Some of us speak in cliches. Some of us love.

Every morning a new arrival

2011-12-19T18:07:00.001+05:30

(Written for my column "Monthly Misgivings" in Page Seven magazine)

I am not always very good to myself. I am talking not only about being kind and gentle to myself, but also about having the discernment to know and do what is good for me even when it is not gratifying right away. For instance, starting my day by logging into Facebook is one of the things that always throws me off balance. Of course, this is not a statement on Facebook or any other social networking site. They are what they are. This is about the use we put them to.

The other day, I started my day the way many of my friends start theirs - I got the usual morning things out of the way, put the kettle to boil, completely forgot about it, forgot to take my morning medication, forgot my previous night's resolve to start the next day with some yoga and meditation, but managed to remember that the laptop had had very little charge left on it when I'd closed it the night before, plugged it in, and logged into Facebook.

I think that all of those were very innocent actions that did not, by any stretch of imagination, deserve serious retribution or punishment. But I felt assailed by all the new feeds and status updates, many people's take on those news feed and status updates, and others' opinion on those takes on those news feed and status updates. Then there were those people who, in the little time I stayed logged out to get a decent night's sleep, had somehow managed to orchestrate a campaign, finish their most brilliant performance, won awards, given birth to babies, made most nuanced arguments about a most current issue, published articles that were already 'liked' by 746 people and commented on by 106, etc.

My heart raced, and I thought I had been left behind, that the world had moved on while I had done nothing with my life. After all, I could have written that brilliant article. After all, I could at least have read that article so that I could now post an intelligent comment. After all, I could be celebrating that anniversary if only....

Before I had taken the time to ground myself in the delicious mundaneness of my day, before I had made life-changing decisions about whether to eat peanut butter open toast or aval upma for breakfast, I had let into my unformed, delicate, full-of-potential morning the mind-blowingly diverse energies of hundreds of people, coming at me like supersonic darts pinning a disarmed me on to the dartboard of the lost moment.

I admit that I am prone to the entire gamut of human emotions, which, of course, include insecurity, jealousy, anger and hurt. Rumi, the great Sufi mystic and poet, puts it most beautifully:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all...*

Every morning is already full of its surprises. I would rather spend time preparing myself to receive, welcome and entertain them instead of cluttering myself with those I can avoid. Therefore, I have now made it a practice to sit with my fragile yet powerful self as soon as I wake up from my night's sleep; to hold this new day and this new me in a bubble of quiet before letting them open for other things to enter.

* from Coleman Barks' translation of Rumi

My New Website! And a few other things.

2011-12-02T09:17:00.006+05:30

Please check out my new website that is slowly shaping up: www.aniruddhan.net ! But don't worry, I will keep this blog going for as long as I can :)

I have been keeping myself very busy with some writing and other projects. Going off Facebook for a while, and slowing down the entire online portion of my life, have cleared out a lot of time and mental space for me to get some things done. I am also doing a small arts and crafts project! It will, hopefully, be part of some lovely decorations in a place that is the center of my heart's home, aka Lexington. Working with cardboard, paper, glue, scissors, etc. after a long time makes me feel like an excited kid. But the best part is my fascination of shiny, glittery things! They are cheering me up like nobody's business! What little of my queeniness lay dormant within me is now being unleashed :)

Yesterday, I danced as part of the University of Kentucky's World Music and Dance Concert at the Recital Hall, Singletary Center, Lexington. It was, truly, a very beautiful experience. The long applause I received at the end of the solo, pure dance piece I performed was truly gratifying, and so were the things people had to say to me at the end of the event. It reminded me, yet again, of why I do what I do!

Another thing: I am headed to India (Chennai) next week, and I am looking forward to several wonderful weeks of dancing and writing. I have many performances in December and January in Chennai and some prospective ones in February. I also have a book project to complete. Exciting!

What have you all been up to?

What is your story?

2011-11-18T08:22:00.005+05:30

(Written for my column Monthly Misgivings in Page Seven magazine)

What I take to be my most staggering insights often turn out to be common knowledge that I have been unaware of. When I talk about them in my customary, hyper-excited way to people, I leave many of them with a look of disappointment at my naiveté. But I still give myself some credit for arriving at the insights anew, by my own path, and in my own time.

Here's my recent burst of epiphany: we can radically alter our stories about ourselves, our past, by just approaching those stories - our interpretations of the happenings of our past - differently. I know you feel like saying, "Uh, Duh!" But do stay with me. I admit that when expressed the way I just did, my so-called insight sounds like something quoted out of context from a self-help book. However, when you arrive at something from experience, when it is truly felt and known, or, to belabour my point, when it is an insight -- something that is seen with the inward eye, it can lead to profound shifts.

Let me give you an example. Recently, I was answering questions for an interview in an e-magazine. There was a question there that I have always been asked in other situations. And I have given the same answer, the truth, but apologetically and trying hard to sound matter of fact and unromantic about it.

Whenever I am asked how I came to learn Bharata Natyam, I tell this story: when I was six years old, my parents saw me trying to drum rhythm on the dinner table while listening to Carnatic music on the radio in the mornings. They thought that I might be interested in learning to play the mridgangam. So on Vijayadasami, the last day of Navaratri that is considered auspicious for new beginnings, they took me to a wonderful arts institute in Kumbakonam, where we then lived. We walked along a corridor in the rooms along which classes for vocal music, violin, veena, dance, and mridangam were in progress. It so happened that in the room just before the one where mridangam was being taught -- and the idea was that I would learn to play the mridangam, a Bharatanatyam class was in progress. I stood at the entrance to the dance class and watched in rapture bodies moving in ways that my six year-old human self had not seen until then. And I told my parents that it was dance that I wanted to learn.

That was what happened, and that is what I tell people. But I have always tried hard to make it sound like a mere statement of facts and not as a story that suggests that I chose, as a child, what I wanted to do with my life, that I answered my calling. I have repeated that story to myself and others as just something that happened and nothing more than a happy accident. Thanks to this, my self-talk about my relationship with dance has failed to acknowledge the beauty and conviction of another, more beautiful, interpretation. It is that I really did make a significant choice in that moment when I said to my parents that dance was what I wanted to learn. I wish I had a way of making my words express to you what a universe of difference that shift in interpretation makes to me now. I wish I could make you see what it means to me to re-imagine this incident with a sense of intention, volition and purpose.

What was more amazing, though not unbelievable, was that just when I was getting a grip at this process of re-writing my past, a very wise and dear friend happened to talk about it to me. Just like that, without any prompting from me. It would only be too easy to dismiss such synchronicity as mere coincidence and to refuse to see everyday miracles for what they are.

I did not re-write a story of pain and suffering. I do not know how hard that could be. Thankfully, I started with very pleasant memory and bolstered it up by admitting intention, choice and decision to it. In the process, I gained a more nourishing, impassioned self-narrative. Do I even need to spell out the wonders such self-narratives can do?

Snap! Thud!

2011-10-14T04:05:00.002+05:30

(Written for my column 'Monthly Misgivings' in Page Seven magazine)

Contrary to what some people think about me, I don’t do well at all in confusion and crisis. Actually, I am guilty of circulating this lie about myself in the hope that just saying it out loud would make it true. Turns out it doesn’t. Some people manage to be like the proverbial eye of the storm and stay completely unperturbed by all the madness around them, or are perturbed but manage to find the inner resources that help them stay calm. Somehow, they become the reliable, rock-solid center that holds things from falling apart. Not me. I usually need a whack in the head from some sweet friend before I can calm myself down.

I remember reading a lovely analogy for a confused mind in a story about Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He had likened a confused mind to a glass of muddy water. Nothing comes out of stirring it frantically. But if you let it sit undisturbed for a while, you can hope for the mud to settle down to the bottom leaving some clear water on top. This makes perfect sense, but why is it so hard to do? I am all zen when everything is perfect. And when I think things are better than perfect, I smell the roses, fall in love with the sky, bask in the sun, and whip out a mushy status message for Facebook. But the moment something goes wrong, I look like a hen roused from her dozing off while sitting on her precious eggs.

So you’d understand why some people are staring at me right now in this lovely café in San Francisco. They saw me change my mind three times about paying with cash or card; do a crazy balancing act of carrying my coffee in one hand, laptop in another, backpack slung across one shoulder, jacket over another, unable to decide where I wanted to sit, which sunny spot was sunnier than the others, and, in the process, drop my mug of coffee. The sound of porcelain shattering on the floor was what made me snap out of my fluster, s down, hold my face in my hands and close my eyes. And I heard the sweet lady who came to clean up the mess say the most comforting words I could have asked for: “It’s okay. Not the end of the world. I’ll fix you another one.”

---

There is a wonderful, healing work that our memory does. In helping us cope with loss, we can filter out the not-so-good times about a person, or a place, and retain only the ones that help us move on. This is also why sometimes the dead appear in a more forgiving light in stories about them.

Some, like me, could really abuse this therapeutic possibility of memory. I, for instance, use it to cope with relationships that have ended, in letting go of people who have moved on from my life. But I don’t stop with it. I push it further. In filtering out the remembrance of times that were painful, I even come to believe, by a circuitous logic, that they never happened. And I start believing that all I had was a lovely time that I have now lost by some stupidity of mine. This belief makes me hold on to the persons in my mind and not let go of them.

In such instances, a reality check is good. You can speak to someone who remembers you from those times, who can remind you what an emotional black-hole you were to hang out with, how a certain relationship was not good for you. Or there is a more fall-with-a-thud kind of a reality check – you end up revisiting the person or place for which you have built up a dangerously Eden-like nostalgia. And you get to see how far the reality is from the colourful machinations of your mind and memory. Thud!

Memory can be a good healer, but only as long as you allow it to do its work without thrusting your hidden agendas on it. Like with any healer, you should not start forming an unhealthy relationship of transference with it. If you do, memory, like any ethical healer or therapist, might tell you that your sessions would have to end.

2011-10-12T08:18:00.001+05:30

இப்பொழுதின் இத்-தனம்

அப்பொழுதின் அத்-தனத்தைப் போலவே

இருப்பதாகத் தோன்றிற்று. அத்தனை

சிந்திப்பில் இப்பொழுது நழுவி

அப்பொழுதாயிற்று. இத்தனை

வேகமாய் விடைபெற்ற அப்பொழுதும்

இப்பொழுது அதன் அத்-தனத்தைக்

கைவிட்டு விலகிற்று

நினைவின் மெத்தனத்தில்.

2011-10-10T22:23:00.004+05:30

I was just beginning to get used to death, when it chose to change its ways. Its scent, that once spread as strong as the slapping grin of a jasmined head in a sweaty bus, has ceased to be. It now has nothing to do with the disinfecting grin of hospital corridors, the scent of fear.

Death used to smell of a million things. Of coffee from a half-drunk cup, the soap that smoothed out the fall in the bathroom, the old starch of the saree that strangled, the car perfume fighting the blood-stench on the steering wheel, flesh arrested in it charring by a bucket of water thrown on it. But death is odorless for me now.

It has also taken the voices away. Many dear ones I mourn, I have forgotten how they sounded. I hear them in my own voice now, like I am reading them from a book. They have been muted out. So it is without the voices and the smells now. But hardly silent or unfamiliar.

To Closures

2011-10-04T06:50:00.000+05:30

Let me raise this glass of spiced tea to new closures, even though they smart on the soul like a hundred band-aids have been pulled out really fast, all at once. The scars make me a spotted creature. A strong, sinewy spotted creature. Or perhaps I am just wrapped in the skin of one. Like the god with the third eye, the one who dances both ends and new beginnings.

A song for the plain ones

2011-10-01T03:39:00.009+05:30

There has to be a song

for the plain ones

The unaccomplished

A song for those who leave

not even rhetoric Oh he was so much

he did so much he was from so much

he made so much he was worth so much

he didn't deserve to go this way

not him not him

not him

There has to be a song for those

who go unnoticed like a fall leaf

among fall leaves lying

on fall leaves

He leaves she leaves they

leave we leave
unsung

But some are plucked

picked folded

within pages of history

books Some deaths

are special They simply are

After all no one has tears

enough for all deaths not even

drama queens Too much information

bombards us too many posts

too many links updates feeds

of deaths of beatings of killings

One too many

it is hard too hard just

too hard to know which ones exactly

to cry for to fight for

to mourn to burn

one's hollow insides for

One has to choose

be sparing be eloquent

about deaths

some deaths

only some deaths Not all

Not even all

one hears of

You got to choose compare

worth prices deals

It might be cheaper online

Do what you can

but choose See who cries

See who else cries

with who cries Thus

choose the death

you will cry for

Dear Paatti

2011-09-29T22:21:00.004+05:30

I am thinking of you, grandmother. I could just call you. You are alive. But I am thinking of you now like I think of someone long gone. Forgive me for that. I will call you tomorrow, and we will talk about your mother, my great grandmother, the one who had many stories to tell. But someone will have to hold the phone to your ears. And you may not hear me properly. Or at all.

You always spoke when I danced. I was your trophy. You'd ask me to dance for the guests. And when I danced, you always spoke about something else. "That one's daughter is getting married. Did you know?" And the guests were too polite to ask you to shut up. So I did. Or I think I did. I always wanted to. Forgive me for that.

I remember your stories of America. Your wore like a tiara the fact that you were the first woman in the family to go on an airplane. You went to hold death's jaws open for as long as you could. But dear uncle died anyway. You changed your saree, wore shoes and sweaters, ignored the meat-smeared dishes in the sink, and even overcame the shock of how much curry leaves cost. But you lost one of your sons anyway.

Can you tell me again that story, the one about how you were locked out one night in the snow and how scared you were? I have a similar story to swap with you. It may not have snow in it, but it does have fear and loneliness. I think you will understand.

I will call you tomorrow. And, as always, you will not ask me when I would get married. You have no idea how much I love you for not asking me that ever.

I have many stories of your failings. But I will let go of them like you let go of that vegetable when you went to Kasi and never ate again.

I will call you tomorrow and tell you I love you. It is very likely that you won't hear me, that you won't know that it is love that rolls in my throat. And someone will have to hold the phone to your ears.

That someone will put the phone down and tell you it was I who called. They will say it louder and closer to your ears. And you will burst into a toothless grin. You will ask where I called from. They will tell you. And your winged mind will soar high above the reach of your shaking arms and hurl its love over the oceans to me.

I love you, too.

Trust Your Bells

2011-09-19T10:06:00.007+05:30

For Shailja Patel, a dear friend who reminded me never to judge my work on the basis of how much money it brings, that in this capitalist world, which refuses to value the practice of art as labour (unless done within certain regimes of oppression), our very existence, our persistence at performing, writing and practising whatever art it is that we practise, are important. Of course, our concerns for our material well-being and achievement of recognition are valid and important, but they need have no bearing on how we value our work.

(Written for performance)

You will be told many things.

For instance, you'll be told

that art isn't labour,

That it comes from sinuous vapours

rising from burning, idle hearts,

That it is not important,

That it has never ended wars,

though nor have governments.

What does not value

art's labour

or yours

likes to hear

you judge yourself and

your artistry

for failing to bring in the buck

for your perpetual bad luck.

It smiles when you hide -

swallowing your pride -

your pen and palette.

You can hear it chortle

when you throttle

your ankle bells under a pillow.

It grins when your scrounge

and scrape and

grovel and gape.

But in exchange for your songs

about empires,

your dance of wrath

about plunder, what tears

your world asunder,

or even your hymn

for your gods and goddesses,

in exchange for your truths,

your soul, your heart,

it will clothe you

in its banners. Flex is

the new haute couture,

the fabric of submission,

of surrender.

You keep your rage, you

lie on your pillow and with your

fingers make the bells on your anklet

toll. When you put them on,

implore them to be both

death's little doorbells

and love's little chorus,

as they will,

as they see fit.

Let them drag your feet,

take you to your truths,

to the dark cave where

your soul sits in hiding.

The bells on your feet

know,

they see, they sing,

they huddle and conspire,

they keep in them your fire,

they remember when you swaggered,

when your aching feet faltered, and

when they stomped to the ground

all meanness,

they remember your gait,

your rhythm, your falling,
but they remember too

your getting up.

Trust their buckled wisdom,

trust even the ones that have lost

their beads and are toothless - they will

speak anyway. Trust your bells

to teach you to dance

your dance. Trust your bells

and dance.

Pills or Reasons

2011-09-16T02:23:00.005+05:30

You ought to have reasons for your feelings.

Or pills.

You cannot have a cold despair come

and sit in your heart just like that.

Not in the middle of a sunny day.

Not without a reason. Have a pill

If you will.

See a shrink.

I was sad the other day. Just sad.

For once, sad was the apt word.

It closed with the airtight click of a tupperware lid.

Language sufficed, and that almost cheered me up.

But a friend said, "Don't despair."

He could see clearer than me

the weekly forecast to the weather in my heart.

A poet suggested I keep myself at arms length.

It became hard to navigate crowded streets

and subway stations. My arm is long

and it slams across the faces of multitudes.

I now sit with the sadness,

the despair and the arm reddened with the slam

of faces passing by. Myself sits close by,

for fall has arrived

and a sudden chill makes you want to huddle

with whoever's closest.

A Charm Against Things That Have No Place In Me

2011-09-14T07:25:00.004+05:30

‎"The bells on my feet rage in rhythm
against your smallness. They toll
for things that have no place
in me, no walls with crevices
to leave their seeds in
to grow and undo.

I stomp to the ground the hatred you throw at me
to keep, water and whisper.
I adorn myself to set myself apart
from your plundering away at molehills of pettiness...

Any darkness there is, lies smeared around my eyes,
reminding me to seek
to see more clearly. I peel the clouds from my eyes
and leave them by the side.

What lies in my gut is timeless
and it rises and flows through me now.
It comes out not as a cry of despair
but as the dance of death, of ends,
and new beginnings.

Little acts of healing and coping

2011-09-14T01:36:00.010+05:30

(Written for my column in Page Seven Magazine)

Whenever I find myself doing dishes in the sink with too much passion, I know that I am sorting through some issues in my head. I scrub away at the oil and grime, and feel a wonderful sense of healing as I see them go down the drain leaving a clean, soaking wet dish in my hand. Does that sound weird? When I announced that I love washing dishes, many people offered to have me live with them. I think I should not dismiss this as an idea, because I already sort of function in the gift economy mode, trading food for work, work for work, etc. But this may not be the appropriate place to go into what transactions I engage in on an everyday basis.

One of my friends tells me that spending time weeding in her garden gives her that sense of healing. I know she really means it. A couple of days ago, I finished watching two movies on the internet while she was lost to the world, bent to the earth in her backyard, weeding away. To each her own, I guess. I have not done much gardening in my life. My mother used to have a beautiful rose garden, and she took great delight in taking care of them, talking to them, thanking them for their colour, fragrance and abundance. Sometimes, if a plant was dying, she would go to it several times a day and speak to it very gently. And my therapy was vicarious, in that I found great healing and love just watching her talk to the plants.

I talk to gadgets all the time, if that counts. The first printer I had at home was a great conversationalist, but not a very compassionate one. When I had to print out several drafts of my Masters dissertation, I spoke to my printer more than I spoke to my parents or friends. One day, when I was in the middle of a passionate plea to my printer to let me print a few pages before it started wheezing and whining, the phone rang. It was my dissertation supervisor who already had strong misgivings about my sanity. When she heard me shout at the printer, she took pity on my condition and extended the deadline for the submission of the draft. She saw it as emotional disturbance that warranted compassion.

Another task I love is ironing clothes. It is especially so when I have issues to sort out, which is, actually, all the time, but sometimes I don't sort them out. I just let them gain weight and sink beneath the surface so that I can go on with my life. But, of course, they resurface soon with vengeance, and it is not pretty sight. So let's not go there.

But when I do iron clothes, I really get into it. I feel like I am ironing out the creases from my life. It is a wonderful feeling. Of course, when I said this to friends, they were like, "Oh you can iron our clothes, if you want more healing." But that's the thing - it was only recently that I learnt to stick to ironing the wrinkles out of my clothes alone. Others' clothes are their business. They might actually be going for the creased and crinkled look. You never know.

Back to the dishes. It is amazing how quickly they pile up. You want to clean them all before you go to bed, so that you can wake up to a clean sink in the morning and feel like a success in life. But you give into the sloth that comes after that terrific dinner, and go to bed right after that second glass of wine. When you wake up the next morning and come to the kitchen for some coffee, there the dirty dishes are, piled up like the easy debris of your weak will and determination, mocking you.

Should I be going for therapy? Please tell me it is normal to go through these emotions, that some of you can relate to this madness. Help me out here, please!

From Public Humiliations to Personal Victories

2011-08-16T07:05:00.006+05:30

(written for my column in the Media Voice magazine)

Recently, I popped open a bottle of champagne over completing ten driving lessons. If you don’t know me, it is very likely that you wonder what the big deal about that is. I had reached a turning point in conquering my fear of driving, and it called for a celebration! Actually, to be more specific, I was celebrating my managing not to knock off a poor cyclist with a large stack of eggs on the back stand. I was also celebrating the very backhanded compliment that my surly driving instructor gave me when I wondered if I’d ever be able to drive. He said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you can… (powerful pause)… All sorts of morons do.”

Generally, I am not very good at making people feel good about themselves, but when someone gives me a ride in their car, by the time I get dropped, they usually feel like epic heroes. I am so keen on letting them know how much in awe of them I am, for the fact that they could drive, that they are usually beaming with self-love by the time I get down. Well, my little service to humanity.

But, seriously, I hope you do celebrate your small victories. You don’t need a bottle of champagne. To be truthful, I didn’t have one either. The booze situation in Chennai is cause for serious depression. That’s for a separate discussion.

Personal victory number two: I found a way to make me do things I procrastinate on. Public humiliation. Of course, for this to have its effect, you must be the kind that is shamed into action by public humiliation. I have started appointing people who would call me out on my dithering and laziness on my Facebook wall! And several other trusted Facebook friends add bitchy comments to it, adding to the humiliation. This propels me into finishing whatever it is that I am supposed to be finishing. Also, my friends who crack the whip are smart enough to make their postings when I am fast asleep, so before I see them and delete them, there is a litany of nasty comments by so-called friends.

Personal victory number three: For the first time in my life, I managed to take a powernap in the afternoon, and I could call it a powernap without adding any air-quotes around it. My “powernaps” usually last anywhere between an hour and a half and two hours. This one lasted twenty minutes, and I sprang to action right after. How did I manage this? The aforementioned, self-arranged public humiliation on Facebook acted as a loud snooze in my pretty, sleeping self and pushed me right off the bed in twenty minutes. Also, the vivid image of my friend walking in circles around me and giving me whiplashes for stalling work was not entirely conducive for a pleasant siesta.

Of course, for any of this to work, you need to be the kind that is discomfited by humiliation, and not tickled by it! Also, you need friends who don’t mind being ruthless with you. Trust me, we all have friends who would pounce at an opportunity to play the cruel coach. This week it is my turn to crack the whip on a friend who needs some pushing to get some work done. Oh boy! The things he will get done before I am through with him!

Ah, but what are friends for ;)

Aniruddhan Vasudevan dances, acts, writes, travels, cooks, and does a host of other things that cannot be listed without inviting serious censorship trouble

The Watched Phone Does Not Ring...

2011-07-14T21:34:00.004+05:30

(Written for my column "Monthly Musings" in Media Voice magazine)

SMS romances are at once exhilarating and nerve-wracking, not to mention expensive if you are on the wrong cellphone plan. For some of us who are running around like headless chickens, heart puffed with self-importance (okay, may be that's just me), with little or no time for a relaxed, caffeine-overloaded romance, conducting an affair over text messages can appear to be a tantalizing option. I mean, who wouldn't like the relief of typing out a short, corny message while suffocating in a conference room somewhere debating how well a project is going, how targeted is the intervention under question, does the said target need the said intervention, does the said intervention actually target the said target, is the target too widespread, is the intervention too weak, etc., with tabular columns and numbers swirling over one's head?

That was how I got fooled. After some defenceless SMS-romancing, I now realize that I need to have a strong sense of self not only to conduct an actual romance, but even to type out clipped cliches over flaky networks. If you are the kind that would get nail-bitingly anxious when the reply comes a couple of minutes late, SMS romance may not be for you. It calls for a stronger constitution. I know, because I write this from the local rehabilitation center for post-paid-coital depression (again, it is based on your cellphone plan).It could push you over the edge and make you a full-fledged whacko instead of just the borderline case that you are right now.

My cellphone bears the scars of all my insecurities and impatience. If it were a computer, I'd probably refresh the screen a million times to see if the reply to my email has arrived. Not that I have done it, not that I have assaulted several mouses by clicking on them endlessly to refresh a page. I am just speaking hypothetically...But since this is a phone, and since I travel a lot and am a casualty to wobbly cellphone signals all over the country, I keep turning the phone off and on hoping that would bring the loving messages flooding in. And in the few-minute long delay that occurs before phone vibrates along the table excitedly announcing a reply, I'd imagine the person has lost interest, is losing interest, might be losing interest, will lose interest eventually anyway, etc. The voice of whoever is speaking at the said conference would fade out and I would start hearing a million voices in my own head: Why hasn't he replied? How can I salvage this? What should I say in my next message? Or should I wait for his message first? Am I acting desperate? The only unequivocal answer is to the last question: Yes.

Then in an attempt to attenuate the edges of my neurosis, I'd bring down my fidgeting by a few notches. This is when I would start staring at the phone, squinting almost, believing, naively, that my poring eyes, which normally have trouble reading small fonts, would somehow make the phone ring, make the SMS reply appear when I want it to. But this is where recycled age-old wisdom, albeit originally about pots, gently whispers: The watched phone does not ring.

Voices in the Kitchen

2011-07-08T20:12:00.004+05:30

When I woke up from a nap today, stretched away the sleep from my body, and thought, "Hmm. What can I cook today?" it echoed along the corridors of my veins in the voices of my amma, my great grandmother who put so much of herself everyday in what she did for us that it actually shrunk her, and my aunts who say, for any of your sadnesses, "Come, just eat this, you will feel better."

Oh goddesses of my family, when I cook without exact measurements, I hear you whisper from behind me, "A little more, kanna," or "That's enough," or "Ayyo!"

I feel you within me. You do me an honour by inhabiting me. You smile when I tell you I cook because I like to cook. I know what you are thinking: you liked it, too, but you also cooked because you had to.

Indian LGBT Activist: We’ll Do Gay Rights Our Way

2011-07-08T20:09:00.000+05:30

Joe Erbentraut's interview with me for his "future queer leaders" series of profiles over at Edge

Media Network - HERE

Summer in Chennai

2011-06-28T19:46:00.005+05:30

Has summer arrived?

Someone on chat asked

From some place far away,

Where summer arrives every year.

In here, I said,

Summer arrived in time immemorial.

Period.

It plays variations like batik print.

But always, like thin batik shirts,

Sticks to the skin

And traces ungainly contours.

When some of us here smile

For no reason,

Eternal summer's wet embraces are to blame.

Sometimes it rains

2011-06-28T19:42:00.006+05:30

Sometimes it rains

The way unlikely dates happen.

Suspicions of mutual dislike

Sometimes end in candle lights

And going dutch.

Flirting with grimy sweat,

Summer rain is a salty tickle.

But I wonder why I think of you

With the first scent of rain before rain.

Joe Erbentraut's Interview with me on Edgeonthenet.com

2011-06-26T20:00:00.000+05:30

Joe Erbentraut is an excellent journalist working on many issues that often fail to assume centrality within the LGBT rights movements -- issues like racism, sexism, poverty, etc. He interviewed me as part of his "Future Queer Leaders" series of profiles at Edge Media Network. You can read the interview HERE. Thank you!

Women's Art of the Everyday

2011-06-26T19:49:00.000+05:30

I am happy to see that Tara Books have posted my blog on a wonderful workshop they conducted in February 2011.

Selvi, a very gifted Kolam artist and a lovely woman, passed away tragically earlier this month. I am touched that my friends at Tara Books have dedicated the blog to Selvi's memory.

Please read the blog HERE.

The Dangerous Talk of Balance

2011-06-16T19:01:00.003+05:30

(Written for my column "Monthly Misgivings" in Media Voice magazine)

I am always amused at the idea of me that people who don't know me seem to have. Recently, someone asked me if I could speak to the members of a club about how I balance my work and life. Ever the first one to laugh at jokes - unintended or otherwise - made at my expense, I had to exercise great control to keep up my serious demeanour. "You are always doing a lot of things, travelling here and there. It all sounds like a lot of fun," he said. Amidst feeling flattered, I did not fail to notice the beautiful haziness of it all. He only knew I did a lot of "things" and that I travelled "here and there." A big thought bubble formed over my head, and inside it was my face with an evil grin etched on it, and the lines, "Oh... so that is what I possess. Mystery value. No one knows what I do!"

It is not as if I try hard to conceal the details of my work life. But the idea of one full-time, salaried job is such an oppressive norm that it has spread its tentacles over people's heads and sucked out from them any possibility of looking at life and work differently. Someone quite innocently asked me what I do. In all earnestness, I listed out the different things I do. The poor soul looked completely baffled and said, "But what do you do full-time?" It was my turn to look baffled. I said, "I live full-time. Everything else I do part-time." It was only a few minutes later, and only after being prompted by the cheers of the other people around, that I sensed I had said something that could be considered witty. As usual, I had been witty without meaning to be so. My baffled responses to everyday queries from people have earned me a questionable reputation for being witty.

But I love it that people think I am so put together and focussed. Little do they know that I am as focussed as a ........ Sorry, I drifted off.

It often happens to me that I realize that the person I am talking to thinks more highly of me than I do myself! I have sort of resented it, too. When someone thinks highly of you, there is a certain pressure to live up to that image. When you protest and try to disabuse them of their fancy notions, they think you are falsely modest! There is no way out. You just have to quietly resign to the faith that time will reveal to them their delusions, that they will soon know what a nincompoop you are!

On the other hand, we are never good enough for some people. But we would flagellate ourselves to make this crowd understand our worth. Who cares about those who think we are wonderful when there is a thronging mass of people, often close at hand, that makes you think your worst suspicion is true - that you are worthless?

On a serious note, how hard it is for some of us to accept compliments, believe them, and see us in our own true glory! As my favourite poet Wislawa Szymborska says in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself."

Very true. I would like to believe in my merits. And I resolve do so as soon as I find out what they are. Also, I need to do something about this wretched force of habit that finds in my faults a richer source of humour than in my merits, whatever and wherever they are. The moment I find something else that makes me funny, I will drop my self-deprecation. I promise, my dear poet!

In the mean time, I have agreed to speak at this meeting about my work and life. But I managed to bypass the murky terrain of balance, or its utter lack there of.

Failing at Epic Episode Scale, and the Epiphanies Therein

2011-06-14T07:09:00.006+05:30

A recent experience brought to mind the first half of the title of JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech of 2008: “The Fringe Benefits of Failure….” But I think I feel this way because of my proclivity to drama. For neither did I encounter failure, not were the benefits so fringe.

Some of you might have heard about a performance piece I have been working on for a few months now. Some of you were there the first time I performed it as a work in progress in March 2011 at Madras-Chennai Local’s event, “Dancers – Separate and Together,” a video of which was taken and uploaded by friends at www.archive.org/details/Brihannala. Some among those some were even kind enough to watch it again, when I performed it for the Justice Rocks fundraiser for campaigns working with pollution-impacted communities, on 5 June 2011. This second performance of the short version of Brihannala, which is developing into a longer and more fully fledged performance piece and taking me to exciting places (speaking both figuratively as well as literally), brought with it a staggering moment of insight and humility.

For those of you who have not watched the performance or the video: the piece is in the form of a self-narrative by an actor who plays Brihannala repeatedly as part of a theatre tradition. He maps his gender non-conformity and same-sex desires onto the character of Brihannala, an ephemeral persona in the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. Brihannala, is, in fact, Arjuna, one of the heroes of the epic, spending the last year of his exile with his brothers and wife, as a eunuch.

An obviousness that could perhaps use some stating here is that a big part of this work is also autobiographical: if not the specific details, at least the essence of the desires and dilemmas spoken about are. In thinking about the kind of inner resources that Arjuna dug into in being Brihannala, in the work, I wonder where he found the energy within himself, what he was sublimating in thus castrating, almost literally, himself, one of the most celebrated heroes of Hindu mythology, possessor of a sort of an iconic masculinity even. Reflecting on his own repeated performance of Brihannala and his love for the character Arjuna as well as the actor who plays the part, the speaking subject, which is me, says that he knows how he keeps his sanity, what he sublimates in his performances. I had ended the script and the first performance of it with the lines “I think I know” repeated over drumbeats and some mad stomping of feet.

This moment and the kind of certainty of knowing something that it offered me were, I had assumed, pivotal to the piece as well as my current reading of my compass of desires. In the second performance of this piece, however, the rug was pulled from under my feet. When I came to the moment where I compensate for my lack of clue about Arjuna's psyche as Brihannala with an admission of my knowledge of my own mechanisms of forbidden desires, self-sublimation and sanity, I froze momentarily. Right there, while performing in front of a hundred people, I was presented with the recognition that this time around, I was not so sure I knew what I sublimated in my performance of genders, what I did to keep myself sane. There I stood, deprived of the impressive sense of sure-footedness with which I had ended my script, which I had assumed I could just stick to for any number of performances. There I was, a mere few months after the scripting and the first performance, having lost that certainty.

But I could worry about those later. What was more urgent was to decide what had to be done right then, while faced with this realization that ran completely counter to the script. Someone said epiphanies happen outside time. Wasn’t it James Joyce? Virginia Woolf had a remarkable phrase: “a moment of being.” I chose to be truthful. And the performance ended with my saying, “I am not sure. I thought I knew. I thought I knew.”

The insight was not only that I did not know whatever it was that I thought I knew. It also had something to do with a question: what do I do with such knowledge, albeit knowledge of an ignorance, while I am in the middle of giving an account of myself, even when that exercise is in the form of a performance. Not that I have resolved this question forever in favour of a candid disclosure, simply because I managed to do it once. All I know is that I did it once somehow trusting that the universe and the audience present that day wouldn’t laugh at me even if the performance capsized under the weakness of the moment. I do not know what I will do next time. Well, I do not know what will happen next time!

Why did I refer to JK Rowling’s speech about the fringe benefits of failure? Well, without being too harsh on myself, I can say that I did fail a little that day as a performer in not being able to deliver a power-packed performance that is rock steady in its course. But at a personal level, I am immensely grateful for this experience. In thus admitting aloud my not knowing some things, in recognizing that some of my answers are makeshift, I was able to get updated about myself. It is generally good to catch up with one’s truths at least once in a while, I guess. It could keep the effects of self-delusions at check, if not entirely at bay.

Back to Essentialisms

2011-06-11T15:57:00.009+05:30

I have been a little bothered about a conversation I had with an online friend about my previous post, "Shut up and dance? Really?" Basically, she felt that much of what I had written was unnecessary thinking on my part and that I had allowed it to come in the way of my letting go and dancing, in my path to finding bliss in dance. Besides a suspicion that she perhaps thought I was kind of playing up my gay identity in my writings, I have also been discomfited by a near-total refusal on her part to engage with the crux of the piece. Of course, if what I consider to be the crux of the piece did not come through in the writing, it is only me who is to blame.

Don't get me wrong. She meant well. Very well, in fact. She genuinely felt that I was thinking too much and allowing that to come in the way of enjoying my dance, in reaching a self-forgetting abandon or bliss that I seem to have suggested I crave. I am touched by the concern. When I said, for the sake of argument, that perhaps I did not want to forget my self in dance, she pointed out to the hollowness of that argument by showing that I did indeed seem to desire it, by directing me to what I had written.

She was right. But the thinking, however unnecessary may it be in anyone's opinion, does not end there. It is not only a question of putting up roadblocks to one's experience of bliss in dance. It also includes the questions "what specific roadblocks?" "what specific dance?" I think it is a place of privelege to be able to prescribe abandoment of thought and processes of making sense of oneself as a general panacea for issues of self-identity. I now realize that what is at the core of the issues that I have discussed in that piece is not a subjective lamenting of my inability to transcend my self. It is, in fact, an attempt to recognize that this space -- Bharata Natyam's contemporary caste-class-gender matrix -- arrogantly calls for a relinquishing of a self that it does not care about, that it positions itself as a pseudo-spiritual space that suggests differences do not matter in way only hegemonic spaces and narratives can.

Then the question is not so much whether I want this space for the sublimation of my self, but more about whether we should spend more time teasing out what various things we mean by words like bliss, self, etc., about the several layers of essentialisms that are mounted over these terms. And when someone speaks about being at loggerheads with a cultural practice one has engaged in, could we be more respectful than to call their thought process "unnecessary," even if it appears to be so from some haloed hall of privilege?

Bharata Natyam's history, its texts, its relationship with issues of caste, class, religion, gender and sexuality are very much situated ones. They have definite loci of power. To construct it is as a spiritual space of great levelling of differences is also an exercise that is part of that same history. There is so much to be teased out, including the apparent contradiction in the fact that despite so much "unnecessary thinking," I continue to engage with the form. That engagement feels like a dance in itself.

Shut up and dance? Really?

2011-05-03T17:44:00.008+05:30

(This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago when I was down with an injured knee, off dancing and with a lot of time to think.)

I read a quote somewhere that was attributed to Samuel Beckett: “Dance first, think later.” I do not know if he really suggested that sequence. I also wonder if it works that way all the time. He might even have used “dance” in the sense of celebration, revelry, letting go. But dance as art practice, even as it has all of these, is hardly just that. It may not be truly possible to separate dance and thought into two neat, separate boxes. Thoughts can dance their way into our heads sometimes; thoughts can also impede movement at times.

So we may not be able to put aside thought for later after all. Specialized thought, particularly academic and intellectual discourse, may have huge impacts on an activity like dancing. It could freeze you momentarily; lurk around the corner you are about to turn and cast a petrifying charm on you.

Despite these possibly discouraging effects, theorizing is an exciting process for me; as much as dancing is. A commitment to theorizing essentially means allowing self-reflexive ruptures into practices - having small and big explosions of insights into one’s performance of, adherence to, and association with social, political, cultural and economic practices. Some of these ruptures could take the form of epiphanies that change the course of a person’s life and practice of art into brilliant directions at once. Some might find theory and politics immediately empowering. For many others, an engagement with theory could sharpen the edge of self-reflexivity and drive it as a wedge between the self and its current practices, the body and its performance, the individual and her/his self-narrative. Here’s my experience!

I started learning Bharata Natyam when I was 6 years old, on the Vijayadasami day of the year 1988 in my hometown, Kumbakonam. Initially, it was just plain, unadulterated joy to be dancing; the kind of unreflective joy that is a prerogative of childhood – the kind of exercise where you hear a huge “YES” in your head every time you think about it. Kumbakonam has a strong presence in Hindu mythology and south Indian history as a pilgrim site and a business centre for the Cholas. The Iyengar¹community I come from also has an embedded history in this space. My family could demonstrate, with great ease, its link to the town and its temples for several generations, notwithstanding the fact that a few generations before us had not lived there. Therefore, there was an easy coherence to my childhood self-narrative - the way I thought of and spoke about myself - dancing included.

Such innocence was not to last. Dance became a zone rife with questions of self-identity during and after adolescence, because of the gender inflections it began to receive. It was an issue for the boys in the classroom and hence became an issue for me. As an activist now, I may reclaim “sissy” and wear it on a pink badge, but even the intensity of such reclamations usually says a lot about the strength of the wounds. Despite these issues, there never was an impasse, I never thought of quitting dance. In fact, the same dance that made life as a boy complex and rife with everyday negotiations of power in school also became a therapeutic space. But dance, I started realizing, was going to be a difficult space. It was not going to be the romantic forget-your-worries-and-dance kind of a space. This was because dancing was singling me out from the boys of my age. This alienation and the anxieties it provoked were to last into adulthood.

Much later, something else, that initially appeared innocuous, made dancing - dancing Bharata Natyam specifically - very hard for me. It was the exposure to scholarship that historicized and theorized Bharata Natyam^2,that dealt a major blow to my emotional affinities to it that I had left unscrutinized till then. But it was not the revisionist understanding, per se, of Bharata Natyam that was difficult for me to deal with. That Bharata Natyam was not an ancient art form but was one constituted by ruptures with tradition was, in itself, not a disconcerting fact. But the fact that these ruptures were located within the politics of caste, nationalism, gender, sexuality and religion was the specific locus of quiet but disabling anxiety for me. For almost all of these categories already had a not-taken-for-granted aspect in my life: a brahmin boy from Kumbakonam, with parents who had strong anti-brahminical and anti-casteist personalities, a boy who was beginning to understand that he desired boys, a boy who has been called "sissy" in three different languages, a Hindu boy with strong misgivings about religion.

One result of all this exposure was the opportunity to get a deeper and defamiliarized look at different aspects of Bharata Natyam. For instance, the nauseating claims to spirituality that were being made (I quite literally grew up among these voices) were making "spirituality" itself a term and domain in need of active reclaiming. If I am now a spiritual person and a Bharata Natyam performer, it is also true that I am a sexual person and a Bharata Natyam performer. In fact, my sexuality is more in the public domain, as a visible problematic, than my spirituality. Also, once I could clearly see the strong hetero-patriarchy permeating the texts and practice of Bharata Natyam, it became an absolute necessity for me to see what subject space I could claim within it. I needed to know if I could be feminist and queer and still find a location within Bharata Natyam to “speak” from, without feeling compromised. I also needed to know if I could find a way to happily marry off aesthetics and politics in a relationship that constantly sustained the tension between them, without attempting, naively, to "resolve" it.

Adrienne Rich, American poet, talks somewhere about the importance of announcing one's subject position; to be aware of and make clear where one speaks from. My dilemma has been in recognizing my subject position with all its limitations and simultaneous centralities and marginalities – caste, class, gender, sexuality, etc. Announcing and declaring it is are simultaneous concerns. I will not sequentialize them. I don't think the (re)cognition and announcing of one's subject position are sequential acts. Often, I have known my own positions only in the stating of them.

Modern scholarships on Bharata Natyam, history, casteism and politics have made access to a lot of things very mediated and anxiety-ridden for me. They have made me see the complex links between identity and performance, both as everyday modes of being in the world as well as specialized and staged performance. And that, I think, is quite excellent. As a gendered and sexualized subject with a caste and class identity in modern India, I see that Bharata Natyam is not just dance for me. It is a practice I engage in, that is at once crisscrossed by several histories; histories that have also written themselves over my body. These are histories not just of community, art and excellence. They are also, very significantly, histories of gender and caste oppression, notions of masculinity and sexuality, even the history of the idea of the Nation.

Theorizing my relationship with Bharata Natyam, hence, amounts to theorizing myself from a few perspectives. It is an instance of acquired knowledge playing upon one's notion of the given. It offers new ways of re-imagining oneself. But it has taken sometime to be able to attenuate the edges of my anxiety with the understanding that I can re-fashion and re-imagine my selfhood; that the seemingly innocent prefix "re-" powerfully questions the givenness of the givens themselves.

Until learning to live in and appreciate liminal zones and interstitial crevices, until learning to willingly make myself vulnerable (for I now think that a true way for me to relate to another is by dis-covering my vulnerabilities), I felt both dancing and speech had been made difficult for me. I thought every movement I executed and every utterance I made were screaming my location to the world - what I saw as the incongruity in being a Bharata Natyam dancer/ Brahmin boy and an anti-hetero-patriarchal, same-sex loving self, social worker, activist, etc. But to this day I find myself ‘doing’ Bharata Natyam, attempting to find new ways to sing my own songs, dance my own dance, as it were. I am thankful for the existence of these etceteras; they allow me new and unknown possibilities of being.

Notes
(1)People of the Brahmin Vaishnava (worshippers of Vishnu) community in this part of the country are called Iyengars. The priestly caste in the Tamil region have Iyers and Iyengars as broad sub-groups, with several sub-communities under each, with various levels of interior hierarchization.

²Bharata Natyam has a history of discontinuity from that of Sadir, the dance form performed by devadasis and rajadasis in the temples and courts of south India until the early decades of the twentieth century. This history is located in the politically charged space of colonial reformist movement that sought to end dancing in temples and the dedication of women to temples. This culminated in the passing of the Devadasi Bill in the Madras Legislative Council, spearheaded by Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy. The revival of Sadir as Bharata Natyam is attributed to people like Rukmini Devi Arundale and E Krishna Iyer and to institutions like the Madras Music Academy. For a little more on this, see Srinivasan, Amrit. 1985. ‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and her Dance’. Economic and Political Weekly, 20: 1869-76

The Little Boy Who Danced!

2011-04-29T18:39:00.016+05:30

Strange are the trappings of a troubled boyhood. You might think you have grown up, weathered the many storms of adolescence, teenage, and those particularly painful years of early adulthood that were made bearable only by bad verse and long love letters that were never posted; you might think you have outsmarted those years that made you flagellate yourself with a sudden sense of responsibility that pushed you to make it in the world; you might think you have finally come to occupy your body with a reasonable degree of comfort. But small things could catch you unawares and, in a flash, make you that little boy again, who stood petrified in front his classroom as the other boys jeered at how his long arms flailed, and how his limp wrists weakly sliced the air every time he flung them about...

That was how I felt today when I went to be part of a lecture-demonstration by my dance guru, Chitra Visweswaran, in a school. I was fumbling about in the staff room, that had been graciously offered as a greenroom, trying to get at least some of the creases out of my dhothi that was crushed beyond measure during the long, killer commutes through Bangalore city. The sweet young lady who had received us at the entrance walked into the room and introduced herself as the dance teacher at the school. She said, "I am delighted you are here with Chitraji! Lots of girls learn dance here, but the boys, even those who want to, don't. That's because there is a general belief among boys that it is not a very masculine thing to do. Today, they can see you and see how wrong they are!"

Though I laughed and managed to appear flattered, I was very aware of the churning feeling in my stomach, the same feeling that has gripped me in its throes several times before. Many years ago, I used to experience this so often that I was convinced these were the shudders of another creature that lay coiled within me, that was sensing danger around. This feeling of dread, which I would feel in my very gut, was like a response to a threat to my survival. It would start in my core and send out its tentacles that held me tight and made me breathless. But, strangely, it also gave me, every time, the will to brave whatever awaited me, to show up to the world no matter what, to live through whatever instance lay ahead of me. "This won't last for too long," I would tell myself, "this will be over soon." And in a bizarre paradox, I would draw my strength from this same threatened creature in my tummy, and manage to live through those instances - the several performances in school, the many times I had to respect the urge to put up my hand to ask the teacher a question, the umpteen speech competitions where I looked, as I reeled out my prepared speech, determinedly in the direction of the girls, who were always, for some inexplicable reason, wordlessly empathetic.

Today’s setting, I realized, was a scary re-creation of those school days. Here I was again, just a stride or two away from being thirty, feeling like a young boy again, acutely alarmed at the prospect of performing in front of boys and girls gathered in a courtyard that had an uncanny resemblance to the one in my school back in Kumbakonam. I did not know where this other scared and threatened creature lay inside me all these years. Don’t get me wrong. I have not exactly been an intrepid embracer of life in the years that have passed between then and now. I have had other frightened, upset and angry little creatures inside me that I have been, one by one, releasing patiently, compassionately and with a great love that I have had to learn to feel.

While I struggled to get the thread into the needle, my teacher waited patiently to secure her ornaments onto her costume with small stitches. My hands trembled, and I felt great love and protectiveness for my body that was manifesting in these tremors trauma buried deep within. Quietly, I started to speak to this creature that was responding in conditioned ways to perceived threat to its survival.

Once I chose to address this being with love, I saw that it was no mystical creature. It was a little boy shuddering and gasping. He was cowering under memories that were weighing down on him. I held his hand and said to him, “Please do not be scared. I am here. And there is help. Remember we have done this before. Many, many times. Don’t you think it is funny that this situation should arise now after several years? May be this is a chance to do something more about it. May be we don’t have to give ourselves the temporary assurance that this will pass. May be we can do better than dealing with it in such provisional basis. I am sorry I did not know you were still hurting, suffocating, and hiding. Let’s go and face this squarely in the eye. Let us not cower. And let us not be armed. Let’s just go there and have a good time. Remember the pleasure we have always felt in dancing, in surviving. No, not just surviving, but living gloriously. Come.”

And we went, me and this scared little boy within me; we went not to war, but to dance. Oh boy, did we dance! No one would have known that I was not dancing alone, that I was dancing with a little boy who badly wanted to dance, but was too scared to let go of his fears and drop his guard. No one might have known the joy both of us felt, or heard a little boy’s laughter floating in and out of the cheers of a happy young man. But it happened. They both had a wonderful time. They danced like no one was watching.

I am very lucky that I have a great teacher and friend in Chitra akka. Though she had been part of the conversation with the school’s dance teacher about boys and their notions of masculinity, she chose to circumvent this troublesome and unproductive terrain when she spoke after I performed. She said to the many boys and girls gathered there, “Did you see how much he enjoyed himself? Didn’t it look like he had a lot of fun dancing?” And the crowd of children went in a thunderous chorus, “YES!”

For now, that is all that matters.

Panappaarai Mattam - The Treasure Mountain

2011-04-21T07:29:00.006+05:30

I am on a train back to Chennai from Coimbatore. Last evening, on the long drive from Panappaarai Mattam to my parent's place in Coimbatore, I got to reflect on my four-day stay at my friend Siddharth's at Panappaarai Mattam, an hour from Coonoor in the Nilgiris. My friend Lakshmi called me to ask about the trip and that helped me further in unravelling the bundle of amazing thoughts that I felt was snuggling inside my heart.

A few days ago, I was sitting in the guest room at Rana's (Siddharth) house, the big windows completely open, giving a clear view of the mountains and the valley in front of me, a red-whiskered bulbul playing in the bushes right outside the window, a jungle fowl incessantly crowing somewhere nearby, and I was writing to a friend of mine. I wrote that I thought the primary purpose of this trip was for me to heal. For that's what I felt when I arrived at Siddharth's place. I have heard and used, innumerable times before, phrases like “breathtakingly beautiful” and “unbelievably beautiful,” but when I landed at Rana's place, I felt I had been very loose with language, that I had hitherto used these phrases rather flippantly, not really believing either the “unbelievableness” or the “breathtaking-ness” of the beauty I was praising.

The place was so - and I say this with a great degree of consciousness now - breathtakingly beautiful that it made speech difficult. It commanded nothing but a respectful silence. I feel very grateful for having friends like Rana, friends who care for me very deeply, who love me, who say so at every opportunity they get, who express it in the most beautiful ways.

Yesterday, on my way down from the mountains, I realized that this trip had had two more purposes, actually more like two sub-purposes under the grand one of healing!

One, to be reminded of the fact that I am a very ancient soul. I live close to the sea in Chennai. In the last many years, I have formed an interesting relationship with the sea. Just the thought of it calms me down. Sitting by the sea makes my heart jump with joy. By the sea, I always feel like a very young, rather new, soul being cradled by the eternal waters. But, in the past few days, taking long walks and hikes on the mountains, I felt like I was an ancient soul who has walked these hills and vales several times before, that these mountains have known me from before. For everything seemed to smile and nod in recognition. It was good to be reminded of my eternity.

The other purpose of the trip, I felt, was to be able to access a quality of quiet that let me hear each of my thoughts. And I am glad I came to this after I had done some good work with non-judgment. For many of the thoughts I heard passing through the thoroughfare of my mind were not ones I would admit publicly to have entertained, let alone be proud of! I could hear each thought and let it keep moving. I could release these thoughts gently over the hills and the sun and the sky, trusting that these powerful healers would heal them for me.

Siddharth is a wonderful friend, one of those people whose friendships I have always doubted if I deserved. And one genre of thoughts that I let go of this time were such thoughts of unworthiness. They don't help. They are not respectful to the wonderful people and experiences that life tirelessly brings my way. To suggest that they are wasting time with someone unworthy of their time and love; to suggest that life is doing a mistake in bringing along all the many lovely experiences it does bring along, is not very respectful. Our sense of unworthiness is actually a source of disrespect to life and to all those who see our worth. We take the impossible position of deeming ourselves unworthy while somehow being capable of knowing how others are settling for less by choosing us! Such twisted arrogance!

Anyway. Panappaarai Mattam has been so named because it is believed that Tipu Sultan hid some treasure there somewhere under a rock. I don't know about that, though, I must confess, it makes me want to write a thriller fiction about a group of people going in search of this treasure. But Panappaarai Mattam has already revealed its treasure to me with great openness and generosity. The treasure of finding more of myself.

"The Wind Will Rise, We Can Only Close The Shutters"

2011-04-15T07:05:00.005+05:30

An episode of depression is often characterized by an utter lack of will to do anything. Let alone work, school and other such tasks, it becomes a humongous effort even to get out of bed, have a shower, and fix breakfast for oneself. Needless to say, everything suffers. Backlog of work piles up, people get upset with you for not taking their calls, for not returning their calls... And you cannot understand why you face so much resistance, from yourself, to pick up the phone and wish your friend on her birthday.

I find it very hard to do anything at all when I go through my phases of depression. It is like I am wading through a long stretch of greyness, surviving and getting spat out of which is a blessing enough. It almost feels too much to ask for to want to be productive, to push oneself to finish some tasks, to get up from that chair or bed to the bathroom to wash one's face, to open that file that needs to be looked into, to start writing that article you committed to. It is even harder not to hate yourself for being so dysfunctional periodically, for having gained a reputation for being flaky. I cannot insist enough that the most useless and unproductive thing to do is to blame yourself.

I am definitely not at my productive best when I go through these tunnels, but I have, in course of being committed (varying levels of commitment, I agree) to help myself cope with clinical depression, tried out different strategies. One of them is to work in collaboration with a friend or two. I keep at least two of my friends informed that I am slipping into a depressive episode, and that I am going to need a lot of push to be able to do even the simplest of things. I make a list of things I want to be able to do in that time, and I share it with a friend and ask her/him to push me to do them. I even ask them to force me to get out of the house for a walk, a concert, a visit to the temple. I tell them that what I am going through is not my often-touted "need for space," but, largely, an involuntary journey through long and dark tunnels.

One important thing to remember while implementing this is that you should be careful which friend you entrust this work to. It is good to pick someone who can be firm and loving, and who does not have a lot going on in her/ his life at that time. I try not to overload someone who already has enough on her plate. What is best, of course, is to work with someone who understands clinical depression, even goes through it, with yours and her depressive episodes staggered enough to allow you to work with each other.

I know how hard it can be. To get out of a phase of depression and find that your immediate world has moved ahead of you, that your deadlines, far from being dead, are now chasing you with great vengeance can all be very difficult to handle. That is why it helps to do what one can, even while smothered by the dark clouds, to push oneself to do some basic things. Besides all these, I do hope that you have a healthy attitude towards seeking professional help, to get the right medication prescribed.

A line from one of my favourite poems by the American poet Adrienne Rich comes to mind: "the wind will rise,/ We can only close the shutters."

The Stories We Tell

2011-04-10T13:26:00.010+05:30

I am a seeker after stories. Sometimes we posit a very simplistic binary between reality and story. A whole lot of theories talk about how our stories about our realities are all that we have and can hold on to; that the thing called reality itself cannot be apprehended outside of language. I don't really believe in that. But I do believe that our stories are very potent. Narratives shape us in bizarre ways. Even to locate a source of a dysfunctionality in my life within a story that I have been narrating about my life, is very empowering. In the first place, it makes me aware of how I have been narrating a story all the time believing that my words are perfectly transparent and show nothing but the truth of the life-situation that the story is about. I forget that my story is a story, a perspective, an interpretation that I have chosen to claim as my own.

When I get present to the story-ness of my story, not only do I become aware of my role as an interpreter of my own life, I also realize that I respond to life a lot through the story (or a web of stories) I have made up. The brain, I feel, loves these stories and the images they conjure. I feel empowered by the possibility that I could re-fashion my own stories that help me live better, more positively, more magically, more life-affirmingly, more joyously. That does not mean I concoct lies. It means I sit quietly and see what other lenses there are through which I could see my life and the situations that I draw to myself. I am not sure of this yet, but something tells me that at some point I would graduate to abandoning stories altogether, that I would meet life in an unmediated way and become one with it. For now, stories appear to have a provisional utility.

For instance, if you have read my previous blogpost, you would know that I now have a story that connects me to my maternal grandmother! I had always yearned for something that would make me feel my connection to her very concretely. Silly as it may sound, an old eversilver ladle that I stir my sambar with is what accomplishes that for me.

This desire to feel a sense of connection on the maternal side has always been there. As a young brahmin boy, after the sacred thread ceremony, I was always very uncomfortable with the Abhivadanam, a practice wherein a brahmin male prostrates in front of an older, brahmin male and announces to him, in Sanskrit, his patri-lineage starting with the Rishi who is supposed to the origin of that line. I wondered why I could not reject that and claim my lineage to be that on my mother's side, and that too only the women -- my mother, my maternal grandmother, my maternal great grand mother etc. However, I did not get anywhere with this, because my mother did not have much to say about her mother. For she had lost her mother when she was only eight years old. She did not remember much. So all I could hold on to were snippets of memories and some photographs my mother has shown me.

Knowing that my grandmother used this ladle, which also happens to be my favourite one in the kitchen ,makes me very happy. It gives me a sense of connection to this person whom I have never met, but who is, nevertheless, a part of me. This story is very important to me. It almost rewires me differently.

One of the reasons I find the act of storytelling very engaging is that the way we talk about ourselves, narrate our stories is not only indicative how we perceive our place in the world, it also points to how much agency and power we will claim in the course of living that life.

What I infer from this about myself is that self-narratives fascinate me. As a peer in the LGBT community, whom a lot of people talk to, consult, confide in, and as a trained peer counsellor, I listen to *stories* all the time. On the surface, it might look like people are sharing with me their life situations, but the truth is that they are sharing with me their *stories* about their life situations. It is never the situation or circumstance itself. It is always an interpretation. Often, I have noticed that with a significant shift in someone's *story* about herself and her life, something major happens. They start responding to life from a place very different from the one they had hitherto occupied. Stories are very powerful.

Thinking about this further takes me to another place. I believe that what we tell ourselves about ourselves has a crucial role to play in what we tell others about us, which, in turn, has got a lot to do with how we live, what choices we make, how much agency and power we think we have, etc. So, at some point in my life, I started paying a lot of attention to the stories I was telling myself about myself. Prior to that, I used to think I was a very positive person brimming with nothing but love and respect for myself. But when I started paying close attention to my self-talk, I was shocked to see how unkind and uncompassionate I could be to myself. I realized I had an incessant commentary of self-criticism going on inside me. Just getting present to that has made a lot of difference.

Sometimes I have seen that others have better and more positive stories about me than I do myself! I can be a cynic and say I know better. But do I know better? Not necessarily. As long as I am here in this world, I can't do my work in isolation. I don't think I can get my self-knowledge on my own. It is in the intricate web of relationalities, in the ways I show up in relationships, for people, in the way I live with people, work with people can I know myself. It is also in the ways I fail to do all of these that I can know myself. That is, if I am smart enough not to judge myself too harshly! Oh, that's another story! :)

A ladleful of granny-memory!

2011-04-07T17:30:00.003+05:30

My parents are visiting me now. Determined to make use of this time with my mother to learn some recipes definitively, I started cooking with her today. She likes my cooking and is a good master to apprentice with. A lot of stories come out, random tips about why it is better to add a pinch of this ingredient only at this stage in the making of a dish, why so and so never got it right, why so and so always got it right, what shortcuts to take when there is not much time, who taught her that, or how she figured that out herself, so on. Kitchen is a space where my mother and I connect with each other in the most collaborative, anxiety-free, non-neurotic way. Even when I work by myself, other than the performance stage, it is the kitchen that brings out the best in me, it is the place where I am my most unfragmented self.

And today, I was awakened to the presence of someone else in the kitchen along with my mother and me -- my maternal grandmother, who died long before I was born; in fact, she died when my mother was a kid. I happened to mention to my mother which of the ladles in her collection I love most, like to use most. She exclaimed, "Me too! It is my mothers!" I immediately got present to my grandmother's presence there with us in the kitchen. Of course, she is present in my mother and through her in me. But it felt beautiful to see that I was holding this ladle that my grandmother once used. It delights me to tears to think that the kitchen, a space I so happily and lovingly inhabit, also thus connects me to my grandmother, someone I have never met but have heard a lot about, whose image in my mother's memories, the few photographs, and my own idea of her in my heart I so love.

From the Sun to the Sea

2011-04-05T22:27:00.006+05:30

I have said sometimes that I feel I live better when I have a witness to my life. And I have said this usually in the context of relationships, being single, my loneliness, etc. I felt this way again recently. I felt very lonely. I immediately felt ashamed for feeling lonely, partly because it felt like a very unspiritual place to be in, and partly because I thought I would appear to be so regressive and mainstream to many of my happily single friends! And I thought: "Oh I would live so much better if I have a witness to my everyday life."

Then something strange and beautiful happened. I came home late one evening and walked, rather mechanically, to the balcony to leave my sandals there, and I happened to glance in the direction of the neem tree outside my second-floor balcony. A light from the next apartment building silhouetted a good portion of the tree, and I saw lots of crows sitting quietly on its beautiful branches. The neem tree was studded with several crows sitting motionless. It stirred something in me when I realized that these birds stayed day and night around me.

Everyday, both my mother and I leave food for the crows on the kitchen window sill. I do it even without thinking about it. My mother and I also speak to the crows. When a lone crow sits on wrought iron grill in the balcony and caws away, we tell her the food's kept on the kitchen window sill. Or we tell her we haven't started our day yet. All of this came to me when I stood there in my balcony late at night looking at these crows perched like silent angels on this neem tree.

The other moment of insight occurred recently when I returned home from a trip, I saw that I had forgotten to water the plants in the balcony. I cursed myself and rushed into the house, without even taking off my shoes, to get some water for the plants. As I watered them, it struck me that these plants were there everyday witnessing my life.

I am not going to say that knowing that these crows and plants were witnesses to my everyday existence drove away my feeling of loneliness and the desire for human company. But some shift did happen. I looked around and felt that everything around me was bearing witness to my life. From my meticulously organized interview tapes, to the cobweb on the southeast corner of the room, to the neatly wiped stove-top, to the dried coffee stain on the outside of the filter, everything was bearing witness to my existence.

It also reminded me of something else that I had experienced many years ago. I was helping my dance guru Chitra Visweswaran rehearse Muthuswami Dikshitar's "Sooryamoorte Namostute...," a most beautiful prayer to the Sun God. In this composition replete with stunning descriptions and epithets of Soorya, Dikshitar also praises the Sun as one who witness the actions of everyone. I remembered how my teacher stopped at that moment and exclaimed at the beauty and truth of this description. She said,"How beautiful! The sun is a witness to all our lives and actions!"

How could I have forgotten it! I go to the beach everyday. The sea touches at least my toes everyday. Sometimes, when it is very quiet, I can hear the waves from my rooftop. Once when we were standing in the waves, my friend Matthew Regan said to me, "Ani, I feel a great affinity to the sea too. It excites me to think that at this same moment there could be many others playing in the waves of some ocean somewhere, and this water connects us to them." I remember shivering in goosebumps when he said that.

Quite unconnected to all this, I also remember standing one sunny morning on the beach, the waves teasing my toes, the sun beating down on my chest, and these lines occurred to me: "Sea at my feet/ Sun on my chest/ That's how tall I am." It is good to remember that. I makes me smile now.

Do you wonder what the point of all this is? I do not. I feel connected to everything around me at the moment. That's all. It suffices. It is not a means to an end.

Of course, I sometimes feel that it would be great to have someone to share the everydays with. But the feeling does not consume me. It is not even a complaint. On other days, I would not trade my solitude for anything. So there is no single story :)

A New Performance Piece

2011-03-31T10:11:00.006+05:30

I have been working on a new performance piece. Earlier this month, I got an opportunity to present it as a work in progress at "Madras-Chennai Local's" event "Dancers - Separate and Together." Now that I know the piece works, I am working on developing it further. It is now taking me to strange and new places, and I am loving it absolutely! A video of this performance is HERE.

I am very grateful to Mridangist Adyar Sri K Gopinath and Veena vidwan Sri L Ramakrishnan for making it all work!

Lalitha Venkat at Narthaki.com had this to say about the performance: “The most interesting was a short theatre piece by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, who chose to portray the Pandava brother Arjuna in his disguise as Brhannala, the dance teacher/ eunuch in the court of King Virata, in the well-known epic Mahabharatha…. Aniruddh entered wearing a wrap around skirt and traipsed around the stage. Through a perky script, coy female movements alternating with strong male moves, he was entertaining and held the audience attention throughout. Strains of the Veena and percussion at appropriate moments provided unobtrusive and apt accompaniment. This is the first presentation of his experimental piece and worth elaborating into a larger presentation.”

In a review that a member of the audience sent the organizers of the event, s/he had this to say about my work: “aniruddhan vasudevan was a revelation, mixing and matching a startling repertoire of the classical and the modern, of theatre and dance. the arjuna-sairandhri story brought to life the shadowy area of uncertain or unacknowledged sexuality and carried the audience with him right through.”

An evening of mixed fare

2011-02-20T15:38:00.003+05:30

A couple of nights ago, I had a wonderful experience performing at Mahabalipuram with some other dancers. Five of us, dancers from the Chidambaram Academy of Performing Arts, students of Chitra Visweswaran, had been invited to perform at a conference for cardiologists and thoracic surgeons. None of us minded the inordinate delay in beginning the performance that evening, since we were on the seashore, watching the orange orb of a sun setting on one side even as a full moon rose on the other, over the sea, like a shimmering silver coin bringing news of abundance.

This blogpost is not about the performance, but about the drive back from Mahabalipuram. The driving was unbelievably rash. On both the drives to and from Mahabalipuram, our drivers, on hire from a travel agency for this conference, we,re extremely reckless. Their style basically, was to rush through any available stretch of the road at great speeds while honking continuously, then come to a sudden halt in front of whatever vehicle was in front of us, honk non-stop until he or she gave us way. The driver who took us to Mahabalipuram was sort of polite, so he obliged me after I requested him, for the third time, to drive slowly. The person who drove us back was a notch over the earlier driver when it came to rash driving. It was past 10 pm, and it was alarming the way we were being driven along the East Coast Road from Mahabalipuram to Thiruvanmiyur, a stretch that witnesses more than its share of accidents.

I must have requested him at least a dozen times to slow down. For the first few times, he smiled and made an appearance of slowing down, only to pick up mindless speed minutes later. After that, my requests met with a patronizing advice not to be scared. Then I had to be firm. I have personally known people who have either been fatally injured or killed in accidents on the ECR. Besides, I felt it need not even be about the possibility of an accident. Rash driving puts the passengers on a weird anxiety mode, and if they request the driver to slow down, he should consider it. With the risk of getting into an unpleasant argument, I told him firmly to slow down right away. He refused! He said that he knew what he was doing. I told him we did not care about that, we just wanted him to slow down. He said the people who'd hired his services for the conference constantly called him on the phone to ask him to get here and there; that made him rush. I told him I would speak to those people and explain that they should not be rushing him about like this. Then I did exactly that. I called someone who was part of the conference and requested him to make sure the drivers were not under so much stress.

All of this escalating nervous energy in the van reached its crescendo when we saw the vehicle in front us, another speeding van, hit a cat who chose that inopportune moment to cross the road. We all screamed in unison at the sight of the poor cat run and tossed over by the van. It was all just a flash. Both the vans were going so insanely fast that in just a matter of seconds we were far away from that spot. It took us all several minutes before we could regain composure. By then, our driver had slowed down, too. Just a little. There was something very disconcerting in the fact that it took him just forty minutes to get us from Mahabalipuram to Thiruvanmiyur.

Bizarre as it may sound, I have not been able to stop thinking about that cat. I do not know if she had a miraculous escape or was killed. Either way, I feel connected to her.

My Detox

2011-02-14T07:25:00.005+05:30

Now that most of my friends know about my alleged New Ageyness J, I don’t have much to hide!

There is a little process of letting go that occurred to be sometime ago. It helped me a lot, and in sharing it with some close friends, I realized some others might find it helpful too.

Recently, when I was caught in some drama of my own and was very confused, I badly needed some exercise that would help me release some negativity that was beginning to show up from within me. I needed more than a mere temporary distraction. I also did not want the usual process: getting bitchy and cynical about it and blaming it on something or someone, thus relinquishing responsibility for my own stuff. At the same time, I felt that this was going to be rather big, and that I was going to need some definitive process for doing this myself.

It was while endlessly ruminating on these that a process occurred to me. I am sure it was a product of a lot of reading, thinking and listening I have been doing for a while now. It sounded good to me, and I worked with it. Here is it how it goes.

The fundamental purpose was this: to regain peace. And to do that I knew I had to allow whatever toxicity that was welling up inside me to surface, and then to release it. But, with the benefit of past experience with this kind of stuff, I knew this was easier said than done. In all likelihood, I would start judging myself harshly for all that I would get to see coming from within me. I also knew that I might give in to the easy way out – blame game. So this process, guided by four principles, really helped me this time. Here they are:

(1) Love and compassion are the only things that will see me through this, see me through anything. And that has to begin with myself. I am not going to judge myself no matter what I see when I take a good look within.

(2) I will hold up to light whatever comes up, and release them. I will not be selective. I will not hold back some and release some. I shall have no favourites among these toxins.

(3) When I see my thoughts about other people surfacing, I will not resort to blaming them. No blame. The only thing to do with them is to tell these thoughts, “Thank you for your visit, but I need you to go now. We are faultless.”

(4) No matter how painful this process turns out to be, I will remember that I am not alone, I am guided and helped. Also, this is not an endless tunnel. I am working towards peace.

If you have a similar process or if you have one of your own and you are willing to share, please do. If not here, you can email me at aniruddh.vasudevan@gmail.com

My article on YaliniDream in the Zeitgeist supplement to The New Indian Express

2011-01-29T00:21:00.001+05:30

My article on YaliniDream in the Zeitgeist supplement to The New Indian Express, Saturday, 29 January 2010. I am sure it looks much better in the ePaper. Will post that as soon as it is available. Remember to come to the event at 7 pm today! Check the previous blogpost for more information on that!

YaliniDream performs in Chennai!

2011-01-27T20:52:00.000+05:30

The Shakti Resource Center for Gender and Sexuality and MP/Orinam.net

are delighted to invite you to a workshop and performance by

YaliniDream

with Special Guest Accompaniment by L. Ramakrishnan on Veena

and Guest performances by Sharanya Manivannan & Shailja Patel

The performance will be followed by a discussion.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

at

SPACES, No. 1, Elliots Beach Road,

Besant Nagar, Chennai 600090

1:00 - 4:00pm- Workshop with Yalini Dream

7:00 - 8:00 pm- Performance and discussion

About YaliniDream:

Sri Lankan Blood, Manchester Born, Texas bred and Brooklyn steeped, YaliniDream is an artist, activist, and facilitator. She conjures spirit through her unique blend of poetry, theater, song, and dance-- reshaping reality and seeking peace through justice in the lands of earth, psyche, soul, and dream. One of the South Asian American community’s most prominent performance poets, YaliniDream has toured nationally throughout the US as well as performing in Canada, England & Sri Lanka. As a director & facilitator, YaliniDream works to bring under-represented voices to center stage through community based theater productions. Through experimental collaboration she seeks to build artistic work that reflects the strength of communities while cherishing difference. YaliniDream was the director and facilitator of Andolan’s Sukh aur Dukh ki Kahani--a storytelling project with Bangladeshi and Indian domestic workers in Queens, NY and facilitated theater workshops with OfERR for Sri Lankan Tamils living in refugee camps in India. She has been a long term volunteer with the Audre Lorde Project's SOS(Safe Outside the System) Collective in Brooklyn working to address homophobic and transphobic violence against people of color. YaliniDream is also a trained aerial dancer in corde lisse who loves to fly-- challenging notions of the seemingly impossible.

Links:
www.yalinidream.com
http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=294
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At7CZcTMWik

About the workshop: Art as a Tool for Community Organizing

On Saturday afternoon (29th January), from 1 to 4 pm, YaliniDream will facilitate a fun, interactive workshop for participants to explore the use of artistic methods as tools for community empowerment, activism, and social justice. Using writing, movement and voice exercises, participants will explore what stories they have to tell, explore how their bodies like to move, and reflect critically on how their personal experiences may be used to engage broader issues and realities.

About L. Ramakrishnan:

L. Ramakrishnan, known affectionately as Ramki to some, is an accomplished Veena player, in addition to being one of the founding members of MP/Orinam, and Country Director for Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India (SAATHII). Ramki’s interests include Nature Conservation, Human rights, Carnatic Music, Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, Biostatistics, Gender Justice, Muthuswami Dikshitar, Poetry, Austin, Texas, and Pondicherry, not necessarily in order of significance.

About Sharanya Manivannan:

Sharanya Manivannan was born in India in 1985 and grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. She is the author of a book of poems, Witchcraft (Bullfighter Books, 2008), which carries a foreword by Indran Amirthanayagam. The recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009 from the Sangam House International Writers’ Residency she is working on her first novel, Constellation of Scars, as well as a second collection of poems, Bulletproof Offering. Iyari, a handmade chapbook of poems and illustrations, was published in 2006. Her column, “The Venus Flytrap”, appears fortnightly in Zeitgeist, the Saturday supplement of The New Indian Express.

Her solo show, Ochre As The Earth, held in June 2007, was a pioneering event in the Kuala Lumpur arts scene. As a spoken word artist, she has performed at dozens of venues in the last six years, from indie cafes to the Borobudur Temple in Indonesia.

She has been a guest of the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale 2007, Singapore Writers’ Festival 2007, Poetry With Prakriti 2007 , Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2008 and Wordstorm: The Festival of Australasian Writing 2010. She lives in India.

www.sharanyamanivannan.com

About Shailja Patel:

Shailja Patel was born and raised in Kenya, has lived in London and San Francisco, and now divides her time between Nairobi and Berkeley. Trained as a political economist, accountant and yoga teacher, she honed her poetic skills in performances that have received standing ovations on three continents. She has been described by the Gulf Times as "the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy" and by CNN as "the face of globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange". Patel has appeared on the BBC World Service, NPR and Al-Jazeera. Her work has been translated into twelve languages. She is a recipient of a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, an African Guest Writer Fellowship from the Nordic Africa Institute, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award from IRN-Africa, the Voices of Our Nations Poetry Award, a Lambda Slam Championship, and the Outwrite Poetry Prize.

www.shailja.com

About The Shakti Resource Center for Gender and Sexuality

The Shakti Resource Center for Gender and Sexuality is a dynamic, volunteer-run collective that has been working out of Chennai since July 2007, and registered as a trust last year. Our vision is to create a world where individuals are free to question, and express their sexuality, to forge relationships based on reciprocity, equality and interdependence, and where rather than merely “adjusting” to an unjust world, are able to criticize the structures upon which their injustice and marginalization are premised. In achieving this vision, we believe not only in advocating for sexual rights as a small sexual minority population demanding recognition as “normal”. Rather, we wish to question the broader norms and structures that define what it means to be sexually normal, legal, decent and respectable in the first place. To this end, we advocate for policy change, create safe spaces for people to talk and think critically about gender and sexuality, and forge links with other social movements. As part of our broad queer vision, we work not only with gay men, lesbian and bisexual women, hijras, kothis, and trans individuals, but also with young women, survivors of sexual assault, teens desiring information about sexual health services, sex workers that suffer police violence, and a variety of other identities that may be shamed and criminalized based on inferences about their sexuality. Get in touch with us at thefolks@shakticenter.org

About MP/Orinam:

Initiated in October 2006, Orinam.net is a bilingual (Tamil and English) website with information on alternate sexualities and genders. We intend this space to speak to a wide range of people, including families and friends of those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. We anticipate that this site would also be useful for Indian, especially Tamil language, media seeking accurate and current information on alternate sexualities and genders. Finally, this site is for us, LGBT individuals of all stripes and colours, including those who do not identify with any of these categories but nevertheless fall outside mainstream expectations and conventions with respect to gender and sexuality. Get in touch at orinamwebber@gmail.com or check out www.orinam.net

Maatruveli - மாற்றுவெளி

2011-01-23T23:44:00.003+05:30

I am totally thrilled that a special issue, on sexuality, of Maatruveli (மாற்றுவெளி), a Tamil academic journal, that my friend A Ponni and I have guest-edited, has been released and is available for sale! It has been a labour of love for Ponni and me. There are some little errors here and there, but on the whole the issue looks great. This is an important compilation of essays, interviews, and other writings in Tamil and translation on issues around sexuality.

If you are interested in buying a copy, please contact Parisal Book House பரிசல் புத்தக நிலையம்: +91 93828 53646 | maatruveli@gmail.com

"மாற்றுவெளி" ஒரு தமிழ் ஆய்விதழ். பரிசல் புத்தக நிலையம் வெளியிடும் "மாற்றுவெளியின்" 6 ஆவது இதழ் "மாற்றுப்பாலியல் சிறப்பிதழ்." இதனை தொழி அ. பொன்னியும் நானும் அழைப்பாசிரியர்களாக இருந்து தொகுத்துள்ளோம். இந்த இதழ் இப்பொழுது வெளியிடப்பட்டு விற்பனைக்கு உள்ளது. விவரங்களுக்கு பரிசல் புத்தக நிலையத்தைத் தொடர்புகொள்ளவும்: +91 93828 53646 | maatruveli@gmail.com

பொருளடக்கம்:

தலையங்கம்: பாலியல்பின் அரசியல் (அ. பொன்னி & அனிருத்தன் வாசுதேவன்) Editorial: The Politics of Sexuality (A. Ponni & Aniruddhan Vasudevan)

கட்டுரைகள்:

பாலியல்பு, திருமணம், குடும்பம் (மீனா கோபால்) Sexuality, Marriage, Family (Meena Gopal)
உடல், பால்மை, பால் ஈர்ப்பு/ வேட்கை: அளிக்கைமை சார் குறியீடுகள் (அ. மங்கை) Body, Gender, Sexual Attraction/ Desire: Symbols of Performativity (A Mangai)
உடல், வன்முறை, உரிமை: இந்திய குற்றவியல் சட்டம் (திருத்தியமைப்பு) மசோதா 2010 ( அனிருத்தன் வாசுதேவன்) Body, Violence, Rights: Criminal Law (Amendment) Draft Bill 2010 (Aniruddhan Vasudevan)
விடுதலைப் பாதை (கௌதம் பான்) Path to Freedom (Gautham Bhan)
"கவியர்" பெண்களும் இந்தியச் சட்டமும் (அ.பொன்னி) Queer Women and Indian Law (A Ponni)
அரவானி/ திருநங்கை சமூகத்தினரின் அரசியலும் தமிழக அரசின் திட்டங்களும் (அனிருத்தன் வாசுதேவன்) Aravani/ Thiruvangai Activism and Policy changes implemented by the State Govt. of Tamil Nadu
தமிழகத்தில் ஓரினச் சேர்க்கைப் பெண்கள் (அ. பொன்னி) (Lesbian Women in Tamil Nadu)
On the Figure of the Prostitute in the works of G Nagarajan and D Jeyakanthan (Kiran Keshavamurthy)

உரையாடல்:

கதை சொல்லல் எனும் உறவாடல் - மாயா சர்மாவுடன் ஒரு சந்திப்பு (அனிருத்தன் வாசுதேவன்)
மொழி, பாலினம் மற்றும் பாலீர்ப்பு (வ. கீதா)

கலை ஆக்கங்கள்:

வான்மேகம் (ப்ரீதம் சக்கரவர்த்தி) On Indian films and Sexuality (Pritham Chakravarthy)
கவிதைகள் (பிரேமா ரேவதி & லிவிங் ஸ்மைல் வித்யா) Poems by Prema Revathi and Living Smile Vidya

ஆவணம்:

பாலியல் சார் சொற்களஞ்சியம் (A Glossary of Terms related to Sexuality and Identity)
இந்திய தண்டனைச் சட்டம் - பிரிவு 377 (Indian Penal Code - Section 377)
மாற்றுப் பாலியல் இயக்கம் - நிகழ்வுகள் (Queer Movement - Key Happenings)
தமிழ் இலக்கணம் மற்றும் இலக்கியங்களில் மாற்றுப் பாலியல் பதிவுகள் (கா. அய்யப்பன்) Registers of Alernative Sexuality in Tamil Grammar and Literature (K. Ayyappan)
மாற்றுப் பாலியல்: நூல்கள் மற்றும் குறும்படம் (ஜ. சிவக்குமார்) Alternative Sexuality: Books and Short Films (G. Sivakumar)

Wislawa Szymborska - another attempt at a translation

2011-01-23T14:37:00.009+05:30

குறிப்பு: விஸ்வாவா சிம்போர்ஸ்காவின் கவிதைகளின் மீது எனக்குள்ள அதீத பிரியம் குறித்து என் நண்பர்கள் பலருக்குத் தெரியும். போலிஷ் மொழியில் எழுதும் இவரது அற்புதமான கவிதைகள் சிலவற்றையும், 1996 ஆம் ஆண்டு இலக்கியத்திற்கான நோபல் பரிசு இவருக்கு வழங்கப்பட்ட பொழுது இவர் ஆற்றிய ஏற்புரையையும் ஆங்கிலத்திலிருந்து தமிழில் நான் மொழிபெயர்த்துள்ளேன். இவற்றை காலச்சுவடு இதழ் வெளியிட்டுள்ளது. அவற்றிற்கான இணைப்புகள் இங்கே:
"ஆனால் கவிதைப் பேராசிரியர் என்று எவரும் இல்லை" - விஸ்வாவா சிம்போர்ஸ்காவின் நோபல் பரிசு ஏற்புரை

விஸ்வாவா சிம்போர்ஸ்காவின் கவிதைகள் சில தமிழில்
ஸ்டானிஸ்லாவ் பாரன்ழாக் மற்றும் க்லேய்ர் கவனா ஆகிய இருவரும் இவரது கவிதைகளை போலிஷ் மொழியிலிருந்து ஆங்கிலத்தில் சிறப்பாக மொழிபெயர்த்திருக்கிறார்கள். இவர்களது ஆங்கில மொழிபெயர்ப்புகளை ஒட்டியே நான் தமிழில் மொழிபெயர்ப்பு செய்ய முயற்சி செய்கிறேன். பொதுவாக மொழிபெயர்ப்பு என்கிற பணி குறித்தும், கவிதைகளை மொழிபெயர்க்க முடியுமா என்பது குறித்தும், மிகுந்த உணர்வெழுச்சி மற்றும் இலக்கிய அன்பு ஆகியவற்றை மட்டுமே அடிப்படையாகக் கொண்டு எழும் எனது மொழிபெயர்ப்புகளின் தரம் குறித்தும் அதிகம் விவாதிக்கலாம். பிரச்சனை ஒன்றும் இல்லை. சில படைப்புகளைத் தரமான விதத்தில் தமிழில் கிடைக்கச் செய்ய வேண்டும் என்பதே குறிக்கோள்.

இப்பொழுது சிம்போர்ஸ்காவின் "An Opinion on the Question of Pornography" என்ற கவிதையை தமிழில் வழங்க முயற்சி செய்துள்ளேன். சிம்போர்ஸ்காவைப் பொறுத்தவரை நான் கைப்பற்ற முயல்வது கிண்டலான அவரது தொனியையும் அதிலிருந்து வரும் ஒருவித விமர்சனத் தன்மையுடன் கூடிய நகைச்சுவை உணர்வையுமே:

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Becoming my Mother

2011-01-23T09:35:00.011+05:30

Lovely Sunday morning. With my morning coffee, I am listening to Sanjay Subrahmanyam singing Janani ninuvina...in Reethigowlai raagam. On 31 December, I went to Sanjay's concert at Kalakshetra. It was divine. When he sang Janani Ninuvina, I melted away. They had to scrape me off the floor after the concert!

It is absolutely weird how I behave at concerts and performances by my favourite artists. They could be veterans in what they are doing, but that does not stop me from taking on great pressure and anxiety for them. It is absolutely ridiculous. For instance, before a concert of Sanjay' Subrahmanyam's on New Year's Eve, I was terribly anxious that everything should go well, that Sanjay should have a great concert, that the accompanying artists should be in their elements, that it should be one of those days when everything fell into place from the word go. I felt like a mother. It was absolutely silly. At some point I caught myself doing this, and told myself, "Hey! This is his concert. He knows what to do. Why am I such a bundle of nerves for him!"

You should see me during the first fifteen minutes or so into a concert. I feverishly look around at the faces of the people in the audience, trying to make sure everyone's enjoying it. Of course, all that I end up doing is to distract them and draw attention to myself by thus fidgeting in my seat. People shoot me various kinds of looks, but it's mostly like, "What's with this man?!" But, at some point, the music takes over and manages to quiet down all my neuroses, and I get lost in the music. But until then, I am positively ridiculous.

I really pity this new friend who had come with me to the concert. I had met him some days before the concert, and he had mentioned that he was looking to explore the Chennai music season a little bit. So there he was with me at Sanjay Subrahmanyam's concert. So I added another layer of unwanted anxiety: I was also super anxious that he should like Sanjay's music! Feeling very keen that he should not feel bored and stay at the concert only on my account, I turned to him after every piece to let him know that we could leave any minute. He finally got sick and tired of my neurotic behaviour and asked me to shut up. Well, very nicely and politely!

Basically, this is what I realize. I am becoming my mother! Last night, when I spoke to my father with the dosai karandi (ladle) in my hand, I heard myself saying, "Appa, you should have finished that. Now I cannot put that much into a small cup and keep it in the fridge." Then I stopped myself and exclaimed, "Ayyo! I sound like amma, don't I?" Appa just grinned!

Thrilled at this mention in a review!

2011-01-23T00:37:00.000+05:30

In December 2010, I had a wonderful experience performing nattuvangam for an ensemble presentation of Sapta Sapti, choroegraphed by my Guru Smt Chitra Visweswaran. I am thrilled at having got a good mention of my nattuvangam work in a review in The Hindu: "...the versatile nattuvanar, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, himself a student of Guru Chitra, who handled the rhythms with ease."

Go HERE for the full review of the performance by Smt Chitra Visweswaran and the dancers of Chidambaram Academy of Performing Arts.

Interview in Narthaki.com

2011-01-23T00:26:00.001+05:30

A interview of mine appeared in Narthaki.com before my 2010 performance tour of the US with my work And She Said, developed and performed in collaboration with my wonderful friend Lakshmi Sriraman

பாலியல் கல்வி: மனிதர்கள் மீண்டும் குழந்தைகளாகும் கனவு

2011-01-23T00:22:00.001+05:30

I forgot to post this Tamil article of mine that appeared in the July 2010 issue of Kalachuvadu Magazine: பாலியல் கல்வி: மனிதர்கள் மீண்டும் குழந்தைகளாகும் கனவு

If you are interested in looking at some of my other Tamil articles, please go HERE for the links.

On Falling

2011-01-05T18:28:00.009+05:30

This past week alone, I witnessed three minor mishaps that involved motorbikers skidding on roads, and falling. In all these instances, what was striking was how urgently they picked themselves up, avoided looking at anyone around, kicked the bikes with all their might, and sped away. Having had more than my share of such falls, I think I know how it might have felt. We feel there is something so hugely embarrassing about falling when others are watching, that we will even amble on a broken ankle to make them believe that we are alright, we are very dignified. I remember, I once kick-started my bike with a bleeding foot, rode away, and stopped a few streets away to examine the damage.

Is there such shame in falling? I wonder if we feel similarly about other kinds of falling too -- failure, being slandered, losing power, money, social capital, etc. When all the inspiration mantras of the age are about valorously picking oneself up after a fall and charging ahead, what is the space where the fall itself could be acknowledged with dignity and respect? It seems that in popular consciousness it is only the quickness of the rise after the fall, the nanosecond bounce-back, which accords any respect to the fall at all. If you ever fall at a colossal scale, you either better have a great, noble story behind that, or work towards becoming a success story by springing back to action ASAP!

Of course, no one in their right minds would romanticize falling this way. But what is it that associates such shame to that instance? Just half an hour spent watching a TV show on allegedly funny videos from across the world shows that an accidental fall appears to provide for great entertainment and laughter. You are thought to be of good cheer if you can crack a joke about your own fall and laugh it off. Sometimes we are so scared of becoming objects of such mirth that we try to pre-empt it with a forced joke.

The anxiety is about how we look in other people's eyes when we thus fall. We could be perfect nobodys prior to that moment, not even noticed as we ride our wheezing two-wheelers, trying to avoid a crazy 90degree turn that only an autorickshaw can do. We might think of ourselves as having merged with the thronging masses on the roads. And then a fall makes us visible. Not a great moment to have the spotlight on us; agreed. But it brings alive everyone around us, too. In just a moment, it turns some people into Good Samaritans; from some others, it elicits a profound comment about how all that young people today want is speed, speed speed...; it also draws, for just a flicker of a moment, outrage about poor civic maintenance and puddles on the road.

A fall, whoever’s it is, seems to be a very dramatic moment. Everyone witnessing it feels compelled to take a position in relation to that event. Something has to be done; at least a gesture of wanting to help. Something has to be said, even if it is to this other perfect stranger walking next to you. It is a very human moment. So we don't have to feel so bad after all. Everyone knows how it feels to fall. If they act like they don't, they have perhaps just forgotten.

Expecto Patronum

2010-08-22T00:00:00.002+05:30

I am a little too lazy to go back and check if I have written about this already in an earlier blogpost. Even if I have, I like to believe it is worth repeating :)

Harry Potter books have helped me in a very real way. Some years ago, I suffered from chronic migraine. I still wince at the memory of those days when the terrible headaches would last for 48 hours or more. I would darken the room and lie curled up. Then at some point, I would start hearing buzzing sounds in me ears, then I would threw up, and the headache would begin to subside. But more difficult than the migraine itself was the pool of depression it left me in in its wake. It was absolutely terrible, dark and lonely.Getting back to work/ study was immensely difficult. Since, for some reason, I found it hard to explain myself to my professors, fellow students and colleagues, I tried to deal with it by attempting to get back to work with vengeance only to feel overwhelmed and burnt out very soon. It was very frustrating for me and several others around me.

I am glad that it was around that time I started reading the Harry Potter books. When I first encountered J K Rowling's description of a dementor attack, I was stunned to see how much it sounded like a description of these attacks of depression: like all happiness has been sucked out from within me and for several miles around, like it was just one endless stretch of bleakness. The depiction of the dementors themselves as dark, hooded creatures gliding soundlessly over their victims struck me as the best allegory to how these phases of depression crawled over to me. The wizards in the Harry Potter books conjure the Patronus charm to defend themselves from the dementor. What a wizard requires to do to conjure a strong Patronus is to first seek refuge in his or her memories of happiness and love and cast the charm from there. For the dementors, in J K Rowling's imagination, cannot withstand the power of even the remembrance of love and happiness.

It appeared to me that this could be a tool I could use to combat the onset of depression. As I usually found it hard to be verbally articulate about how I felt during these phases, it helped to have a visualization that someone else had taken the trouble to come up with. Thankfully, I have not gone through a migraine for sometime now, but depression still sneaks upon me in various ways. To this day, the Patronus charm works for me. It is quite wonderful.

Sickness and Health

2010-08-15T14:12:00.000+05:30

Note: Here's something I wrote and shared with a bunch of friends by email sometime in late October 2009. I was in Washington, DC, and could not perform at a festival as planned. My knee injury had acted up, and I had to take a call and refrain from performing at the event which was, in fact, the main reason for being there in DC.My personal angst at not being able to perform notwithstanding, the festival and shows were a great success. Dakshina's (the company) team of seven dancers presented "Karna," a new work created by Daniel Singh and me, very beautifully.

My dear dancers,

I don't think I need to tell you that I was quite saddened about not being able to dance in the festival this past weekend (the last weekend of Oct 2009). It sort of became acute on the second day (Saturday), when it felt like everyone was dancing and it was only I who could not. So, after the matinee show on Saturday, I came home to cry. I did not want to sulk in front of everyone. But I am sure I did that too!

I also quietly admitted one truth to myself: that besides feeling bad for not dancing, I was jealous of you all. I just decided to face that fact, have a good cry, and get it over with. And that's what I did.

Something really beautiful and paradigm-shifting happened after that. While walking back to the theater, I found myself humming the lines of a song that I have not remembered in months. It is a song by Subramanya Bharathiyar, one of Tamil's most dearest poets. The lines of this particular song go like this:

காயிலே புளிப்பதென்னே கண்ணப்பெருமானே - நீ

கனியிலே இனிப்பதென்னே கண்ணப்பெருமானே ........

How do you taste so sour in this raw fruit, Oh, Kanna!

How do you taste so sweet in this ripe one, Oh Kanna!

And then,

நோயிலே படுப்பதென்னே கண்ணப்பெருமானே - நீ

நோன்பிலே உயிர்ப்பதென்னே கண்ணப்பெருமானே

You are what lies enervated in illness, Oh, Kanna!

You are what springs alive after a fast, Oh, Kanna!

Never before has the song made sense to me in the spectacular light in which I occurred to me at that moment. If I love my dancing, agile self, I must also love my healing, wounded body, for it is all "Kanna" finally! If I can offer my dancing body in prayer, I can offer by limping one too! :) That shift was tectonic in scale.

I wanted to share this experience with you.

On the Criminal Law (Amendment) Draft Bill, 2010; Sexual Assault, etc

2010-06-29T00:58:00.001+05:30

I have been part of several discussions on the Criminal Law (Amendment) Draft Bill, 2010, which proposes crucial amendments to the sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with sexual assault. Here's something I wrote for the New Indian Express, that was published on 30 May 2010, as part of a larger feature on this Draft Bill.

http://expressbuzz.com/magazine/overhauling-definition-of-rape/177336.html

Gender and biological sex are two different things(Opinion | Aniruddhan Vasudevan)There are sure to be other takes on the Criminal Law (Amendment) Draft Bill, 2010 from the queer perspective, considering that the LGBT spectrum is wide and covers several sexual orientations and gender identities. This is just one.

Section 375 of the IPC, which currently deals with sexual assault on women above the age of consent, should be made gender neutral, at least with respect to the victim of the assault. The argument often made to restrict Sec 375’s applicability to women is that sexual assault is a gendered crime. While the language of law appears to be speaking of gender, it is, in fact, speaking of biological sex.

In other words, while the law perceives “women” as possible victims of sexual assault, it in fact means “females.” Therefore, it has been impossible for it to understand gender as a much broader axis of power, oppression and violence.

Thanks to this lack of understanding of gender as a matrix of social codes and transgressions and not as some ‘natural’ outcome of one’s biological sex, the language of law fails to perceive that persons other than women are also regular targets of sexual assault. The possibility of serious harm to bodily integrity is a matter that also concerns persons other than women; bodies that are other than biologically female. For instance, when a kothi-identified person or an aravani is sexually assaulted by a man, it is indeed a gendered violence, for it is the person’s gender expression that becomes the site of sexual violence. Why should such violence be considered under a very archaic and morally-loaded category, “Of Unnatural Offences,” under Section 377?

Our understanding of what it means to be gendered has expanded beyond the narrow perception of sex=gender. You could be biologically male (sex), but if you are perceived to step over the gender norms that are purported to pertain to that category, you could be a potential target of sexual assault. We can continue to understand sexual assault as a gendered crime, without discounting the sexual assaults perpetrated on women, by taking into account the reality that bodies of those other than biological females constantly do become targets of sexual violence.

To deny the very possibility of violence on the bodies that are gendered in so many ways, and not only those that are biologically female, would indeed be a gross disservice to feminism which, in the first place, expanded our understandings of what it means to be gendered. In other words, to apportion victimhood, when it comes to sexual assault, only to women is a regressive move that only reinforces the false notion that both ‘the sexual’ and its assault locate themselves in (certain parts of) the female body alone.

— The author runs the Chennai-based Shakti Center

Creating their world under spotlights

2010-06-27T11:36:00.000+05:30

A profile of my dear friend Taejha Susheel and me in The New Indian Express, 26 June 2010

Shut Up and Dance? Really?

2010-05-13T01:40:00.000+05:30

I am delighted to see that this article has been published in a blog. I wrote it almost two years ago and had forgotten about about it! Please click on the title to go to the blog.

Death

2010-04-27T21:20:00.009+05:30

Today has been a bizarre day. It brought in the thought, sight and sound of death. Of all days, I chose today to revisit my poem "Totentanze," published in Dance Macabre Issue XXXIV. I had written the first draft of the poem when I was sitting in a hospital one day, looking at my grandfather's bag of bones lying on a clean sheet. I wondered what the tubes running in and out him were for. They kind of looked beautiful as they crisscrossed in red and white, going here and there, and looked like American freeways seen from some height. I had sent this poem to Danse Macabre when they called for submissions on the theme "Dance of Death."

Propelled by self-love and the desire to re-read one more of my published poems, I read this one again today. No sooner had I finished reading it than a mail arrived from a friend informing me of the suicide of a girl we know of. The reasons for which the girl terminated her life, and the several ways in which those reasons could have been better engaged with by her family came and hit me like a tidal wave. I refrain from sharing more here for fear of disrespecting her privacy. But this girl, whom I did not get to meet, will haunt me as do several others who have given up their lives because they love differently than the majority of the world does and that is somehow a problem for the world.

The afternoon, as casually as it smothered me with its salty summer stillness, brought in the news of someone else's death; someone who was old and had suffered. As I went to pay my respects, I could not help thinking of this grand old mystery that is death. Faces of all those whom death has plucked away from me flitted past my mind's eye. They almost appeared in front of me suspended in the solidness of the afternoon summer heat. Faces. Not voices. As I wrote somewhere else,

"Death smelled of a million things.

Of coffee from a half-drunk cup, the soap

that smoothed out the fall in the bathroom,

the old starch of the saree that strangled,

the car perfume fighting the blood stench

on the steering wheel, etc.

But mostly death was sound for me. It took

voices away. Many dear ones I mourn,

I have forgotten how they sounded.

I hear them in my own voice now,

as if reading them from a book..."

If there is a most respectful way to remember the dead, I would give anything to learn it. Until then, the aspiration should suffice, I guess. That and the desire to love and honour the living.

Looking beyond the world of toxins

2010-04-27T08:42:00.000+05:30

A write-up of mine from the New Indian Express. It is based on my impressions about and my participation in the West Bengal state consultation on issues facing Men who have Sex with Men, and Transgender women.

Notes from the Netherworld - Part II

2010-04-23T11:50:00.006+05:30

I am very good at knee-jerk reactions. I am such a centred human being that my poise can be upset in a moment. A sceptical twitch of your eyebrow, a tentative ‘but,’ a counter comment – are all it takes to unsettle my rock-steady sense of balance. You confront me, however unknowingly, with something about me I do not want to hear, and I will huff and puff and say things to make you feel bad. I recently got mad at a friend for pointing out an inconvenient truth. I have this pattern of reacting from a place of anger and hurt and then catching up with the truth just moments later. If only I step back, pause, consider and then respond! The distinction that most self-help literature makes between reaction and response sounds simplistic. But it does make a lot of sense in many life situations. While working with the LGBT peer counsellor training program, the subject of reacting Vs. responding came up and made for some really insightful discussions. More on that later. Now to the specifics of this particular blog.

I am indebted to my friend for directing my attention to some important things about my depression. I am not using the word “friend” here lightly, as it is often used by many of us – to refer to anyone one even casually knows. He is a true friend who really cares for me and often helps me with his brutally honest comments on matters I share with him. This time he urged me not to get smug about the fact that I suffer from clinical depression and only got biological factors influencing how I feel. He asked me to consider if my “lifestyle” actively contributes to these cycles of depression. I immediately went on the defensive and accused him of not allowing me the space to rant, and offering advice instead. But I almost instantly knew I was fooling myself. He was offering me something important to consider. Of course, his comment about lifestyles influencing mental health is not a staggeringly new perspective. It is almost a truism. Its significance for me lay in the fact that I now feel I needed to hear it at that moment.

It is, indeed, true that I must reconsider certain things about the way I live. And I think it is about the rate at which I live and not about what I do or what I am. I have to slow down. Also, I am now able to see better where I had come from when I reacted vehemently to his observation. People often talk about a “gay lifestyle” in a very condescending and moralistic way. It irks me when people, often those who have no clue about it, refer to being gay as a lifestyle choice. Perhaps they are influenced by the ubiquitous American sitcoms, several of which have gay characters that come with their shallowness wrapped in designer clothing, accessorized with Prada and Louis Vuitton, and scented with Gucci. I think my subconsciodus mind connected my friend’s reference to my lifestyle to these flippant references to “gay lifestyle,” whatever that means. As someone who knows me well and understands my life and work, he was clearly referring to something else. He was talking about my intense living, my vulnerabilities, and my desire and attempts to do a million things. I also know he has a persistent concern about my life as an activist in Chennai and the particular concerns of doing work related to LGBT issues. Well, so much for knowing about how much he cares for me! I read him wrong and snapped at him.

Of course, there were points where I definitely disagree with him. For instance, I do not share the belief that clinical depression or depressive disorder is an invention of Western medicine and that there is nothing that yoga cannot cure. As much as I take responsibility for how I feel, I do not want to continue to incriminate myself for feeling terribly depressed and lacking in will when I have no apparent reason to be so. I accept the fact that there are biological/ hormonal reasons for some people experience debilitating cycles of depression. In a sense, I was revolting against my friend’s comment because I felt it failed to acknowledge the fact that after years of feeling frustrated with myself for not knowing why I felt the way I did sometimes, I have come to understand the issues better and was relinquishing this added burden of guilt. Now that I know that my body is throwing up issues that unsettle the activities of my mind, I can choose to take charge and see what I can do about it. I am also aware of this bizarre domino effect where once I feel out of control and do not know what is wrong, I do things that go wrong and reinforce the preying sense of ennui. So there is definitely that space where I actively contribute to my depressions.

It may not have been intentional, but what my friend basically did was to remind me that I cannot shift the blame on to a clinical situation and go without examining the ways in which I add to this situation by my mode of being in the world. And I am now very thankful to him for that.

It is very difficult for me to think about my emotional health without thinking about what has unfortunately become a dirty S word – spirituality. I know many of us guard our true thoughts on this subject from entering public discourse for various reasons. Primarily, we do not really have a vocabulary to talk about matters of the spirit or the self in a way that can align with the political/ rational and does not degenerate either into New Agey mushiness or fundamentalist essentialisms. But I want to end this blog with something I will take up for a longer discussion in the next one. Two other friends of mine recently used the word “core” in very conscious ways while talking about emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Among its other possible meanings, for me, the word signifies basic premises, those on which one’s living is premised. In that sense, I am definitely interested in attending to my “core.”

திருமணம் உறவுகள் குடும்பம் - பாகம் 1

2010-04-02T15:38:00.010+05:30

கடந்த மார்ச் 28ஆம் தேதியன்று 'பெண்கள் சந்திப்பு' குழுவினர் ஒரு நாள் நிகழ்ச்சி ஒன்றை ஒழுங்கு செய்திருந்தார்கள். சென்னை பெசண்ட் நகர் "ஸ்பேசஸ்" அரங்கில் "திருமணம், உறவுகள், குடும்பம் - பெண்ணிய பார்வைகளும் புரிதல்களும்" என்ற தலைப்பில் நடைபெற்ற இந்த நிகழ்ச்சியில் பங்குகொண்டது பெருமகிழ்ச்சியளித்தது. அங்கு பேசியது, கேட்டது, சிந்தித்துக் கொண்டிருப்பது ஆகியவற்றின் பதிவுகளாய் கீழ்கண்டவையும் அவற்றின் தொடர்ச்சிகளும் இருக்கும்.

குடும்பம், நட்பு, மற்றும் இதர வகைகளிலான மனித உறவுகள் - இவை குறித்து பேசுவதற்கான வெளிகள் இன்று வெகுக் குறைவு என்றே தோன்றுகிறது. அதுவும் இச்சை, விழைவு, இன்பம், பாலியல் ஆகிய கூறுகளை உள்ளடக்கி உறவுகள், நட்பு, குடும்பம் ஆகியவற்றைப் பற்றி சிந்திப்பதற்கான சந்தர்ப்பங்கள் குறைவாகவே கிடைக்கின்றன. நம்முள் சிலர் இவை குறித்து சிந்திக்க முயல்கிறோம், இதற்குத் தேவையான மொழியைத் தேடியபடியே.

எனக்கு முன் பேசிய தோழி பிரேமா ரேவதி ரோஸா லக்சம்பர்க் தனது காதலருக்கு எழுதிய கடிதங்கள் சிலவற்றை வாசித்த பொழுது என்னுள் சில சிறிய வெளிச்சங்கள் தோன்றின. எண்ணங்களையும் உணர்வுகளையும் விவரமாக அசைபோடுவது போல் நீண்ட கடிதங்களாக எழுதி எத்தனை நாட்கள் ஆயிற்று என்று தோன்றியது. என் காதலர்(கள்) உடனான எனது எண்ணப் பகிர்தல்கள் சிறு சிறு துண்டுகளாய், பிட்-பைட் அளவுகளில், chat சன்னல்கள் அனுமதிக்கும் அளவுகளில், வாக்கியங்கள் கண்டபடி மடிக்கப்பட்டுப் போய்சேர்கின்றன. விழைவுகளின், இச்சைகளின் பரிமாற்றங்களும் கூட இப்பொழுது அப்படித்தானோ என்று தோன்றுகிறது. குறிப்பிட்ட அளவை மிஞ்சிவிட்டால் கைபேசியில் வரும் message களும் துண்டுகளாக வந்தும் போயும் சேர்கின்றன. உணர்வை அடிக்கோடிட எல்லாவருக்கும் ஒன்றாய் மஞ்சள் நிற முகபாவனைகள். Emoticons. இச்சை, விழைவு, காதல், காமம், உறவுகள் குறித்த எனது பகிர்தல்களும் திட்டுத் திட்டாய் உங்களை வந்தடையும் என்று நினைக்கிறேன்.

வந்தடையும் என்பதே ஒருவிதமான விழைவு, எதிர்பார்ப்பு, வேட்கை. பேசுவது கேட்கப்பட குரல் மட்டும் போதாது. நாம் பேசுவது போய் நிற்க ஒரு வெளி வேண்டும்; ஒரு கருத்துச் சூழல் வேண்டும். நம்மையும் நாம் பேசுவதையும் அடையாளம் கண்டுகொள்ள ஒரு கட்டமைப்பு வேண்டும். மொழியாலான ஒரு இடம். நாம் பேசப் பேச அந்த மொழி வெளி உருவாகிவிடும் என்று பலருக்கு நம்பிக்கை உண்டு. இது பற்றி எனக்கு சந்தேகங்கள் உண்டு. நீங்கள் தாராளமாகப் பேசலாம். ஆனால் கேட்கப்படுவது நீங்கள் பேசியதாக இருக்கும் என்று எதிர்பார்க்காதீர்கள். பல வடிகட்டிகளும், சுருங்கச் சொல்லுதல்களும், தொகுத்து வழங்குதல்களும், மேற்கோள் துணுக்கெடுத்தலும் வழியில் உண்டு. இவற்றைத் தாண்டி நீங்கள் பேசியதாய்ப் போய் சேர்வதை அடையாளம் கண்டுகொள்வது சில சமயங்களில் போர்க்காலப் பிணங்களை அடையாளம் காணப் போவது போன்ற நிலை.

மாற்றுப் பாலியல் விழைவு, இச்சை, அடையாளம் என்ற தளத்தில் இருந்து பேசுகிறேன். நான் இவ்வளவு கூறியவுடனேயே பலர் என்னைப் 'புரிந்துகொண்டு' விடுவார்கள். அவர்கள் சிந்தனைச் சிதறல்களில் ஒரு Key Word search செய்தீர்களானால் இவையாக இருக்கும் - "ஓரினப்புணர்ச்சி," "இயற்கைக்குப் புறம்பான," "தில்லி உயர் நீதிமன்றம்," "மனித உரிமைகள்," "கலாச்சார சீரழிவு," "தனி மனித சுதந்திரம்," மேற்கத்திய நாகரிகம்," "எச் ஐ வி," "மனப் பிறழ்வு" - இம்மாதிரியாக. மாற்றுப் பாலியல் குறித்து பேச/ கேட்கப்பட இன்று இவையே வெளிகள். "ஒன்று மனித உரிமைகள் என்று பேசுங்கள் அல்லது எச் ஐ வி/ இதர பால்வினை நோய்கள் என்று பேசுங்கள். இச்சை, விழைவு, இன்பம் இதெல்லாம் எதிர்பால் நாட்டம் கொண்டோரே பேசுவதில்லை! நீங்கள் வேறு! உறவுகள் பற்றி நீங்கள் பேசினால் பொறுமையாகக் கேட்க ஒன்றிரெண்டு பேர் இருக்கிறோம். ஆனால் இருவர் உறவுகள்/ ஜோடிகள் பற்றி மட்டும் பேசுங்கள். புரிந்து கொள்ளுங்கள். நீங்கள் பேசுவதைக் கேட்காவிட்டால் அது எங்கள் முற்போக்கு அரசியலைக் கேள்விக்குள்ளாக்குகிறது. அதனால் தான் கேட்டுக் கொண்டிருக்கிறோம். ஆனால் நாங்கள் ஒன்றும் பாரபட்சம் பார்ப்பதில்லை. பெண்ணியத்திற்கும் இதே உபசரிப்பு தான்" என்பதே நாம் பேசிக் கொண்டிருக்கும் பொதுவெளி. இன்றைய இந்த நிகழ்வு, இந்த உரையாடல்கள் போன்ற சிறுவெளிகளில் பேசுகையில் ஏதோ ஒரு ஆசுவாசம் ஏற்படுகிறது. வெவ்வேறு புள்ளிகளில் தொடங்கி உயிர்த்துக் கொண்டிருக்கும் இயக்கங்களும், சிந்தனைகளும் பல புள்ளிகளில் இணைவதும், இந்தப் புள்ளிகளில் பின்னல்களில் சேர்ந்து சிந்திப்பதற்கான இயங்குவதற்கான சாத்தியங்கள் நிறைந்து இருப்பதையும் காணும் பொழுது நம்பிக்கையுண்டாகிறது.

குடும்பம் என்ற அமைப்பின் ஆணாதிக்க ஆதார அடித்தளமும், முதலாளித்துவக் கருத்தியலின் குறியீடாக அது இருப்பதும் எல்லா முற்போக்கு இயக்கங்களாலும் பிரச்சனைக்குள்ளாக்கப்பட்டுள்ளன. பெண்ணியவாதிகள் எல்லோரும் குடும்பங்களைத் தகர்த்தெறிய முற்படுபவர்கள் என்றொரு சித்தரிப்பு உண்டு. அதென்னவோ அவ்வளவு சுலபமான காரியம் போல! தகர்த்தல், கட்டுமானங்களை உடைத்தல் என்ற சொற்களுக்கும் அவை சார்ந்த செயல்பாடுகளுக்கும் மாற்று கற்பனைகள் அவசியம் தேவை என்று எனக்குத் தோன்றுகிறது. தகர்ப்பது உடைப்பது என்ற சொற்கள் பொதுவெளியில் சில விதமான மனக் காட்சிகளை விடுவிக்கின்றன. இந்த மனக் காட்சிகள் கொடிய வன்முறை சார்ந்தவை, ஆழ்ந்த சிந்தனையும், அன்பும், பரிவும் இல்லாத ஏதோ ஒரு பொங்கியெழுதலின் விளைவுகளை அவை சார்ந்த உணர்வுகளை மனதின் எல்லைகளில் நிறுத்துபவை.

என்னைப் பொறுத்தவரை வழக்கத்திற்கு மாறான பாலியல் உணர்வுகளையும் செயல்பாடுகளையும் கொண்டவன் என்ற நிலையிலிருந்து குடும்பம் என்ற அமைப்பையும் என் குடும்பத்தில் எனது இடத்தையும், அதன் மற்ற அங்கத்தினர்களுடனான என்னுடைய உறவுகளையும் மறுபரிசீலனை செய்வதற்கான வாய்ப்புகள் எனக்கு நிறைய கிட்டியுள்ளன.எனது ஒருபாலீர்ப்பு குறித்த எனது அறிவித்தல்கள் நல்ல முறையில் ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளப்பட்ட தருணங்களிலும் உறவுகளின் பிணைப்புகளும் அன்பின் இருத்தலும் உறுதி செய்யப்பட்ட சம்யங்களிலும், ஏதோ ஒருவித்தில் இந்த மனிதர்களுடனான என்னுடைய உறவுகள் மீண்டும் புதிதாகத் தொடங்கின என்றே நினைக்கிறேன். "இதனால் ஒன்றும் மாறவில்லை. கவலை வேண்டாம். நம் உறவும் நட்பும் இருந்த வண்ணமே இருக்கும்," என்று பிறர் சொல்லிய நேரங்களில் இந்தக் கூற்றுகள் அவர்களின் உண்மையான விழைவுகளின் வெளிப்பாடுகளே எனினும் நிச்சயமாக இந்த உறவுகளில் மாற்றங்கள் ஏற்பட்டுள்ளன என்றும், அவை புதுப்பிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளன என்றும், நானும் அவர்களும் ஒருவருக்கொருவர் defamiliarize ஆகியிருக்கிறோம் என்றும் நினைக்கிறேன். ஆகையால் இந்தத் தருணங்களையும் இவற்றை நிகழ்வித்த எனது பாலியல் நிலையையும் மனித உறவுகளைப் பற்றி சிந்திப்பதற்கான, மறுபரிசீலனை செய்வதற்கான, புதுப்பிப்பதற்கான சாத்தியங்களைக் கருத்தரித்திருக்கும் தருணங்களாய் நான் பார்க்கிறேன்.

இதனாலேயே, ஒருவித விளிம்புநிலை அனுபவரீதியாக, எதிர்பால்விழைவு (heterosexuality) என்பது இப்போது இயங்கிக் கொண்டிருக்கும் மனித உறவு வகைகளின் கட்டமைப்பின் மையத்தில் (எங்கும் ஊடுருவி நிற்கும் மையம்!) இருக்கிறது என்று புரிகிறது. பெற்றோர்களின் எதிர்பார்ப்புகள், ஒன்றும் சாதித்திராத வம்சங்களைக் கூட விருத்தி செய்ய வேண்டும் என்ற வேட்கை, நண்பர்களின் கிண்டல் கேலியான பாலியல் இச்சை சார்ந்த பேச்சுகள், இவற்றால் ஏதோ ஒரு விதத்தில் உறுதிப்படும் நண்பர் குழாம்கள், இவற்றில் பங்கேற்பதினால் அந்தச் சிறு சமூகத்தில் உறுதிப்படும் உங்களது இருப்பு, காப்பீட்டு நிறுவனங்களும் வங்கிகளும் ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளும் உறவுகள், விளம்பரங்களும் திரைப்படங்களும் காதலுக்கு வழங்கியுள்ள definition -- அவை அனைத்தும் எதிர்பால்விழைவு என்ற மையத்தால் தாங்கிப் பிடிக்கப்பட்டிருக்கின்றன. எனவே நீங்கள் மாற்றுப் பாலியல் கொண்டவராய் இருக்கும் பொழுது இந்த அமைப்புகளை, அவற்றின் எதிர்பார்ப்புகளை, நியதிகளை, அனுமானங்களை கேள்விக்குள்ளாக்குகிறீர்கள். இது வெறும் ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளல் (acceptance) குறித்த விவாதம் அல்ல. இந்தப் பெரும்பான்மைச் சமூகத்தின் மையமானவற்றை, ஆண்-பெண் உறவின் தனிப்பெரும் நிலையை, அதனின்றும் எழும் குழந்தைப் பேற்றை, குடும்பம் அமைத்தலை, அக்குடும்பத்தில் யாருடைய பணி என்னென்ன என்ற தீர்மானங்களை -- இவை அனைத்தையும் நீங்கள் கேள்விக்குள்ளாக்கும் பொழுது, இவை எனக்கு உகந்தவை அல்ல என்று நீங்கள் கூறும் பொழுது, உங்களுக்கும் இந்த அமைப்புகளுக்கும் சமூகத்திற்குமான உறவு என்ன, உரையாடல் என்ன? ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளுதல் என்பது, அது அதிகாரச் சமநிலையற்றது என்னும் பொழுதும், எப்படி நிகழ்கிறது? உங்களையும் என்னையும் ஏற்றுக்கொள்கிறேன் என்று கூறுபவர் எந்த ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளுதலை எப்படி நடைமுறைப்படுத்துகிறார்? நம்மை அடிக்காமல் கொல்லாமல் இருப்பதன் மூலமாகவா? திருமணத்திற்கு வற்புறுத்தாமல் இருப்பதிலா? உங்களது விழைவுகளையும் உறவுகளையும் அதன் ஆழங்களையும் அங்கீகரிக்கிறேன் என்று கூறுபவர் அந்த அங்கீகரிப்பை எப்படி வெளிப்படுத்துகிறார்? கடவுளே இது என் வீட்டுப் பிரச்சினையல்லாத வரை நன்றி என்று உள்ளூரச் சிந்திக்கும் நிலையிலா? ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளல் என்று எதனை அழைக்கிறோம், அது பார்ப்பதற்கு எப்படியிருக்கும்?

இப்படிப் பல நிலைகளில் மனித உறவுகளைப் பற்றி, சமூகக் கட்டமைப்புகளைப் பற்றி இச்சை, பால்விழைவு என்ற நிலையிலிருந்து யோசிக்க முடியும். ஆனால் இந்தப் பணியில் இப்போது குறைந்தது இரு விதமான தடைகள் உண்டு.ஒன்று பாலியல் குறித்த நுட்பமான சொல்லாடல்கள் இன்று இங்கு இல்லை என்பது. இச்சை பற்றிய சொல்லாடல் யத்தனிப்புகள் மனித உரிமைகள் என்ற பரந்த வெளியிலும் எச்.ஐ.வி/ எய்ட்ஸ் பற்றிய விவாதக் களத்திலும் திராணியிழந்து விடுகின்றன. தவறாக நினைக்காதீர்கள். இந்த இரண்டுமே முக்கியமானவை தான். உரிமை மறுப்புகள் வழங்கல்கள் நிச்சயமாக கவனிக்கப்பட வேண்டும். எச்.ஐ.வி/ எய்ட்ஸ் மற்றும் பொதுவாக உடல் நலம், மருத்துவ பராமரிப்பு, நோய் தடுப்பு ஆகியவற்றைக் கவனிப்பதில் தாமதம் கூடாது.எனினும் விழைவு, இச்சை, உறவுகள் ஆகியவற்றுக்கு இவற்றில் இடம் மிகக்குறைவு. இவற்றிற்கென்ற வெளி வேண்டும். ஊடகங்கள் அமைத்துத் தந்திருக்கின்ற ஒரு மாற்றுவெளி கண்டிப்பாக உதவாது -- பாலியல் கிலுகிலுப்புகள், பரபரப்புகள், குற்றச்சாட்டுகள் ஆகியவை; படுக்கையறை இரகசியப் படப்பிடிப்புகள், ஒளிபரப்புகள் பொன்ற வியாபாரங்கள். எனவே ஒன்று வெளி, தளம், சொல்லாடல்கள் இல்லாமை குறித்த பிரச்சனை. இந்த இடத்தில் காயத்ரி சக்ரவர்த்தி ஸ்பிவாக் கூறிய ஒன்று நினைவிற்கு வருகிறது. குரல்கள், பேசுதல்கள், கேட்கப்படுதல்கள் குறித்து உரையாடுகையில் அவர் சொல்கிறார் இது உண்மையில் குரலின்மை, பேச இயலாமை குறித்த பிரச்சினையன்று; நாம் பேசுவதையும் செய்வதையும் அடையாளம் கண்டுகொள்ள ஒரு சூழல், ஒரு கட்டமைப்பு வேண்டும்; infrastructure of recognition என்று கூறுகிறார்.

இரண்டாவது, இயக்கங்கள் மற்றும் கூட்டுச் செயல்பாடுகள் குறித்த ஒன்று. உரிமை மறுப்புகள், வன்முறை நிகழ்வகள், அநீதிகள் ஆகியவை பல மறுக்க முடியாத காரணங்களுக்காகப் பிரதானமாகின்றன. உரிமை கோருதல், வேண்டுதல், பெறுதல் என்ற அதிகாரச் சமன்பாடற்ற செயல்பாட்டில் ஈடுபடுகையில் திட்டமிடுதல் முக்கியமெனப்படுகிறது. எந்த எந்த விவாதங்களை முதலில் முன்வைக்கலாம், எவற்றை இப்போது பேசினால் வேலைக்காகாது என்று பிரச்சினையிலிருந்து பிரச்சினைக்குத் தாண்டும் செயல்பாட்டு முறை. எல்லா இயக்கங்களுக்கும் உள்ள பிரச்சனை மாதிரி என்று நினைக்கிறேன். "பெண்ணுடல், உடல் அரசியல், பெண்களின் பால்விழைவுகள் பற்றியெல்லாம் பேசி எழுதி பொதுவான ஒரு கருத்துச் சூழலை உருவாக்குவதெல்லாம் திட்டவட்டமான செயல்பாடல்ல. இட ஒதுக்கீடு குறித்து பார்ப்போம். இந்தச் சட்டத்தைத் திருத்தியமைக்கும் மசோதா பற்றி பார்ப்போம்" என்பது போன்ற நிலை.

(வேறொரு சமயம் தொடர முயல்கிறேன்...)

Notes from the Netherworld - Part I

2010-04-02T11:22:00.007+05:30

“Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet

I am only as 'out,' if not more, about my depressions as I am about my sexuality. Most friends know about it, and many strangers read it from my face. My dear friend Shakthi once told me that I am one big heart walking around. It is a very flattering description. But to someone prone to depression, it points to other things as well; primarily to the degree of vulnerability we experience. I have also been quite vocal about my bouts of depression, my different modes of combat, etc. But I feel I have reached a crucial phase where I am engaging with the issue in a very committed way, informed by my rather new sense of importance of my own emotional and spiritual well-being. That's where these notes come from.

I am reading this beautiful book, "Sunbathing in the Rain - a Cheerful Book about Depression," by Gwyneth Lewis (Flamingo, London 2002). I find this book very insightful, the writing very honest but also very gentle most of the time. Whenever I think of honesty and truthfulness, I am reminded of one particular session during my Yoga course. We were discussing concepts. Our beautiful teacher, Jyothsna, explained the twin concepts of Satyam and Rtam, truth and the appropriateness of that truth. We talked about the possibility that we walk all over someone in the name of honesty, wielding it like a dagger. We discussed the importance of considering if the utterance of a truth is appropriate for a time and context, if the intended recipients of the truth are in a position to engage with it, if the manner in which that specific instance of honesty is performed is appropriate to that setting, if it would do more damage than good. Considering this book is written for "those who are depressed at the moment and who are looking for something nourishing to read as they go through their terrors," (p. xx) understandably, it has been written with what Amitav Ghosh calls the one word in English language that is known only by its absence - ruth!

However, Gwyneth has a brilliant note on truth and truthfulness in her introduction, which is very strong, and hit me right at the spot that I was shielding from such intelligent attacks. It is not about living truthfully as much as it is about living one's truth. Gwyneth Lewis clearly explains that she is aware of several kinds and levels of depression and that her discussion is "not about the catastrophic events in the blood chemistry but about the kind of depression which seems to be a combination of genetic inheritance, emotional habit and stressful life events" (p. xvi). Her sharing of how she has come to see her depression as "an important gift" is not a sign of nauseating positive thinking but one of acute self-awareness and self-reflection. This journey, she says, began for her when she met the Australian poet Les Murray for the first time. Though Gwyneth Lewis starts this anecdote with a specific reference to her artistic activity as a poet, and its links to mental illness, she expands the understanding as she proceeds. Here's the excerpt:

When I first met the Australian poet Les Murray, who has written his own book on the black dog, he suddenly turned to me and asked, 'Do you suffer from depression? I was very taken aback, as I was then perfectly well and hadn't mentioned the disease. 'Ha!' he exclaimed, when I confessed that I did. 'I told you I could see round corners! ...Later, I asked Les what was the cure for depression. He didn't hesitate: 'The truth.' We are all artists of our own lives. We shape them, as best as we can, using our experience and intuition as guides. But we're also natural liars and we get things wrong. It's so easy for the internal commentary that forms how we live to become a forgery. Approached in a certain way, depression is a lie detector of last resort. By knocking you out for a while, it allows you to ditch the out-of-date ideas by which you've been living and to grasp a more accurate description of the terrain. It doesn't have to come to this, of course, and most people are able to discern their own truths perfectly well without needing to be pushed by an illness. But my imagination is strong and it takes some people longer than others to sort out pleasing fancies from delusions. (p. xiv and xv)

Personally, I found it important to stay with this paragraph for a while. In fact, I continue to stay with it. Nothing has, in recent times, propelled me into a committed introspection and self-reflection as these lines have. But, interestingly, I proceed in an almost neutral frame of mind. It has not further depressed me. It feels like an interesting project with myself. For today, I will end with another quote from the book:

If you can cope with the internal nuclear winter of depression and come through it without committing suicide -- the disease's most serious side effect -- then, in my experience, depression can be a great friend. It says: the way you've been living is unbearable, it's not for you. And it teaches you slowly how to live in a way that suits you infinitely better. If you don't listen, of course, it comes back and knocks you out even harder next time, until you get the point. (p. xv)

Thanks, Gwyneth!

Families, etc

2010-03-06T01:39:00.021+05:30

I seem to have angered a few people by writing the piece that was published in the Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, 30 January 2010, entitled "What does your family value most." It has appeared to a few as my recommendation to lgbt people to valorize the family as a most sacred thing, to get married, to found their own families and blend in with the marital-familial normative world. Not at all. My concern in the article was about the several young people who are still staying with and/ or strongly connected to their parents.

Lack of acceptance in the family of a son or daughter's sexual orientation and/or gender identity leads to a lot of pain and suffering. We hear, almost regularly, about threats from parents to children, asking them to stop being gay or lesbian or bisexual and to marry a person of the opposite sex. There have been several instances in the past many years, and particularly in the past few months following the visibility around the Delhi High Court verdict decriminalizing adult, consensual, same-sex behaviour, where parents have approached psychiatrists and quacks for unethical and painful reparative therapies on their children to make them heterosexually oriented. We also hear of very violent exorcisms being performed on lgbt youth, often at the request of the parents.

For people whose gender identity and expression are very visible aspects of their personality, for effeminate men (gay, bisexual or otherwise), masculine women (not necessarily lesbian), for people who transgender -- for all those who are seen to be transgressing gender and sexual norms in a million different ways --the way their families deal with these changes is of crucial importance. A major reason for the great number of school drop-outs among Aravanis is the fact that during their adolescence many of them find their parental homes to be extremely hostile spaces that they must run away from.

These are of concern to me. Several of my friends, many of those who call seeking counsel, and many others who write in to share discuss situations that involve their parental homes, the pressures they face, the violence they experience, etc. I find it hard to see it simply as the response of weaklings. If some people want to engage with a situation, their families, and want to choose the best possible response that comes from a place of love and compassion, I support it. People often seek help to gather the courage to step out of their homes as well. And then there are those who feel their situations are not dire and want to think the issues through.

Not everyone has to walk out of their families. Just as not everyone has to found one. This calls for a larger discussion. There is a lot of potential for lgbt people to redefine relationships and families; our sexual difference has already called the role of family, marriage and other relationships to question. I hope these possibilities, new modes of relating, loving, communing and cohering (and new modes of not relating, not loving, not communing and not cohering, too) will be more widely discussed and realized and not swept away in some kind of a majority (within the minority) move to valorize only coupledom, marriage and the family. Yes, a lot of people could want these. And they should have them. But the desires of those who do not want it should not get erased in the moves to institutionalize only one kind of relationship, as it seems to be happening in the United States today. And when we want the marriage and the family, it would be great to see how we can ensure we do not replicate the structures of oppression and violence that do not only characterize many heterosexual marriages and families, but seem to inhere in the very structures of these institutions.

On The Shakti Resource Center

2010-03-05T22:05:00.011+05:30

'Shakti' is right now what excites me, scares me, confuses me and possesses me. I am very thankful that I met Padma Govindan three years ago and we got together to found 'Shakti.' But it took me so long to feel sure of my desire to co-run an organization that with my flightiness I made myself exasperating to work with. Being an individual activist and out-queer man was hard enough for me. I repeatedly felt that my officializing it all with an organization and the attendant commitments was going to make me even more visible and vulnerable than I already was. And then there were the concerns about personal finances, and the kind of time that I would need to spend on setting up 'Shakti' with Padma. But at some point I stopped resisting it and started going with the flow.

The Shakti Resource Center is now a registered trust. In the last two and a half years, we have done some exciting work - media outreach, public events, trainings, workshops, film screenings, collaborating with other organizations in organizing Chennai's first Pride, etc. We are in the finishing stages of the LGBT peer counsellor training program. It has been a pleasure collaborating with the Center for Counselling in conducting this training program. So many of us queer folks find ourselves in situations where our peers seek counsel or are in difficult situations that call for active intervention on our part. But often we do not know if we are equipped to engage with certain problems; we do not know if we are helping. In some extreme cases, we get very drained in the process. These are some of the things that made Padma and me go for a training program for peer counsellors. Thanks to Padma's efforts, LLH Norway funded this program with a seed grant. The manual and resource book for peer counsellors, in Tamil and English, should be ready soon. And then the helpline. But all of us trainees are already seeing the benefits of this training program, for we are all engaging with our peers on a daily basis already.

The resource library is shaping up, too. Some years ago, when I started my PhD on queer literature -- a project that was aborted for various reasons -- I had a very hard time finding access to relevant material. Thanks to the fact that I was travelling a lot at that time, I could get my hands on some material. But this experience made me resolve to setting up a resource library. Padma and I pooled in all our collected material in our office space. Friends, members of local support groups, students working on issues related to gender and sexuality, and other activists started borrowing books. Now there are around 250 books on subjects related to gender, sexuality, sexual health, queer studies, etc. And some magazines, journals and pamphlets. There have been some excellent, recent donations of books from the USA. Once the collection is catalogued, we will have it open for people to use. You can donate us books and films themed around gender, sexuality, sexual health and reproductive health. Check with us at thefolks@shakticenter.org. We have a list of stuff that we need. You can buy them for us! :)

The last film screening we organized at 'Shakti' went very well! Shohini Ghosh's "Tales of the Night Fairies" is an excellent documentary film on the collectivization of female sex workers at the Durbar Mahila Samanvay Committee, famously knows as the Sonagachi project. I never expected the event to be listed in the 'Engagements' section of The Hindu that day (20 February 2010)! It was great to have a mixed audience. It was not a congregation of the "converted," where everyone agrees with everyone else, where everyone's politics aligns itself very nicely with everyone else's. Different views and opinions on sex work, questions around decriminalization of sex work, etc., came up and were discussed. It was fun!

So we march on, I guess. Well, who is this "We"? There is me, then we have Asma volunteering a lot of time, tut-tut-ing me away whenever I feel terrible about not being able to pay her yet. We have Shakthi Nataraj, working hard on the English draft of the manual and resource book for peer counsellors and excited with several brilliant ideas. Ajay Gabriel is a wonder kid, juggling a night-shift job and several other commitments along with the tasks that Shakti requires his help with!

And then we have those wonderful souls who help us keep it all going - friends who give money when it is required -- we have so far needed very little, but still, to have it come when needed is nothing short of magical!

Oh, writing this makes me feel much less anxious now. We are doing good work. We will do better.

What does your family value most

2010-03-05T21:53:00.001+05:30

A short piece of writing that appeared in the Sexualities page of the Zeitgeist Saturday supplement to the New Indian Express, 30 January 2010

Why I Dance

2009-11-18T05:58:00.002+05:30

Here's a piece - Why I Dance - I wrote for Dakshina Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company in Washington, DC, with whom I have been collaborating for the last three years

Joining forces in the fight for equality

2009-11-14T18:25:00.002+05:30

Another article/report by me in the New Indian Express. Saturday, 14 November 2009

Silence to Homophobia amounts to Complicity

2009-11-01T03:03:00.002+05:30

My article in the Sunday edition of The New Indian Express, 31 October 2009: Silence to homophobia amounts to complicity

One right does not undo many wrongs

2009-10-07T11:23:00.001+05:30

Do check out my article in the Saturday magazine of The New Indian Express, published on 19 September 2009: One right does not undo many wrongs

Kalachuvadu Articles

2009-09-23T03:24:00.005+05:30

sharing links to my articles in Tamil that have appeared in Kalachuvadu magazine

(1) வேட்டைக்களமல்ல விளையாட்டுப் பொருளல்ல - an anti-homophobic review of the film "Vettaiyadu Vilayadu," Kalachuvadu, Issue 82, October 2006

(2) தமிழ் வாழ்வில் காதல் - an autobiographical piece, Kalachuvadu, Issue 83, November 2006.

(3) தோட்டத்தில் இரகசியமாக - On a short story by Jean Arasanayagam, Kalachuvadu, Issue 85, December 2006

(4) காத்திருத்தலின் கலை அனுபவம் - a review of Sandra Chatterjee's "Waiting for Rasika," Kalachuvadu, Issue 90, May 2007

(5) பாலியல் உரிமை - transcript of a speech delivered at a seminar கருத்துரிமையும் வாழ்வுரிமையும் in June 2008 - Kalachuvadu, Issue 104, August 2008.

(6) பெயர் சொல்லத் தொடங்கும் காதல்கள் - Kalachuvadu, Issue 103, July 2008,

(7) காதலும் காமமும் - உடைபடும் கற்பிதங்கள் - Kalachuvadu, Issue 115, (though I write this, it is better to mention it as Kalachuvadu editorial, I think)

Dance of Death

2009-09-14T00:35:00.003+05:30

One of my poems has appeared in the September issue of the online journal Danse Macabre. Titled "Dance of Death," the poem keeps to the overall theme of the issue - Totentanze

Wislawa Szymborksa - Translations

2009-09-12T07:45:00.003+05:30

Do check out my Tamil translation of Wislawa Szymborka's Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1996) from English (original Polish) - published in Kalachuvadu
and also
my translations of some of her poems, again from their English translations by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh

Death left for good by the last train

2009-09-10T01:03:00.005+05:30

Death left for good by the last train,

and my grandmother stood waving to it.

Not in farewell, but frantically,

to stop it and get aboard. She would have run,

if she could. But now she will only get better

and better in not being able to run,

she will build it up like a storied cake

that endlessly climbs the skies of her

storied past. But no death will be the cherry

on top. For death left for good

by the last train.

I was just beginning to get used to death,

when it chose to leave for good

by the last train. Its scent,

that once spread as strong

as the slapping grin of a jasmined head

in a sweaty bus, ceased to be. Forgive me,

but it had nothing to do with the fragrance

of hospital corridors; the scent of fear.

Death smelled of a million things.

Of coffee from a half-drunk cup, the soap

that smoothed out the fall in the bathroom,

the old starch of the saree that strangled,

the car perfume fighting the blood stench

on the steering wheel, etc.

But mostly death was sound for me. It took

voices away.Many dear ones I mourn,

I have forgotten how they sounded.

I hear them in my own voice now,

as if reading them from a book;

they have been muted out.

But now voices will stay and sing

and speak and curse forever,

at once, or taking turns, or muffling each other,

but forever.

They will also mourn the only thing

to be mourned: that death left for good

by the last train.

Insomnias

2009-09-08T21:50:00.011+05:30

I recently learned to tell between two[*] insomnias -

the one brought in by our being together, bodies entwined

in wanton discomfort, and the other

where they lie awake, trying to remember

the entwinement.

Of course, I choose, without equanimity and shame,

the former.

Leave those marks of insomnia on my neck,

and I shall gladly offer you

what these bags under my eyes hold.

[*] The reference is to the following one from Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks:

When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you’re not here, I can’t get to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!

And the difference between them.

Body Music

2009-09-07T20:58:00.006+05:30

I watched out for my mind
to begin to sing
the song of separation.
On a night's vigil I heard
the refrain starting.
It was my body.

A Glorious Day

2009-09-02T16:14:00.003+05:30

I have my days of glory.
Eyes tinted with last night's desires -
variously met and unmet -
men walk past me
to their days of toil.
I become taut at the attention
from the morning eyes
all weak with a conviction
to keep desire in check -
toes may tingle, but inside the shoes;
the fount may tease to spring forth, but
not beyond the belt;
the heart might well up, but
can choke at the tie knot.
Desire still rushes to the pupil
and peeps out.
Even ones like me are seen
and wanted
in the rush hour flurry of bodies
by eyes craving the night.

Rain as endless as the Ocean

2009-08-27T12:27:00.009+05:30

I caught myself humming it again! "Aazhi mazhai-k-kanna...." The moment I see dark clouds gathering, hanging over the land and the sea like a visitor pausing at the threshold, I start singing.

Oh, Kanna! The lord of the rain that is as endless as the ocean...

While growing up in Kumbakonam, particularly during the monsoons, this song perpetually came forth from me. For the clouds gathered every few hours before breaking open and falling on earth in heavy pellets of rain, sending the plantain trees in the garden down with their crops in whatever stage of fruition. But before falling the trees stood beautiful against the monsoon grey, dripping rain drops from the edges of their torn leaves that looked like elephant ears when they rubbed against the translucent window panes. And this particular Thiruppaavai (a work in 30 verses written by Aandal, in 9th century AD, on Vishnu, her love) was the unfailing background music for this duration of my childhood in Kumbakonam. I never thought of inquiring why. I assumed it was because the word "mazhai" (rain) featured in the very first line of the song.

Yesterday, as I looked out the living room window of this Chennai apartment and saw the ends of the casuarina tree shuddering against a dark sky in a sudden breeze, I sang again. I rushed to the terrace of the three-floor apartment and looked at the sea.

Do not withhold any of your generosity. You must enter the ocean, inhale the waters and rise to the skies with a thundering noise....

The clouds were moving in from the west and towards the sea, giving a very brief and brilliant shower, but nevertheless scaring the womenfolk into quickly retrieving the clothes drying in the balconies. A domestic help came running to the terrace, cursing the rain, to gather the red chillies laid out to dry on a jute sack. She gathered the sack into a tentative pile and rushed out, shielding it from the rain by holding it against her chest and bending over it in a gesture of protection.

You should darken like the body of Narayana, the lord who holds a lotus from his navel, whose shoulders are strong...

Everything had acquired a darker hue. The sky, darkening in its desire to give, had made the trees greener somehow. The sea too appeared to have darkened into a bluegray and, at the horizon, looked as if it curled upwards into the sky, planning to wrap everything into its fold.

…and shine like the discus on his right hand and resound like the conch on his left...

And that's when I knew why I sang this song.

The Prakara at Oppiliyappan Kovil was great fun, though it was not as long as the ones in Sarangapani or Chakrapani temples. But Oppiliyappan was the family deity and had also assumed a greater importance by the fact that he required a bit of a ride to get to, while Sarangapani and Chakrapani were in Kumbakonam, very close to the daily hangouts, easily accessible for examination-inspired prayers. Oppiliyappan had a village to his name, had buses stopping there, letting out hordes of noisy pilgrims rushing to buy his favourite Tulasi garlands and red and white lotuses before entering the temple. Tulasi was what the whole place smelled of. And camphor. That was the fragrance of the holy water too. Dark tulasi leaves and camphor would have floated on the water in the silver bowl for hours, turning the water fragrant. When the priest hurriedly gave you a spoonful of it and you drank it off the palm of your right hand curved to a dip, it was as if you drank the place itself, taking it all in.

Right after the darshanam, you walked around the Prakara, rushing out into its wider space after being squished out and released from the darkness and focussed importance of the main shrine. The first stretch of the Prakara had paintings corresponding to each Thiruppaavai. They were multicolor, modern-looking, oil-paint-on-stone-wall freezes of scenes described in the Thiruppavai verses. Aandal and her friends were all indistinguishably beautiful, sashaying about in long paavaadais (ankle-length silk skirts). Krishna, the cows, the trees, the gardens – everyone and everything shone with prosperity. Below each painting were etched on granite slabs the lines of each verse. My mother and I would stand and recite the familiar verses every time, looking just at the paintings, without any need to look at the lines at all.

The fourth one was my favourite. It had Aandal and her friends standing together, looking reverently at the sky. The sky was Narayana himself, shown not in the bright colours that filled the rest of the frame, but in a dark grey, rising out of the sea in such a whoosh that you could not see his feet, but just a dark cloud rising from the depths, curving into the sky and becoming Narayana himself, smiling, leaning over the world in benevolence. A streak of lighting, too, in a corner.

Just like the rain of arrows that come forth from the Saarnga bow that Narayana holds, Oh, Krishna, you too shower timely rain on us so that the world may live on and we shall rejoice in it...

At Home in War

2009-08-25T11:57:00.004+05:30

She brought the war to me.
She crossed the sea and came to me,
for whom the battalions' march pounded
only in the bold, big and black letters
of the headlines.
I stopped nursing my insomnia and
started nursing hers.
I became her child and her sisters
and their killers, and she brought in the war
with her kisses, kicks and slaps,
and I wept and laughed with her,
bizzarely thankful for any role;
helpless spectatorship to a remembered war
is worse than
helpless spectatorship to a real war.
So I would cry and scream and fight
and throw my head from side to side
at imagined slaps,
and would close my eyes shut
and scream
as her legs were spread open
to make way for the warriors.

for you to smile like this

2009-08-20T10:12:00.003+05:30

You smile like that
when you get something right,
a smile of small victories,
a suppression of a yippie
a yoohoo a jump a hug;
a kiss if I’m lucky.
I shall secretly gather
glowing bright balls of success,
drop them one by one
from hiding for you
to pick them up
and smile like that often,
a yippe yoohoo jump hug,
and a kiss if I’m lucky.

Again - (an old one edited - does not reflect current state of mind at all!)

2009-08-20T09:08:00.005+05:30

I did not know it would come to this
Again.
A song of separation.
Tossed by love and dreams
I am so lovesick it hurts in the gut.
And gut is the depth I cry from
as an old lesson is learnt afresh:
a watched phone does not ring.
I did not know I would be washed
ashore again,
my love slapping me
on another rocky shore.
A cliched nayika of padhams
was the last role I wanted, but
I do it so well: I wait, I long,
I cry and I am alone,
except in my dreams.

-- an exercise --

2009-08-20T09:01:00.001+05:30

5-CARD DRAW -- Write a poem of 20 or fewer lines that contains all of the following words: splendid, candle, stony, drink, morbid

That's splendid, she mocked, hands on waist,
her made-up mind shining in her eyes,
pinning me flat, once again,
to my field of failures.
She is always around when I mess up,
bearing bright and burning witness to it all,
over and over, dropping on me
her exclamations
like wax from a burning candle,
punching them sealed with a stony silence
long after;
almost always grabbing a drink
after the job is done. And I always think
she would then stride up to me,
tear a seal open, giving me
something to lick.
Morbid, I know.

Bubble-bursting

2009-05-13T16:16:00.001+05:30

Some naughty child leaps and laughs
And bursts each bubble
That leaves my mouth.
She turns swiftly on her toes,
Twirls to her own laughter,
Laughs to each burst.
Wave upon renewed wave
Of wicked breathless laughter.
I am driven to a helpless silence
For fear of setting her off
Sometimes.
Sense is what I make
Truth is what I utter
When I don't stir her mirth.
She never peppers with her cackle
Nor burst with her prickle
The naked truths of my dreams.

Poetic Kindness

2009-04-23T09:06:00.004+05:30

Even bad poems cannot be written at will
is the moral of the week.

Stare at the sky at dusk
as long as you want or
as long as it lasts,
eat away at the end of your pencil,
cross and uncross your legs forever,
But no.
The sky's blue-pink smudge does not care
to write itself down and stay forever
on a stupid blog;
it is meant not to last.
The sea might splash and dash and roar
on your page, but it does it all better
in real.
Even personal drama passes
like mint chew on the tongue.
It makes for tastelessly gooey verse.

Friends and family are usually kind
to familiar mediocrity blogging away.
But you must be kind too,
give them something,
a word, a phrase, a line, some wit
they can justify their kindness by.

A little less love

2009-03-27T08:52:00.003+05:30

Though you have an endless supply of it,
Give me a little less love.
A steady trickle if you will,
Even in spurts now and then.
Think of me in smaller terms.
Picture me as taking it
In my joined hands.
My hands, as you know,
Are not good with floods and dam-breaks,
cascades and deluges.
Give me love that keeps me going,
that does not choke, does not kill,
does not wash me far away
from you.

Dream Breasts

2009-03-04T19:46:00.006+05:30

My breasts were firm tight
succulent throbbing globes
in the mirror,
filling my hands like bowls
of plenitude.
They were not the sad, hairy absences
my hands now grate over.
The mirror's sweet lie look me close
to baby lips - joining soul to soul
through my pointed pink soul ends,
the tickle and pinch of nourishing.
There is a lot more to a mirror
than a boring reflection of imperfections.
It gets playful sometimes,
poetic even, irreal as well,
And shows what is not,
but could have been
and could be.

Pre-approved

2009-02-22T11:49:00.000+05:30

Imagination is for things
That are not.
Either just not there
Or had and lost.
So fantasy or pain of loss.
Tolkiens have exclusive rights
To the former
While mine is a larger group
Called the romantics.
Membership demands are
Very democratic.
All you need are problems
Of personality and
Some masochism: no proof
Of identity needed.
All humans qualify.

Work in Progress

2009-02-22T11:46:00.001+05:30

You know how we do that?
Conjuring up “friends”
When we feel
What we want to say
Will sound better
From elsewhere:
Oh, I have a friend who used to…

I think I am one of them.
I mean I am one
Of those “friends”
Conjured up
By someone somewhere
Using me as a proxy
Tentative self.

Like a test-drive vehicle.
If it works
They make more;
If not
They improve upon it.
Or simply give up.

No complaints: first drafts
Can never be disowned.
They go
Into air-conditioned
Glass cases in museums
If their author dies
A memorable death.

Or to Sothebys.

No Promises

2009-01-09T08:19:00.001+05:30

No stubble-tickle, no back-rub,
Only morning air on my lips,
It hurts just hurts to wake up
To a day that has no you.

To a day that has no promises
of mock-anger and true love.

To one that isn't sweetened
By the sweat on your nape.

It's all effort to get up and get by
On a day that wraps you in a night
Over there out there on the other side.

I am already your tomorrow
So I can tell you how it hurts.

Since you love me oh so much
Be warned about tomorrow,
Be warned about this day
That has no promises.

All the time

2009-01-04T20:07:00.003+05:30

And then that had to be.
That's how it always had to be.
There. You had said that.
And that's that.
The end of things.
They can now fester in the silence
that clatters like spoons on china.
They can now grow and cloud my eyes.
They will now hide
in the new space
between you and me
when we hug.
You will not know how I wonder
at how normal you are.
Normal shall not be wondered at.
But we will carry on
Just as we always have.
Until one day I scream,
drowning it in the cry
of the fire engine,
making you more normal than ever,
giving you another chance to say
"See! I told you!"
It will all be like just a screech
of chalk on blackboard.
The lesson's the same.
It happens.
All the time.

Dear One,

2008-12-22T23:20:00.002+05:30

This is the round tana
our conversations shape now;
what we go around, not through.
This can now be measured
as that which we do not speak.
This is the sum total
of all that you never ask me.
Plus all that I want to tell you,
that come out in strange tongues.
This is why I travel miles some days
to see you. Who cares about the long-
borrowed book?
This is what could fill
all my silences around you.
This is what we make poignant
by the suffering to tell and ask.
This is what stays back
in the filter.
This is what never disturbs
our tea.
This is what you must hear.
This is what I must speak.
Now.

Untitled

2008-12-11T22:41:00.000+05:30

Passing clouds filtered the moonlight
and laid out on the sea
a stage
befitting only something extraordinary.
The friend on the sand did not stop
his out-of-tune singing of a stuck line.
The watery arena glistened
with my anticipation of something.
Something that would complete this day for me.
The friend could still not find the next line
in his jumble of songlines and hmmms
and la la la's.
As tufts of cloudlets drifted away
and the moon peeped out at us all,
the perfect man walked into the light
and let the glistening waters
touch him just eversomuch,
ran his perfect silhouette fingers over
his perfect silhoutte head of hair,
and exited.
Clouds closed in
and the friend on the sand
found just the next line to his song.
And we grinned.

Guilt

2008-12-10T19:20:00.002+05:30

The pencil lead broken on the table,
the mild stutters, the slight swoon in the chest,
all this darkness when the phone rings
and throws in little flourescence his name,
with a custom tune set in days of happy togetherness.
Symptoms of guilt.

Of not having loved enough,
but having lived once like you did
and zoning out like a power cut,
Just bang. Gone.
The aftertaste of trying to sing
"I don't know why I didn't come."
It matters not you truly didn't know
why you didn't come.
You didn't come.

You can stand someone up.
You have been stood up.
They refuse to strike each other out
in a game of elementary this for that.
Sweet innocence cannot even be feigned.
This is how love is performed
by some of us who do not know
how it is to be done.

Needed this

2008-12-03T22:32:00.003+05:30

I needed to think of you again
In the peace of a rainless night
Under a cloudless sky.
I needed to hold you and me
In the palm of my heart
for my tearless eyes to see.
I needed to feel the truth
In the shivers of my skin
weeks after you touched it.
And I needed to hear this
whispered by the universe
In the time between a wave
and another: we are in love.

And I fall in love

2008-11-13T01:04:00.001+05:30

And I fall in love.
The mad rush in the stomach
like while coming down in
fast and screechy swings -
that's like morning coffee to me.
Essential.

Madness is all I can offer
to you, my new love...
Looks like I will stay in you
and you will let me be mad.
I know there is largess
in your madness.

I can float on you forever.
Even drown.
I would like to be in your depths,
sloshing in your soft,
honey viscous love.

Neither of us can gag or kill.
We know only to grow
in each other; on each other -
I will be the velvety moss
on your bed.

I ask you to stay
and let me stay.
Catch me in a whirlpool,
if hurt you must.
And carry me with யு,
if move you must.
I am weightless already,
for I dropped my bags,
tore my clothes,
left my books behind.

Snaps

2008-10-21T06:14:00.001+05:30

At some moment they give up on me.
Something I say. Something I do.
Then Something snaps,
Like fall twigs under shoe heels.
As simple as that.
Nothing ever is the same again.
One twig has snapped.
Nothing is ever the same again.
I am never the same again.

Persistence

2008-10-04T08:37:00.001+05:30

Bruises and cuts.
Everytime I try to climb
That slippery
slope
to your
self
I am sent down
palms and knees scraping
on the massive
holdless rocks
on the way.
The time between that
and a fresh new attempt
is the time it takes
to heal. I truly wish I had
unhealing wounds to deter me
from these replenishings

Good Intentions

2008-10-04T08:29:00.000+05:30

My memories of you
refuse to fade or slim.
They have chosen to go
by a hair-conditioner promise,
only, misplaced:
long-lasting, more volume, more shine.

Untitled

2008-10-04T08:25:00.000+05:30

With an expressionless shoulder bag
And a protective arm around it,
Walking on strange city streets,
I perhaps look like a salesman.
But I promise you I am harmless,
With only my loneliness to trade
And a reluctance to sell it to you.

A Virtual Let-down

2008-09-16T00:51:00.000+05:30

This is a most loveless night.
Lobby lights go off
As some invisible clock
somewhere silently strikes
midnight.

With the screen's luminescence
obscuring my face
and hiding my slow tears,
I sit waiting
for someone to come
online
and touch me.

When a neighbour walks in
announced by two key beeps
and happy whistling,
I wish she would come to me
and hug me
and say they sent her in real
since the network was down.

She dances to the elevator
and my network resurrects itself
to tell me
I have no new messages.

On Frequent Intimations of Ignorance

2008-09-13T07:50:00.003+05:30

They are not as bad as they are made out to be -
Times when silence carpets you
like fall leaves under a tree.

Between ignorance and knowledge
of ignorance
is the space and time to shut up
and listen
to the steady inward hum
of your ignorance.

Sometimes that is all you can offer
to great music - your silence.
Intimations of ignorance are such relief
sometimes. You can be quiet
and full of wonder
at what you do not know.