Dear readers!

Skipping small talk here because this one is going to be fairly long. There was just too much I wanted to say. So please keep up with me and thank you in advance.

Taking Active Charge of Your Politics

I had a my proper political awakening during college when I studied sociology for my majors and it opened this whole new world of critical thinking for me. I feel I always had the right emotions, I just needed an intellectual level guidance. And my politics has been evolving. 11 months back, when the Gaza genocide began, a drastic shift occurred in my politics. I got more radicalized.

Till that point I was like most other liberals. Yes, I could speak on Marx and how capitalism is bad. How colonialism ruined the world forever. What Foucault meant by power. How inequality is our biggest problem as a society. I had all these big names, words, and ideas, ready to throw in any conversation. And while I do agree that there is nothing wrong with this, in hindsight, it feels not enough. It’s great to have this knowledge, this worldview, this ability to engage in critical thinking. I would put some posts here and there on my social media, share news with my comments condemning the systems and ruling class, but somewhere I definitely knew even back then, this wasn’t going to be enough.

So have I figured out what’s enough? How to change the world? How will I change this world? No, no, and no. But have I become more mindful of my limitations? Yes. Have I started to actualize my active position as a citizen of this society, and the power that comes with it? Yes. I find my politics evolving more rapidly than it ever did. From mere commentary and surface level understanding to more deeply rooted action.

What made all this possible? Love. Love for this world. Amazement and awe. Despite everything, despite all the evil and darkness, humans have always managed to find goodness and light. If we’re capable of great destruction, we are also creatures of creation, care, and nurture. And above all, empathy. That thing which has carried us through time and ensured our survival.

When I talk about why I am so vocal and loud about how everything is wrong with this world, how we are absolutely fucked, I know I am sounding too pessimistic. Negative. Cynical even. Like there’s no hope left in me. It’s the exact opposite. There’s only hope and hope in me. And which is why I am so drastically bothered by everything that’s wrong with our world.

Because I know that is not who we really are. That essentially and fundamentally, humans are creatures of love, care, nurturance, and sustenance. And that it is the greed of few, the ones who perpetually want to dominate and rule, that has always brought destruction upon our world. They have normalized destruction, violence, selfishness, apathy, neutrality, hatred, and dehumanization. That is not who we are. And that is why we fight. The ones this world considers the cynics.

Cynics are fighting to protect and preserve love. It aches me so deeply to see such a beautiful world being destroyed like this. And it is that very ache which moves me to speak and do something about it.

The Burning Question: Have we lost empathy?

As I became more and more conscious and proactive about my politics, there were certain questions that constantly bothered me.

• Is empathy slowly dying down?

• Why is that being political is seen as a choice?

• Have we become numb? Or selfish? Or both?

• Why aren’t people bothered by the suffering of the world?

For a very long time I rationalised that these questions were too naïve. It was my way of protecting myself from all the anger, frustration, distress, despair, disappointment, and a whole lot of questioning and doubt that arises from sitting longer with these questions.

And when I couldn’t hold it in any longer, there was a huge outburst. I was mostly angry at everyone and everything. I wanted to scream and shout, at the top of my voice: “HOW ARE YOU STILL SILENT? UNBOTHERED? AND UNAFFECTED? AND SO SELFISH”

But I tried to sit with these questions instead (once a therapist, always a therapist). It was a more smarter thing to do. Reactionary behaviour is often short sighted in its impact.

Is empathy slowly dying down?

Empathy isn’t dying down, it’s becoming a selective response. People are empathetic only to those who belong to the same social hierarchy as them. Most people are okay with that. They see their selective empathy as a sufficient qualification for being a good person. This rationalisation helps people in building a wall of apathy around them. Inside these walls, people see themselves as essentially good people, who care for their family, their relatives, their neighbours, basically anyone who is on the same social standing as them. And thus people are okay with not caring about what’s happening outside these walls. Unless it very directly inconveniences them.

One day, an upper class friend of mine was forced to travel in a public bus. They were telling me how difficult it was from them. How overcrowded the buses were, people had to stand for hours and hours with little to no space, the roads were so bad, everyone kept falling on each other. It was very distressing for them. I thought this would be a good opening point for me to spark their empathy. I asked them to sit with this distress and imagine how hard it must be for people who have to do it everyday. That majority of the people in India have to travel via public transport and the devasting conditions of it makes this such a difficult experience for them. That unlike us, who can take cabs, they don’t have that privilege.

It’s wasn’t surprising that I didn’t get any response. It also wasn’t surprising when a few days later I found them showing empathy to another friend who has to travel a lot for work and how distressing it is for them. The person who lived through the reality of what majority of people suffer due to terribly bad conditions of public transport had empathy for someone who has the privilege of bypassing that reality.

This is where we are at. We cry for people our own class who face only 1% of the system’s brunt, but we only have “oh that’s sad” for all the rest who face 99% of the system’s brunt.

Why is that being political is seen as a choice?

Another bullshit outcome of neoliberalism. The buffet of choice where “citizens are consumers” (George Monbiot). Everything is a commodity in the market, and every commodity comes in a thousand varieties to choose from. Politics is seen as no different. I can choose whether to be political or not political. I have the choice to consume information that will help me consolidate my politics. Or I can choose not to.

Yes, individual choice is important. And making active choices and respecting them is also crucial. But the problem arises when we start seeing everything as a choice. Even our duties as citizens, our responsibilities towards each other as members of a collective community. Very glad to be the bearer of bad news but every single aspect of your existence is politics.

If you choose to take active charge of your politics, you are resisting the system by saying: “Hey! Fuck you!! I won’t let you treat me as a passive consumer you use for your own advantages.”

But if you don’t solidify your politics, and this is where it gets interesting, you are not being apolitical (which many find a comfy choice), rather you are being very political. You are saying to the system: “Hey! I am okay with giving up my personal agency and upholding status-quo. You can do whatever you want, just give me my buffet of choices and commodities to fetishize.”

Have we become numb? Or selfish? Or both?

I think the long term effect of treating everything as a choice and then constantly choosing what brings the most comfort to us, has pushed us to place of selective empathy or even total apathy.

The news is too depressing, I don’t want to hear it. Oh it’s too much information for me, I don’t think I want to engage with it. Capitalism and neoliberalism have made sure that you always prioritise yourself. It has pushed us into such deep trenches of self-focus that we will automatically choose what brings us the most comfort.

Because discomfort is a sign that something around us is wrong. The systems don’t want us to feel any discomfort. The more you sit with your discomfort the more you will realise how absolutely horrific and brutal this system is. How this system is ruining everything you love and value. The more you allow yourself to feel uncomfortable, the more you would want to change it. Resist it. Act against it. Rise against it. Reject the system.

Your discomfort is a threat to the system. Hence the system keeps giving you varieties of comfortable things to choose from. So that eventually you just stop caring. Or you care just enough to keep your conscience clean, whatever is left of it.

Why aren’t people bothered by the suffering of the world?

What do you know about the trees outside the window? What keeps them healthy? What about the other animals that live close to you; do you recognise their calls or tracks? What they do, what they prefer? What do you know about the lives of human animals that go on over the other side of the wall next-door, or the masses you pass on the street? What do they know about you? How does that make you feel?

What do you really know about where the food you eat comes from? Or about what has to happen for our homes to be lit, heated, or built? How many of your survival necessities or subsistence skills are truly in your own hands or those of your relations?

How much of your daily activity is to suit your own needs? Aside from within the symbolic order of the wage economy, that is. How much of it do you even really see or understand the repercussions of? Would we live in this manner if we could directly see and touch the impacts that are hidden from most, in ghettos, toxic dumps, slaughter-houses, hospitals, cemeteries, refugee camps, battlefields and felled rainforest in distant lands, youth jails, oceanic garbage-gyres? Or have we become so distanced from other lives by the allotment of everything into categories of utility, so justifying their and our exploitation, that we cannot empathise with parallel lives that become mere resources for our own, as rulers living off us cannot empathise with ours?

- from Alienation by Return Fire (2014)

We Are Fighting for Love?

After all the discussions are done, and all questions resolved, the final answer is love. All of us who choose to see everything that is wrong with our world today, who choose to witness the injustices, the oppression, the violence, we do it because we care for this world. We love this world, and we are fighting to preserve this love. To preserve all that is good in our world.

We need to feel uncomfortable. We need to feel distressed. We need these emotions to move us to action. Unless we don’t face the society we are living in, confront it in its truest form, we cannot change it. And let’s face it, you and I both know, the world we are living in right now is doomed. Its only purpose is destruction. So we must do our part in making this world a better place. One filled with love, magic, beauty, care, and warmth.

Okay, this is officially the longest post I have written. If you managed to reach till here, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart. Yes, I know I haven’t provided any solid points for real life applications. But my primary purpose here was just to rant. Also hoping that this rant manages to move at least some of you. We may not have all the answers we need, but at least we need to start the process of being conscious of systems.

I am also very excited to share that after a lot of deliberation I have finally decided to create a Buy Me A Coffee profile. Now you can monetarily support my work with something as low as Rs. 170 ($2). A LOT of unacknowledged and unpaid labour goes into creating these essays. It would mean a lot to get rewarded for some of it. So if you can, please support my work!

With that, I hope to see you soon. Wishing you pleasant rainy evenings with a hot cup of tea/coffee.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello readers! I wanted to start this newsletter by telling you briefly about the reason why it takes me so long to write these posts (barring the fact that I severely lack the discipline for writing). Mostly I don’t know what to write about. Unless there is something really urgent that needs an expression, such as my essay on the TV show, The Bear, or the one on the film Gulmohar, it is hard to put together a thousand thoughts and feelings into a single, 1000 word essay. I usually let these thoughts and feelings marinate for months till I find a way to stich them together somehow.

With some new experiences and a bunch of other insights, I am back with the latest sequel of my most favourite topic, Thoughts on Adulting. Ah yes! Adulting… The very topic that drove me to create this newsletter. Here’s the link to part one, and part two. Do try to read them as well!

Off lately, I have been thinking about negotiations and renegotiations, and the part they play in the process of adulting.

Change does not solely exist in absolute terms. That something has to completely take a new form, discarding its existing condition for it to be considered as change. That’s so far away from reality.

I have begun to understand change in a more relative way. Change looks more like a continuous process of negotiations and renegotiations. This understanding offers a kind of flexibility, a wiggle room of sorts, that I feel is very urgent during these years of adulting.

I know it may sound a bit like compromising, adjusting, or even settling. And in some ways, it is that. But not entirely. Let’s also take this moment to acknowledge the role of capitalism in creating a bad reputation for settling. We are now at a point where we have internalised the core capitalism spirit of chasing and seeking. This belief that something better is always ahead of us, and that we must constantly seek betterment. To stop is to settle for mediocrity, a wastage of your time/potential.

What I find to be most fascinating is that this never-ending capitalistic race for better does not even have a finishing point. Capitalism will never let you believe that what you have is enough. It insists on you forever chasing better without ever knowing what better actually is. Because as long as your are running this race, chasing this vague idea, capitalism will keep benefitting from your misery :)

Sorry for that quick (un)expected rant. Coming back…

So yeah, it’s more about finding your space in the in-between. It’s allowing yourself to stop from constantly chasing better and actually defining what better is. (Basically, just keep a zen mindset lol)

Now how do we do that? Through negotiations and renegotiations.

Negotiations and renegotiations are more about moving from the polar ends and reaching somewhere in between. It’s about creating fluid conditions that enable meaningful engagement, thus leading to something new, something different.

Some examples of negotiating and renegotiating that I can think of:

• What I had — What I have

• What I want — What I need (personally v important)

• What I can — What I can’t (also vv important)

• What is best — What is better

• What is enough — What is not enough

Pro-tip: you really got to cultivate acceptance as a driving principle in your life if you want to take this path.

When I was reflecting upon the past year, especially the moments where I found myself negotiating and renegotiating, two words stood out for me: Shukr (Gratitude) and Sabr (Patience). (How very Instagram bio of me🤲🏽🙏🏽)

Gratitude for what has come, and patience for what is to come.

While remembering the major and even some minor moments of 2023, I often found myself engaging with those situations in absolute positions. For example, when I first came back to this city, I hated it. It is for that very hatred I did everything to stay away from this city. Till I could not anymore. Till I had no other choice but to be here. For a very long time my only response was either living here with absolute angst and despair, or finding any possible (even unsustainable) means of getting away from here. Not going to lie, that mindset sucked everything out of me.

This was the case for most part of 2023. This absolute mindset was not taking me anywhere, and was extremely tiring. I felt that nothing is changing in my life, that I am stuck. So in October, almost around the time of having lived like this for a year, I began to re-examine things differently. I wrote about it in my previous newsletter as well (read here).

I often find solace in the popular Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

(removed the word god from the prayer because I am asking myself to grant me this serenity)

I feel that these words capture the essence of what I am trying to convey about negotiations and renegotiations. The wisdom to know the difference is precisely all about that. To act on that wisdom is to negotiate between what you can change, and what you cannot.

In my case, the negotiation was about creating a life in this city, with all its ups and downs. Accepting that I can find my place here, and not keep chasing it everywhere else. A large part of my year has gone in this process (still continuing). And I have learnt a lot about myself through this. Most important being the value of Shukr (Gratitude) and Sabr (Patience).

Gratitude for what has come, and patience for what is to come.

I know all this is easier said than done. There are still some days, many days actually, when I can’t help but feel disappointed by my present. I yearn for more. I don’t have space for patience and gratitude. Only despair and angst. But I try hard and remind myself to not fall in that absolute mentality. And to accept those feelings as normal.

I still fall back on the internalised belief that better will only be found somewhere far away from where I am now. To be honest, it may be true to an extent. But then I try to bring myself back to present. Better can also be found here. Better can also be created here. And there will still be time to be somewhere else.

(Gosh it’s so hard to keep reminding yourself that time is not running away. Fuck you capitalism for creating this perpetual rush in our bodies that refuses to let time pass and be okay with idleness.)

I am slowly seeing myself eventually convert this city into my home base. I am allowing this city to sweep me off my feet. I think for the longest time I kept my heart closed for Calcutta, and now that I am slowly opening it, Calcutta is working it’s charm.

may you open your eyes 
to water 
water waving forever 
and may you in your innocence 
sail through this to that
- Lucille Clifton 

That’s all for now. Thank you for taking out the time to read this. Take care dear readers.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Dear readers!

Hope you are doing well in this summer. It’s been the most brutal summer, yet. In fact it’s the least dangerous of what’s to come. Hold tight for the rains. It’ll be worth it.

There were a lot of things I wanted to write about. How afternoons are my favourite time of the day (not so these days). How reading good books can deeply impact your life. I wanted to write about the film Three of Us. But alas, I couldn’t. Blame it on my severe lack of dedication to writing or just a general lack of ability to put together words.

In my journey with words I have found a direct relation between language and thought. I have always been fascinated by language. I keep saying “what we say is how we think, and how we think is how we speak”. Which is why words are of utmost importance to me. They are the fundamental tools of experiencing reality and making meaning of it.

There isn’t any such thing as thinking. There isn’t even any such thing as experience…that cannot exist apart from language.

— John Searle on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Theory of Language

Ludwig Wittgenstein has been one major thinker whose ideas have greatly impacted the way I understand language. Something resonates so deeply about his ideas that it has shaped a great deal of how I interact with the world. He basis language as the building blocks of thought.

The structure of the language determines what we think of as reality. We can’t think of the world, we can’t discuss the world, we can’t have a conception of the world, independent of the conceptual apparatus that we use for that purpose.

— John Searle on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Theory of Language

Another idea of Wittgenstein that I’d like to share is the picture theory of meaning. To quote John Searle again:

The structure of reality had to determine the structure of language. Unless language mirrored reality in some way, it would be impossible for sentences to mean.

We are able to talk about reality not just because we use words that mean something, but because those words have a relationship to each other within a sentence that corresponds to the relationship that things have to each other in the world.

The reason I am talking about these concepts today is because I have been struggling with words off-lately. This isn’t to say that one must stop talking about things they find indescribable. This is to bring attention to the massive abyss like gap that has formed between language and reality. I started noticing this when certain words began to loose all their meaning. Words like justice, humanity, civilised, law and order.

I think this past year has radicalised me in ways I cannot express. The realities that I have witnessed have left me speechless, in the most deepest sense of that word. What’s happening in Palestine and Gaza for the last 8 months has pushed language to its very limits for me. It feels like there’s no connection between reality and the language I have to describe and in turn experience that reality.

I don’t think language was ever meant to capture a reality so dystopic, brutal, and violent. And this reality goes beyond the Palestinian reality. We have become a society of violence. Colonialism never left us. It stayed in varying forms and shapes. And now there is no way for us to look away from it. Colonialism is staring at us with eyes wide open. Together with capitalism, it surrounds us.

And so, the language of the coloniser and the capitalist has taken over us. A language of violence, destruction, brutality, oppression, hatred, and dehumanisation. A language that denies, restricts, controls, and upholds binaries. It is not a language of the people, or communities. Heck, it isn’t even a language that’s natural. It’s a language of a minority group of power hungry and greedy people. Those who use language to deny and defy, to change and erase what’s natural and indigenous. Those who use language as a tool to normalise their systems.

Countless examples come to mind. Even after tens of thousands of people killed, permanently injured, or in rubble, one million internally displaced people, forced famine, 60% residential areas, and 80% commercial facilities destroyed, more bombs dropped than in World War II, massacres after massacres, hospitals after hospitals bombed and bulldozed, largest population of child amputees in history…the world STILL has the audacity to disregard and deny this reality. The leader of the world’s most powerful nation STILL has the audacity to say that the perpetrator of these crimes has not crossed the red line. And the same narrative is parroted by western media that further normalises this way of things.

Closer to home, the language of violence and hatred has been perfectly normalised by the ruling class. This language has now become the norm. And every major power system has played their part in doing so. The role of legacy media and news channels in spreading hatred and normalising the language of the ruling class is so blatantly out there. Entertainment industry is equally complicit by making Islamophobic, anti-minority, and propaganda ridden films. As a result, we’re at the peak of hate speeches in our country. People no longer think even once before saying something extremely Islamophobic or violent. Because a reality where hatred is normal has been made possible by such language.

All the while climate change denial continues to be strongly prevalent as before.

Two things are happening with me at present. First is the massive gap between reality and the language I have to express and in turn experience that reality. This is creating a tremendous dissonance for me where I almost find myself dissociating from reality. And sometimes all existing efforts to capture this reality appear hollow. My attempts to talk about it feel hollow. And when I see this inadequacy of language, the seriousness of the situation really strikes me. How unnatural this is.

Second is seeing the way language has been hijacked by the oppressor to justify and normalise their systemic oppression. World leaders, people in power, media, all repeating the same narratives that uphold oppressive systems. Through language, they create a reality where violence, brutality, injustice, oppression, hatred, division, and dehumanisation are not only acceptable but normal. And once when we begin to consume that language, we begin to consume the reality this language mirrors. That is what we think is normal, and that is what we experience as normal.

And that's why it’s important to reclaim language. If Wittgenstein says that language is the basis of reality, we must use language that mirrors a new reality. We must resist the oppressor’s language of violence and hatred with language of kindness and love. A language that creates space, that accommodates, that goes beyond binaries, a language that accepts. A language of people, of communities. A language which is natural and indigenous.

We must move past the Western language. Consume language that talks of other worlds. Other kinds of realities. The way is through art. Watch films from other cultures. Read literature and poems from other cultures. Allow yourself to visualise other possibilities of existing. Reading poems from Palestine has brought me closer to their world. There’s an innate kindness, longing, grief, and beauty in these poems, reflective of the unique Palestinian reality.

Red Brocade
– Naomi Shihab Nye

The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
 
Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
 
No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.
 
I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s resistance in reclaiming language. When we consume, when we speak in other languages, languages of different cultures and values, languages of the oppressed, we are resisting the oppressor’s language. We are saying that we reject your divisive language of violence and hatred. The language you use to normalise a reality where oppression is acceptable. We choose to speak the indigenous language of our communities. And it is through this language that we will create pathways for newer realities.

Sending you grace and love. Until next time.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Motto
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.
– Bertolt Brecht

Hello readers!

I wanted to write this post for a very long time now. I made a draft 4 months ago, but I just couldn’t get myself to write anything. I didn’t know what to write, or even how to write. All I could do was absorb. Absorb deeply everything that has been happening.

There have been several humanitarian crises during the 20th and 21st century. Each being equally catastrophic for people. But this was perhaps the first time we are witnessing a genocide being live telecasted to our phones.

Day after day, we watch people being killed in the most inhumane ways imaginable. As if Palestinian life has no value for the world. Massacres of the most hellish kind. And it just isn’t about killing people. Their entire life systems, every infrastructure to support life, destroyed. Razed into rubble. Homes, schools, hospitals, freaking hospitals. Bakeries, restaurants, hotels, shops, markets. The entire Gaza strip became a living, breathing graveyard. And all of this happened in real time on our phones.

The thing that unsettled me the most was silence. I am used to people maintaining silence through the worst of events. Compartmentalizing their lives from the harsh realities of world by calling it “too political”. But this time I couldn’t tolerate this silence. How could people look away from this.

Unable to make sense of anything, I returned to words. I spend my time finding solidarity in words. Words have been a refuge for me, as they have been for people throughout history. These words of resistance provided me with tremendous solidarity and solace in these dark times.

This was my first time reading Palestinian poets. There is a certain radicalness to their words. They are so strongly grounded in their homeland, their communities, their culture and heritage. And all of them carry an aura of grief. That was something that immediately stood out for me. Even if their is no direct mention of loss, the poems speak so loudly of losing one’s homeland. This is the truth of poems from occupied lands. As Uzma Falak, a Kashmiri poet says, “the smallest unit of time in Kashmir is a siege”. Let’s not forget, Kashmir and Filastin have shared the same fate.

Poems from Gaza

Think Of Others
– Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Mohammed Shaheen

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
   (do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
   (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
   (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
   (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
   (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
   (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
   (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).


What is Home?
– Mosab Abu Toha

What is home: 
it is the shade of trees on my way to school
    before they were uprooted.
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding 
    photo before the walls crumbled. 
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants
   slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and 
   put in a museum. 
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and 
   roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house 
   to ashes. 
It is the café where I watched football matches
   and played—

My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold
   all of these? 


Before I Was a Gazan
– Naomi Shihab Nye

I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined,
I was looking for my piece of paper,
proud of this plus that, then multiplied,
not remembering if I had left it
on the table after showing to my uncle
or the shelf after combing my hair
but it was still somewhere
and I was going to find it and turn it in,
make my teacher happy,
make her say my name to the whole class,
before everything got subtracted
in a minute
even my uncle
even my teacher
even the best math student and his baby sister
who couldn’t talk yet.
And now I would do anything
for a problem I could solve.

Poems from Kashmir

KASHMIR
(After Agha Shahid Ali)
– Danyal Hassan

Let me cry out in that void, say it as I can. I write on that void:
Kashmir, Land
Kaschmir, Mother’s—
Cashmere, Stolen
Qashmir, Teardrop
Cashmir, Shoes
Cashmire, Frisking
Kashmere, Blood
Cachemire, Garden history
Cushmeer, Little finger
Cachmiere, Smoke
Cašmir. Siege. (trigger)
Or Cauchemar, Hospitals
In a sea of stories.
Or: Kachmir; PTSD
Kaschemir, Night After Night
Kasmere, Teacups. Cold—
Kachmire, Militants
Kasmir, Trout fish
Kerseymere? Life.
Or Occupation?


In Kashmir: Writing under Occupation (excerpt)
– Ather Zia

they want us to write. in blood.
and only write. of peace.
they capture our land. make us sow rice that is not seed. kill us. rape. 
They tell us we are ungrateful. like children – who do not see what is 
good for them. holding us with many kinds of guns; they grimace at the 
world calling our blood on their faces –
vermillion


Postcard from Kashmir
– Agha Shahid Ali

Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.

I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this the closest
I'll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.

And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.

Other Links to Words of Resistance

I have hyperlinked other poems by these Kashmiri poets in the main title of the poem. Do take out the time to read them. Here are some more links to other words of resistance.

• Arundhati Roy’s words on India’s position on Gaza: Our country has lost its moral compass.

• Arundhati Roy’s words on Kashmir: The Silence Is the Loudest Sound.

• Aamir Aziz’s stirring poem during the anti-CAA protests. Sab Yaad Rakha Jaayega (Everything will be remembered), and the English translation of it.

• And finally, this poem by my beloved Hindi poet Sarveshvar Dayal Saxena. Written ages ago, these words have gained immense relevancy (unfortunately) in our present times. Desh Kagaz Par Bana Naksha Nahin Hota (A country is not a map drawn on paper). Saxena asks some questions whose answer our generation is struggling to find.

  If one room in your house is engulfed in flames would you be able to sleep in the room next to it?
  If one room in your house is full of rotting corpses would you be able to pray in the room next to it?

The People’s Psychology (sharing some of the most relevant insights), recently said:

We have a responsibility to do whatever we can, no matter how small and insignificant and powerless we feel. We have a responsibility to be honest with ourselves and about our emotions and actions. It’s okay if we feel powerless and paralyzed, if we seek escapes and distractions - that’s human - but we need to make sure we don’t stay there.

I think I needed to hear this. I wanted someone to say those words for all of us to hear. Resisting is our responsibility.

Yes, it can be tremendously paralyzing to think about the hugeness of the systems we are fighting against. The fight may even seem pointless. It is easy to dissociate from it. Compartmentalize it into some isolated corner away from our personal lives by calling it “too much political”. As if politics exists only in newspapers and headlines. But the fact is, everything is political. Our lives exist in the very same universe as these headlines.

Resistance becomes a duty. As members of a community, we must resist the forces of injustice hell bent on destroying our communities. We must find solidarity and solace in others’ resistance. That is why these poems exists. To provide shelter to our resistance.

We need to make intentional choices and efforts about the kind of world we want to create, and the values we want for this world. And for this we have to work, we have to do our bit for the resistance. This can take countless forms, and each form matters tremendously. Read, educate yourself, share resources with others. Speak up. Sharing a post on social media makes a big difference. Discuss these issues with people around you. Support independent journalism. Get to work. Here’s a great post I found that conveys what we can do instead.

And lastly, remember that if you ever feel tired and hopeless, struggling to make sense of it, you can always find shelter in words. But never stop singing about the dark times.

Sending you strength and courage.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Note: Much of this post was written prior to the escalation of the ongoing situation in Palestine. I have been seriously disturbed by what’s happening there. I hope words, the only thing that helps me make sense of things, will come to my rescue in the next post.

Hello! And welcome back to another one of my Aakashvaanis. Hope you are doing well. Hope the weather hasn’t been harsh on you. It’s been really weird (surprise, surprise, climate change anyone). This constant shift from rain, cold, humidity, and heat has driven many people sick.

But there are some brief moments where I get the chance to enjoy the rainy weather here. The rain here in Kolkata isn’t always that great. For a perpetually humid city, the aftermath of a shower makes your environment a literal oven. The stickiness is a great buzzkill. So, it’s a great relief when the rain actually sets the mood correct. The skies look broody, there is a coolness in the air, and your mind starts playing old Hindi songs that gently embrace you.

October is a pleasant month. In fact, honestly speaking, it’s one of my favorite months of the year. I always call it “the month where I listen to Lamhe Guzar Gaye on loop”. Because that’s what October feels like. A recollection of all the moments that have gone by. The sense of yet another year coming to an end starts to sweep in, accompanied by a shimmering hope for the few months. Year ends are always difficult for me. The ticking of life’s clock sounds a bit louder around this time. But October is that sweet window where I can reflect in peace.

Two things have been occupying my mind since October began. The fact this is the first time I am living in my city (after almost 6 years) without having to be somewhere else, and how rituals form the foundation of everyday existence. I have come to love the word mundane or roz-marra, a little more in these past few months.

To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings.

— David Whyte

I recently came across this poem, titled “Everything is Waiting For You”. It not only reminded me of Pat Schneider’s “The Patience of Ordinary Things”, but also resonated so deeply with how I’ve been feeling for the most part of this year.

When I came back here in November last year, I came back with the usual mindset of leaving. Ever since I left home for college, I have always returned in the hopes of leaving. So much so that I was never able to live here fully. I strongly believed that my life was somewhere else. That everything was waiting for me, somewhere else.

A disconnect with your present strongly affects your connection with the future. Despite having a world around me, I did not allow myself be a part of it. This led to a really rocky start. I led my daily life half-heartedly. Did not feel any excitement. Always planning of finding means to escape from here. Always daydreaming of a life I could be living in a different city. And trust me, it wasn’t fun.

But as they say, settling takes time.

The world I was familiar with was no longer there. Mostly because the people of those world were missing. All the friends I grew up with had left the city by now. That meant it was going to be just me, starting from scratch. Building a new life in the same place felt like a herculean task I wasn’t ready for. But I tried.

When I look back at this process, I am coming to realise that I wasn’t so alone (as much as I’d like to believe). The physical distance from my friends, from the life I could have instead, made me repeatedly feel abandoned. And this feeling only distanced me from the life I was living in the present. And I ended up abandoning my present.

I used to think that “live in the moment” or “enjoy the present” were vague overrated statements that had zero value. But having managed to do that in these past few months, I can confirm that it’s the most valuable life advice. However, the process of “living in the present” can be confusing, and overwhelming at first. I feel the whole glorification of this “present moment” is majorly responsible for it. By making it sound like something magical, we have created an air of mystification around it. But it’s not that complicated actually.

Here are two things that helped me in this process:

Honoring the Ordinariness of Life Around You

I think everyone eventually reaches a point where they have this realization that life might not actually be all about glamour and grandeur. Life is actually about all those million moments in between. Those tiny little moments in your daily life that happen everyday, but never exactly repeat. Life, in its entirety, is plain and ordinary. And honoring this ordinariness is what connects you with your present.

In an earlier post on my thoughts on adulting, I spoke about how I derive hope from these ordinary moments. I keep saying this, I drink tea almost everyday but I’ve never had the exact same taste twice. It probably comes from me honoring the dailyness of this act. Tea making, and tea drinking is something so universal. It’s one of those rare acts that connects our lives with those around us. Such is the greatness of ordinary life.

But how does one honor this ordinariness?

Gratitude for This Ordinary Life

By being grateful for these million little things that make up your single day, day after day, one honors the ordinariness of their life. Not living them passively but acknowledging them. This is how you witness their greatness. The way these moments keep coming back to you in different forms each day. Eventually you start appreciating them. As you get habituated to these moments, you start looking forward to them.

For instance, it’s lunch for me. The most exciting meal of the day. By now, it’s the same 5-6 things we make, week after week. Yet, I always look forward to lunch. Somedays mother feels a little extra energy and makes raita. On weekends, I take over the kitchen. Make some lip-smacking spicy noodles with a side of manchurians. I repeat the same menu on most weekends, yet the excitement still remains the same. To do all the fine chopping, prepare a spicy thick gravy, fry the manchurians, and above all, the garnish of dhania and sesame seeds. The way dhania elevates the freshness and the smell of anything it is added to, and the sight of sesame seeds instantly embracing the manchurians makes it feel like it’s straight out of a 5-star restaurant. And nothing makes me more happy than eating this lunch. Every single weekend.

Here is a small list of things I honor and I am thoroughly grateful for:

• My brother tells me about his day at school and how his teacher gave him a smiley because he did all his tasks correctly.

• I find an empty bus after a really tiring day, and get the whole seat to myself.

• I go for these ferry rides closer to the sunset and watch the sun floating down the Howrah Bridge, coloring the entire Hooghly river marmalade.

• Being able to finely chop vegetables. Patiently peeling those tiny garlic cloves. Setting up the the vegetables on a tray that form a great color palette. Red, pink, green, white.

• A good meal (chana dal and rice for me).

• I like to take these long walks, especially inside the lake area near my house. I never get bored of it. There won’t be a single centimetre of space there which I wouldn’t have covered. During late evening, cool breeze gushes through your face, if you walk closer to the lake. Huge canopy of tress welcoming you like a court waiting for it’s emperor to enter.

  

The Patience of Ordinary Things

by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Everything is Waiting for You

by David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

That’s all for now. It has been an eventful month. After a really long time, October presented itself as the month I really enjoyed myself the most. And yet, it was also the month that brought with itself the most devasting moments of our history. Helplessness and despair peaked as I ran out of my already exhausted resources of meaning making.

I hope you find comfort. I hope the ordinariness around you supports you and replenishes you. We need energy to speak against these injustices. We need energy to be ourselves despite power systems stopping us from doing so.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

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SPOILER ALERT FOR THE TV SHOW THE BEAR

And once again, we have something new to obsess over. A friend made a funny observation when I said grief is my favourite genre. They said: tell me you are a therapist without telling me you are a therapist. 🤡

Well, I had no idea what I was getting into before I started watching The Bear. The premise was simple, and it was categorised as comedy/musical. That’s cool. A big time chef, Carmen Berzatto (Carmie) working in the world’s best restaurant leaves his job to take over his family diner. Nothing too heavy. Yeah? Until we find out that Carmie took over the family diner after his brother, Mikey, a drug addict, killed himself, out of the blues. Over the course of 18 episodes the show puts you in a pot full of grief, stirring the pot slowly and steadily, till you find yourself completely absorbed in it.

The Past Lives With Us

The first and foremost thing that stood out for me was a beautifully accurate portrayal of the past. Often, films and tv shows depict the past as something external, a separate entity on its own. It’s easier to divide time in linear boxes when telling a story. But more often than not, time does not work that way in real life. Conventional storytelling conveys the idea of people being “stuck” in their past, therefore being unable to move on with their lives.

Past is not an event to be resolved. As if you move on from your past, your history gets absolved, and you start afresh. We carry our histories. The past lives with us. What changes is our relationship with it, and good storytelling tries to capture precisely that.

The episodes move swiftly between past and present. They take you through all those crucial moments that shaped these characters (referred to as chefs from here on) that we come to know very intimately.

What I love the most about this show is how real it feels. The show plays brilliantly with grayness that is akin to what we experience in real life. You just can’t form an absolute opinion about any character, because there is no right or wrong here. We dip into the most vulnerable parts of our chefs’ lives. In no time you start seeing these chefs for the people they are and not some stereotypical characters used as accessories for telling the main story.

In its attempt to show how the past lives with us, The Bear manages to be one of the most realistic representations of grief. Much like the compartmentalisation of time, grief, too, is seen as something that can be separated from our present. Something that can be successfully resolved. Popular notions of grief suggest that if a person continues to grieve, they are “stuck” in their past. One is expected, yet again, to move on. As if grief is a one time event.

Grief stays. Like our past, we carry our grief. What changes is our relationship with it.

Grief Lingers

Loss is an inherent part of life. Therefore, grieving becomes a natural part in the process of life. The Bear does not restrict to the loss of people (something that is commonly misunderstood) but rather covers the widest terrains of grief. Loss is loss. It has no size, shape, or form. All of us are carrying our losses with us each day as we continue to strive in our lives.

To invest fully in life, we must mourn the past that never was and the futures that never can be. — Dr. Jonathan Shedler, Psychotherapist

Like I said before, one does not get over their loss, it’s our relationship with our loss that needs to change. This is what The Bear captures the best. It shows what it truly means to change as a person. To become better versions of ourselves. A process that requires a patient negotiation with our past and with our grief.

In one of the rare instances where Carmie opens up about his grief, we get a glimpse of the past he carries, and his relationship with it. He confesses to a group of strangers that since he took over the family restaurant, he’s been trying to fix it. And he feels that in trying to do so, he is trying to fix his relationship with his brother, and maybe even fix his whole family.

It becomes clear that maybe the Berzattos weren’t the best of the families. They were dysfunctional, chaotic, had many differences, but still loved each other. Carmie felt the most supported by his brother who gave him the confidence to be himself. But when Mikey grew distant from him, Carmie felt hurt. And his entire pursuit of being this world class chef was an effort to get back his brother’s validation. So when he finally receives a note left by Mikey, after his death, it breaks him.

As I passed through the lives of our other chefs, I could see their struggles with their past as well. Natalie, Carmie and Mike’s sister, longs for her mother’s love and affection. She longs for a healthier relationship with her brother, especially after losing one. In some ways, she longs for a family. Similarly, Richie, a close friend of Berzattos, finds himself reaching the absolute point of loss after Mikey’s death. He finds himself out of place. With nothing remaining from his past he begins to question the meaning of his present.

The reason why I loved Richie’s character so much is because he somewhat manages to reconcile with his past, alter his relationship with his grief, and commit himself fully to his present and his future. The seventh episode of the second season, “Forks”, is one of my favorite ones. Season 2 starts with Richie having a full blown existential crisis. Everything around him has changed. The city he knew all his life is not the same anymore. He lost his wife, lost the possibility of having a family life. And while everyone around him is busy adapting to change, he finds himself lost. A lost man with no purpose. A man who doesn’t fit anywhere.

Richie’s character growth shows that it’s never too late for change. Change requires negotiation with your past and with your grief. Change requires acceptance, and giving yourself another chance. Accepting that past will always be a reminder of who you were, so that you can find ways for becoming who you want to be. Richie finds a new meaning for his life. And I feel it wouldn’t have been possible without finding ways to carry your grief into your present.

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love

— Allen Ginsberg

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Let It Rip

Losing something or someone is never a one time thing. The loss unfolds in layers. Layers as deep as your connection with what you lost. Grief only shows how deeply you loved. And as you continue grieving, you continue loving. This is what I wanted to say when I was talking about changing your relationship with your past, and with your losses.

The past stays. The grief stays. Love lives on.

People never truly leave us. They keep finding ways of coming back to us. To remind us how strong our love really is. One day out of nowhere you stumble upon something that belonged to them and it feels as if they never left. You meet people who knew them and they share stories of their connection and you find newer sides of this person. There’s always so much to know about a person, even when they are no more, that their presence continues to live with us in newer and newer ways.

I would have never imagined that this show would make me cry so much. But it did. It constantly reminded me how difficult losses can feel. How hard, and tiresome, and emotionally draining it is to cope with them. How it leaves a gap so wide, nothing can ever fill that.

I feel grief is not so much about filling the gap. It is about leaving it as it is. Everything leaves behind a mark. A reminder that it once existed and what its existence meant for you.

Mikey would often say to Carmie, “Let It Rip”. These words almost feel like Rilke’s reminder: Let everything happen to you. No feeling is final.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

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SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FILMS MASAAN AND LIFE OF PI

Not getting a chance to say goodbye is, perhaps, one of the most cruelest fate to receive. A simple acknowledgment of the passing and letting go. Of the end. I can’t help myself but think of the famous Andy Bernard quote from The Office

I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.

I find this to be a great absurdity of life. How, despite all our efforts to view things linearly, we can’t really box our experiences into a straight line. Oh! How we wish we could separate the beginnings from the endings. If only we could point our fingers to these moments. This is where it all began. This is how it ended. A sense of closure goes a long way in a pretty much uncertain life.

When I first watched Masaan, I remember feeling very confused. It was initially difficult to keep up with the two separate storylines. One was a playful, blooming tale of an innocent love. And the other, a tale of carrying the ghosts of your past.

Richa Chadda’s tale follows the aftermath of her character’s rock bottom and takes us through the painstaking, and yet patient journey that Devi makes upwards. It’s the journey of a new beginning, forever haunted by the mistakes of the past. This plays out in contrast to Vicky and Shweta’s tale of a budding romance. One shows us how hard new beginnings can be. That, what has ended, never really ends. And the other is all about the hope and ambition of new chapters in life. The dissonance sat heavily on me.

We find ourselves on a familiar crossroad by the end of the film. As Deepak is emerging from one of the most difficult goodbyes of his life, another hello awaits for Devi. That’s where the film ends. The meeting of these two worlds was something that I could have never imagined.

Maybe life doesn’t redeem itself but gives us a chance to say hello again. To start over. This is what Masaan meant for me. This frame. It gave me faith that that despite the most tragic things that could happen, life always gives you second chances. To begin again. To let go.

And what do I say about this film. So much grief. So so much. This entire sequence was tremendous amount of grief to take in.

As Pi recalls the moment when he was finally rescued, he remembers breaking down and crying hard. It wasn’t the fact that he survived the sea, or that he made it out alive, which broke him. It left me with so much pain for Pi. Who did he survive for? At that moment, what meaning did life make? What do you live for when all is lost? How do you begin again?

Here is a man, who lost everything. His hometown, his family, the person he loved, the person he was. And he did not even get a single chance to say goodbye to any of them. The suddenness of his loss. I could feel that shattering emotion when even the last chance of coming close to a moment resembling goodbye was not for him to keep.

That’s what Richard Parker, the tiger, represented. All things come to an end. The good and the bad. They all become a part of us, as we become a part of them. To bid farewell, is then, to part ways with a part of us. A part that stayed with us, and made us who we are. Even something as bad as a maneater helped Pi to survive and be the person he became.

So then, a moment to say goodbye becomes the saving grace in a life full of loss and grief.

Both Masaan and Life of Pi showed us that beginnings are endings in making and endings are beginnings waiting to happen. Devi, Deepak, and Pi, were faced with tremendous losses. Endings that weren’t in their control. But they found their way to newer beginnings.

Beginnings and Endings are never the two opposites of a line but rather two points on a continuum. Hellos and Goodbyes are moments that capture these points. I feel sometimes these moments become really important. When I look back at the lives of these three characters, I feel the lack of closure they experienced. Their grief. The most beautiful hellos of their life could not see the face of their goodbyes. Even another series of fresh beginnings could never fill that gap.

When I look back at my own journey, I often think about some important points that defined the most precious moments and relations in my life. So many hellos come to mind. The pandemic took away the chance of saying goodbye to all these sacred hellos that had come to be an integral part of me.

I wish I could say goodbye to my roommate who became my constant companion for most of my college life. I wish I could say goodbye to my friends who made college memorable for me. The countless adventures we made. I wish I could say goodbye to Bangalore. The city that saw me evolve. The city that witnessed my growth as a person. The city that gave me all. What sucks the most is that even during the second time, when older goodbyes led to newer hellos in Bangalore, I was robbed of the chance to say bye again.

I know that these people and these moments will forever stay with me. But I only wish I had the moment where I could look them in the eye and thank them for all they did. To tell them what they meant to me. So take every chance you can, and thank the ones around you. Thank them as parts of you.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello and welcome back. This week we have been obsessing yet again over the idea of home. I can’t help but find something new each time. In fact I might as well make this my full time pursuit. If I can’t find a physical home, might as well search for the meaning of it, eh.

A major chunk of my ideas about adulting have revolved around home. In my previous post Thoughts on Adulting (I) and (II), I have mostly spoken about my experience of living alone in a new city, and coming back to the city I left from. In fact, leaving and returning have been quite recurrent thoughts for me (read this post).

And so, I have been wondering a lot about people around me. Those who’ve been around me even before I existed. Those who’ve been here, no matter what. People who never left. People who always stayed. None of my age. It’s my building’s caretaker. Our cook. The panwari across the corner. Owner of that grocery store. The ironer right next to our building. The photocopy guy who has known me since I was a child never misses an opportunity to remind people of that. Every time I go to him, he starts telling the tale of how he has seen me grow, from a small kid carrying his school notebooks for photocopying to this giant adult who doesn’t need his help anymore because everything has become digital now.

All these people have seen me grow. And yet they have always looked the same to me. Nothing about them ever changes. The way they look. The way they speak. The things they talk about. Things that matter to them. And above all, their places. They never changed their place. I can be away from this city for years, and yet, every time I return, they’ll always be there. Right where I last saw them. Where they’ve always been. I am becoming more and more conscious of this.

In the last six years, I have been in-and-out of this place. I remember during my college years, I was always thrilled to come back to the city where I had grown up. I liked the idea of being welcomed. All these people that I just mentioned, would instantly smile seeing me return. Aa Gaye? You came back? They would ask. Bahut lambe samay baad dikhe hain. Theek to hain na? Seeing you after a long time. Are you doing alright?

This sense of familiarity made me believe in the moment that this is where I belong. Nothing communicates belonging more than a place to return to.

This is my second longest stay in this city after the pandemic. No moving out. No coming back. I find myself becoming increasingly observant of my daily surroundings. Suddenly, these people, these places, that have been here for ages, appear new to me.

I was amongst the initial set of people from my friends circle to leave this city for higher education. Gradually that number increased. Sooner or later, everyone left. Now that I am back, hardly anyone I grew up with lives here any longer. The ones who do, are on their way to move. “There’s nothing left here”, said one of my oldest friends who was telling me about our other companions who left and settled in different cities. He is about to do the same.

Isn’t that considered a passage of rites? To move out of your home during your twenties. I look at these people around me, who’ve always been here to welcome me. They are not from here. They, too, left their homes. And found a place to settle. Each had their own reasons. Work, providing financial support for their families, starting their own families. Each found their own reasons to stay. And now like trees, as old as the fabric of time itself, they continue to exist here. With their roots deep in the ground. They are now a part of this place. They are this place.

I feel a sudden rush of curiosity and gratitude realising this.

What made them stay? How does one find their place? How do you become sure of it? That this is it. This is where you want to stop. This is where the search for the best ends. I look at my parents, their friends, my neighbours. People who’ve been living in these same places for forty, fifty years. And it’s not that they never got a chance to go beyond. They did. Travelled to other cities. Saw glimpses all other possibilities. Cities, places, jobs that would have meant a different life. And yet, they chose to stay back. Or return. To this place they call their hometown. How does one find a place to root themselves?

Maybe it was a sense of responsibility that held them back. Commitments. Obligations. Duty towards their family. Maybe they genuinely found everything they needed, right here. Maybe they found comfort here. Each has their own reason. But the fact is, they stayed. So that they could be here to welcome the ones who left. Ones like me. Who never found their places except for that brief moment when they were welcomed.

I write this as a letter of gratitude. A tribute to all those who stayed back. Thank you for being here. For always reminding me that some things never change. That no matter wherever this search for finding my place leads me, I will always have a place to return to. People to welcome me. A place that will remember me, even on days I forget to. Isn’t that what belonging feels like? A surety that you will be remembered.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

*SPOILERS AHEAD for the film Gulmohar*

Long ago, I remember driving through the curvy uphill of Pushkar with my mama (uncle). He works in construction, building houses for people. Pragmatic as per the standards of early youth, I asked him: “why do people spend so much time and money in building houses?” I had grown seeing people dedicate their entire lives to building a house of their own. It’s almost as if to have a house of one’s own is what they live for. Films and songs, too, have often glorified this. But I never understood the appeal of it. Why can’t you just rent a place? Or get a flat?

My mama, the architect behind hundreds of places which people call their home, glanced at me with eyes that carried a sage’s calming wisdom. Before he began working in house construction, he had his own long-standing tryst with homes. Mama never had a single place to call his home. He lost his childhood home where the entire extended family lived, in a dispute. They moved from one rented house to another, till the time mama could finally stand on his own two feet and build a home of his own. Over the years, I have lived in three different houses. Yet, it is my mama’s/naani’s house that I call home.

Image Source: Hotstar

Gulmohar (2023) is perhaps one of the most delicate portrayal of home and belongingness. It captures the complexities of attachment and relationships that continuously make and break in the larger system of what can be called a home.

The idea of home, more like questions about belonging to a place called home, have stayed with me for as long as I can remember. I was born in a place of which I have very faint memories of. I grew up as a toddler in another, which bares witness to the purity of my childhood. The closest I felt to having a home. My teenage years were spent in another place, which is where I have been living since. And yet, it is naani’s/mama’s house that I still consider my home. The great naani baadi as we call it. For long it has been glorified as a refuge, an abode for those who left their homes. A place of return. For daughters and for their children. To me it also marks the return to the primordial feminine, the anima in us.

I saw the film through the eyes of Arun and I have to admit it was Bajpayee’s acting which truly made me feel for the character. To the extent where I could see parts of my own life struggles in him. A pure moment of catharsis straight from Aristotle’s Poetics. From the very beginning, Arun gives us a glimpse of the anxiety of losing one’s home. The news of his mother selling their family home and his son deciding to live separately is a burden far too heavy for him. After all, he only wants his family to stay together, to live together in Gulmohar villa.

Home is never a physical space. That is a house. A chaar-diwari (four walls) as we say. Home is ghar. House is makaan. Gulmohar precisely helped me visualise such thoughts.

घर बनते नहीं, बसाए जाते हैं

You don’t build a home, you settle in one

And that is all Arun wants. The new penthouse in Gurugram, no matter how luxurious it might be, will still be another house. A place to return from office. But Gulmohar villa, his home, was a place to return to oneself. Return to the center of your safety. Because where else will you go when the outside world leaves you confused with no place. We see this idea of return take the limelight as the film progresses. Aditya and Amrita are two other characters who struggle in the outside world. While Aditya is trying to create a place of his own, separate from his family, Amrita is navigating the paths of her sexuality.

The challenge to find a place, to stand still, and be yourself in the outside world is rather a difficult one. For Aditya it is not just living alone and making a home of his own, it is also a matter of creating an identity of his own, on his own. Similarly for Amrita, embracing her identity in terms of her sexuality becomes as important as coming to terms with it.

For most part of the film, they’re running. Running around, running away. Doesn’t that feel familiar? Don’t we often find ourselves running quite often in this outside world? The constant pull-and-push, the effort to hold tight, finding your ground. The constant state of making your way through the ever changing complexities of daily life. So tiring. And yet we run. But where do go when we can’t run anymore? Where do we go when we can’t escape from life anymore?

Home. Ghar. A place where not just you, but all your anxieties settle down.

And that is what Gulmohar villa did for these characters.

“Home is not where you were born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.”
— Naguib Mahfouz

Home is not a place where one is born, and for Arun’s character, it is quite literal. We discover that Arun was adopted into the Batra family, and yet he found his place here. The question about his birth parents trouble him for the longest. Of another life he could have had. Of another home, of another family. Moreover I see that grief, and that pain, as he tries to reconcile with the fact that he was left. That he was discarded. One can only imagine the agony Arun felt when he realised that his father did not leave behind his home for him. Hearing the word adopted in his father’s will conjured all his deeper anxieties of being an outsider in this family.

The outside world with all its absurdities makes it easy for us to feel like an outsider, a stranger. We spend our entire lives making persistent efforts to make our place in this world. College, office, work, communities, people, places, we try to make our place, time and time again. Because after all, deep down, our greatest anxiety is not knowing our place in this big wide world. The moment when Arun reads his father’s will that referred to him as their adopted child, snatched away that place from him. Home is the place made for us. If this isn’t his home, where does he belong?

What is a home then? What did it mean for Arun? For Aditya? For Amrita? For my mama? For me? A place to call one’s own. Is that all?

Home is a reminder that there is still a place for you in this world. The world outside is too big and it’s not difficult to lose yourself trying to make it through. But no matter where you are or where you go, you will always have a place to return to. Return to yourself.

For the majority of my life I have struggled to find a place I could call home. My naani’s house comes closest to it, which also happens to be in my hometown. I hardly get to visit it. Maybe once every two year or so. But the minute I pass through the main door of that house, I know I am home. It's the place I left from. It’s the place I return to. There is a sudden ease in my body. I find myself more expressive. It’s the place I spent countless summers with my whole family. Where the only thing I cared for was being myself.

In the most cramped up, filth ridden, chaotic lanes of my city, where it’s difficult to even find space on the footpath to walk, one can find gulmohar flowers adorning the roads. The blossoming of gulmohar signifies the coming of new year, new beginnings. Gulmohar provides us shade, something that is much needed after the first rains of April. Personally, it’s the name gulmohar, that shines through for me. Gulmohar, gul mohar, the stamp of a flower. Flowers that bloom, regardless of everything.

Every time I pass by a gulmohar, I stop instinctually as someone passing by a temple. I look and see this huge tree with flaming red flowers. I want to stop here. I want to pause here. I want to stay here for a while. We often say that life is a journey where we are constantly moving, striving, falling, failing, flying, dropping. But under the shade of gulmohar, I want to stop. Remember, home is a place where all our attempts to escape cease. The naming of this home as Gulmohar villa couldn’t be more apt. The end of Gulmohar villa marked the beginning of a new chapter in each character’s life. A renewal.

Home is where the search for one’s place in this world ends. Home is where you can be you and only you. A place where people will love you just for that. A place to call one’s own. A place to be.

जिएँ तो अपने बग़ीचे में गुलमोहर के तले,

मरें तो ग़ैर की गलियों में गुलमोहर के लिए।

To live in your garden underneath the gulmohar

And to die in the stranger’s lanes for that gulmohar

— दुष्यंत कुमार/Dushyant Kumar

When Life Gives You Melon

Choose Water Over Choly 🍉

Aakash xx

Hello! Your friendly neighbourhood dazed and confused adult is back. I have been lost for a while. Lost in my thoughts, in my environment, in work. Basically, just lost. I can’t say that I have found my way, because well who has. But, I am in a different place right now. A café. Where else would I go?

I am turning 24 this week. Very very scared, for some reason. I mean, it’s 24 now, then 25, then before you know…BAM. You’re 30. THIRTY! I can’t even imagine. Birthdays have always been rocky for me. A gentle reminder about the passage of time in my life. And it got me thinking. Why do we talk so much about adulting? I mean, till 20, even I used to find all the fuss about it quite unnecessary. It’s just growing up, right? You get a job, do what you like to do, get paid for it, and live the way you want to live. Sounds fun. Can’t wait for it. What an idiot, huh!

When I was writing about my initial experiences on adulthood, it was more from an optimistic, hopeful, looking forward to it attitude (read it here). Now, it’s more of a confused, lost, directionless, braindead, when will this end attitude. Half the time I don’t even realize what is happening. And the moments where I have some clarity, are so so brief. Therefore, I would like to share these precious moments with you.

Dazed and Confused

As a Led Zeppelin song, it’s a really enjoyable thing. As a feeling to live with, not so. From what I understand there is a huge bubble burst that happens, once you finish college. Now, this bubble isn’t something that pops in a single go. In fact, once you turn 18, it starts to pop in layers. I left home at 18, and started living on my own. I was in a BIG university, and it almost felt like I have been thrown in a miniature world of its own. There were kids from all over the country, each with a completely unique set of life experience. And over the years, it was a gradual and impactful realisation that there are endless possibilities to life. You meet more people, exchange ideas, make new experiences. You start forming your own ideas and values about life, about the world, about the things you see around yourself. And suddenly, another layer of bubble pops. The world outside is so different from the one inside your head.

So I take an extension — postgrad. Still unsure of what needs to be done in life, with a brief examination of some core values, I am able to make at least one decision that would keep me occupied for the next two years. In a blip, I am now a graduate. I have studied for 5 years now. There’s no way I can take any further extensions. The real world awaits you. Time for one grand fucking reality check. Another layer of bubble pops. The world is far more worse than you thought. As you are lying on your bed, on the remains of your hopes, you find yourself being dazed and confused.

Get up, clean your bed, brush your teeth and wash your face. Make your morning beverage (tea for me), open your laptop, and dive in the ocean of unknown. After leaving my first job, my career tanked even before it could take off. Each day its getting difficult to not think in absolutes. Will I ever get a job that upholds my values? Will that job pay well? I always use to consider money a very secondary thing. Now it’s out here for a payback.

What are my values, though? How relevant are they? How flexible can I be? I forgot what I wanted. To help others…? But how can I, when I can’t even help myself. What do I want? From this world that I never stop complaining about. From life I never stop shitting about. From myself. How will I know all this, when everything around me just keeps passing by in a rush. What the fuck is actually happening?

And just like that, it’s time for bed.

To Hope Is To Push A Rock

If you know me even remotely, you would definitely know that despite all my talks about despair, I somehow end up talking about hope. A very I contain multitudes moment. Like seriously, what I said in the previous section, I feel all that, and that too very intensely. And it is with the same intensity I feel hope. Let me show you.

I have for the longest wondered, why do we persist? Why do we continue? Why, despite everything pulling me back on most days, I choose to do what I do? Things haven't been kind off lately. The fact that I still hope, amazes me. How absurd?

I walk past the same buildings, the same roads, the same lanes, over and over. For the past 10 years. Still, I find one small lane somewhere that I had never been to before. That's thrilling. One day I was walking through the same route I had been taking every week for the past few months. And I stopped somewhere because I saw a really gorgeous building. At first I wondered how was it possible that I was seeing this building for the first time. I realised I was looking at it from the opposite direction, which is why it appeared brand new to me. Silly me. But in those 5 minutes I was really amazed by the building which I had known for years. Perhaps the best description of my feelings comes from what Schrodinger had to say about his view of the world: "And yet we are astonished". This is the only world we have. We have no other comparison to form our expectations. And yet, we wonder.

That is hope for me. Having the chance to see something for the first time despite having left nothing to see. Hope, like many other good things in life, often finds us when we fail to see it. It’s a cup of perfect tea after a really really sucky day. Let me explain. I am very particular about making tea. The water is to milk ratio has to be perfect. Tea is to sugar ratio has to be on point. Ginger has to be grated and not crushed. Water goes first, then milk. Have to boil it for just the right amount of time. I follow this process very diligently every time. Par tab bhi, I never get the same cup. It’s always different each time. Sometimes it’s a little more sweet, sometimes the tea leaves a strong after taste. Kabhi bahut zyaada paani lagti hai, kabhi bahut zyaada gaadhi. But there’s that one day, where I can say just by the color if it, that it’s a perfect cup. Hope is that cup of tea for me. When the days have been really shitty, and I have nothing left in me to expect anything, hope presents itself to me. I make tea each day, because I hope.

I still don't know what I’m doing in life. I haven't for the most part. I have no clue what I'm suppose to do next, where my career is going, how will I earn money for myself. These thoughts continuously bother me.
But then one day out of nowhere, a cool breeze blows through my hair after a really sweaty day, a bubble pops, and I am convinced that maybe it's not so bad after all.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello! And welcome back to AakashVaani! Hope you had a fairly decent start to the year. Like a bottle of cold drink, mine started with absolute boost, but quickly fizzled out. Which is not that bad, since I prefer cold drinks without all the bubbles. I am very happy to announce that AakashVaani has found a new home, Substack. I can do so much more here. I always wanted to read out these letters to you, and now I actually can. The layout, slightly more fancier than Tinyletter, is still minimal. Hope you like these new changes.

Once again, I have been thinking about cities, and which city I belong to. This thought has always bothered me for the longest. And recently, I had this realization that more than actually being somewhere, I enjoy the to-and-fro, the travel. So when I was in college, travelling to home was more fun than actually being there. In fact, what made my stay pleasant, was knowing that I’ll have to travel back to college. I have always enjoyed being in this state of transit. I don’t quite understand the peculiarity of it. For example, I would always take public transport, or choose the longest route to reach somewhere. And whenever I’d recollect being somewhere, or the time I spent there, the memory of travelling would shine strong.

I am one of those rare people who enjoys sitting at airport. One of my fond memories from college days, is taking the bus to the airport. Bangalore airport is quite far from the city, so a bus ride would give me ample amount of time and exposure to glance through the city, as I made my way out of it. I once walked all the way from my office to my hostel, which was around 8 kilometres. It’s such a blissful experience to walk through neighbourhoods and inner lanes. This experience in itself has always justified the tiring walks I have put myself through, when I could have taken a bus instead. I adore houses, especially the standalone bungalow types, amazed at the effort and resources people put in building these structures. How each house is converted into a home. And no two houses look same, because each is a product of love.

I will do anything to stretch my commute time, and hence these habits, to stay in transit. Long back, I was listening to an interview of my beloved poet Vinod Kumar Shukla. He said something that most accurately describes my feelings towards being in transit. Talking about his own fixation with transit, he described how his going is always tied to his coming. That, whenever he leaves for somewhere, he leaves with a state of returning. Only the state of returning can fulfill the state of leaving. And that’s what being in transit is for me. The distance between the two.

But when it comes to treading on the roads of memory, being in transit can be extremely hard. It is usually an exciting experience, to be lost on roads. I am the last person to open Google Maps. I will keep on walking till I find my way. However, I wish there was Google Maps for navigating the paths of nostalgia and the uncertainty of future. Getting lost in the memories of yesteryears is not always a fond experience. I find it as a strong indication of loosing directions. Remember, how when we loose something, our first response is: check where you last saw it.

And in this present state of transition, as I experience uncertainty, confusion, and dread, I am asking myself everyday: where did I last see it? A sense of hope, some direction, some conviction, tiny bits of motivation. Where did I last see content? Was it college? Was it Bangalore of 2019-20. Was it the few months before the pandemic hit? I think so. Its always easy to find comfort in past. Especially when there isn’t much to look forward to in the present. And then I get carried by this unbearable conviction that I’d be much happier somewhere else, probably Bangalore or Delhi, or maybe some new city…

But somehow I bring myself back. I ask myself, what was it about being in transit that I liked the most. Why did I stay up the whole night, to reach at 4am on the airport, when my flight was hours away? Why did I walk 8km after an entire day of work, when I could have just taken a rapido? I wanted to experience the quiet of the dawn, the sunrise from the huge window panels at the airport. I wanted to see what colors people chose to decorate their houses, and the tiny plants they kept in their balconies. I guess taking the direct route to my destination would not have allowed that.

And so each day, despite being down with uncertainty and confusion, I actively remind myself of the perks of being in transit. I get to pet and feed a really cute pair of cat and dog, each night. Everyday! Unbelievable. I get to cook food more often (only if my mother would allow me to do that more often). I have so much more time to read and write such things to feel a little hopeful again. I get to take these long walks where I end up clicking hundreds of random photographs. Each evening, I get to visit the lake, and I swear that breeze has meditative powers. Above all, I finally get to take music classes, and reignite a small part of my childhood (by going to those evening classes).

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

I don't know where I picked this quote from. My mind tells me that it was Abed Nadir from Community, but having looked through most of his dialogues, I couldn't find this one. Maybe it's because I don't remember the words correctly, but over the months I have repeatedly summarized the sentiment of this in all sorts of ways. It goes like:

Maybe the toughest doors to unlock are the ones that have no keys...

Honestly, it took me a little while to grasp this one. It's one of those statements that I have reinterpreted time and and time again, and each time I am left with a sense of puzzlement and intrigue, content and confusion. So here is me engaging in this dialogue yet again, because it has been on my mind off-lately. 

When I look back at my life (I know 23 years aren't that much but still), something that stands out is my affection for rooms, more specifically a room of my own. For the first 10 years, I did not have a room to myself. I had to share my space with my parents. This also meant that anyone could access my personal space. I could not lock the door, and even if I did manage to close the door, I could not lock it from inside. The inability to lock myself from within meant that I could be locked from outside. This also happens to be a very popular parenting trick. And so, I often found myself getting locked inside rooms, whose doors I could not unlock. The only way out was waiting for someone to free me from there. As a child I believed that the toughest doors to unlock were the ones that were locked from outside. Ones which had a lock with a key that somebody had control over.  And that somebody was never me.

I was 11 when I was given an entire room to myself. My excitement could not be contained within those four walls. I felt a certain kind of freedom being inside that room. And I realized that freedom came from realizing that I had the power to lock and unlock the door from inside. And so I did that. Time and time again. Whenever I was sad, angry, annoyed, or I did not feel like speaking to anyone, and be by myself, I would just come inside my room and lock the door from inside. Simple acts of power. And so every room that I subsequently entered was a room that I could lock and unlock from within. With of course a brief exception when I was staying in a overly crowded boys hostel, where privacy is treated like a joke, much like everything else. 

The power to lock and unlock the door from within meant that I could stay inside for as long as I wanted. Now, over time, maybe this ability or power became a little implicit. I chose to stay inside for longer periods, or kept coming back to my room, and lock it from within, more and more often. Soon, my room became a sort of comfort zone. Not just the room in my home, but all the rooms that I rented over the years. I still remember how I would quickly come back to my hostel room after classes, instead of socializing. Not just that, anything that didn't sit well with me was a good enough reason to lock myself within. Somewhere in the process of escaping discomfort, I got comfortable with the escape. 

What I realized is that when you get too comfortable with a sense of familiarity, anything remotely unfamiliar brings a sense of discomfort. Even if that something unfamiliar has a sense of goodness to it. I would always prefer to be inside this room, both literally and metaphorically. So much so that I started to believe that being in this room is my only option. It's the only way to go about things. Much later, I found another explanation for this behaviour. When the world around me felt so unstable, and unsafe, my room was probably the only place that provided a morsel of safety and control. When I found my surrounding extremely chaotic and as a result felt extremely helpless, the only thing that was in my control was staying inside my room. At least, here I felt somewhat protected once I had locked the door from inside. It was easy to shut myself off from things that felt threatening. This made sense. The idea of comfort zone which I visualized through the imagery of a room. 

Over the course of time, talking to different people about their comfort zones, listening to their stories, watching them describe their comfort zone, their room, in details, what it meant to them, helped me understand this space better. Even though we have a perfectly reasonable explanation to stay inside, i.e., our safety, I wonder if we forget a few things in the process. We are locked inside a room that has no key. A room which is not locked from the outside, but rather from the inside. Nobody pushed us or locked us inside. Nobody is coming to rescue us. We chose to remain inside. We may have made that choice due to whatever factors, factors that were in our control, factors that weren't in our control. But it's a choice we made. And the thing about choices is, that they are endless. 

Does this mean that staying inside the room is the only choice. Or, was it the only choice during a specific period of time in your life. A choice that helped you survive during that time. But are we willing to step outside and see what the world looks like now. The loud noises of chaos are no more audible. You hear a silence. Is this the calm before the storm or the serenity of autumn, as the leaves prepare to reincarnate themselves? You wouldn't know unless you step outside. 

Maybe the toughest doors to unlock are the ones that have no keys. Doors that aren't locked from the outside but from within.

Hello! This took me sometime to write. I am still slowly recovering from the loss of past few months. Getting back on my feet, as they say. It's also the winter season, making the act of getting up itself quite hard. The thought behind this newsletter existed only as a quote for the longest. So, took me some time to put it into words, and I am really glad that I did. I am also realizing that the year is ending. Good opportunity to look back at the year and reflect. But I'll leave that for the next newsletter, which will be next year.

I am also super proud of myself. This is the longest I have stuck to an initiative. I didn't give up. I am grateful to each and everyone of you who reads this whenever they get the time to. I know it's extremely hard to find the time to read such long pieces which is why I appreciate your efforts more and more.

I will be back with more stories and thoughts to share. In the meanwhile I would love to hear from you. What do you think about AakashVaani? What's something that you liked reading? How do you feel about the year 2022? Until next time, Happy New Year!

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello! Hope you doing well. And sincerest apologies for being away for this long (in case this newsletter was missed). I guess the most cherished commodity when you are working in your 20s is fursat. So, as I am sitting in this brief moment of fursat, I decided to come here. 

Life, yet again, has been pretty much haywire. Calling it a roller-coaster would be an understatement. I am thinking about the time when I went to an amusement park. As someone who had known see-saws, slides, and swings to be the only jhoolas, I was blown to the see the variety of rides in this park. Of course, roller-coaster was that one ride I was really scared of, all thanks to popular media. But, I actually felt the most scared in the ferris wheel. The way it would just not stop. And how scary being on top felt, so much so that even in those brief moments, when the wheel would pass the ground, my body would refuse to calm down.

And that's how I would like to describe life. It's this constant up and down, round and round, so quick, and so fast, you don't realise most of the time what's happening to you. I guess that's what they meant by going in circles. I have been wondering off-lately, how scary it feels when the wheel is way above the ground. How helpless one feels. That weird feeling in your gut, that you want it all to just stop. But you can't. Once you step inside this ferris wheel, there's no stepping out. You don't have the stop button in your hand. The power to stop lies outside. I couldn't think of a better way to explain the inherent powerlessness of life. Even when the wheel comes down, that moment is so so brief. When you are touching the ground, and everything feels stable. Just as you start enjoying that moment, the wheel goes back to the top again. And such is the circle of life. The ups and downs. 
Even though we don't have the power to control this ferris wheel in our hands, we have something far better. We have hands. Hands that can so perfectly fit into another pair of hands. Hands that can hold. Hands that can warm each other. Hands that remind us that we are not alone in this ferris wheel. Isn't that enough?

Amidst all this spinning and the consequent nausea, I have been keeping up somehow. To the extent, that yet again, I have managed to surprise myself. The wheel was really fast this time. And I wanted to slow down. Not even stop, just slow down you know. Yet somehow, I managed to reassure myself. I wouldn't say the nausea of spinning was any less, but I kind of managed to hold tight through the spinning bit. And I thought I'll share what helped me through this:

• I Don't Feel Like That Anymore: An old trick that has worked miracles for me. Revisiting the past, especially the times I felt the way I am feeling now. Hurt, tired, exhausted, confused, stuck, oh god so so stuck, in circles, in loops, that unbearable feeling of being unable to move past. But move past what exactly, I don't know. It's just that feeling. Angry, helpless, irritated, at myself, the world, people, mostly myself, why am I this way. Asking constantly, when will this end. Ugh, will this ever end?? And this is where the trick lies. Everything that made me feel this way back then, is no more. I somehow got past those situations. What I am feeling now, is a result of my present circumstances. So, when I think about those past memories, I remind myself, I don't feel like that anymore. Wow! Does that mean, what I am feeling now, this amalgamation, a weird yet organic cocktail of feelings, I wont feel this way anymore?! Circumstances change, and so does the feeling they create in you. Feelings are fleeting. I will feel better. In fact, I am feeling better. I think the past serves as a beautiful reminder that the way you are feeling right now, you have felt exactly the same before. That even though your bad feelings will convince you that they are here to stay, the past will keep reminding you they won't. They never do. 

• Forgive Yourself, Over and Over and Over: The one thing I learnt (still learning) the hard way. Forgiveness that comes from within, for oneself, is the only forgiveness that'll set you free. The guilt and the burden I put on myself, just to seek forgiveness from others, was the only thing that was holding me back. And even when I started to offer myself forgiveness, I slowly learnt that it is not a one time thing. You have to forgive yourself, over and over and over, for the same very mistakes. Forgiveness creates space. Forgiveness makes you human. The very same human you want others to see in you. But are you willing to see yourself as the human who made mistakes. You are willing to forgive people, telling yourself that it is necessary to pave the path for a more accepting future. Then, why can't I apply the same logic to myself. So I (am learning to) forgive myself. Every time I feel I have to. Every time I seek forgiveness from others, I forgive myself. I forgive myself for wanting to seek all the love and validation from outside that I am capable of giving to myself. 

• Go Gentle Into That Good Night: Be kind, be kind against the dying of the light. A more recent lesson that I learnt. I was always the one to feel a sense of rage, fury, anger of sorts. To put it better, the sense of angst. The feeling of injustice. I clearly don't deserve these hardships. Nor do these people around. Why is that we try, and try, and try. All of us. We try our best, only to keep spinning in the ferris wheel. Why is life unfair? But well, it is. And the more I hold on to this feeling of angst, the harder it becomes to get rid of it. Yes, I admit that life sucks, and it's unfair. And honestly, it's infuriating. But what is this rage going to get me anyways. Just an additional burden for my body to carry. The optimistic pessimist in me accepts that the dying of the light is inevitable. But surely, I can't accept that to be the only truth. I can choose to be kind, be kind to this dying of the light and only then allow for some more light to enter. Also the more gentle you go into that good night, the better sleep you get. 

It took me about two months to write this newsletter. I am not really proud if it. But things turned out to be a little more chaotic than I had imagined. The only thing I aspire for, the only thing I hope for, and strive for, is just some more time to write. I feel I have so much to say, so much to write. Above all, so much to read. I have been stuck on this one book for close to a month now. I absolutely hate this arrangement. Reading list piling up, list of topics to write increasing by the day, yet only a handful of time. There is just so much beauty I  keep missing out on. But someday, and hopefully very soon, I will create that space for myself. 
Honestly, I hate this world. From the bottom of my heart. But the abundance of beauty in it, always amuses me. And I am sure it is this very beauty that is keeping me alive. That has kept me alive. I hope to share my thoughts more often with you. 

Liking my new venture? Tell me about it! Would love to hear your thoughts. And if you actually liked what you just read, why not share it with others! Baantne se pyaar badhta hai :))

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello! Hope you are keeping well. I apologize for writing so late. Past month has been extremely challenging to say the least. The thing called adulting is becoming more real than ever. I recently shifted to Delhi for a new job. My first job actually. And it was chaotic to say the least. From shifting cities overnight, searching for a place to live, falling repeatedly sick, settling in, to slowly adjusting as the chaos of the word does not pause for anyone. Having lived away from home, for about 4 years now, surprisingly this was the first time I felt home sick.

It's almost been a month, and yet I am trying to understand the timing of these feeling that I have not felt before. This mystery got me thinking about home, a topic that never ceases to be off my mind. It also got me wondering about adulting. And so, I decided to write down my thoughts. 

- Adulting is realizing the value of goodbyes. It's about coming in terms with the fact that every hello is a goodbye in the making. It's about unlearning that goodbyes aren't bad. Goodbyes are necessary for saying new hellos. Goodbyes teach you a lot about life. More specially, they teach some very important lessons about acceptance. 

- The other day I came across this statement by Cheryl Strayed

"Acceptance is a small, quiet room"

Adulting is all about travelling from one small, quiet room to another. It's about sitting in silence with yourself in this room. It's about decorating this room, whichever way you like. It's about making this small, quiet room, yours and yours only. It's about accepting that your room, the one back in your home, is long gone. The room you grew up in is only a memory. A memory that you shall forever carry with your luggage from one city to another, from one room to the other. 

- Adulting is that period in life where we learn to create our space. I cannot emphasize enough on this. This was perhaps the first thing I learnt, as I passed through my 20s. The creation of a personal space was the only constant thing in my life, as I kept moving places. The only act that gave me a sense of stability, control, and power. It was also the realization that this space was the closet thing I had to something resembling home. Something I could call mine and mine only. Home is long gone. To find that one physical space, worthy of calling home, is futile. I always refused to call my rented rooms, home. To imagine that there was someone before me living here, making this place, and calling it their own, was weird. How there will be someone else after me, who'll live here, and still make that place their own. Rented houses are fascinating that way. Yet, all of us, in that briefest moment, made that place that was never ours, ours. I think that's what making space means. 

- Home is not a place, its this space. Home is here and now. Home is what I make of it. Home is the objects I carry from my home. Its the bedsheets my mother bought for me. The bag that I have been using since college. Its the clothes I bought together with my mother. I guess, home is the memory of my mother. 

- Adulting is carrying a bag that can never be filled enough with memories, longing and yearning. It's telling yourself everyday that you are grieving, and its okay. Somedays it's remembering your old classrooms, the break hour where you would roam around the campus. How 4pm was the best time in college to be alive. Catching up with friends from other courses, eating fruit bowl, drinking cold coffee. Somedays, it's the memory of travelling to Cubbon park and having my little picnic. Its walking randomly on the streets on Koramangala just for a glass of sugarcane juice. Each passing moment is a memory in making. Each step forward, leaves behind a mark, that always reminds you of what was. Empty spaces can never be filled. We only end up making more empty space. 

- Much of your adulting happens in a routine. I have been a longstanding fan of the beauty that lies in our daily lives, the rozmarra. But, it is only recently that I am seeing how much value this routine life holds. Many people may find it constricting. I find routine very liberating. Probably because it's the only thing that feels remotely stable, and certain, in a pretty much chaotic world. The metro journey back and forth from work, dancing sneakily while walking the great hauz khaz interchange, making inside jokes with your colleagues each day. Honestly, it's these little things that make much of the dread quite liveable. It's wonderful how it's not just the people around you who become a part of your routine, but how you become a part of everyone else's routine. Saying hello to the grocery auntie every morning at 9, as I leave for work, and she opens the shutter. Meeting sharp at 1pm in the kitchen for lunch, which quickly becomes a hub for gossip. Packing your bag right at 7pm, so that didi can clean the office, and go home. Diligently making small talk with your sabzi walla at 7:30pm, right when he is about to leave your neighborhood. It's truly amazing how the routines of a bunch of strangers get organically intertwined. Maybe everyone is seeking some stability in a routine. 

- Adulting is about distances, but more importantly about transcending those distances. My old friends from college, keeping me up to date about life in Bangalore. Calling my mother each night, and exchanging a list of interesting things we found in grocery stores. As much as it hard to accept the growing physical distance, it is easy to remind oneself that these distances are only and only physical. Phone calls becomes such an important part of the day. Sending messages about your daily happenings never felt so good. 

- Lastly, adulting is all about you. Gosh there is just so much of you. Living alone is an art that is practiced and mastered during adulthood. It teaches you so much about self-reliance, finding your way, enjoying your little moments, I can go on and on. 

थक गया हूँ मैं 
हर रोज़ चलते-चलते 
सुस्ताना चाहता हूँ मैं कहीं भी कुछ घड़ी 
कोई है जो दे दे एक पेड़ 
दे सके तो दे बस देह भर छाँह!
~ उदय प्रकाश

I don't know why, but I wanted to share this poem with you today. This was one of the most toughest piece to write. The moment I started writing about my experiences with adulting, I was all over the place. There was SO MUCH that I wanted to say. But alas! I would however love to hear your thoughts, and your experiences with adulting. Anything that you would like to share :)

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When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Throughout the play, we get to know nothing about Godot or how these two men ended up waiting for Godot. The reader is left with plenty of questions by the end of the play: Why do both the acts look exactly similar? Why do our protagonists confuse everyone to be Godot? Have they never met Godot before? Do they not know what Godot looks like? Do they even know who Godot is? Then who or what are they waiting for? For how long are they waiting? Why are they waiting?

I believe the reason one is left with so many questions has partly got to do with the fact that one has always been made to believe that there are answers to everything. There must be an answer. If there is no answer, what was the question supposed to tell us? The human mind is driven by this dichotomy of questions and answers. It’s what helps us arrive at meaning, if there is to be one. Meaning is the ground we need to walk upon, to navigate our life through the chaos of the world, if there is to be one. 

“What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come… ”

The only question that Beckett asks is if there are truly any questions to be asked.

Waiting for Godot has been aptly defined as “the drama of unknowingness”. There is nothing much to follow in the story. No great revelation or life changing pathos. It leaves you with nothing. So much so, that the reader has no option but to strip down the entire play to find some abstract concepts or metaphors that it represents. Surely, there must be something in it. Something that we are unable to understand at first. Something that will suddenly make sense like a great insight and we would be able to see the whole point behind the action. Don’t we look at life in a similar way? Strip everything down till it makes sense. Can’t there be something in nothingness too? In a way that it still occupies a space in our minds. 

I am someone who often stumbles upon questions. Questions that have no answers. Questions I need answers to. This bothers me with another question: Why am I so bothered to find answers? Will the answer make it any better? I look around myself and notice that everyone is waiting for an answer. Waiting for something or someone. Sometimes, knowing what we are waiting for, comforts us. It gives us some meaning, some purpose, if there is to be any. I am slowly learning to wait, while still not knowing what I am waiting for. Waiting for someone to return. Waiting for the unfamiliar to become familiar again. Waiting for things to get better. Waiting to know what better means. Waiting to slow down. Waiting to just exist. Waiting for answers, if there are to be any. 

I have a tendency to go back to the place where I first met someone. Or read those old texts. Relive those old memories. I know nothing is going to change. No one or nothing can give me the answer that I am waiting for. Come walking towards me and give me all that I was waiting for. Maybe I don’t know the answer myself. Do we ever really leave? Move on? Or do we keep coming back and wait?

Wait for Godot.

I know Godot will never return. Yet I choose to wait for Godot. Aren’t we all waiting for Godot? Isn’t the answer in the waiting? 

Estragon: “We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.

Hello everyone! Hope you are keeping well. Today I wanted to share an old piece I had written about a work of literature that I admire a lot. Like I often say, reading Beckett should be considered as deliberate self-harm. Waiting for Godot was my first introduction to it, followed by yet another mind-breaking play Endgame. I am currently reading Beckett's earlier work, including his first novel Murphy.  To me Beckett and his writing provides an opportunity to understand the intricate absurdity of our times. I keep returning to Waiting for Godot as if I am still trying to make sense of it, when there is none. I am sending you an initial draft of my latest project. Hope it gives you a glimpse of what I am trying to find in this play, where there is nothing to find. Is there something you are waiting for too? Something for no reason? Feel free to share your thoughts with me.

Liking my new venture? Tell me about it! Would love to hear your thoughts.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx

Hello dear reader! I hope you’re making the best of spring before the summer heat kicks in.

I was going through some of my old essays and it was a fun ride. If you are someone who converts their thoughts and feelings into writings, I suggest it’s a good thing to revisit them once in a while. Not only does it give you a benchmark to compare your present writings with, and judge the level of improvement, it also helps you look at your past self from a more empathetic place. What I am now will always be more empathetic to what I was.

So with that in mind, I will be revisiting three of my previous essays written during mid 2022. This one was first published in June 2022.

Sometime ago, I watched a comedy special by this comedian called Daniel Sloss. I had heard a lot about it. Apparently it has made people rethink their relationships more seriously, leading to a drastic surge in breakups and divorces. Sloss even takes pride in it, asking people to tag him on social media, keeping a track of the relationships he thinks ended because of him. The special is called Jigsaw. There’s another one called Dark. Highly recommend you to watch both of them.

I love this kind of comedy. The first 45 mins of an hour long special are just shits and giggles, and in the last 15 minutes the comedian will throw some emotionally hard hitting truths that will punch you straight in the gut. It’s as if everything was just one long set-up to emotionally wreck you in the end.

In Jigsaw, Sloss recalls his childhood confusions. Once, when he was a kid, he asked his father: “what’s the meaning of life?”. Sloss' father used an analogy to give a comprehensible answer to an incomprehensible question asked by his son.

He said that our individual lives are like jigsaw puzzles. The pieces we use to build this puzzle are our life experiences and lessons we learn. The only difference is that we don’t have the box with the picture of the whole puzzle. So we don’t really know what we have to piece together. Pretty daunting if you ask me. This means that we are left to solve a mammoth puzzle without having anything to guide us.

And so we start building this puzzle by ourselves, piece by piece. We go on making it till we can find the best possible image.

When we don’t have something as a model, the best way to go about it, is to start from the four corners. These could be our family, friends, interests we have, and the work we do. A good solid start. And as we keep going, our puzzle keeps taking some definitive shape.

From what I understood, this is quite a flexible process. Because there is no one picture that we are working towards, the pieces themselves don’t have one single place. They are free to move from one place to another depending on where they fit.

Sometimes we may lose a family piece, and we’ll have to find something else to fill that space. Maybe that could be a new relationship or rekindling an old one. Or, taking on new job might might mean compromising on something you enjoyed doing because now you have something else occupying your time. It’s a continuous process, and it makes complete sense.

So now Sloss asked his father: once the corners have been built, what are we heading towards? What’s that centre piece? What is the image that we are trying to make? To which he father said, “that’s the partner piece”. One day, a perfect person will come along, who will fit right in the centre, and complete your image. Complete you, like you have never felt before.

What Sloss learnt from that is, if you don’t have a partner piece, your puzzle is incomplete, your life is incomplete. And much like Sloss, we all make the same mistake of believing that. It is because our society has been pushing us to believe that that is the truth. All the movies, songs, shows, stories, everything glorifies relationships.

Time and again we are reminded that having a partner is what completes you and we just end up believing that being with someone is better than being alone. Put it another way, being with someone is more convenient than being alone.

We are never taught to love ourselves. So we find someone who would do that for us. One day someone comes along in your life and loves you a little bit, and you get overwhelmed by it. Because the template for love is so smudged, that even a brief glimmer of it is good enough to make us believe that we have received so much love from this person.

But Sloss challenges us saying that when you love yourself 100%, you wouldn’t settle for anything less. And it is at this point, Sloss tells us about his interpretation of the Jigsaw Puzzle.

His interpretation is focused more on the relational aspect of the puzzle. That the idea of one true love, or finding a life partner is false. That we have to first learn to love ourselves before we can let someone else do that. My takeaway from this analogy was more about the experiential part of it.

The most beautiful thing about this puzzle is that we don’t know the final completed image before we start. This means that there is no single image that we have to make. So we can keep changing it as and when we like.

We can never experience life in an absolute all-or-none, right-or-wrong manner. But only in bits and pieces. In here and there, in ebbs and flows.

Sloss later learnt that when his father declared the partner piece as the main centre piece, he meant that for his own puzzle. Because he found his true love, his true purpose of life in that piece.

It doesn’t have to be that way for everyone. There is no single image, no one single set of jigsaw pieces. They change as we change. With growing life experiences we can add and remove pieces to make the image that makes us the most happy. How liberating is this idea.

This was the Jigsaw analogy as given by Daniel Sloss. The true genius of an artist lies in creating such broad yet specific metaphors, that even though they are a direct product of the artist's lived experiences, these metaphors very effortlessly become ours. 

The following is my little contribution to the Jigsaw Analogy.

You know how they say it's our flaws that make us perfect. Imagine a picture made up of perfectly shaped squares pieced together. All joined neatly, line by line beside each other. But if that’s the case, I don’t think these pieces will be able to hold together for long. Because they are so perfectly shaped, they have no space for others to hold on to them, or for them to hold on to others.

Now imagine a normal incoherently shaped jigsaw piece. Those curvy edges instead of neat perfect lines. There's a piece with a side bulging in, and a piece with a side bulging out. What makes these incoherently shaped jigsaw pieces special is nothing, but their sole flaw.

That is where their beauty lies. These jigsaw pieces have the ability to hold space. And it is their imperfection which gives them this power. It is through their curves and bulges that they are able to create space for each other. Space through which they are able to hold each other together and stay strong.

We need such imperfections in our lives. If everything is perfect, life will fall apart easily. Perfection leaves room for nothing. Flaws create space. Whether be in our personal lives, our relationships, the work we do, we need to be imperfect. A friend who does not talk enough, probably needs a friend who talks a lot. Failing at a task or being unable to finish something gives the opportunity to redo it. Much like a jigsaw puzzle that stays strong all throughout, it takes a lot of time and patience to build something like that. More importantly, it takes several trials to piece it all together. 

I guess what I am trying to say through my extension of Sloss' analogy is that while we are in the process of making our unique, personalized jigsaw puzzles, we must also acknowledge the uniqueness of each tiny little individual piece that makes up the entire puzzle. Each piece is imperfect in its own way. That's what keeps them strong.  

After thoughts: I guess I needed to revisit this essay for some good old self motivation.

Interestingly, I have reignited my interest in puzzles, two years after fixating on that analogy. In fact, got myself a 500 piece puzzle which is still waiting for me to complete it. But having seen an actual jigsaw puzzle, the entire analogy made so much more sense.

• The life experiences like the actual jigsaw pieces are very small (if you buy a 500 piece puzzle but I am guessing otherwise as well).

• And even when you have a picture to work with, it is still very hard to put them together. Such is the complexity of any experience.

• And it’s the imperfect shape of each piece that really makes every single one of them special, with each of them having a designated place. No matter how identical some pieces might look, they will only fit in their designated place. And when you put them in the right place, they will fit instantly, making a strong bond with their surrounding pieces. And trust me, jigsaw pieces hold each other real strong.

• Funnily this experience of doing an actual jigsaw puzzle reminded of many life lessons we are always taught. Like “things take time to build”, “if it’s meant to be, it will be”, or “don’t force things”.

Very safe to conclude that Jigsaw Analogy is a very an apt and beautiful metaphor.

When Life Gives You Melon
Choose Water over Choly 🍉
Aakash xx