Looking Inwards, The Beginning
The Art of Domesticity, Wild Parrots, Travel Moments, and Much More
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
Hope you are all doing well and had a great week.
You are receiving this newsletter a little late this week. I was on track until my partner and I disagreed on something and suddenly everything fell apart. We got back on the right course though. It took us two-long sessions of about three hours each to understand each other, complain, and see how we can be better to both of us and our relationship.
Writing is as much a thing of heart as it is of mind. When I’m in pain I write about a lot of painful things. When I’m writing about something sad or tough, I feel sad too. And when a disturbance occurs in real life I have to pull myself out of the writing world to fix up the world around me.
So it is. There’s a learning curve to everything. And I acknowledge that the learning involved in living our own lives in a better way follows a steep curve. We have to let go of ego, pride, and come to terms with things that are strange to us.
But when we have gone through the ordeal we come out stronger. It is like feeling confident and elated today when we have climbed an obscure path that frightened us yesterday. As if we have achieved something unimaginable. Have you felt on top of the world after completing something you thought would be too hard?
It ain’t easy to be living with another human consciousness all the time. Relationships can get challenging. Domesticity has always been an art to me. Managing around the losses and wins of a human being’s life is the hardest thing to do. Yet we go on living like all relationships, our house, and everything else is just going on smoothly and all we have to do is sit on our computers and work and write.
But it all goes together, dear friend. And when things get too much, I tell myself we can always step back, take a moment, and look at things as if they are all fresh. Thus I see better for myself and the other person and head back in with more respect for both of us.
When we feel confused we should ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Why our life is the way it is. I always ask myself these questions and feel grateful for what I have. Yes there are challenges along the way but who said it was going to be easy. And when it gets tough we cry and laugh and fall down only to get up and be ridiculous all over again.
What do you think?
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Articles of the Week
Celebrating My Parrot Mithu With 100 Photos of Wild Indian Parrots
While I was growing up my home had a little green Indian ringneck parrot. We called him Mithu. That’s the Hindi name for Indian parrot bird. No originality there but Indian homes rarely named their pets (things are changing now).
Despite his common name, Mithu was special. While we all walked on the floor and ate chapatis for lunch, mister swung around in his cage near the guava tree and ate butter and chilies and guavas. If I got home from school late he shrieked and shrieked. And if I returned to find his cage empty I shrieked and shrieked. My uncle often used to unlatch the tiny door of his iron cage. He would jump out looking for all sorts of trouble. (Pocket)
We Dared to Hike to Shikari Devi Temple (Mandi Himachal) On Our Own
In this 11,000-word hiking guide to Shikari Devi temple (3400m but remote) in Himachal Pradesh, I get candid, vulnerable, daring, scared, and lost. Read for a thrilling adventure of two independent hikers who hoped the ancient forests would let them pass. (Pocket)
I had shared the article before but then I hadn’t added pictures to the narrative. Go look now.
Read The Full Travel Guide Here
Don’t Feel Like Working? Read This (An Old Post)
Don’t want to work on a bad day or in tough times? Do you know work disengages us from bad thoughts and helps us look at our problems in a new light? But there’s more.
With my perfectly balanced arguments I may sound like someone who expects life to be as perfect as an abstract Turing Machine.
Or to some of you, I will appear like a mature person trying to channel her emotions and downfalls so she can pick up herself faster than before.
Well, I don’t want to stay fallen on the floor. Do you? (Pocket)
Read Why Working Despite Mood Is The Way To Go
Quotes I Love
“Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating.” — Steven K. Roberts, the world’s first digital nomad.
“I have learned to make do with sympathy. It is easier to come by and it carries no commitment. In the internal monologue, ‘please accept my sympathy’ comes right before ‘now let’s get on with something else’. It’s the emotion felt by a prime minister or company chairman: you get it cheap after some disaster. Friendship is not so easy: it’s long and hard to win, but when it’s there, you can’t get rid of it, you have to make do. In any case, don’t imagine that your friends will be phoning you up every evening, as they should, to find out if this happens to be the day you’ve decided to commit suicide or simply need company or don’t feel like going out. No, no, don’t worry. If they do phone, it will be the day when you’re not alone and life is smiling on you.” — Albert Camus
“Millions of sparkling dots when shine together make a blinding galaxy.” — Yours Truly
“Everyone has to go one day but we still try to save them until the last minute.” — Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve been reading short stories, books, articles, and so much more. I can’t possibly list all what I have read in the past week so I’m putting down the things I found the most relevant and worthwhile.
“I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense.”
Grief notes which read so real yet so surreal. I’ve shared this memoir before but every time I reread it I can see human’s vulnerability more clearly. I also appreciate the world better.
In our age of extinctions, every loss is like this: the disappearance not just of a creature from its ecosystem but of all that we might learn about it, all that we invest in it, all its layers of meaning, from our human future. To lose the eel is one grief; to lose the eel question, another.”
Eels have no ovaries, no testicles, no eggs, no milt. They are never seen mating. This piece emphasizes how once adequately abundant – and now critically endangered – eels have baffled humans for hundreds of years.
What if we lose them without ever understanding how can we even save them? Quite a hard punch in the face.
It is not unreasonable to associate the watches in The Persistence of Memory with ideas about the passage of time and the relation between actual time and remembered time,” writes Robert Radford, “but probably the dominant fascination for Dalí was the paradox of rendering the hardest, most mechanical of objects into its present soft, wilting form.”
“How does it feel, as a veteran who watched the Iraqi province where I served fall to isis, to now watch this country—where marines I knew were shot or blown up or killed—fall to the Taliban? Who cares? As the Taliban go house to house looking for those Afghans who believed in us, and who had the physical courage to put that belief to the test, who cares how I feel? Who cares how the vets who battled alcohol addiction only to start drinking again this week are feeling? Who cares what my marine friends are feeling as they receive frantic text messages from Afghan allies? Not, for sure, Americans for the last twenty years.”
Who cares?
In the wake of the doors of India being opened for foreign travelers from November 15, here’s a fellow blogger’s guide to understand the travel restrictions in India during the current scenario.
This Still Happens – Four months after interfaith marriage, Delhi man battles for life with bullet in head – Devi Singh (Hindu), who wed Heena (Muslim) in July, was allegedly shot by his brother-in-law. His family blames ‘religion’.
Resources for Bloggers: Given how tough it is becoming to be on Google first page (with all the advertisements, videos, companies’ useless blogs) I’m back to finding means to get more readers. These below titles are well on mark and talk about things bloggers and website owners shouldn’t ignore.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I saw a beautiful movie and I believe it will do you real good if you see it too,
Ottaal: A beautiful Malayalam movie (with English subtitles) about childhood, friendship, love, loss, helplessness, and the fragility of belonging to someone.
And for all my Wanderlusters!
Pondicherry beach these days. Water hyacinths adding a bit of a color to the otherwise grey landscape.
I’m in Pondicherry, as you know. We are receiving heavy rainfalls for weeks now. The sun doesn’t get out on most days and it rains all-day-long. Thunder roars so loudly we feel some part of the sky has fallen off somewhere. Lightning is so strong for a few seconds the whole town lights up as if it is daytime. As soon as I go out to sit on the roof it starts drizzling. Sometimes I come back in and at times I put my Mac to test.
Our house has a bamboo-thatched terrace sitout in which I work. It leaks from many places in the rain. And so does the staircase. Out kitchen gets most of that water dripping from the stairs. We just throw footmatts on it and wait for the rain to stop. Clothes don’t dry for days.
The beach has so much water there is not much sand left. I went for a walk the other morning and it was dirty and so weird. It gets worse if we get in the ocean because we come back with a lot of sand and when we wash those clothes they refuse to dry as well.
Now I don’t bother about the rain and go out when I have to. Last Thursday I exercised at home and then went out with a rain jacket and umbrella. I wanted to walk and buy groceries. There weren’t many people on the road. Some men and women were on their bicycles in ponchos. A few cars went by. Couple of scooters. Not many on foot.
I explored new lanes I hadn’t seen and eventually I got to my favorite vegetable and fruit shop. I got so much stuff and put it all in my backpack and walked home a happy girl. It was fun to walk in the rain with an umbrella. My feet got dirty but those you can wash.
Today the day is sunny and bright. It was bright yesterday too but then in the evening it poured hard. Let’s see for how long the sun lasts today. As long as the sunshine is here I will make most of it from my chair. Lots of things to write and a period stomach doesn’t allow me to go out.
Hope you enjoy these photos as much as I relished the moments. Some are from Pondicherry and most are from the previous travels.
I miss Himachal hills and those buffaloes.
Also this kachori – a deep-fried whole wheat bread stuffed with spiced lentils. I ate many in Mandi district of Himachal.
These Kathukani architecture homes can never stop mesmerizing me. Again from Himachal Pradesh. See the alternate layers of stones and wooden logs. Balanced and fitted into each other perfectly without any concrete.
Drying clothes on a hill in monsoon. This was in our Prashar Lake guesthouse.
My last home in Himachal. A camp in the middle of nowhere. Near Prashar Lake.
Prashar lake with its temple. If you get a chance do visit this lake. I have been to fewer peaceful places than Prashar. Also I didn’t feel as if I was still on earth there. So little people. So many hills where you would be the only human. Air as fresh as it gets. Golden eagles flying high in the sky. Fleecy clouds dotting the azure sky. Please visit and let me know how you feel. (Of course a travel article on the lake will be up on the blog soon.)
And then those brave shepherds on their own with their cattle in the obscurest parts of the mighty Himalayas.
Does it get better than this? I took this picture from the top of a hill (above Prashar) my partner and I had climbed. The mist flew in and we couldn’t leave until it cleared up. We didn’t care really but it can also get a bit frightening when you don’t see nothing and rain falls without warning and the wind is so strong you think it will take you with it.
The gate to the queen’s palace in my mother’s village. We visited my mother’s home where now only our uncle lives. He is adorable and I never miss a chance to see him. And thus I also get to see where my mother grew up and what she did as a child (even though only a little bit). It is funny how I used to think my mother was always like how I have known her. Being a mother and doing chores. But no. I’m told she used to cross this fort to get to her school and the queen’s daughters were her friends. I’m writing memoirs about growing up and those will have details on the life of my mother too. I will share when I finish.
The palace building.
Taken on the highway in Madhya Pradesh. (Madhya means Central.) We were driving from my parent’s home in the North towards Maharashtra. This corn seller eventually asked us to move our car because the evening had set upon and she was expecting clients.
Again on the Madhya Pradesh highway. Not many see these blackbucks roaming wild in fields right next to the road. We were. So I took out my camera and clicked many photos. The couple was gorgeous.
How weird is this? I found this photo when I googled for Blackbucks. As per Wikipedia, “This is the photograph of a carriage pulled by deer at Baroda, Gujarat from the Curzon Collection, taken by an unknown photographer during the 1890s. The small two-wheeled carriage belonged to Gaekwar Sayaji Rao III (ruled 1875-1939), 12th Maharaja of Baroda. He owned a collection of exotic transport, which also included solid gold and silver carriages drawn by caparisoned bullocks. They were displayed to visitors and used on ceremonial occasions.” Image Courtesy: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And then of course hunting. King Akbar hunting down black bucks. Image Credit: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
That green weed plant you see pulled aside on the right side washed up on us when we were in the ocean with our friend (about whom I wrote in the last newsletter). We don’t know what was that plant or where it came from but it filled the whole beach in like two minutes. It appeared with the waves and we ran out as soon as we saw it. Later my friend and I lost one slipper each just trying to wash up our feet in the water. So that’s that.
Something I wrote a while ago.
That’s it for today. Thank you for reading. I hope you have a great rest of the week :)
Take good care of yourselves.
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Yours,
Priyanka
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