To Daily Challenge or Not

July 29, 2021

A few days ago when I felt my fallow mind slipping into another drifty phase, I set myself another challenge. This year has been arid, filled with mundane tasks and boggy emotional states that suck out the energy of creation. The challenges help gather my mind and focus on ‘one something’, and also churn out a ‘product’. Of course this attachment to productivity itself needs to be, well challenged, but right now I am following another thought. 

 

The great thing about a daily challenge is that it gradually builds an inner room that one can enter and begin immediately to work, even after the challenge is done. This is huge, especially after a year of suffering from scattered brain syndrome. But while executing this second challenge I began feeling uneasy, something felt dysfunctional about the need to follow one challenge with another. It’s like I needed these mandated challenges to fill a deep void. It’s like I could not trust my mind and body to move towards living a meaningful life without them. The challenges felt like a place holder for ‘real’ life. 

 

I have been an addict in the past. I had a daily dependence on alcohol for a year, or so, of my life. I created a personal ‘rehab’ to free myself from it.

 

There are several approaches to rehabilitation post addition. Some that recommend complete abstinence and others that feel that simply moving from excessive use of the addictive substance to moderate use is easier to achieve, and enough. Some approaches additionally use several behavioural modification therapies to work with addiction.  I abstained completely from alcohol and explored the psychological roots of the addiction, with self-help books and process oriented psychology methods, to gain control over it. This worked, but I only felt myself truly free of alcoholism when I could drink when I wanted, even in excess, knowing that I knew when to stop too. Only then, I felt I was  in control of the addiction, as while I was forcing myself to abstain, it was still controlling of me. I was constantly forbidding a substance that isn’t always all bad. 

 

Challenges are forced behaviours and in that sense they are like being in rehab. They do help build ‘mental muscle’ and perhaps even skills towards something, but just doing the same without any external force is where I would rather be. A mind able to decide for itself what it needs that day. 

 

So, do I give up my second challenge and regain freedom in my mind, or am I making this argument just to escape doing the challenge? Am I  being true to myself or tricking myself? I’m sure there is a simple answer but I haven’t found it yet. 

Day 27 of 27 — Imposter Syndrome

July 17, 2021

I still do need to explore the karate path as I still do not know how I got where I am today. That I would still be training, is no surprise. That I still love it as much and hope to train till the day I die, is not a surprise either. It is a surprise though that I am teaching karate, and almost daily I feel like an imposter.

 

A huge part of me knows that I was never meant to teach karate. It is a strange set of circumstances that put me here, and daily I feel I should step away and let the 'real teacher' take over. When I am teaching my class, I often feel removed from myself, like I am not really in my body, like I am scared to own who I am when I am doing it. They say imposter syndrome is something more women than men suffer from. Have you felt it? 

 

I felt it less right after my Sensei left Singapore. He had left the care of our dojo to two of us, his most senior students. It made me nervous when the other person stopped training almost immediately. But at that time there were just three of us training, me and two brown belts, on Fort Canning Hill. Twice a week at 7 pm when the day was still light, finishing at 9 pm when darkness had fallen. We often did Sanchin in the moonlight. On days when it rained, we took shelter under SMU and trained in the wide corridors outside Bras Basah MRT, along with SMU students practising theatre or dance. After half a year one more joined us, and when senior black belts passed through, they came and taught us on the hill. Such was the warm spirit of these Senseis. 

 

I rented a room at the Substation, where the arts were supported at subsidised rates, after I convinced the manager that traditional karate was also an art form. It was the perfect location and very affordable. More students joined; a teenager from Bombay who had started goju-ryu there, a Japanese man who had a black belt in another karate style. But then the substation changed management, and the practice rooms were converted into classrooms. We were dojo-less again. 

 

We moved to the Clarke Quay area and trained in several different gyms over the years. I guess the imposter syndrome grew as the class grew. Many of those who joined had years of martial arts when they were younger, many more years than I did. There is fear that fuels this feeling of being an imposter, but there is a logic to it. Most of my own teachers had forty or fifty years of karate behind them. Most of them had superior knowledge and skills. To teach one should at least have that much. You must have felt this at some time about something?

 

When the self-doubt felt crippling, I used a twelve-week inner work and creativity course to explore my feelings around it. I was wrecked with anxiety. I assessed my capabilities as well as my inadequacies. I drew and gave a voice to my critic, I walked like him (yes, he was a man!) and sneered like him, and I found a couple of allies—an ancient chilled out dragon, and a bumbling student samurai. I sat around the fire with them. It helped. One of my biggest strengths is that I recognise skills others in my dojo possess and I regularly invite them to teach. I also attend as many gasshuku’s and trainings as I can. I have trained with excellent teachers who have transmitted not just techniques but the essence of martial arts. For now, it will have to do. 

 

Sometimes I feel all this work is a patchwork still. One day I’d like to feel whole. One day I’d like to know how I ended up here and what is right about it. I feel like an imposter as a writer too. I don’t know how to overcome this feeling yet. 

 

Thank you for staying with me on this twenty-seven-day journey. Thank you for the gift of your time and involvement. I feel like something has shifted in these weeks, but I don’t yet know if it has or that I just want it to have. All day as I taught my class, had tea with some karatekas, rode back in the bus, ate lunch, I was sad. I will miss doing this, but I also am glad that the twenty-seven days are done. Though I sit here alone and type on my blank screen this writing has felt too much of an ‘extroverted’ activity. I need to retreat within for a while. 

Day 26 of 27 — Relationship Lessons

July 16, 2021

For the last seven days I have stayed inside the story of my beginnings in karate. I feel a need to pull out and come back to the present. The day is hot and still. I haven’t slept much as my cats are visiting and the white one kept me up all night, like he always does when things change in his environment. He jumped on my bedside table and started sliding things off at 2 am, then sat on my tummy and purred loudly on-and-off all night. He needs time to adjust. The black one went directly to her basket when they arrived at 1pm and slept off the trauma of being moved. She was fine after dinner.

 

As a friend reminded me on Facebook, I cannot end this story in just two days. In fact, as I wrote about that first month of karate, I began remembering so many more details that are important to me and it felt like I was leaving out more than I was including. It is not possible to tell the story of the next seventeen years in two posts. 

 

When I moved to Singapore in 2008, karate was the one constant in my life. New training spaces (with blue bouncy mats, hanging bags, and mirrors), new Sensei’s (one English and one Japanese, each with very different emphasis and teaching style), new dojo mates, but still the training was the constant. It absorbed the shock of moving without a job, or friends, to keep me steady. My world of karate widened here. My yearly camps, after 2009, were at Koh Samui with Sensei George Andrews, and Okinawa became closer. If I were to tell those stories it would take days of writing. 

 

But besides the training and the impact on body, mind, and spirit there is another aspect I want write about. The dojo is a microcosm of the world and like relationships in the world the relationships in the dojo also had much to teach me. Very often relationship challenges I was dealing with in life would appear in the dojo, and in that space they seemed even more intense and pressing to resolve. A lot had to do with hierarchy, authority, and respect. Specifically, how to cope with my normal irreverence to authority in a very hierarchical space, and how to respect seniors who I did not like much, or juniors for that matter too. Thus, how to learn from, or teach when it was juniors, while having strong negative feelings about the person. You can't always like everyone!

 

When I first started karate, I had a very romanticized, idealized view of it. I guess a lot of it was shaped by films and media. I believed that there was something magical about the training that automatically changed you into a better person. That if a Sensei and dojo were good then somehow all the people in the dojo would be too and especially so the senior belts. I was surprised then to find seniors and training partners I did not like because they were arrogant or insensitive. It was hard to look for that one thing in them that I could respect and negotiate those relationships. And of course, as I did this, I was always learning about myself. 

 

Another valuable lesson I got from partner training was about boundaries. Partner drills are about helping each other learn and not about dominating the space, yet there were always partners who tried to do just that. As I learnt to understand and defend my space in attack-defence training drills, I learnt how to control my boundaries with others in life. Now as I spend more time with karate, meet more people on this journey, I do find many more who have integrated the values of traditional karate than those who have been untouched by them. 

 

When I started the last third of this experiment with that memory of being restricted from martial arts in childhood and consequently making choices based on rebellion, I could have traversed the writing path I have i.e., about karate, or I could have written about how I found my way back to making choices based on my core needs. There is yet much to reflect on, discover and express on this path, but I wonder if I could go back to the other too. 

Day 25 of 27 — The First Month Ends

July 15, 2021

That last Sunday in August, I watched my first gradings. I had planned to watch the white belt ones, since that was my level and what my first test, if it ever happened, would be. My friend A was in that group, but the brown belt who had encouraged me about camp, when I first signed up, asked me cheer him on as he was nervous. Their grading was in the hall on the 4^th level. There were about fifteen of them and included one of my roommates. In a corner of the room three or four yellow and green belts were also doing a test. The brown belts were excellent—sharp and quick. The combinations they were tested on seemed complex, and the grading ended with free sparing. Somebody smacked another person on the nose and got severely reprimanded for loss of control. It was beyond me and I didn’t think I’d ever get to this level. 

 

When we trooped down for a late breakfast, A had emerged from his test looking pleased as Sensei had skipped two grades and graded him to yellow. The black belt aspirants had finished a written theory exam. They were high strung while the rest of us were relaxed and ready for end of camp. In a bit we all went up to the 4^th level to watch the black belt gradings. The test was serious, long, and tough. Basics, combinations with movement, kata, bunkai, sparring, hojo undo. It ended with the usual 100 push-ups, crunches and squats. I was in awe of those attempting it. At the end while announcing the results Sensei Mistry said the words that I would hear again and again at every shodan grading that I ever attended. ‘Welcome to the beginning of your journey into karate. Now the real learning begins.’

 

Black was so far away that I could not comprehend what that meant. Not everyone passed their tests and it was my first experience of feeling disappointed hopes. I ran downstairs to help serve our last lunch. One the first day at camp my brown belt friend had dragged me behind the food counters to help serve the meals. Sensei H also regularly assigned me tasks, and both these helped me feel part of the community in which I was a stranger. 

 

Sensei Mistry looked solemn when he entered the cafeteria, but he smiled when he saw me. He pulled me out of the serving line and said, ‘I’ve been busy with the out of towners, but I’ve watched you struggling with the last move in Geki Si Dai Ichi. Come do it with me.’

 

Geki Si Dai is the beginner’s kata and after almost a month of being the dojo I was still lost in the last pattern. Right there in the cafeteria he made me repeat the move till I began to understand it. I rode back in the bus a different person than the one who had arrived four days ago. I had learned my first kata and more, I had experienced a deeply embossed spiritual moment, and bonded with new friends so different from people I normally hung out with. I vowed to go to as many camps as I could in the future. 

 

Much changed in the second month of karate for me. My teachers had seen my efforts and realized I was not going to quit. Almost all in the dojo began supporting my learning. I too had new respect for myself, particularly in terms of what my body could do and began taking care of if better. Also, perhaps because of the dream that led me to the dojo I wondered how the effects of karate would manifest in my life. Since 2002 I had been working with a team of six, designing and facilitating workshops for educational institutions. Our work was to create experiences that allowed the processing of power dynamics, stereotypes and prejudice in society. Since the Gujerat genocide there were instances of severe discrimination on basis of religious identity and our group had formed to try to work on these issues. We normally began with a structured exercise then followed whatever processes emerged. In each group the end point reached was different. My colleagues told me that my ability to respond to small changes in people and the group and use them to facilitate change was becoming keener. I don’t really know if this was an effect of the karate or of the months of work we had already done. I did notice that my reactivity and temper were easier to control now as karate shifted my inner energies. All personal growth work I had begun with therapy and meditation ripened quickly during this phase. I regret giving meditation after a few months of karate as I had no time to do both, and karate seemed to be filling up all my empty spaces.

Day 24 of 27 — Sanchin in the Moonlight

July 14, 2021

We were back on the open field at 7 am, or it could have been 6 am as it was still dark, on Friday. We jogged downhill towards an abandoned dead-end road. It was hard to believe that this was 'couch-potato' me running in shorts at sunrise. We did body conditioning, sit-ups, push-ups, ude-tandren etc. Then jogged back to the school. Sensei H was there with water, and we finished up with a lot of kicks. Hot breakfast and tea followed, then another training in full gi’s at 11am. One set of gi’s hadn’t dried yet and I hoped it would not rain. I need not have worried as the sun shone strongly leaving us groaning for water in the first ten minutes, but the water break only came after an hour. 

 

After lunch we had free time till 3pm. I bathed using a bucket of cold water in the area near the sink. One of our roommates had washed her hair and left the drain clogged. It was gross. Everything was feeling a bit much, so I found a quiet place to journal. Before I knew it, it was time for the afternoon training which was in a large hall on the 4^th level. My muscles ached as I climbed the floors. The room had windows on three sides and since the sky was clear I could see for miles around. At tea we ate jam sandwiches in our gi’s. The next training and sometimes the last of the day began at 6pm outdoors. Again, it rained and now we all had two wet gi’s. We strung ropes across our bedroom and hung them on top. The room was muggy and began to feel suffocating. 

 

The next day we put on damp gi’s for the morning outdoor training and the scorching sun dried them off our backs. That afternoon again I sought solitude in a covered spot near the playground, but two of my camp mates found me there. One was A, the white belt who I had met on my first visit to the dojo, and the other a big built young man I had called obnoxious in the theory session the night before. He, O, had squeezed in next to me even though there was no space on the bench, and then chattered away with the person behind. He had looked shocked and shaken my hand. ‘Normally people call me obnoxious behind my back.’

 

The three of us chatted, sharing surprisingly private details about ourselves, till the next training. I don’t think A and O ever talked much again but both became my good friends. 

 

The camp passed in a trance. It was a new experience to train in a group of about 150 people. The collective kiais reverberated adding to our soaring energy. Besides the people from dojos in Bombay there were men from the army and the special reserve police there. These men looked rough and often sensei Mistry would partner the women with them to give us an experience of what it would be to be like to be confronted with someone so tough. 

 

During the evening training on Saturday, Sensei N approached me and asked if I was up for an uphill hike in the dark. When I said, ‘Sure’, he assigned someone to teach me the complete movements of Sanchin. Those who were grading the next day were called for a special training in the upstairs hall at 9 pm. The rest of us gathered in the open field soon after. We walked for about a half hour and then began climbing a steep path surrounded by trees. It had been raining and the ground was slushy. We were climbing with only the light of a full moon to guide us and had to be careful about not slipping back. The men from the army made up the rear catching those who slipped. After climbing for about forty-five minutes, we reached the top. The moon was high in the purple-black night. Bright stars shone through the clouds crowding the sky. Sensei N lined us up and we did Sanchin three times. I did not know the importance of Sanchin in Goju-ryu at that time, but the experience left an imprint on me. I felt the contemplative silence of the forty or so people there add to the silence of the night, which deepened my own silence. Then we were instructed to sit on the ground. I found a rocky spot which was cold and wet but not muddy. Sensei asked us to close our eyes ‘do’ Sanchin twice in our minds. I found myself in an even deeper space within myself and suddenly I disappeared and all that remained was the mountain, the moon, and the sky. The feeling of this moment was something I was able to touch for long after. 

 

Walking down was harder and a light rain had begun to fall making the track more slippery. The moon was obscured by clouds now, and we had to rely on the feel of the ground beneath our feet rather than our eyes to lead us down. I fell a couple of times and slid a bit before someone stopped my fall. One of the army men told me to walk down with my feet in Sanchin position, it would help me be more rooted. It did help as I didn’t fall again. When we got back to the road, we jogged to the main gate and quietly slipped into our dormitories as everyone was asleep. That night I had the most peaceful sleep in months. 

Day 23 of 27 — Camp

July 13, 2021

Every July or August the dojo organised a four-day camp in Lonavla. Seniors began encouraging juniors to sign up, but everyone left me alone. I’d only been there two weeks, and many thought I wouldn’t last long. The physical pace was still tough for me, and I was pathetic when it came to executing attack-defence combinations. Partner training left me petrified, not of being hurt but of letting my partner down and not being able to provide a decent training experience for him or her.  Often, I was left partnerless till Sensei Mistry assigned me one. 

 

One evening after class a new senior black belt, Sensei N, appeared after class. Many seemed to know who he was—someone who had trained with Sensei Mistry at the beginnings of his own karate journey. He asked everyone to sit down and spoke about the benefits of camp—how immersing the self in karate for four days would help the learning process. I knew the truth of this from my experiences while learning traditional Indian music when I’d come away from a weekend at the gurukul with a leap in understanding. Sensei N asked those who were going to raise their hands. A part of me did want to go but most of me was chicken, and of course I didn’t raise mine. 

 

He looked around the seated karatekas and for some reason his eyes settled on me, in the last row. ‘Why aren’t you going?’

‘Erm… I just joined two weeks ago,’ I stammered.

‘You are scared,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed, and I heard some sniggers.

He nodded gently. ‘But your soul is calling you to camp.’ 

 

I was stunned. I have no clue why he said that, but I knew it was true and at the next class I handed in my registration form for camp. As I paid the fees to Sensei H, who was organising the camp, one of the brown belts said, ‘You are coming?’ Later during the 8:30pm break he came to me and said, ‘Radhika, don’t worry. We all go together, and we will look out for you.’ 

 

I was touched by his warmth and sure enough at camp he and several young higher kyu grades grabbed my arm and pulled me out when I felt I was drowning. It was my first experience of the karate community spirit, a feeling sense which has grown over the years. 

 

Despite, being reassured by the brown belt I still was terrified of going. I talked to others who had been to camps, mostly to find out how tiring it was. They told me some unbelievable stories of the physical training—like carrying heavy potato sacks up and down a hill or a thousand repetitions of a kata. Later some confessed that they had exaggerated just to scare me. Yet, when the day came to leave, I was terrified and almost wished myself ill so I could drop out. But I was on the bus to the camp the afternoon of that last Thursday in August. I was quiet, sitting on the edge of the rowdy crowd and listening to their excitement. 

 

The camp was held in a school in Lonavla with boarding facilities. It was a picturesque location with hills, lush and green with monsoon water, on all sides and a soft mist hanging low over the imposing four or five storey stone building. The school was on vacation, and we took it over for the next four days. The men stayed in the boys’ dormitories on the first level of the main building while the women, and the Senseis, in an annexe where the teachers usually lived. There were eight women stuffed into two tiny rooms—no floor space after fours beds were shoved into each room, which normally held one. The two rooms shared one narrow primitive bathroom. Of course, there was no hot water, and the sink was so tiny that most of the water cascaded out when one was washing. We had barely claimed our beds when there was a knock on the door and one of the Sensei’s yelled, ‘In your gi’s and on the grounds in ten minutes.’

 

I’d never done karate in the open and it was exhilarating. I found a part of myself flying free from the heavy pull of gravity on my body. It began to pour around the end of the training, but we kept on with our basics for another fifteen minutes. The rain was freezing, and I was glad to get back to the little room, get into dry clothes and go down to the cafeteria for some piping hot tea.

 

Later we had dinner, a theory session, and a short training at 10 pm. And my first day at camp ended.

 

Day 22 of 27 — First Weeks

July 12, 2021

Finally, it was Monday. I was eager all weekend and then terrified all day. I got to the dojo early and the white belt, A, who I’d met last week, showed me where the women changed. It was a dingy little room where the equipment—chi’ishis, punching bags, tire makiwaras—was stored. The men changed on the balcony outside the main hall. I put on my gi and walked out clutching my white belt. The black belt, B, who I’d met previously, asked someone to help me tie it. I stood alone on the stone floor feeling self-conscious. The class began and B explained how everyone lined up according to rank. I was the newest and was at the back. I hoped that this would help hide my clumsiness from the others. I tried to keep up with the warmup and black belts came around to correct my moves. Monday was basics day. Sensei Mistry arrived early and started with basic punches—jodan tsuki to the face. He did ten counts of slow movement to help us understand how the arm moved. Then he said, ‘hard and fast’ and began the count. I managed to punch fast but the whole dojo kiaied at the striking point and the powerful sound froze me. I’d never been in the middle of a loud collective yell like that, I closed my eyes and stood still. I heard a female voice say, ‘open your eyes. Never close your eyes in the dojo’. I opened them and saw an amused woman dance in front of me. She stayed there helping me while we practiced more basic punches and blocks. She was Sensei Mistry’s wife and a 4^th degree black belt.

 

The pace of the class was fast and by the 8:30 break I was exhausted. I was in terrible physical shape. I’d asked B if newcomers got to leave early. He approached me in the break and said I could leave since it was my first day. But I decided to keep going. The challenge was exciting and there was something else, which I could not say in words then, that had me hooked. Looking back the closest thing to capturing that experience was to say that it released an unbounded joy and exuberance, a childlike spontaneous laughter, from deep in my belly. Over the years I’d done many psychotherapy exercises to connect to the inner happy child, but they all seemed at a very head level compared to what I experienced during karate in those early weeks. 

 

Soon I looked forward to the routine, Monday basics, Wednesday kata, and Friday kumite evenings. I still worried all day if I would get through the training, and I also worried about making a fool of myself. I did that every training but making a fool of myself in karate helped release the fear I had around it. So many things in life, I’d hesitated to try because I worried about being laughed at. I had two left feet and two left arms. I was always doing the wrong move, facing in the wrong direction, or freezing. Yet, except for one or two people (I did get called slow old woman by a fellow white belt and was told to find a ping-pong class by a senior) the laughter was not malicious, and it helped me laugh at myself and keep trying. Nothing came easily, but the teachers and seniors were supportive, and Sensei Mistry would often stop after class to check on me and tell me to hang in. 

 

Being a slow learner was a new experience. Whatever I’d tried in my life, even the things that were initially hard, I found I became reasonably good at. This was the first thing I was way below average in, and it was interesting to follow the inadequacy feelings that came up over the years. In that first year they were not so intense as I gave myself a lot of space to be slow and progress at my own pace. The youngsters who joined after I had, picked up things faster than me. They moved quickly and were stronger too. It was a humbling experience and I recommend that everyone do something that they are terrible at. It helps build empathy and shows you what you’d do in an ‘alien’ situation. Would you lose yourself to fit in, or walk away, or negotiate it from the core of your Self?

 

Also, the beginners, those close to my grade, were twenty years younger than me and those closer to my age had been training for twenty or more years and were senior black belts. In those days similar grades hung out together and it was hard to make friends. I’d get there early most days and not have anyone to talk with. I also didn’t know how to warm up or what to practice, so I’d stand around crossing and uncrossing at my feet, fiddling with my belt, or sipping water slowly. Klutzy and geeky, I deeply understood those parts of me. 

Day 21 of 27 — My first dojo

July 11, 2021

I arrived at the location, a stone school building, opposite the Charni road station railway tracks, half hour before the class began on the first Monday in August. The guard told me that karate was on the ground floor just beyond the main entrance. I stepped onto a well-worn tiled stone floor. The room was high-ceilinged with a staircase at the far end, that lead to classrooms and offices. Paint was peeling off the walls. Young people walked through, mainly towards the main gate as their classes were ending. I saw a man in his late twenties wearing a karate uniform doing stretches in one corner towards the back. I stammered as I asked about the class. He looked coolly at me and took me to the back where a rugged male black belt was hitting a wooden post wrapped with cloth and nailed into an old car tire. 

 

The black belt looked at my white hair. ‘How old are you? Do you have any health issues?’ 

 

I said, ’forty-three and the only health problem I have is fibroids in my uterus.’

 

He didn't want to discuss my fibroids and didn’t question me further. He indicated where I could sit to watch the class. Students, most quite young, bowed at the entrance and removed their shoes before they walked across the training area, even though the floor was very dusty. The class began at 7 pm, with what I would later learn was called junbi undo, a traditional warm up. People who were late ran in, bowed to the black belt who was teaching and joined the class. By 7:30 there must have been fifteen black belts and twenty-five other coloured belts there. After the warmup the black belt announced they would do kata today as Wednesday had been a holiday. Some youngsters looked disappointed while others delighted. I later learnt Fridays were usually sparring days. Everyone began to do the same set of movements. Around 8 pm, a short black belt came in from the back, the class became still, and everyone bowed to him. He began teaching. I guessed that it was Sensei Mistry. The forms being practiced looked complicated. After a bit the class was separated by belt colours. One group of white belts, close to where I was sitting, were being taught by a very young brown belt. She exuded confidence. Another black belt was teaching yellow and green belts another form, and Sensei Misty was teaching the brown and black belts. 

 

At 8:30 the class got a water break and the kids, maybe eight in number, were picked up by their parents. The class was still quite large and continued for another half hour. Sensei Mistry had everyone do a kata called Sanchin. This felt very profound, and familiar—as if another self had known it in another time. Slowly I realized that some of the movements seemed like the ones I had seen in my dream. Throughout the evening I had felt drawn into the forms even as a part of me was sure I could never do them. I was terrible at body movement and could not learn even simple dance steps. These forms required co-ordination and dexterity. But even as I despaired about learning them, I knew I had to, and once I saw Sanchin being practiced I had no doubts left about joining the class. The dream had indeed called me.

 

The class ended, everyone scattered to change, and people began to leave. I was too shy to approach anyone and just sat there. The black belt who I had met before class came out in street clothes. ‘Still here,’ he said. ‘What did you think?’

 

‘Fascinating but seems difficult.’

 

‘Yes,’ he said and walked away.

 

I shouted, ‘How do I sign up?’. 

 

He spun around. ‘You want to join?’ 

 

I nodded. His eyes widened and he introduced himself, then took me to a little room at the back and introduced me to Sensei Mistry. Several of the older, senior black belts were in the room with him. Sensei also asked how old I was and when I told him he smiled. ‘Welcome to the club we are all over 40 in here’. I wanted to say, but you are all black belts and have started younger. Instead, I asked if I could still learn. He said one could learn at any age—something I say to those asking me the same question now. He gave me directions on where to buy my uniform. My heart was pumping wildly as I pranced out of the dojo, a smile in my feet.

 

Sometimes I wonder, what if they had sparred that day? What if they hadn’t practiced Sanchin? 

Day 20 of 27 — Re-emergence

July 10, 2021

I arrived in 2003 after half a decade of conflict and instability. My spouse and I had been estranged for several of those years and my brother had left taking the family money. It was a time when grief and seemingly impossible problems consumed my waking life. I had begun meditating in 2000 after a period of alcohol dependency. Now both my innerlife and outer work path were emerging solid from a vague and uncertain fog. I had developed an interest in human rights, education, and conflict resolution after the Bombay riots of 1992-3.

 

But I felt a dark emptiness, like important parts of me were missing. The meditation had plateaued too. I had been using my dreams to live my life more deeply since 1995 when I first started personal therapy.  I asked for guidance about my stagnation. That night I dreamt of a woman in a karate uniform doing movements near a waterfall.

 

I had repressed the memory of my childhood flirtation with martial arts, so the dream was a shock. Since I had completely split myself from my body, I had no intention of following through on this dream. I asked for another guidance dream, but none came. That year after very long our family was able to afford a vacation. We flew to Sri Lanka. It was a strange vacation to start with because we had forgotten how to be together and relax on a holiday. Bentota beach was our second stop, and it began storming as soon as we got there. The tumultuous grey waters crashed powerfully on the beach again and again. We played board games, read, ate, and got restless. As soon as the sun emerged on the third day, my daughter and I decided to try a water sport. We chose wind surfing. 

 

The instructor was a young man with strong upper body muscles, and sun-bleached hair tied into a long pony-tail. He looked at us sceptically. A skinny girl and an unfit woman with white hair. He first put us on boards on the ground to teach us how to move our feet, then put the boards in water.  He found that we had a good sense of balance and he moved us to wind surf boards and began teaching us to manipulate the sails to use the wind to move and change direction. The work was tiring and engrossing. We had to be totally present in every move or we would either drop the sails or fall into the water ourselves. When the morning instruction ended, I had been able to go out to the middle of the river and come back without falling off the board. 

 

It was our first sunny day in Bentota. We ate lunch and lazed by the pool. The wind began to pick up and we napped beneath swaying palm trees. My spirits soared and something dormant stirred. 

 

The afternoon session was more absorbing and intense. We both went out in different directions with assistant instructors in motor-boats supporting our learning. The waves were flowing faster than the morning. Two days of storms had ended but the weather had not yet quieted. In the morning, when I could not control the wind in my sails, I had dropped the sails to avoid being pulled into the waters with them. That afternoon I decided not to drop them, no matter what. My puny arms struggled with the sails and the strong winds, which were determined to subdue me. The two hours ended in a blink. I learned more than windsurfing that day. I learned that physical activity that absorbs is a way to inner depth and quiet focus, just as much as meditation is. The holiday became more spontaneous after that. 

 

When we got back to Bombay, I knew I had to follow through on that dream, but I didn’t know how. In those days you could not google ‘karate clubs in Bombay’ and get a list like you can now. It was another synchronicity that my friend Sean, a quirky Irishman, invited me for lunch. Sean and his wife had lived in the Himalayas for many years with their guru. They only came back to ‘normal life’ after their guru passed on. The adjustment had been hard, and he knew a lot about life and death. At lunch, I told him about my dream and how the urge was amplifying. ‘I don’t understand why my call for a dream to deepen my spiritual path was answered by a karate image.’  Sean pulled out two books from his shelves—The Zen of Archery and a book describing different martial arts. I read them overnight and called him, ‘So what now.’ 

 

‘If you must learn martial arts, there is only one person in Bombay you can go to, Sensei Mistry. I'd studied judo with him years ago,’ Sean said. He called Sensei Mistry and got details of his karate class.

 

The next class was on Friday evening, but I was nervous. Sean said he would go with me but had plans on Friday. I couldn’t wait till Monday, so I set out alone on Friday evening. 

 

The most meaningful journeys are often solitary.

Day 19 of 27 — Aborted Beginnings

July 9, 2021

It must have been 1969 or 1970. My brother, a boy cousin, and I were practicing simple jiujitsu moves under the guidance of a man who came home to give oil-massages to my father. The man was large and strong but gentle and controlled when he handled us nine, and ten-year-olds. He told fascinating stories about his days in Japan learning both martial arts and healing massage. He demonstrated some amazing feats, and we eagerly pushed our bodies to copy them. My mother did not approve of how we shoved back all the furniture every Saturday morning, and tossed around on her plush red carpet. What she hated most though was me learning jiujutsu. She had forbidden me to join them, but I snuck in anyway. I was already tomboyish and got into fist-fights with the boys in the compound, climbed the trees no-one else dared, and attempted crazy feats in the swimming pool. Our family was very patriarchal, very traditional and girls had definite roles to fit into. My mother was afraid how I would negotiate the family expectations as I grew and she locked me in my bedroom every Saturday afternoon, hoping that I would course correct. My father would rescue me, whisk me away to watch live cricket, followed by large chocolate sundaes at Bombelli’s. 

 

When my father died, after a prolonged illness, in 1970, life changed. I felt alone and abandoned. The man who massaged my father didn’t come anymore but my brother and cousin were allowed to enrol in karate lessons after school. I grew defiant and aggressive and my mother, who later studied child psychology to learn how to handle me, now punished me by locking me in my father’s study. Our family home was built on a hill and was surrounded by a garden and trees on three sides. One side dropped sharply to the main road and here there were difficult to access spaces where the vegetation grew wild. It was here that I used to find refuge from the family I didn’t fit into. The study had large windows which overlooked the main garden and almost every evening, I enviously watched my cousins play there. Yet I refused to tame my rebellion and I wasn’t going to let anyone see how upset I was. The light wood panelled room had a comfortable sofa and shelves of books, that I began reading. There were novels and mystery books but also books on history, politics, and biographies of world leaders like Churchill and Martin Luther King. I stopped yearning for the outdoors and physical activity and transferred my passions into books and knowledge. I used to be a bold girl with a lot of friends, but this isolation changed me into a shy and socially awkward, almost geeky, girl. At first my grades in school worsened but later I formulated a plan to study hard, get a scholarship and escape my suffocating joint family.

 

When I was 18, right after the 12^th grade, I escaped to the University of Michigan with the help of an older male cousin. In our family nobody has been allowed to study abroad. My cousin’s dreams to move away had been thwarted, and though he was now married and entrenched in work he helped convince my uncles to let me leave. 

 

At University I had the freedom to pursue whatever I wanted but I did not think of learning martial arts. In fact, except for walking, I had become a complete indoor lounger as the eight years that followed my father’s death had completely altered my personality. I had become interested in academic challenges and not those of the body. I chose to study Physics because it was difficult, but I suspect also because my family often said, ‘Girls don’t do Science.’ It is sad that I made decisions about my life based not on what I wanted from within myself but on what my family would disapprove of. With these beginnings, I had years to journey before I began to truly understand my emotions, my childhood imprints, and find my way back to my loves.

Day 18 of 27 — Two-thirds Done

July 8, 2021

It’s an incredibly hot day, I have my curtains shut tight to block out the afternoon glare. I’m supposed to be outside under that strong sun, returning those library books that came back with me last week, but I put it off once again. Left it for a cloudy day. 

 

I fell asleep last night thinking of the dust elephants under my bed—probably what’s responsible for my sinus allergies. I named a few, and started a list. I’ll begin dealing with them next week. 

 

I woke this morning with the same uneasy sense I’ve had for a few days. I’d talked about it yesterday in my weekly Wednesday chat with a friend. I told him it was day 17 of my writing experiment and I was wondering if I should stop the experiment. I said. ‘It’s been good for me. I've built consistency, trust, also broken past some internal barriers about the time of day and place I write. Those panic attacks I used to have almost every day have stopped too, but I am missing something. Focus or variability or originality or purpose or something.’ I asked, ‘Is it strange that it is after writing three books that I am beginning to ask myself what I want to write and what form I want to use to write it?’

 

‘Not strange,’ he said and shared his own journey with education, art, and how he slowly came to the subject of his current thesis. We agreed that it takes years, perhaps ten, before one understands the medium they have chosen to use—so it is the right time for me to be thinking about my identity as a writer. Yet the conversation did not leave me with a concrete answer so I asked the question, why should I continue with this experiment,  again today. 

 

I was feeling unhappy with my last posts. I fretted about them while sipping my unsatisfactory tea—my Irish tea blend is nearly done, and the bag teas I prefer are not in stock in the stores, so I’ve had to settle for something blah. I pulled out Kafka’s Diary from the pile of books lying on the bedside table. I randomly opened it and began reading. Kafka was writing about how unhappy he was with his story on motor cars that had been read out the previous evening. He was exploring obstacles to his writing, mostly the comings and goings of people in the space he wrote in. It felt good to hear his doubt and dissatisfaction. 

 

Now, I pace around the coffee table. I make myself another cup of the blah tea, make a note to order tea online, and gobble several Nice biscuits. What can I change about this experiment? It has become too comfortable. I’ve forbidden myself from going back and reading my entries till twenty-seven days are done, but I know that I write about whatever is uppermost on my mind. Sometimes if what’s impacting me is strong, I take two or three days to move through my feelings around it, and the writing feels draggy, repetitive. I’ve nine days left. I think I need to find a focus—maybe pick one issue or theme and deliberately write about different aspects of it for the rest of the experiment. Maybe allow myself an increase in word count—overshot today. Maybe even plan a little. I make the rules after all, but I need to make it more difficult. 

Day 17 of 27 — Darkness and Spirit

July 7, 2021

 

My fatigue has peaked after Father Stan’s death and the response from the Central Government to criticism about it. They’ve kept it simple. All they say is, ‘The process of law was followed.’ 

 

There is more I want to say about this but I feel my roar becoming a bleat before my lungs can push it out into the world. My feelings whimper out and my body flattens like a balloon without air. I signed the petition demanding the laws that kept Stan Swamy and many others in jail without the glimmer of a trial be reviewed. The way the laws are being used to punish and frighten voices criticising the Centre be reviewed. The citizens of India deserve better. 

 

Many feel that the rot is too deep and don’t see the point in these petitions. Many sweep such things under their king sized beds, and ignore the elephant sized dust ball that sleeps with them each night. Many others won’t smell the shit rising around them and delight in the fragrance of the fading plastic rose.

 

I feel at war with my own country-people. These people say I am a BJP hater, a Modi hater. The BJP lost their innocence in my eyes when Advani divided the country over a non-existing temple in 1992. Modi became the bogey man in 2002 after the Gujarat genocide. And though he came back in 2014 cloaked in white sheep-wool, I smelt his blood lust. 

 

All this lot want is the cultural realignment of India into a Hindu state. Not interested in development or economics or employment or poverty or health or education. Just one thing. And power of course. Absolute corruptive power. 

 

I am repeating myself. I echo the tiredness of the activists I see on the shows I watch. I feel the haul has already been long and it is not near over. I have been engulfed in leaden sadness all day. The wily government is winning. They package everything repressive they do in a benign wrapping and with the help of their IT cells fool many. The emergency of Indira Gandhi was solid, material, very visible. The Government and its supporters keep posting articles about it. But activists who fought it say it was declared and so it could be combatted, this undeclared emergency is a darkness we can never emerge from. 

But then a friend sent me a poster on WhatsApp. The people of India are calling Stan Swamy’s death a legal assassination. They will switch their lights off between 8:00 and 8:05 pm. They will fight on.

 

And as I said some months ago — one day the Modi-Shah types will be dust in the earth. I too will be dust. But this spirit of life, of unwillingness to be suppressed will live on. 

Day 16 of 27 — Loss of Innocence

July 6, 2021

In November 2020 I’d blogged about Father Stan, a 84 year old with Parkinson’s, who had been arrested by the National Investigative Agency under the UAPA, an anti-terror law, and incarcerated without hope of bail in Taloja jail. He had approached a court to get a straw or a sipper-cup so that he could drink water as his hands shook due to his disease. The NIA had taken 3 weeks to reply to his petition and provide him with a sipper. 

 

The NIA opposed his bail ferociously even when his health deteriorated. They stated in court, ‘There is no evidence that his health is poor.’ But in all likelihood what there is no evidence of is materials and a case to convict Father Stan. He wasn’t present at the place where he was supposed to have given speeches that incited violence. But under UAPA a person can be held for 180 days without the need to produce evidence in court. Guilty until proven innocent is what the UAPA treats you as. The conviction rate for those arrested under the UAPA, since 2016, is 2%. Yet an increasing number of ‘terrorists’ continue to be booked under it, and held for months or years (they are simply re-arrested) without bail. I can cite case after case. This Orwellian Law even classifies dissenting thoughts as a crime. 

 

Father Stan’s health deteriorated in Taloja jail. A place which should house 2500 inmates, and less than 1400 in covid times, housed 3000 without a single allopathic doctor in the facility. Moving him to hospital was opposed when he became severely ill. He contracted covid and passed on yesterday. Even when he was in the ICU the NIA opposed bail. 

 

I watched three shows about his death last night. Lawyers and activists said that the NIA knew he would die, they wanted him to die. His death was a message to dissenters against the government, ‘We can hold you until you die.’ The friend I chatted with about Father Stan this morning said, ‘Not even a message, they (NIA and the Home Minister under whom they act) enjoy the power to be cruel.’ 

 

I hadn’t thought of that but it is possibly true. I have become numb to the inhuman brutality of those currently in power. But the viciousness of their spokespersons still shocked me. There were BJP/RSS ilk on the shows who said, ‘I have no feeling for him. People like him deserve to be in jail.’ 

 

Meanwhile on another show people debated the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat’s statements, ‘Islam is not under threat in India. Muslims have no need to be afraid. Hindus and Muslims have the same DNA.’ This as Muslim men are lynched by RSS cadre. On that show the RSS spokesperson talked about how the RSS ideology was about Unity. 

 

I don’t need, anymore, to understand the unfeelingness of those in power. But I cannot fathom the barbarism of their followers in turning a blind eye. Of wallowing in the gaslighting and perpetuating the savagery. 

 

Gutted.

Day 15 of 27 — Black Marks on Blank Pages

July 5, 2021

The day began easy. No alarms, a cup of tea with my dream journal on a mellow cloudy morning. It progressed at a relaxed pace. Chat with sis, things going ok there. Outside the wind blew and cooled the tropical day. I had cancelled my work meeting as I was isolating after my friend was quarantined. I hadn’t experienced such a chilled day in a while and I thought about reading my old manuscript. These two weeks of writing the blog had revived the motivation to revisit it, then decided to wait a day to two till the intent built further. I didn’t want to start and then have the desire fizzle out. I pulled out my sketch book. 

 

During the lockdown phase of the pandemic, I had found myself dabbling with all of the dry sketching materials I had purchased over the years, but never used. When curbs lifted I went to the art store and bought a bunch of B and H pencils, kneaded erasers, fine liners, and a couple of sketch books. I eyed the gorgeous coloured pencils—this store had the full Derwent ranges—but only bought raw umber, ultramarine blue, Chinese white, a burnishing pencil and a blending pencil. I decided to use my old basic Faber Castells till I knew whether coloured pencil was the medium I wanted to swim deeper into. I was still nervous to try messy, rather what I felt was messy, water colour and acrylics.  

 

Over the last months what I kept going back to was black pen, both the technical pens and fountain pens. The simplicity of the medium and the monochrome that could create such complex sketches was what drew me in. It relaxed me to experiment with making black marks on white pages to create shape, form, texture, light and shadow. And it was cool that all I had to carry when I went out were my Faber Castell medium nib, and Platinum Preppy fine nib, pens to draw or write. 

 

In writing I am searching, to do something different than I what I have been doing so far. My first two books—the fantasy series—had a big story, with a strong plot, a huge landscape, and a ton of characters. The third one had fewer characters and focused on their emotional changes through a stormy time. I think I want to do something even less complicated now. I am drawn to reading short books with just a character or two and a simple story where language is used to create beauty, intensity and truth. I think poetry does that beautifully but somehow feel an edge to being the creator of poems. I am seeking a form that will take me deeper into observing the marks I make on blank days, of knowing fully this life I am living in a time when meaning has leached out of this pandemic—perhaps soon to be post-pandemic—world, where I find myself far from purpose. 

Day 14 of 27 — Half Done

July 4, 2021

My tiredness feels immense today. It has felt so all day. Stomach cramps, probably due to the antibiotics, kept me up during the night and then, after the two hours of karate on zoom this morning I felt flattened. 

 

Luckily I didn’t have much to do, to think through, or even feel all day. I lay on the sofa and finished reading a book I had started a few days ago. It is the story of a woman who wants to write about the paintings in a museum she cleans in. She marries a rich man and is exposed to theatre, ballet, holidaying, and new experiences. She keeps going back to the museum and writes about the paintings. We don’t really know what else she is writing about but it feels as if she is writing to become herself. That feeling resonated. 

 

Today I said to my spouse that it feels like this little, little virus is zooming in closer and closer. It’s been a threat all year to all of us, and though all around me it has also felt distant. Then all in the space of ten days first my sister and others in her home get infected, then I am swabbed and though I know I don’t have covid I feel anxious till I get the negative PCR, and finally someone I am in mask-less contact with has a close contact with someone who tests positive. Wondering what the next escalation in this will be. 

 

I did feel the inner saboteur at work today. Mostly saying something like, ok so you want to disrupt my plans eh, what if I just don’t make any? Or, before you mess me up, I’ll do it myself. Or, you really have nothing worthwhile to say. Don’t drag this out. Just stop writing.

 

Whereas I believe some of this. Whereas I feel like I am plateauing in some way, repeating myself, and not really saying anything important, I do also feel the need to finish the experiment. I am at the half way mark and from previous experiences with projects I do know this can be the most discouraging of times. 

 

Whatever it catalyses, this experiment is a gift. For a while I’ve been aching for a writers retreat. A blocked out period of time when I let all my other concerns and activities dissolve and focus on aspects of writing and being a writer. This daily writing of  about 500 blog-words has been the closest to that. It’s a focused space and time, out from the anxious days, dedicated to whatever writing brings. I am noticing the things—issues and people—that crash my writing time, and also those that are allies to it. I beginning to know how to create boundaries and carve out more such mini-retreats.