Contouring, maintaining equanimity...our daily life

Robert Macfarlane : Word of the Day: "contouring" - when traversing steep or unsure ground, picking a path that holds its height. On the hill, as in life, a means of staying steady, of keeping level even when the going is rough, the world falling away to one side or the other.

This is so apt for the times. The world really does seem to be falling away, while we all work hard at staying balanced. I never thought I would appreciate the word equanimity - which I heard numerous times every day during my Vipassana course - as much as I do today. One happy chat with Shashank and some of the family is what keeps me going in this largely self-centered life where we are basically concentrating on keeping our surroundings clean, stocking up adequately for our own sustenance and working at keeping ourselves entertained and occupied. All the news , all the hardships one reads about are all on the periphery - it's almost like this lockdown has made all of us take a break and become more selfish than ever before.

x

21 day lockdown : Day 4 - 10

3 April

I had forgotten about this blog for the past few days. Apart from doing sporadic bits of knitting and making a quilted laptop cover for Kanishk, there really hasn't been much of handiwork that I have done. But the days have been good, and I have managed to keep some kind of equanimity in my life, and and family and friends are safe in their homes. My yoga and Pilates classes are going on online and we are well-stocked up with provisions for the next few days.  I am enjoying tending to the garden: with some protection from the sun, the avocado plant has sprouted a few new leaves. The perennial plant is also looking healthier and sprouting a few leaves after being repotted and kept in the shade.

I have been listening to some peaceful Desert Island Discs episodes and a few episodes of Seen Unseen podcasts. The most useful thing I have been doing for myself is downloading a whole lot of books from this very lovely electronic library. Thanks to this, I am able to locate a lot of books that were recommended by Rouayda and Asha/Sanjana.

The only exception is when I catch up with news on Twitter and then get all angry and upset at the way everything is being handled by the powers that be.  I sometimes wonder if things would have been handled differently by a sensible woman at the helm of affairs. When ordinary thinking people like us were already talking about the plight of daily labourers with a one day Janta curfew, how could an entire 3 week lockdown be announced without thinking of where they would go, how they would survive, what they would eat... The migrant labour on the move is supposedly the largest such movement of masses after Partition! People were running for their lives then.. why did this need to happen now? Instead of collecting huge amount of funds to allegedly support the needy in these tough times, shouldn't they have actually worked at preventing these tough times. It really does seem like anyone who can afford to, stays indoors peacefully, while the majority of India is on the move - whether as migrant labourers struggling to return to their homes or as suppliers of 'essential' services that the privileged cannot do without. Either way, these people are out on the streets without any protection from any virus that may be in the air.

The saddest part of this whole thing is the news that domestic violence cases are increasing during the lockdown. If more women and children are getting battered because their husbands/fathers are home all the time, then what does this say about the condition of their lives in the first place! The small mercy was that at least these men were hopefully not having access to alchohol, but now that Kerala and Chattisgarh have declared that these stores are providing essential services, even that protection has been taken away. I am just too overwhelmed by all this and have never felt more useless in my life. 

21 day lockdown: Day 1 - Day 3

The lockdown was announced on Tuesday night, to start from 12.00 am.  Given that I am used to being home for many days at a stretch, with more than enough to do, I did not foresee a problem, especially as I knew that all my family members and friends were safely in their homes, as comfortable as they could be.

The news has been terrible - not so much the spread of the virus - as the way this lockdown has affected so many people including migrant workers and daily labourers, and the inhuman treatment of people by the police. I thought I would maintain a daily record of my activities (mundane as it may be) and thoughts (hopefully less mundane) over the next 21 days so here goes.

Day 1 - 25th March

Today is Ugadi/Yugadhi/Gudi Padwa - the start of the New Year in Karnataka, Telengana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Interesting that this lockdown will be over on 14th April when Punjab, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala will be celebrating Vishu/Baisakhi/Poila Baishak - their New Year.

While the world seems to be commending the quick clampdown by the Indian Government and predicting the effectiveness of the lockdown in controlling the spread of the COVID virus, news has started coming in of people all over the country struggling to get back to their homes. With public transport suddenly coming to a stand-still, thousands are on the road walking to their homes hundreds of kilometres away. Police brutality is again rearing its ugly head. The days ahead are going to bring out the worst and the best in human beings.

A lot of discussion in all the groups is about what social distancing and isolation should typically involve. A video chat with some of the family has kept my spirits up. Interestingly, the TV has stayed switched off for most of the day.

My day - worked on fixing the iMac with an upgraded OS (that finally didn't work), learnt Thirukkural couplets 31 - 60 from my mother (there are 1330 to go through!), progressed further on 1 crocheted prosthesis

Day 2 - 26th March

The broadband connection has been really slow and all of us at home are having problems going online, and are really cribbing about it.  Watching the news over Twitter of increased police brutality, the desperation of people on the roads and the very real concerns of many people has realigned our priorities and the cribbing has stopped. All of us are reading a lot more than before. I wish there was some way we could be of use in this awful situation. I checked with doctors about making cloth masks but most of them feel they would not be of any use as protection from the virus. However they could be used by people who have a cough or a cold. I've decided to wait for an actual need before getting busy making masks. Total respect for our frontline medical workers!

Within the community, as expected, people are being as generous as possible, offering support for anyone needing it. The suppliers are managing to provide vegetables, dairy products  and grocery, at least for the present. Hopefully the trend will continue for the days to come.
My day - Restored the data on the above mentioned iMac, started a light Ginger Gold mystery, started a knitted sweater for Kiara, made Mysore Pak, fixed some glitches in our internet connection, learnt Thirukkural couplets 61 - 80, read too much on Twitter and retweeted a lot of it, made udud dal baris, went out, by car, to the store 4 mins away to collect some provisions.

Day 3 - 27th March

Woke up today to awful videos of police beating up innocent people - one apparently died of his wounds! -, making people hop as punishment for being on the streets, recklessly damaging vegetables from a vendor's cart... the list goes on. One IPS officer actually tweeted about how they were preparing, with an accompanying picture of a few lathis on his table! Thankfully he took it off later, but if this is the mentality that is all pervading, then all i want to do is curl up and go back to sleep... for ever maybe.  There was an article about someone asking if this was a good safe time for babies to be conceived and all I could think of was why would someone want to bring one more baby into this horrible world.

The trick to keeping sane - have a quick video chat with family, exchange notes on whether others are well and safe and then sit down with a frothy book like another Ginger Gold mystery where the choice of correct hat to go with a suit is a major dilemma.

My day - Ginger Gold over, now Manu Pillai's The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin, more work on Kaira's sweater, completing Kanishk's laptop quilted cover and watching Parasite with family over Amazon Prime in the evening.

Caste-less because we are 'Upper Caste'

I remember writing a while ago about how Shashank called me up from Bangalore, where he was studying, to ask if we were TamBrahms. At that time, I was thrilled that we had successfully brought up our sons without telling them about castes and races. A few years later, I realised that the only reason we could have maintained this 'caste-less' bubbly is because we DID belong to the upper caste! I still cringe at the thought that I enjoyed a privilege that was given to me just by a chance of birth, and felt great about it. T M Krishna and Amit Varma's very interesting discussion on Caste, Gender and Karnatik music here - https://seenunseen.in/episodes/2020/3/1/episode-162-caste-gender-karnatik-music/ - discussed exactly this and mentioned this poem by Akhil Katyal.

One day, when he was
about ten or twelve,
he asked his mother
“What is my caste?
Some boys in the
school were asking,
I didn’t know what
to say.” The mother,
got up in the middle
of her supper, “Beta,
if you don’t know it by
now, it must be upper.”

Katyal is a Delhi-based poet

My attempt at protesting

Today I joined a group of youngsters at a 24-hour protest that had started at 6 pm yesterday. The protestors I met were young and so earnest. One young girl was sitting with a lot of scrap and stitching cloth pieces together to make a map of India. A few people joined her for a few minutes and then moved on. People around her were shouting out slogans for different things - the protest by the Trade Unions, one group was talking about JNU, AMU and the Delhi Police, and some about CAA and NCR/NPR,  but she was going about her work.
I sat and stitched a few pieces with her. She was so calm and peaceful while surrounded by protestors and the police who stood around.

It made me think of what I was like at 21. There were so many issues even then, dowry-deaths being one of the most horrifying. I made a couple of attempts to go join an activist group - Saheli was set up in Delhi when I was 20 - but I am ashamed now to say that I was scared of by the thought of having to travel to meetings by public transport in Delhi in the early 80s. Facing all kinds of eve-teasing on my journeys to and from my college, I really did not then have the guts to brave it all again.  Why did I not have even half this young girl's courage? How is this youngster sitting so bravely, knowing that the situation could turn violent at any moment?

One of my sons has joined the protestors, my other son and daughter-in-law are protesting vociferously online, and my nieces are sitting in similar protests in the cities they live in. I respect them so much for being able to stand up for their beliefs. And I am so glad that, just for a few minutes, I was also able to join them as a protestor.  So many of the maladies that affect our country now are because the earlier generations did not protest enough. This is a good time for us Generation Xers to stand up and be counted, and join the youngsters in saying 'Enough is enough'.  

Shower of diamonds

                     

I'm sitting outside after a heavy downpour. The sun has come out and I'm  watching the rain drops glistening as they hang onto the leaves of the hibiscus plant in our front garden  The sparkle is one that no diamonds could match.  Suddenly one of  the sunbirds that have been flitting from one branch to another lands on the plant I am watching and stirs up all the droplets. Suddenly, just for an instant, there is a shower of light!

I'm so thankful for looking up at the right time, and for being able to appreciate this wonderful miracle that nature has provided for me. 

These are not my people

Waking up as usual to the sound of birds chirping outside the window, I wondered why I was still waking up with a heavy heart. I suddenly realised that over the sound of birds, the sound that i could hear was that of the young man who was whispering Jai Shri Ram, Jai Hanuman while getting beaten. I had consciously stopped watching the news on TV a while before the recent elections, and only followed a few people who I considered still sane on Twitter to keep abreast of the latest events everywhere. 

The news of Tabrez had come in bits and pieces throughout the day and horrified me. The TV was switched on yesterday in another part of the house, and just for a few seconds, the sound of Tabrez pleading reached my ears before I could hear the TV going off, but this was enough! 7  hours! Someone could be tied up and beaten for that long by human beings? Could they not hear him plead! My younger son is the same age as Tabrez - he is just setting out into life as an adult. I cannot help but think of what kind of a world we have brought him into, what kind of world have we created.

Last week, a letter was circulated by eminent Muslims in Bengal expressing horror at atrocities committed by one who supposedly was born into their religion. A group of friends discussed why these people had to feel responsible for criminal acts by someone they didn't even know, just because they shared a religion. Today, I can understand what they felt when they wrote their letter to the Chief Minister.

I feel I should also apologise. Who should I apologise to? And what all should I apologise for? Apologising on behalf of Hindus would automatically mean that I agree that there is something I have in common with these - do I still call them humans?; that I grew up believing and loving the same gods that they supposedly are devoted to. These people who supposedly are devotees of Ram and Hanuman are not my people. I cannot choose which religion I am born into, but this Hinduism that they follow is not mine. I do not want to have anything in common with them. The next time they chant Jai Shri Ram, are they not going to see Tabrez in front of them?

For many years, I have grappled with doubts about the existence of one, many or million gods. Now I can honestly accept that I have no doubts any more.