Tag: hope

Virus

I watched Lady Bird for the first time on 26th March.
I remember the day because I had woken up to my phone buzzing with messages from concerned friends and family – US had overtaken China on the Covid dashboard the previous night to hit 85k cases, and the world was slowly waking up to that in different places. I’d been attending online classes from home for a week, it was a sunny day and most importantly, I had to get a drug test taken at Emory that morning for my summer internship.

The lady at the empty lab was aghast at the sight of me until I told her I was there just for a pee test. Through the two hours that I was out, I was super stressed out and worried shitless, wanting to be anywhere but outside.

I returned to my apartment to find Whole Foods bags delivered outside the door. Bless Amazon. I took all the stuff inside, washed my face and hands, wiped the surface of my phone with hand sanitizer (is that what you’re supposed to do?), threw everything I wore including socks into the dirty laundry cardboard box because who knows what the virus might’ve hooked on to?

I then took a shower, got to my bed, emailed HR that the drug test was done, wondering if the virus was already inside me, all the while thinking about the bus driver on my way back who wanted to know if we’d be back in college by Easter like the President said.

Probably not, I told him (Do you want us to die?). We need to keep things open, you know. It’s just depressing to see the world shut down. Speak for yourself, I wish I weren’t out right now. He was actually sweet and friendly, but I also knew I was going to constantly monitor myself for symptoms for 2 weeks thence. No it wasn’t all that bad then, I was just super paranoid.

US reached 100K cases that evening while I was watching Lady Bird on Prime. The President was talking about opening up localities where cases had slowed down. Blame capitalism and us for letting it feed off us; Amazon, Apple and their sweatshops across the world. Did I still not interview in these places? Yes, sure, but only to prove a point, I guess the competition was too high for me to get to my point. Anyway.

I drank an entire Tropicana bottle that day to buff up my immune system.
Then I hyperventilated once every 3 days until the 2 weeks had passed, suffered some 13 episodes of self-diagnosis followed by panic, and finally began getting out of my apartment two weeks ago once my deadlines were done and summer vacation began.

I haven’t used the bath tub here ever, only the shower. Not even during fall break. Well I’m glad summer is here.

I was trying to learn a choreography today (been all week), and I’m tired and sweaty and my frothy fragrant bath awaits me. One of the positive impacts of a regular physical activity in my life is tire from exhaustion rather than the lack of sleep that I’m used to. My worked up body eventually leads to better hygienic practices, some kind (and frequency) of food intake and even sleep, all of which I’ve been missing these days.

I take inside the bathroom our short stool to have my tiny Bluetooth speaker closeby. I also make sure everything I may need – shampoo, gel, scrub, etc – is handy on the counters to not ruin my upcoming experience.

The water is warm and the bubbles are friendly, and I can see my feet up on either sides of the running faucet. Much like in Lady Bird, different context though. My flatmates aren’t home (haven’t been since spring break), Ae Hairathe Aashiqui reverberate within the bathroom walls, the door is locked from the inside so even if somebody breaks in they could never enter or I could buy time to dial 911. All is good. I could fall asleep right here, eyes closed, the warm blanket reaching upto my neck.

So the other day a girl in my LinkedIn feed thanked Jeff Bezos for inspiring her, only the previous day news had come out about a VP quitting over firings. More than 50% of LinkedIn posts are infuriating anyway.

I open my eyes. The fact that every single item surrounding me was from either Amazon or Walmart hit me. The speaker was Amazon, my shampoo was Amazon, the razor and everything else was either Walmart or Target. I sink further into my blanket.

This is old. You would think an active mind is where thoughts creep up, thoughts and no action of any consequence. How about leave my worn out system alone to doze off on the tub?

I should worry more about the orange juice without pulp that I bought yesterday. Like someone said, I could make a difference to that. I should also try the Lady Bird thing some time. Too exhausted for it now.

So lying in the tub, I decided to not check the numbers today, and I don’t want to know what Trump is saying, I cannot bear to look at migrant laborers’ pictures and stories in my feed, not for another two days, and not knowing seems better than curling up every third day.

I resume my bath, close my eyes again. Radha ragasiya is amazing in the bath tub or even for the shower. I need to do this more often.

I forgot I also have kanji payar waiting for me for when I’m done, ravenous as I know I will be. This will be a good night after all.


Some days, I cannot decide if this vacation is all that bad. I keep my bars low and that helps.

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Faith – at 25

I needed to believe in something larger than life, larger than anything I knew.
And it’s how I survived. (Also, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana.)

Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha
Wahi tha wahi tha
Wahi tha wahi tha.

(When there was nothing,
He was the one,
the only one.)
– Kun Faya Kun (2011)

Time is a great equalizer, maybe the only one?

How do you measure sadness, how much is too much? Do you need to be so sad that you find no joy in life, or is it when you somehow cannot force yourself to smile?

Who has seen the most sorrow? Can a child’s sad story be considered sad enough? Or do you have to be broken after you’ve built that adult threshold for grief?

By the time you’re 25, everyone has had that experience, from life or from people. Everyone has lain on their beds numb one night having cried their eyes out, thinking of how alone they are, of how right those were that left everything and everyone, of how they were brave, of how helpless we are by ourselves. Sat on the floor and bawled at this cruel world of those that hurt us.
Defenceless, alone, but above all, innocent.

That’s the sad, but also the beautiful way we’re all equals at 25. How time is an equalizer, maybe the only one.

This isn’t about being 25 though.

Nobody is more sympathetic to our younger selves than us, I think.

Last month I was sitting on a bench outside DO class when two students approached me, said they’re from the Theology department doing a survey, and asked if I believe in God or a higher power. (My better guess is they were two friends in conversation looking for a random person’s perspective, but yea).

I do, I say.
They ask me their theological question which isn’t relevant in this story, but they took me back to this phase I had almost forgotten I had.

I don’t have an adjective to describe it though, it’s just a vulnerable 19 year old me and an overflowing heart. There’s people, there’s college, there’s lots more people. But they’re somehow neatly tucked away like we belonged in parallel stories, in separate worlds.

Amma and I visited Padmanabha Swamy temple every month back then on my asking. It was the one place where I took peace in return for surrendering all that that plagued me, where I didn’t have to fight and was finally at ease. And I never wanted to leave.

Everything the temple housed was alive to me – oil that dripped to floors from large hanging lamps, flowers from prasadam that were gently squeezed to the back of aunties’ hair, the constant humming breeze to which untrimmed bushes swayed. Alive and sacred. They were glimpses, or rather a beckoning at a life sans desperation, a life that was elusive yet very much existed, that I was allowed to be a part of for the short while that I was there.  

I saw beauty in every person, I could see only kind faces that reflected back at me the serene in passing, as if they all knew why I was there, as if they all said a prayer for me.

I saw old ladies seated on a mandapam reciting chants and that’s when I knew I could sit with them and cry my heart out if only I had learnt those songs that Amma knew. I wondered how they did not break into fits of weeping every time they sang them. I envied what devotion (and in all likelihood old-age) gifted them. They were already at peace and singing a prayer for me and others like me, just like the solitary cobweb floating on a high corner I chanced upon seemed to be.

Every time after going around the whole temple, Amma and I sat on the parapet facing the sands on my asking, watching the towering gopuram in the orange lights.

It was almost always 7pm by then, and I wondered how there were no pictures of that one angle of it bathed in shadows and light against the dark sky, one you can see only from the inside. How whoever constructed it back then saw the quiet splendor that I was looking at, or probably much more.

Of how somebody had known humans would house worries bigger than themselves to look for comfort in things larger than life.

I wondered if there were others who visited the place to absolve of all that taxed them, who marveled at its massiveness and felt the same empty light heartedness I felt then.

I watched a classical recital in the temple once, and I watched others who sat listening – silent, smiling, dissolving. I could only see pointlessness in my suffering then, how what I bore was boundless to my trivial self yet how the world was much bigger than any of it. And yet I knew I’d soon walk past the doors of the temple out into the world only to be overwhelmed by my own reality.
It makes sense that I never wanted to leave.

I remember thinking Gopika was lucky for getting to visit so often, for staying so close by. I wondered what one did if you had no troubles to hand over, if you had no turbulent mind to begin with, and I couldn’t imagine much more. Looking back, what’s funny is I was either not in my elements while I was there, or it was the only place where I was. The lines are blurred and there’s no way I can tell now.

Jab kahi pe kuchi nahi bhi nahi tha,
Wahi tha wahi tha,
Wahi tha wahi tha.
(When there was nothing,
He was the one,
the only one.)

There is a story of how when we were kids my brothers and I played in the sand inside the temple for hours, and I have listened to it being retold as many times as I’ve been there. I once asked Amma about why the place felt so positive, and she mentioned something unappealingly scientific about energy flow, unobstructed pathways and open spaces.

Every time I have gone back, I have still seen magnificence but in the “open spaces, positive energy” way.
I’ve smiled at how I once looked to its huge corridors* and pillars to be a part of me, how I felt lighter with every step I took around the temple, how even the cheli of wet footprints had brought me peace. How I held on to this one place because I found nobody and nothing else to turn to.
I’ve wondered at how young I was, how innocent I was, how I didn’t deserve any of it. Like we all do, I guess.

Yet I’ve not felt the same submission nor seen the surreal there since. I see beautiful faces, sure, but also the regular lives that go on behind them and the chanting. I see pottis and that solitary cobweb on the high corner, but they’re no longer conferring a hurried blessing upon the mortal me. And yet I had seen all of it there, the same way we seek comfort in music or art, but cannot go back once we’ve made it through.
Like the Room of Requirement lending itself only to those that need (ask and you shall receive?).

Faith to me was hope. I needed mine to be larger than life, larger than anything I knew.
It was, and it’s how I survived.

(You’re right, this article may be summarized as Paalam kadakkuvolam narayana).

Because a little faith goes a long way – 2014

* I meant pradakshina paatha but I’ve only ever called it chuttunna vazhi and hence. 

Cry

I’m a crier.

I mean I own a weak-ass heart that feels too much.

It’s funny because I didn’t quite cry for a long time, although I was sad for the longest time. Then came this study leave before sixth semester exams in college when I cried 24×7.

Like after a breakup you look at your face in the washbasin mirror but realize it’s already wet all over with tears.
Like you don’t cry for two decades, and then you do.
And you can’t stop.

So one evening after my second last exam I cried to someone, and although I didn’t think it was possible, this time I cried it out.
Well, most of it. Which is when I started crying for all the right (you decide) reasons.

For those of us that feel too strongly, crying just happens to be the easiest release in a world where we’re a minority. It isn’t reserved just for when I’m really sad or really happy, it’s for everything overwhelming in between.

At how time conned us, and didn’t let me meet my parents’ magnificent younger selves.

As most 70/80s songs play, I can see my father contesting elections in engineering college (to lose, of course) in black & white, while my mother (in color, cos she has described the shades of her college saris to me) is studying her ass off in medical college hostel. Achan vehemently yells SFI slogans in CET while Amma scoffs at party members in MCH, and they both listen and tap their feet to the same songs, but I never got to see or hear any of it.

Neither know at the time they’d marry each other. Or that they’d have 3 kids who’ll listen to them humming these songs (with a much much lower tempo) some 15 years later on moonlit nights at engineering college quarters, sleeping on their shoulders and laps and chests. So I was upset when I finally heard the originals of Aayiram Padasarangal Kilungi  – “that’s NOT how you sing it, those are not even the lyrics, this record is all SO wrong”.
Because that’s not how Achan sang it to us.

Some days I wonder at how beautiful the world looks during sunrise and wish I could broadcast it across people’s minds in a network so we can feel one another (okay Amal I know that sounds wrong on many levels).
Or how we could both be looking at it and I could be thinking of you right now, and you could be thinking of me, but we’d never know.

And the sunrise could be a Kathak performance or a ghazal recital, or two lines of a brilliant poem or a song or an instrument, the beauty of how its boundlessness dissolves us into one, for as brief and fleeting a moment it be.

Like listening to Vijay Yesudas’ Malare and remembering that’s the closest I can listen to his father’s voice sing it, and how we weren’t lucky enough to belong to the generation whose lives can be traced along Yesudas’ songs.

Or those dusty college windows with sunlight streaming into classrooms and how there was never such a romance as Premam to enjoy all of that on evenings after classes, how I never had the appetite for those back then either.

Of how we were (I mean I was) ugly and sweaty and sick dressers in school (and college, pfft) and how the people and the happiness was innocently believed to be ‘a trial version of what’s to follow’ yet the trial was the best there ever came.

That there was this magical duet of If I Lose Myself we practised during monsoon 2015, when the song could hardly be heard over the patter on chetan’s studio roof, that we never took a video of, that the world never got to see, that’ll die in team memories.

Or of how we cycled through the college forests at Madras at 4am on borrowed bicycles after placing a wrist watch on loan, stopping under orange streetlamps for breaths and shouting across roads, turning in zigzags as trucks passed us by, not knowing it would be our only time.

Of how often I deserved to lose so many from my life yet how they always stayed. And stayed.

Of longing to have known certain people just a little bit more, and to have hung onto certain chapters of our lives just a little bit longer.

How life is short and life is unfair and life is cruel and yet how it comes back together to us every time. And just how much we endure in those hopes. Alone.

Of the stories we hear delivered, and how there remains so much more untold.
Of how no poetry is more beautiful than the conversations we leave unexplored.

And at the end of the day, how we all deserve more.
So much more.

I know most of this is worth smiling over. But you can only smile so much.
And then you can only cry.

No?

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