Shame and Courage

 May 18, 2022

 

I feel as fatigued and battered as a warrior returning from a fight. Though all I did was verbally battle Hindutva ‘boys’ on Facebook. 

 

Let me backtrack a bit. Yesterday on our weds morning chat, my artist friend agreed to join me in a retreat. The purpose of which was to move through our creative blocks. He had a clear idea about how he would start. One of his teachers had told him to break through a block he should go where he was most afraid, and so he chose portrait drawing. He is a conceptual artist who is in a phase where he fears he cannot do representational art anymore, though at one time he was very good at it. 

 

As we talked I disclosed that even though the retreat was my suggestion I had no idea of how I would use the time. I made vague noises, accompanied by a lot of hand gestures, about still exploring the contrasts of my yet uncertain and shaky writing practice and my fairly disciplined karate practice. I had some vague(r) thoughts on projects but mostly I was still ‘sharpening pencils in my studio’ it seemed. Though my friend said I was surfing the ocean, waiting for the right wave. All I knew is that I would spend my days with more attention and awareness of how I passed through time.

 

As I munched on my pasta with sun-dried tomatoes lunch, I surfed Facebook and made a casual comment on one of the articles I read — about how a militant Hindutva organization was providing arms training to its young cadre. This organization has been in the news for harassing religious minorities and instigating mobs to lynch Muslim men — over love jihad and unproven cow slaughter accusations. I said they should be banned as they were destroying the social fabric of India. An army of trolls quickly emerged to abuse me. 

 

Last week I had commented on an article on a group called the Trads, that believed in Upper Caste Hindu Male superiority, and their activities against women (this group set up the apps that auctioned Muslim women), other religions, and lower castes. A male troll had commented on my profile picture — one of me in a fitted tank and gi bottom, in a karate stance. ‘Look at you aunty, don’t you feel shame?’ He said, adding a line of emoji’s of those grinning faces, rolling around with tears of laughter popping out. 

 

I froze. Women have been shamed for so many things around their bodies — and I too have felt shame about my body for most of my life, since before I was even born perhaps. I wanted to rush and cover myself, to hide my body parts. To pick a demure picture, perhaps one that did not even have me in it. All through childhood and I guess even now I have been told about women who 'asked for it' because of the way they dressed, moved, sat, even when all that might be visible of them was their scared lowered eyes. I felt violated by the comment. 

 

I remembered a story I had read in my twenties. It was set in a village where a woman was gathering other women to stand up to the upper caste domination of the village. The leader, a patriarch, had ordered her captured and punished. His henchmen had tied her to a pole, stripped her and raped her repeatedly over days. The story had infused waves of horror and fear in me. Rape was a fate worse than death we women had been told. After two days the man had ordered the woman be brought to him. She was freed and clothes were thrown on her body by sneering men who had used her body. She had tossed the robes away and swayed naked and proud to the man’s ‘throne’, absolutely voiding the effects the man had hoped for. 

 

That story had reversed every single thing I had been told about rape being a woman’s shame. Of course the shame belonged entirely to the rapists and I reminded my ‘daughters’ about that daily after. 

 

I wrote a reply to that young man, I can’t remember what I said – probably just pointed out how his comment was irrelevant. He said, ‘It is your time to retire and take God’s name, not come out to fight with us young men.’ I had an image of an old woman sitting in a corner, thrown scraps of food if anyone felt like feeding her. He mentioned my clothes again and used the word shame a few more times. I didn’t respond but that goaded him to write a few more comments reiterating my shame. 

 

Yesterday a young man commented on my picture again. ‘So aunty does karate.’ Grinning emoji. He barraged me with mocking comments about karate and when I refused to engage he threatened that the likes of me would be obliterated. 

 

I think some sort of word was sent out and all day and night mostly young men began deriding me. I responded to a few, just to see their replies, and words such as pseudosecular, jihadist, leftist, began appearing quickly. Then  more like swine, poison, liberandu (a liberal who should be anally fucked) etc. spilled out. 

 

I stood back detached, going in to jab at something if I felt like, mostly just deflecting the words away. I think I wanted to test myself. How far I could stand tall and grounded amongst these creepy men. I wanted to shed that internal conditioning that felt shame if a man commented on my body, my now aging one that deserved even more to be covered or condemned by their standards. I wanted to be that woman in the story — bold, courageous and unfazed by male attempts to punish her. 

 

I couldn’t sleep till 4 am. Something inside was trembling from the felt threats of many lifetimes upon many women. Even as I post this the trolls are still trying to shame me, the milder ones for my thoughts, but definitely the undertones are that a woman needs to sit these battles out. I have a long way to go to shed the layers of shame and invisibility I have felt all my life, but each time one woman succeeds it is a step in the right direction  for both women and men. 

We Shall Not Cease from Exploration

 May 6, 2022

 

I made a couple of starts on a blog post during my first week back, but they fizzled, and I let them be. But in a WhatsApp conversation a friend said she was waiting for reflections of Bombay and so I sit here on my desk today trying to write a post again. 

 

I wrote this on Monday morning… Singapore welcomed me smoothly, gently, back. Immigration, baggage pick-up, and the cab back home were swift. But when I entered our apartment, I looked around as if I was entering an alien space. 'This is our apartment?' something asked. I had to survey the living room and anchor on the lone, slim bookcase in the right corner near the balcony, to reply, 'Indeed.'

 

It is that sense of entering an alien space that haunts. Is it the moment of arriving where I started and knowing something for the first time, like the TS Eliot quote, or is it losing a space of grounding and being less anchored than ever?

 

I’m still feeling overheated – literally. I met a friend for lunch yesterday after doing some training – basics and Sanseru. He messaged unexpectedly while I was on the zoom call with my artist friend. We hadn’t spoken for the three Wednesdays while I was in India and had a lot of catching up to do. I told my artist friend that despite having so many more things to do in Bombay, and subsequently less time, I had slowed down considerably internally. It was the first time this happened since March 2020. I said, 'I wrote 100 pages while I was there, though they might be drivel.'

 

I said, 'My major challenge now, which is connected to other decisions I might make about where I want to live, is to be able to replicate that slowing down here.' I also told him about the dark, sticky terror I felt while I was there, and of the inconsolable and uncontrolled meltdown on Sunday afternoon in Singapore. (I notice I want to write Singapore instead of Singy now?). Of course he had to know more about it all. 

 

I wish I could replicate that conversation as it moved from here to there. One of the things we discovered was how the filling of masalas and grains contributed to the slowing down. The timelessness of it, the sense of being part of an infinite cycle, of something bigger than myself, of the togetherness of millions of others doing the same thing, was one of the underlying factors that lead to a deep slow calm. I said, I’d have to read my writings while there to know what else — between the connections and missed connections, the closeness and the fights — lead to this. 

 

While we were chatting my Indian friend sent me a picture of the sea followed by a message that said ‘East Coast’. I hadn’t contacted him in Bombay, and I was happy that he was here. At the same time, I had plans to start work and this was interference. I decided that I needed to meet him. I wanted to know how we would connect after two years of barely any connection. 

 

We had lunch near the beach and talked about our processes during the pandemic. The losses —  physical and emotional, the following of the inner fears, the self-awareness or lack of it, and the noticing of how things, and people, wanted to move back to the way they were before — even if it meant a regression of sorts. We also could talk easily about politics in India, something we could never do as he is a Modi supporter. We didn’t agree on everything, but it was good to find some common ground and even better to disagree without the accompanying heat. 

 

I walked with him back to the spot he would cross-over to get to his daughter’s apartment. I should have gone with him and taken a bus back, but the sea tempted. I ended up with a moderate heatstroke, as the breeze and tree cover dropped and the sun scorched down. 

 

I need to find the courage to read the words I wrote in Bombay. There might be things I have learnt that I could use here. I know one of the things I did in Bombay was to go back to free-writing, in the mornings if I could. I also used the hour or the half hour I had between chores to do focused writing tasks. As usual the mind scattered not knowing where to begin. I noticed the fear, the terrible fear, perhaps of missing out if I picked one thing over another, but the lack of time forced the decision to pick and focus on one thing. 

I know two things. We need to not skip over the traumas and the learnings of the pandemic as we go back to normal. Time is limited and I can’t do everything I want to. Yet, I do feel that at the end of this ten-year exploration of Writing I am at some sort of beginning and I am knowing it for the first time. 

The Last Monday…

April 25, 2022

I’ve been itching to write another blog post. Even though I wasn't sure what I would say I had started one on Friday. This is as far as I got…

 

…Each day is hotter than the day before it. A drier heat than Singy though Bombay is a coastal city. Today I am sitting in a large blue chair in what used to be my daughter’s bedroom. The chair is rickety as the legs need tightening, and nobody else but me uses it anymore — though it is big and holds one comfortably and we all used to fight to occupy it before.

 

My days suddenly have space. We rushed through a lot of the tasks over the first ten days and now the empty time feels a bit odd. Never has a Bombay trip after 2016 has had this kind of slowness. Yesterday it felt like a huge treacherous void that had me taking deep breaths to stabilize myself.  I want to explore that feeling but perhaps not yet.

 

I have been more immersed in the Indian political news since being here. It always happens this way. I used to end up writing small notes in my journal – a character sketch, a theme, or plot idea – that later, in Singy, I would turn into small fictional flashes, just for fun. But something feels different this time. I can’t write fiction, haven’t been able to for a bit. That feels a bit scary…

 

Then I got interrupted and was busy with chores till this morning. I obviously had been wrong in thinking that my days had space. They do in bits and pieces but not long stretches. Nevertheless, I started a post this morning and got one line in…

 

…I’ve reached the last Monday of my stay here…

 

…Interrupted again and now it is afternoon. I think this morning I wanted to write about a conflict I had with my sister. I normally expect one in the middle of our time together. Just like I expected a ‘separation anxiety’ one with my spouse or with my daughter, when she lived with us, each time one of us was leaving. These were and are predictable and since they are expected we name them for what they are and move through them very quickly now. 

 

So yes, I expect a fight with my sister in the middle of any trip I make. But this time she flared up on the second day of my stay and it completely boggled my mind. She and I are very different. I want to go into the core of the conflict, uncover the root of it and clear the air completely. She won’t talk about it, but mulls and broods alone. She doesn’t express her feelings like I do, but I could sense something very heavy lay behind her silence and tears this time. I tried to figure out what it was. She had been alone for two years, had taken care of my mum and managed the house without any help for the period of the first lockdown. Later, though she had help she also was still doing it all alone. It had left trauma traces within. 

 

I wasn’t surprised when another conflict erupted on Saturday. I misread her space totally, and felt that because she had been alone so long our presence now felt intrusive. But when I put forth my theory she began crying in loud, spasmodic sobs. Suddenly I knew I was wrong. Totally off in fact. I realized that the loneliness of those months lingered within creating anxieties and blank spots that she could not articulate. This time I managed to guess correctly, and we took the morning to slowly unfold some of what she had been through. Mostly in silence, just by being together, and working together — cutting fruit, collecting tax documents, clearing a cupboard.

 

I don’t know the point, if any, I was making when I decided to write about this. Perhaps I was just allowing myself to feel it without analyzing it. I felt immense guilt — of course because I hadn’t been around to help — but also because my incorrect guess had triggered such an intensity of pain for her. I couldn’t bear that, but there was not much I could do about the past or even the present and future, except be with it. Sometimes that is all that can be done in the moment, or ever. 

 

I have indeed reached the last Monday afternoon of my stay. So much seems to have happened in these days. Every moment I was free I made small journal entries. I’ve written 74 A5 size pages since I arrived. I am longing to read them and make sense of them. 

 

One of the things I did write about is writing and karate practice. Even though I have only made it to the dojo once and not trained other than that, I know that from the day after I land in Singy I will easily slip into the practice. About writing I don’t know yet. But I think the friend who commented that I am closer to establishing one than ever before is right. Maybe for now all it needs is to just write. I itch with that desire more often now than I did over the last many months. 

Bombay!

April 18, 2022

 

I don’t think I’ve ever written a blog post from Bombay. 

I am sitting in the ‘swing’ balcony as we now call it, after my sister changed most of the upholstery from green to coral. My daughter and spouse sit here too, reading or working on their devices. It is our morning spot where we gather before the busy day. 

 

This is the beginning of the second week in Bombay, and last evening something painful and heavy slipped below the light, happy tones of the first week of joyous reunion, and made its presence felt strongly. It could just be that my daughter is leaving tomorrow and a feeling that the best part of the trip is over is growing in my belly, or a horrid dehydration and dizziness due to the heat, and dust, and perhaps some mold too, is making my head reel. 

 

But I think it is a lot more. 

 

Suddenly I feel aware that I am 61 and I don’t know where I will live the rest of my life. Suddenly, and this is the painful part, I don’t know where home is. It used to feel I had two homes but now I feel I have none. After two years of not visiting periodically, this here doesn’t feel home, and nor really does Singy. I was content with a sense that I would move between homes and have the best of both worlds but now, though I can’t exactly define this, I feel I am without roots. I also feel like I don’t want to live in a country other than the one my daughter lives in. 

 

There is also the dark awareness that I don’t know where my life is heading or who I am. This visit, my spouse cleared his corner cupboard — where he stores his stuff and ‘memories’ — and layers of my life emerged. Among letters and photos which we squealed over, he found an article from the Mumbai Mirror featuring me and my friend Charmayne’s dream workshops in the section on alternate healing. I realized that unlike many lives more stable, with definite paths, mine has changed constantly and I haven’t been able to predict where it was heading next since I was tiny. It feels like I had no plan ever?

 

At 15 I didn’t know I would convince my traditional and patriarchal joint family to allow me to study Physics at University in the US. At 25 I didn’t know that my life would take another sharp turn and I would drop all selves that I knew previously and be moved towards working with human rights violations. At 35 I didn’t know that in a few years I’d study psychotherapy and dream work or that I would be drawn into vipassana Buddhism, or that before 45 I’d start training in karate.

 

And this goes on and on — as every few years I seem to simply re-invent who I was. Perhaps the previous identities assimilate in some way within, but I do have trouble recognizing the selves and lives that emerged from that dusty closet. And today I don’t know where I will be in five years, or ten, or ever. Today this is unnerving me, making me shaky. 

 

This week I will find my way to the Bombay dojo and see my friends there and meet up with other friends from other stages of my life – school friends, human rights work friends, therapy days friends – and this will likely cause some of this unease to ebb. But I also think that though running about and meeting them will temporarily cover up the unstable feelings lurking deeper, I am going to have to confront these very soon.  

Cats, Anxiety, and Writing Practice

 April 8, 2022

I am still feeling the void, the post-partum blues, I felt after the test. At first it felt ok to be in this state. My Wednesday chat friend felt exhausted and ‘brainless’ weeks after he submitted his thesis. But as time, as in days, went on and I still couldn’t write, read, or do anything remotely creative I felt anxious and restless. The uneasiness grew within my chest like a bubbling pot that was always on the point of boiling but never did. 

 

Our family cats came to live with us on the 29^th of March. They come here when their human parents travel so haven’t been here for a long, long while. They took ages to settle. Neither ate in the first 24 hours. The black one slept and slept all day, she cuddled on my feet at night, but ran away from me in the day — like she used to when we first rescued her off the streets — but 48 hours later she had managed to find stability. Now during the day, she eats, she sleeps, she wakes and demands pets, then plays by herself and goes back to her window seat spot to sleep. And she only comes to wake me at 7 am. On the first night, the white one woke me up at 2 am. He sat on my stomach, purring loudly, and kept coming back every half hour or so. He settled a bit a few days later, then unsettled himself in some way again. All day his slightly open eyes watch where I go. He sleeps lightly and meows and wanders in the day, and at night he jumps on my stomach between 5:30 and 6:00 am. He has this personality where he sometimes makes himself miserable and then stews in it. No amount of comforting soothes him during these times.

 

Today, or perhaps the last three days or even the entire week, I am feeling a bit like that. I can’t seem to relax and even thinking about doing something to relax, like going to the library café and journaling, tumbles me into a deeper state of anxiety. 

 

The cats will be with us till Sunday when their human dad returns. I will help him get them and their stuff back to their home and then rush back here to pack and leave for Bombay. I haven’t been back in over two years and two months. I haven’t been anywhere and forgotten how to pack and travel. Anxious! 

 

But my current internal suffering comes from being in a complete creative void. No writing, no reading,  no drawing even. I don’t know what it is — the combination end of the test exhaustion and sleep deprivation once the cats got here, or something deeper? My mind tends to pick up the white cat’s anxiety and then we make each other more anxious. I feel sad, ashamed even, that like him I haven’t handled my disturbance at all well this time. I have been grumpy and tense.

 

It's a time when I am trying to establish a proper writing practice. I don’t think I’ve ever really had one. Despite having a serious passion for writing, it feels on and off — dependent on inspiration, task (as in deadline of some sort, that includes feedback to another writer), and time (as in when I have time constrains the first thing that gets dropped is writing). Perhaps a part of me likes this non-structuredness, and not very committed way to doing things. 

 

But every so often I seem to have the need to have a proper practice. I read how ‘real’ writers have routines and how they go ‘into the cave and sharpen their pencils’ even when not writing. I’ve tried several times to start one but never chased it seriously. Perhaps I need to process these two parts together, allow them to dialogue, but right now I just want to start one. 

 

Several writer friends, and I mean serious and published ones, have suggested that I link writing practice to my karate practice, or at least take tips from that to develop this. The two feel very far apart though I know they are not. It wasn’t always so but now it is simple to keep the karate practice. There is a simplicity in the elements involved — basics, kata, hojo-undo, gym, group practice, and teaching. A certain number of hours every week which could be a combination of those elements in any way that feels right. I never get karate ‘block’ and nor do I faff on the day and time I am supposed to practice. 

 

It wasn’t always so and perhaps reflecting on the process of how I got serious in karate might provide me more insight than looking outside to other writer’s practices. But it is fun to hear about those.  

 

It’s been a disruptive time and the next weeks in Bombay will be more so, especially since we haven’t been there in so long, but I am going to keep a bit of my mind on getting the shape and elements of a practice going. I am making a list of things that could go into a practice and I am going to keep my notebook with me and make notes whenever and wherever. 

 

Natalie Goldberg says, “One of the main aims in a writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and non-aggressive.” I think that learning to trust the body and mind was the exact process by which I came to a karate practice. May I succeed in this too despite the time of constant change.