Modi Magic

April 30, 2024

I’m still struggling with the allergy related issues, but I saw a doc last week and also am being more careful about exposure. But it still feels like I have to pull myself above some numbing fog to get anything done, including just making a cup of tea. 

India is moving through the third week of elections. The BJP’s speeches and particularly the PM’s are sounding rather desperate. Very different from speeches from previous elections. Now he and his party are raising ‘bogeymen’ and asking for votes in the name of fear. The bogeymen include the Congress — its past and present leaders, its manifesto, and the future course it will follow if it is voted back into power. The other things the public are told to fear are Muslims, and the Western World particularly the media who are out to defame India. Only the BJP can keep them safe from all this and maintain the glory of our rising Vishwaguru. 

I didn’t think it would happen so fast, but it feels like Modi has peaked and with it the BJP, or perhaps the BJP will manage to rise from the ashes of Modi. Downward swing it feels but still winners of this election, for sure. Just a month ago they were still high on the Ram Temple and still beating every bit of glory from the G-20 they had hosted many months ago. Confidant of winning 400 seats with their allies. 

I have been following whatever U-tubers I can find who are showing ground reports and doing serious analysis based on what they see. People are voting for Modi but they are also fed up of him, or rather of his talking of irrelevant things and not about things, like unemployment and price rise, that occupy their minds. He seems to have no emotional connect with them which is surprising as he has been known for picking up the pulse of people. It just surprises me that BJP ministers are unable to talk about their achievements over the last years at all. They did have a few, and they also appropriated few others from previous governments (including their own party's), so I don’t get why their speeches are only filled with creating fear now. Also it makes no sense that they are ‘doctoring’ elections in seats they would win anyway? Just doing it because they can? It will cost them at some point but before that it is costing Indian democracy and the people of India. 

Yet they can’t disguise the reek of the fear of losing which one can sense while watching any of them. They swagger and boast but their body language is not that of winners. 

I am trying to limit my election news time and focus on being present in myself but the urge to just check the latest, watch one little video etc. is strong. I feel like I scatter almost the moment I wake. I feel pulled in different directions and the discipline of doing just one thing at a time is missing, so I often end up not doing as much as I could if I focused. At the end of some days, I hate myself for it.

Probably because of my Memoir course I am thinking a lot about the nature of my own memories. What I remember, what I forget but somebody else remembers, what we remember differently. Why we remember things certain ways, what about our beliefs and values, and hurts, makes us remember the way we do. So many writers have created fiction out of these musings. For the assignments I mostly find memories related to my karate journey or my family. I am losing interest in writing about my karate journey but since nothing else has replaced it I do write about it. I also am losing interest in writing and wondering why I bother to write at all. I could do something else a voice says. Not sure if this is one of those plateaus or blocks that trick one into not writing, or it is a true feeling and my tryst with writing is done. I hope I will know which soon. Things ebb and flow within me and I am happier when I follow the flow and recognize the ebb. 

After the First Day of Polling…

April 23, 2024

It’s Tuesday and the last thing I want to do is write a blog post. I want to curl up and read. I finally found a book that has pulled me in after a string of meh books. 

The book is about art or about an artist, a pandemic, and the intense desire that manifests in most new romantic relationships. It moves between times and places and has no chapters. It is like a remembering and many books I have read recently have been experimental in narrative and chrono time but this one works for me. 

I am sick again and I am sick of coming here on Tuesdays and writing that. My immunity must be shot to pieces as my throat gets sore so quickly, or my sinus clogged, and then the ears feel blocked, and for some reason the stomach too starts falling to pieces. The leg pain from the injury during moving, which is healing but far too slowly, feels amped up as the body copes with the mild fever etc. etc. etc. All I feel I am is the pain. 

Today I drew pictures in my journal, as I often do, to describe my state but none of the pictures captured what I feel. There are two things going on — the feelings of not being well, whole, etc., and then the pushing through required to get through the tasks and activities of the day. I was focusing on the second as all morning my spouse had been saying this in different ways — you’ve pushed through too long. 

I shouldn’t even write this blog post. Or rather I should write it if I feel like it but shouldn’t share it as it is so meh. 

After the first phase of voting in India it was evident that there was no ‘wave’ except a heat wave. What I mean is voting percentages were low and if there was a strong Modi wave the percentages would have indicated it. It might mean that Modi is losing his magic, but people don’t believe in that the opposition are up to the tasks ahead, basically rebuilding the economy in a way that there is employment and equity, so they haven’t come out in a tsunami to vote. Or it might just be that the hot summer makes people a bit lazy to get out.  

I myself don’t have much faith in the opposition but I admire their fight despite every possible thing being thrown at them—leaders being jailed, accounts frozen. And my vote is for them as a vote for Modi is likely to be a vote for the end of Democracy. We will see what happens but I am one of those who believe that Modi = dictatorship or electoral autocracy  = end of democracy. I hate dictators in all walks of life so why would I want one as my PM. 

Anyway, the jittery PM and his party have begun indulging in scary hate speech. Scary because it wants Hindus to feel fear and get rid of the Muslims. The PM claims that the congress will take wealth from Hindus and give it to Muslims. He called Muslims people who have many children, even though he should know that fertility rates in Muslims are closing in with those of Hindus. He also called them ghuspetiyas — infiltrators, illegal immigrants — even though they are citizens of India. He had previously likened the congress manifesto to Muslim league or the Mughal era. The model code of conduct is on and campaigning in the name of religion is an offense, but our election commission is sleeping through all these violations. I shouldn’t say sleeping as it is active in slapping notices on opposition leaders and declaring election results in seats despite results day being in June. 

The PM's  speech was fiery and hate filled and I fear violence on the ground. 

We are akin to a Banana republic. No, we don’t have only a single export but we do fit in with — servile, oligarchy, exploitation. We are a joke. And the election ads have been jokes. One saying Modi stopped the Ukraine war to bring Indians stranded there home. 

I am angry that the PM has turned us into this. 

Maybe my symptoms which feel big, burny, and hopeless are a manifestation of this. I hope the Indian people vote these divisive autocrats out. 

Apologies for serving up meh stuff mixed in with a fair dose of venting today.

 

A Snapshot of a Moment

Tuesday, April 16

 

The trees are shedding, well some trees are. I wish I knew the names. I see so many different species and wonder if there is an app that might help me know the names but so far haven’t tried to find one. One hot afternoon I watched one particular tree lose a flurry of yellowed leaves. Its branches are so bare now. Spontaneously I wrote a haiku about it, but I can’t find the haiku now. I never expected the tree-scape to look different during different seasons. Small changes but noticeable. 

I am still irritated by smells, or my nostrils and eyes are, and I mostly want to hermit. I want to hermit more than I have wanted to in a long, long, time, but life has got busy and I often need to just flow. But I am still sitting alone and reflecting, or sketching, or journaling, a lot. 

I enrolled in a memoir writing class and I want to push myself, despite the allergy headaches I still get, to build my writing muscle and stamina. Why? I don’t know as right now I notice my ambitions and expectations about my writing are low. I used to hope to get a novel published but right now I am just meh about publication. I do want to keep improving my craft though. My ambition and expectations about everything are low. Even about being healthier. I read a line somewhere about illness. It went something like this – I realized later that the illness wasn’t the problem, but obsessing about it was the problem. That thought changed something about the anxiety around healing from anything.

But going back to pushing — when I chose to push myself in karate, I didn’t know I would one day teach it. Who knows what life will fling at you? 

It's only been a week, but I love that memoir class. The teacher seems to expect or hope that we will push ourselves and having an outer driver is useful right now, and I like being in a class with others who are writing.

My email group — the one where we share our angst and hopes about India — has been very active. Elections start soon and U-tubers are making more videos. One about the connection between buying electoral bonds and the Pharma industry was terrifying. The presenter showed definite connections between faulty drugs licensed through and bribes paid using the bonds. I don’t know how anyone can forgive this or say this is not the first time this has happened, meaning previous governments have done the same. I hope this story is picked up by international media. India has sometimes been called the pharmacy of the world. It exports medicines to many countries, and this affects more than just India. Of course our foreign ministry will call it a conspiracy by western nations to defame India but at least the story will get more coverage.

India deserves more than a party that believes in uniformity and one face for Indian identity and culture. India deserves diversity. Monocultures of anything are disastrous, whether it is plants or people or media. India deserves not electing a right-wing government expert in lying and intent on forming a Hindu Rashtra. India deserves to feel free to dress, eat, speak, marry, the way every/each/any individual wants to. But India will get what a percentage of people will vote in. The rest of us don’t deserve this but we will have to lump it and live with it. It depresses me often and feels like doom. And sometimes is feels like a blip in the long time span of the life of a country. Both are true. 

On TV debates I often hear followers of the right-wing party saying that if any opposition candidate wins it is because their constituency consists of minorities — Muslims. Somebody retorted are they not citizens of India too? I wish right-wingers would understand that. 

A part of me will never forgive the people who overlook the way bribes are used to get faulty medicines to us, the way institutions are used to harass the political opposition, the pay or join my party and get out of jail politics, the way media blanks out news which helps the right-wing rulers lie more about their achievements. I can’t overlook these things. 

This is me in this moment. This post is short because I must go work on my course homework before I rush out for a workshop I am helping facilitate. Thanks for reading. 

 

Allergies

April 8, 2024

 

I didn’t google long term effects of exposure to allergens until I had to sit down after the first hour of karate on Sunday morning and I couldn’t finish the class. That hadn’t happened to me ever in the 20 odd years of doing karate. No matter my physical condition I always finished the training. 

I also didn’t realise how angry I was until that happened. 

This post is more for people who suffer from allergies. Others may not get it. I see people around me, those who care deeply about me, also haven’t understood the impact of allergies on my life, and maybe that has made me marginalize this within myself. 

It began on Friday. My body had begun feeling better from the flu on Thursday. My mind had begun to feel hopeful that I would recover soon too, and when someone I met recently wrote saying they had tested positive for covid I wondered if what I had been experiencing was covid. I hadn’t tested because, really, how long does one live in the grip of testing for covid. But I heard many had been suffering from a flu like mine and I assumed that was that. But if it had been covid then it explained the prolonged fatigue, and I felt hopeful of a full recovery.

It was that Friday evening when my spouse began sorting the laundry into neat piles on the dining table that I smelt that overwhelming intense smell. I had been complaining about it, saying that the kitchen smelt weird, for a few days. Since he is not challenged by smell allergies he had said, probably the new fabric softener I bought. 

I should have insisted he get rid of the box of softener sheets. I should have thrown it out myself, but I didn’t, and I truly hate myself for it.

But even that evening I wrinkled my nose and said, uuughh that smell is so strong and left it so. Later I pulled on a freshly laundered tank and shorts pair to sleep in and immediately realized I couldn’t wear them. But even then, I believed that the smells would dissipate, that all I would have to do is wash out again the things that had been in the dryer with that softener.

Assaulted by that smell I didn’t sleep well that night and on Saturday afternoon after I returned from karate and found I couldn’t sleep again, I began to deeply experience the helplessness. With every in-breath all I smelt what that smell. Weirdly it was the same smell that had assaulted me in Bombay when the linen I was using had been dry-cleaned using a similar softener. The curtains in the library had also been dry-cleaned with the same softener and after three months of them hanging through sunny days the smell still lingered in the library. It didn’t for my sister or my mother or my spouse but I felt suffocated and trapped by my linen and the curtains in my second favourite sitting area in my Bombay home. It felt horrid and I had to use antihistamines to deal with it. I functioned at lowered capacity as anyone who has had to use antihistamines long term knows, but it all had an end-date. I knew that when I left Bombay, I would be free and be normal again. 

Now it was in my home. My safe, sacred, haven. And I began to feel a sense of doom. A feeling that I would never escape. It blocked my nostrils, inflamed the tissues within my ears, constricted my throat, compressed my head, burned my lungs. I felt dizzy. I felt my soul permanently damaged. I am not exaggerating; those are actually the things I felt. To cope I walked up and down the living room and short corridor, and muttered aloud and wrote in my journal. 

And today, Tuesday, I still smell that smell with every inbreath. My brain feels pummeled into a mashed banana state. I feel confused and helpless and angry. 

As I said the anger ballooned on Sunday. It encompassed everything, every part of me. Anger at myself – for not throwing that box out, but equally at my spouse for not paying attention, for being indifferent to my challenged nose. 

Repeated allergen exposure weakens the immune system and makes one susceptible to fungus and bacteria in the nose, throat, lungs, and ears. It makes one feel light-headed, depressed, and fatigued. One even might feel a sense of doom, I read.

Someone who suffers from severe allergies will know what I am talking about. 

Anger peaked and spilled over and over. It was a deadly Sunday. I felt like an uncontrolled animal of some sort. 

Monday, I tried to control the anger, and at moments I could but every inbreath I was still saying please any other smell, please, please, please. I felt quite hysterical. But in some moments I became aware of how I had been assaulted by smells since November — the boxes while packing and unpacking, then in my mum’s home, then when I went for cat-sitting in my daughter’s home too there was an odour from an air freshener that my nose didn't like, and finally this here, where there is no end-date. The curtains exposed to air and sunlight still smelt three months later. When would these smells leave this space? 

Of course I considered going to stay in a hotel for a while but how long would that while be?

In the moments when panic was low, I began seeing this as a process symptom, a message that I seemed unable to hear and so the messenger made it stronger, more deadly each time. 

I know I need to fully process this body symptom, inhabit the symptom maker to understand its purpose but for now all I can do is feel like the victim. Feel like someone strong is holding a slightly porous cloth soaked in a malodorous toxin over my nose and mouth and forcing me to breathe through it. Death would come if the cloth was not porous, but this porosity keeps me alive yet makes me experience the suffocation at each in-breath, and have me begging for death. The toxin enters my lungs and my blood and flows into every organ in my body. I have trouble sleeping, thinking, eating, or even drinking water. I can’t exercise. I manage to distract myself with TV —watched the black and white, The Talented Mr Ripley — but since it is in every part of my body and home I feel hopeless and wonder if I should even try bother doing anything. 

Through journaling I also see this process is pointing me to relationship issues – intra and inter, with the closest, and slightly further away. There is a ton going on and unless I learn to hear the messages, I fear that I will be further compromised. It is urgent I listen even if I can’t because all my brain is able to do is say over and over, this will never go, this will never go, I am doomed, I am doomed. 

I am aware of a small feeling of something besides doom today. I feel like perhaps writing has become a way of life, like karate had become. It is something I am disciplined enough to do under the most adverse conditions. Something that doesn’t get bogged down with physical, emotional, or spiritual oppressions. I can do it when incapacitated, like I could do karate weeks after fairly major surgeries and through flus, and muscle strains. I did write my Tuesday blog even though body and mind feel on fire. 

Not sure what that means but that thought feels nice. 

Rambles…

April 2, 2024

 

Since I reverted the post I wrote yesterday to draft mode, I felt I needed to write a new one that I was willing to share for this week. I pulled off yesterdays' post because it occurred to me that the thoughts I had in it — mostly about the honourable martial artist — were worth incubating and keeping aside for a more reflective personal essay. I was left pondering that not only is the pen mightier than the sword to effect socio-political change, it is mightier to process internally and create. That is obvious, I mean when is violence ever creative? Or are there instances when it is? And there definitely are instances when the pen or the written word brainwashes and destroys. This is another rabbit hole of exploration I can fall into, but I don’t have time for it today.

I’ve had a strange flu that comes and goes for almost ten days now. It started with a sore throat and then a fever was added to it and then it improved and now the sore throat has returned. The scratchiest sore throat ever. I feel almost in a dream state as this flu wanes and waxes, and also feel a bit irritable, but it is a busy week and things keep moving. 

Yesterday I had said that I wanted a break from writing about Indian pre-election politics. But the ruthless way in which the ruling party is trying to destroy the opposition of course remains in my mind. Because I often comment on articles written by independent media and engage with troll-types (they probably see me as one), I see the way the ruling party is creating the narratives.

In one of its latest doings the ruling party has dug up an old issue, about the island of Katchatheevu being given to Sri Lanka in 1974. Idiots supporting the ruling party have blamed Nehru, our first PM, for this — somebody forgot to tell them that he was already dead a decade when this happened. The island has become, apparently, strategically important because China is suddenly in that neighbourhood through one of Sri Lanka’s ports that Sri Lanka has been forced to lease out to China for 99 years. So of course, the game of blaming the Congress began as it is also election season. Meanwhile China has renamed Arunachal Pradesh, and the ruling party is doing little to fight that battle — changing names can be the first step to claiming ownership — with China, but a BJP IT cell alert may have gone out claiming that the North-Eastern states were never part of India as they are not mentioned in our National Anthem, so how can we lose what was never ours. A troll-type I was arguing with wrote this. 

Sorry those not Indian reading this might not get the stupidity of this but Indians reading, prepare to hear this — Arunachal Pradesh was never ours — said more often, to cover up yet another failure of the ruling party. Maybe that’s why the PM hasn’t visited Manipur yet even though it is coming up to a year and the north-eastern state is still consumed by ethnic violence but since it is not reported by mainstream media it is as good as it is no longer happening. If a tree falls in an empty forest does it make a sound? Does it fall at all? But perhaps I am wrong and that was just that one supporter of BJP making it up for himself. The ones who run the IT cell are not stupid, though the ruling party is desperate. 

I think India is still on a Modi wave and the BJP is going to win but it wants to win with a 400 majority so it can change the constitution. I am not saying this, a BJP party member said it. But in crushing the opposition by jailing CM’s and freezing accounts it is overplaying its hand. I think fear that it had underestimated the Indian public is the reason that the Congress account was unfrozen. Germany, the US, and UN, had begun talking about these events and were told to mind their own business, but the Indian people are also talking and they are the ones whose votes matter.

Meanwhile I took a lunch break and watched one of my favourite u-tubers talk about Katchatheevu island that is suddenly appearing in election speeches. He said that the island is approximately 250 acres big and does not even have water sources. Also the Solicitor General of India in 2014, Mukul Rohatgi, after the BJP had won the election had said during a Supreme Court hearing filed by another party to reclaim it, ‘Why rake this up so many years later.’ The island then was mostly important because fisher-folk often strayed into Sri Lankan waters and were picked up the Sri Lankan coastal guard — and visa versa, and prisoner exchanges had to be made. Also in 2015, 17,000 acres of land was ceded to Bangla Desh by the BJP in an exchange to improve the border situation. Bangla Desh returned 7,000 acres to India. 

But it is clear that India gave up more acreage and even more clear that Katchatheevu island is merely an election issue raked up to rabble rouse. It is also interesting to see how the BJP sets narratives about how much they care about India but the previous rulers never did. 

And to end this blog with a report about myself — I have given up on trying to sort out my drawers and cupboards and thus know where I can find my stuff, in this not anymore new house. The time to settle and sort is gone. It is time to move into trying to resurrect life activities. The sorting will have to wait until the next spring cleaning, and I will have to stumble along, grumbling and opening several cupboards and drawers to find something. Karate self-training has been slow because of the flu, but writing practice and thinking about the karate stories is picking up, as is the other volunteer work I do. I’m sketching a lot more but reading has disappeared, so this week the focus is on catching up with reading. The hermit-ing mood continues but it is a busy week with groups and appointments, so I have to venture out into the city a lot.