still thinking

"I don't know when I will ever come to terms with the fact that articulation is always a 'squandering', that I am giving away more of my self with every word than I can ever get back, balance out."

sentimental explanations

I spend hours on the silver sliver of my macbook: various and irrelevant musings. I edit old posts. Read about printmaking courses that I will never do. Put on my headphones and lick my lips, wondering what it is that my soul is asking for. Eventually when I put on Damien Rice -- after so many long months -- I smile to myself. There is something to be said for sentimentality, after all.

I sometimes wish I wasn't so easily distracted. I console myself because it's not the I at fault -- it's the whole jingbang of capitalist consumerist culture that wants us to flick our eyes from screen to screen, open-mouthed, and never think deep enough to attack the things that need to be attacked. This, then, is a revolution: to stay with my thoughts, to travel deep inside these musings, and create. To read a book from cover to gorgeous cover. To study all the wildly exciting things that I'm studying. 

I have a thousand misgivings about keeping a blog. There is too much, too much I worry about when it comes to the wild forest of the internet, of social media, of easy communication. Some communication cannot be easy. Yet as I scroll down Shinji Moon's blog, or Bhanu Kapil's blog, I am so fucking thankful that these women chose to put up random fragments of their life up on the cruel and vast interwebs for me to read, consume, devour, as it were. The final poetic product is important and often dazzling, but I often want all of it, all of the incomplete and aching words that go into making it before it is made, all the writing that must take place before the writing. Sometimes Shinji's final poem will touch a stutter in my chest, but her vast thoughts and politics pull out that stutter, touch it, force me to travel down the lines of my body until I can unearth it myself. If I can touch somebody in that way someday -- it will be enough. So I write, I reorder, I put up a fragmented biography, a broken archeology of my life. And to be honest, I create temples of posterity whether I am on this blog or off it. All the diaries, all the fragments, all the Evernote notes -- they are all evidence that I am fearful, that I want proof of my existence, that I want to create something I can hold in my hands, or reach back to with a click, and know that it will be safe, like a seed in deep soil. A dead seed, I understand: what is living about the seed is already running in my veins through this conversation; what blossoms in me someday will be a result of the thoughts I think now. So why this, why the obsessive, almost neurotic desire to document, to prove, to hide away? Why this desire for stasis where there can only be river?

What I tell myself today, smilingly, is that we're all looking for ways to stay sane, reasons to hold on and make sense of this vast existence. I could say it subtly or crudely, but here it is. If I could not, did not question, then I would have other reasons to go on -- I could give society all the keys it wanted and play my role as a Good Woman -- I could live day to day because of all the duties and obligations that piled on my back like secret creatures, and I could marry, have children, worry about them. But that's silly, that's not what life would be like today -- I could, I will, I must, have a career! An ambition! I will study, I will get a job, I might choose to marry a lovely man and have children. Worry about them. Watch my body rot away until one day -- poof! -- like a leaf on the wind it will soar beyond my reach. Life is so long, and so hard, and so often it seems so unbearably bare. What keeps you sane? What makes you wake up every day and do all the things you're supposed to? What makes sure you don't curl up into a foetal position and weep yourself to sleep every night? I don't care if it's crude, if it isn't the right philosophical question to be asking, if existentialism is passe -- fuck that, fuck academic sophistication, these are the words that lick my spine and whisper to me with fangs when I am unable to leave the bed. I don't know the big reasons and I am often afraid to touch the big questions -- I don't know how to say them right, how to hold them gently, politely -- and so this is how I stay sane. This here, the temples I build from corners of my life where the lazy afternoon sun burns all edges gold and bronze and a plastic bag flutters in the wind like a poem, where the landscapes of my mind are sometimes solid mountain, and sometimes the uncertain sea. It isn't much (but what is?). I survive (even thrive, sometimes). 

So here I am, as usual, laying out my excuses and escape planes, flyaway bits of paper that hide under my thighs, that I hold down under desperate palms. The words are all I have, most of the time, and I'd always like to do better by them. I hope this means something, I hope I can create some meaning. I am reminded of the things I don't respect enough because they are often the things that matter, that force me to look up, that render me unable to hide. My body is an ocean that I need to tend to, that will wear out and snarl me into acquiescence if I don't pay attention -- listen, hear my stomach growling right this second... I am unable to curl out the twist in my spine, unable to ease out the forest of knots in my aching shoulders. I need to be better to my brown skin and tangled muscles. My mind is a mess, is always a mess, is sometimes bearable, is often interesting.

Meanwhile I remember an old conversation with my wise-and-crazy cousin where he told me -- in all seriousness -- in the middle of an increasingly cynical and nihilistic conversation about politics, relationships, life -- that the only thing that can hold out against the world, that can stay pure, that can change something -- is love. At least that's how I remember this conversation. In my smoky haze I was amused, sceptical. Perhaps he meant it in a more serious and philosophical sense -- right now I am not serious or philosophical. I am sentimental. And the one part of my life I cannot touch with the rough fingers of angst or the bruises of hopelessness is that -- that word, too oversaid by humanity -- the bubble of wholeness I feel erupt in my chest when my body is laid against yours on a bed stained by afternoon light, the laughter over familiar things in which we've built a home for ourselves, a haven. You've punctured my solitude, as Maggie Nelson said, and I've never felt more hopeful about it. I try to work harder, live bigger, feel less drained and bent over under the weight of the world. There is much to be joyful about, much to read, many fragmented conversations to have with so many people. So many sunsets to chase with my silly sentimentality, my disregard for truth, my chest aflame with hope for this life...

moments from mcloedganj

o mother moonface

Trying

I try so hard to search for poetry in all the corners of dreary afternoons, and my head fills with questions like a brimming bowl, too much, too much, too much, all I have are the words and they are too little, too little. Suddenly everything that was compartmentalised comes together in a crashing and toppling, all the separate boxes of desire and fear and anxiety and theory and literature and ache, all of it is here and none of it is here -- the too-much-ness and vacancy of it all -- and I am left both wailing on the ground and also here, on my chair, perfectly still. Well, if you want to know, here are the questions: where does it begin, and where does it end -- this crazy romance with the words -- this wild hope that the words will fix it all, will pin the monsters into little black alphabets and leave me free -- what do I do with this hope, do I believe in it, can I afford not to? Why must my sanity depend on putting everything in a box, on understanding understanding understanding, unravelling knowledge that I can verbalise and somehow control, organise according to date and time and colour? The knowledge of chaos has not permeated through my thick skull -- or perhaps it has, and that is where all the fear stems from? I try to live my life like an exquisite, thick, work of art, layered with detail and craft -- so much to dig through, so much to understand and unravel -- the notebooks, the fragments, the empty boxes, the facebook posts, the pictures, the sequins, the bookmarks and forgotten tickets. I am my own archeologist, memoirist, observer, devotee, biographer -- I am my biggest project. I do this, I live like this, and then I have the gall to ask -- why, why am I so afraid of death?

Afternoon sun lights up fragments of my room, of the corridor, of the grass, in bronze shadows and gold lining -- it is what keeps me hopeful even now, at the onset of winter, when everything seems to be falling apart. The internet confuses me, excites me, leaves me bleeding -- is there anybody out there, listening? Should there be? I write and I write and I write, I craft my life out of my flesh and of the scraps around me -- I hide some of these stories in the folds of my clothes, and I roll some into fragile glass bottles and toss them into this sea, with hardly a second look for the aches that shattered against shadow-black rocks. I scroll and scroll, read something beautiful in the strange forest of the internet, and sigh. I listen to Iqbal Bano and Noor Jahan sing Faiz and I try not to cry, try to hold the vast gaping holes in my chest shut, try to survive it all.

nomenclature

the white sheen of blank paper excites me
until it appears; and then it is only ever
a clenching in my stomach: such an easy
giving up. I give up too easily.

in my dreams, I am still lost, and blurry,
my edges pencilled in like forgotten things
and my feet standing on something soft
and infinitely breakable: somewhere along
the crawling away from death I forgot
what certainty feels like.

I am trying to remember, and also learn,
what it feels like to write a good poem,
what the balance is in between
casual words
and words that hold the world within them
fiercely. how do I make something sacred?
is it the practised ease or the rioting genius?
is it the straight pencil lines I fill in blindly?

I worry, and I worry about worry.
I am able to call my anxieties
anxieties
but I never want to call my sadness
a bigger word. nomenclature mocks me.
it is only ever self-diagnosis, and so many
kinds of self-doubt, crawling under my spine
like ugly things. I want to be a river of calm,
but sometimes I find a secret snarl at the back
of my throat. I do not know if I can live here.

I want to think of this as practised ease and an
unhesitant beauty, but it is also always just
casual words.
I once told myself I was the only true audience
I would find, and that thought makes me sad today.
I am a terrible, over-thinking, self-validating audience
for myself. perhaps for everybody.

I am learning how to love, and it is as easy as it is
hard. the simple things feel vast, like whole lifetimes
of this moment. the strange uncontainable joy of falling
asleep next to a warm body, knowing that your
fragility is, for once, in the fragile hands of another.
it's all self-destructing, but at least it feels
human, feels like love, feels like a dream.

I am feeling things in tidal waves
this time around: the highs are hopeful and I feel
as though I can blossom in ways that I never knew;
but the lows are snarling and dangerous and feel like
insidious holes that I could slip into like a shadow.
it would be so quiet and comfortable. in a hole,
there would be so much less to worry about.
only the silence, and the sadness
which wraps around you like a shawl.
winter kept us warm, covering
earth in forgetful snow...
new words speak to me each time and tell me
how to map my mind. I am a strange city.

I am afraid of writing
because I know I can do it.
I am afraid of giving myself to this vast world
and I am afraid of its disinterest in my small bones
and trembling fears and pouting silences.
love me, love me harder.
love me until I can find a way out
of a ruined city and a chessboard forest.

I love myself
but it won't do.
you must do it for me.
I will name you
river
and you can carry me through
to an ocean that I will call
only through absence. do it.

once the words are spilled out of me
like ink, they leave no trace. I do not ever
remember writing these stains into my skin.

in Phnom Penh

At the edge of the street where we sat over salad,
three children got in a brawl. A girl with a basket full of trinkets
tied to her waist, and a weeping toddler.
As he howled and kicked, his wire frame full of glass bangles
flew across the sky and scattered fragments
all over the curb. Later, alone, he sat by the tyre of a car
and looked at his empty hands.

The bustling streets of Cambodia had no space for his grief. The riverside
sprawled out like a dirty postcard.

Four days into an unknown country, the inevitable happened:
a man, perhaps drunk, sauntered over
with his eyes on my hesitant naval.
Where are you from, he asked my terrified stomach. Hey, lady. Where are you from.
Walking fiercely down the street, I could hear his footsteps behind me
as sure as his sleazy smile. I wondered
if he ever did this to the white women who visited,
their navels and shoulders and bikini strings carelessly given over to the city.

Even after the music in the open square, the sky blossoming with leftover light,
everything tasted of shattered glass;
the mug of beer with a chipped edge,
the quiet desperation that comes with vulnerability
or love. I filled my mouth with smoke
until my hands shook.

Being Woman

I am angrier than ever about being a woman. I've been trying to write this post for days, but I have too much to say and I'm afraid I won't do it justice. When I was a child, I always assumed that I felt afraid and unsafe when I was alone in most public spaces because public spaces belonged to adults. I'm an adult now, and I still feel afraid and unsafe in public spaces. I was wrong. Public spaces do not belong to adults. Public spaces belong only to men.

I know this shouldn't come as a surprise. We knew this all along. But somehow, it still does. I am shocked and bewildered and angry every day. I am trying to be conscious of all the ways in which I monitor my movements, try to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible in public spaces. These are all things I never paid as much attention to as a child, because I was always out of the house with what I assumed were all-powerful adults. Since perhaps fifteen or sixteen, all of these things are a reality, and I have dealt with them only by ignoring them. Here goes:

Every time I step out of the house, I change. I make sure I am covered from shoulder to knee in sturdy fabric. Despite this, I also need to clench my jaw and be ready to be stared at. Give angry looks sometimes, but mostly remain silent and look away (read: look down. In shame). Don't really look anyone (read: men) in the eyes on the road. Or in a market. Anywhere. Even from inside a car, where I love looking out and just observing the strange circus of life taking place -- I cannot afford to catch somebody's gaze for too long. Somebody might flash me, or make a lewd expression, or follow my car. It will be my fault. I'm never too loud. Never really show affection in public. Terrified of doing that, of holding somebody's hand or grazing their cheek with a finger. Intellectually I know that these actions do not mean I'm giving a stranger permission to view me as 'easy', but I am still afraid. It will be my fault. My fault. To smoke, or drink, or laugh too loudly in public is scary. Angry eyes follow me. All of these things mean that getting out of the house is hard. The same street that I used to walk on so easily as a child, is totally alien to me. I get out of the house in a car, and now sometimes in a cab. 

I know that I shouldn't be doing any of this. I also know that I'm in a society where if anything ever does happen -- and it does, it has -- then nobody will even need to blame me externally. I will blame myself. I will be too afraid to act. The patriarchy roars in satisfaction, from inside my belly, where it lives now. These days, I am angrier than ever. In a dream where I was being chased and followed by a strange man and my boyfriend and parents weren't taking me seriously, I woke up crying. Not with fear -- I managed to escape, I hit him, I was fierce despite being absurdly helpless -- but with anger. It is unfair. Unfair, that I am twenty, and have not been equal given access to this vast world. I want to travel, and sit in parks, and in marketplaces. I hate coming home to Chandigarh, because I am trapped in these four walls for more time than I am used to. I am used to the privilege of college, of 3am walks and no slutshaming. I am used to Delhi, scary as it is, inhabited by so many kinds of people that there's almost always space for one more. Chandigarh has no space for me. I can go out if there is somebody to visit, or something to buy. Or else I am home. "Of course you are right, it doesn't matter what you wear or how you travel, but you still need to be careful na, you can't invite trouble", my grandmother tells me. She doesn't need to, I tell myself that. So I hide out here, in this safe and equal space.

Fuck that. I want to own this city, and every city I am in. I am angry that I am twenty and fierce and intelligent and yet bound up in a history and a place that is refusing to give me my fair share. Here it is: I will go crazy if I am kept in these four walls. My prison is beautiful and full of lovely people, but I need to see sky. This TEDx talk is wonderful and articulate, and yes, yes, yes, we need to loiter, we need to spend hours and days on roadsides and in parks doing nothing in particular, but sure as hell that we belong there. It is unfair that the fight is so hard, but here it is, and it must be fought. My boyfriend is kind and wise and wonderful, but when he tells me, "we must not compromise", he is wrong. Every movement of mine in a public space is a compromise, and it has been that way as long as I remember. I am still afraid, and anxious, and dream about strange men who laugh as they harass me -- I am not going to stop compromising. I do not know how to, yet. But I'd like to think I'm getting there, that we're all getting somewhere with the awareness and discourse and conversation. He changes it to, "we must compromise as little as we can". Yes. We must. It's going to be a fight every day, and it is. To reclaim public spaces for our vast and wide and skinny selves, and to change a status quo which suffocates more people than it liberates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgGNv5t92A&app=desktop

insides of my head

over the summer