Do Not Go Gentle…

July 4, 2022

For the first time in two years, I am alone — have no one else present — for more than a few hours. The spouse is away on a business trip. The first one after 2020. 

 

It’s been a busy few days, each with an early start, but today was deliciously slow — woke to no alarm, a large pot of the assam masala chai, reading in bed, and late arrival at my desk. My body and mind feel traumatized. My body because of a flare-up of sinusitis and a subsequent throat and chest infection for which the doc insisted on a seven-day antibiotic course. Today is the last day J The mind is coping with accelerating destruction of democracy in India. 

 

Maybe others might not see it that way, but the collapse feels quicker now to me. Yet the country has been on a slow boil for a while so it’s hard to tell. Unlike the 1975 declared emergency where everything shut down in one swoop — and we didn’t have to guess if the media was free, or if the police were fair, and the courts just — right now we are still arguing about our democracy.

Many things have happened in the last tenday, but I am not here to list them all. Maybe those that disturb me the most?

 

A tailor who shared a post supporting the now infamous BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma was beheaded Taliban style in Rajasthan on June 28^th by two radicalized Islamic youth. They recorded the killing and shared it gleefully on social media. It shook me in a different way than the persecution of Muslims by Hindutva groups, because I cannot remember when something like this happened in India. I googled it but found nothing before this beheading. But soon there was another one in Amravati. It was not the same — as no video was made but that could be because the killers didn’t have time. But the victim here too had shared a post supporting the woman. These are terror attacks — as in attacks to terrorize Hindus who support the woman who made remarks about the Prophet. 

 

We have been slowly conditioned to terror attacks on minorities — by Hindutva groups and by the State. Attacks that are meant to terrorize them, scare them into submission, keep them in their place. These have been filmed and shared gleefully by BJP supporters to subdue and show them their minority status in our country. When they happen, I feel disgusted, nauseous, but they don’t have the shock value the first lynching of a Muslim man did. They have been normalized and justified. Hindus are no longer tolerant and that is ok, we are told. 

 

This one was chilling because it was the first from ‘the other side’. And there will be more —  as it does feel that some larger planning, some group is involved in this. 

 

Now both sides are terrorized? Both polarities gleeful when 'their side' avenges something, while we in the middle feel the horror of them both.

 

The law though is increasingly applied differently to both. The police have been weaponized against one and pamper the other.  Hate speech is defined differently for supporters and opposers. Hateful or false tweets by one and the other are treated differently by the Government — State and Centre.

 

Yesterday Twitter filed a suit against the Government for forcing it to take down tweets, by political opposition, in a non-constitutional manner. I had to laugh and cry. Twitter enforcing the Indian constitution? A dark day indeed.

 

But I was reminded by a spokesperson of the BJP — the fact that twitter can do this shows India is a vibrant democracy. The fact that we the citizens of India hear about this says that the media is free and India is a vibrant democracy. A thriving, radiant democracy. 

 

Will these be the last things that go? Do we wait in this slowly boiling pot for that to happen to declare India an authoritarian state where the constitution functions differently depending on your caste, religion, class, one day perhaps gender too, and whom you criticize? Do we wait patiently till then? Is it possible that a part of me thinks a declared emergency might be better? Because this is a mockery?

Absurd. These are absurd times. Brutal. And I don’t know how those of us who want ‘more democracy’, are surviving them. Be gentle with yourself if you are suffering like I am, but for everyone’s sake, Do not go gentle into these dark times. Rage, rage, rage…

 

If I went gently, I would regret it hugely. But everyone is different and you should do what keeps you well. 

 

My way of gentleness with myself are these slow days of trying to gather my pieces, meeting with friends that contain and make me forget for a while, reading, and this blog where sometimes I try to prevent my insides from being polarized.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lest I Forget to Breathe

June 28, 2022

The clouds came in about an hour ago and brought relief to a zapping hot day. After an inspiring chat with my Monday Prosers, our newly named writing group, I decided to lift my head out from trying to make sense of the political circus in my home state of Maharashtra and revisit my book Boiling Frogs. I’ve just hit send on an agent query letter. 

 

It’s scary sending out these letters. Each agency and sometimes each agent within the agency wants different things in the query. A synopsis, chapters, chapter summaries — and make sure you number and label everything just right! It feels nerve racking. I’m at the point that I no longer feel anyone will want my book and sending out the query is futile and simultaneously I eagerly wait for a response. One that often never comes. Very few promise they will reply. 

 

I have sent out fifteen so far for this book and have got seven rejections. Each time I send out one I feel like my chances of getting a yes diminish. I mean if this one rejects me too, I have one fewer agency to send a query to. I also have one more chance of being rejected. Sounds too negative and I need to say instead — this is the one, this is the one, she has to want me, how could she not? Does sending out positive vibes really change the outcome? Can’t hurt.

 

Rejections take a while to get over. They feel like a physical blow. I often see the email while I am sitting next to someone, watching TV, reading, sometimes even having a happy chat. I scan it quickly and then close it, continue smiling and don’t tell the person that I am chatting with, even if it is my spouse, that I got another rejection. I can’t tell anyone till 24 or 48 or 72 hours have passed. I can’t even think about it myself. 

 

It's a book I spend years pouring over and into. It contains so much of my blood and sweat and love and more. It feels like I am no good. Everything I do is no good. For a week, sometimes much more. Then it takes a while to gather courage to send another out. Maybe the best strategy is to send it out before the 8-12 weeks deadline of when you might hear from the agent.

 

Talking to the Monday Prosers left me longing to write again. Even though all of them, just three others, feel like real writers and me an imposter, they treat me like I am a writer too, or like all of us are posers. I hadn’t spoken to them since before my trip to India. After the chat a glimmer of an idea, for my temple story, zipped through me. 

 

It is time to detach from feeling so low with all that is going on in India. Maybe write some fictional characters who are feeling what I am feeling so I can put distance from it and yet indulge my obsession. It is a way I process my most intense feelings, the ones I am too scared to feel but can allow my characters to feel. 

 

Often, I am this person who feels like I should not be happy until everyone in the world is. Trying to find balance with the way I spend my mental-hours — between that which I cannot change but also cannot turn away from, and the life that I can influence. Lest I forget to breathe, to live this life as fully as I desire. 

Heartbreak and Happiness

 June 22, 2022

The heartbreak continues and intensifies. The heartbreak of seeing my country change and change, and change more rapidly, and not in a direction of my choice. It cannot be captured on this page. Since Monday my body has been feeling it, breaking down. It is a churning that feels like Pralaya, the end of the Universe, before the next beginning. The epoch where evil is the only thing that succeeds. Where meaningless cruel truths become political goals and the explanations justifying them make some of us doubt our sanity. I am being overly dramatic. But there are political maelstroms brewing daily in India and I experience myself carried away in their tsunamic waves.  My identity feels like a red giant star about to crash into its own belly. 

 

This morning I spoke to my artist friend. We looked at each other’s battered faces and grimaced. Tired, dark, swollen eyes. His maelstrom was more personal — financial issues, loss of a friend, grief of another kind. As it often does our talk took us through it all. At one point I said I don’t care about pushing through anymore, all I want is to feel happy. 

 

He nodded, and we ended the call telling ourselves that we would each do something that would do that for us. Make us happy. He probably was going to make cheesy nachos with shrimp, watch a film with his partner, and finish off with an ice-cream sandwich. I groped around that sticky boiling terror within to find something, anything, that would make me happy, and I couldn’t. It happens to me sometimes when I am gripped within such darkness, that I cannot see any light even when it is shining on me. 

 

I decided to listen to a podcast a friend had sent a link to a few days ago. An interview with a writer whose previous book I had adored. The new book she was talking about seemed fascinating and I reserved a print copy from the NLB, as I listened to the podcast. At some point she talked about literature helping people cope with difficult periods of life. She went on to say that she, and the character in her new book, looked to books to find ways to live their lives. I know this character from the previous book she appears in, a super intelligent seeker, and if that was good enough for her to try, then it is for me too. My happy place?

 

This year I am 13 books behind in my 50 books a year goal. I will attempt to close the gap now. Do what is necessary, what I have committed myself to — though retreating from everything would be ideal — and read. And even as this excites me immensely, a daemon inside laughs and reminds how the only constant over this year, or even the last, has been that everything I began with enthusiasm and joy collapsed into insignificance.  

 

And so this might too. But I need to find a way of surviving, of making sense of how my life feels further away from some ideal I want for it, than it has ever felt before. Perhaps I need to move away a bit from my normal preoccupations — many over which I have no control. And I need to start today. 

A Rant or a Moan At least

 June 15, 2022

 

I’m churning. The country is churning. Someone (A) will say it has been brought here by the Hindutva agenda of othering Minorities, starting with the Muslims. Someone else (Z) will say it is here because of Minority appeasement and finally Hindus are fighting back. Z will say that Hindus have been tolerant so far, but they’ve reached their limit. A will say that Muslims have shown exceptional restraint in the current atmosphere in the country and their rioting last week was because a line was crossed. A might remind you of the genocidal comments that included rape threats against Muslims that were made at a Hindu conclave where the people who spoke are walking around free and doing the same again. 

 

Anyway, let’s forget about the whataboutery for a bit and go back to the main thread. The line crossed was that a spokesperson of the BJP made a comment on a national channel about the Prophet Mohammed. She said he was 52 when he married 9 year old Aisha. Apparently this is a truth written in the Hadith. I haven’t checked but I believe it must be written there. Z would say she only said it because she was provoked by the radical Islamist on the show who made a shivling comment. A would say that Muslims were upset when no action was taken against the woman who spoke. 

 

Initially I felt Muslims needed to stop being so sensitive, jokes had indeed been made about the alleged shivling that was found in a mosque. Then I saw a video clip. The spokesperson had been on three other channels on the same day and said the same thing. The way she said it was arrogant, inciting, and with intent to insult. She implied the Prophet was a pedophile. Z would remind you about the shivling jokes again here to justify or at least explain her words. Ten days later Islamic nations demanded an apology, and she was suspended but the damage had been done. 

 

Muslims in several parts of the country, it had to be planned I have no doubt, rioted after Friday prayers last week. Scenes of stone pelting, attacking policemen, and those of a leader of another political party calling for the BJP spokesperson’s beheading were played out on TV screens. It was horrible. Teenagers were among those indulging in violence.  

 

And another round of liberal bashing began. So called secular (or sickular) liberals (or liberandus) were asked to speak up about the death threats to the spokesperson. They were called hypocrites for speaking up selectively. As far as I know most free speech absolutists in India spoke up condemning it. Most didn’t bother to condemn the shivling jokes or the prophet comment though. Yet a series of articles were written mocking liberals, and blaming their selective speaking up for the current crisis.

 

Sorry for the long prelude. This is my rant now…  I am fed up with liberals being asked to comment on anything and everything. It’s like they should have their finger on the news and issue a statement condemning everything that needs to be condemned as soon as it happens and they should say it loudly and spread it far and wide so that everyone knows it’s been said. A set of rules is applied to liberals that people, who wrote these articles and quote those articles, do not apply to themselves. But it is worse that they don’t apply them to the PM of the country who has remained silent through all of this. 

 

In the state of Uttar Pradesh bulldozers began demolishing the properties of alleged rioters. Of course it was said that they were illegal constructions. A backdated notice — to the wrong owner, and not acknowledged by the said owner (but who cares about such details when one wants to spread hatred) — began floating around. There is a lot more to be said about the non-constitutional and bullying way in which this was done but I will just say these scenes brought tears to my eyes. There was an even more horrific video of men in custody calling for mercy but being repeatedly thrashed with sticks by policemen. A BJP leader shared it saying, ‘a return gift for rioters.’ The State's behaviour of being judge, and punisher all in one go is vigorously defended by the UP BJP and by supporters.

 

In the end this is what I will say, I am an ordinary citizen of India, and I will speak up about what moves me and not what someone else insists I do. Those article writers and spokespeople who are calling out liberals should just ask themselves what they haven’t spoken about and yes, ask the PM to break his silence. His words will have the maximum effect. 

 

If you made it through this rant… thank you… I needed to get it out… though I feel totally vulnerable sharing this I am just about to hit share…

Snap-Shot

 June 9, 2022

The days have whizzed, and sleep has been disturbed. So much is going on in India which is distressful and divisive. I feel lonely at times in groups where these things are not talked about. I know a lot of people have said that it is too overwhelming and feels too hopeless. It’s hard to see what an individual can do to turn the tide in these times and a lot of people prefer not to talk about it. I seem to have withdrawn from such groups (though I miss being there) and am thankful to the one e-mail group where we do share and discuss. It’s a place where I hear of the most horrendous things and also the place I learn to hope. We talk about the frustration of not connecting to family or of stilling our speech when a guest in our home is bashing minorities or praising progress based on doctored numbers. 

 

We are in such times in so many places. George Orwell’s doublespeak is visible everywhere. His quote, “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing,” haunts my hours. It is the most cruel thing one can do. 

 

My experiment with engaging on some social platforms where right wing trolls run amok continues. I see the counter comments also are getting more hateful. Where will it all lead us to? I am less angry, more detached, but still the pain of hateful comments pierces the body. I’ve found some allies and when the trolls swarm in I get support sometimes. One is a woman who is much kinder than me, a Brahmin who has grown strong with the Hindu scriptures and I feel has truly absorbed the essence of unity, tolerance, love. Our views differ at times, but I think neither can bear the injustices we see around. It makes me less lonely.  Another is a man who literally took on all the trolls that were attacking me yesterday. It is all virtual but it feels very physical. But sometimes the discussion goes in a softer direction when people start talking about the universal values and even spiritual truths. I spoke to an agnostic today who is so troubled by all the violence in the name of religion. 

 

I learn a lot in these perhaps self-indulgent engagements about the different kinds of thoughts of my country people.

 

Something happened this week in the country that is fueling division and it scares me but it is too raw of speak about yet. I feel so sad, so lost, most of the time. Many of us saw as far back as 2002 or even 1992 where this path was leading us down but so many others scoffed at us. 

 

My Creative Non-Fiction course keeps me busy. This instructor gives a lot of ‘handouts’ and her feedback is incisive. I think it is helping me tighten my non-fiction writing. Though not this blog. This is where I relax —so I don’t edit here. I use this space to gather. 

 

I will be volunteering next month for an outreach program to help first responders learn to see signs of crisis in a person and engage them. I’ve found a new space for my Sunday dojo — nice mats, solid bags. Spouse will be travelling more again for work after two plus years of staying put, and I will be alone again after many, many months of never being alone. Wonder how that will feel. Lots of change ahead and I do need to gather. 

 

This post is not saying anything — just a snapshot of ‘me’ right now.