The Year of Failing Spectacularly!

December 31, 2025

            The good news first (not that failing is bad news)!    

            My kidney function stabilised. It feels like a miracle. After a sudden deterioration which normally is a sign of kidneys beginning to fail, they seem to be recovering. One thing that helped could be stopping the ayurvedic powder I has begun to take in October for my digestive issues. But I think the major change came after a deep dive into naming and trying to remove the psycho-spiritual toxins from my body-mind system. I hadn’t done this seriously, almost as if I thought, nah that is voodoo and it won’t help, but then the spouse had an anxiety dream from which he woke crying out, I don’t want to be alone. Wake up call for me! I deepened the cleansing and it seems to have helped. Some reading this might still think it’s voodoo. 

            But the title of this post is ‘the year of failing spectacularly’. On the last day of 2025 I am making this list, which I hope is a reminder and an instigator for change in the new year. 

            I failed in improving the relationship with my sister. It is complex and personal in a way I don’t yet want to blog about. She is a private person, so private that she doesn’t talk to me too about herself. She says it is because she doesn’t know how to express emotions and that’s true, yet in the past I have been able to guess and make shifts that improved our conflicts. We still are sisters and there are very warm and supportive moments but there are moments of separation that are painful. I can guess some of the factors that might be creating distance, but I don’t know for sure and I have failed in making the relationship what I want it to be. 

            I failed in supporting my spouse enough. In fact, I left almost all the house-care — including weekly shop and cooking meals to him by the end of the year. When I noticed this, I tried to be more useful but as the months progressed, I became more and more usefless. 

            I failed in my creative pursuits. There is only one complete piece of writing that I feel happy about in this entire year. I wrote that piece in March for an online class. It is about the Pahalgham attack by terrorists on tourists in which they killed twenty-six men. All my other writing this year has been fragmentary and uninspired, and I haven’t been able to reflect on why. Maybe there is no ‘why’ and all I can do is notice it. I’ve been in a paralysis of bringing things together or revising things with promise. I also failed in my sketching pursuits, unless you consider simply doing the same thing without any improvement again and again ok. I’m not actively trying to improve but in the past regular practice had made my sketches ‘artier’ but this year my sketchbooks have only a few things that I feel pleased with. 

            I won’t write about karate because considering my knee I feel I might have done ok there. In fact, on the last Saturday of training ten of us completed the 108 kata challenge — a tradition I began in 2013 first for myself and then for the dojo. Four were ‘minty’ new white belts. Three others in our dojo also completed it at home. I couldn’t be prouder. The kyu grades and I spoke about it after and one asked me what I had been thinking as I did it. I can truly say that except the first five repetitions which I did in synch with the new white belts and during which I was focused on seeing if they needed help — I was in my body, present to the moment for the rest of the 103. My mind didn’t wander through the corridors of the year’s failures or future hopes. It was just there minutely following the movements and the stresses my body was feeling and recovering from by breathing. That is one huge success for me. 

            I hope I don’t sound self-absorbed or self-flagellating. I don’t feel the latter, though I am likely the former. It’s a record of 2025 and I’m ok about it today, though I have joined my inner critic in beating myself up about it often this year. If one must fail then doing it spectacularly is the way to go. 

            Would love to hear about your 2025 or your hopes for 2026. Happy New Year everyone!!

Time Rolls Forward

December 18, 2025

            On Thursday, while I was messaging with my friend in a faraway land she texted, It is amazing how the day can end so quickly when doing nothing. 

            It struck me that this was the way I felt about the year. I did nothing, it passed so quickly. 

            Later I watched a 17 min video of a young woman in Florida going into a café and drawing. She drew the café and the people, as they came and went. She drew some of the food she ate and painted it in bright colours. Yes, this is what I want to do with the last days of this year I thought.

            But then there was the other desire of filling the hours with things I didn’t do all year. Stop analysing the reasons why you didn’t do anything and do some of the things you wished you had done, this voice said. Like going back to that book – the only novel I have written that I must get out into the world before I die. The issue still burns for me and nobody else has written about it that I know of. And when this desire grips, I wake up at night and roll around with ideas and frustrations. And in the morning on 2 hours sleep I try to re-work some of the pages. 

            Drawing in a café is being present to the moment. For me a not-professional-artist, it is a task that doesn’t have a purpose beyond doing it then. I will never make it into an art piece and sell it or show it to the world in a u-tube video. And that purposeless time has much meaning.

            Wandering the streets or the forest also has the same feel. Maybe with the added feel that doing this might help me find the self I still feel I have lost in this year. It is true that I have lost it. Small things like not knowing what is in the box on my desk, which at the beginning of the year I opened and used every day tell me that something has changed during the year.

Reality is not continuous, is it? But sometimes I pretend it is. My thoughts at the end of the year come in fragments, which I try to string together into something whole and sometimes convince myself that I have done so. That I have solved the puzzle of this year, answered the burning question.

I don’t know what the question is yet. And that’s somehow ok. Because we don’t know the questions that drive us in life though often, we pretend to? 

I see now, after the blood pressure stabilised that the things in my life that regulated stress and perhaps with that blood pressure, had become distant from me as the year progressed. When the knee got injured, everything did change though I clung to the idea that I was managing well despite it. I trained less and when I did train it was always through pain and the fear that there would be consequences — like more pain, and swelling, and further injury. 

I wrote less because at one time writing and training were somehow linked so instead of writing more as I trained less I did less of that too. And both these help regulate stress and pressure. And I read less until September when some inner impulse urged me to read the booker list.

Every day, for the first week after I saw my blood test results I wrote in my journal — I felt lost (when I saw them), I feel lost, I might continue to be lost. And on the last day it changed to I felt lost, I feel lost, I will try to feel less lost. And I did find a measure of peace, until Friday. The organ that might be dysfunctional is the kidney. The kidney is one of the bodies filtration systems, it remove toxins from the body. It’s ability to do this seemed to be slowing down. In the last two weeks I journalled a lot about the psycho-spiritual toxins within — resentments and angers in relationships, anxieties and never-ending fears about the future. They had built up. I can’t say I have filtered them all from within, but the process begun has brought peace. 

Until Friday when the spouse suggested I go in for my blood test a bit earlier than I was supposed to. He said, we might know if things have shifted before Christmas, then. I fell into disarray, chaos. I didn’t want to find out that the numbers were worse. The inner-safety I had built, perhaps through some rigid routines, fell apart. I had worked in a steady groove for two weeks but again the lostness invaded. We did go for the test and then to the pen shop and got a shiny new pen and ink I didn’t need. It was comfort shopping. I hadn’t expected the upheaval to return but this is where I am today.  

But no, this year and the next are not separated by a boundary where some invisible magic will clear the difficulties of this year. They are continuous. I will not have a Hollywood ending to my year but I don’t have to frantically rush to finish some things this year so I can start the next year fresh, empty, hopeful. It sometimes happened this way in the past, like when I finished the first draft of the novel I referred to above right on December 28 in 2018 or when I got a health test result back with improvement like I did the year my potassium was high – 2020, I think. But it is ok to not have completion. It is ok to carry unfinished things into the next year.     

In 2026 I plan not to set challenges but breathe and get back to living in the moment whenever I can. More drawing, I guess. This year my sketchbook is full of faces. I like drawing faces, perhaps I can improve but I really want to draw trees and perhaps with a stronger knee I can walk more in the forest again. 

Thank You!

December 8, 2025

I woke today in my own bed after having slept six plus hours after several weeks of an average of five hours sleep per night. I felt different. Less like doom was around the corner and more like hmm… what is this feeling? Am I smiling? Is the headache really barely noticeable? Do I actually want to open my eyes and have the energy to make the bed? My pressure was normal when we measured it. 121/82. I can’t remember the last time I felt this OK! 

I want to thank everyone who read and responded to my previous post. I want to doubly thank those who shared that they have been on blood pressure meds for long. As I shared that I had begun to take them more people began talking to me about people they know who are on the meds, and have been for years. My NS buddy was taking them, our cousin takes a pill before brekky every day, my best friend, my son.... and so on…

Wow! 

I’ve had a hard time with my meds adjusting my pressure. It went low, it went high again when we moved to the cats home. I lay around in their living room coping with some of the side effects and feeling that it would never end. The pressure dropped low when I was outdoors and then my pulse raced and raced and left me short of breath and scared. When I measured later it was 96/53. Ok! I read sometimes it happens with the meds.

Anyway, hearing so many share that either they or someone they know takes the meds has made me believe that my body too will find a way to equalibrium and I too might feel normal soon. I would think — oh so-and-so has high bp and still does this or that, or so-and-so who has high bp has such hectic high flying days — they all live normal lives (though I don’t know the minutiae of what they/you struggle with). Thinking this is a nice feeling. For weeks I haven’t slept well, and then dealt all day with fatigue, foggy brain, and depression. Waking up to this and sitting here in my pj’s, past noon, watching the tress outside swaying in the breeze, which is gently blowing into my home too, is as close to heaven as anyone can get. 

I want to pull out my paints and experiment once more with drawing the trees outside, capturing shadow and light and depth and texture. Something I’ve tried before and never been able to do. My brain actually is looking at the vista of trees and saying, lime green here or ionian green there or a bit of grey to capture the shadow there and what is the blue I should use for the skies? Honestly, I yet don’t have energy to do get out my paints and try this today, but I haven’t even had this thought for weeks. It’s all been a dull blur, so this is welcome. I am grateful I can read and write. This is hope. 
            One pill. Ten days. And a sense that there is life to be lived. Heaven indeed. 
            Thanks everyone for helping me get here. 

Also want to say that my circle of energy still feels tight, like I still want to stay a bit withdrawn, like I still can only think of my body and a few close peeps — so even though a part of me wants to reach out to have a zoom call most of me wants to stay low. I will initiate contact when I feel able. 

With so much love.

uncertainty

 December 5, 2024

I wish fervently for the next year to begin with a return to flow. I’m so drained from the slow and intermittent trickle that life has felt like this year. I’ve felt more than mildly depressed, screeching-ly irritable, perpetually exhausted, since I injured my knee in January. The problems from 2024, 2023, 2022 had refused to resolve and followed me into 2025. As the year progressed new small things that would have felt manageable in ordinary times seemed like wide cracks that would swallow me whole. And the last quarter of the year has been particularly dreary — except for two events that have shocked the inertia most of me had fallen into. 

Shocks for me can be things that suddenly energise a sleepy system (can be great), or things that badly disrupt a functional state (terrifying). I had one of each.

December is a time to reflect over the year. This year I made three lists. Things I have done, things I wish I had done, and things I have coped with. The third was the longest, and the coping methods used have been revealing. The things I have done list is mostly made up of ‘passive’ stuff — like classes I’ve participated in, rather than those that create a sense of accomplishment. The things I wish I had done made me sad, but I also saw that I did attempt (unsuccessfully) to re-ignite some of those towards the end of the year. The only thing I really feel proud of doing this year is attending a poetry class in July, reading more poetry after, and signing up for a poem a day prompt in October when I did write poem drafts on 21 days. Nice eh!

When I was in Bombay this year, I met a friend who casually said in the midst of a conversation, Radhu you were always very self-aware. Meaning in tune with myself. Meaning able to see clearly what I was doing, good or bad. It shocked me, more so because a friend in Singapore had remarked on the depth of my being the week before. Neither statement was something I identified with anymore — meaning at one time I had yearned to be both and actively worked towards them. That they still saw me that way shocked me after this year of simply coping, merely existing, sometimes feeling like a parasite on this earth. (Yep, mild depression). But the statements ‘woke me’ and pushed me towards listening to the call of the self I had lost. Hence more depth journalling and attempt to resurrect my desires.

Last week after several weeks of terrible headaches, nausea, and brain fog, I visited my GP. My last blood test from Bombay had some aberrant values and I wanted to consult her about those as well. She ordered a blood test to retest the values and asked me to monitor my pressure three times a day as it was inordinately high — beyond that the ‘white-coat syndrome’ causes — when she measured it. 

To reward myself for going to the doc, I visited the Central Library, browsed and borrowed some books, sat in the café on the 3^rd level, drank iced tea, and sketched my surroundings despite the pounding headache. Then walked over to my favourite pen shop and bought a deep indigo blue, textured, (supposed to write colour after texture) pen after trying out a few others. Ya, these are the things that make me happy and I am so glad I indulged in them that day just a week and two days ago. 

For two days later when I revisited my doctor after realising that my blood pressure values were very high and were probably responsible for the way I had been feeling, I discovered something that makes me feel paralysed. She hesitantly offered me blood pressure meds. Hesitantly because each time she had in the past told me to take meds for blood sugar or high cholesterol I had said, let me work on it for three months before I start. She had always agreed and though I need a low dose statin (bad genes), I have managed other issues with diet and exercise. I immediately said, yes please. Anything to stop that awful sensation, and at 65 I didn’t want to work hard to balance out my body. 

The blood tests she had done showed further problems particularly related to one organ of my body and I must get my values re-tested on December 22^nd. Even as I write this, I feel scared and sad. I did tell a few people that my blood pressure was high (and different reactions showed me something about the people I confided in) but I haven’t been able to talk about the other more anxiety producing issue. Something that might not be very serious after all or might alter my path in this world perhaps. I won’t say what it is until I am done with the test and have my results, post-Christmas. It took me two days to absorb the numbers I had seen and get past a mini-denial stage.

Waiting is hard. The same friend who had mentioned that I had always been self-aware had shared how a friend who had been waiting for results for a cancer test had felt enormous relief once he got them even though they were positive. The waiting had been killing for him. And it is for me. I start to do something, to read, and suddenly the thought about the tests invades. I suddenly wake up from sleep with fears and tears. It feels so isolating and I find myself withdrawing from my surroundings. But then suddenly reaching out for connection. 

What is that about — the so universal reaction of not wanting to see, the not wanting to tell, and the anxiety around waiting? Life is uncertain. Every new day, new year is shrouded in the unknown but there are moments (or weeks) when that uncertainty, the sense of not knowing is more intense than ‘normal’. Does everyone see-saw between wanting to be alone and needing the right companionship?

I’m not surprised this year is ending this way, the whole year has been about wondering, hoping, wanting, but never feeling fulfilled or even semi-resolved.

Is He Still My Brother?

November 21, 2025

Some people know I had/have a brother. A brother who walked out of our lives one morning like he was going to the office like he always did. It’s not like I deliberately hide it but I don’t have any reason to talk about it too. Or maybe I just want to not remember. 

Anyway at the end of July, after my poetry class, I wrote this. I was reading some materials shared in class, a book the teacher had mentioned that I found in the library, and this popped out, and then I forgot about it. Yesterday I was talking to a friend and I mentioned it. Today I want to share it. It is a draft and will never be revised/edited.

Untitled (yet?)

 

The last time I saw my brother he wore a dark

Blue suit. Suits should be light grey, dark grey, black.

Dark blue, Miheer’s favourite colour.

 

At one time he was my favourite person.

Born twenty months before me, 

At one time he was generous and protective,

Giving me half his allowance,

To buy a book I wanted.

 

He hadn’t told me, that this was the last time,

I’d see him, but I knew. In the way

Bears know that winter,

Is coming, and they need to find a cave

To hibernate. His wife was with him in a gaudy pink silk saree.

 

Miheer and I hadn’t been speaking,

But I lifted my hand and waved.

He raised his hand too, did he pause, 

Probably not. He turned the corner and disappeared.

I rushed the corridor and caught him,

In the lift landing. I hugged him, and he hugged me back.

 

The elevator dinged and he pried,

His arms from around me and was gone.

I stood still. I stumbled,

into our father’s study, lay down

On the carpet and shook.

There had been an earthquake in Latur few weeks ago.

 

Next week at Rusi’s, he asked 

How are you feeling?

I’m fine, it’s fine, I said.

Minutes later I put down my wine glass and rushed

To his bathroom and puked.

 

I dreamt that I saw Miheer at an airport.

He was going to New York, 

and I to Tokyo. I hid,

behind a pillar and didn’t talk to him.

 

He is alive somewhere on this earth

But is he still my brother, 

If we don’t talk anymore?

 

            Things happen, you grieve. Then more things happen and the old losses are swept away. Better they are I think? Sometimes they creep up. The more you loved someone the more deep the shock. 

            Is he still my brother?

Unexpected October in Bombay

October 10, 2025

I’m sitting on the swing in the green balcony of my childhood home and icing my knee which got severely inflamed after my flight. We used to have family lunches here on weekends when I was little. I love it here even though some of the sliding windows don’t open anymore. The pink small sofa and armchairs were added by my sister and an hefty stone I picked up on a beach in Calvi while visiting my friend Midi is placed on the sofa. Two areca palms on the two ends occupy most of the space in the balcony. Nobody uses this spot much but when I visit it is my favourite morning spot. I can keep an eye on squealer’s favourite tree from here and watch an expanse of sky and spot other flying kites. 

Only a few days left of our trip here. When we booked the tickets, my mum wasn’t having eye issues, but a few days before we flew in, she suddenly had a blank spot in her right eye after shampooing her hair. My sister acted quickly and set up an eye appointment, she had a blood clot, and on the third visit to the clinic she was administered the injection. She has trouble walking because of scoliosis, particularly climbing steps and each trip took its toll on her. Though I wanted to go she asked me to stay home and make sure lunch etc. was prepped, while my sister took her. I wasn’t offended as my sister is her primary caregiver. I wrote up questions to ask because (like many of us) my sister goes blank at the doctors, but I felt redundant and a bit like my mum didn’t trust me.

I remembered my visit last October when she had been unable to walk because of muscle loss, and unable to lift her arm because of shoulder pain. She needed help with getting out of her bed or even bathing. My sister had panicked, and so had I, and I had made an urgent trip here. When I helped mum my sister always yelled at me – be careful, don’t hurt her, you’re exerting too much force on her arm. I had blown up one day and said, she’s my mum too, I’m not torturing her. My mum had not intervened, but she was steeped in pain and was quieter and more turned inward than ever, hardly aware of the surroundings. She slept a lot more than she ever had. All this scared me immensely. But with good orthopaedic advice and physiotherapy she is stronger again and her alert self now. 

The evening before her injection I asked her again if I could go and she said no. Then later that night she asked me if I would go down to the porch when she returned to help her up the short flight of stairs to reach the level on which the elevators are. When I asked about my sister, at first mum merely said she will be carrying bags, but when I offered to go down and carry the bags so my sister could help her, she replied, no I like your strength and support. Her support is too light. 

Surprised and pleased, I realised that my mum knows what and who she needs for different things. Knowing this made the waiting at home for messages from my sister easier. 

This was the nicest part about this trip so far, but something happened that also shocked me. I’m not sure what exactly started the topic for I don’t talk politics with my family as they prefer not to know about ‘the things they cannot change’. But one morning as we drank tea mum said, we (India) needs to be careful with Muslims, what they teach in Madrassas is not known, and they hide their weapons in their Mosques. I wasn’t surprised she said the latter for I know that she had experienced bad Hindu-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad as a child before, during, and post partition. She has memories of cowering with her siblings in the dark as people ran across their roofs yelling. She has told me about swords and knives, blood and bodies. Of course to her the aggressors were Muslim men and the defenders Hindu men. 

When she remembered those stories I would say, times are different now and it’s Muslims who are threatened under a right-wing government. Most times she used to hear me out and she’d nod her head as her sharp brain integrated what I told her about current happenings. Even when I was with her when the Ram Temple in Ayodha was inaugurated and there was a frenzy about digging up more ancient mosques she told me that she was happy to see this temple but there was no need to break down old mosques. What happened then can’t be corrected by more violence and destruction now, she’d say. 

This time though she spouted a few more ‘myths’ that have been spread through the BJP IT cells. It floored me. There were population growth myths (that Muslims were now 41% of the population) and myths about how Muslims use Hindu names to fool people. She doesn’t watch news, and she barely meets people and when I asked who told her this she said, 'everyone', and 'one hears these things'. 

Not wanting to upset her I walked away. I could tell she was upset by that, but I needed to calm down. These kinds of statements set me off badly and I often find it difficult to stay connected with people who buy into the myths floating around.

Yet this was my mother. She needed care not an argument — and we’ve had plenty of those over the years. Of course, I made my peace with her later — though I took a shower first. But frankly I am still processing this as I don’t know how to be with a person who will believe and repeat these things. I guess I will find another time to investigate what has changed her moderate views. Maybe I will get some understanding about how these 'myths' take root in a person’s mind. But yes, still processing.

I haven’t been out and about and meeting people much. There are only two friends I want to connect with this trip, and I have a few days left. But spouse and I had blood tests done and the person collecting our blood brought up the topic of Modi, Ambani, and Adani. I know in 2014 the man was a firm Modi supporter but the vehemence with which he talked about how the above three, and more, have messed up the country made me feel hopeful. 

Is the tide turning? Can it? It often feels it is too late for any kind of normal change of power for now all institutions have been ‘captured’ by the BJP, and they arrest and lock up those who oppose them, journalists who ask questions are found dead. Political change will take more effort than ever but hoping it will be peaceful, unlike the recent Nepal Gen Z revolution. And I don’t know how long social/mindset change will take. 

It’s been an heartful and instructive trip, but tiring. I am waiting for the day when I can wake up in my Singy home.  

Dojo Magic

September 15, 2025

            I think I must be the world’s worst ‘re-settler’ or even ‘settler’. Been home two mornings, and a full day already, and I am still wo(a)ndering around the home fiddling with this or that and not doing much. I used to be better, but though I moved into the cats’ home just 20 mins away and just for two weeks, I feel like I was living in an alternate universe for an unknown number of years, where language was distorted and words disappeared from memory, and even when I went out for a bit I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I’m thinking sleep deprivation can do weird things to the mind-body, but I need to figure this out—why each time I live at the cats’ home I feel disconnected from the city I am living in and the life I ‘normally’ live. 

            Yesterday I arrived at the dojo from my own home in that altered mental state. Only one of the brown belts was there doing some stretching, and I joined him. One of the other black belts was prepping the lesson for yesterday and he had got stuck because of rain and was late. I’m not sure how we got there but we found ourselves in a conversation about death, living alone, aging, and meaning at different stages of life. I shared how as we aged spouse and I became more dependent on each other and my fears of being the one being left behind. I spoke of how I felt I had done almost everything I had wanted to do in life which money didn’t constrain, and I wasn’t holding out for a long life. The brown belt talked of his grandma who lived almost forty years after her spouse passed on and what the last years of her life were like. When the black belt came in, changed into his gi, and joined us on the black mats of the gym we rent on Sundays, he said, “I was thinking this same thing on my way here.” He shared a bit of his thoughts and the memory that triggered his reflections, then we all stood up and trained hard for the rest of the time.

            It was magical. Outside it was dull and cloudy and sitting on the black mats felt cosy and conducive for such a conversation. Then hitting the bags first, and then doing other training, the thoughts we had shared and heard softy assimilated within. I have experienced such magic in the Singapore dojo community—on Sundays when fewer or us train and we linger for a chat, or on Saturdays when several of us go out for brunch to the coffee shop at Aperia and have conversations where anything could come up—from career explorations, post-retirement plans, existential issues, the terrible genocide in Gaza, something going on locally, besides of course thoughts related to martial arts. 

            We are a dojo, and we train hard together, but we also meet weekly, and the bonds that this regularity creates allows space for intimate sharing. People who join the dojo take their time to find their comfort levels within but most end up feeling this camaraderie. We also have had disagreements but today I want to bask in the magic of our small karate family in Singapore. I suppose this magic happens in any group where people meet to practice a common passion in an atmosphere of co-operation and not competition. We listen to each other and encourage people towards their dreams. 

            I didn’t know that I came ‘here’ today to say this. I merely sat at my desk, flipped open my lap top, and opened up my blog to help me gather my scattered self after finding it difficult to settle back into my tiny home, where paint smells still waft in from open windows, and I hear workmen chatting somewhere close, and I worry if they will be painting something outside the window or in the corridor and I will be back to battling allergies—already my ears feel a bit inflamed and the eyes burn. 

I know this time I will pull on my sandals, grab a notebook and perhaps the laptop and head out. And I am about to do just this soon, as I don’t have any left-overs for lunch and am too lazy to put together something. But the magic of yesterday and writing here today has grounded me a ton. 

Time with the Cats

September 11, 2025

            My time with the cats is coming to an end this weekend. 

I had ‘work’ and ‘play’ goals when I came here and based on vague memories from my last visits, I knew to be moderate with them. I’m not sure how this is possible, but I am feeling both ‘empty’ and disappointed about what I’ve managed and feeling good too. I guess in this blog I am trying to make sense of this contradiction.

            But before that I want to share a conversation that spouse and I had this morning. After twelve consecutive days of being woken up early and earlier with each passing day, by Yoda the spouse asked, ‘why do cats need to wake sleeping people?’ (Yoda of course even wakes sleeping cats!) And then the spouse added, ‘why do cats need to knock things off the table?’ (He had knocked off several things including my iPad off the bedside table.)

            I don’t know the answer to either and might google them later. But this morning, as we sat looking bedraggled and droopy-eyed while I tried to jolt awake with the caffeine in a second cup of  Assam tea, I replied, ‘ya, and they get rewarded for it. We don’t punish cats the way dogs sometimes get punished.’ I mean we had fed the cats despite Yoda’s annoying behaviour, cuddled them, and I had even stood sleepily keeping watch near the open door as Yoda had his morning peek at the corridor—I would call it neighbour spying but most days there is nothing to see. But this visit though Yoda has been particularly pesky, and I have been particularly patient with him. But except for the very early wake-up visits, and one chomp when I tried to syringe water into him (left it to the spouse after as he is better at it), he's been particularly affectionate with us, though it was also easy to see he had some very 'bad' days towards the end of the trip when I am guessing he is missing his mum (he is mama's boy) He either sat on his mum's bed and self-calmed or when he was being his old self he chased Heka around and woke her constantly when she was asleep. Heka has been smooth and sweet except for two days when we gave her the wrong breakfast and she complained vociferously. 

            But back to that weird contradiction. This was one of the most ‘distracted’ visits, dominated by trying to heal from symptoms of the allergies that I had arrived with, never having even one night of six hours sleep, and unexpectantly being shocked by renovation/hacking sounds from above for three days. Despite this I managed some of the stuff from my ‘work’ goals list. I couldn’t do anything that required a ‘full brain’ but first drafts, reading craft essays/books and making notes, and other such stuff, got picked at daily. My ‘play’ list was dominated by drawing and painting. The sleep deprivation made even this hard this time, but I sampled all the colour pencils from my daughters around seventy piece water-colour pencil Derwent set (that she’s had since school) and drew the same tree outside the window in a different set of colours every day. This morning’s tree in shades of brown (my favourite from which was burnt carmine) was significantly improved from the first tree in shades of cream and pale yellow. 

            I’m going to have to find a way to get more ‘brain involved’ work done even while tired—I can train something or the other even on my most physically challenged days—but I am glad that I had some discipline and worked despite fairly severe illness and fatigue. I also drew/painted much less than I have the last two times I’ve been here, but my one daily drawing of that tree and some practice of negative space cat drawings showed improvement and for that I am more than pleased. Actually just doing a daily drawing of the same tree is what I am most pleased about and not the improvement — daily practice is more desired than the one lovely image, process over product. I guess this is where the feeling good comes from, and the source of the self-criticism is obvious.

            In my time here but I have watched the news but haven’t had strong reactions or formed opinions around it, I think because of the tiredness. Only this morning I did feel outraged at Netanyahu’s statement that the world should be ashamed about condemning Israel’s Qatar attack targeting a Hamas delegation, and I felt anxious watching the unfolding chaos in Nepal—will something better come from it or will it just end in more suffering for the people. I have reached a point (and I hope I get through it) where even when I see or hear of something that has partial hope, I find it hard to muster up hopeful expectations—whether about the world or my personal self—because of so much disappointment for so long. I journalled about the state of my mind on most days and this stood out.

            So ya, this is where I am at the end of my days with my cats. Earlier this week I read the blogs I had written during my last two visits, looking for similarities, differences, hope, or advice and decided that even though I don’t have much to say it will be good to have this record to refer to next time. I will be happy to be home in two days and get a full night’s sleep; and I am hoping that the painting of the external walls of our building on our side is done so I am not assaulted by more health disturbing smells and sounds. 

An Un-birthday Sharing

September 1, 2025

            I’m writing from the dining table in my daughter’s home, more correctly the cat’s home, where Yoda has decided to share his bed—the pullout Futon—in the guest bedroom with us. He uses it as his whim calls during the day and sighs and gets off when we decide to go to bed at night. He sometimes visits at night and sits purring on my tummy. Hekate mostly colonises the ‘moon chair’ by the window in the living room. My daughter is ‘keeping’ it for a friend who is away from Singapore for a couple of years. The friend has asked for it to be used and both yoda and heka have made the most of it. 

            I’m unsettled this visit, which is post my birthday week/month. The most un-birthday week I can remember. I guess I should explain. I have an expectation/hope that birthday month or at least the week or if not that, at least the day will be magical—some problem resolved, some good news, an insight about life, or something else in this vein. This year there was heightened hope for one, any one would do, of these as the preceding year had been full of humbling, unpleasant, numbing experiences, a general lack of productivity, a lot of health issues. 

            I think it is always a good thing to be humbled, to be reminded of how fragile, and insignificant, I am in the large scheme of life, the world, and history. When I was little, I had this thought that I would leave behind something important that people would remember me by. I meant some scientific discovery or other, as I was a Maths/Science person and my s/heroes came from that field. Then I thought I’d write a book that would be deep, and people would read, put it down, reflect on something I said, then go back to it, and be filled with introspective moments while and after reading. But of course, by my 65^th nothing of this sort had happened and though with the unpredictable nature of the future anything is likely I doubt if I will make a scientific discovery. I suppose I can still hope for other things.

            Though these days the only things I hope for are good recovery of my knee or some health issue a friend or family member is dealing with or resolution of one long standing problem in Bombay. Nothing magical happened last month and the only insight I had was that nothing about life was in my control. But a beloved teacher gave me a private class on something he thought I might enjoy learning, the day before my birthday, and that was special. Also, my knee inflammation ebbing steadily has been a great gift for the 65th. 

            The week of my birthday began with paint fumes from first the corridor and then the outside walls of our apartment building being painted. The work was supposed to have completed mid-August but barely a few strokes had been applied by then anywhere at all in the building and when we called the supervisor he apologised for the delay and said the work on our side would only begin in September. We had felt elated that it would be completed while we were away, but in a frenzy of efficiency they began the Monday of my birthday week. I felt sick with a very scratchy throat almost immediately and as the week progressed it turned into post nasal drip, aches, and a slight fever. I had to cancel plans and stay home on my birthday and normally I welcome that but this time I either felt light-headed, because of the fumes or claustrophobic when I had to shut all the windows, and was unable to think. I struggled just to remain in the land of the living that week and I’m not sure if I am thinking clearly today too. 

            So, I arrived here on Saturday already ill, and unlike other times cat fur began irritating my nose and throat, and I got sicker. Not sure how the rest of the two weeks will proceed but through the fogginess of mornings and slightly clear afternoons, and evenings when I am ready for bed, I am enjoying the silliness and joy of Hekate, her mad morning rolls, her very structured day—get cuddles, eat, play, sleep, repeat and Yoda whose each day is different, sometimes neurotic with wanderings until 2 pm and others where he eats and promptly choses a perch and sleeps calmly through the day. Nights of quiet or yelling, chewing his blue ball, and more or fewer visits to my tummy and either a soft mew fifteen minutes before cat breakfast time or loud yelps that begin an hour or two before. 

            Just mundane everyday stuff, I guess. I have brought work with me. I’m working on a braided essay (a structure we learned in Memoir class) that came about from my last blog post—what being a white belt in poetry was like. First draft should take a week and then I’m not sure what next week’s project will be or if I will be well enough for one. The allergies are feeling very oppressive today. 

            So, no birthday reflection though I had an insight about the areas in my life in which I am not being ‘authentic’ and how that is making me feel sluggish, numb, and cut off from the source of my life and creativity. I also realised that in am still in a phase where I desire more hermit-ting than contact. Good to have the booker longlist to get through—some acquired and some on reserve at the library—while the world moves deeper into chaos, and inexplicable tyrannies, and blindness to the suffering of those different from ourselves.

If I did have a birthday genie, then that would be my wish—may all tyrants and their blind followers find compassion and right sight. Yea, really if we were lucky enough to get a birthday wish then perhaps… 

How I Survived My Poetry Class

August 12, 2025

            This post is for a friend who asked when I would write about my writing classes which I had talked about in the previous post. It’s hurried but it’s a start.

I survived poetry class by tapping into my first year of karate. 

The second assignment for my poetry class was to write a sonnet — in two days. I must have read sonnets in literature classes in school, but do non-Math/Science folks remember algebra from high school? I have friends who recite poetry and Shakespeare as easily as they breathe, even the spouse can recite a few things, but I don’t remember any poetry from school days except Tagore’s Where the Mind is Without Fear. On the Wednesday evening when the sonnet was introduced, I realised that I had trouble counting syllables accurately. And at the end of class, we were told to write a sonnet by Friday midnight. It felt impossible.

I decided to just focus on having 14 lines and the correct rhyming structure to construct my Shakespearean sonnet. I chose Gaza, Netanyahu, Trump, and Iran as the subject and managed to submit before the Friday midnight deadline though I was terrified of seeing it on the screen and reading it aloud the next morning, particularly since I have a fear of reading aloud anyway. We were doing a lot of writing in class and reading aloud our pieces—no compulsion—in the same class. I had decided to try to get past my fears and critics and read out my work too. It was easy to tell which of us had never written any poetry.

            That Saturday morning the three or four English teachers in my class helped me sort out syllable count. Each had a different way of explaining and their combined explanations helped the impossible become possible. But of course, my submitted sonnet didn’t have the right syllable count and my voice trembled as I read it out that day. I got through. Later during that class the ghazal was introduced and that was the challenge that made me think I should drop out of the class.

            And as I write about this, I see that I am focusing on the poetry class, I suppose because it was harder. Memoir flowed easily, the readings were enjoyable, the assignments doable, and the teacher had an extremely structured approach that helped me learn quickly. The first week’s assignment I worked on over two days and could submit two days before the deadline. 

            But ghazal week was different. I wrote and submitted a ghazal by the deadline. I got the comments back a day later. I read them out to the spouse at night. It was obvious that I had totally missed the essence of the ghazal which is to tap into the metaphysical and the eternal. But the comments were so detailed that the spouse quipped, Wow! I’m sure you can use these and rewrite easily. 

            Nope. I spend all my free time on the ghazal that week, using only 45 mins for the memoir assignment and barely remembered to read the memoir pieces. So, by the time I reached the third Saturday of classes the beached whale that I had felt in the first poetry class began to give up on its struggles to ever reach the waters again. Despite all that effort no revised ghazal had emerged. Luckily the second assignment for the week was one which could be completed in prose, so my critic was hushed. 
            I felt I had two choices—drop the class or continue going but not put any pressure on myself. I was leaning towards the first, until I remembered my first weeks of karate. I had the same feeling of ineptness, clumsiness, and hopelessness then. I don’t think I thought of dropping out but the hours before going to each class were filled with the same trepidation and the feeling of breathlessness. Huge fear combined with excitement too. I remembered plunging into the class without hesitation, even going to camp in week three. I remembered how Sensei Mistry didn’t test me until I had been there for eight months.  Trust me, he said, and allow yourself time. Which I did then. 

            In karate as well as poetry class all belt levels trained together. I felt like a white belt in poetry as there were published poets in the class, one whose fifth book was coming out later in the year. The way they expressed and reacted to poems, all the in-class writing they read aloud, everything was at least a fourth degree or above black belt level. I could struggle on and on in poetry and spend less time on memoir as things felt more complex and speedy, but instead I wrote to the poetry instructor and asked if I could still come to class but not submit anything. I focused on doing the memoir assignments and readings which had also got more complex. 

            Of course, the poetry teacher agreed. I’m not happy about giving up the struggle to keep up in poetry, and am contemplating how I could have struggled on, but I was glad I could attend and enjoy the class pressure free. Maybe someday I will write more poetry, and poetry that is good. Maybe I will go back and write the other forms introduced like the haibun which felt so beautiful. Maybe one day I will write a decent ghazal. I did borrow a few poetry books and read them during class and poetry will be something that I will read more frequently now, even though some of it still feels like wandering through a dream in a foreign land and where a foreign language is spoken. 

            But July, my vacation from regular life is over and all the issues that I had kept at bay are occupying my being again. And though it is August my birthday month I don’t yet feel the excitement and hope of the month. The days feel bleah and tiring.            

            There is much more to mine from July 2025. That poetry class was incomparable to any other writing class I have done. With so many more ‘black belt’ poets than beginners it was a space where I saw how ‘real’ writers operated. Most classes before had a mixture of all levels and my comfort level in those was average or better. Most classes before had twenty-plus students so it was easy to stay in my comfort zone, but in the poetry class there were only ten of us, and no place to 'hide' from myself. Also, both teachers were especially warm and encouraging in their own different ways and the sense of possibility in terms of writing has grown immensely in the month. Needs further unfolding. 

I Remembered Things

July 9, 2025

End June, I accepted that my injuries wouldn’t heal quickly, and karate movements at normal speeds hamper healing more than anything else. I accepted that I might be injuring myself each time I don’t remember this. I accepted this more deeply yesterday when I let the deadline to register from the CI gasshuku pass. When I train right now it is 60% strengthening, 20% haishukata, and 20% kaishukata at slow speeds, except Sunday trainings where though I remain mindful I train at 60-70% capacity and then pay the price of increased pain levels and inflammation for a day or two. 

To offset the deep sadness this created, I gave myself permission to enroll in two writing courses in July, one poetry and one memoir. This meant skipping Saturday training. But almost immediately I am feeling the dividends of this choice. The courses are making me deliriously happy, releasing an endorphin-high intoxication similar to what I feel post training, but without the pain. It’s immersion in reading, writing, being guided by an expert, and hanging with writer friends that is fuelling this high. 

This morning the poetry homework offered up a further dividend. I don’t write poetry, and I think I mistakenly applied for this course instead of another one, but sometimes these ‘guided’ mistakes open doors. When I got accepted, I decided to enrol and in the first class I felt like a beached whale. 

Then while completing the first assignment I remembered things. 

I remembered a group process from my distant past – probably December 2003 because I remember doing Sanchin kata before breakfast in the memory. It was a time when a few of us were working with schools and colleges in a voluntary capacity and doing programmes that focused on the increasing socio-cultural divides and identity politics of that time. 

For the last session of that year a few of us had driven up to Panchgani Plateau where we were to conduct an afternoon session on conflict resolution during a five day workshop for teachers, which included teachers from rural areas in India and some from a Living Values programme from the US. 

We arrived the night before our session. At dinner we saw a large group of white participants, from the Living Values programme. These youth, with loose linen pants and shirts, probably bought from Cottage Industries in Mumbai, seemed to have taken over the dining hall and the Indian participants sat in corners eating quietly.

The organiser told us that our session would have to be conducted in English to accommodate the foreigners. She said, “They are the paying participants, and this allows us to subsidise the Indian teachers.”

I asked, ‘Do the Indian teachers speak English?’ 

The organiser brushed this aside and we facilitators looked at each other. At night we went over our plan. Some conflict theory, examples of classroom conflicts and role plays on how they could be handled. We all had been teachers and two of us had trained in conflict resolution. The language issue bothered me. I said, “What do we do if they don’t understand English.”

N, the most pragmatic of our group said, “They have translators.”

I remember the bare basic unheated rooms we were assigned. The course bed linen, the bucket bathing system where hot water ran out faster than the geyser could heat it for the next person. The crisp, dry, cold morning air where we were served up a very invigorating gingery chai. I practiced my Sanchin while my roommates bathed.

We attended the morning session to get a feel of the dynamic between the participants. Five women from Manipur sat huddled at the back. I sat down next to them. They looked restless as the presenter spoke, passed out notes, asked questions. There were headsets attached to each seat, but they weren’t using them. 

“Are you following the class,” I asked in Hindi.

“No, these headsets don’t work. We were promised translations.” The women were almost in tears. One said, “I’m not stupid but I feel it. I feel like a five-year-old child.”

I stormed out and sat on a stone baking myself. It was December but the stone heated by the noon sun brought warmth into my frozen limbs through my back. Soon I was sweating and removed my sweater. I lay down on the stone and allowed the mini-tempest with me to swirl and sort. I looked up at the sunrays filtering through silver oaks, the light shifting as the leaves moved in a soft breeze. I felt the gap between the me lying on the stone and something larger than me diminish. N brought me an aloo roll at lunchtime

I said, “N, we will conduct this session in Hindi.” I didn’t speak Hindi well, and I was the main presenter. “You will translate to English.” She would correct the mistakes I made. 

She started to argue but then changed her mind and nodded. Emboldened I said, “And we will conduct a group process not the role plays. Some theory and then a process around language hierarchies in the room”

When we began the teachers from the US looked bewildered even though N translated after I spoke. A white, bearded male, at the back got up and brought in the organiser, they argued but didn’t interrupt us. The young women from Manipur came to the front and joined in the conversation. After a bit we forgot to translate to English, and a white woman who was leaning against one of the exit doors to the room yelled, “What is this crap. Speak in English.” 

In the stunned silence that dropped, N and I set up the roles that had emerged naturally. The oppressor/I’m paying so speak English and the oppressed/It’s my country and you are my guest but don’t take advantage of me. The back and forth was heated and we modelled changing roles, speaking from both sides, encouraging others to do the same, and tried keep the translation going. By then most of the Indian teachers had come up front and were scattered on the floor. 

Towards the end. One of the women from Manipur, took the mike and spoke in Manipuri. We gathered around her, though none of us spoke it. Some of foreigners also sat on the floor. Her anguish, her yearning didn’t need translation. 

We had reached that magical moment which we often get to within a conflict if we allow it to emerge fully and deeply. The moment where the sides collapse into shared humanity and where coloniser and colonised, centre and periphery, can hear and be each other. People shared and listened for a while before we summarised parts of the process so the teachers could understand how the theory had worked in the room.

At dinner that evening the participants sat in mixed groups attempting to have conversations and the organiser said she’d try harder to get the translation going for the next sessions. 

That memory unfolded after reading a poem and writing on the prompt the teacher gave the class Saturday morning. It came in small doses until I remembered most of what had happened. The heart of it especially. And I remembered that this was what I thought was my ‘heart’ work before I came to Singapore. That part of me has disappeared completely but to be reminded was a precious gift that came from allowing myself a break from activity that might begin to heal my dysfunctional joints and hopefully integrate this missing part.

Soaking into the remembrance of who I was and want to be. 

 

A Procrastination Post

 June 24, 2025

Yes, this is a procrastination post. I am supposed to be working on the first draft of a personal essay for an anthology around rituals that a friend invited me to contribute to. I did make a start but then went down the rabbit hole of both researching rituals and remembering my abhorrence of them while growing up. Time disappeared as I chased these threads and I emerged a bit richer but with knowledge unconnected to the task at hand.

Over the last twelve days my procrastination has mostly taken the form of endlessly watching news about what now is being called the 12-day War. Hopefully the ceasefire will hold and I will get back the space and time I spent following it closely, trying to watch/read different kinds of sources — left, right, Israeli, American, (I didn’t find specifically Iranian ones), and some I think which were funded by China. I’d love to spend time today drawing a large sketch showing which source said what. Frankly at the end of it all I don’t know how much who suffered and whose goals were met to what extent as in times of war not revealing these things is strategy. 

Do you know exactly who achieved what? Does the fact that at the end of it I don’t know much is that I wasted tons of time and mental space over the last twelve days? I am wondering if I learnt anything at all about the outside world or even how my mind works or why I couldn’t stop trying to track what was going on. 

What I do know is that I saw Iran as the underdog — something that shook me. Trump called Iran the bully of the Middle East and at some other time I would have agreed so for me to perceive the Ayatollah, religious, women and others oppressing, regime as an underdog was weird. Over the weekend my spouse and I had several arguments where I was supporting Iran, and he was taking them apart. I kept screaming, I agree but look at it in this context. I understood the complexities of whom and when you support something or condemn something at a very minute level and the non-black-and-whiteness of things. I guess as a teenager I wanted things to be starkly good or bad, take one side against another and the grey nuances only bloomed as I matured but still there are black-white moments in life despite ripening in wisdom.

Lately I have been doing things at the very last minute whether it is submitting applications to courses I'd like to attend or replying or acting about ‘urgent’ bank messages. I spent the time I had hoped to be working on the essay doing the above. And now I still am not writing the essay though I submitted the summary on time with the caveat that the content will hold but I am likely to restructure the flow. I am instead thinking of how I detested religious or cultural rituals as a child. I saw them as rituals of oppression and of discrimination — against girls and women of course but also lower castes and classes too. I do understand that rituals can also be forms to reinforce identity or foster social cohesion and the age-oldness of them carries an ancient energy that brings moments of depth and gravity. 

The only religious ritual that I enjoyed as a child was the walking around the raging fire on the eve of Holi, cheering the story of Holika and the Narasimha Vishnu avatar, and celebrating the joy of colours the next morning. In the ritual essay I hope to write I want to focus on the Joyo no Kane Japanese ritual performed on New Year’s eve which for me was transformed into a 108 kata ritual at the end of year and the connectedness it brought one year when I especially needed it. 

The other struggle in my life has been between my knee and me. Maybe that should be my knee and I since this is the subject not object of my struggle. But then perhaps it is the object. I am examining the struggle between my knee and me, but I can also say that — My knee and I are in conflict with each other. In any case these days I often see my knee as something separate from me that I examine, curse, analyse, disown, nurture, and mostly cry about. Since January this year my right knee has been a constant attention grabber even when I’d rather it be like my sweet, functional, docile left knee that does what it is supposed to. As a believer that chronic symptoms are a messenger of change I do think about the knee in those terms too, and I am planning to work deeper on it with a process therapist but I already also do know the direction this right knee is asking me to go in. I just am unable to accept the change it is calling for and as I don’t accept it acts more autonomous and screams for even more attention. In previous times when joints tried to assert themselves, I always calmed down their nuisance value with anti-inflammatories but after I contracted covid or took the vaccines my stomach has also decided to become fragile and react to attempts to use them. I am in a 'Cold War' with my body.

So next month I will be focused on attempting to integrate the changes the knee is shouting for. It is scary business, but I see no other choice now. More on it later. 

I missed writing but I also didn’t know what to write about for a long time as I felt empty of everything but my knee and some other crises in my life and in the lives of loved ones. Also I think I no longer want to write the way I used to but I don’t know how I want to write anymore. A time of transition(s).