To Chethana...

It's been just over a month and I don't think I can still comprehend the enormity of this loss. Chethana was my cousin and a dear sister. On 26th July 2015 she decided this journey wasn't worth it. It was sudden, it was shocking. It was horrifying and cold. I could feel her decision move her – the silence and the noise. As saddening and painful the whole thing was, there was also a hint of a larger picture yet to be revealed before me. Although something earthy, nothing magical mind you.

The most disturbing thing through this whole time to me was whether she gave a thought to what our grandmother would have thought or whether she didn't. Ever since my granny passed away, although I can't hear her voice or spirit speak, I keep thinking of what she would make of the situation and I believe chethu did too. And to now see her picture hanged right next to granny's, it just doesn't seem fair. Life and death don't seem fair.

She was 26. Her birthday was a day after mine. So we did see a few celebrations together. I must say we weren't the best of friends when we were kids. We always found a way or two to fight and cry. Now, there will be no more fights I guess although some tears are left.

Chethana Murthy: The absolute joy that she was!

But down the line, we grew up and stopped fighting. We shared a lot of laughter. She was a kind of person who could brighten up just about anybody's day. 

A few months earlier I discovered she was deep in depression. When I found that out, I was worried. Absolutely. Yes. But I started looking at her differently. I knew she was sensitive to energy. She was a wonderful painter from childhood – a fact I had forgotten till the last time I met her when she actually showed me some of her works. She always wanted to learn music. She had a thing, a sort of a connection with God I can say. She travelled extensively.

A piercing sketch by Chethana.

I think I started looking at her as an artist who considers experience everything. And I wanted to talk to her about life and sundry. But I guess, it was a conversation that I delayed and eventually missed. She saw things that we never could. I'm not saying she had it easy. I'm saying every artist has an eccentricity that she shared. And I was almost jealous of her experiences. And like a true artist who wants to see the whole of life, she experienced death too as a part of life. How often can death be a choice. She chose death like she chose life. I hope she chose right. And I can never be an artist that she was. 

I can never digest the way she lay there dead on a stretcher. The whole world was disappearing around me. I couldn't hold on to any sense of my surroundings. Was it calm on her face? Was it wisdom? I can never say. And I know I can never have that conversation with her. Because I cannot hear her voice or her spirit speak. But I'm sure as hell, she left a mark in this huge hole called earth. A mark that I'll spend the rest of my life trying my best to comprehend. 

insights from diaries unkept

...fragments...


Poet, i never was.
an eye for love,
for beauty, makes me no poet.
words do.


what does it take to be true
when a night's sleep could be the end of you?


I'm passionate. About creation.
What sort you ask?
My sort.


Words don't appear in front of you;
words happen like incidents do.


A page unwritten...
...................................
It takes a soul to see the joy.
It takes a heart to smile at the end.

of wishing to print those silences forever...

Crystal cut swirling chandeliers, domed string lights, gold-diamond-pearl clad -- there doesn't end the showmanship of God.  

A temple. People come and go. Some beg mercy. Others praise him. Some others complain. But they all seek Him all the same. The showmanship grows, I wish I could simply believe it. I wish I could seek Him. Or not. Any which way -- with dedication and firm foot. I wish I could look at those swirling lights and call it His creation. I really wish.  

I wish I could bow in tremendous respect sitting far from the idol like my uncle does. Or just turn my back with great indifference/ innocence like the child that just ran inside the sanctum sanctorum not recognizing what all the fuss was about only to return to the toffee in his mom's bag.  

I wish I could not be jealous of all the saints who were divinely appointed to do good in the world. Their conflicts seem to be non-existent. But so do the conflicts of saints who believe in a truth completely opposite to what my saints believe in.  

I wish I believed God pointed out a material approach to life. I wish I believed that the Hindu Gods are so "scientifically advanced" that they prove theories of evolution right. I wish I could fight for these greater causes to save God and to save humanity. I wish I had the conviction to fight those fights.  

Or I wish I had a "liberal" point of view where God is a -- what-is-it -- "a human construct". I wish I believed whole-heartedly that all is political. I wish I believed this God factor was a phallocentric whatever-ness in the world. I wish I believed it was all just a power game between masculinities and femininities. I wish I could stand up for the oppressed Gods and disregard the privileged ones. 

 I wish I could drape a saree, change my appearance and be amongst believers. Or I wish I could go bald and belong amongst non-believers. But, at the end of the day, I know I wouldn't belong to either sides. And I know I cannot take the mid-path either.

I wish I could just believe. Anything that inspires me. And trust. Beyond questions and doubts. For questions are starting to become more absolute than the subject itself. I wish I knew better. I wish.  

blurring mindscapes

Everything is connected. The stories of the world can be woven together to form a single ball of consciousness. We have apparently had parallel histories throughout the past. But, some things (well, a lot of things) don’t make sense to me anymore.

I don’t know if you would brand me a nativist or not. That’s not the central issue at hand. What bothers me is the double standard with which the academia that I’m exposed to views world histories and present scenarios.

As scrutinised as it is, colonization is looked upon as something that brought in a sense of the modern with its great ideals of renaissance and reformation. Thanks to these revolutionary ideas, there was advancement in human thought from the archaic knowledge systems of the East. We were totally incapable of “modernization” by ourselves thanks to our RIGID social set-up.

Moving on, it seems, when Hinduism encroached the territories of tribal regions in India the religion was bent upon epistemological violence. So when Buddhism influenced large sections of vedic society, it was a beautiful exposure to a new knowledge system. [okay, I love all things indigenous and all things Buddhist. This is just for argument’s sake.] The arrival of Islam, for instance, is considered the best thing that ever happened to Indian society because they brought in their knowledge and texts along. [Although I understand how important the blending of cultures is in societies evolving. But why romanticize something and put down a similar event?]

When UR Ananthmurthy talks about doing away with religion – because what is religion other than a set of superstitious beliefs – we uphold the spirit of Ananthmurthy. When say North East Indian writers talk about how Hinduism erased their sense of the past and created anew their memories, it’s the wiping out of tradition that formed the core of their being-ness. And there’s a call back to traditional ways of living to gain a better hold of life in general.

I understand minority discourses in this context, but how is upholding one tradition considered a great purpose of life while upholding another tradition is nothing but an act of power?

Why are knowledge systems of the West held so dearly while the traditional “Hindu” texts are branded “oh so sanskritized!”, “power politics”, “it’s all about maya”, “no sense of the material”, “far removed from reality”? Why can’t they be looked at from an intellectual perspective?

I hope I made the raw argument clear enough. I’ve been stuck with these thoughts for a while now, and I can’t find a suitable outlet in anyone. Kindly leave your comments and suggest some reading so that I can take this forward and construct a decent argument.

Anything that is right inclined is cast away as being closed or narrow minded while being left is the in thing. What I’m really in a way asking for is consideration of all knowledge systems alike, because the dots cannot be connected otherwise. To me, they seem to be falling apart every day with every reading.