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).

Setback(s)

May 13, 2025

            It’s been one of those weeks, one that sometimes feels like a month and at the same time feels like a heartbeat. India attacked Pakistan, Pakistan responded, and Indian media went berserk and ‘attacked’ Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Islamabad. It was embarrassing watching India being joked about by other countries. Then Trump tweeted about a ceasefire, and both India and Pak insisted the other had capitulated. Trump tweeted again, acting like a school marm with a stick, and threatened, you can’t get any trade unless you stop your war. Most Indias were pissed with him and some Indians also wondered why our PM wasn’t telling him to get lost, but our PM was lost himself until last evening. 

            The PM made a 20-minute speech at 8 pm IST last evening. Most of what he said had been said before. He did tell us India will not be blackmailed by nuclear threats or threats of trade. He did say India-Pak was a bi-lateral issue, but he didn’t clearly tell Trump to get lost and some of us wondered why. India had stood against bullies before. 

            I watched a discussion about his speech during which the speech was praised as powerful. One person even said it was the most powerful speech ever made by any politician and I was like, dude, were you born yesterday or do you think the rest of us were. Anyway, it felt like Orwellian doublespeak, which left me wondering if had missed something ‘powerful’ in his speech and if I should replay it. Later before I slept, I was pleased to watch another press conference where the person brought up the unanswered questions that I had been left with. Like last week I was relieved that someone had spoken what I had been feeling. Lesson one of this week was to trust my gut and sing my tunes even when the world was blasting other noise.

            In the behind the scenes stuff during this week a big one was about China assisting Pakistan during this mini-battle — many say that they were using Pak to test their defense equipment against Western made defense equipment used by India. The Chinese equipment did well, and the share value of the arms company rose. I wonder if that is one reason the ceasefire happened. China seems to have gained in field tests as well as economically and I wonder if the terrorists that killed the civilians in Baisaran were funded by China. They haven’t yet been caught or killed, and I hope they will be soon — preferably caught so there is a chance to find out who sent them. 

            Meanwhile most of us could get on with our insignificant lives or let me amend that and say that I got on with my own insignificant life and struggles. Lately I have been feeling down as I feel like I have been going in never ending circles with some problems in my own life, but I had been feeling that I had made some progress towards healing my knee and ankle. But in that urgency to feel a forward movement, I rushed and pushed, and suffered a major setback there. This set off a period of gloom and brain fog and paralysis (which was particularly easy to slip into under these circumstances where the threat of a nuclear war hung). Today I am emerging from five days of level 8 pain with the second lesson of this week, a big lesson, that at this age any gains in body healing will have to be slow and steady, and pushing beyond limits is daft. I’m sad but it is what it is. 

            This morning, I woke low and saw several people had sent me the same forward — about the PM’s speech and what a precedent Operation Sindoor had set. I almost didn’t get on to the monthly call I have with a group of writer friends, the Prosers, I had met during an online class. Part of me wanted to wallow and I was convinced the Americans wouldn’t possibly get what I was feeling. But I got on the call and everyone was in a slump. A person was angry because her very rich boss was ‘instantly’ closing the company she works in. She had to figure out her life in a heartbeat. Another works in environment and under the new Trump regime was worried about her job. Both hoped they would write a million-dollar book and be worry free. I did too. Another was sad because her best friend’s dog was in ICU, and the last of the group didn’t attend because he was going through a mini-nervous breakdown. All of us are worried about him. We spoke also about the importance of being kind to everyone during these times. I’ve been an hermit lately so the authentic social contact even with others who were also in a slump felt reviving.

            So yes, three big lessons this week on a personal level. The first two mentioned above to trust the gut, and let healing find its own pace. The last was, get on those calls and don’t cancel those one-to-ones with people you trust as authentic relating is also healing. 

            A calm beat amidst setbacks on so many levels. Breathe easy and love yourself.