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. 

 

 

 

Weekly Check-in, a Bit Boring.

October 1, 2021

So where am I this week? I can only do this in bullet points today. I'm tense—a generalized anxiety around never-ending covid, I think. And my perennial sinus and sore throat which adds to the constant doubt of whether I have covid or not. Imagine living with that for a year and half now.

 

·       I'm sleeping 6 hours a day and that’s better than last week’s five.

·    I wake and slowly drink a pot of the new strong assam tea I ordered, while reading, or writing and sometimes watching a news debate. This morning I almost finished The Reader. It is such a powerful book and, in some ways, related to the story I want to write. Finding connection to the other side through confusions? Understanding the other?

·       I then worry about my teeth each morning. Stained badly from the one hour of slow black tea drinking which the dentist had told me to avoid. But that is one daily source of joy in my life, and I don’t want to give it up. But I hate how much I worry about my teeth then. I even preponed my cleaning appointment by a month.

·       I also preponed my covid booster as I felt a bit freaked by all the messaging suggesting that over 60’s should stay home for a month. Part of me is happy to stay home as I am doing a lot more just sitting on my butt and writing these days. It’s not anything I can pull out and show but I’m just happy doing it. 

·       I postponed my eye appointment as they feel fine. 

·      So, what am I writing? The story of friendship torn apart by political differences is just not unfolding, though I have a file of about 5000 words with little unconnected snippets. I discovered the dictate feature in word this week, and delightfully read all the little musings around this story, from all my notebooks into the file. I feel sad because I spent ages over it and the sense of loss of having nothing despite the focus on it is huge. I'm thinking though about the turning point events in the life of my narrator and  also about how one boring day in her life might look like. 

·       I have managed to get my mind into Boiling Frogs again. Chapter One is ready for submission to my online class for critique. 

·       I still am enjoying the class. Zoom on Tuesday mornings, even the nervy free-write. The first Tuesday I couldn’t write a word. The second I wrote a few lines and even read them aloud. Some in the class are so creative with the prompts, and I love listening to their pieces, but I am ok just being where I am. Another person in that class loves fountain pens too. She had a gorgeous Mont Blanc. I felt inexplicably thrilled knowing that. 

·       I love the podcasts from that class. They’re addictive. I learn something that I can apply to my writing process from each podcast. And it is easier to listen than make the effort to write, though I do both. 

·       It is Friday and I'm still struggling with how to structure my karate classes. Now we have to train in pairs that remain the same throughout. And some still join by zoom, so to have a balanced class takes preparation. I've said this before and I will again.

·       Today I was supposed to walk with a writer friend whom I haven’t seen for three months or so (she was travelling). I was excited to finally catch up with her, but it got dark, rainy and thundery and we had to postpone. 

·      Oh, and now most of us do weekly Antigen Tests at home. I sometimes feel that with this testing of asymptomatic people, that is seeing numbers climb quickly, soon all of Singapore might be in quarantine. Just kidding, but not. 

 

This week’s check-in is a bore. Not all weeks can be exciting. I'm now going to watch the rain which has already ‘wiped out’ the distant buildings. I can barely see the indoor stadium. It's so beautiful to sit on my writing room futon and sip a green tea while letting my mind drift into the rain. 

 

PS – prepone is not a proper English word but an Indianism. And eeks—the bullets disappeared when I published, and so did the formatting.