My Heart Goes Mmm

 Usually, I don't enjoy conferences, meetings, townhalls, or much of what goes in the name of professional development. I participate and attend because I must, to prove that I seek self-improvement and therefore continue being worthy of being employed. Most of these events are pointless, unspeakably boring, and smack of self-congratulation and self-celebration. 

However, last Friday was an exception. Actually a couple of events were a pleasant surprise. I apologize to my patient reader for the length of this entry since I plan to include a couple of poems that emerged from a writing workshop. These poems resulted from two workshops, both part of a writing conference hosted by my college, for my college. It was a great way to get to know the very active writing community this place harbors. The members of this community sometimes publish, sometimes not and they are extremely diverse, their writing as varied as it is evocative. 

The first session I attended was on the multilingual nature of writing when one writes for oneself, not an imagined audience or publisher. A University professor who teaches creative writing facilitated this session. She used Ciserno's "You Bring Out the Mexican in Me" as a starter and suggested we each write a You Bring Out the _____ in Me poem. We had around ten minutes. We were to use at least some native language or phrases and present at least one verse to the group. I share mine below. I will hopefully re-visit it to revise and tinker with it, but here is the first draft:

You Bring Out the __ In Me

You bring out the bureaucrat in me.

My verse replaced by Excel columns,

Multicolored, swirling scarves tamed into pantyhose

My stories translated

Into skillsets,

 Appropriated to fit

The glass walls of my assigned office

 

You bring out the vanquished in me

Smothering batting onto my worn cotton sheet

“It will be much improved if you

Stitch on these words over what you just said. Use

Embroidery floss, not your cotton threads,”

You say.  I always listen

 

You bring out the wanderer in me

I wash up alone on craggy shores, hazy landscapes

Scowling, dark with bruise-purples and greens and yellows

Sunrises spill across indifferent skies

I squint myopically to recognize

Alien accents, slippery consonants, nasal vowels

But I get it. Sort of

 

You bring out the Gujjuben in me

Dal-Bhaat-Rotli-Shaak for lunch

Mung for dinner. Elaichi cha and thepla

For noon-headaches when the day heaves and slows.

Please-please, Lounge

On my swing, I bring you some, quick-quick

 

You bring out the Gujjuben in me

When the festivals loom

I scream the harder. I dance the louder

You do not listen.

Another session in the writing conference was about mining one's childhood memories for generating ideas. We were given various ideas about which we listed memories (the more sensory the better, of course!). This session was facilitated by one of our local creative writing faculty who regularly publishes children's books. Again, we were encouraged to use the phrases & languages we experienced the memories in. The next stage was to create a character, what this character sought to achieve through the plot, and what lay at stake. Of course, my character was a kite, who sought to fly with a lantern. This exercise ultimately led us to nailing the framework for a Where I Am From poem. I may flesh out the fiction piece (told from the kite's perspective) one day. However, here is my first draft of the poem:

Where I’m From

I am from Chhipwad, from its

rough roads and cows lowing and the smell

of daal dhokli in the afternoon.

 

I am from the shout of game-invites at 6 pm

Homework done, dinner too far

The clink of a thrown can

Begins the game

Of Chor-Police continued from

Summer vacations and last night

 

I am from the stink of burnt ghee

Left too long

A desperate rush to the kitchen

As the radio swirls remembered lyrics

In the sandalwood air

Cut by the hiss and slash of flour in the pan

 

I am from clanging temple bells and the Mullah’s Call

I am from Jack-and-Jill and the Saraswati Mantra

I am from sandalwood and marigolds and cow dung

 

I know this.

But I can’t find my glasses to see where I am

(Would you text or tweet if you find them?)

To say that I enjoyed this day a great deal would be an understatement. I even stayed back for the "happy hour," during which we got a beverage of our choice and read what we had come up with on that day to each other. Because the event was on Zoom, I did not have to leave my comfort zones or worry about the thousand ills that flesh is heir to. 

The wonderful day was preceded by the wRites of Spring festival the English department at my campus (North Campus) puts on every year. This year, the theme was Fantasy Tales and Why We wRite Them. Fascinating! The author featured was Kij Johnson, whom it was a pleasure to discover and Zoom-meet. One of our faculty encouraged his classes (and the attendees) to come up with 2 to 4 syllable words and phrases we were never going to be mature enough for. Pantyhose and self-improvement were some of my contributions, of course. Then our instructor converted them into poems and songs. Immense fun! However, one of my favorite sessions was the nature of fantasy tales on TV and in movies. This, too, was facilitated by one of our local professors. She examined shots from shows like True Blood and movies like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to point out mythemes, settings, themes, and other stock elements that constitute fantasy tales and that one must look for. 

Kij Johnson also discussed the differences between fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc. Her stories can be found on her website. It was quite the experience to see these genres from a craft person's perspective.

It is such a treat to be afforded these shining days and evenings! They provide an oasis in my daily drudgery of juggling schedules, finding and hiring staff, supporting the existing staff, and conducting workshops. I do not go on retreats and have a very generous amount of vacation time accrued, having gone almost nowhere since I started in this position. These events promised professional development credit to me. However, I cannot see how I can use any of what I learned and realized to enhance my professional performance. In fact, the vagaries of my imagination are now confined to managing my staff, colleagues, and students, garnering traffic to my writing center, and balancing schedules. 

I shall not examine these "credits" too closely. As it is, I seem to have wandered too far, not just from my janma bhoomi, but also from all that makes my heart go mmm (to paraphrase the song). 

It serves me best if I just take these events as a sort of an apology offered to me by my fortune (or misfortune) for all the compromises I make daily by genuinely trying to do my job well. I remain grateful for such apologies. 

I wonder if I can mine ideas that would frequent and multiply these apologies. Mmm . . .

Silence

 Last Wednesday, the unthinkable happened to me. No, I do not mean the COVID or Ukraine news. This is much more trivial and in the larger scheme of things, irrelevant and of no import whatsoever. 

However, to me, it felt horrible. My tv refused to work. 

I know. Some people call the tv the idiot box. Some people call it mindless corrupting of a sharp mind. Some people call it an addiction. To me, however, it is a portal to a world I remember, dream of, and in the most essential of ways, inhabit. 

When I am home, I need everything underlined with the noise of people talking, if not in Gujarati, at least in Hindi. I rarely watch television in English. When I leave home, I leave live tv on on one of the Star, Utsav, or Zee channels for the cats. The cats and I have become accustomed to this noise. When the tv is on, the cats perch on two sides of the sofa and nap or relax. But in the silent house, the cats did not know what to do with themselves and roamed around meaninglessly, sometimes through the house, sometimes outside. They felt abandoned in the silence. 

I felt abandoned in the most inexcusable manner as well! I need constant stories being told to me, even if I am not always attentive to them. I love the familiar tropes, the recognizable places, the ease of the idiom, and the comforting cadence of the language. I need the remembered tastes on my tongue and the fragrance of camphor and sandalwood of the festivals. And I am not ashamed to say that I also missed the laughably improbable plots and the outlandish caricatures.

When my tv died, I felt as though one of my anchors, indeed, the very axis of who I am were silenced. Without the familiar syntax and idiom, all that they evoked disappeared as well. Because of my work schedule, I was not able to go out and get one with haste, like I knew I needed to. On a regular week day, I barely get an hour to watch tv. But I need those minutes to re-align all my worlds so everything makes sense before I go to bed. 

My entire universe remained plunged in this dark silence for two days and two nights. 

Finally, Friday dawned and by the time I was done with work, I knew exactly the kind of tv I wanted, the amount I was ready to spend, and all the know-how I needed so I would get my life back in Eastman Technicolor instead of making do with survival in the shadow world of silence. 

By Friday evening, I had  my worlds back. The cats heard and returned to their sofa. I had found, traveled to, bought, hefted, assembled, and reconnected, all in the space of 3 hours. My family remains amazed at my prowess, especially the hefting around. 

There were times when I wondered if my life would have been easier had I a partner. The very next second, I discarded this idea with an involuntary shudder: who guarantees that a partner would help instead of commenting, faulting, taunting, sighing at my ineptitude, irritating, and generally getting in the way? Perhaps it would have taken much longer to get my tv, had I a partner. I imagine endless arguments about the merits of a certain kind of tv, a continuous sniggering at my dependence on it, a condescending dismissal of my whims, even repeated admonishments to "Get a Real Life!"  

At any rate, the absolutely wrong kind of noise. 

I have defeated this cosmic silence on my own. Besides, it always gives me a considerable boost of joy, knowing that I can make myself happy. When I talked to my family over the weekend, I casually remarked that I'd bought a new tv. Only some of the closest of my tribe understood the apocalyptic silence, the terror, the displacement, and the immense distress involved in the casual remark. They just said, "Oh. Good." The pause that followed this was pregnant with acknowledgement. 

My patient reader must excuse me now; I have a great deal of catching up to do. It will take a week to recover from this turbulence. But soon enough, my feline room mates and I will finally believe in the music, sounds, colors, and cadences of a well-loved, well-remembered universe behind the tv screen.  

Body Language

My body has a language: it sings in numbers and I am grateful to say that I can hear its song.

But first things first: I have been amiss in posting. Things fell apart and the center could not hold.

This anarchy has also been of my body's making. The humors flowed sluggishly; red stitched itself through the eyes; the eyelids proved unable to stay lifted long enough to let the eyes see; the balloon feet staggered, unbalanced; the heart raced to keep up and then slowed down, tired. All I wanted to do was to sink within and let my body have its way. My kidneys have failed, causing panic to shoot through an organic system that had taken its balance and well-being for granted. Undefined anxieties exploded and my mild distaste of needles loomed into a major phobia.

However, today, I am glad to report that the storm has been contained. My kidney disease has brought me many gifts and this entry goes out in acknowledgement of these gifts.

When I was younger, people teased me that I was not of this "modern" world, that I operated from some golden, pre-lapsarian past because of a predilection of seeing the world through romanticized glasses. I have never agreed with this; I am born in exactly the absolute correct age and I never had any pink prisms to filter the world's realities. This age suits me and I owe it my very life. Thanks to this wondrous age, even though my major organs have failed, I am aware of a feeling of undeniable well-being. I can enjoy my job, sustain a conversation, and savor a demi-tasse of coffee. Of late, I have even found the wherewithal to use earrings when I go out for dinner with family and friends.
Yes, these outings exhaust me once they are over; yes, I have muscle cramps that go on for days; yes, I have forgotten what it is like to sleep through the night; yes, my social life is seriously compromised. Even so, all this is nothing when I remember my body's desperate attempt to reach me to help it. I also remember my total inability to help.

Then, this age, this millenium came to my body's rescue and taught me to understand its language. I started dialysis, a miraculous process that helps my confused body to maintain balance, to come to terms with its condition. Patient experts taught me how to listen and talk with the flesh I inhabit.

I have always known that my body has an intelligence all its own, an intelligence that I have no understanding of, that I have been unable to access. But now, I have learned to balance my diet (the strictest kind) with the medications I have to take; I have learned to understand the relationship between daily weight, blood pressure, and the kind of dialysis solution (or dialysate) I use that night. I await my blood results with alacrity because that is how  my body speaks now. Last month, I celebrated my independence from Epogen shots and blood infusions to maintain my red blood cell count; my body actually beat anemia! A couple of weeks ago, my nephrologist congratulated me on controlling my phosphorous after months of trying to achieve the correct balance between including enough protein in my diet while avoiding phosphorous. It took almost a year of trials and failures to achieve the correct potassium numbers.

Every morning, when I take my blood pressure, record my weight, and finish my treatment, I am grateful for the ability to do so. Every evening, when I again take my blood pressure, record my weight, and begin my treatment, I am grateful for having lived the day. Yes, I do wish my life were easier, but more often than that, I am glad, so, so glad that it is as easy as it is!

The Geeta insists on the importance of making friends with oneself. The truth of this issue has been brought to me. I understand now that I need a lot of people and a lot of things, but all pale in comparison to how much I need to get along with my body. I am humbled by the incredible adaptability of my body, its admirable insistence on being my best friend, its stubborn loyalty in its refusal to abandon me, its ever-youthful willingness to accommodate new ways of replacing parts of itself, and at the risk of intense narcissism, I am so, so proud of being allowed to inhabit this wonderful machine that celebrates the spirit of being human with every breath it draws for me, with me.

I have learned to love my body with a completely different sort of appreciation and for that alone, if for nothing else, I wish to live forever with this body. There can be no gift greater than an aware life lived in a body that won't quit.