The Artist’s Dilemma

In the long list of liberations that I’ve experienced over the past year, the most important one is the liberation from gaze. Not like there was a particular gaze I wrote to when I wrote here, but in the privacy of a notebook, my words are protected from stray trespassers, too. Not like you are a stray trespasser whose audience I don’t appreciate. But in my notebooks, I don’t even have to consider you.

Psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicot said “Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide”. Since I last wrote here, I’ve liberated myself from all desire to communicate. Little by little. And its been gorgeous.

When you’re ruled by the desire to communicate, you have to be so attentive to the person you’re communicating with. Even as you speak you are listening, to their silences, gestures, twitches. Or you’re listening to them speak (which happens so rarely in my life, that people speak). Or when people do speak, you know, just to speak, I’m there, nodding maybe, looking attentive but I’m already elsewhere because I have such little space inside me to store anyone else’s story but my own. Even my own at this stage has been overflowing out of every pore, and it seems like it can’t get itself to stop. I really don’t have the attention to communicate with anyone but myself.

The double edged dilemmas of hiding, though, have a script all to themselves. From underneath blankets, in cold dark rooms, these dramas come out to the stage. They’re not limited in form, no. From the dingy corners of the mind, the produce stories you believed were long gone. The monsters you thought you had dealt with were only hiding, and now, they want to be seen, and felt, and heard and smelt. In one second its warm and in the next you’ve been swept up by your ankles and hung upside down, being reminded why its always been so familiar, this feeling of heart in mouth.

In hiding, you can hear all the sounds. In hiding, you can hear all your thoughts. In hiding – there is nowhere to hide. Sit, stand, sit, lean forward, then back. Lie down, maybe you need to. You can’t run anymore, so you may as well lie down. In hiding, you’re the hostage. In hiding, no one is coming to look for you. In hiding, you can’t be found. In hiding, no one will see.

You welcome this. You’ve been naked a long time and its the peak of winter. You remind yourself of the security of blankets. And when your skin gets hungry for the skin of another, you wrap her up in shawls that won’t leave you. The thickness of wool helps keep you from spilling over. But there is no alternative to spilling over. You’ve been spilling over from the day you were born. Spilling blood, spilling love, spilling pain, spilling self. You’re a woman in a man’s world. Your destiny is to spill over.

Better spill than contain. Better breathe than suffocate. Better be whole than not at all.

In hiding, you speaks to you. In hiding, you’ve started hearing the grumbles of your hunger. Not yet abiding, barely able to listen without being besides yourself in fear. In hiding, hunger tells you her story. Hunger, your continuous companion. But you have no imagination of continuity, only ruptures. And why not. In a world where hunger is your continuity, and nourishment comes only in ruptures, its no surprise you seek intimacies of the “bad” kind. You have no imagination of any other.

Hunger, like the lover that refuses to leave. Hunger, like the one that brings you to your knees. Hunger, pulling punches where it hurts most. Hunger, reminding you of the emptiness that will never be full. Hunger, that discards all your dignity. Hunger, that connects to mortality. Hunger, in anger’s robes. Hunger, that does not leave you alone.

I don’t know anymore to reach outwards. Right now, its baby steps inwards. Right now, I’m learning to feed me. Right now, I’m learning to hold me. Right now, I’m learning to touch me. Right now, I’m learning to know me. Right now, I’m trying to find a voice. Right now, I’m looking only for silence.

And then, sometimes, this cruel hunger – demands what she cannot have. And she demands it, and all the world stops. Everything stops, or maybe just me. I that gets stuck, like I’ve never known how to move. In hiding, no one makes you move. In hiding, you are stuck, as long as you want. In hiding, you try to escape. In hiding, sometimes, you even scream. No one is coming for you.

In hiding, you only have you.

My business is to create

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s, I will not reason or compare, my business is to create” – William Blake

I was 13 when this quote first entered my life, and since then it has, time and again, given meaning to me in my darkest moments. At 13, with this quote, I was first introduced to this “other world”. In between my grief of losing a member of my family, and the pain of surviving in a family that was acutely in pain, this quote and the world around these words gave me hope. In Prithvi Cafe on those humid mornings and scorching afternoons, perhaps I glimpse a truth that I have tried to hold on to all these years. Those moments showed me that it was possible to relate to others deeply, that it was possible to fall in love and have others fall in love with you – with all the madness that it means. It showed me what collective energy looked and felt like, showed me that others were in pain too, and all of us were suffering together. Writing and theatre showed me that there is a way in which to truly and vulnerably express that suffering – to share it with the world, to listen when others share, to empathise with them, and hold their hands because sometimes thats all we can do.

All these years, I sought that energy again, and if I think about it like that – it makes sense that I have landed up where I did. Over the past few years, I had forgotten what it means to not “reason or compare”, and that made me suffer deeply. I judged myself for not having paid enough attention to my career, I compared with others and convinced myself that I had no skills to offer to the world, at times I tried to reason that this way of living was somehow “better” than others, in an attempt to understand why I have landed up where I have and to not feel it like a failure. In a system where friends find that their work and efforts and skills find gratification in the form of recognition and success and money, to have none of these made me feel like I had failed. Instead of continuing to have faith that “my business is to create”, I allowed myself to be “enslaved by another man’s (system)”.

I know how much I missed it – this energy of “creating”. I was at a tribal museum in Bhopal, surrounded by the beautiful and vulnerable and universal energy that I saw in everything they created – from their tools, to their shrines, to their homes, to their art. In that moment, I longed so deeply for that energy – to be one with the universe of creation. I felt jealous of these people who lived in a system in which this energy was available to them to tap into in every little thing they did with their day – whether they created food from the soil, or created art from stone, or created homes from clay. I felt angry and “enslaved” in this system, the one where I don’t create at all. Where all my work is – is managing other people, coordinating with other people, talking to other people, engaging with other people. Perhaps there are possibilities to create in this way too but they just weren’t coming to me.

Just a few days before this trip to Bhopal, we had a three day workshop within Nirantar. I was dreading this workshop with every cell in my body. At the time the space in Nirantar was alienating, excluding, hostile and made me anxious to be in it from a mile. But it was also the time that I had made a promise to myself, this is where I will be. Despite every reason and incentive to bail, to abandon ship and start over, there was a part of me that kept me rooted right here, to this place. Even on the worst day, I convinced myself I will try and do the best I can in the space that I have available, but that I will discipline myself into coming to this space, and be vulnerable to this space. During this workshop, I suddenly remembered being told about zentangles – this method of creating a particular kind of art – that is rooted as much in creativity as it is in discipline. Maybe all art forms are, come to think of it, but this one is explicitly so. The moment I started to feel anxious in the workshop, I reached out to a sketch pen and started drawing zentangle after zentangle. Everyone noticed what I was doing, they asked me, they were even perhaps irritated that I was doing this but I didn’t feel at all apologetic. I knew that I had to do this, and when I did, something happened. The negative anxious energy in me started to come out in a positive, creative and celebratory form. Maybe its as Einstien discovered, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another”. Slowly, I started to feel the difference in me. The space and the people around whom I couldn’t stand to be, suddenly I felt love for them, and I felt their acceptance of me. I felt like I could come to be in that space, and that space will come to have me.

This happened, and then the tribal museum the weekend after. I started to slowly become convinced of this lose idea that I was grappling with – that there is something about creative energy that has the potential to help us be and stay much more conscious of the world in and around us, and perhaps even transform it as we go along.

Create what? The task I have unwittingly committed to is a massive one. “Create a system” – a feminist system -“or be enslaved by another man’s” – yes the writing is on the wall. But how does one create a feminist system? When I was younger (can’t believe thats the term I use for when I was 18, but its true). I used to think creating a system meant creating a macro system. When I consumed all that delicious Marxism, and Leftist Idealism, I just knew that until the macro doesn’t change, the micro won’t either. When I went to a school for tribal children after my undergraduate, and took on the task of building thematic curriculum with them based on a Freirian pedagogy, I was disgusted with my work. I thought so little of it, thought it was wishy washy. I wanted to do what other friends were doing “research”, “policy” – big fat changes for adult people. What was this “working with children” thing anyway, so worthless. I wanted there to be agrarian reforms and economic reforms and healthcare reforms and environmental reforms – all at once – radically. I guess, I believed then that the only way to create a system is to destroy the other one, the one that exists.

At that time, I didn’t think much of myself as a “woman” or a “feminist”. I had a long journey to make from that moment on till the moment I would encounter Ursula, and she would help me make sense of this dilemma. So what is a system, UKL would ask me, I think, if we sat and spoke. Is this system a Utopia? What kind of utopia? And aren’t all utopia’s, perhaps by virtue of being “static”, a man’s system that can enslave all else in them? But UKL gives me an alternative too – a deeper, more spiritual alternative, rooted in a way of understanding the world that we have come to disregard in this current “system”.

“Every eutopia contains a dystopia, every dystopia contains a eutopia.

In the Yang-Yin symbol each half contains within it a portion of the other, signifying their complete interdependence and continual intermutability. The figure is static, but each half contains the seed of transformation. The symbol represents not a stasis but a process.

It may be useful to think of utopia in terms of this long-lived Chinese symbol, particularly if one is willing to forego the usual masculist assumption that yang is superior to yin, and instead consider the interdependence and intermutability of the two as the essential feature of the symbol.

Yang is male, bright, dry, hard, active, penetrating. Yin is female, dark, wet, easy, receptive, containing. Yang is control, Yin acceptance. They are great and equal powers; neither can exist alone, and each is always in process of becoming the other.”

-Ursula K le Guin

So perhaps that means that all that is creative is perhaps also destructive? That in creating a new system, bit by bit, you’re also destroying an older one? This feels much more approachable, and echoes much more the feelings in my heart.

Maybe what this also means is that what is destructive is also creative? I think I understand that too, which brings me to the final section of my stream of consciousness.

Its difficult to write about this and I don’t know where to start. So maybe I will start by introducing C again. C is, without doubt, my soulmate and my home. We met each other when we were 15-16, and soon after, we told each other that we were in love with each other. We were young and we didn’t know what these words really meant, I on my part was gripped by fear – I didn’t know what I wanted from my life, and to think that I was in love with this person and to know that I could see myself spending the rest of my life with him is a scary thought when you’re 16. I know he felt the same way, and I know he was afraid too. For many years – we danced around each other – experimenting with the boundaries of friendship. Together we created a language in which we could speak of all that made us feel vulnerable, anxious, afraid and human. Together we treaded the tightrope of intimacy, discovering each others bodies along with each other’s souls. The first six years that we knew each other, maybe we were in a “yin” kind of space. A space that was dark (yes without doubt), easy (in parts and moments, differently for the both of us), and most importantly of acceptance – of each other – as we were, and of the nature of our relationship – as it unfolded. 6  years later, we found ourselves in a different space. We chose to “penetrate” a certain boundary, we chose to be together, as a couple. Those years, by virtue of this commitment – were the “yang” years. These years were active in that we made an effort to be with each other, to fight through our differences. They were penetrating in that we dug into each other’s beings, we unearthed the very best and the very worst in each other. They were bright, in the moments of our togetherness, in the moments of our joy, in the moments in which we laughed together and the moments in which we cried together. But these years were also years of control – over each other, over ourselves in order to be with each other, over circumstances so that they may lead us to each other. The “yang” phase started almost exactly 6 years after the “yin” one, and almost exactly 6 years after that, we found within ourselves, the seed to destroy what we had created.

Its not easy to let go of something you have created with such love, such intensity, such investment, and yet, having faith in the process of “creating”, it felt like the right thing to do and both of us chose to walk back into friendship, into our own darkness, and into its acceptance. In destroying the way our relationship and we in it, have existed so far, are we also creating another way to be? A system that does not enslave one another? I really hope so.

What this phase has done for me, however, is that it has also simultaneously destroyed many of the assumptions about myself that I held close. It has destroyed in me any ‘utopias’ I may have had about how things should be, any ‘expectations’ about how I and others ought to be with each other. This destruction has helped me plunge into my own darkness -the “yin” energy – the one that according to UKL – is dark, wet, easy, receptive, accepting, and above all – female. Slowly it starts to feel like the most natural next step.

Inside of my darkness, among all other things, I have confronted another idea of ‘utopia’ that I had come to believe all these years. That it is not, as UKL identifies, “located not in the afterlife but just off the map, across the ocean, over the mountains, in the future, on another planet, a liveable yet unattainable elsewhere.” If utopia is a process, then its also a process that must happen here and now, in the present. If utopia is a process, then maybe it must transform the past, rather than abandon and distance from it.

All my life, I have run towards a utopia (perhaps, or definitely according to my dad). I can’t grudge myself for having run, because if I had not run far, I would not have found myself where I am now – where I am now which makes perfect sense because of what I seem to have been seeking since 13. But running towards this utopia has led me to realise that utopia is a process, has led me to realise it is both acceptance and control, that it is both creative and destructive. Coming to this realisation is deeply settling. It makes me stop running and learn to stand and breathe. It makes me need to stop and create, because perhaps you can’t create when you’re running. And most importantly, it makes me hopeful, that there is another way of being with my past, one that is accepting, and maybe some day, one that is healing.

A fortune teller once told my mother – that I will never live in Mumbai (the city of my birth and my childhood), and that I will most likely divorce – after marrying – the person that I love. It seems he also said that this “divorce” will be for the best for both of them. Here I am, in New Delhi, with a soul mate who is my best friend, and it feels like destiny has come to pass. Maybe this journey was written in my stars all along? And where do we go from here?

My father always asks this question, perhaps its pertinent here – “what is my role in all of this? am I only playing out my destiny? or do my actions have impact the direction my life will take?” To this, my mother always says that “Your destiny has brought you to this moment, your actions define where you will go next”. Is it that hers is an answer of acceptance and his of the need for control? Or is it that his is the question of acceptance, and hers is an answer of control? Maybe this is the yin-yang relationship I have grown up with, in which it is never really clear which one is the masculine and which one is the feminine – that they become each other interchangably – and their relationship signifies their interdependence and continual intermutability.

So here we are. And where are we going?

If I already had the answer to that question, all this would be pointless.

All I have are desires, hopes, dreams intertwined with fears, shame and low self worth. Is it that I want to control destiny, lead it to where I want it to go? Or is it that I want to accept destiny, even when it means something deeply painful? Or is it, as Thich Nhat Hahn says, that we need to “We accept others (or in my case destiny) as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.”?

As I complete this sentence, the thunder echoes around me and I am reminded of monstrous rainy nights in Mumbai, in my home, with my home, and all I can do now is have faith that one day I will come home to myself.

In love?

Remember the time you first felt it? The little funny feeling in your stomach, the little hazy feeling in your head, and that little place in your mind that was far away from reality, where the world was exactly the imperfect and beautiful place you wanted it to be.

It was the place, where it was safe to be so submissive, so not in control of yourself, that a look from across the classroom could make you melt to the floor, and that was alright. It was that place where you could shamelessly desire to spend every moment of your day with the other person, imagining how incapacitated you would be at hiding your joy if you bumped into them unexpectedly on the road. It was that place where you were vulnerable to reading into the slightest gesture, affectionate or hurtful, and obsess over it for an infinitely long period of time. It was the place that you ran to every free second you got. When you were around people, you had a consistent smile on your face to buy time in this place and avoid being dragged into conversation.

You thought this place was so private, so unique to your being and so intensely yours, that surely, no one else has ever felt this. You thought that if anyone else knew this place existed, they wouldn’t go about their days doing what they do, living as they live, being as they are. Surely, knowing that this place exists had magical transcendent powers.

And then the vase fell from the table and crashed on the floor, glass scattered and water spattered everywhere. Someone recognised your smile, said they knew it all too well, knew it was a passing phase and that you would get over it. In one swift move, the doors to this place slammed shut on your face, and you were left outside in the cold, in the big bad world, all alone.

Of course, you got over it. You toughened up to the world outside, you found strategies to cope, to pretend that this is the only world that existed, this other place was a juvenile creation of your imagination, it was fiction, a thing of books and films. You went so far as to smirk, or even blatantly laugh at others who found the place after you, breaking something in their hearts and adding an extra lock to your own slammed shut door.

Then one day, suddenly you woke up to find the door wide open. The sun felt brighter and the wind cooler and the world went about its business without bothering you, without shaking you out of the euphoria you felt when you realised you were standing at the door with someone, someone special. You held hands and walked into this place together, for the first time you allowed someone into this private,  intimate world. You allowed this person to mark their territory in your space, in your heart and mind and spirit, which led to a feeling so intense, so scary, so huge that you knew you had not felt this before.

You panicked. Ran amuck. Raised hell. Everything, anything to not feel/be in this place again. No! You know how this story ends, its too painful to go through again and again and again. Theres hurt and bloodshed and mess and noise. NO! This must end. “Go! Get out!”, you scream to the other person. “This was a mistake, I’m sorry, just please leave!”

Just like that, the door shuts again, and you’re too afraid to visit it, for weeks and months, maybe even years, you pass by that door and look the other way. You pretend theres nothing on the other side, or that its just a part of the wall, painted differently. Yet, as you go through your days, jaded and disillusioned, someone somewhere makes sounds in your heart, catches you unaware, off guard.

Now imagine living in this place. Physically building this place, with your own hands, with others, one brick at a time. Now imagine realising that the place is not yours alone, its not a private space but the most public one there is. Now imagine understanding that this is not only a personal space but a deeply political one. Imagine knowing that its worth fighting for. Imagine figuring out that the only way to open your door and keep it that way, is to open someone else’s.

Imagine reclaiming “love” from hallmark and rom-coms, from running around trees and choreographed dances. Imagine realising that to be in love is the most intensely bittersweet experience in your life, with pain that tears through your rib cage and joy that explodes in your lungs. Imagine sharing this, not with one, but with many. So many, so differently, so intensely.

And between the reality of closed doors and aspirations of open spaces is a struggle that defines the purpose of your life. And then you realise, that you were right, that if people truly knew this feeling, you would not exist as they do now.

Unworthy Mothers

My generation of girls were born
to unworthy mothers, 
women, artists, scientists, feminists,
almost human, as men
fools, that loved 
in it found strength 
not quite the same
as winning bread.
Women unguarded 
to all but themselves,
exchanging desires for whims
of others, who 
repeatedly, thanklessly,
took something 
away from them. 
 
Women knowing nothing
of pleasures, of power
or wealth
surrendering instead,
to nurture and care
as they forfeited the fortress of egos
it takes to be human. 
No, giving life isn't enough
a self-sacrificing person 
is no person at all. 
These women, our mothers, 
at the threshold of personhood,
denied to their mothers 
and the mothers before
turned it away 
because who did they 
think they were 
to be treated equally 
accept they're worthy.

Its not what mothers say
that sticks, its what they do, 
and who they are,
stays, like data in blood
so while they
and their naive faith,
almost had us believe
we were worthy 
when the moment arrived
to measure up to ourselves, 
We relied instantly 
on the data in our veins,
and found we weren't
that worthy after all,
because our mothers before 
hardly believed they were. 

If I could be honest

If I could be honest,
I'd tell you I was asleep
the whole time you knew me
all this while that you thought I knew,
I'd say it was all a lie 
I said to me and you.

If I could be honest,
I'd tell you I fear
that you see through me
and then I would let you
see me, not as I claim to be.

If I could be honest,
I would stumble over you,
speak in broken languages 
show you how little I know,
How little I am.

If I could be honest,
I'd would introduce you,
to every demon I've tried to fight.
and when you met them, 
I would honestly tell you,
Yep! That's a demon, alright!
and for a while I would sit with it,
have a beer for you to see,
how comfortable with my demons, 
I can pretend to be.

But if I could be honest,
then once the beer was done,
I would put my hand on the table,
and wrestle the demon's
till I was brought to my knees. 
And if I could be honest,
then when I lose,
I would accept defeat 
and let you know,
I don't have a choice, 
but to be back tomorrow.

Patching Up With Words

Words and I go way back. Back to when they were still just only in my head. Long endless sentences creating one story after another around and about me to keep me entertained, occupied. Words was my companion, my partner in crime, my love. Words and I, we saw it all together. First crushes and ensuing heartbreaks. Best friends lost and found. Alternative worlds discovered and aspired worlds experimented.  So long as we had each other, we needed no one. Not legs, not stomach.

Like all long term relationships, Words and my affair also waxed and waned. Moments of intense togetherness, discovery, emotion followed by moments of silence and separation. When Words and I were with other people, we didn’t need their bodies to make love to them. Their ideas were enough, their voice was enough. Words took care of the rest. The physicality of being was lost on Words. For them, the body was a distraction, an unnecessary one.

My recent falling out with Words, though, was not a part of the normal ebb and flow of our relationship. My recent falling out with Words came from a sense of betrayal, of being lied to, of feeling hostage to and powerless. You see, Words was all I consumed. I devoured them and on their part, they adapted to my every need, my every taste, my every whim and desire. Words would wear the Marxist hat or don the feminist robes or slide comfortably into fictional slacks.  Words and I needed each other so much, that we did everything to never let the other feel, or realise, they were not enough.

This whole time, the body, my own, other people’s, and just the materiality of the world we live in, was in the other room having a party. So many were invited to this party, so many came to this party. Everyone that came shared their common physicality – happy in the shared knowledge that they touched and were touched by the same things. This party was huge. Everyone was there and neither Words nor I found it worth our time. We went there, and smiled and waved at the others while we sat around in a corner, until we slyly slid away, back to reminding ourselves that the body was just a distraction. Words and I even organised our own little parties, with others who were like us. These usually looked very different. The only physicality that mattered in these was usually the form and frequency of caffeinated drinks.

Words and I were so close. Too close if you ask me. Words knew exactly what hurt, exactly what caused pain, exactly when to speak and exactly what to say. And Words was everywhere, in every space whether physical or mental or emotional or spiritual. I couldn’t understand if there was any difference – what if Words and I are the same person. I am all that Words is, and they are all that I am. Through all of this my body had had enough. My body had endured pain, neglect, hurt, solitude and shame at the hands of Words and now it was not going to sit there quietly.

When Body first started speaking, it was like a baby that shrieked when it was hungry, or wet, or cold or scared. It was always a shriek and you had to pay real careful attention to understand what the shriek was about. Unlike Words, it didn’t spell things out, it only made itself heard, made its presence felt. Words didn’t know what to do. Threatened with divided attention, Words made Body shriek more. Like an older child does to the younger new born, a sado-masochistic pleasure so instinctual no one understands it.

I reluctantly started tending to Body, still hoping to be done with it quickly so I could and go back to Words. Slowly though, I started to discover things with body that I had never experienced before. Body made me aware of the wind on my skin, of the dancing shadows of the leaves on the ground, of the dull red colour of brick. Body helped me find ‘things’ to love. Not in the way the words and I had always hated – you know. Not in the way of shiny purses and gameboys. It was more everyday than that. It was just the heightened awareness of the little purple wildflower along the path. An awareness of love, and happiness, and calm.

But also panic! I’m 25 years old! Why is this the first time I’m experiencing all this?! I summoned Words and I was furious. I demanded answers. Words had none. They hinted to when we had both decided that Body was a bother. Like a possessive best friend, they argued that we had everything we needed just the both of us, that Body was lying, seeking attention. I was not convinced. I shut Words out. Even though Words never left, they were no longer a part of everything. Every time Body shrieked, I shut the door before words could enter and distract me, or make it worse.

Words’ other lies crumbled too. The fact that they only spoke, mostly, in English. That they were inaccessible by so many people all over the world. People that I cared about, people that I wanted in my life. Body spoke a different language, so it seemed to communicate more unanimously. It wasn’t always coherent, but then, neither was the world. Words’ were a reminder of privilege, Body was a reminder of the opposite. Body was the reminder of shame. Shame, all consuming. Body and I battle with shame constantly. Body demands to feel it, I, reeling and tired and devastated, try to distract Body with a colourful toy. But through all of it, Body has my utmost attention.

Words lurks around the corner, joining me from time to time for a caffeinated drink. Words is careful when it speaks now, no longer changing dresses in youthful enthusiasm. Words has now tried to don a more sombre attire, its called Truth, Words’ tells me, its the latest fashion. Words is right. Even when it hurts, the truth will always be one that Words and I have shared. We might give up our childish game and invite Body to the party, or participate more enthusiastically in Body’s noisy gatherings, but Words will always be my companion, my partner in crime, my love.

Truth

“If I had a life ahead of me – I who am about to die – I would spend it telling this story, without ever stopping, a thousand times, so as to understand why truth gives itself over only to horror, and to arrive at it we have had to pass through this inferno, to see it we have had to destroy one another, to have it we have had to become ferocious beasts, to flush it out we have had to rack ourselves with pain. And to be true men we have had to die. Why? Why do things become true only in the grip of desperation? Who has turned the world around this way, so that the truth must be on the dark side, and the repulsive swamp of forsaken humanity is the only loathsome earth in which there grows the only thing that is not a lie? And in the end: What truth can this be, that stinks of corspes, and flourishes in blood, feeds on pain, and lives where man humiliates himself, and triumphs where man rots? Whose truth is this? Is this a truth for us? Back ashore, during those winters, I use to imagine a truth that was tranquility, womb, alleviation, mercy and sweetness.”

“This is what the womb of the sea has taught me. Those who have seen the truth will always be inconsolable. Only he who has never been in danger is really saved.”

“And what we have seen will remain in our eyes, what we have done will remain on our hands, what we have felt will remain in our souls. And forever, we who have known the truth, forever, we the children of horror, forever, we the veterans of the womb of the sea, forever, we the wise and the sagacious, forever – we shall be inconsolable. Inconsolable. Inconsolable”.

—

“A marvellous feeling. As when destiny finally shows its hand, and becomes a clear path, and an unequivocal trail, and a certain direction. The interminable moment of drawing near. That coming close. One would like it never to stop. The gesture of giving oneself over to destiny. Now that is an emotion. With no more dilemmas, no more untruths. Knowing where it lies. And attaining it. Whatever it may be, destiny.”

—

(Ocean Sea, Alessandro Baricco)

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

She would look at herself. At her face, her pimples, zooming in on the scars they left when she scratched them. Her skin was far from perfect. It was sticky, oily, uneven. It was hairy and dark. Her lips were too thick. And her eyes, my god her eyes. These massive pockets of white sunk insides the black holes in her face, that opened up wide, too wide. When she was angry, they would get big, as would they when she was happy or excited. Her only path to normal eyes, was to be perfectly emotionless. Still.

She smeared her eyes with black Kohl. Her mother said that made her eyes look like a cat’s. Others said it made her eyes look even bigger. In her heart, she knew, she put Kohl to draw a boundary around her eyes. To define that they start here, and end here. That it is only within these parameters that they can exist, emote, be seen. And even the Kohl would smear, overflow from her eyes when she blinked, making her dark circles darker.

She wore it, everyday. It was the only way her face was acceptable to her. It was her security blanket, a mask that wouldn’t let someone look into her. When the ophthalmologist told her, years later, that she would need glasses to wear everyday, she could’ve kissed him if it wasn’t so inappropriate. Instead she made a sullen face because her mother stood next to her, feeling her daughter’s dwindling eyesight as a personal failure, and immediately blaming it on food habits and staring at the computer screen too long, and reading in dim lighting.

The glasses she got had a thick black frame, boxing her eyes in the middle. It did what the Kohl was meant to, and added another barrier between the person in front of her and the person inside her. Yet she hated the concept of sunglasses, of not being seen at all.

She was fifteen, maybe, when she first got her eyebrows shaped. A few years later, they started taking her moustache off. They called it “upper lip” euphemistically. The first time she did it, it was purely out of curiosity. She had seen it being done to a lot of aunts and older women and she was fascinated at the process of a white thread dancing on one’s face, leaving eyebrows looking well rounded, and perfectly shaped. When these aunts would let out slight screams of pain, she wondered how something as soft as a white thread could ever cause any pain.

The first time she did it, the boys in her school looked at her weirdly. They made fun of how her eyebrows danced to her every emotion. Her best friends were fascinated that in moments of doubt and mistrust, she involuntarily raised one eyebrow. It wasn’t the norm for girls in her class to have their eyebrows shaped, and so she put all this unnecessary attention and the shame it brought away in some corner. She would smile and look away, or ask, often sounding very agitated, what the fuss was all about and why they couldn’t just get on with life.

Then it seemed to become a habit, when she entered high-school. Whenever the ‘dehairing’ lady came over, it became part of the package. A monthly quota of physical pain that had to be endured. Until, it didn’t have to be endured anymore. Until she decided it wasn’t worth it.

She walked around high-school proactively wearing all things “unattractive”. When someone asked, she said confidently, that if someone decided to like her, it would be because of the person she is, and not how she looked. This made her popular with the guys, mostly because she didn’t find any common thread on which to speak to the girls in her class, who carried substantial quantities of make up in their bags and touched up their lipgloss between classes. The boys mostly thought she was one of them. They would joke about whose leg hair was longer, and she often took pride in the fact that it was hers. Every time they mocked her, she asked them if they’d rather have her touch up her lipgloss, and that settled the conversation. Had she known this was misogynistic? Was it?

When she had dressed up in a black dress and heels for prom, the now-love-of-her-life, then-prom-date looked behind her and asked what ‘this person’ had done to his date, and when he fretted about how beautiful she looked all night, it annoyed her to no end, a feeling that stayed with her for days after.

In the years to follow, she would chop of her hair to a ‘boy cut’, pierce her nose, continue wearing copious amounts of Kohl. She would dump the shirts and t-shirts for Kurtas, as a rebellion against all things “western”, as a way to find and keep her roots. She would remain completely alien to the idea of skirts and dresses and wear shorts only at home when sleeping. She felt complete, in her own skin, in her person.

Except, he hated the nose ring. He hated the short hair too. He tolerated the Kohl, but often suggested she use it less, so that it won’t smear, so that it will be a thin perfect line under her eye. He wasn’t a particular fan of the kurtas, but he noticed when she teamed that up with a matching chudidar, dupatta and earrings.

He was never one for grand expressions of likes and dislikes, or anything else for that matter. Everything with him was about picking up on the subtle hints, a smile, a nod, a cringe, a frown. Things didn’t need to be spoken about or explained. There wasn’t room for that kind of dialogue. It was just as it was. Take it or leave it.

She decided to take it. Just before his visits, she would make sure she “dehaired”. She would spend a few moments more on dressing up, wear the one skirt she owned. It seemed okay, because in a week or three, he would be gone again, and she could go back to not caring.

Then, suddenly, there was an addition to their dynamic. A small black box with lenses that divided them into 2, the seer and the seen. In the click of a button, a moment could be frozen in time, a version of her could be frozen in time. This version would normally have changed from one minute to the next, and would only be complete in a culmination of moments. Yet, what would be remembered of her was in that one moment.  A moment of excitement, one she would like to remember fondly because of the way she felt, would be captured as one where her eyes took up half her face, where her lips made some convoluted shape, and her scars were all too evident. A moment of complete submission, of posing for the camera, of accepting to look a certain way for someone else, and of complete alienation from a part of her own past, could be captured as something beautiful, something that he will admire, something that he will die to share with the world. When others would compliment it, he would bloat with pride, the pretty thing in the picture is his.

If she travelled alone, she would carry a small backpack, something kids would take for an overnight stay at a friend’s house. Thats all she needed. Just enough cloth to cover her body, and kohl. On her travels with him, this backpack would make way for a bag, with clothes that were beyond utilitarian, that served some aesthetic purpose. Right in that moment, she would surrender her freedom to jump of a train when it halted between stations because it was easier to reach her destination. She would surrender her freedom to get on a crowded local bus, and settle for a private taxi. She would surrender the illusion of classlessness that she liked so much to create for herself, and accept her reality, of being able to afford clothing for aesthetic purposes. She would accept that she is rich enough to own accessories of no monetary or security value. She would accept that she is rich enough to not have to worry about the cost of private transport, to ferry her additional baggage.

Instead of spending time romanticising stories of passing landscapes as seen from inside a fast moving train, or the infinite mental images of small fascinating things that would dot the roads, she would imagine what she would wear, how her boots would look with her skirt, and how she needed a belt to go with it. These thoughts were detailed too, except that the focused on details she had spent all her life believing and telling herself, were not important.

The camera brought along with it many feelings, of excitement, to be seen and captured in the perfect image of herself, of fear of the moments of imperfection, and of all the lies and deceit of the image because it would tell no honest or complete story of her. It would forever after be associated to her, used as a symbol of her, a simili, and she would have to live with having been that person in that moment for the rest of her life. To save herself from that, she will pretend that she is everything she wants to be seen as, hiding everything she is but would rather not show. She will pretend that she doesn’t care when her insides are burning. She will pretend that she can look away rather than fight. She will worry when she’s laughing too loud, when she’s carefree, when she’s happy, because thats not who she is supposed to be. When she poses in front of the lens, her smile will hide her feeling of betraying herself, and when she is speaking about something that she is deeply passionate about, and he is seeing it from the other side of his camera, she will learn to accept that he will not engage with her on her passion, because his is very different from hers. She will learn that when she looks away because she is upset, he will see it as a moment to capture, rather than a moment to support and hug. He will be too busy seeing and capturing someone else feel a certain way to feel it himself. And when that moment has passed and they have both accepted that neither understand how the other feels and why, they will settle in the silence they both know so well.

Time

Thoughts are like whiffs of smoke, they materialise with a blow, a push and then before you know it they’ve disintegrated into nothingness, and you are left with only a memory, the feeling of a moment passed.

Even as she thought this, the thought disintegrated into oblivion, and in between thoughts, she rested in the brief moments of thoughtlessness, the fertile grounds on which the new thought would grow.

Thoughts had a way of blurring reality. The moment a thought was born, its noise muted completely the honking of the car, the street-food vendors banter with her customers, the rhythm of a million footsteps, with different kinds of footwear being the instruments that contributed to the percussion, the ‘tick tick’ of the stiletto, the ‘clack clack’ of the boot, all following some orchestrator into imperfect rhythm.

She was sitting on the corner, on the footpath, watching the city blur past her, until she would see something that caught her eye, like the girl in the red coat, or the old man with beetle stained teeth, or the brake lights of a car jerking to a halt at the traffic light. And then, just like thoughts, these would all disappear into the blur, in almost the same moment that they became evident. The city would continue being/ or was it becoming?

She wondered how long she had waited there. She had no way to keep time. Heck, no, that was wishful thinking, to lose time. In this world of measured existence, she could know exactly how long it had been, all she had to do was turn her wrist and see that it was 6:15 pm, and calculate how far that is from 5:06 pm, when she got here. In that moment, she wished she didn’t have this information. She wanted to enjoy the nothingness of her being within the chaos of a world that seemed to have something, many things to do. She wanted to enjoy it for as long as the universe would let her, without having a measure to it, a measure that wasn’t even hers.

What does an hour mean anyway? Or what is a minute or a day or a year? Wasn’t there something about hours seeming like moments and the other way around? “So what am I to do with this information, ‘I’ve been waiting one hour’, when this hour could have felt only like a moment, or like an eternity or both”, she thought.

Just then, like all thoughts, this one too dissolved into nothingness, into the blur, into the noise.

————–

Somewhere far away, he was carrying too many things to be able to look at the time. His moments were filled, overflowing even, with things. Things to do, things to think about, things to arrange, things to carry, things to pick up, things to drop, things to adjust, things to achieve. Time didn’t feel at all endless, instead it was a series of moments, each shorter than it should’ve been. Each moment that seemed to slip away before enough had been done with it, each moment that ought to have stayed longer.

He hadn’t the luxury to let the blur pass by, he was the blur. He had to keep up with the pace of everyone else in the blur, any slower and he might miss the crucial moment where it all came together, without him. Being left out was not at option, being nothing was not an option. He didn’t want to be everything, surely, but something, someone, in the myriad of other someones. Someone that mattered, somehow.

Suddenly, in between this chaos, he saw her, as if he was standing across her. He saw her sitting on the footpath, alone, waiting, cold? His stomach sank. Where was she? And how and why? Could he touch her, maybe hold her?

Just then someone called his name. His neck swiftly turned the other direction and in that instant, he was reminded all about the million things to do in the hundred moments that weren’t long enough. Yet there it was, at the back of his head, the image of her, far away somewhere, waiting. He turned around again, to see if he could still see her, but like thoughts, the vision had dissipated into a million different pixels, that had found a way to fit into the world as it already existed.

————–

Her eyes were following a trail of ants walking on the road below her, feeling awe for the distances their tiny feet were able to cover, the weight they were able to bear and the obstacles they manoeuvred. Their journey made her own feel more desirable than it did before. The chaos of the ants reminded her of her own chaos, unlike the one of the city, and yet meandering around it, through it.

When her eyes zoomed out to capture the rest of the city in their field of vision, she noticed in front of her, the red bus that was gearing to motion. An absentminded study of the bus told her that she was meant to get on it, and it was within a fraction of a moment that she had to decide if she would leave her stillness and her solitude for the promise of a new place, a new story, a new thought. Even as the latter called out to her, and she flung her bag around her shoulder and sprinted to the door of the bus, she felt immense sadness for losing the moments that she just had. She knew them intimately, as hers, and yet life provided her with no time for a farewell, as if parting was meant to be an unceremonious, fact of life.

She found her seat by the window and rummaged through her bag to find a book. The journey of the bus warranted the continuity of a story rather than the disjunct dance of thoughts. As the bus hurled to a start, she too accepted the motion, the continuity, the flow of time. She accepted that neither her nothingness, nor her being last forever. And with that thought she dove into the illusion of another world, far far away, continuing her battle with time.

————–

Hours later, or was it months, when he turned the corner, he was gripped by an eerie feeling of familiarity. He stopped and looked around, as if he was meant to find something here, a clue? The city was silent. No honking cars or bantering street food vendors. Yet he knew, as a feeling rising from his gut, that this is where she once was, cold, alone and waiting.

His stomach clenched as a thousand different feelings fleeted through it, none staying for long enough to be identified completely. Then again, could feelings ever fit neatly into boxes of identity? He stopped, looked around, the calmness of his gait not betraying the franticness of his insides. The silence haunted him with the thought of her solitude, as if it were his too, in that moment.

Almost as a reflex, his hand reached out and there it found another’s, which he held tight, as if it would refuel him with companionship, after being drained by solitude. He looked in the direction of his companion, his insides easing slowly as he reciprocated her smile.  The image of the girl he is with quickly replacing the one of the girl he had once known, waiting in the cold.

He started walking with her, looking ahead. And as they moved away from the corner, she turned her head and threw it one last nostalgic glance, and continued forward.

————–

Who are you? Why are you here?

I can’t find a good reason to why you walk away with my life every time you leave. I can’t explain to you why I need to communicate with you, and you alone. How do I tell you that with you, I find a language that doesn’t exist without you. With you, words mean differently, even if not to you, they do to me. I don’t know what magnetism in you draws open the walls of my dam, making my words, my ideas and my eyes flow.

How do I make you see how important you are to me? Do you see I’m bleeding now that you’re gone? How do I tell you my consciousness is oozing out of my wounds and I can’t seem to stop it? Can’t you see only you can save me?

And yet, my screaming, my tears, my painful cries, the rocks I throw in your direction to grab your attention as I lie motionless and bleeding, none of these things seem to get you to stop a moment, to see, to feel, to know that something is very wrong.

How long will it be till you realise if you won’t do something for us, no one else will? When will you realise how weak and helpless I have become? How will I be able to communicate with you when you’re not listening? How will I know you’ve heard if you’re not responding? If all I see are your steps walking further and further away from me?

Why do I need you the way I do? Surely its a connection beyond the worlds we know how to explain. Surely, we are meant to rustle something in each other’s lives, poke and pull, someone in the universe wants it to happen. So why is it that it doesn’t happen?

Is all I’m meant to learn from you is what it is to be alone? Because I don’t want to learn that lesson anymore. I’ve done it enough times, I know it too well. Are you in my life so I can experience loneliness after companionship? To push me into greater realms of knowing how truly alone I am?