The Last Monday…

April 25, 2022

I’ve been itching to write another blog post. Even though I wasn't sure what I would say I had started one on Friday. This is as far as I got…

 

…Each day is hotter than the day before it. A drier heat than Singy though Bombay is a coastal city. Today I am sitting in a large blue chair in what used to be my daughter’s bedroom. The chair is rickety as the legs need tightening, and nobody else but me uses it anymore — though it is big and holds one comfortably and we all used to fight to occupy it before.

 

My days suddenly have space. We rushed through a lot of the tasks over the first ten days and now the empty time feels a bit odd. Never has a Bombay trip after 2016 has had this kind of slowness. Yesterday it felt like a huge treacherous void that had me taking deep breaths to stabilize myself.  I want to explore that feeling but perhaps not yet.

 

I have been more immersed in the Indian political news since being here. It always happens this way. I used to end up writing small notes in my journal – a character sketch, a theme, or plot idea – that later, in Singy, I would turn into small fictional flashes, just for fun. But something feels different this time. I can’t write fiction, haven’t been able to for a bit. That feels a bit scary…

 

Then I got interrupted and was busy with chores till this morning. I obviously had been wrong in thinking that my days had space. They do in bits and pieces but not long stretches. Nevertheless, I started a post this morning and got one line in…

 

…I’ve reached the last Monday of my stay here…

 

…Interrupted again and now it is afternoon. I think this morning I wanted to write about a conflict I had with my sister. I normally expect one in the middle of our time together. Just like I expected a ‘separation anxiety’ one with my spouse or with my daughter, when she lived with us, each time one of us was leaving. These were and are predictable and since they are expected we name them for what they are and move through them very quickly now. 

 

So yes, I expect a fight with my sister in the middle of any trip I make. But this time she flared up on the second day of my stay and it completely boggled my mind. She and I are very different. I want to go into the core of the conflict, uncover the root of it and clear the air completely. She won’t talk about it, but mulls and broods alone. She doesn’t express her feelings like I do, but I could sense something very heavy lay behind her silence and tears this time. I tried to figure out what it was. She had been alone for two years, had taken care of my mum and managed the house without any help for the period of the first lockdown. Later, though she had help she also was still doing it all alone. It had left trauma traces within. 

 

I wasn’t surprised when another conflict erupted on Saturday. I misread her space totally, and felt that because she had been alone so long our presence now felt intrusive. But when I put forth my theory she began crying in loud, spasmodic sobs. Suddenly I knew I was wrong. Totally off in fact. I realized that the loneliness of those months lingered within creating anxieties and blank spots that she could not articulate. This time I managed to guess correctly, and we took the morning to slowly unfold some of what she had been through. Mostly in silence, just by being together, and working together — cutting fruit, collecting tax documents, clearing a cupboard.

 

I don’t know the point, if any, I was making when I decided to write about this. Perhaps I was just allowing myself to feel it without analyzing it. I felt immense guilt — of course because I hadn’t been around to help — but also because my incorrect guess had triggered such an intensity of pain for her. I couldn’t bear that, but there was not much I could do about the past or even the present and future, except be with it. Sometimes that is all that can be done in the moment, or ever. 

 

I have indeed reached the last Monday afternoon of my stay. So much seems to have happened in these days. Every moment I was free I made small journal entries. I’ve written 74 A5 size pages since I arrived. I am longing to read them and make sense of them. 

 

One of the things I did write about is writing and karate practice. Even though I have only made it to the dojo once and not trained other than that, I know that from the day after I land in Singy I will easily slip into the practice. About writing I don’t know yet. But I think the friend who commented that I am closer to establishing one than ever before is right. Maybe for now all it needs is to just write. I itch with that desire more often now than I did over the last many months.