July 27, 2018

Tonight, I am grateful for growth. For this wisdom that allows you to accept, to let go, to be. For rootedness. For the realization of the power of seeds, of sparks. For the exploration of true humility, true service, true love. For paradoxes and middle paths, for ambivalence and balance. For hope. For the luxury to ruminate, to let structures fall and rebuild, to shine light on the darkest, dustiest corners of self. For the feeling that it all comes together. Of course, to fall apart, but it does. For this rhythmic convergent and divergent nature of existence. For okayness and now and this breath that's been faithful for yet another day.

November 18, 2018

"Is human life worth living?", you ask as I tell you the story from my mother's childhood when she returned home to find her pet rabbit tortured to near death by her adoptive brother. "What builds or rather unravels this capacity to be so cruel. Is it even something that blame can be attached to?". 
"We do this to each other through our inability to love. But loving is so hard and has so many definitions."
"How did we end up creating a world where we enable so much hurt that leads to so much cruelty?"
"It is our inability to adapt to all the diversity that we all carry. Each human being's need is so different, and our capacity to cater to that so limited."
"That is why I wonder, if human life is worth living"
"It is. Even if it is about learning to love one other person."
"Would you want to come back?"
"At least a few more times if I had you to love each time."

February 10, 2019

Dear T,

I write to remind you of the gift that life is. I want you to realize and remember that it is a gift that you must never take lightly. That you will go through many dark phases, but always emerge stronger, clearer and a little more compassionate. That the demons of childhood do go away, and when you are 30, memories of that time will feel like stills from another life, or reels from a movie that you felt deeply. They will not affect you or define you, but they will shape you. T, you will spend life looking to get better, and this will sail you through a lot. But you must remember to not seek perfection, which you tend to do. You must let go of shame and fear. You know that people do not need to earn love; they deserve it, irrespective of who they are. Do not make yourself an exception. You will love and laugh and forgive easily, and you will get hurt a lot. But you must not get cynical. At around 30, you will learn that you do not carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and that the only way to change the world is to begin with yourself, and that the process of change begins with acceptance. You will learn to hold greys, and be gentler on yourself and others. I hope you remember to laugh and have fun.

Love,
T

Banjara Hills

There's something intriguing about this part of town, the hills have been carved into roads and streets with beautiful bungalows and showrooms, but you take one left turn and you are in narrow lanes with near vertical drops lined by houses. Young boys in kurtas running down the lane with hands on each other's shoulders, women in burqas(always in groups and never alone) returning home with their children, men sitting outside their houses, bonding over something on the phone or sharing a conversation about the day gone by, and another left turn and you are going through probably the biggest graveyard you've ever seen, innumerable graves on both sides of the road with not even inches between them, and you think about how you're looking at more graves than people, and a thela with someone hawking something to eat and little lights on the cart just outside this graveyard. You think about the juxtaposition of life and death, how there's something beautiful about the acceptance and assimilation of the graveyard into the landscape. You think about the people, the children you saw, and wonder about their ancestors that are perhaps buried there, watching over them, and the living watching over the dead, co-existing with them in their dance of life. The next left turn takes to into an impossibly busy market. It's lit up and alive. You wonder what lives of children are like in this community. You notice that this whole area automatically registers as a community. You know nothing about them but you know that these are people who live intertwined lives - they create safety nets but also nooses, they live, love, laugh, fight, cry and die together. You dream of a community of your own some day - some place you'd finally belong.