We Shall Not Cease from Exploration

 May 6, 2022

 

I made a couple of starts on a blog post during my first week back, but they fizzled, and I let them be. But in a WhatsApp conversation a friend said she was waiting for reflections of Bombay and so I sit here on my desk today trying to write a post again. 

 

I wrote this on Monday morning… Singapore welcomed me smoothly, gently, back. Immigration, baggage pick-up, and the cab back home were swift. But when I entered our apartment, I looked around as if I was entering an alien space. 'This is our apartment?' something asked. I had to survey the living room and anchor on the lone, slim bookcase in the right corner near the balcony, to reply, 'Indeed.'

 

It is that sense of entering an alien space that haunts. Is it the moment of arriving where I started and knowing something for the first time, like the TS Eliot quote, or is it losing a space of grounding and being less anchored than ever?

 

I’m still feeling overheated – literally. I met a friend for lunch yesterday after doing some training – basics and Sanseru. He messaged unexpectedly while I was on the zoom call with my artist friend. We hadn’t spoken for the three Wednesdays while I was in India and had a lot of catching up to do. I told my artist friend that despite having so many more things to do in Bombay, and subsequently less time, I had slowed down considerably internally. It was the first time this happened since March 2020. I said, 'I wrote 100 pages while I was there, though they might be drivel.'

 

I said, 'My major challenge now, which is connected to other decisions I might make about where I want to live, is to be able to replicate that slowing down here.' I also told him about the dark, sticky terror I felt while I was there, and of the inconsolable and uncontrolled meltdown on Sunday afternoon in Singapore. (I notice I want to write Singapore instead of Singy now?). Of course he had to know more about it all. 

 

I wish I could replicate that conversation as it moved from here to there. One of the things we discovered was how the filling of masalas and grains contributed to the slowing down. The timelessness of it, the sense of being part of an infinite cycle, of something bigger than myself, of the togetherness of millions of others doing the same thing, was one of the underlying factors that lead to a deep slow calm. I said, I’d have to read my writings while there to know what else — between the connections and missed connections, the closeness and the fights — lead to this. 

 

While we were chatting my Indian friend sent me a picture of the sea followed by a message that said ‘East Coast’. I hadn’t contacted him in Bombay, and I was happy that he was here. At the same time, I had plans to start work and this was interference. I decided that I needed to meet him. I wanted to know how we would connect after two years of barely any connection. 

 

We had lunch near the beach and talked about our processes during the pandemic. The losses —  physical and emotional, the following of the inner fears, the self-awareness or lack of it, and the noticing of how things, and people, wanted to move back to the way they were before — even if it meant a regression of sorts. We also could talk easily about politics in India, something we could never do as he is a Modi supporter. We didn’t agree on everything, but it was good to find some common ground and even better to disagree without the accompanying heat. 

 

I walked with him back to the spot he would cross-over to get to his daughter’s apartment. I should have gone with him and taken a bus back, but the sea tempted. I ended up with a moderate heatstroke, as the breeze and tree cover dropped and the sun scorched down. 

 

I need to find the courage to read the words I wrote in Bombay. There might be things I have learnt that I could use here. I know one of the things I did in Bombay was to go back to free-writing, in the mornings if I could. I also used the hour or the half hour I had between chores to do focused writing tasks. As usual the mind scattered not knowing where to begin. I noticed the fear, the terrible fear, perhaps of missing out if I picked one thing over another, but the lack of time forced the decision to pick and focus on one thing. 

I know two things. We need to not skip over the traumas and the learnings of the pandemic as we go back to normal. Time is limited and I can’t do everything I want to. Yet, I do feel that at the end of this ten-year exploration of Writing I am at some sort of beginning and I am knowing it for the first time.