Emerging from 'Hamnet'

 

She of Nature and He of Art - it’s inevitable that they collide.

Nature is wild and generous beyond boundaries.

Art is selfish, yet without guile or malice.

Nature seems unbreakable, but when she breaks it's loud and unforgiving.

Art takes everything from Nature, but when he gives back, it's redemptive; elevating the physical to metaphysical on this mortal stage.

She of Nature and He of Art - it’s inevitable that they create life together.

And where there is life, there is its end.

In Hamnet, the end is so crippling, it threatens to destroy both Nature and Art. But they sustain, because the thread that connects them never severs, despite the storm. 

Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’ Farrell navigate the storm with such intuitive deftness it feels as if all of the world's philosophies are moving through them. The film is soft and deep, nurturing grief as it takes root in every character - in Agnes, Will, his mother and the children. It makes you stay in moments so stretched - so real - it's as if time has come undone then rewoven itself to give breaking hearts all the room in the world to crumble, then reassemble.

The first time I watched Hamnet, I couldn’t drag myself away from Jessie Buckley’s Agnes. But the second time, I saw Will’s ache, his battle with himself and finally, the non-negotiable surrender to art; a pull for which Agnes expands space. How unfair, then, that her own primal need to return to the forest is never honoured. But Art sees all. 

Will's atonement? Pressing the full might of his art into rescuing Agnes from drowning. His Hamlet laid at her feet, love’s ultimate offering, so that she can bid goodbye to her son by witnessing, through the play, that grief isn't the only thing death brings, it's also freedom. 

In the end, both Art and Nature work together to restore Agnes’ knowing back to her, back home where it belongs. If that won't split you open in a cinema hall full of strangers weeping with you, nothing will.

- Hamnet, 2025

The Artist's Return

There's this stupid certainty that returning to my creative self at age (almost) 47, having burned pretty much all my media/art bridges 5 years ago, with no light in sight, is the wisest way to use my life from here on out. I could be out on my arse financially, I could become homeless (pretty soon actually) but there's this stupid certainty that it's where I need to head.

Because there was this silly little show, maybe you've heard of it, that managed to push through the grey, rubble-laden, packed-stiff-dry-earth of 'Netflix-&-chill' teevee to become this massive moment in popular culture globally...Yeah that little show. Boy, it showed us something.

This is the return of the artist, climbing over debris left by 'content-creators', seeing but not agreeing that audiences are 'consumers' or that art is meant only to confirm the darkness we find ourselves in as the human race. Art can build whatever world it chooses to, and in doing so, give us possibilities of whichever world we want to live in. 

This little show has given us a world which leads with kindness, where conflicts resolve not just with bravado and wits, but with empathy. It doesn't pretend evil doesn't exist, but neither does it treat us like defeatists, exhausted from living these dystopian lives. It takes all that and then gives us a story where compassion becomes the air we breathe in and, more importantly, breathe out.

Whether I define myself as an 'artist', or not, is irrelevant. We're all artists if we lead with authenticity and I guess the only question is: are we -am I- doing that? What is my voice in this world? Is it what a client or a channel or a boss or a 'market' or a political party tells me it is? If it's not, then what it is? If I were to make a silly little show, what would I lead with? Would I have courage if everyone around me said it wouldn't 'work'?

Jacob Tierney seems to have done whatever the fuck he wanted to do (I simplify, I'm sure it was more complicated than that). He has built an almost unbelievable premise, where the worst of humankind never really takes over and the plot twist is: love. How fucking audacious for these times. How fucking radical.

In doing so, he's given the artist in me strength to lead with whatever I want to lead with. My only job now is to go deep and excavate. 

For The Ugly Girl

Somewhere there is someone for this ugly girl. Someone who speaks completes sentences containing feeling words and honest truths. 
Somewhere there is someone who remembers to stop, breathe and listen. To her. 
Somewhere there is someone who remembers how she said she was sad, she was sick, she needed time. Somewhere there is someone who wants to be unbroken before they reach for her. 
Somewhere there is someone who sees her ugly and because of it, calls her beautiful. 

Pocket Change

every time we meet
pieces of change fall from your pockets
get entangled in sheets
drop behind headboard
slip under mattress & into pillowcase
when you leave I hunt for coins
collecting them in a jar
waiting for it to one day
be full

Conversations With Boys

-->

Mid Life Problems

Just as it’s time to leave, he leans in and asks like it’s a secret, “Are you happy?”

I lean back. My brow knots up. “Wrong question. Ask me if I’m excited about the future.”

“Are you excited about the future?”

“Yes. Even if the happiness comes & goes.”

 “Hmmm…”

“You? Are you excited about what’s up ahead?”

“I don’t know. I’ve checked all the boxes – degree, job, marriage, money. I expected something more than this.”

“More than what?”

“More than…vanilla.”

“Talk to your wife more. Be vulnerable. You’ll be surprised how meaningful it can make your life to share like that.”

“I think I’ll start a band.”

 ******

Reminiscing

They meet after more than decade but one might say they’ve never met before because this is the first real conversation they’ve ever had.

And she says, “I used to be so scared of you back then.”

He looks surprised: “Why??”

“Oh I was scared of everything in those days.”

“No no. I’m pretty sure it was me. I used to be an asshole.”

 ******

Body Issues

He texts me from an out-of-town wedding: “God everyone is *so* fat here. The women are cows.”

I text back: “I’m fat too. You seem ok with it.”

“You’re different.”

“Why?”

“You change. Your face changes.”

“In bed?”

“Yes.”

*****

Insomnia

She is half a country away from home and from him. It’s a lonely hotel room, where the TV only plays Tamil channels. She has an early morning but sleep won’t come.

“Why not?” he asks on the phone.

“I have trouble. Insomnia.”

“I can sleep anywhere, any time.”

“Lucky you.”

“I’m going to help you sleep.”

“Best of luck. You won’t succeed.”

“Oh I will. Are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to the sound of my breathing and breathe deeply with me.”

She inhales and exhales with him. For a good ten minutes.

“Are you asleep?”

“Mmmmm…no.”

“Ok. I’ll keep trying.”

 ******

The Turning Point

I dream of forevers with him.

But he says, “I’m only going to be a chapter in your autobiography.”

“Impossible. Only one?”

“Yeah, I’ll be the one after the assholes. Just before the love of your life.”

“You’re the love of my life.”

“No. I’m the turning point.”

******

Wah, mazaa aa gaya!

Every Goddamned Morning

Moments from your past are picked up and thrown back at you, unsolicited, unwanted, unasked for. Moments that may or may not have been significant to your story but in their popping up, take you back.
When all you've been struggling to do...
In the books you read...
In the prayers you pray...
In the act of war you perform with your will power...
In the resigned surrender of your heart...
Is to return to the current, to stick your feet in the moment, to not look left or right or up or down or even straight ahead or directly behind - to be okay with the hysterical blindness it brings.

Your goal is to know that 'this-here-now' is not a trap, even if it feels like it. That it is the looking back, the sudden recurrence of a feeling, a look, a whispered breath on your neck that's the trap.

And so, every goddamned morning - would you please stop?

Some Days on Twitter Be Like...

Binary Code Boyfriend

He speaks in binary
Grunts and silences
1's and 0's
There is a novel in there
Maybe a mathematical mystery left unsolved for centuries
Mmmphhh----
Mmphhh----Mmphhh Mmphhh----
Meaning,
"I need a holiday"
or
"Pass me the ketchup"
or
"You're kind of cool how you make me laugh and give me the benefit of the doubt"
or
"Stop annoying me"

It takes some dedicated decoding
And a possible career as a spy
To figure out the difference between
I love you
&
Goodbye

Soap

Ask me again what I want to be when I grow up.

At age 34, I want to be someone who knows how to love and be loved. 

It is the simplest thing I can think of wanting to be. Certainly, also the hardest.

A magnificent thing happened to me while doing the dishes today. A fluff of dish washing foam fell into a vat of oily water and whoosh, like Moses parting the seas, the grease parted and a pristine moat of clear water emerged out of the mess.

Now, I know that soap is designed to make a hearty meal of grease. It’s what the label on the pack says. It’s what my chemistry teacher said in school. It can be proven with equations and formulae. There’s math to explain it. I've had a 25 year long career washing dishes so I’ve also come to place good faith in soap’s appetite for grease.

Yet, there was something about paying attention as it happened: a single droplet of lily-white decimating an entire army of oil & grease in one graceful swoop.

You really had to be there.

***************

(But of course soap doesn't really decimate anything at all. On the contrary, it builds a chemical bridge between natural foes - oil & water. Dang, science, you're awesome.) 

Awwww

Guy & Eep from 'The Croods'

Guy
[strained while holding on to Eep]
You're really heavy!

 

Eep
Really?
[lovingly]
Thank you!

On (Wrapping My Head Around) Intimacy & Love

This is the big work of my life. 

As I begin to pick apart the debris of my personal history, I try to work out a new way of thinking about myself at this age, in this time, as a woman who is ready & willing to love wholeheartedly or not at all.

A big part of that is to move from a place of abject mistrust of men (as emotional creatures) and begin to believe that they are capable of love. 

So, I'm reading a book by bell hooks. 'Communion: The Female Search For Love'. In it, she writes:

"Shere Hite published her voluminous report Women and Love. Providing an accurate and realistic examination of women's attitudes toward love, her data suggested that far from 'loving too much', most women were cynical about love. She reported an overwhelming majority of women in relationships with men testified they did not feel loved. Hite commented, "Given the assumption in our society that one grows up, falls in love and gets married, it's surprising that few women say that they are 'in love' with their husbands and how acceptable this seems to be to them." In her section 'Loving Men At This Time In History' she documented the reality that women involved with men felt they had surrendered the hope of finding love, accepting in its place the pleasures and/or benefits of care and companionship. In short they...gave up their desire for men to embrace emotional growth and become more loving. They repressed their own will to love. Denial and repression made life more bearable and relationships more satisfying."

I linger on this passage for a long time. I type it and send it to my closest friend. I re-read it several times. The pull of this extract becomes clearer and clearer.

I am the consequence of what bell hooks & Shere Hite write about. 

Born of a woman who bartered her definition of love and a man who refused to partner her in emotional growth. She needed more than children and a roof over her head. He understood marriage as just that. 

I have always carried their denial & repression inside me. It started sprouting at a young age until it spread its tentacles to the extremes of my body. Reinforced repeatedly like a self-fulfilling prophesy, like a cancerous growth so malignant, I could see no virtue in allowing men anywhere close. They could skirt the peripheries, yes. But my greatest asset: my loving & caring heart was hidden safely away from them.

Except in hiding it so carefully, I encountered the same paradox again and again: How is a heart supposed to do its job of loving if one keeps it boxed in? 

Is this a dilemma that other women (whether currently in relationships with men or not) face? Is there a cynicism born of repeated disappointment with their men, who while wonderful at companionship & security, are failing to embark on emotional journeys? I see it in the eyes of so many wonderful women I know - all in relationships with remarkable and caring (in a way) men. And I wonder, have they completely surrendered their version of love to accept whatever the men are willing to give? 

If yes and if this is the norm, I can't see myself following in their footsteps. It's a path I've already walked down through the lives of my parents & their parents and I know how it will end. Because you see, I am their heart's desire never fulfilled. I am the consequence.

Image stolen from here

Message To Boys Who Are Afraid

See? You don't need to be afraid of loving a smart, independent and liberated woman, who has your back.
If you play your cards right, things might turn out really, really well.

Barack & Michelle Sitting On A Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
(This photograph appeared on the front page of this morning's Hindustan Times. What a visual for us Indians to wake up to. What a visual to announce Obama's re-election as one of the world's most powerful men.)

Not Suitable For Adult Types

I was invited by the fabulous Miss Karina to contribute a Story For Thing.
I discovered that writing for kids can be life-saving - especially for curmudgeonly adults like me.

In the event that you start tiring of being a grown up, please take a moment to visit the blog.
It includes The Most Loved Girl In The World by yourstrooly.

Happy Birthday

There was a young man Cumberbatch
Who struck gold with a role perfectly match-
-ed. To his looks that could kill,
With mad Shakesperean skill,
Now even my Amma agrees he's a catch.

And What I'd Like To Believe Romantic Love Feels Like

From Andre Agassi's autobiography 'Open':

'To my mind, being with the right woman is true happiness. After all the time I've spent putting together my so-called team, the only thing I want now is to feel like a valued member of Stefanie's (wife Steffi Graf) team. I hope he (Pete Sampras) feels the same way about his fiancee. I hope he cares as much about his place in her heart as he seems to care about his place in history. I wish I could tell him so.'

*****
I don't know what it feels like to be in love. Over time I've gotten an idea that it's not a preset condition that you acquire, rather it comes to attain whatever shape & texture you choose to give it. In that sense, I'm not sure of what I'm hunting for or whether I should be 'hunting' at all.
But this understanding of love that Agassi speaks of, seemed like something worth aspiring for.

Grow A Pair

Three women got together one evening and through a fog of marijuana teetered down a dangerous path. They found themselves recounting their tumultuous adventures with unsuitable partners.
Towards the end of the evening, they converged upon an idea of spending their twilight years together in an Old Hag Home.
Then one friend said: And there'll be a sign outside that says 'Yay Boobies!'
To which the other one added: No entry unless you grow a pair.

She saw me through my angsty twenties and will always be welcome in my Old Hag Home.  

The Shit They Don't Tell You

It's taken me 32 years of living to realise I know nothing of love. At least not in the way they tell me I should.
I love both my families - the one I'm born into and the one I've cultivated. I also know that I'm loved back. I have felt deeply connected to creatures of all kinds, even objects. I've hugged my fair share of trees & even said "I Love You" to my Ipod and meant it. I've experienced what can only be described as love, when a piece of favourite music reaches its crescendo or when I read a sentence that's written so surprisingly, it takes my breath away.

But the kind of love they write pop songs & billion-dollar grossing films about? I've never known it.

I finally watched BBC's adaptation of 'Pride & Prejudice'. I hoped it would help me learn lessons about love, lessons I might have missed when reading the novel. It was very pretty, very charming and very infuriating - all the ingredients for a good romance, I suppose. Then came the most highly anticipated, deeply intimate moment the lead players had shared so far. After 5 episodes of waiting, this was it:

Surely Liz Bennett & Mr. Darcy had traces of anal-retentive South Indian DNA floating about

He's just proposed to her. She's just said yes. Super. Let's never talk about our feelings again okay? Okay.

Then there's this:

 

My route to understanding love, as you may have guessed by now, had more pit stops in popular culture than in real life. I never grew up with functional, positive examples of romantic love to learn from. I never knew any other templates of 'love' besides the ones pictured above. My 20's, therefore, were most exciting. 

I messed up all over the place. Misunderstanding what romantic love meant, what partnership entailed and what I needed to look for in a healthy relationship. By 28 I was most decidedly, and dangerously, on the brink of failure. So I gave up.

Then my friends started partnering up one by one and suddenly I had new templates to observe and learn from. Some crashed & burned spectacularly (because they, like me were following the above two templates of 'love'). The ones that stayed afloat opened my eyes up to a whole new world.

There are some who understand the real texture of intimacy more easily than I do. They seem to instinctively understand the unglamorous bits of being in love, the every single day hard work, the non-grand gestures that end up being more memorable than anything in a lovesong. I observe as these couples respectfully give each other the space to be the best individuals they can be, how they resolve conflicts, how they set ground rules, how they become a team, how they go about their normal lives. There's a distinct lack of melodrama, there's also a lot of talking (not as much 'reading of the minds' as I'd imagined) - in short, nothing that fits anything I've been taught 'love' to mean.

Maybe it's time to get real about how we tell love stories. Not just in films or on TV, but even the stories we tell each other, the stories we tell our kids: the little girls & little boys. Maybe in the tales we spin about grand gestures, we can sprinkle in some magic of the everyday kind. Maybe mention how loving oneself is as integral as divine luck in finding true love. Perhaps talk about how thrilling an argument can be when it leads to greater closeness. How sexy it is to know that someone truly sees & respects who you are. That love - any kind of love - is life's work, neverending & immensely rewarding.

It's taken me a while to get to the starting line. Even though I'm a little behind in the game it's not in my interests to look back or regret the lost time. What I can do is celebrate the fact that I'm no longer on the sidelines. 

This happy ending may or may not be like the movies, but I have a strong feeling that it will ultimately & profoundly be okay.        

Meeting Narender Singh Benarsi at the Golden Temple

Read my latest post on the music of the Golden Temple and a conversation with one of its senior raagis at the other blog And Your Bird Can Sing.

New Shit Has Come To Light

It has come to my attention recently that one loves not with the brain, not with logic, not with intellect, but with the heart.
Dammitall.

(...Yeah well, that's just, ya know...like, your opinion, man...)

Goodbye

Look at our house.
There's water seeping in through the concrete. The paint is peeling off. The flowers in the wallpaper are falling to the floor, shriveling up into a dry heap.
The windows are caked with greybrown grime. No one can look out, no one can look in. The bolts have long since fallen off, the hinges have rusted into paralysis. Can't push them open, can't pull them shut.
The air is dust. Every breath we take is punishment. We can't see for the haze all around us.
We had a cat once. Or was it a fish? I know we had flowers, maybe even a garden. Big, yellow chrysanthemums. Can't find them anymore. What are we tending to then?
Sometimes I think we might be hamsters in a cage. Running on that darned ferris wheel, endlessly, thinking we're covering vast expanses of land. Thinking we're getting somewhere. Except we're in a tiny cage, barred in - going nowhere, playing the same song again and again and again. And it's the worst song you've ever heard. Cacophony in syncopated time.
Remember when we danced standing still? When we cooked without heat? We smiled crooked smiles at each other - or was it our teeth chattering in the cold?
Remember when we closed our eyes tight shut and tried to wish each other away? Only to frantically unwish it in the fraction of a second before we reopened our eyes?
Remember how we waited for each other? Seemingly forever. At the time.

Right, so. I've done a load of laundry. The pantry's full. The bills have all been paid.
Now I have to go.