Things Have Changed: The Year of Burning

Pooja on the Ganga, Rishikesh.

Oh 2016. The Internet claims it was the “worst year ever.” It seemed like there was a heart-wrenching disaster, attack, or political catastrophe every other day. Every time, we quaked, quivered, hid, and re-emerged. The un-ending assault on our hearts and senses made us wonder what the heck was going on. Indiscriminate killing of black people, Nice, Brock Turner, Orlando, Aleppo, Brussels, our own military blowing off an arm in the peaceful Dakota pipeline protests, Brexit. A satire of a U.S. election so excruciatingly painful, resulting in the election of the sort of person you’d normally wish dead or in jail: a media-hungry, human-rights-destroying, accused rapist that elicits you to vomit every time you hear him try to form a coherent sentence. The death of any sort of respect for intellectualism or morality – false equivalence taken as fact, to the point that you start to wonder about the twisted human psyche. A sort of nose-dive into a world that seemed to respect neither facts nor ideals nor basic human life and dignity. Basic, utter, chaos.

Is the catastrophe real or a result of the immediacy of our news via social media, the increased perception of proximity of global events that used to seem far away, and the increased polarization of our News Feeds? Are things dark? Are we all delusional for believing so? Are we all naïve for not thinking so? Should we build bridges or stand our ground? Should we fight or heal? Should we act or withdraw? No one seems to know anymore. No one seems to have an anchor from which to draw our opinions or make sense of the world. Everything is spinning. And now, 2016 is ending, just like that. No elaboration, no closure, no straight lines. Americans, especially, aren’t used to this.

Metamorphosis

Sometimes I wonder where I went.

That excited, feverishly burning 23-turning-24 year old girl with grand ideas, churning up the momentum and courage to jump without one inhibition onto her Dawn Treader, to go wherever it will take her. Arriving in India, one-way ticket in hand.

Doesn’t sound very different, does it?

But actually somewhere along the way, I became 27-turning-28. The restlessness is gone. The fever is gone. And, the self-begrudging angst and feeling of inadequacy is also gone.

The Steps Are Everything

I’m sorry it’s been so long.

It’s been almost a year since my last entry. I’ve been sprinting, trying to keep up with my own life. Creative energies have been uncontrolled and volatile, resulting in my writing my first song, my first piece of spoken word poetry that I was invited to perform, convening and activating a super amazing community of people for gender justice, constantly getting my writing out there through my gender justice portal, filming a video on periods with amazing slum girls, and just generally trying to build build build. Being lost, finding a direction, pivoting, getting lost again, pivoting again. Getting lost leaves me feeling unmoored. As with creativity, there is a lot of unproductive time. The lulls harbor lethargy, confusion. But every new pivot brings the surge of reassurance that I am, in fact, getting a little closer.

Every day brings new inspiration, every day brings a lovely soul to meet and enjoy.

This city is electric, and it won’t let me forget it. Any moment I hesitate it shoves me in the back into something so large and full of possibility that I’m forced to shelve my apathy, just for a moment, to accept what I’m falling into, always people, opportunities, ideas, moments that magnify my lens of the world so I might hope a little bit more, dream a little bigger, love a little harder. So I may have a reason to focus.

And then I go sprinting again, after this fragrance.

An Airtight Bottle, Sealed and Magnificent

We live in an unsettled world – we young people in our 20s fly away every few years or months, moving to different countries, finding new passions, carving out our unique paths onward and upward. At least that’s how it is in my world. We form connections across the globe, London to Naiorobi to Mumbai to Bangkok to San Francisco, pushing the boundaries, experimenting, creating, thriving, guided by the fire in our spirits.

Incessantly, we meet each other, we foster new relationships, we work together, we have fun together. We make meaning of the world around us together, coalescing into movements, sectors, reactions, sub-cultures, and tides of ideas. Every day new events shake the globe and those of us in this universe have opinions, and we make them known, and we influence, and we create our own earthquakes.

But the nature of this world is that we can’t hold still – you’ve got to keep on moving to stay ahead of the tide, you have to keep moving if you want to win, if you want your senses to stay perpetually sharp and your spirit burning.

Together in our mini-communities – the overlapping startup, social venture, development, environmental, global citizen, intellectual, activist, what-have-you spaces – we belong. But only with the knowledge that either very soon, soon, or at some point, we’ll all be gone – vanished to another city, with another community, another mission, with other priorities on our minds. This point in time in this place – running though the narrow, cobbled Bandra bylanes, igniting our respective movements – will very soon be a memory, replaced by new times, new places, and entirely new people.

Spirituality, Feminism, and Yummy Food

There is so much ancient wisdom in existence, and it’s not defunct, dead, ancient wisdom, it’s present and alive every day in our modern world. And it becomes apparent through unlikely connections, through linguistics, religion, stories, sights, and understanding the lived experience of different cultures.

I was in an amazing art gallery in Phnom Penh; all the art was by an artist named Asasax who was able to take the ancient and apply it to our modern existence – I felt he was able to draw the power out of ancient symbolism and deftly infuse it into mundane experience. His motto was “Without color, people die,” – without creativity, we die; without infusing life into everyday experience, we die. He had imagery of the gray stones of Angkor Wat colored bright, bringing them to life in 2013, stone deities wearing sunglasses to “see beyond the confine of the walls that surround them.” The sunglasses? Both trendy and transcendent.

Above: crude print giving you an idea of his work, though his paintings were better.

Through the Closet, into the Kingdom of Cambodia

So, I’m in Cambodia. Surreal.

I still haven’t fully absorbed the randomness of the fact that I hopped in a taxi, went to Mumbai’s international terminal and stepped on a plane going to Bangkok, and then another one going 55 minutes northwards to the Kingdom of Cambodia. Just for the hell of it.

I actually ran into my Brazilian friend from Mumbai at the airport, and I got to hang out with him while waiting for my flight. Though I like to travel alone, the universe always surprises me with friends along to the way. 🙂

Walking down the riverfront today, I felt refreshingly like I had found a different land. It was kind of like walking through a dream – the sheer comfortable-ness of it, and the random little magics sprouting up here and there made me feel like I had wandered through the closet into a Narnia-like place, where natives welcome you with warmth, and you don’t feel anxious, or weird, or out of place. There is something special about the Khmer people – it’s like they get where you’re coming from, as if you’re not a foreigner intruding on their kingdom. As if it’s perfectly normal that an Indian-American girl would be sitting in a shrine to Buddha – they let you live. This is very refreshing after India.

And then there are the almost dictatorial displays of power. They are so seamlessly woven in, next to the noodle shops and boys playing hacky sack, that it doesn’t seem forced. The Khmers love their king, I realized.

When the Extraordinary Becomes Ordinary

I’m sorry, I know 3 months is a long time. Or is it?

It’s a quarter of a year, but really, 3 months can pass so quickly.

Honestly, one of the reasons I haven’t blogged is because the speed at which life is passing is cosmic. The number of extraordinary occurrences in a given week seamlessly mesh into the rhythm of life, until it’s a rich, colorful mosaic – a mosaic that’s then difficult to take apart and articulate piece by piece.

It’s because each piece isn’t really that important in itself. It’s not that important that I met John Abraham and Salman Khan, it’s not important that I was invited to a meeting with Dr. Rajiv Shah, it’s really not that important that just last week I was watching a sunset over the beach, eating exquisite Greek food, on a adorable loft in north Goa. It’s fun, but that not important that I saved a friend from getting arrested by the Marathi police! I can’t synthesize the number of people passing in and out of my life in this grinding city – a friend from New Zealand whom I met in Chile 6 years ago, a virtual friend I just met in real life who was in town from Nairobi, a friend who is a famous movie star. I can’t give justice to the coincidences that frame life here. Eating lunch at a Pizza Hut in Bangalore – having reached there 3 hours before – and someone I know from Bandra walks in and casually says hi. My closest friends giving me insights into scandals and scams that somehow loop back to colleagues and acquaintances, everyone somehow being tangled in the same hyper-interesting webs of fate.

Something We Call a Literary Festival

It shook me up and brought me inspiration much out of the blue. It’s called the Jaipur Literature Festival, and it’s the biggest intellectual festival in Asia and critically acclaimed as the “greatest literary show on earth.” Every year, there come together the global thinkers and writers that shape our times. Where do they come together? None other than the quintessentially artful Indian city of Jaipur – steeped with the traditions of maharajas and ranis long gone – where the events take place in the textile-laced Diggi Palace.

The thinkers who so eloquently debate and articulate on the stage for four straight days, from 10am-6pm, are some of the world’s most enlightened individuals. Somehow, despite the fact that I’ve been to dozens of conferences full of interesting people, this confluence of thinkers truly, truly impressed me.

Cultivating a Home – a World – in 2013

I had said: Now, the great task before me is to cultivate a home like that in another new place. Once again – pack up, move, re-start, re-settle, re-cultivate. And hopefully cultivate carefully and well this time. And once I do, stick around for a little while. That will be nice.

That seemed like a lot of effort. And it was. It took four months since I wrote that, but I’m here. I’m so here. Packed up, un-packed, tolerated, packed up again, un-packed, organized, re-started, re-settled, packed up again, un-packed again, bought things, decorated, cleaned, cultivated, curated….and I’m here. I live in Mumbai for real. I have a life in India for real where I can make fajitas and brownies in my kitchen and step outside and get Thai food and meet up with real live friends. A real live life.

There are sidewalks. Flowers, normal people wearing normal clothes and speaking English and looking polished and cute and being friendly.

I’m actually here. There are Christmas lights on my building. It’s not actually a fight…it’s not a battle! It’s not me v. all the stupid people outside and cars wanting to kill me. No, it’s like…merry.  It’s like I’m going to wake up in a good mood and KEEP THE MOOD dammit! It’s like, good, old normal life. So so so underrated. I’m not under attack, I’m not screaming at anyone…it’s just a bunch of civilized people going about their nice lives. Wow.

Art, culture, music, interesting work, interesting stories. Pretty things, stunning things, mundane things (like people delivering all your shopping to your house) that are so convenient that you just feel so at ease. I’ve missed so many things and so many things I’ve never experienced yet because I’ve never lived in a real city. Here I am in Mumbai and there is so much to experience still.

As the world comes under attack and start to eat itself up with instability and violence, just keep that sane, safe, calm bubble around you and find beauty, and hold on to it. They say this is a new era. Interestingly, according to the spiritual gurus in India, the Mayans were right. They say that this is, indeed, the end of the world as we know it, the end of the era of Kali Yuga, the darkest of the four ages. But it’s the beginning of a higher, more evolved plane, where people open their eyes to higher levels of being. So interesting that yogis in India are corroborating ancient Mayan scriptures, as well as ancient Indian scriptures. And, so interesting that they are fortelling something so bright and hopeful while people around the world squirm in fear that “the world is ending.”

Of Shoeshine, Wooden Boxes, and Kentucky Fried Chicken

Deepak’s wide-eyed, honest gaze stays with me. The huge, unblinking gaze has undoubtedly seen it all – all the worst of humanity – but somehow retains a steady equilibrium that keeps him going hour by hour, day by day, completely accepting to anything that make come his way. It’s almost a dreamy gaze in a way – though he’s completely with you, he doesn’t have the tough, practical, jaded look of other street workers. He and his thin frame just exists, floating, accepting. It’s hard to tell how old he is – maybe 40 or 50, maybe younger.

When you see him on the sidewalk, he’s just simply present, not pushy. He could almost be invisible. That must come in handy living as him.

He calmly stood there and said, “Only 2 rupees. Shoe polish.” I had the feeling that he was actually speaking to me, not just repeating his sales pitch.

“Let me see if my friend is here.” I get a call telling me that my friend will be 2 minutes late to reach KFC, our meeting point. Considering I have never paid less than 10 rupees for anything in my life, I figure I’d see what 2 rupees can do in 2 minutes. Plus, if my sandals can handle the grimy water of Chowpatty Beach, it can handle anything this guy will do to them.