'Tis that time of the year again. Endings, new beginnings, reflections, learnings, looking backwards, moving forwards, you get the drift. This year taught me many things but even as I was chewing on one of its greatest lessons, it reinforced that lesson with another thump. That things can change in a moment with no warning and I can't do a damn thing about it! That no matter how much I hold onto a sense of stability and try to grasp it with both hands, it will still slip through my fingers like so much sand. Instead of complaining though, I want to be thankful. Thankful that these things did not escalate more than they did and the people who mean so much to me will get through to the other side, maybe a bit battleworn, maybe later than sooner, but what matters is that they will. And I hope to learn from these lessons to cherish the moments I have with people who mean something to me. To tell them what I cherish about them and how they bring light into my life. In spite of how hard I make it for them to find a way in with their light. That's what I am taking with me into the New Year...

I read a quote that to want to be a writer and not want to be rejected is to want to be a boxer and not want to get punched... hehe... As an academic my stock-in-trade is writing. However, before I ever even imagined entering academia I was writing. I guess I have been writing since I can even remember, in my diary or wherever. And what is this blog if not a paean to my love of writing! In short, writing is my lifeblood, as natural as breathing. But this past year, writing has become part of the competitive sport one plays in academia, not what I do for pleasure (except on this blog of course ;)). And rejections or defeats are a part and parcel of that. It can feel really tough to serve up a core part of your identity, which writing is for me, for judgement and criticism. Which is why I find this quote strangely comforting. It shifts the way I look at rejections or defeats - you can't not have them and still hone your craft. I guess like boxing one must focus on playing one’s best game (though I know next to nothing about boxing) rather than avoiding punches because the only way to completely avoid them is to not play. But I am here to play so I must learn to bear the punches too. I must grow a thicker skin. Easier said than done of course. But that's another note to self I take with me into the New Year...

Here's to the New Year, dear reader... may it be full of adventure but in a kindly way! :)

Sometimes when you are looking to cheer up, something just pops up out of the blue to tell you it is okay. These words did that for me: “Life gets better when you are no longer trying to be everyone’s cup of tea”. I know that I am not everyone’s cup of tea and I don’t even want to be because that just sounds too boring and ordinary but I guess it is hard to live in a world where you are judged by those common tea standards. It is also hard when people do not realize that everyone needn’t be everyone’s cup of tea so why not meet people on their own terms instead of trying to evaluate them by common standards? It makes me want to retreat into myself and that is hard because it takes courage to even venture out when you know it’s the same tea everywhere and you are going to stand out, one way or another. It is hard to again find that courage, and it is also hard to feel like you are doomed to be misunderstood so may as well find joy inside your own shell. Which I luckily do but the world demands that you come out if you are to amount to anything. So my conundrum is how do I come out but stay in in a way that I am not hurt by outside, if you know what I mean? One way is to find people around me who give me the same comfort that I find inside, people who are my cup of tea or people who do not keep trying to box me into some universal cup of tea. That’s what I try to do but that is also hard because people are hard…

Why should we prove

Who we are

To all and sundry?

Why make our efforts

Count for something

In the eyes of

Tom, Dick and Harry?

Who are they

To judge

What springs forth

From the innermost

Recesses

Of one's mind or heart?

And how are they

To weigh

Or measure

The depth you

Have to go

To recover

Those treasures?

Only some

With a kindred spirit

Can directly gauge

What others can never

Find

No matter how hard

They look

Pretend and fake

They might

But it's not theirs

Nor will they ever

Grasp

What comes easily

To those few

Them

Rare as they are

I am grateful to

For showing me

How to disregard

The noise

Of emptiness

And live

As I would

With no desire

Nor care

To be

Judged

By the world

And all

Its self-appointed

Minions

~ Me

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I have to admit I am a bit under the weather. This year gave me much needed stability in some ways but it has also shaken the ground under my feet in some other ways. One that relates to home and there is some light at the end of the road there finally. And another that relates to one of those rare kindred spirits whom I look up to very much and whose influence has been very much instrumental to my growth in the last many years. I have faith that things will be looking up as we turn the corner of this year and I will be speaking from a happier place... I can only look forward to being there very soon!

"How good it is when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this is the dead body of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is the mere juice of grapes, and your purple edged robe simply the hair of a sheep soaked in shell-fish blood!

And in sexual intercourse that it is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected.

How good these perceptions are at getting to the heart of the real thing and penetrating through it, so you can see it for what it is!

This should be your practice throughout all your life: when things have such a plausible appearance, show them naked, see their shoddiness, strip away their own boastful account of themselves.

Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced that your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell."

~ Marcus Aurelius

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I don’t really know how to take this piece of advice. On the one hand, I agree. I agree that looking at things in their stark nakedness can help us confront the truth behind them, no matter how uncomfortable or ugly. But on the other hand, the truth can sometimes lie in the pretence itself or in its symbolism, rather than in the material substance. That is why we have such a thing as rituals I would think. The death of a person could be seen as simply the expiry of a body but it is certainly much more than that…? Which is why we have funerals to commemorate the “much more”. Even marriages for that matter celebrate much more than the meeting of bodies. I’m not sure if stripping away the appearances or symbolisms in these cases helps us get to the truth because in a way these appearances construct the truth rather than hide them. Though I suppose it’s easy to get carried away by the appearances of things and make more of them than they really are. Perhaps that is what Aurelius asks us to guard against.

I complain too much

Or maybe I just

Seek for the rightness of things

Not satisfied

With what the general lot

Accept and go

Happily or sadly

Drifting by

I contest and complain

I keep asking

Why

Because you listen

Not everyone does

Don't I know

Which makes you, you

And there is none

Not a single soul

Quite like you

But I fear

How precious you are

So rarely comes to my lips

That you will never know

Because I only speak

In quarrelling tones

Telling of what

You could do more

And so I fear if

All this noise

Drowns out the sound

Of the real thing

It can't though?

Because real things

Are felt, not heard

And I do hope

You will feel

In spite of all the din

Of my general laments

~Me

An optimist, as the popular story goes, is "the fellow who falls from a ten-story building and when he passes the fifth floor they hear him say: 'Well, so far so good!'"

The question of whether one is an optimist or pessimist pops up now and again. I consider myself a realist which people might think is a cop-out but I don't think so. I like to or rather I am compelled to see reality in its own hues instead of making it brighter or bluer than it is, though I have to admit that my tendency, given that reality itself is a matter of perspective, is more towards pessimism. If I were falling from the building I would consider myself dead at the first moment - hehe - though I suppose if I survived that would be a positively pleasant outcome for me? Would it not? I don't believe in passively waiting for an outcome though. I guess my brand of realism or pessimism is all about trying to avert the worst with action rather than letting it happen. In that sense, I see it as a productive force than the opposite.

Optimism, on the contrary, when it puts a positive spin on things no matter how they really are or when it turns a blind eye to them, seems quite toxic to me. There is these days a lot of general acknowledgement of toxic positivity but I find that in practice it is extremely difficult to resist it or to question it. Given how much of a premium society places on cheerfulness, happiness, positivity and the like, even if with no solid substance. All the bestselling self-help books no doubt point to this. Anyone trying to question these could seem like a Debbie downer or mischief-maker or disruptor or anything unsavoury you could think of. Toxic positivity to my mind is all about maintaining the status quo. Maintaining a facade that actually is conducive to happiness for some and not for others, not the people on the margins or fringes. People who are not happy in these conditions might be accused of trying to prick the balloon of positivity if they were to voice their feelings about how things really are. Though they would find it hard to even voice them in a climate where positivity is upheld for its own sake. Which is why I prefer to be in atmospheres or among people who appreciate or welcome realism/pessimism/criticism. I see disruption of fake positivity as a good thing. As something that could pave the way for actual positive things. Rather than simply adopting a mind-set of positivity because it’s easier or because one's own position is secure under the status quo.

One could put lipstick on an ill person and pretend they are well or one could face up to a true diagnosis even if it's uncomfortable. What works in the long term is anyone's guess.

“Duke Huan of Chi’i was reading a book at the upper end of the hall; the wheelwright was making a wheel at the lower end. Putting aside his mallet and chisel, he called to the Duke and asked him what book he was reading. ‘One that records the words of the Sages,’ answered the Duke. ‘Are those Sages alive?’ asked the wheelwright. ‘Oh, no,’ said the Duke, ‘they are dead.’ ‘In that case,’ said the wheelwright, ‘what you are reading can be nothing but the lees and scum of bygone men.’ ‘How dare you, a wheelwright, find fault with the book I am reading. If you can explain your statement, I will let it pass. If not, you shall die.’ ‘Speaking as a wheelwright,’ he replied, ‘I look at the matter in this way; when I am making a wheel, if my stroke is too slow, then it bites deep but is not steady; if my stroke is too fast, then it is steady, but it does not go deep. The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from the heart. It is a thing that cannot be put into rules; there is an art in it that I cannot explain to my son. That is why it is impossible for me to let him take over my work, and here I am at the age of seventy still making wheels. In my opinion it must have been the same with the men of old. All that was worth handing on, died with them; the rest, they put in their books. That is why I said that what you were reading was the lees and scum of bygone men.'” — Chuang Tzu

Cited in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, 1962, p.9

"I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I am not the same person who went home a month ago. The things that bothered me before seemed so trivial in comparison to what confronted me now, not because they were trivial in any way, but I realized how trivial they can be in the grander scheme of things. In one case thankfully it did not lead to the worst and in another I can only pray that it doesn't. While I cannot speak of the second as it is not my own matter, the first was a health scare. A rather minor thing as it turned out but initially when I was really poorly and my imagination went a bit wild as it is wont to do, as you my dear reader knows better than anyone else, it struck me how very insignificant, even petty, everything else can seem if one's body doesn't feel right. I thought about how people with severe or chronic health problems might be forced to live life and nothing I was suffering in imagination or in reality could be even close to that experience.

I guess I was also made very vulnerable during this period, exposed to fears and insecurities that were lying dormant in me for a very long time. A bit like a person whose world turned upside down in an earthquake a very long time ago might feel when the earth suddenly seems to shake with tremors. Though one had almost forgotten the shock and horror of that distant time, it all comes tumbling back. But more than that what comes back is a sense of unstable ground, a sense of a shaky foothold in the world, a sense that one is not destined to let go of one's guard or be at ease, a sense that one must forever be conscious of one's place… or one will be reminded yet again.

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!" 

~ Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Finally the day to go home is here... after almost 3 years! With Covid and everything in between there were many days when the very thought of going home seemed so distant, almost impossible, so it feels extra exciting this time. Like my feet can't wait to move. I wish I could just drop home instead of going through the motions of the airport, flight etc. My least favourite part and now even less so with all the new hocus pocus going on. This is also the most long that I have ever been from seeing my family. Though I keep saying home, I don't really mean home the place but rather the people. Home the place will have to wait longer I guess but I am as happy as I can be to just be with my people. The food will bring the place to me anyway :) I can't wait...

Sometimes when I try to view things with a more balanced frame of mind, after the first rush of indignation has somewhat cooled down, I start to wonder if there is a design behind things that is far larger and better than my own plans. In hindsight, a lot of things turned out that way. With more distance and wisdom that came with time, I could see that, as they say, I got what I actually needed even if it was not what I wanted! Now too certain things didn't completely go my way and I felt a bit dejected. Then I tried to take a broader view of it and couldn't help but realise that it's again perhaps what I need. Even if not what I want. And the more I take this thought further, the more positive the developments seem. Almost like someone up there thought of a different way for me to reach my destination but because I have a very organised and fixed way of doing everything, just the fact that the linear path I had in mind didn't materialise makes me feel like the universe is really against me. The more I orient my thinking to the idea that the universe is getting me there through a different route, the more I am able to see that alternative path. And I am also able to see why all in all it might even be a better path... if I see it with an open mind.

I feel like if we are put on this earth to learn hard lessons—I don’t know about you but I sure feel that’s why I am put on this earth ;)—then the lesson I feel I am here to learn is to let go of all attachments, to places, people, things. By nature I tend to get attached to the familiar. If I live in a place long enough, be around a person long enough, have a thing long enough, I get attached. Of course there has to be some substance to it or I won’t get attached in the first place. But once I am, I find it very hard to let go. Even when logically I might know it’s not worth holding onto or that I might have a better place/thing in its place. I don’t feel that way about people. People to my mind are essentially irreplaceable. But there are times where perhaps it is best to let go of them too. It seems to me that I am always put in this position of having to let go because it comes so hard to me. I might like a space a lot and then suddenly for some reason I am expected to give it up. I might like having a person around me and then suddenly they are pulled somewhere else. The more I learn these lessons, the more wary I get of developing attachments. That seems like a way to solve the problem or never experience the lesson. But that’s another problem rather than a solution I guess! Yet I am not sure how to have tentative type of attachments where you hold something dear and yet are okay with letting go of it… I don’t hold anything dear too easily unlike those who do tentative attachments so there is a fundamental difference. But the world at least the way it is today seems more suitable for the tentative types. Nothing is expected to last or stay forever and you just go with the flow. Recently someone said they were like a butterfly and I thought of what I would compare myself to… an oak or banyan tree came to mind! J

Browsing through Netflix I found what looked like an interesting movie, An Angel at my Table. New Zealand based. The story of a woman, Janet Frame, who had a difficult upbringing, spent years in a mental asylum, and then finally became New Zealand's premier poet sounded powerful and intriguing. I guess I am always very interested in ‘rags to riches’ stories or stories of real people who lifted themselves up from the very ground to the sky. Not people who had a decent cushion at the start because I believe it is much easier to make 4 out of 2 than to make 2 out of 0. I would know I guess :) I suppose it also makes me happy that there is a possibility for such people… that you can reach somewhere even if you have had the worst of beginnings. It must be even more difficult to find greatness in the arts than in other fields if you don’t have the right background. All in all, I was expecting much from this movie… and it disappointed me in that way.

I guess I was expecting a tale of determination, focus, grit, hard work and so on. Whereas what it seemed like from the movie is that it was a series of fortunate accidents and pure luck that led her to success. Sure there was hard work because obviously she had to write those poems and novels to even be recognized. But there are many in the world who write profusely and are never recognized. It almost seemed like the opportunities and accolades came to her doorstep rather than her struggling her way towards them. I am not sure if that was actually the case or if the movie wasn’t able to capture that part. I was curious how she was able to find the will power to write in the mental asylum or how she managed to get her pieces out there in such circumstances—and this was the early 20^th century so in some ways communication must have been harder—but that’s never shown. It’s almost like her work gets written and published magically! Another fact I found a bit strange is that Janet is a rather shy, timid, naïve, trusting, non-discerning, submissive person. She seems to be taken in easily by people; it actually gave me anxiety a few times because I was worried she would come to some harm some time. This made me wonder how a person with so little understanding of human nature even though intelligent in general—at least as per what the movie showed—could write books which are supposed to be a lesson of sorts in human nature? I suppose nature poetry which seemed to be her forte might not require it. But when I think about novelists that I like such as Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte or any of the older classics (those being my favourites), the thing that most strikes me about them is their astuteness and insight into people. Or perhaps I do like authors who show this astuteness and insight. For that matter, I like poems too that have a human nuance about them rather than nature poetry. I guess I have digressed too far from the actual topic, which was the movie. The bottomline is the movie didn’t deliver for me in terms of what I was expecting from it, but it was a great watch for itself even at 2.5ish hours. I guess the movie was more about her descriptive life whereas what I was looking to get closer to was her internal life.

Two interesting observations today.

I have been trying to rework a paper and from past experience I know that making a start on any piece of writing is the hardest part of the whole process for me. I tend to read, read, read papers relating to the topic or that will be useful for my argument to the extent that it feels like a way to productively procrastinate, then I tend to organize, sift and turn the ideas… and finally when it seems like I have exhausted all means of putting it off and I know that I really must start if I am going to have any chance of finishing it by the deadline—in this case I have a serious deadline because I absolutely do not want to work on this when I travel home in September—that is when I finally start. Though I also make a lot of flourishes before I do start. An analogy came to my mind while I was in the middle of some of these flourishes. It is how we make chapatti or roti back home in India. I am not good at making chapatti/roti at all but the people who make it routinely tend to emphasize that it’s all in the kneading. If you knead the dough very well, the chapatti or roti turns out well! And it struck me that all this reading, thinking, organizing, reflecting is the kneading process for me! Now I have an intuition for how much kneading needs to go into it for me to be able to write something remotely coherent. I do not know this consciously which is why I tend to feel guilty wondering if I am wasting time but subconsciously there is something that knows more is required, I am not yet there. I suppose this process might be different for different people just as different people have a different technique for making chapattis/rotis, and some like me, try to follow the rules instead of practising and it doesn’t work out. 

The second observation relates to my visit to a grocery store. I wanted to get some milk to have a cup of tea while procrastinating on said writing piece. It’s summer over here and very warm these says. I don’t wear a jacket for that reason. When I entered this store, it was like entering a freezer or something. I couldn’t wait till I got out of that place and though I have a habit of browsing around even if I am there to get something specific, I just couldn’t wait to finish my purchase and run out. The cashier was wearing a thick sweater, no surprise. This made me wonder why the place was so cold and the only logical thing I could think of was that that’s their way of keeping veggies etc. fresh maybe. It’s a small store and maybe that is why it gets colder than the large superstores where it’s relatively fine even if they use the same strategy. This made me think about how in certain contexts people tend to do something to maximize returns in a way, if we think of increasing the durability of veggies and stuff as maximization, but in the process they perhaps do something else that damages the outcomes in a more serious way, if one considers that one is driving away customers who might have purchased other things if they could hang around.

The sun does not have to

Make a case

For its brightness

Nor the moon

Write proofs

Of its beauty

The things that stand out

For their attributes

Must stand for themselves

Compel us

Move us

To give credit

To what we

Cannot but

Lay witness to

There is a lesson

To learn

From these

Luminous agents

To not argue or contend or justify

What is most precious in us

For to those who have an eye

It must, it has to, be visible

And for those who don't

No number of arguments

Could sufficiently paint

A picture of one's merit

Just as the blind man

Cannot encounter the glory of the sun or the moon

With copious description.

~Me

I wonder if it is a feature of modern life in general. At times I feel a sense of overriding ambition, a desire to do great things, achieve great things, find recognition, move ahead of the pack, maximise my potential etc… and at other times, I want to escape, give up everything, disappear into the quiet, become invisible, accept that life is meaningless and everything that comes with it. This mood yo-yos from this to that in a single day depending on what I choose to focus attention on or what event is prominent in my mind. Perhaps everyone feels this because we can’t help but get sucked into the world we live in and we can’t help but wish we didn’t have to. Sometimes I think about the peaceful folk back in my native place of Mangalore—perhaps they too aren’t that peaceful anymore—but when I think about how things used to be in my childhood, the daily rhythm of simply existing and doing the few things that kept existence going with small enjoyments in between. Those folks never really bothered with the big questions of what their life is all about and if they are really meeting its purpose but in living simply they were defining it in their own way. This simplicity of living is perhaps lost in our modern worlds. We are not satisfied by just the day-to-day motions which admittedly do not have that same comforting rhythm… even our routines are hurried, gathering momentum, catering to the future rather than the present. The goals we have for the year, what we did, what we could have done, what we plan to do… we think of everything in terms of performance, productivity, accomplishment, achievement, not so much about the satisfaction, the pleasure, the joy in the doing itself. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even possible to centre our lives around the latter in a world that is constantly thrusting the former way of being onto you?

I keep thinking about how to attain more balance, how to be more tranquil in who and where I am, about how to be at peace with myself and all around me, how to just 'be' perhaps than to 'become'.