emerged when I answered the second part of the question—what lengths would I go? I recognized that both require such differing inner energies that I might not be able to pursue both and complete them in the time I want. And though what I most badly want is the first, I would slow down on it to finish the second. 

 

I found that the main obstacle was wanting both equally and juggling constantly to fit them both in. In the process I dropped too many other things and was constantly anxious and unhappy. What is at stake is the sense of self-doubt, identity, and so many other questions about life path that are bound to emerge if I failed the tasks. In a novel I might experience several mini failures but would most likely accomplish the final task(s), but in real life that is uncertain. Yet fail or not I have to go on. And failing in the second is not an option.

 

The change that will happen in the pursuit of these is something I don’t want to think about. I would if I was writing about my characters, but when it is me, my life, I can only stay open to what changes come and try to flow with them rather than imagine them in advance. 

 

Knowing this helps. I have a plan, sort of, with priority one and priority two now. And reading those chapters on revision is not procrastination but having something to focus on while reading my manuscript. And writing this blog is not procrastination either but a step towards sorting the clutter. 

But an extra day every week or two, to sleep and to finish the tasks that never get ticked off my lists would be great right now. 

Extending my Year

December 2, 2021

I’m doing some committed procrastination today. There are things, maybe just one or two, that I need to do today, but since last month I’ve been wanting to ‘review’ the year. It’s something I often do at the end of each year and sometimes blog about it. Reading through those year-end posts is useful. 

 

I mean, I don’t know how many of you remember your ‘years’? Or even the earlier months of the current year? I don’t—and those posts have been a snapshot capturing the major energies of that year. 

 

This year I felt an urgency to review the year, and find something ‘useful’ in it, since November. I feel like l’ve drifted 2021 away and I needed to find solid markers that would  allow me to map it.

 

One of the things I need to do today is self-training and prep for my karate class tomorrow. The self-training often provides a blue-print for the lesson. I also need to start reading my re-drafted novel so I can start the revision. Will it be the last one? Maybe, as I have versions of it all over my laptop, and in clipped piles of paper on the bookshelf in my writing room. I want to expunge them all. 

 

Instead, I am doing other things. Like looking at my journals from the beginning of this year to see where I was at then. The days before I began that 27-day blog challenge in June seem erased. I also am looking for my journals from end 2013, when Sensei Pete left Singapore. I want to remember those first days in this journey of teaching. I want to drink tea, stare, reflect, assimilate. 

 

I took a quiz earlier. Are you a plotter or a panster? A plotter plots out the entire book before writing. A panster wings it daily, often having to delete large sections of work. I already know I am a panster. I would bore myself if I plotted things tightly. The quiz had questions about how organized one is on holiday or when going to a new place. I’ve changed. I used to have a solid itinerary for each holiday but in the last trips I’ve taken I’ve planned the next day only at dinner on the previous one. I discovered I am at the extreme end on the panster side of the scale. I used to love ‘pansting’ my karate but the pandemic rules forced more planning. Which am I then?

 

This made me want to organize some notebooks and I was shocked to find that since the pandemic began my notebooks have moved into chaos. I used to have a journal and two other notebooks, one for the novel(s) I was writing and the other for classes I took or craft books I read. They were organized chronologically, as in I finished one and started the next. Also, by color, size and type. Now there is no order. Several notebooks with similar content and overlapping time periods exist. Also, the black ones are now sometimes journals, and beige ones contain notes for other things, and I have them in different sizes than I used to. The urge is to ‘stop’ my world till I finish making sense of the notebooks, or alternately shred them all. I am that frustrated for that clueless about dealing with the disorder. 

 

I am desperately frightened to start reading this draft of my novel. What if it is crap? I had a goal of finishing the revision before the end of this year, but each time I pick up the papers to read I get a temple crushing headache that makes my sinuses ache. I need to explore this resistance, so I’ve decided to extend my finish date to CNY instead of the Gregorian new year. Gives me an extra month.

 

Meanwhile the spouse was home today, and we spontaneously began remembering scenes from my fantasy novel. I also remembered the first weeks of karate after Sensei left Singapore.

 

I might be wrong, but it feels like these two journeys may converge in some way over the next months, particularly if I pay attention to signals. I feel like I am discovering some lessons in both, that might help me reach another space, level, understanding with them. 

 

May it be true. 

Never ending 2021

December 1, 2021

 

I had a conversation last week with one of my karate students—and how I hesitate to call him my student, mostly because I still grapple with imposter syndrome when I think of myself as a karate teacher—oops that sentence got away with me. But ya, that conversation made me feel like writing more, and more honestly, about my experiences as a karate teacher. 

 

After our Saturday morning class some of us had gathered at a café, called The Refinery, just opposite our gym. We like getting a coffee/tea/snack post class when covid rules permit. We were seated at the longest wooden table, centrally placed, in the café. Potted plants separated us into two groups of four (only five allowed per group and we were eight that day). I was sitting next to one of our yellow belts, a quiet man who had taken his time to become more vocal in the group. I asked him, Will you continue karate after you get your shodan?

 

The question came from another conversation with some other students where we were talking about karatekas who had passed through the dojo. I had said to them, some leave in the first year and those who get to yellow normally continue until they get their black. But that is the goal that some aim for and these leave when they have achieved it. Only a small percentage—some say it is as small as 2% of those who enter the dojo—continue further. 

 

The student I’d asked the question to turned his head and looked directly at me. He waited, then said, You had said it’s a way of life. 

 

I do sometimes say a line or two about the ways in which karate is a way of life, but most times I think nobody is listening. I think when I ramble about it many just want to get on with the training. Yet on the off chance that some do hear and reflect further I bring it up anyway. 

 

That’s all the yellow belt said. As if my question was silly. Then he added, kata is important. His answer was a surprise, a delight, a door into more questions. Just that morning I had asked the class what they liked about training. The Saturday class is about 70% white and yellow belts, and most of the juniors, particularly the women, had said partner work. I know women enjoy partner work as it allows them, for some for the first time, to connect to the power of their bodies in relationship to another. I’ve had one woman tell me after her first class, that the men who partnered her were so strong that training with them forced her to really feel her own physical strength. 

 

All that internal grappling with—I should quit teaching... I cannot be a karate teacher... but I bring something to them... something non-verbal that some come seeking... but that’s not enough... many just want to learn self-defence... and tests measure other abilities not this esoteric stuff... so step down and let someone else teach—silenced for a while. It is true that the training needs to prepare students for tests but unlike school I hope that is not the only goal. It is true that it is about self-defense too, but I hope it does more than prepare one for bar brawls or sudden street attacks. I hope that training is about that something more in life, in each person’s individual life, that we probably begin searching for the moment we are born. 

 

I think I want to write about ‘this’ and about the those who continue training as a lifelong process. Not sure what ‘this’ is exactly yet, but it’s time to explore. 

 

My writing, the novel I mean, has reached another branch. I finished re-writing a lot of the book that needed complete reworking. There are more chapters that now need to be changed but I had thought they could be re-worked in a week or two and I’d have a new draft which I could polish into a final product in the first month of next year. But now I feel there is something that needs a re-look. Not sure what, but I need to explore. 

 

That’s where I am today. On the first day of the last month of 2021 when I thought, I hoped, to be winding down, finishing up some things, I feel like I am just beginning. That thought is tiring. The part of me that is dying to package up something, to feel that sense of completion about at least one thing, is frustrated. 

 

2021 the year that refuses to wind down. Now with omicron emerging it feels like the beginning of another old-new phase of covid. May we move from extreme uncertainty to only mild next year. We need some space to process this never-ending covid trauma.

Out Bad Habits

November 22, 2021

 I started following blog post on November 17…

I’m trying to change bad pandemic habits. One of the worst ones is lolling around in my pj’s until 4 pm, then training and showering. 

I wrote two lines and gave up. I had no energy to explore anything in a post. My mind felt tired and incoherent and journaling was preferable.

 

I’ve been busy, and my writing time, but even more my reading time, has expanded, and time binging ‘netflix’ reduced. But my mind has been constantly tired. It is perhaps this needing to change bad habits and the resistance by the habits to the desired changes that has been one of the reasons. 

 

I’m writing about the habits as if they are interlopers, outsiders, not me, but for a while they completely took over my body and mind. They were me, my life and I sunk, slipped, lulled, nested, into them through the pandemic. Until one day I woke so sick of them and who I had become that I needed to oust them immediately. By then of course they were comfortable occupiers of my inner home, squatters who did not care for it but were hard to dislodge. The daily struggle to topple them, I felt in my body as a deep lethargy, gastric troubles and difficulty sleeping. Now some days I train in the morning, shower, and put on decent clothes even if I am working at home. Today though it is past noon and I’m still in my pj’s. Not yet successful, this war on bad habits. 

 

I’ve been working on Boiling Frogs slowly, too slowly. Most days, and today more than ever, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. But some days I’ve made it to a chapter, and I’ve got a glimpse of what needs to happen, and for a few hours I’ve been happily immersed in the world of my novel. 

 

Today though I feel more panicky than ever. I’ve been watching writers talk about their books and processes both on the Singapore Writers Fest and then at Tata Lit Fest, and I’ve been feeling, Stop, you don’t have a clue, do you?

 

Today I’m feeling, I can’t do this. I can’t do it alone, I haven’t a clue.

 

So, I think I need to pull out of the chapters and spend some time with the bigger picture? Maybe, perhaps, who knows?

 

One of the things about listening to some of the writers is the reassuring sense that they too had long moments of feeling, I don’t have a clue. 

 

But today I really, really feel like I can’t or don’t want to work on this alone. Yet a writer’s work is solitary. Yes, there are editors and book coaches, but I don’t feel ready to surrender to one yet. 

 

Besides this, three of our Singy karatekas will be doing dan exams in a few months and I’ve been occupied trying to arrange an online test and figure out how to assist their training. 

 

Modi in a dramatic turnaround, in a dramatic speech, announced that the farm laws would be repealed. Farmers have been sitting at the borders of Delhi in silent protest for more than a year, and about 700 have died. His speech had no mention of those dead, and those maligned with words, or with false court cases. There is a lot to unpack around all this. Most say it is an election move and it likely is, though it is being spun by Modi media as the act of a sensitive leader. The bhakts who aggressively supported the laws are confused and slightly betrayed, small farmers and those who would benefit from these laws are let down. But it is a victory for democratic process and it felt great watching the farmers distribute jalebis. Whether the laws were brought in good faith or not, the process by which they were rushed through parliament was spectacularly undemocratic and hopefully the BJP Government’s bad parliamentary process habits have taken a hit. 

 

More VTL flights to India opening soon and I am watching and waiting to plan a trip. It will be two years in January. 

A Walking Shadow

 October 28, 2021

 Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. 

 

After 11 days of my 14-day antibiotic course, these words uttered by Macbeth, feel mine. Operating under several layers of fog, muscles loose and blubbery and painful, gastric upsets, and worst of all the insomnia, oh god the insomnia, have garbled me this ten-day. The morning caffeine has no jolt, and though I stretch and stretch and stretch each step is agony. Nobody notices. I have, so many of us have, perfected the art of seeming normal, efficient, productive while unravelling internally. So, nobody notices. 

 

Yesterday I spoke to my Wednesday zoom call friend. I should give him a name. Hmm… I’ll call him Art, as he is a visual artist. I told him how the antibiotics were chomping on my brains and creating this fog, but I was managing to operate through it, slow but getting it all done. He started talking about how fogs can be creative, and I argued, then listened. How on earth could I associate this debilitating fog with anything but disruption and exhaustion? Maybe another day I might make the connection.

 

I woke this morning with a disproportionate sense of fear, hopelessness, meaninglessness. 

What if even after the antibiotics are done, this morass of symptoms will persist and I will continue on doing, while hiding that my mind-body is paralysed? What if I never again figure out what I really want from life and go after it, instead of being stuck within the same circle of doubts and duty that I am currently mired in? What if even after covid… even after covid what? Don’t you too ask at least the last question?

 

Fear, hopelessness, meaninglessness. 

 

What if the minister’s son gets way with it? The one who, allegedly, ran over people in Lakhimpur Kheri? He was finally arrested but after that I didn’t hear news about him except that he developed dengue and was taken to an hospital. Meanwhile the family of the BJP workers who were killed by the farmers who saw their brethren run over, cried for justice. Normally they would get it being BJP supporters but this time before those farmers can be arrested the minister’s son needs to be investigated, so the wheels of justice have stopped for everyone. Anyway, I should forget about that case as there is no news about it.

 

What there is news about is the 23-year-old son of a Bollywood superstar arrested, on October 2^nd,  for being with a person or persons who possessed small quantities of recreational drugs. Bollywood that  den of dense vice needs cleaning up. What if, what if (spoken louder) the boy doesn’t get bail even today or before Diwali? What kind of justice is this when a person who doesn't even possess drugs is kept in jail for so long on drug charges? 

 

There are so many languishing in jails for small possession, why do I only care about the super-star's son, BJP supporters ask. What I care most about are the three tonnes of heroin seized at Mundra Port. Where does this kind of money come from? What is the end game of this gigantic consignment? Who has imported it? Those are the things I want to know but there is no news of this as the drug agencies are busy chasing small users, booking them under draconian laws, and publicizing the process, for their political masters. They don’t seem to be interested in chasing the suppliers. What if the political masters are connected to the suppliers?

 

And India celebrated, or was told to celebrate by the PM, the 1 billion-nth dose of the covid vaccine. We were told to and followed orders, to forget the death and destruction caused because vaccines weren’t ordered on time.  BJP strutted the billionth dose news while telling us how many fewer doses other countries had administered, but we weren’t told that China had already completed 2 billion doses, or that despite this number only 21% of the population was fully vaccinated. 

 

But you get the picture? What needs to disappear does. What needs not to is announced, often, with sound and fury. You there, yes you, a good citizen, DO NOT divert from the official narratives. It will all signify nothing soon anyway. 

 

So, several days of productivity despite fog were totally overtaken by chaos, fear, hopelessness, meaninglessness. This morning I didn’t know why I felt so devastated. But now I seem to have some sense of why my mind has gone into standstill. 

 

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

PS - I don't remember lines from Shakespeare normally but my friend M does :)

Balmy Afternoon

 

October 17, 2021

 

It’s 2:46 pm. A balmy afternoon. I always wanted to write that – balmy. I can’t decide whether to try to salvage the day or let it deteriorate further into wasted meandering. Cancelled out because hmm… wasted feels judge-ey?

 

I woke to news of a death. Not someone close but a karate practitioner I’ve known since 2009. I met him first at a gasshuku in Samui. We were the only two brown people there and I was shy and withdrawn in the beginning, just trying to find my feet. He was friendly and helpful. I am sure he was younger than me and his death is sudden. I’ve also met his young students, one was his son, and I wonder who will guide them now. I feel sad. 

 

Then I read a post by a friend on fb about health issues and we chatted. Our conversation going from health concerns to cats. Her cats were the first cats I fell absolutely in love with.

 

In between I did a nasal rinse. Ate a cheese sandwich. Read several news articles sent to me by friends from India and replied to them. All were about the absurd things Indian Modi media focus on, while avoiding the real issues. Made some comments on online articles—mostly replies to hateful comments by BJP supporters in a language that was not mirroring theirs but still pointing out the hate and illogic in their statements. The discourse on these forums is so aggressive, both from Modi supporters and critics. I also walked about the apartment. I had work to get done but couldn’t do it today. I did a very writerly thing—compared my writing to that of some others and found mine wanting. But I finally submitted my assignment. Then felt less guilty about the day and picked out new fountain pen inks which my spouse will bring home later. I’ve almost run out of a darker blue, black and green. 

 

This weekend I finished two novellas by Dorthe Nors written in unique styles. One as a series of lists and the other as headlines. Both about women, single and middle-aged, trying to find their way. Emotions, repeated days, burrowings (I don’t think burrowings is a word, but I want to use it anyway) under the surface of the social media lives they, and many of us, live.

 

I guess this post, and several before it too, might be something like that. About nothing much. Repetitive but also searching. This weekend I visited the clinic after teaching my Saturday karate class and, when I ticked sore throat in the online intake form, was attended to by a GP in full PPE. My chronic sinus had flared to the point where I felt frustrated, helpless, and broken. I always understate my symptoms and perhaps I overstated them; went on and on about how I couldn’t take it anymore; and he prescribed me strong meds. My body feels under a wicked spell, a spell of languid muscles and unenergetic mind, with these in me. But i can breathe better.

 

As I’ve been working towards being more productive in writing — and that has worked somewhat — my reading has fallen off, too off. This week my goal is to start reading more while maintaining the same amount of writing and training. 

 

It’s 3:26 now and its raining. I think I will read and hope I have a spurt of productivity tomorrow to catch up with what was left undone today. Though the day is not over yet and I might still have a breakthrough.

Lakhimpur Kheri - Continued

 October 8, 2021

I slept five hours and woke up on this same day that I wrote that last post on. I’m tired but still rumbling.  

 

Lakhimpur Kheri still haunts me, there is so much to unpack. There are two other stories that have also held my attention over the last two weeks. One from Assam where a video of a government employed journalist, documenting the governments eviction of people squatting on government land, is seen jumping savagely on the corpse of a man who has already fallen to police bullets to his chest. I wonder, and also know, how that kind of rage develops. The other story on my radar is the arrest of the 23-year-old son of a famous Bollywood actor at a rave party by the Central Narcotics Bureau. The boy didn’t have drugs in his possession, between his friends and him they had a quantity, not large, of party drugs. Drugs are bad and they should be punished, right? But he didn’t have any on him and he has still been held in custody by NCB from October 2^nd till date. There is other murkiness there as some questionable persons were also present during the arrest and in the room where the young people were held in custody. Also a possible political angle.

 

Some would say to me, what about the Kashmir killings by the new Islamic terrorist group, The Resistance Front, targeting Kashmiri Pundits and Sikhs. That story is important too as is the rising prices of fuel and cooking gas that are choking people into desperation. That is perhaps the most important story of all, as it impacts employment, hunger, inflation, education, and more. 

 

But it is Lakhimpur Kheri that holds my attention. Today I woke thinking of the 19-year-old boy who had died, felled down by the fast moving jeep. His mother, I heard is extremely unwell and in need of medical attention. The family think the boy was killed by a bullet and wanted an autopsy. The autopsy report copy which they were given, largely illegible they said, didn’t mention the bullet. 

 

I wish I could believe that autopsy report. It's hard to live, constantly disbelieving Institutions and people in power. The UP authorities have lied so much, falsified so much information, suppressed so many truths—the floating corpses in the Ganges vs the statements that UP had barely any covid deaths, or those images of patients struggling for oxygen while UP declared the state didn’t have an oxygen shortage—that I don’t trust anything they say now. I also remember the girl who was raped by Kuldeep Singh Sengar a BJP MP, and her long suffering road to justice. 

 

So yes, it is like the boy who cried wolf syndrome, where the sheep suffer for the boys lies. All authorities lie, they all spread misinformation, possibly hate. They all use institutions that trample legal and constitutional guidelines. IT cells create the narratives they want people to believe. It is hard to trust that justice and truth will prevail in that field. 

 

When the furious mob turned on the people who had run over their mates, it made sense to that dark part of me that loves law and order episodes where the bad guy gets his chips. Mob justice has been used by Hindutva groups to control the minorities. We all have heard the calls to lynch those who deal in beef, or traffic in love jihad. We all have seen the viral lynching videos some with policemen in attendance. We all have seen the perpetrators walk free. 

 

Of course, the BJP supporters shouldn’t have died. Of course, the farmers shouldn’t have died. When a question was asked on a news channel, that tries to be neutral, ‘Were the deaths equivalent?’ I was stunned. I was even more stunned with the answer, and my own thoughts about it. 

 

I feel for all the dead. Four farmers, three BJP workers from the cars, and a reporter. The men in the cars who died were just there. I don’t know what they were thinking when they realized that the driver wasn’t slowing down. That he was going to ram through the crowd. I did see the rage on the face of the driver driving the jeep. I don’t think the BJP workers deserved to die. But the deaths were not equivalent.

 

The farmers were willfully mowed down while the mob that killed the BJP workers gave in to a fury that in part was created by the BJP leaders themselves. I know this justification is morally questionable, even reprehensible. Those videos asking BJP workers to go after the farmers, that threat to them by the Minister of Home Affairs all were provoking them to violence. I think it all was part of a game plan to instigate the farmers to violence and then blame them for it while never taking responsibility for any violence, verbal or otherwise from their side. The farmers, and I, are also part of the culture where hate speech and mob lynching’s by the Hindutva brigade have gone unpunished. Where policemen have not been held accountable. Nobody in power has. They probably felt, like I do, that they were unlikely to get justice. 

 

In that split second of being there on that the ground where their mates were lying dead, I don’t really know what they thought. But the above is not the way I want to think and it is this kind of thinking that will lead to anarchy and complete breakdown of society. But are we not being led there daily by our elected leaders? 

 

There were people in the mob who didn’t succumb to their rage. Who grabbed the men in the car and handed them over to the police. I hope that if I had been on the scene, I would have done that and not been one of those who beat a man to death. I don’t think, no I know, I would never mow down a row of people just because they were BJP leaders, who I have furious feelings about. But then I have not repeatedly associated those leaders with being termites or cockroaches. They are humans. 

 

Much to think about. Mostly about the kind of world I want to live in and how to not absorb the hateful messages spewed by those in power.

 

Thanks again for reading. I had my booster shot this week and have been a bit fevered and fatigued. Mostly just done my writing class-work and written this. 

Lakhimpur Kheri – Just a List

October 8, 2021

 It’s 34 mins past midnight, but I won’t be able to sleep unless I write this down. For the last three days I have been traumatized by the unfolding story in Lakhimpur Kheri. Many Indians have been. Many are asking questions they might never receive answers to as this is the UP model in action. 

 

I will tell you what I know about this story. 

 

A week ago Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Mishra, made a provocative speech about the farmers who are protesting near Lakhimpur Kheri. He said they should ‘improve’ otherwise he would ‘improve ‘them in two minutes. Don’t forget who he was before he was Union Minister (apparently he was a man charged for murder and other violence), he said. They would have to leave the region. 

 

A little before this, the CM of Haryana had addressed a crowd and told them to gather 500 to 700 of themselves, take sticks and beat the farmers. Don't worry about jail, he said. Before that a bureaucrat had been filmed saying break open the farmers heads.

 

On Sunday, October 3, farmers gathered to peacefully protest the presence of another minister at an event there, but the didn’t show up, and the farmers were told to leave by UP police. A jeep—belonging to the Minister mentioned above, followed by two cars—allegedly accidentally ran down a bunch of farmers. The enraged farmers pulled out and beat up three of those inside. 

 

Media, Modi Media, started reporting a story. They said the farmers were pelting stones and attacking the cars with sticks and swords. They said the driver lost control and hit a few and the farmers beat up those inside to death. A video was shown of a crowd, chaos, cars and people being beaten to death by sticks. 

 

We were shocked. I was shocked. So far the farmers, through extreme provocation, had remained peaceful. What had happened. 

 

The next day a very suspicious top cop of UP. The same man who had tried to suppress the investigation of the Hathras rape case, last year. The same one who had ordered the body of the rape victim  to be cremated in the middle of the night without giving the family time to perform last rights, had brokered a monetary settlement with the Farmer Union. The state would pay compensation to every dead farmer in return for peaceful cremation of the bodies. The victims families were supposedly happy now that they had received money.  Would you, can you be happy if somebody had just died violently in your family? Nobody asked why the state was settling a private matter between the occupants of the Ministers car and the dead farmers families. Why was the state of UP forking out money for this? Recently it had paid off the wife of a man who had been killed by policemen in a hotel room. They had promised the wife that she would get justice but the policemen were still free.

 

Several farmers had seen the Ministers son, Ashish, running away from the scene, helped by policemen. They insisted on his arrest. He and his father claim he wasn’t there. The father said. The farmer said. So he roams free. Though the Minister father has confirmed that it was his car at the scene. 

 

Opposition leaders who tried to visit the area and see if the victims needed assistance were illegally detained without warrants for long time periods. They were manhandled like they had been last year during the Hathras case. They were also called political tourists, publicity vultures by the Modi media. Meanwhile internet was shut down in Lakhimpur Kheri so those there couldn't communicate with the outside. When they did manage to reach the victims families, the families were grateful that somebody who would voice their needs listened to them. 

 

Then another video emerged that showed clearly. Very clearly. Farmers walking away from the scene. A jeep and two cars coming from behind at great speed and running over farmers whose backs were to them. One an old man, 60 years old, who died on his way to the hospital. Three others also died, the youngest 19, and several were injured. No stone pelting was seen, and nobody had swords.

 

Enraged farmers did pull out people and beat them. They used the black protest flags they were carrying. I repeat no swords were visible. It was the fury of a mob whose belief in justice is gone. The UP model is known to protect people in power. Also, people did  emerge from the cars and run away from the scene.

 

The suspicious top cop, who rouses my basest instincts, when questioned about why no investigation was under way, why nobody had been questioned, said don’t ask such questions, everything is happening as it should. The Minister, whose son is accused, is overseeing the investigation. As Union Minister of State the cops report to him. It will all be fair and right, the top cop said. Some people see the glass half full and some half empty. His words not mine. 

 

The Minister met the Union Home Minister, a scary man, the second most powerful man in the country, a man with no scruples and I think very little or no humanity. The minister father was told not to resign and the son didn’t need to be questioned. They had already said they were not there.

 

So, the Supreme Court was moved and today the Court asked the UP cops what had been done. The cops then arrested two men who had been in the car, and taped a summons at the home of the wanted son. They said they could not find him. Just hours before he was giving interviews to Modi media.

 

BJP leaders still say the farmers, who are not farmers, but terrorists, pelted the car and caused it to lose control. They have their story down pat and every one of them says the same thing. Their supporters tweet the same, their trolls echo this on comments in articles. The amount of energy that goes into disseminating falsehood doesn't go into spreading the truth, does it?

 

If you have read this far, tell me if you think the cops will conduct a fair investigation under the watchful eye of the Minister who threatened the farmers, whose son wasn’t at the place where he was seen by some of the victims, who’s protected by the Union Home Minister.  

 

At this hour I don’t even know if I make sense but the words rumbling and roaring in my insides needed to be let out. The feelings are cauterized, numb. Tomorrow they will roar and rumble.