On Feeling Ugly | On Being Miserable

On Feeling Ugly

I have been feeling rather ugly for sometime now. I just don't talk about this, because it is simply impossible to say that I feel ugly without having my friends jump right in trying to convince me it is not true. Well, as friends, we are pretty much scripted to do exactly that. If any of my friends broke this code and said, well, nothing, I'd probably be even more heart-broken. 

Then there are the others, who would exhort me to seek comfort in some notion of inner beauty. At the moment, I could not care less. I am sure they are well-meaning, but I don't think I need it right now. 

Under intoxication, however, an acquaintance of mine managed to break free of the limits of civility and tell me she wouldn't dance with me, only with "one of the handsome gay boys." Had I not been swooning under the influence of a kiss that a much younger man had planted on my lips barely ten minutes before that, I would have fallen apart. I'd been dancing happily with him when he leaned over close and said, very sweetly, "Can I kiss you?" I had said yes before he had the time to change his mind. 

Of course, when I have guys wanting to kiss me, my feeling of ugliness must be entirely unfounded, right? Yes. So? If you can give me such evidences to disprove my ugliness as a fact, I can come up with twice as many to prove it. It is to circumvent this exercise that I have chosen to speak in terms of my feelings. They seem to exist per se. 

I have seen that even the most stunningly goodlooking people have some body-image issue going on. So then it all must be crazily subjective, tweaked only by varying degrees of self-obsession? I am not so sure. Not everyone who hates the way they look are invisible, are passed over in silence in everyday parades of eye candies. 

  

I thought I could write interestingly about feeling ugly. But it only comes out as pathetic whining. Note that I still do not say I AM ugly. I have to keep saying I FEEL ugly, resorting to the slightly assuaging perspective that it might only be my feeling, not reality. 

I am sure there is some radical perspective that claims a rightful place for ugliness in this world. Until I find that, I should perhaps disable comments for this post and put my friends out of misery! But what I cannot avoid is the utter discomfort of having them look at me closely next time, their eyes tracing the contours of my face, trying to find in it the ugliness I feel, or looking for what would help them prove me wrong. 

On Being Miserable

This only partly follows from feelings of ugliness. At this stage of overall miserableness, everything gets enmeshed in a chicken-and-egg conundrum. 

I might cope better if I relinquish my exacting notions of living, which demand that I live with gusto all the time, that I live life to the fullest, throw myself in it one hundred percent. Whenever I go through phases where I simply cope with life rather than live it, I feel like an utter failure. 

The other day I went to meet an older friend of mine. When I entered her home, she was sitting with a few other friends of hers, and I was shocked by how disheveled she looked. Not one to ever present herself in human company with even a string of hair out of place, she shocked me with her sweat-stained face; faded, old saree; and dark circles ambushing her lovely eyes. In addition to all these departures from her usual image of being on top of things, she broke down in the middle of the conversation, held her head in her hands, and shook in sobs that came with the force of things held back for too long. Through her crying, she said she was finding it hard to cope. 

Even as I put my arm around her, let me confess, I found some tight knot getting undone in my heart. I was relieved to see that it was alright to just cope; that even she, whom I had thought would always be in control of things, was merely coping. I felt less alone. 


P.S. I am still trying to figure out how to disable comments!

No End to Surprises

(Originally written for a column in Page Seven magazine. I have made some changes here.)

You might have heard this famous line from The Philadelphia Story, that Katharine Hepburn's character says: "The best time to make up your mind about people is never." Intellectually, I have always known it to be true, but I have also always gone ahead and made up my mind about people anyway.

The last place I expected that to be challenged was on the crazy roads of Chennai. But then why should I have made up my mind about what could happen on Chennai roads!

I have had this ongoing battle with autorickshaw drivers for years now. I know many of you think it is perfectly reasonable to be so. But the sad fact is that after a while it stops being about right and wrong, and it becomes a great source of negativity and anger. At some point, I started using my interactions with the autowallahs as moments full of possibilities for spiritual growth. My reasoning was that if I could manage to not get angry, not shout at them and not create a scene, if I could bargain calmly and, actually, wish them well, I might become a better person. I have been doing this with some success, but I have always judged them a priori, and my expectation of them has been a set one: they are here to rob me!

One gentleman challenged me on this recently. When he asked me for what I thought was the most reasonable fare, I was pleasantly surprised, but I also grew wary. I thought, "Hmm. He doesn't know the distance. He is going to start off an argument once we get there." My fangs started emerging, so I sat back and meditated and tried to bring to the fore my so-called best self. Also, I checked with him if he had change for a larger bill/ note, and he said he did.

When we arrived at the destination, to my great surprise, he did not ask for more. Nor did look sheepish and discontented. But he looked in his pockets for change and could not find it. My alarms went off: "Aha! He is going to say he does not have change!" And he said, "I don't seem to have the change I thought I did. Sorry." My best self, that had just started to peep out, went right back in, and my fangs came out again. "What do you mean you don't have the change? It is late, the shops are closed. We could have stopped at a petrol station....."

He was completely unperturbed, and said, "Sir, don't get upset. It is not so bad. Don't worry. We will drive to the end of the road. There are some shops there that are open late. I will get you the change and drop you back here." He did not have even the slightest urge to entertain my drama. I have never seen such calmness, respect and peace on anyone's face on the roads of Chennai. I cannot distill the brilliance of the moment here, but I can say that he definitely awakened something in me. I bow down to this teacher and his lesson.

The second instance was even more stunning, since it happened at the infamous Jayanthi signal in Thiruvanmiyur, where the idea of "every man for himself" gets lived out in the most basic and vehement sense. Intrepid pedestrians run across the intersection trying not to get run over by the buses turning in from the East Coast Road, rubbing shoulders with the giant volvo buses that belong to big IT establishments on the Old Mahabalipuram Road. People on motorbikes get sandwiched between the regular autorickshaws as well as the share ones, both of which have this killer ability to take sharp 90 degree turns.

One evening, in the middle of such madness, I was sitting in an autorickshaw, pretending to be the calm center of it all. That's when it happened. A taxi driver leaned out his window and addressed a motorbike rider in front of him, "Friend, can you move a little please? I turn left here." Everyone in the vicinity looked at him like he was the Buddha himself come down to show that civility was possible even at the Thiruvanmiyur signal in the evenings.

Well, there seems to be no end to surprises in this world! I am glad I had these reminders not to make up my mind, not to live in a "furnished soul," to borrow e e cummings' brilliant phrase. Others give me the benefit of the doubt all the time. The least I could do is to the pass the kindness forward!

Every morning a new arrival

(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.

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?

(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!

(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.

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.