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.