108 Kata Ritual

December 23, 2022

Normally many dojos do the 108 kata challenge on October 25^th, World Karate Day.  I chose to make this ritual our dojo’s end of year one because of a dream I had while I was still a brown belt in 2010.

 

Many of you know that dreams have guided me often on this path. When I moved to Singapore in 2008, I found myself in a dojo with two unique teachers with different teaching styles and emphasis. I was grieving the loss of one of them, who had returned to Japan a few weeks earlier, when I had a dream. In the dream — I receive a small package in the mail from my teacher. On opening it, I find a tiny Japanese temple bell.

 

I don’t know how I knew it was a Japanese temple bell but in dreams one knows things that one doesn’t know they know so I didn’t question this knowing. I merely googled Japanese temple bells and read about the ritual of them being struck 108 times on New Year’s Eve. 107 times on December 31^st and once after midnight, to bridge the new year to the old. 

 

This number 108 was familiar as it has special significance even in Vedic/Hindu traditions. Here, in the Japanese context, it came from the 108 desires and anxieties in Buddhist teachings that a seeker had to grapple with to reach enlightenment. The striking of the bell 108 times in Buddhist temples was meant to purify one from the desires and anxieties of the last year. This dream helped me process the grief, the letting go of the old to allow in the new, while never losing touch with what had been. 

 

When our other Sensei left Singapore at the end of 2013, I felt bereft. The feeling this time was heavier than before, as the dojo’s continued existence fell on me and one other black belt. I’m not sure it was a conscious decision but on December 31^st of that year I pushed aside our dining table and did 108 Geki Si Dai Ichi in the cleared space. It filled me with a determination to keep the dojo going in whatever form I could.

 

In 2014, I was joined by two more from my dojo in doing 108 kata. I remember marking our progress on a clipboard and completing the kata challenge in the little room at the substation that I had rented earlier that year, then having a beer with them after. That year it became the end of year ritual for our dojo. 

 

In these last days of 2022, I am grappling with a lot of sadness and loss about many things and several of them are karate related. 

The year in karate began strong with three of our browns testing to shodan, and one shodan testing to nidan, in February. I felt a sense of hope and accomplishment. It felt like this dojo now had deep roots and would grow well over the years. 

 

At the end of the year though I am unsure how much the storms of the year, the split in the global organization, has weakened our dojo’s roots. As a student of conflict, I know that intense friction at the top levels of an organization are mirrored at lower levels. As the strife in the divided organization played out on social media it found expression in our dojo too. I found my leadership challenged and I grappled with deep self-doubt that weakened me, until an event on December 8^th, which re-connected me to the determination and purpose I had felt in December 2013. 

 

It also feels like yearning for new, for advanced, has seeped into some, and this old ritual perhaps feels meaningless to them. I know though that old cultures understood better the continuity of old and new, and to them old didn’t mean outdated, or new enhanced. Growth that is in resonance with the basic essence of something, is one that sticks and sustains. Kata is a building block of fighting forms. 

 

Some dojos use the number 365 for their end of year ritual. But this 108 kata ritual is connective, almost sacred to me. It transcends practical considerations, times and worlds, and connects me to my karate ancestors. I am here because of them. Setting aside time at the end of the year to complete it, is a way of honouring them. As I practice, I feel their ancient spirits infusing mine. 

Challenges, Goals, Experiments

December 19, 2022

The challenge I am most behind in is the one i set for words/story-draft. Only 7000 words (instead of 11,700) and not a single word in my draft file. Though a story I would call, Sanchin Magic, is beginning to shape internally. Yet a blog post is banging around in my head wanting to come out. 

 

This morning when I filled in and photographed my challenge record, I noticed something that excited me. All year I have tried to find structure and ‘regularity’ in the things I do and have failed spectacularly, then beaten myself up and called myself a failure, a loser, etc. etc. etc. I’ve spent several hours consulting with my spouse, urging him to help with his scheduling projects experience, in making work charts. Nothing has worked.

 

Now I see that I am better at binging. I cannot, just cannot, do the same thing every day but if I set a general goal for the month, I can work my way towards it with long gaps and sudden spurts. I think I sort of knew this about myself but in the long, arid, desert of 'barely any words month after month', I decided to follow the advise that the muse would show up if one sat at one’s desk at scheduled times. That just sitting there on dry days and sharpening the pencils while waiting for the words that had to appear sometime in the near future was a worthwhile occupation. But all that I have done is wasted hours and then felt miserable about that. Though I also do believe in my father’s words, Don’t be afraid to waste your life. 

 

I’ve also trapped myself into the belief that when something is a way of life one does it every day. There is truth in that. Especially in the beginning of things, daily practice helps it seep into our blood and bones. But any belief is a 'blind spot'. It assumes that everyone works in the same way. Specifically in this case maybe for some people binging helps absorb the essence of things? We do come out of retreats — whether meditation or karate — with new insights into the same old thing we were doing daily. It also assumes that every day, week, year can be the same. But time flows and with it we change and no moment can ever be the same. No perfect day can be replicated by trying. No practice can be done so rigidly, right?

 

Suddenly I don’t really know what I am writing about. But one of the major conflicts of my year has been about allowing flow and following structure. I have been through times when structure inspires flow, but also know that neither can be scheduled. I’ve been silly in trying to do the things that matter on a daily or regular basis hoping for growth in those things. And I’ve been silly in the way I have tried to cram an over-brimming schedule into an already full day. I’ve been silly in setting daily challenges for a whole month. It just does not work for me. But a general goal seems to be ok?

 

Maybe I’ll try that in the first month of 2024 and see what happens. Maybe the rest of the month will show me something else. Now that this is on paper I can get back to my story draft J

 

Interested in knowing what works for you in creative pursuits and in learning endeavors.

Cravings and Guilt, and Tiredness

December 16, 2022

Yesterday after the last community outreach workshop of the year I was exhausted. It had been a difficult week and I was exhausted most days, but it hit a new low yesterday.

 

Yet I couldn’t go home and sleep. A craving had gripped me. I had to, just had to, get a few clickart zebra markers. The retractable marker with new technology that prevents it from drying up, ever. I had seen a few in Kinokuniya when I had visited two weeks ago, but the colours were limited so hadn’t bought any. I thought if Kino had them, then Popular surely would. So, after grabbing a meal in a quiet and empty Rocky Master (I’d rather have eaten some East Asian food in the basement of Raffles but everything was super packed and the noise in the basement was deafening) I headed to Popular in Bras Basah Complex. Ideally, I would have liked to have got some markers then eaten leisurely while making silly art in my journal, but I had been famished and needed to eat first. I roamed the stationery aisles on the top floor of Popular even after seeing that the Zebra Pens section didn’t have any. I hoped as a new product they might be displayed elsewhere. I felt dejected and the exhaustion felt more intense when I couldn’t find them. I really was wilting as I had already drunk all the water in the bottle I carry everywhere (yes, could have just bought more water but I wasn’t thinking clearly), but the desire to acquire clickart markers had grown so strong that I decided to walk to Tokyu Hands at Suntec. 

 

And yes, they didn’t have them either. I felt so desperate that I snatched a six-pack of Pilot Juice-ups, 0.4, and went home. As I sat in the MRT surrounded by people, each with a ton load of packages (it is Christmas), the guilt descended. I had known it would even as I was picking up and putting back the pack in the store, definitely before I paid the SGD15 for them. I could have just bought a pen or two, but I wanted the pack. It felt more indulgent, and I wanted to indulge myself. I don’t completely understand why. Perhaps I felt it might fill some of the end of year emptiness, or perhaps to study how I would feel and what I would do about it? 

 

The guilt wasn’t about giving in to desire. Desires and satiating them are a needed part of being human — for me at least. We can’t deny ourselves everything. Making choices of what to deny and what to satiate help me know myself. The guilt was about knowing that the pens I bought were not refillable and in buying them I was contributing to plastic wastes, thus messing with the earth and its environment. When I decided, about a decade ago, to switch completely to only gel pens that I could re-use indefinitely, and five years ago to fountain pens only, I had felt good. This choice I made yesterday made me think about the myriad other choices I make that contribute to global warming. All the unmindful things I do and tell myself that I am only one little cog, that me being mindful constantly puts an unfair burden on me and isn’t useful when millions of others never consider these things. 

 

I don’t know how this writing moved from describing a day in my life to the small thing that made me consider my values. I thought I would be writing about one of the thousand other things that occupy all the layers of my mind. 

 

So many other choices I’ve made, or am about to make, show me who I am. This year as awful as it has been in the way it has forced me to make choices I’d rather not make, has made me more mindful again and thus more in touch with myself, and for that I am grateful. I must be emerging slightly from the fog I have been in?

 

And the guilt — I decided to offer up some of the pens to other members of my family. I made swatches and took a picture. Hopefully there will be one or two takers. 

 

But the guilt of being fortunate enough to have many meals a day, access to healthcare, a stable roof etc. etc. etc. tops the guilt of the glass of wine, the cup of coffee, the steak I eat, that contribute to global warming. What do I do with this existential guilt? It would ease only if the word were more equal, but it becomes less so every day, doesn’t it? And honestly that truth is exhausting.

Oh and a challenges update — 128 kata (instead of 150), 7000 words (instead of 9750), two books read (that one is ok) until yesterday.

I Am A Fighter

December 9, 2022

 

My first update about my December challenges. I’m doing poorly with them — except perhaps the reading. Started well enough but having a cat with anxiety as a guest and having to visit doctors when the ribs/gastric pain soared, have been huge obstacles to progress. I am not surprised because the energies of 2022 were disruptive, so why should the last month of the year be any different. I sense disruption until February or March. 

 

It has been a year with shock and betrayal. And they have often come when I am most fragile. But it has also been a time when I have re-connected to both my strengths and compassion. Each time I’ve had a setback I have felt it intensely, thoroughly, allowed the crushed feeling a home, and expressed it outwards. But then something else has kicked in after I've had a good cry.

 

I am a fighter who does not give up. And it has been a surprise to discover this each time. Because really, you don’t ever know if the next time you are hit will be the one that will knock you flat. Each time I’m amazed to discover that vein of resilience within. 

 

And see the relationships that matter come through with support. 

 

Yesterday the abdominal pain spiked again. I got an emergency appointment with the gastro. He decided to also x-ray the ribs. The spouse had meetings and could not accompany me, but my daughter rushed to the hospital and sat with me through the long waits in radiology, and while registering for an endoscope. Initially I was disoriented, but she sorted out papers and pointed me to the right rooms and elevators. She also brought an extra scarf for me as I had left in a hurry and forgotten to take one. Hospital can be such cold places. Eventually wrapped in warm scarves we sat in a shrimp ramen place and ate piping bowls of noodles. Noodles are comfort food for me. Carbs fill that aching exhaustion, soothe the fear — for me they do anyway. 

 

The first week in December has been a sort of microcosm of the year. Good, painful, surprising. 

 

The first four days of the month writing flowed in a satisfying way. On, Tuesday I went for a briefing session for a community outreach program I am involved with. I heard about the number of workshops the program had completed and number of people it had trained. It gave me immense pleasure to see how much our small steps had accomplished. And slipping into a book has been easy and relieving. One book finished and one more by the weekend. Training slow, but never giving up. 

 

Sometimes the pain, physical and emotional, swells and engulfs. I sag a bit and allow it space and then go on. Yes, I am a fighter. Have been since childhood and karate has strengthened that strain in me. I don’t mean to ‘blow my trumpet’ here today but I did need to remind myself of my strength. 

 

A Map for December 2022

 Friday December 2, 2022

We have arrived here! Time zoomed through many months of 2022, but has been crawling in the last two for me. It’s also been busy and tiring, externally and internally.

 The one word I would use for this year is disruptive. Each time I arrived at some measure of peace or lightness, or a feeling that ‘I’m going to be ok now,’ I’ve been smacked around and reminded that things will go wrong — especially when I have put my feet up, stretched contentedly, and reached for a glass of wine, while watching the sky turn from bright to night. 

 But the human mind and body are tremendously elastic and resilient. I am reminded of those dolls we made for Physics class in 7^th grade, to demonstrate how a low centre of gravity equals a state of being where the doll re-finds equilibrium in an upright position even when pushed around. Many made their dolls with eggs — making a hole in the egg at the pointy end, letting it drain dry, and dropping in sand or pebbles, then painting it nicely. They worked well but had holes in their head. Others used two ping pong balls, the lower one cut in half and re-pasted after a weight has been taped to the bottom. These were cute but sometimes the balls rolled apart. I used a rubber ball the size of a cricket ball for the bottom and ping pong for the top with a stick that passed through both. I cut the rubber ball in half and stuck in a heavy paper weight and cello taped it together again first, then connected it to the ping pong ball and dressed the doll in a robe and wizard’s hat. Watching it roll back up was always so satifying. 

 I guess I have lowered my emotional centre of gravity with age. I roll back up despite the knocks. It is satisfying though exhausting. Oops I shouldn’t have said that aloud. Sure to receive a knockout blow soon.

 I don’t know why I want to do this — except my guts says I should — but I have recorded in my journal three challenges for this last month of the year. Maybe it’s my last chance to say, hey not too bad a year after all. I also have decided to not feel miserable if I fail in these challenges but laugh at myself for thinking I could defy the spirits of 2022. So the map is ready but if I go nowhere it is ok. 

 I should tell you what I have challenged myself with. I’ve kept it easy and doable. 

1.     Writing 20,000 words in the month and having a draft for a 5000-word story around karate. Like a mini, very mini, nanowrimo (national novel writing month, normally done in November) in December. A writing buddy is also doing her own challenge. 

2.     Doing a minimum of ten kata daily – making it up if I miss a day. This one was inspired by a friend doing a more challenging version of this challenge. Right now, I have bruised my ribs so my movements are likely to resemble a snails. But who says snails are too slow?

3.     Reading a book a week and reaching 47 books this year.

 I should be organizing things as everything — as in my closet, my books, my journals, my stationery, the kitchen, in fact anything that has doors in the living room too — is so messy. And mess outside creates a sense of dense anxiety inside. But instead, I am doing this. Because my gut tells me to. 

 What I need to do is relax, as in ‘flaneur’ and sip coffee in cafes, but I feel some structure and work might be more relaxing right now. Some measured work daily that allows my mind and body to then slip into the satisfaction that completing it creates. Yes, my gut tells me this. 

 If I can say ‘my gut tells me’ then I suppose I have moved a bit away from the state I was in a month ago when I felt I hardly knew myself. Maybe the changed profile pic helped. I made a few more very tiny changes beyond that too. 

It’s been a hard year. I still feel more heavy and dread-filled than light and hopeful. And I don’t think 2023 will be easier but I hope it might. It’s funny how we do that — hold all kinds of confusing contradictions within ourselves while at the same time wanting one-pointed clarity.

Tiny Scattered Thoughts

November 3, 2022

It’s been a very long time since I have felt this way. Felt like I don’t know myself at all. I feel a distance, a huge distance between me and my writing self, and perhaps even from my self-exploring self. 

 

The notebooks on the top shelf of the three-level bookshelf in my writing room are suddenly unfamiliar. I don’t know which one to reach for when I want to write something. I had a clear, though loose, classification of what goes into what notebook. But right now, I squint at them as if I’m trying to remember something from far in the past. Are they alien objects or is my mind disintegrating? The answer is sadly clear. 

 

And for the first time in years, I feel in need of a therapy session with someone else. Someone who will listen and make sense of my patterns, of me. Who will paraphrase and reflect back what I say. Hear what I didn’t say, see what I am unaware of, ask the questions that will help me probe further. For the first time in a decade or more, I can’t do this for myself. Stress levels too high or the mind disintegrating? This time it I can say that it is stress that is causing the disintegration of the mind. Slowly, gradually, like the temperature turned up in the pot with frogs who don’t feel it going up. Yes, I didn’t realise just how disintegrated and depressed — so much so that I couldn’t write — my mind was feeling as the stress increased gradually. 

 

But I have today? Written I mean.

 

A recent shock transported me out of the slow boiling pot, directly into the fire. Ya, a series of shocks first, and then an intense thunderbolt. I feel trapped right now in certain circumstances that I feel unable to describe clearly and think through. Unable to share the specifics with others. This makes me lonely.

 

Shocks are painful. But they do bring one back into one’s body, into the present moment. Though it is a choice after whether to stay there or float away to reduce the pain. I feel trapped by the things I cannot yet share or describe clearly. Some of it is related to a collective, a community, and some intimately personal. For weeks I have been wanting, but unable to shift this state. I hate it.

 

The shocks have made me contemplate integrity, as they have originated from behavior that I consider untrustworthy. I’ve thought about the integrity of leaders, of people I look up to, of people who are acquaintances or closer friends, of family members, and most of all myself. I have reflected on the ways in which others might define integrity differently from me and thus act differently. That there may not be absolutes. Or that they may be unaware of their lack of it. I feel like I have been given a chance to examine my life and see in which direction I have moved. I have thought of a time when I didn’t act from a place of integrity and am glad to see that I am closer today to being the way I'd like to be. Integrity is important to me and at times it isn't easy. 

 

My panic attacks increased over the last week or two and the need to let everything go — untie all bonds — and start life like a newly conceived fetus, grew. Often it felt like the only way to get out of the trapped feelings. But to sever all bonds is hard to do most times? And I don’t know how. 

 

Then last night as I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself, I sensed something or heard something from my belly, my tanden — the centre from which, many traditions believe, life force is received and disseminated to the rest of the self. It felt like a clue, but then it was gone. 

 

But for some reason all that remained of that little flirt of a clue was a feeling that a profile pic change would be good. That sometimes a small, almost insignificant, change sets off a series of flutters that can create a storm. 

 

How do you change your ‘trapped’ states?

Rainy October

October 8, 2022

I’m sitting in the green-pink balcony munching spicy khakras. It is a moist grey morning. It’s been raining since yesterday afternoon. Evening dojo with Sensei Mistry got cancelled because of the rain and I sat at home sipping cold vodka and luxuriating in Annie Ernaux, whom I discovered after hearing she had won the Nobel Literature prize. 

 

Rain in a Bombay October is unusual for me, but my sis says it rains almost until Diwali now. We tried to plan this trip to avoid rain because it sometimes scuttles plans when low-lying roads flood. But I am glad of this, for me, unexpected rain, as it is a special pleasure to witness Bombay thunderstorms. 

 

Several social plans also were called off this trip. One because I messed up the time and it clashed with a work appointment, but the others dropped by the other side. A friend got a stomach bug, another fell ill with covid, and another’s father-in-law went into hospital. At first the suddenly empty hours unnerved me as I felt like since the structure of the day that was holding me together fell apart I might too, but then I accepted it as some ‘wise force’ trying to get me to slow down. I still think in this irrational way sometimes. 

 

Initially I  felt a resistance to occupy this slow mental space as it brings up anxieties that have been camouflaged under busyness. The deeper space though also allows these worries to become less threatening. Once it felt like an outside force was saying slow down, be alone even if it is hard, I found myself wanting not to re-schedule or make new social plans. This led to a strange guilt that I don’t know how to name. Like I shouldn’t be wasting this time in Bombay, which I could use to connect with people I don’t normally get to? 

 

It’s been long now that the pace of my life had slowed this much. I read three books here and now I am only five books behind my Goodreads goal of fifty a year. One was a book of exquisite short stories, another a book with articles on racism and whiteness, and the last the Annie Ernaux last evening. 

 

But mostly I watched the trees around my home, fresh and vibrant, in this rain. Though there is a lot more built up around this house, my great-grandfather built, which was once the sole one on this hill, the area has remained dense with trees. I watched them sway in the mild or strong winds, I watched leaves flutter and swish. I watched squirrels scampering the green lawns, particularly in the mornings. I felt joy seeing this. I watched the birds that populate these trees and skies—crows, sparrows, mynah’s, pigeons, parrots, and kites. 

 

There is a tree with yellow flowers and leaves the green of Bombay parrots. The parrots like to hide in it. I stare for hours trying to spot and photograph them, but often I only know their presence when they fly off. There are flocks scurrying across the sky together as if on an important errand and then suddenly turning around as if they forgot something. There are kites and eagles, circling and gliding, mostly at dusk—finding the wind currents they can coast on. Most often I watch two kites protect a nest that I discovered one morning when I saw one of the birds fly repeatedly into the same tree. The nest is high in a tree, that seems to be some kind of fir, and the two birds are often either hidden in the branches of the tree next to it or sometimes on the tip of one of the surrounding ones. They seem extra vigilant at dawn and dusk. They also sat there through the hours of evening and night rain—I looked for them until I fell asleep a little past midnight, and saw they hadn’t moved, and when I woke in the morning they were in the same spot—and only now that it is slightly dry, they have flown off perhaps to find food. 

 

I think I needed to re-acquaint myself with the beauty and silence of this slow mind. There is no desire to do, to catch up with someone else, or with where I imagine I should be. Maybe this is what might heal some of the distress and lostness I have been feeling for a while now. Maybe it won’t, but it is good to be in this space.

From the Green-Pink Balcony

  

October 3, 2022

I’m sitting in what used to be the green, and now is the green-pink, balcony in my Bombay home. I arrived last week. The pace has been slower than in any visit in the last decade and I’m relearning how to relax in this home.

 

The first few days I roamed the corridors of the house restlessly trying of think of what I was forgetting to do. I called a few friends, two of the closest asked, ‘Can I come over for a bit,’ and visited the day I called. The conversation was instantly deep and connective. I yearn for these talks. 

 

With one, I sat in this balcony, and she admired the cushions—coloured leaves on a white background—my sister had painted. I said I loved them too but would probably have used a different set of colours, or left out a few that were there. But my friend connected every colour to those present somewhere in this space and said the cushions bind the room together. My friend is a healer. She picked up a stone that my sister leaves on the sofa there and asked what it was. I said, probably some feng shui my sister thought up. My friend caressed the stone and said it had a lovely, peaceful energy. My sister walked in then to say hi, and she revealed that she had found this stone at Gangotri, the source of the holy Ganges river. 

 

Legend has it that when sage Agastya drank up the oceans, to find an asura that was hiding from the devas in them, the world faced drought and Ganga was brought down to earth from the heavens where she flowed, to bring relief to the people of the world. She descended at Gangotri. The force of her flow was so strong that first Shiva had to receive and hold her in the coiled locks of his hair before allowing her to flow. Ganga is the Goddess of purification and forgiveness. There are so many legends about her, many sound like they are about taming the wild flow of a powerful woman. The legends are patriarchal and misogynistic, but I love them nevertheless. They contain a sense of timelessness. 

 

This week is busier than the last, and I have also decided to clean and clear out some book cupboards so my sister can use the space, but on this possibly last slow morning I wanted to write a blog post. About time since I hadn’t written one in six weeks or so. Six stressful and hectic weeks in which I visited doctor’s clinics six times and the dentist twice. 

 

Maybe I will write a short one daily here.

Seventy-Five

August 19, 2022

 

Over the last few days, there are times, often in the afternoons when the ground suddenly drops from below me and I find myself at the edge of a crumbly bottomless pit. My words tumble into that void and I reach out to grasp the few I can. 

 

India turned 75 on August 15th. A great milestone for any nation. Like many I took time to feel the gift of being born in this multi-cultural, fierce, and loving land. Without ever being religious I always felt a strong sense of identity of being Hindu with its rich culture and literature — radical myths and characters of every shade of the rainbow — twining within, giving me fragrance and depth. But the greatest gift of India for me have been my school and college days where classmates of every shape and religion shared each other’s food and stories. 

 

Even though I was born after independence the freedom struggle had deep meaning for me. Uncles, aunts, told stories of their protests and as I grew, I felt a strong civic sense — a need to fight for equality and justice for all. This was my India. Of course, I was privileged by my class, my city life, my education, while many others were not and probably felt differently about their India.

 

I walked the streets around Dhoby Ghaut with my daughter at noon on August 15^th. We had just seen the doctor and were looking for a place to eat lunch. We talked of India and though there was a lot of sadness about the erosion of democratic values there was no prescience of what we would see that evening. 

 

Eleven men — who in 2002 gang raped five members of one family and killed fourteen, including a three-year-old whose head they dashed on a stone — being garlanded outside the jail, and later at a special function held to felicitate them. 

 

Those images are etched into my brain as are the images of Bilkis Bano, the five month pregnant woman who they had raped and left for dead in 2002, was etched in then. She called these men, her neighbours, uncle and elder brother and begged for mercy, but they held her down and took turns. They raped her mother alongside her. 

 

These men were released as a celebration of our 75^th — freedom for saffron, gang rapists, and murderers in Amrit Kaal India. Remission is part of a judicial system and state governments were encouraged to set prisoners free to celebrate this 75th, but apparently gang rapists and others who had committed heinous crimes were not to be included in this. Yet a ten-member committee consisting of MLA’s and leaders of the ruling party, and government officials set all eleven rapists free. One of the MLA's said, the men were Brahmins and had good values. I don’t know if they could have done this. This about eleven men who had been tried and convicted of the crimes.

 

The rapists must have been remorseful? Nope, many are insisting they were innocent and framed by some NGO. I can guess which NGO will be named. 

 

I am shattered. I take refuge in my little email group where we share our feelings of horror and hopelessness, and exchange articles written by others similarly shattered. I am also shattered by the lack of outrage in the general public. Many too numbed, too ‘conditioned’ by the excesses of the BJP to react?

 

But what if these had been Nirbhaya’s rapists? Would society be more outraged if those men had been released? The eleven men, rapists of Bilkis Bano, looked well-fed and groomed. They were fed laddoos and themselves were distributing them just outside the jail. 

Sitting here. Stopped momentarily. When such horrific happenings do not stun citizens, I think it is time for us to take stock of who we are as a country and do something, even if we haven’t a clue where to begin. 

Welcome August

August 4, 2022

 I haven’t set goals in a while, but August certainly has goals. 

 

I told my artist friend, on our chat yesterday, that I had been able to drop my compulsive news following, and now instead of staying up late to watch debates or checking on news from India every hour, I check twice a day and switch off the late night shows and read. Mostly this is true.

 

Reading eight books in August is one of my goals. 

 

I woke after only about four hours of sleep this morning and said goodbye to my spouse. He’s out for a work trip. I couldn’t fall back to sleep and brewed the last of the white tea from Teabox, the one called Silver Needles, cultivated in the foothills of the Himalayas, with more caffeine content than black tea. The day seemed to smell of rich, strong, black, assam tea. Don’t know where the full-bodied, malty, fragrance in the air came from, but I closed my eyes and breathed it in. I drank my less fragrant golden tea slowly and read, finishing the first of the eight books—Either/Or by Elif Batumen—this morning. Then took a picture and posted it in the FB book group a friend had added me to a few years ago

 

The low ache of separation, even when it is only for a day or two, felt in the first hours of apartness, hit me as the not-so-empty day stretched ahead. I had a schedule, and I was tired. Always a challenge to negotiate. 

 

My artist friend completed his PHD defense last week and now is a doctor in waiting. We hadn’t chatted for a couple of weeks, and it was special to hear of his frenzied preparation, moving viva, and the cauldron of feelings after. He said he no longer felt stupid, and we laughed and discussed the areas in which we feel stupid. He had been told that he was stupid since he was a child and in some ways I had too. I solved it for myself by studying Physics and doing well in it. I developed an arrogance, try calling me stupid now, I’d emanate to the joint family who often pulled me down. But later when I started karate I felt very, very, stupid. I told myself that karate was my side passion, a hobby, and it was ok to be stupid there. I couldn’t say that though when I began teaching it and had to grapple with my insecurities. 

 

I don’t know why we don’t like feeling stupid. I want to embrace those stupid parts more. 

 

What next, I asked him, and he told me his plans related to deep listening and art. I shared what I want to work on. I had been trying to write about my karate journey with little success. It was rich but it felt without much body too. Last week an insight-bolt jolted me. It makes only intuitive sense yet, but I began to think of the second event/activity in my life that had altered me irrevocably, the one that my human rights activist self was born from. These identitites, karateka and human rights activist, journey like two parallel rails of a train track. I think I need to see if I can braid them together. 

 

Along with the ache of separation there is a feeling of freedom that comes with being alone, even if it is for a few days. I miss my solitary travels, or days by myself in my home. I don’t know why I need this, since my spouse never restricts me. But this need exists along with the equally strong need to have somebody to be with. 

 

We talked of other things too on our chat, and there is so much more to reflect on and write about as July was very full, but the day’s tasks call. 

 

Unquiet Yet

July 28, 2022

 

A long unquiet time it’s been, and the mind’s felt like a cardboard box holding hand-painted porcelain teacups that have been crushed in transit. I constantly hear the rattling of the broken pieces. I dared not open this box until today. 

 

On Tuesday, I couldn’t wake to the alarm and had to take a taxi to the group I was co-facilitating in. It was my last day at the outreach I have volunteered for all July. Rain fell in thick sheets and the large meeting room was too cold for my thin black sweater. My head hurt because the weather had aggravated the sinus again. After the large group presentation, I walked to one of the smaller rooms for the breakout groups. Mine had five young men, two of which I had seen dozing off in the first hour. I shook away the lethargy that remained after the two cups of tea and approached them.

 

Right away the young men all identified themselves as people who didn’t talk to anyone about their problems. Their ways of destressing were smoking, alcohol, football, or music. Right away they expressed thoughts and opinions conflicting with the presentation. I pulled down the sleeves of my sweater to cover my reddening palms (when very cold they lose circulation sometimes) and began doing what I know how to do — throw in all ideas presented into a pot, elicit more, and begin to cook them. The sleepy group livened up as they argued with me and when I requested them to remain open through the role plays to explore new ways to respond to crisis, they did. I ended up having the best group of the month. 

 

It felt like the river’s flow was favoring me again. I paced the corridors, by the floor to ceiling windows, to warm up before the debrief. I encountered one of the other co-facilitators, whom I don’t know very well, wearing just a t-shirt over jeans. She had been drinking hot water through the morning she said, and stood next to me for the group photo. I said she was so warm and it felt nice, and she hugged me closer. And just like that I wasn’t cold anymore and I broke into a huge smile. It's lovely when a project ends on a high note. 

 

Soon, I hurried out of the building to the warmer outside. The rain had stopped, and cloud cover made it a pleasant day to walk. I pulled my mask off and walked, and walked, beside the waters of the Singapore River, feeling my ruptured, jangling mind settle into temporary quietness. I found a quiet place to eat, ordered chicken curry, and drew in my journal. 

 

I have moved away from True North again it seems. Or rather True North is being redefined internally. I haven’t been able to see myself clearly for a while. It’s all been murky and sluggish with a sense of ‘non-starting’. It has been so in my swollen sinus and throat, and my always roiling stomach. My state reminds me of what I felt in those times, 1992 and 2003, and places when the raw material of myself was being sorted through to be re-organised. 

 

Today I opened the cardboard box and began sorting the broken teacups. I wrote for a while about the raw ingredients within me. Unsure if the cooked product will be palatable or will have to be discarded. 

Miscellanea

July 15, 2022

 

Yesterday I left my Sunday dojo with a vague disturbance. I no longer have a need to know exactly what any disturbance I feel is about as soon as I become aware of it. Instead, I leave it to swirl and mature within before I try to examine it. 

 

I was extremely tired yesterday as my white cat had kept me up, like he usually does, the four nights he’d been here. Actually, he just comes to cuddle and purr on my stomach but being a light sleeper, I have trouble falling back to sleep. I needed a nap but it eluded me so I journalled hoping the disturbance would appear on the page and reveal more about itself. Instead, I wrote about change and how I know I might have changed. I wrote about aging and what urgencies are arising around that. These have been like suspended particles spiraling in agitated eddies for a long time. Now they feel settled into the deep waters of a still pond. 

 

For a couple of weeks my connection with my artist friend on our Wednesday chats has been fragile. Both of us are going to several layers of heaviness. His related to personal loss and strong body symptoms and mine very concentrated in the grief I feel about India, a thing I keep patrolling the perimeter of. 

 

On Saturday for some reason, I decided to not be so obsessive in following the news. I guess it happened after hearing the absurd allegations made by a spokesperson of the ruling party claiming that the Congress party had instigated the Gujarat genocide of 2002 to defame Mr. Modi. The same genocide that had lead to Mr. Modi being denied a visa to the US. Those of us who have been involved, even in a small way, with investigating the violence know how absurd the BJP claim is. But the Supreme Court gave the PM a clean chit and instead named human rights activists and victims of the violence as those wanting to keep the pot boiling. A witch-hunt of activists and police officers who had clearly identified the Hindutva elements, with close connection to the PM, as perpetuators of the violence, began. After hearing this new allegation by the State Police and the BJP I felt lightheaded and slightly vertiginous. I knew that history would be re-written as fiction. Whatever inaccuracies and biases any history has, I hope that it does begin with a quest to document something ‘truthful’. This one is a deliberate attempt to whitewash. Yet I wasn’t depressed, despite knowing that the corruption, brainwashing, and infiltration of all democratic institutions is complete and none with power will use it for an unbiased probe into anything against the current regime. I should have felt hopeless, but I just felt—this too shall pass. Though not as quickly as the declared emergy of Indira Gandhi. I knew I was unlikely to see the other side of it in my lifetime.

 

On the comments section of an article on an independent website, a Hindutva male trolled me. He told me to keep crying for the next twenty years, he called me Begum Aunty, Liberal, Leftist, Jihadi, in need of Burnol (an ointment to soothe burnt skin) etc. I told him he was unoriginal and that if I was Aunty, the PM was Grandfather, and he too would one day be past. The troll-man didn’t like it and upped his attack, but I walked away. 

 

I have changed. Few months ago, and for a while before, I often wrote about how I don’t know myself at all. I realized this week that I have come to know myself again. I see the changes, but I don’t like many of them. Why do we become that which we do not like? I ask this of myself personally and also of Right-Wing Religious Extremists. I am thinking about the Hindu ones who are mirror images of the Islamists ones they despise. 

 

Maybe if I understand why I became what I do not like, I will also understand them a little bit? 

 

Now that this I have become slightly detached from this heaviness, I wonder if I will connect better with my friend’s heaviness. While I was carrying my pain, I felt too full to be able to talk about his. And visa versa. 

 

Today my cats go back home. I will get the deep sleep I badly need, though I have an early start tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow afternoon after my morning co-facilitation work, I will sit in a café and free-write about my disturbance from Sunday post karate. It still intrigues me. 

What Offends...

July 13, 2022

 

My stomach had gone through huge exhausting churnings in the last week, and it might just be that I have serious digestive system issues, but often it feels like internalized churn from happenings in India. 

 

Lately it’s become difficult to express personal choices and opinions about religion. Since I am Hindu, I am speaking about Hinduism. The way religion has been weaponized and politically used has bothered me since LK Advani, a leader of the BJP, zoomed around the country on his Rath Yatra in early 1990’s. It resulted in an ancient Mosque being destroyed by Hindutva fanatics and riots in other parts of the country.

 

I’m simplifying those events by describing them this way, but to me they were the beginning of the divisiveness that is all pervading today. 

 

Hmm, on second thoughts, it isn’t difficult to express religious choices if they are aligned with what the Right-Wing Hindutva (RWH) groups want you to say. The noise around religion got louder recently as the RWH’s started a movement to dig up and destroy more mosques around the country. One called the Gyanvapi mosque had been in the news constantly for the RWH’s believed a lingam—symbol of Lord Shiva, was found on the premises. Apparently though, the residents of the area were not involved or impressed with the news and controversies for they say many shivlings were destroyed when the Central government made the Kashi-Vishwanath corridor, and they wonder why the RWH’s were not bothered then. 

 

I tried to detach myself from the fray but sometimes it felt absurd when RWH’s asked for Mughal emperors to be removed from history books, or for present day Muslims to pay for the sins of those invaders. It was disturbing to hear RWH’s say that Hindus—yes, they were speaking for me too—were offended by this or that. It was even more disturbing how easily the Police helped them to remain offended and exact their pound of flesh by locking up 'offenders' and ensuring they never got bail. It offended me how selectively the law was applied and how 'offenders' on the other side escaped arrest. 

 

I don’t get offended easily around religion but recently it offended me that a priest who called for the rape of  Muslim women was called not a hatemonger but a great Mahant, respected by many Hindus. It offended me that it took so long to arrest a man that called for genocide of Muslims, and after he was out on bail, where one of the conditions was he not make hate speeches, he made more hate speeches, and as far as I know hasn’t been re-arrested. 

 

It feels very absurd that it is ok to abuse actual living citizens, ask for a genocide against them, ask for the women from the community to be raped, call the community jihadist and traitors, economically destroy them by boycotting traders and workmen from that community, even illegally destroy their homes, arrest and torture them in police custody — but it is not ok to say something the RWH’s don’t want to hear about a Hindu God or Goddess. 

 

Just wrapping my confused head around this. 

 

Meanwhile life goes on. My cats will come live with me for a while their parents go for an anniversary holiday. I am meeting a lot of people I normally never would and hearing about their lives through my newest volunteer activity. I find that exciting.