Is it working?

June 5, 2020

I feel this blog experiment may not be working. Unsure whether to continue or not. I suppose if I were to logically evaluate its efficacy, I would have to first define what the expectations were. 

1. I hoped that the blog writing would kickstart other writing. 

2. I hoped it would help clarify my confusions and states and show a path ahead. I hoped it would make me more ‘productive’. I was feeling envious of those absorbed in productive projects. I felt a pain about my own empty state. 

3. I wanted to be able to write authentically about my inner states. 

It has not kickstarted other writing yet – because I am still flexing my writing muscles and am slow? Once I finish the blog post I feel depleted of writing energy and move on to other things. But I have more ideas than I had before I began writing -- which I sometimes jot down. One particular one – the happenings in Delhi between December 2019 and end-February keep coming up. But the writing has not yet clarified my confusions and that is mostly because of #3.

I don’t feel I am able to share authentically about everything I am experiencing. Some feelings are very, very unstable and dark and I feel fearful about sharing them. I feel like I will be judged for being weak, for spiraling out of control, for grieving too long, for not going with the flow and adapting, or whatever. As I mentioned before I have been labelled as ‘one who stays too long on the dark side’. So, I write through a filter and that makes the blog completely ineffective as the tool I want it to be. 

Last year I discovered two new inner energies. I was grappling with a choice about whether or not to continue teaching karate, as the feelings of being inadequate as a sensei were huge. I wanted to continue training but not teaching. I discovered an ancient, wise, chilled out dragon and a bumbling, apprentice samurai who had no clue about what she was doing. Daily dialogues with them, drawings and writing, lead me to a place of confident choice I was previously unaware of. One of the themes that emerged while I was playing with these two figures was about armour. The dragon had his own natural impenetrable scales, while the samurai wore external metal. She was finding it too heavy and wanted to shed it. But it made her vulnerable as a warrior. I need to go back and read those pages to see exactly what happened but there was a learning there about ‘innate’ protections and discovering them, so I could shed the external armours. That my strength lay in being able to be absolutely comfortable with vulnerability. 

I will go back and read those pages but some of the questions I need to ask are apparent – about vulnerability and strength. What armours do I need to shed? And which ones may be useful to hang on to? 

Perhaps re-connecting with the inner dragon will help me see the next steps. Feeling more like the bumbling Samurai right now. 

not saying anything really

June 3, 2020,

Today I am sitting on my bed. It’s getting harder for me to bring the body tension down after going out for the weekly grocery trail – Cedele, Cold Storage, Marks, Fair Price. Fair Price is normally a nightmare. No distancing especially in the fruit and veggie section and today there were dozens of filled carts just sitting alone blocking aisles. I waited patiently for my turn to pick out fruit but masked faces breathed into my ear as arms reached over my shoulder impatiently. People were pushing past everywhere, making physical contact, not really careful anymore. 

But ya, the circuit breaker is supposedly easing and there are no fines for not safe distancing in public transport, where the seats one cannot sit on are no longer crossed out -- which actually feels a bit scary rather than 'eased'. My brain is having a hard time finding its way around things. All the things I love are still restricted. Most people are still working from home, libraries are closed indefinitely, no meetings allowed with friends, I cannot go see our cats, and the seats along the river are still taped up. Infection numbers in the community are low, and I should feel safe, but the messaging through the govt around masks and distancing in work places has increased, so the combination of signals makes me uneasy. I still come home and rush into the shower and then spend a good part of an hour sanitizing the purchases. Sigh.

Small woes compared to the huge issues in the world. But today it seems endless and I feel a long tiredness. I don’t want to do it anymore. I see the posters at the protests, ‘I can’t breathe’. The last words of George Floyd.

I can’t breathe too. My sinuses are now perennially blocked. It's another day where thoughts are too scattered to gather into a bunch that I can arrange into words on a page. In our email group one day we spoke of how the small griefs, and difficulties and depressions we felt around the lockdown even though we were safe in our homes were as valid as the huge traumas faced by those homeless,  hungry, walking on roads, far from family etc. If we can't feel our own pains how can we truly feel those of others. 

I am listening to some experts talking about the cyclone in Bombay. They haven’t had one in 100 years and the experts are saying that with Climate Change there might be more. A bit earlier I heard political leaders discussing it. It sounded like they didn’t understand that this might not be a one time thing. They didn’t get Climate Change. Like they don’t really get that there are protests all over the world not just because one man from a marginalized group was killed by another with more social rank and power, but because there are deeper un-eases coalescing. 

Waiting. Sensing something different will unfold. We need a different kind of political leadership now. Earlier in my Wednesday afternoon chat, we had talked of the unease, the unhappiness of people with the current socio-political order. Not sure if the overlying covid-19 situations will facilitate the changes we need or the fear around it will just help maintain the status quo. One of us felt that the inversion has to happen, another felt that fear will prevent people from voting differently and the third was undecided, observing and waiting. 

More than ever we need to have conversations about everything. Listen, discuss, churn. 

National identity - incomplete post

June 2, 2020

I haven’t thought about my national identity in a long time. I guess maybe I never really thought about it till my first long stay abroad, as a student in 1980’s, when where I came from, and how I was brought up, my beliefs, the languages I spoke or didn’t, were suddenly in the forefront. I wasn’t just a teenager trying to figure out university life like most of the others there. I realized then that I knew much more about the culture there than my American co-students knew about me. Some of their questions and stereotypes were hilarious. I can thank Hollywood films and books I read by American writers for that. At that time though, I was more interested in finding the ways I was similar to the others than different. 

I finished my studies, returned and didn’t think much about it again till several things began to happen around me. Mostly beginning in 1992, with the Rath Yatra that Advani started and the tearing down of Babri Masjid at the end of the year. My city exploded in riots, I got involved in human rights work, many friends fought with me over my perspectives, and I began to see the ways I didn’t identify with other Indians – even friends whom I had been close to before. 

The journey after that is interesting but I will fast forward to the last few years.

When the BJP won the 2014 election I was devastated. I found it hard to believe that my country people would vote in someone who was clearly responsible for the 2002 genocide in Gujarat. Without realizing it I distanced myself from the country, while actually having more conversations about what had happened with the few that felt the way I did. Even though I lived in Singapore, I was working on and off with activists in Bombay, participating in a few brainstormings, attending events when I was in Bombay. 

The discrimination against Muslims went up, the country’s economy slid down. I was so sure that my fellow Indians would not tolerate this and would vote them out. BJP came back in 2019 with a thumping majority.

I fell into a depression. I didn’t realise it till much later how much it was connected to national and cultural identity and happenings, and not with personal stuff. The BJP revoked Kashmir’s special status, they won the Ram Mandir case and boasted how they would build this huge temple there. The CAA passed in both houses of parliament. Many fellow Indians on fb shared this information and more with glee along with hate stories about how vile the Congress was almost daily. I stooped while walking, which created a pressure on my spine, my brain was in a grey fog. I was in pain. I hated going to Bombay. For the first time I considered changing my citizenship.

Then one Thursday or Friday in December when I was sitting with a friend at the Esplanade Toast Box, my phone began pinging. Picture, after picture of huge crowds on the roads protesting the police violence at Jamia appeared. I could not believe how quickly my spirits lifted after. That is the India I felt close to. It validated my own Indian identity.

Many India’s, many Indian identities exist. It’s tricky, wide and deep. I am curious about them. I am more curious about how that non-identification with the mainstream identity, feeling marginalised by my country people depressed me so deeply. Much more to explore and I want to keep writing but have appointments to attend to and must stop.

The mind and the screen

June 1, 2020

I don’t know why I am so happy that May is done. It’s just a new month but I ascribe to it new energies. May was so, so heavy and it feels good to leave that behind and wish for some lightness. 

I didn’t write yesterday. I wanted to and even took the laptop to bed at night. I wanted to explore how my karate has re-found some deep grounding within, through the lockdown. But I was too tired. The stomach flu really exhausted me. The cramps had begun Friday and by Saturday I was in gastric distress. Slow breaths and slowing the mind made them bearable. Then I had woken on Sunday and trained in a zoom session with our karatekas in Singy. All day I lay on the sofa and read – Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. I felt nostalgic for Bombay. I felt guilty that I wasn’t writing that blog post I had committed to.

I still want to explore karate and me through the covid lockdown, but new things buzzed in my head in the morning. An article one of the participants of an email group – in which we write about our covid experiences -- caught my attention. It was about Einstein, productivity and solitude. The one who shared said that this changed his thoughts on productivity. The article took me back to a memory of something my father’s spirit had said to me when I was in a very unproductive time and unhappy about it. ‘Don’t be afraid to waste your life,’ he had told me. I wanted to reexplore that as it is relevant to now.

But this morning I also had a conversation on imessage with a friend in NY about the protests around George Floyd. That felt more urgent to think/write about. I was reminded about how similar this was to things that happened during the period December through February when Dehli had witnessed all sorts of violence. What Amy Cooper did, what Politicians said, institutionalised racism, patriarchy, anti-semitism, Islamophobia came to mind. 

A friend on fb posted the video of Floyd being choked to death and another friend from India commented that it was shameful, and the man needed to be punished. The same friend had ignored a video of Indian policemen beating and kicking Muslim men while asking them to sing the national anthem. One of the men had died. The friend is a supporter of the ruling BJP – proud Islamophobes. I wondered how she didn’t see the parallels. Needless to say, those Indian policemen have not been booked or fired. 

I opened up a file of short jottings I had made in January about that violence and wanted to weave it into a set of connected stories. But now thoughts about us vultures, and prophets of doom, who keep harping on the migrants and their continued suffering also zipped in.

Sigh, the mind is vast as the Universe, thoughts whirl in it like galaxies, exploding supernovae, imploding black holes – but the page, the blank screen is finite and the process of writing, trying to capture the chaos of the mind, somewhat linear. Something I learn again and again and forget.

Prophet of Doom

May 29, 2020

I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I would fill a page with this sentence if I was writing in my paper journal. In the spirit of disclosure – the saboteur won again last night. I stayed up Netflix binging. Woke tired and crabby with a mind unable to focus. Not a good state to try to work in.

I don’t feel good. Sigh. Something inside feels itchy and angry. Like I want to claw out things – people’s eyes, their hearts – when I read FB posts of cheer. Also, stories of people doing good work on the migrant crisis in India. Ya, mostly that I think.

This week, the Supreme Court of India finally turned its gaze towards the migrant problems – after two months of suffering and chaos – after repeatedly dismissing petitions brought before it since March 29. The behavior of the Solicitor General has been particularly despicable. It seems so be without integrity, truth or morality. Besides calling people, drawing attention to the continuing plight of the migrants, Vultures and Prophets of Doom, he asked the Court to have the petitioners file affidavits on how they had helped this crisis before challenging the government. He called them armchair intellectuals. 

I have been called these names too. Not yet Vulture, but the rest and also anti-national. As are all of us who criticize the government. This government seems to need a whole lot of acknowledgement and praise simply to do its job – which it is doing incompetently right now. 

Arguments -- that descend into the verbal equivalent of a fist fight – I’ve had many with supporters of the government. But what is puzzling me right now is a mini conflict with a friend who I have worked extensively with against BJP agendas of hate, one who is definitely on the same side of the divide as me. 

Whenever she brings up stories of hope, stories where ordinary citizens are attempting to fill the gap the government has left, I feel myself bristling. I want to yell, ‘STOP IT. STOP IT. It is not enough. It is never enough. Stay with the fucking lack of hope. Stay with the fact that we are seeing this happening in the first place.’

And that is the crux of it. In the society we are living in these issues exist, they always existed and we have found ways to make our peace with them. During crisis the good hearts of so many are opened. They/We come out and help – but then once the crisis is done they/we go back to their/our lives. Why should we not – we too went through the stress of it and we too need to feel normal, rested, hopeful.

But there are those who will not feel normal, rested, hopeful even when this crisis is past.

How, oh how, can we change the way society is structured right now? At the very least hold the government – any government – constantly accountable to the needs of the poorest? How can we ourselves decide that no more – no more will we blind ourselves to the continued enslavement of the poorest? None of us want to live the day by day existence they do. 

Yes, I am the Voice of Doom in that sense. I find it hard to embrace the stories of hope. I tend to constantly peer into the shadows where the most suffering exists. Sometimes that is where some glimmers of change emerge.