Welcome 2025

January 1, 2025

For me 2024 met an abrupt end, in the middle of an insignificant week. It didn’t resolve or complete any of what I had hoped it would, nor did I finish anything in it or change any of my most entrenched habits by the time it ended. This post is a look through of the beginning of last year and why it felt urgent for me to traverse those days again in memory.

In the middle of December 2024, I tried to retrieve memories from the beginning of the year, but it felt like the first months had disappeared into an impenetrable mist. It disturbed me enough that I resolved to read my 2024 journals as I truly had forgotten much of what happened in the year. I had begun it with a optimistic feelings of change and discovery as we moved into our new home but on the third day of being box-free, also the third day of 2024, I was plunged into a crisis that occupied my mind and emotions until the middle of the year—I cannot share what it is because it was somebody else’s problem and I was a mere supporter. It was also a time when my 'nose' was constantly assaulted by odours that slowly slipped me into a brain fog and reduced my immunity as my allergies waxed and waxed towards a peak that reached up beyond the highest Himalayan peak. I struggled with the use of anti-histamines—I couldn’t survive without them but using them dulled and depressed me. I developed an addiction and obsession to fountain pens and often coped by buying a new pen—my journals during my worst states are filled with ‘I want a new pen, I want a new pen,’ for long pages.

And I think both these things—being involved in issues that were not quite my own and being assaulted with allergens—was the trend for a lot of the year but particularly until May when I felt all I was doing was waking up and getting through the days. An unproductive and slightly unhappy time which I tried to change by enrolling in an online writing class. It was wonderful that the deadlines of assignments and submissions was added to the other things I forced myself to do. At least I was a bit, a very little bit, happy doing these but my days and doings did feel meaningless. The general state of the world, the wars and the swing to right wing extremes, the othering of people, the wealth inequalities plunged me further into a feeling of doom—though most people saw me as functional and possibly even cheerful. 

Something shifted in June when a beloved teacher left this earthly plane and an outpouring of memories of him filled my journals. He had lived a deep and very meaningful life and remembering this was a wakeup call. I wanted to pull my life back into meaning. Yet resolving to do something and actually doing it has a gap—and this distance can vary according to the state of someone’s mind and body. My body was dragging me down, lack of sleep, painful gastric disturbances, and a muscular thigh injury the pain from which crawled upwards to my lower back and downwards to my instep, deadened my brain constantly. Hating this and trying to resurrect the dying brain, I filled my days with activity which aimed at trying to convince myself that I was ok, that life was still ok. 

I succumbed to all these—the body and mind dampers—while also exhausting myself raging against them. The year continued—the trip to Okinawa and Kyoto were a highlight that until November were the only bright spots of the year, though after these trips things plunged into darker empty meaninglessness, though the desire to move back into a meaningful life ignited by the passing of a teacher also rippled like a tender mountain spring within me. 

On September 28, I bought an A6 Midori journal at the airport before my emergency trip to Bombay and in it I created a graphic journal of the days that followed. This was the second turning point of the year. The illustrations that could only be drawn after a deeper reflection on what was happening and how it affected me brought a small shift, and on my return the Writer’s Fest where I heard inspiring writers and met my writerly and readerly friends helped slow me down. That lovely week was the only time I went back to my ‘less is more’ belief and only attended a few select programs which provided nourishment and joy. Mid-December for the first time in 2024, I resisted the habit of the year to fill up my hours, and to hate myself when I didn’t live a ‘productive’ day. I became aware of how I set myself up for failure constantly—by creating a daily too-long to-do list (I had to have this for the lost time, the things left undone through the year) that nobody but a robot might be able to tick off, and flogging myself at the end of the day for not finishing it, but starting out the next day in the exact same way.

I was in the grips of these terrible habits, a whip wielding giant critic that had grown unnoticed through the first months. I still am. There has been no resolution or magic yet, and there will not be. But I also know that it is not discipline that will shift it but just a slow awareness and a gentle forgiveness for the self that fell into this existential darkness where light couldn’t enter. 

I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I did manage to pause the constant, restless, chaos within over the last two weeks of the year and connect to a crazy fun me within. On the edges of this darkness, I sense the formation of dreams and goals for next year, I sense some wisdom garnered in this darkness, I sense love and strength and compassion and calm—all things that I also am. It is a time of transition.

Nothing hugely terrible happened this year but I still will say it was one of the worst years of my life. Some of this I have realized came from external things—the wars, the violence, the terribly self-serving leaders. In a life of 64 years these phases too will be and perhaps I have been reminded how to live through them, though at the top of my wish list for 2025 is that these stupid leaders finally get that they are there to serve the people and not there to inflict their terrible fantasies on the world.

On the last day of 2024, yesterday, my daughter and son-in-law unexpectedly invited us to a lunch at a Swiss restaurant. Over fondue and rosti and fish and wine we chatted and remembered the highs and lows of the year (their year too had been exhausting) and laughed and remembered comics we had read in our childhood— Asterix and his village-mates came out the winner. My spouse also gave me a pen made of wild horse jasper—a stone that has various healing properties—as a 42^nd anniversary gift. The cream pen body with swirly black and dark brown marbling has a weighty, smooth, feel in my palm. It feels like it is just what I need to move into the next year. 

Now what ink will pair best with it? May I know how to set myself very simple and finishable tasks after that exhausting 2024. May the storms of our life and those in the world move us towards living purpose-filled, kind lives.

If You are a Marginalised Voice… Speak Up Anyway.

 November 28, 2024

            Recently I read an essay by George Orwell on the Spanish civil war of 1937. Some of the things he wrote about are as relevant today.  Things like the spread of misinformation, the war between fascism and liberal ideologies, the rewriting of history. Orwell was a prophet of the times to come and his skill I think came from seeing the understory of things, seeing underneath the most forceful narratives of the times and being able to show and tell it. Also put himself in the story and describe his internal dilemmas.

            The rewriting of history by the victors, so that future generations have a one-sided view of what happened is a concern I feel deeply. And I’m not sure why that’s important but it is, right? Isn’t having as objective a history as possible for our children important? Yet how many of us do much about it? 

            Our ideologies, and political affinities sway us, and misinformation which is easier to spread than in those times mire us in a bog of ideas that suck us down and suffocate us and then we operate not from clarity but from that bog and perhaps many of us just give up and get on with our days, our cups of coffee in cafes, our social evenings, feeling helpless, believing that there isn’t much we can do. I do this but I also feel empty at the beginning, the middle, and the end of every day. 

            Orwell had a suggestion for preserving history. He spoke of us — everyone, individuals — recording the moral atmosphere of the time with as many visceral details as possible. And I thought why not attempt it. It might be an antidote to the helplessness I feel.   

            Sitting here at my desk in Singapore I can only record the details of what I see on TV, which is limited as I can only see what somebody else, in this case a govt appointed channel, decides to show. I don’t know what the camera has omitted and what the editor has included. But still, one doesn’t need to be a seer to guess who builds what narrative. 

            The moral atmosphere in visceral details...

I saw chaos in both houses of Parliament. The Rajya Sabha redone in garish red with Dhankar sitting over the proceedings. Kharge introduces a need to have a JPC on Adani. And all Dhankar says is nothing is going on record, nothing is going on record, nothing is going on record. Isn’t Parliament where everything is discussed – at least in other times it was.

In the garish green house, the Lok Sabha, before even anything was done, on day one the proceedings were stopped as the opposition demanded a probe. I saw on the second day the opposition still demanding a probe, shouting on one side of the room, business as usual on the other. Things introduced and passed without the speaker looking up at all. Just saying, I think the ayes have it. How does he see the arms raised when he looks down at something I cannot see on his table. 

Outside the ruling party blames the opposition for the chaos, the non-functioning of Parliament. I was told when this ruling party was in opposition that the business of running parliament even in 'noisy' situations was the job of the ruling party. But the PM stands on a podium, surrounded by yes men, before the start of Parliament and says, these 80-time losers haven’t learnt their lesson yet.

 They have won something — that’s why they are inside though. Besides just because you lose in an election doesn’t mean you have to shut up until the next one. You still are a voice, a leader, of those who didn’t vote for the rulers. Of course unfortunately our leaders don’t necessarily act for the best interests of the public, the voiceless, the ones who have chosen them as representatives of their needs.

I see highly paid lawyers calling a press conference to defend Adani. Doling out incomplete information to the public to convince them of his innocence and about Big Bad USA bullying poor little Adani and trying to destroy the forward growth of India. BBU is jealous of India, they say. Lawyers who at one time seemed intelligent, and perhaps ethical, dole out partial truths. 

I see Adani using the might of his channel — the channel he acquired because the channel’s owners suddenly came under a probe by SEBI, and the CBI, for failure to disclose some assets, and other things —to distort facts, to shout out his innocence. BTW the charges against the previous owners were miraculously dropped, a few years later after Adani had successfully acquired and made the channel Modani TV. There was no evidence of wrongdoing SEBI and CBI said. 

This isn’t visceral detail, there are no sounds, no smells, no atmospheric descriptions, or even details of what who wore what (and somebody did wear an ill-fitting suit and somebody else a suave turtle-neck), and whose nose was bigger than whose, who was bald, and what the mike shoved into somebody’s face looked and felt like, but it is images — though second-hand, and memories — all raw and fresh and mine, and I am glad to record this as my truth. 

I watch independent channels. They are not allowed inside Parliament. They don’t have the resources to stand outside too. They are moving faces in boxes on my TV. They offer alternate views that I want to hear. 

But I too only write with incompleteness. The ‘everythingness’ of happenings is too huge. But a short addition here — the opposition also wanted a probe into Manipur and the continuing violence there. And a discussion on the revival of temple/mosque politics despite an act called The Places of Worship Act. A discussion on the deaths, only of minority men despite both religions rioting, caused by police actions in Uttar Pradesh. Of course denied by the police but then we know how that state operates. 

That is even more sickening and it makes me more determined to tell my temple story if, if, if… only if I can get out of the stuckness and silence that the enormity all this creates, and find the words. 

Meanwhile if your story is a marginalised view continue to tell it in any way you can. I am sure at least one person is listening. 

I am not reviving a weekly blog, still not able, but I will write about the moral atmosphere of things, whenever I can. 

 

Taking a Break

October 27, 2024

             My body and mind are recovering from a violent gastric virus. It started with my spouse getting it two Fridays ago, and two days later I followed. I’m not going to describe it for even thinking about it makes my head reel. Too close to it yet.

He recovered faster though still feels drained at times. I am taking longer.

It disturbed my balance, and what I thought the rest of the year, or at least October would look and feel like. I had thought I might slip into finally doing the things I felt I had missed out on during this turbulent and windy year that pulled my inner boat off any courses I had set for myself. Currents pulling away and out, which I fought hard for a while to get back on course.

The illness further added to the feeling of being blown off course by winds and currents and now it seems the better course is to go with the winds and currents. 

And I feel a blankness, an inability to reclaim the structures from my life anyway. They feel meaningless, alien. Which makes me wonder that perhaps they are no longer the ones I need. Nothing makes sense — the things I hate or the things I love or the things that help relax. Nothing makes sense.

Sunk deeper into the darkness. 

And the reason I write this blog are no longer clear. I have felt my writing unauthentic for a while, but I thought I would find the genuine voice and self again. Perhaps, or of course, I will but not anytime soon I am sure. 

So, taking a break from blogging. Doing it while not knowing why I do it, does not make sense. Thank you to some of you who have read and responded. It always feels nice to know you have been heard. 

But the forces I sense are telling me to be quiet and 'unheard', for a bit. I’m sure you know times in your own life when you’ve felt this. It feels a bit sad. A bit scary. A bit isolating but the ‘world’ is really never far away. 

Back to the Before…

October 16, 2024

            Two days after I returned to Singapore the helper we had found for my mother quit. My sister didn’t tell me until the weekend was over, so I spent the weekend trying to recover from the sense of not knowing who I was and trying to find my way back to my life and dreams.

            I walked in the hill park, trained, sketched, read, though I couldn’t find myself back into the writing space yet. That is still all a jumble, and I guess it requires a slowing down or a change in the way I do and view things.

On Monday when my sister told me the helper quit any sense of feeling that this trip had been worthwhile disappeared, and I fell down a rabbit hole of anger and fear that shook apart any wholeness I had achieved over the weekend of doing things I thought would return me to myself. 

You think things will go one way but they have their own agenda. I know in writing this sentence I reveal a lack of control or agency. 

            For two days my sister reverted to the person she had been before I had gone, the one I would constantly be in a war with. Our calls ended with a sense of tension. But I think the trip had shifted something for me —I could step back from my own thoughts and reactions and try to step into her shoes, and through the day I found myself calling her back at odd times to say this or that and it made such a difference. 

            I am in limbo. But where else would I be?

            I dreamt of being on a boat between places. I didn’t know where I had embarked and where I would be getting off. It is what I call a transition dream but normally I am on airplanes or at airports, or on trains and train stations, in these dreams. Being on a boat is different. 

            It has the sense of slowness, the sense of luxury, as also a sense of intense fear — after all slaves were transported in the holds of boats in the most disgusting conditions from Africa to America and there was nothing slow, luxurious, or enjoyable about that. People died or were blinded or permanently maimed on these journeys. 

            Part of me thinks that I should go back to Bombay. My mind is there anyway and no amount of trying to relax here is working anymore. At least I’ll be useful there. 

            There is another part though that still feels I need to be here. Not sure why. That this is not the time to be there. Not sure why. 

I do need to plan a longer trip to settle things in Bombay but first I need to settle things within me. Things that have felt unsettled since the year began. These are not material things, or visible events, but things internal that when so off true north put me in a state of unbearable unease. 

            This self-examination, this seeing who I am in this world where I disagree with more things than I agree with is intensely needed. I need to have a map of myself again.

            If what I am writing is not making sense, then it simply means that I haven’t been able to explain it to myself well enough and so cannot express it well on paper. Maybe understanding and expression will evolve as time moves on.

Towards the End of the Trip

October 7, 2024

I’m reaching the end of my trip. On most trips here on the last days I am sad to leave and wish I had a few more days. On my February trip though I couldn’t leave fast enough and even the last day felt too much. This time I am sad to leave but not desperate to leave, and I have no desire to stay. 

            Until yesterday I felt the trip was a waste but suddenly all three of us felt something shift at teatime yesterday, something very heavy and dense lifted and our moods were lighter and hopeful, even though mom’s left ankle and calves, and knee had swollen up. There was a sense of accomplishment or completion though not much has been accomplished or completed. At the most I can say that the point we have reached is that of lowered confusion; we have a good ortho, and are able to figure out what might help her. 

            I can’t yet see the path that got us here — from the apprehension I felt while flying in, to the cheer between us all; from the pained, shrunken, person, I saw on the first day to the Mom who pushes herself up from her bed without help and walks more steps on her good days. 

            Mom and I fought a lot. Even yesterday morning we had a bitter fight in which I huffed off. I felt her language was that of victimhood and of ‘dis-ease’. She felt no agency but would say things like her health condition prevented this or that. As I tried to shift it, she got more stubborn about it and stuck to identifying with being unwell — and yesterday wasn’t even one of her bad days. I had to meditate and then walk around until noon, when I go help her stretch and put on a cold pack after, to feel calmer. I also watched the garden — crows were chasing the kite who was waddling and looking for twigs on the ground but when it turned around the crows scattered. A cat appeared once the sun was higher and the birds and hidden away. It groomed itself lying partially in the shade of large yellow-orange flowers. Each garden vision made me smile. 

I guess on this trip I learnt to communicate in ways Mom would listen — humour and even at times mimicking her actually helped. My sister and I fought less than ever. She began enjoying the exercises I used to try to get her to do in the past but never had succeeded. I understood Mom has good days, medium days, and really bad days — and sometimes all of them on the same day. On bad days she can barely raise her left arm and is super cranky, on good days she feels hopeful of getting back to the old normal though she can’t do most things that she could do just in February. On bad days I would never force her to exercise, though I did force on her a very light massage, and gentlest of movement and stretching. As the days passed, she agreed that it didn’t increase the pain and helped loosen some of the stiffness.

            In some ways my presence was essential in getting here. I too, like them both, was a lazy person until my karate dream got me involved on this journey where I understood my body and its limits better. I understood more about the bone and musculature supports of the body when I trained vigorously. I learnt self-massage on points of pain, and this helped me to massage out her knots. I know how muscular pain goes up and down and I know the difference between the pain of pinched nerves, a fracture, or just sore muscles after weight training.

            All this is unknown to them.

            I am weary though and I think it comes through in this writing. I feel bereft and very far from my own life and dreams and unsure how I will find my way back. I am scared that I might never because the effort might be too exhausting. I guess I have to go the way of doing without doing and waiting without trying. That’s something I have forgotten how to do.

            I know though that the counting of days until I leave wasn’t about desperation to leave but about the feeling that I need to be elsewhere. That feels like a ‘truth’ for my Self.

Storms and the Calm After

October 2, 2024

            It’s a Saturday and I am sitting in my bedroom, which used to be my dad’s study and mom’s bedroom after he passed on. I like that it is mine now. The paneling is peeling and so is the green paint, but it is the coziest room in the house. It is the smallest and I have placed lamps all over the room and at night the room is lit in a gentle light from the lamps which relaxes me.

            It’s noisy this morning — traffic, construction, and a kite that may or may not be old squealer. S/he exhibits the same behaviors and squealing as squealer from my Jan visit. I still don’t know why I am so obsessed with him/her and why I project a personality into him/her. It does bring lightness into the days here.

            Yesterday mom refused to eat her protein biscuits at tea. They are thin biscuits, and she only has to have four a day. After two days of eating them, she exclaimed, ‘Biscuit holiday,’ and ate another snack. I asked my sis for support and she sided with mom. I yelled, both said something in a condescending tone, and I said, whatever, and left the room.

            I sat in my bedroom and drew and made notes. I drew two pages on different sides on a page in my A6 and wrote my sister’s name on one and me on another. I then drew a page in the centre with both our names and a question mark. I drew scales with the words empathy and compassion on one side, and pushing through and discipline on the other. I said I tilt towards the latter and called myself stern. I said my sister tilts towards the former and called her coddler. 

            My sister came into my room to try to patch things up. A first for her. Normally she waits until I make a move. My anger was huge and I couldn’t re-concile. 

Earlier that day we had fought. I was helping mom wear a belt-harness. She had asked me to pull out her older ones and air them so we could see if they might help her stay straight while walking. My sis had walked in on this scene and begun yelling, ‘Stop it. She can’t do it. Look at her face.’

            I had said, ‘I am just trying. You talk as if I torture her. She asked me to see if I would help, but do it your way.’

            That argument had ended when we had held up mom and taken her for her first round of the day and then helped settle her in bed. I felt remorseful as I could see that attempt had increased her pain considerably. 

            So, there was tension and difference already building up since noon and yesterday evening I told my sis I would handle talking to mom when I was less annoyed. ‘Let us both cool off,’ I said, and she went off to do some chores.

After a bit more drawing, I went to my mom and told her gently about the biscuits and what the doc had said. She said what she ate had the same nutrients. I got angry walked out, walked back in and said, ‘I challenge you to say that to the doctor.’

            She went silent, then stuck her head out and waved her hand and said, ‘I challenge you…’ and we both began laughing. 

            But of course it didn’t end there. I asked her when she will do her round of walking — we had decided she’s start with a few and slowly build up, three times a day. She said, no to the walk and added, ‘Once the new meds work, I will be able to exercise.’

 There was a difficult conversation to be had as I felt a need to remind her that the doc had said clearly that only the meds will do nothing, she must exercise, walk, and eat right too. She sulked. 

            I left the room and went back to mine, muttering under my breath. Then went out to look for my sis. I found her with mom. I pulled her aside and told her that mom was back to expecting the meds to create a miracle. She frowned and asked mom when she would do her next walk. 

            Mom, huffed off, feeling persecuted I am guessing. While my sis and I were chatting softly about her, she suddenly passed us with her walker. Normally she needs help to get it out as it is wedged in a corner. She ignored us and took a half round down the long corridor. 

            I guess that storm passed and for a bit my sis and I were on the same page.

            But I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t understand my anger. I know it partially came from worry, now as I was more than half way through my trip, but I had been gentle and allowed her to drop out some exercises when she said she was in pain. Why had ‘biscuit holiday’ bugged me so much?

            Only late at night when everyone was asleep, and I was dropping off after reading a few pages of Maya Angelou, I realized that while I was willing to understand days when pain would keep her from exercising, I couldn’t understand her lack of commitment to her healing when it came to consuming four thin biscuits.

            There is probably more beneath this simple explanation but right now I am not sure what. I am wondering if my time here is useful in the way my sis wanted it to be. I worry how she will cope once I leave. 

Before this entire experience I used to think that I was probably a selfish person and would not be able to dedicate my days to taking care of someone. I am glad to see I was wrong about myself. Yet a lot of growth is needed in the direction of selfless care for another, or is it also true that being aware of the needs of me as a care-giver will in fact make long term care easier? 

            Again, I guess each one finds, their own path.  

            Squealer 2 is making a racket outside, even more than squealer used to make. I don't know what his/her problem is.

Bombay —Day Four

October 2, 2024

             There is a blankness I often feel when I am in Bombay, though sometimes sitting in the green balcony with the pale coral pink sofa and chairs, and the plants, often counters it. When we were younger, my sister and me, and my brother I guess, used to spend Sunday lunch here chomping down fried potatoe toasts and a cheesy crumb salad with dark green lettuce. I don’t remember what dessert we had after. 

I arrived here late Saturday. Our flight had to detour over Sri Lanka to avoid some turbulent weather and it added one hour to the flying time. Before I boarded, I went into a bit of a frenzy looking for an A6 book to chronicle my journey here and back. The frenzy had begun Friday and I felt desperate — like the book would save me from the anxiety I was feeling about the journey. By sketching and doodling I would survive the trip. I found a Midori blank book at WH Smith and added two juice-up pilot gel pens and felt content. Not sure why I couldn’t chronicle my journey in my regular journal. 

But it’s been nice to have this little book always by my side, to draw and write impressions and feelings and look through. 

As also usual it feels like so much has happened, and nothing has happened. 

As so many of us do, we send messages to each other while travelling, like — landed, through immi, got luggage, got cab, etc. Our text messages, my sister’s and mine, this time didn’t have the usual exuberances. The normal yay’s were replaced by ok’s and this continued all the way until I reached my Bombay home. My apprehension grew, but now that I was in the moment and the anxiety was a pained memory, there was relief too. That’s how it is when the thing I fear gets right in my face, and I am living it rather than worrying about it. 

And as soon as we sat for a short chat before I showered and settled, the closed faces and language shifted — to the normal pleasant feeling of being together. We spoke mostly of mom and over the next days of other things that needed addressing. 

Mom looked frail when I saw her at breakfast the next day but her arm was less bony than the picture my sister had sent me a few weeks ago. I could tell she had brain fog, that her normally sharp mind was dull and somewhere else. Pain does that to me, and I recognized it and named it and she was happy that someone had. She was in severe pain that day and she drifted through the day with several naps which scared me. I almost wondered if mom was slipping away in some way, depressed and hopeless. 

Perhaps she is but I see sudden spikes of joy and hope and her silly humour. 

I always eat a lot on my first day in Bombay and I had a severe gastric attack Sunday night, and my own brain fog on Monday, but I began my exercises with mom that morning and she could actually do more than I had imagined though less than she should be able to do. That evening I sat with her session with the physio and there too she pushed herself and both the physio and I were pleased. 

My sister had also requested help to get her into an exercise routine and that one was a disaster! She was unfit, stiff, and un-coordinated. After that first session we haven’t done another, and I am internally arguing about whether I should push her or let her take responsibility for herself. 

I push mom but the age makes that a necessity. 

Luckily our, my sister’s and my, relating has not been a disaster but a slow unravelling of many misunderstandings and projections and me realizing how frightened and overwhelmed she’s been. My mom plays her, which doesn’t work with me, and my sister saw that too exclaiming that, ‘Mom, makes a fool of me.’

Yesterday the orthopedic doc made a first visit. I pushed them to get in touch. He came in a jazzy red and black BMW, wearing pants the shade of purple with a blue striped shirt and a multi-colored tie. At first I wasn’t sure I liked him as he didn’t speak to mom but asked my sister and me about her. But he was very competent, he supported every single viewpoint I had over the things my sister and I were arguing about. I mean I didn’t bring them up; he just observed and said the things I had been saying. About walking more, about pushing the stiff joints beyond the pain, about some tests, about some special protein biscuits. He also read the family dynamics well, observed my sister was soft on mom while I pushed her and ticked off mom to try harder. 

Magically any little remnant of our fights over the previous months disappeared. I am grateful they did. I am guessing my sister saw that I only had mom’s best interests when I pushed certain viewpoints. But I am not even half way through the trip and I am not fooling myself that there isn’t potential for more conflict. 

As for me. I am counting the days to return and feeling guilty about it. The time I spend with mom and with my sister is good and I feel present and pleased but there is an exhaustion that comes over me here. This time there is a busyness between exercises for mom, and doc visits, and hot and cold packs, and there hasn't been time to contact anyone. But without that too, here my world shrinks and I feel a huge emptiness. I still haven’t figured out how to keep my life going — my creativity, productivity, and training while I am here, and until I do I fear planning a long visit. And I know there are long visits in the near future for many reasons.

It feels too exhausting to deal with everything that happens — like a shower that trickles and a tap that leaks after you shut it, musty smells, and clothes that never dry, and gastric upsets, and lack of sleep—and be there for mom and get on with life. 

For now, I am just chronicling that emptiness I feel in my little Midori book, along with all the precious moments, and maybe one day I might know the emptiness better. For it is not the emptiness of loneliness or boredom, as I am always surrounded by people and the schedule is overfilled with things to get done — it feels deeper, more visceral, perhaps even to do with childhood or times in my cradle. 

I just feel a huge hole. I’m glad I don’t have it today, but I did yesterday. And I am glad I have this A6 pictorial exploration of it. Easier to look through this than wade through pages of text when I have some distance from it all and want to process stuff. 

My Sister and I

September 25, 2024

            I know I am procrastinating. I know I am supposed to be doing other work but what with travel coming up on Saturday and a zillion things to do zipping through my head, too many even to make lists of, I feel helpless and unable to focus on work. 

            I have been dreading this trip and today I’m thinking of my sister because we have been fighting a lot on every call over the last weeks. Her ideas about taking care of my mum, during this time when she is in pain and has lost muscle tone, are completely different from mine. Her idea and mine of why it came to this are also so divergent. Sometimes I am forceful with her and she closes up, but one day I flared up badly when she did that and now she tells me to shut up and listen. 

            These conversations over the last weeks made me see that though we went through the same experiences of losing a father at a young age, and we had the same mother, our time and upbringing after our father’s death diverged drastically. I will write about that another time, but I realized that I don’t know my sister and perhaps will never really know her. I feel further away from her than I felt since that day in 2015 when we had a massive fight in a Kyoto hotel which ended up in us understanding each other better. From that time on we got along better, at least until my January Bombay trip.

            Things broke down completely because I refused to play by our previous patterns. One of which is midway through every trip she gets grumpy and I try hard to get her to talk. She doesn’t, I push harder, she cries, and things ease up. Last time I simply told her I was there to listen when she wanted to talk, but I didn’t daily ask her what was wrong, and put up with the unpleasantness of a grumpy co-resident by doing the things we were supposed to do together in silence and then retreating into my room. I think she was shocked, and it took her longer to bounce into an easy relating space. It was not a nice trip for us.

            In that trip, I had a goal of improving the relationship with my mom and maybe I didn’t, but I did end up knowing her better — from both the things she talked about and the things she clamped up on. I got into her skin at many moments and felt deep compassion for her, and I felt that though we have dealt with life challenges differently, that our core personalities could be similar. 

At least more similar than my sister’s and mine. I don’t even know if I can set a goal of getting to know or understand her better. But I do want to get her into a creative space. She is a painter who has stopped painting since covid. She makes excuses and every attempt of me to get her to try to pencil sketch, or do an ink sketch, or a brush pen one, for just 15 mins daily have failed. She doesn’t really do black and white and her main reason for not doing her fabric painting is that setting up and getting her colours right take a long time, and she is too often interrupted. Then the colour dries up and changes and the work is messed up. 

She has an affinity for colour and is more comfortable handling coloured media so this time I am going to take a small water colour palette and water brush with me and see if I can get her to do a 15 min sketch every day. I want to start using water colour and I am going to say that I want her to teach me. 

Not sure if it will work but I need to keep trying. I realized I had given up with her to an extent after the January trip, but it bothered me enough that some unconscious part of me still sought a way to shift that while consciously I was just going through the motions. 

How peculiar this is, isn’t it? Siblings are complicated but I wish I had a closer relationship to her like I see many other siblings have. 

I know this is a procrastination post, but it is also an advance post for next week when I may or may not have time to do one. 

Oh, and the idea for this post came from an email a friend sent me after reading the previous post and also reading a story I wrote, a while back, about conflicting sisters. You know who you are and if you read this, huge thanks. Your making that connection might improve that story but more so it sparked this thought about painting with my sister, and I hope it improves my relationship with her. 

Family is important to me though I also see that due to loss of my father at a young age, and a brother who left suddenly and didn’t get in touch after, there are interior barriers to family. But that too is another story. 

Delayed, Displaced, Reaction.

September 25, 2024

The rain has scuttled my plans for the day. I was supposed to be out doing errands, going from one location to another, but it’s a bit icky to walk around in wet streets with rain dropping down from above. The insides of buildings feel colder, especially if I get wet in the rain. Much nicer working at my desk while it patters outside, and the green trees look lush and happy. 

I am home this week. I returned Saturday and though settling in took a while I felt lighter that one of the two back-to-back stays away from home were done. But Sunday night my peace was shattered.

After we returned home from Sunday dinner with our cat and human family, I lazed a bit on the sofa, watching some sketching videos. My current sketchbook is boring and I wanted ideas to do different and more striking things. Instead, I found a video encouraging me to draw ugly birds and embrace the ‘ugliness’ of my art, because without doing the ugly stuff we couldn’t create the beauty. It was fun but neither the video-makers nor my birds looked ugly to me and I suppose that exactly was her point. 

I switched to another video, and I heard a huge thud from the study. ‘What fell?’ I said, wondering what Deepak was doing in the study at that time at night, almost midnight. 

‘That wooden box on the bookshelf, with the headphones in it. I wanted to update them,’ he said, and went back and sat on the bed after re-arranging the box. 

I had forgotten what other things were in the box and I continued watching another video, but suddenly asked, ‘What else was in the box?’ 

‘Erm those ninja keychains, and some pens.’

I jumped up. I remembered the pens. After nine months living here I still don’t immediately remember what it where. They were my least expensive pens, ones I had removed from the trays in my desk drawer as my collection grew, but which nevertheless included some of my favourites. Had any bounced out, did any crack, had they opened up, were the nibs damaged. I went into panic mode, and I felt an anger that was disproportionate to what had happened, and then I went numb. 

I wrote a message to my fountain pen group asking for advice. Almost immediately people started posting suggestions. One person also added walk away from the horror for now and deal with it after the panic has subsided. I liked that and after checking the nine pen’s outer bodies for cracks, I got into my pj’s, slipped into bed, and picked up a book to read.

But it was as if something more precious, not necessarily materially precious, but something like trust, or a belief system had crashed, and not a box with the least expensive of my pens, and I couldn’t sleep, and when I woke my body felt shaken as if it had undergone a huge trauma. 

I love my pens, from the cheapest to the most expensive, but I don’t believe that I would be in the kind of shock I felt if one or a few were broken. I’d be sad, I’d wonder if I could fix them, or if I should replace them and how fast. I might feel like the best thing to do was to let go.

But there were layers here. Why did Deepak not mention that my pens had fallen, but instead, just go back to the bedroom? He said he had panicked and felt paralyzed, which makes sense as I also have done the same. I also could have been the one who dropped that box and maybe I just need to find a safer place for my pens. 

A flood of memories of other things broken, of people not owning up, of people just running away without saying anything, and maybe even denying it later when confronted. The sense of life’s forward flow being obstacle-ed and stuck in eddies that swirl and circle, that reverse the flow and change everything, overwhelmed me. Even though what had happened was not that big a deal. 

I couldn’t touch the pens until Tuesday morning. Monday, I continued as if the box and pens didn’t exist, made plans for the short few days here in this home before I went away again. I got on with life. I haven’t understood the enormity of my reaction, my overwhelm and anger, yet. I don’t know what delayed shock I was responding to in this possibly echoed experience to one from my past. But unidentifiable fears, the worst kind, overtook me. 

Delayed response. I often get into that mode. It’s as if the body-and-mind need a less heightened state to process whatever is happening. Does that sound familiar?

Meanwhile the escalation of the war situation in the middle east terrifies me and yet I go on with life trying to not think too much about it. Even if it bothers me what can I possibly do about it and the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness is too much. All I can do maybe is include it in a meditation, but I suddenly stop in whatever I am doing, I just pause, my hand in mid-air, my thought flow arrested and wonder what people on both sides — the Lebanese, the Palestinians, and the Israelis — are feeling. Are they wondering when it might stop? Are they in the place where they had to numb out a bit or a lot? How do they cope emotionally. The ordinary people I mean, not the ones perpetuating the violence.

I wonder if we, all of us in this world, are numb and what our delayed, displaced, reaction might be. 

Collateral Damage

September 18, 2024

            I woke to news of Hezbollah pagers exploding simultaneously. I don’t know why it shocked me so much—I don’t have any sympathy for them. But perhaps because it felt like a scene from a future with never ending violence, what with all the new technology being developed on ways to spy on and to kill.

            I read a Washington Post article about it that made a coherent argument about the IDF being behind it—though IDF had not confirmed this. It made me think of Pegasus and how Israel never confirmed or denied selling the spying system to the Indian government. It made me think of how the story has died down in India and nobody knows what if anything the probe into it is doing. 

            So, my mind split. 

Part of it thinking of the scary cyberespionage-ware being developed. Thinking of this attack that seems to me to violate some basic ethics. The entire war on Hamas where ‘collateral damage’, non-combatant casualty, has crossed every boundary of humanity should be uniquivocally condemned. I read recently—“Israel has dropped almost 80,000 tons of explosives - this means that Israel has dropped ~36 kilograms of explosives on Gaza for every man, woman, and child.”
            This is astounding. Unthinkable.

            What does it mean for humanity, the human race’s future as an ethical one, that such things can happen. That groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, that don’t care that private citizens are ‘collateral damage’ in their war for power, can flourish. And a state like Israel, that does the same, thrive. I also wonder what it means for humanity to not realise yet, that violence can never lead to peace and co-existence, that it fosters cycles of revenge not just amongst those that believe in the ideology of exterminating the other, but also amongst groups who have suffered from the ‘collateral damage’. It is rare to see forgiveness bloom in such circumstances, though not completely unseen. 

            As I keep saying and feel deeply—what if the world spent as much on peace technology that it spends on war? What would our world look like? Maybe it is age, living so much life and not seeing things change—but I don’t feel much hope. 

            The other part of my mind went to all the things, huge unforgivable things, that have been glossed over in India. Pegasus, electoral bonds, crony capitalism, rising inequality in wealth distribution, bias and corrupt regulators—and the list goes on. Though despite all this it warms my heart when I think that the people of India did were not won over by religious sloganeering and voted from on basis of their needs, in the last election. Hope they do the same in the next, though which party/government actually cares about us/them is a mystery. 

            Just observing the weird ways in which the mind moves—starts somewhere and other things get thrown up. 

            I am still here at the cat’s home. Will be back at my home for a week and then have to make a trip to Bombay to see my mother who is unwell. The time here is tiring—possibly because sleep is reduced, and I am missing being around my things, and missing my life as it was finally beginning to emerge. I feel isolated here and stressed by even the thought of trying to keep my activities going while juggling cat meals and things. 

            The stress did exacerbate my gastric issues which anyway had flared up recently. This though had an interesting insight—that when I have gastric flareups not only does my brain fog up, but I become self-absorbed and would like to be in an almost comatose state. I did a chakra meditation and felt a relief or clearing in the abdomen area the first time I did it, similar to what I had felt after my first acupuncture session last year. 

My mind is still rebelling against the knowledge that eating anything I have allergies to causes massive flareups and sometimes I reach for that bottle of chill sauce or the dairy product—read ice-cream—that I know makes life miserable. I’d like to work on this body symptom and this dysfunctional behaviour but haven’t had time yet.

            The meditation also left me with a feeling that what would help me heal is being in one place for long enough that I could focus on developing structures and diets that promote the healing. But this year has constantly thrown up movement and scattered attention and I’m not yet sure how it will end. 

            Still, I hope I can end the year in stillness and maybe even some solitude and healing. 

Favorite Book of 2024

September 9, 2024

         I’m writing from my daughter’s home. This is our second time living here and this time we both, my spouse and I, feel scattered and sluggish. Last time my spouse did better. Last time I didn’t even try to do better. We had moved homes, after which I had gone to Bombay almost immediately for five weeks, and barely had I returned and lived in my new home for two weeks when we had moved here to cat sit. I spent most of my time ‘being under’ and wishing I were home — the new not yet lived in one. My spouse held the space and the time here so we/I were/was able to survive it. I had also bumped my head on the third or fourth day here, had a vertigo attack mid-stay, and severe allergic reaction to cat fur and odours in this neighbourhood throughout the two weeks.

Luckily the sofa in their living room has a view — of short trees just outside, a patch of grass with taller ones across the street, and the top of the ARC and much taller trees in the distance. I spent most of my time on their sofa making sketches of the trees and the sky, and of people waiting at the bus stop across the street.

This time I am trying to get more done, including exercise. I am finishing up reading what for me is the best book of 2024. Hisham Matar — My Friends. 

The book is about many things but a few of the themes it delves into include friendship, what keeps us close, or apart, even in what feels like the strongest of bonds. It also talks about home, being away from home, and about whether one ever can really go back. Some can be pulled by an inexplicable desire — sometimes familial, sometimes political, and most often a primal, preverbal longing — back to home which is still home. While others return for a particular relationship and still others fear returning at all. 

Why does the same friendship contain both powerful connections and an unbridgeable silence? Why and how, do some intense friendships change when we live apart longer than we live close by, and the time spent together becomes about just catching each other up to the happenings in our lives. I had felt this the last time I was in Bombay in January, when I had met some of my friends. I missed the being in ‘the moment that existed’ feeling that used to be there. Conversations this time around were about the broader sweeps of happenings in our lives, and only momentarily dove deeper into something that the psyche was grappling with in that moment or in that week or in that month, and the processes that it had already been through. And other friendships, just as strong but built perhaps not around an intimate emotional connection but around an external activity that felt constant whether all were doing that activity or not in the present — friendships that may have felt less deep than the other ones, somehow seemed better at being in that moment than the deeper ones that earlier were the perfect ones to contain the moment. 

And what of friendships where the people involved who had the same strong feelings about something suddenly are on diverging paths. As the path diverges does the connection get looser, weaker, less important even? 

And leaving home and returning is completely different for everyone. Making a home in a new place is harder for some than others. And then having learnt how to do it in one place doesn’t necessarily free one of the fear of uprooting and trying to root elsewhere. Some need this rooting to do anything meaningful and others wander gathering or trying to at least gather meaning. And return is something some slip into, but others never can as they always feel alienated by the fact that they were away and changed in a myriad of ways that they sometimes cannot dare share with those who never left. 

Moving here has changed me in places I thought were unchangeable. And I am pondering that. I think the need to write memoir is less about sharing parts of my life with others and only about trying to make sense of who I was, I am, and want to be. 

This book, My Friends, is fiction though reads like life. It took me to many places and there is an urge to finish and start again at the beginning at once. Do read it if you get a chance. And do share with me what you thought about it.

Lack of Compassion or Connection

September 3, 2024

Today I am thinking about a change in my ability to relate with a friend I have always been able to connect easily with. It happened yesterday while we were chatting that I found I couldn’t connect. It upset me enough for it to stay with me and I reflected on its genesis as I felt it had been coming on for a while. 

When I read back through my journal — we chat very regularly — I found that I had felt this for the first time in July. I had wondered then if it was simply our paths diverging after they had been running parallel for a while. 

It’s not the first time this has happened in a friendship. It does disturb me. It makes me wonder if there is indeed something within me that is broken when it comes to relating long term. I have sudden occurrences of a need to withdraw, and I have noticed this more in Singapore than before.

As a child growing up in a joint family I didn’t fit into, I spent a lot of time alone. I had so many cousins that our socializing was mostly with family. And since I didn’t fit in, I was on the edge always. As I grew, around grade 10, I began expanding my circle of socialising, but I think I remained on the edges always then, and even through University, and the early years after — until perhaps the 1990’s when I began to know myself and the things that drew me and began to seek those things and find more people who I felt were part of my 'tribe'. It was a time of picky expansion. Picky because slowly, besides knowing the activities I wanted to be involved with,  I began to understand the kind of relating I wanted and waited to find friends who could be authentic in relationship, willing to deepen it with vulnerability, especially in times of conflict. I was/am lucky to have several such friendships now in Bombay and in other parts of the world. 

In Singapore I have fewer such friends. But I felt my relating with this friend was one such in that there was search for authenticity and for understanding our core essence — if there is such a thing. But since July I found an inability to be present authentically when we talked. A, always was a good listener, someone who I turned to when I had a dilemma as I could rely on him to help me think it through. There were some issues that A had fixed views on and could not listen openly to, but those were few. But in July I found the quality of listening shifted. A listened with the intent of finding something similar in his life and relating it back to me, I guess thinking that the way he dealt with it would help me or something — not really sure what but I began to see in it a certain need to talk about his own self and life journey that stopped him from listening. 

He was going through some heavy issues so I decided then to spend the time we talked listening more to him, and trying to understand what might be behind this shift in his quality of listening. I felt it would move as his energies moved within him, but the months rolled by, and it just stayed the way it was.

            And yesterday I switched off. I had arrived to the conversation with a ton of anxiety about my mom who has been ill for a month. Something I realised I hadn't told him about, despite talking at least twice since she fell ill.  I never seemed to find the right moment to talk about it or anything. I found his lack of interest in my life, and my hopes and fears, turned me off so much yesterday that after a making a few attempts to bring those into the conversation I withdrew from the authentic connection and listened politely. Of course A noticed and felt sad. And I felt sad too because I just could not connect. 

            But I also go through periods of compassion fatigue. I feel unable to muster it up for individual person, or for a situation in the world that I have previously felt it for. I notice, withdraw, and replenish during those times and I wondered if this was one of those, or if something was wrong in the friendship, or it was just me operating from my childhood dynamics that fostered an inability to relate. 

            No answers — just sharing my process and questions. Bit sad.

A Year From the Last Birthday

August 27, 2024

            Arrived at the day amid a terrible sinus attack, with aching forehead and congested ears. The plan was to go into the forest-park and sketch trees, but it’s been dark since I woke and began raining a while ago. The parched trees look a happy lush green! And perhaps it will clear later in the day.

            I keep telling the spouse that it doesn’t feel birthday-ish, whatever that means. It hasn’t felt all month, but there is a lightness there that I thought was missing last year. So I pulled out my journal #109 to check on the same time 2023. I see that all the external worries that were dragging me down, except one, still exist. But I am surprised how much feels shifted with just one worry being shed? Or is it something else entirely, because the lightness began post the Phuket holiday, the getting away from what was and allowing that to begin to re-configure my inner space. Often I go away for a trip taking everything with me and return not changed much. 

            I’m writing this within the dullness of the sinus pains and cannot muster up much bubble, but I’m celebrating myself today and my journey through life. 

Last week at a get-together with my writer’s coven, someone pointed out that my tendency type according to Gretchen Rubin’s classification is probably Rebel, and later the website quiz indeed led to Rebel. 

“You can’t make me, and neither can I”, is apparently the way I function. I resist both outer and inner expectations. During the reflections of the past weeks, I realized that indeed I had lived life on my own terms and if someone said I couldn’t do something or tried to put obstacles in my path I had gone ahead and done it. And this showed clearly in my karate journey, particularly here — perhaps because since I have moved to Singapore I have been deeper with it than many others threads in life.

I also realized that I need fluid identities, and I cannot bear to be stuck in one. When it solidifies, I need to shrug out of it and go on my way again. I have been feeling this with my karate identity. Since last year the urge to step back and re-define its existence within myself has been almost obsessive, for I felt that what at one time had made my spirit soar was now constraining it. But last year the time didn’t feel right to pull out, this year is different. I feel my seniors can and will keep the dojo going and I can step back a bit. The goal of having a self-sustaining dojo that I had since 2017 feels reached this year and I think this is where the lightness I am feeling comes from. 

It is the freedom to discover life paths anew having accomplished something meaningful to me. I feel other old identities calling and perhaps new ones waiting to be discovered. 

Besides getting away from the physical space what has helped is examining the inner space. For one’s karate to be strong one must have a strong body and in the past almost 90% of all training was building the body through exercises, with or without equipment, and with or without a partner. The rest 10% was about techniques and other practice — though outsiders mostly see this aspect of karate. A year ago I was watching a sketching video where I learnt that while making a sketch the importance of laying down of the form and shapes is 80%, while the details (which most people notice first) is 20%. I wondered what the basic foundation of writing is, and I though nobody has said this clearly, I think that it is the knowing of the self, the examination of the lived and un-lived lives. That forms at least 70% of the kind of writing i enjoy. And when that wavers and is lost, the writing is insipid. 

Life had been so busy, so tiring, so fast paced — from my last birthday — that until Phuket I had neglected this. Phuket and then the Japan trip slowed me immensely, and even while I was busy and spinning on the outside the still core existed. 

May I always re-find it whenever I lose it.