Looking Inwards, #1
A refreshed look of On My Canvas, resilience of Himalayan people, power of discipline, therapeutic relationships, beautiful jazz, and Arabian sea pressures causing us heavy rains in Pondicherry.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
Hope you are all doing well and had a great week.
Welcome to the first edition of Looking Inwards, my weekly newsletter. Last week I had informed those of you who were registered to “What’s On My Mind” Friday newsletter that I have migrated to Substack. Now Looking Inwards is the only letter I’ll be sending every week. I hope this change brings you as much as a whiff of fresh air as it has to me.
Dreams are weird things. We can dream for more money or a creative outbreak or a whole life with our loved ones. We can sit on the moon dreaming about an upside down world. Or we can dream of waking up to a sunlit day. Whatever we want to achieve is just a path or, sometimes, a morning away.
This dream of mine of having a beautiful blog with meaningful writings is one which needs me to walk on a long path. Have you had dreams which kept you up at nights? Do reply and tell me.
With time and more footsteps I’m forever closer to my dream. I spent the past three weeks working hard at resetting my website, the newsletter, and the paraphernalia. I can’t thank my partner enough who has taken up most of the technical work on his tasklist. And a little way of thanking him was to put up his photo in this week’s article on the resilience of mountain people.
When you visit my blog On My Canvas you will notice some changes. More design and concept alterations will roll out in the upcoming weeks. Let me know if you have any questions about anything up there, or here.
Apart from the blog changes, things have been constant, or so they seem. I’ve been in the coastal town of Pondicherry for almost two months now. My Google timeline is stagnant as compared to the earlier months of this year when we made the North to South and vice-versa road trip twice. I’m sharing a piece below which talks about my transition from my temporary residence in Bangalore to a full-time itinerant writer’s life on which my partner joined me.
Staying next to the beach has been therapeutic. Day and night I listen to the ocean roar. And only one of us can thunder at a time so I let it be him. Meanwhile I sit on my desk and get some words out. And that’s the hope for the rest of the year too. Let’s see how it goes.
What about you?
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips and photos.
Articles of the Week
An Old Mountain Woman’s Life Showed Me How Hard Himalayan Village Living Is: And What It Teaches Us About Resilience and Repetition
When I’m going through the routine, sometimes the mother of our Himachal homestay, whom we called aunty, comes to my mind.
Aunty devoted all her life to sustenance. She never cared about getting anything beyond the essentials. Neither did her son. Most Himachal locals I met throughout my eight-nine-month journey there didn’t either.
How many of us can imagine living without a television, washing machine, refrigerator, and grinder? We don’t run behind cattle and in fields all day. Our craziest outing is not to the neighbor’s hut or to a one-off wedding for a few hours. In our comfortable lodgings we aren’t afraid of wild animals. Rains and snow don’t worry us about the yearly ration.
When water pipes break or there’s a water shortage, we call someone and do not stumble down the hill searching which duct got choked or who blocked the waterway. We can get rice or soap two minutes from our home and don’t have to hike down an entire hill despite how much pain our head splits from.
Most of these general things we do (or don’t) are dependent on our geography and financial stability. Where we are born and where we live make us who we are. But with how much grace, patience, and satisfaction we carry our lives matters.
Despite not having what would seem like a regular life to outsiders, aunty giggled and had the right jokes and walked unafraid. All the surrounding hills were her village and you couldn’t tear her down there.
Aunty’s daily meditation was her cows. Even if no one visited her, she had things to do and she found pride in them. Guests could be friendly or odd but aunty just turned around and minded her own things. If something out of her control happened, she figured out ways to live with it.
For aunty it was not a good or bad living, it was just living. She didn’t feel this big gap in her life if the cable was gone or felt sorry for herself for not taking that annual trip to the Maldives.
And I wonder if we can say the same? (Pocket)
The Pandemic, Onset of Our Indefinite Nomadic Journey, Crossing Barricaded Indian State Borders, and Collective Helplessness (An Older Post)
I wonder why I didn’t think India would get rampaged by the pandemic so badly. I miss my parents with whom I just spent two weeks. The face of my mother crying after hearing about her sister’s death is pasted in front of my eyes. Are my parents able to get fresh milk every day? I worry.
I write but I feel I have lost my usual flow. I find it hard to get into flow when I’m distracted by not only the cornucopia of bird calls outside or the winding mountain trails but also by the oppressive coronavirus news, articles on how the government has allowed and abetted a deadly virus to unleash a genocide in India, the safety of my family and friends, the Whatsapp groups running fundraiser campaigns for rural India, and life around and away from me in general.
Despite millions of Indians dying in one of the biggest underreported tragedies we might ever witness in our lives, I still have to do all the essential homely and professional tasks to continue the pretense of regular life.
For the past few years, my life has been divided between the road and my partner’s home. Now my husband (and partner) has also joined my nomadic lifestyle by taking up a remote job. As the first wave of the pandemic passed, it looked like the infection had retreated from India. We gave the one-month notice of our rooftop abode, mobilized our plans to buy a car, and both of us listed down our preferred places to find one common destination we would explore for the next few months.
Himachal Or Goa was on our minds.
By the time we bought our compact SUV and could be on the road, it was already March. The second wave of the pandemic had started swallowing India like a tsunami devours an entire island.
Our first road trip in our new car loaded with all our important things, laptops, clothes, utensils, and books was to Maharashtra to see my husband’s covid-positive father. Scared of the barricaded roads and rude policemen we had driven from Bangalore to Mumbai with negative RT PCR tests (even though it wasn’t a requirement, yet). (Pocket)
Quotes I Love
“For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.” — Francoise Sagan
“You can be lonely anywhere.” — Olivia Laing
“Where does this power come from? Yes, discipline is important. You simply have to keep working and suddenly something emerges—something very small. I don’t know where that will lead, but it is as if someone is switching on a light. You have renewed courage to keep on working and you are excited again. Or someone does something very beautiful. And that gives you the power to keep on working so hard—but with desire. It comes from inside.” — Pina Bausch, Taken from Daily Rituals Women at Work: How Great Women Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work by Mason Currey
“Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.” – Henry David Thoreau
“People will also care about those things of us which we pay attention to.” — 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.
The Management of Grief by Bharti Mukherjee (Scroll down a bit to read the story)
Quite literally, this one is about the management of grief. I don’t suggest you read it if you are already low. But it is something to see how life disintegrates when you lose it all.
The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri
An extremely melancholic story about a man and his journey through three continents. A poignant read on identity, migration, attachment, and the grief of loss.
Race and Medicine — Read a doctor in Los Angeles tell how hospitals in the US systemically segregate the patients on the basis of their race.
I’ve shared meaningful pieces from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) before and I’m sharing two today too. You would need a free subscription to read the articles.
The right were the “resident” clinics — where Medicaid patients were seen. To the left were the “attending” clinics for privately insured patients. I watched as Black patients turned right and White patients turned left. It was 2020, but it could have been 1950.
If our academic institutions and hospital systems truly support Black Lives — if they seek to be anti racist and to address implicit biases, and if they are serious about addressing racial health care inequities — they will start by desegregating their own training hospitals. Segregation is not a billing thing. It’s a systemic racism thing.
Here’s the other one from NEJM.
A really therapeutic relationship by Elizabeth Adler, M.D — About a bond between a doctor and her 93-year-old Eritrean patient. The woman asked the doctor many times if she was a real doctor and when her knots was released kissed the doctor’s hands three times every time.
I like to think that she felt held and loved in that moment, that some part of her was aware I was there, but even as I wept and kneaded her stringy biceps, I knew I was doing it for myself. I squeezed her shoulders before letting go, wanting to somehow absorb some of her into me, not wanting to forget, in this isolated time, how touch connects us.
On the link between great thinking and obsessive walking by Jeremy Desilva
I love to walk. And when I read this piece on the cognitive and creative benefits of walking, I had to share.
Walking changes our brains, and it impacts not only creativity, but also memory. (In an experiment) The walkers had significantly improved connectivity in regions of the brain understood to play an important role in our ability to think creatively.
While reading around travel articles I came across this Belize post from Legal Nomads and realized, yet again, how beautiful travel really is and small things on a trip make us chirp. The beauty is also in writing about the journey such that the reader feels she has got a chance to come along. Do check out the colorful article.
UK’s traffic light travel system will help you figure out where you can go and where the light isn’t green - For UK residents or the current travelers there
Indian security forces kill Civilians in Nagaland — Why is this not the prime news right now?
In Nebraska, a 151-year-old family farm struggles to survive — A family’s struggle to sustain an old farm and the difficulties of life.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I’ve been listening to this beautiful jazz playlist from the 40’s and 50’s (when I’m not listening to the waves).
A channel Yoga with Kassandra has gotten my attention and even her 15-20 minute sessions on writing-heavy mornings bring me peace and mindfulness. Do try.
Solar Electrification of Daribokgre Village in Meghalaya state of India bring so much hope. Everywhere I go I tell locals we should install solar cells. Their roofs are huge and sunlight is abundant, at least here in India.
And for all my Wanderlusters!
I saw this marvellous temple in Pondicherry and I had to share it with you. Its night time so the ocean billowing behind can’t be seen.
Finally the low sea pressures in the Arabian sea near where I’m have started to subside. But not before they have already done their damage.
Our homestay owner here in Pondicherry tells me her husband’s boat toppled in the ocean. He had gone to fish in the morning. We live in a fishing community and you can see boats going in as early as 4 am.
In the middle of the night I used to wake up with a man calling someone. The voice was coming right from under my bedroom window which opens up on the beach-facing road. It’s not a heavy traffic street so I sleep peacefully with the sounds of the ocean.
But I was used to hearing that man call his fisher friend every morning. I don’t hear them anymore. The ocean runs deep towards the street but the landlady tells me there is nothing to worry and hands me four fish intact. Her husband had fished those that morning when the boat toppled. I don’t know the name of the fish, and she told me something in Tamil. I’ve forgotten what she said so I can’t even search.
The curry came out perfect and the fish didn’t have too many bones. I’m enjoying these seafood days for I don’t know when I quit eating fish too. (A few years ago I stopped eating all meat and even eggs. ) I brought my homemade eggless chocolate chip cookies to her and her son ran away with the packet.
Such has been life.
I’m yet to click pictures of this blue rippling sea in front of me. So here I share a few from my Himachal journey this year. Hope you enjoy these photos as much as I relished the moments.
A High Himachal lake covered under mist.
A wild flower from the Himalayas. You can find absolutely any color there.
Sweeping grass within ancient Himalayan jungles.
Gods kept in trees.
Rain drops stuck on pine needles like our memories stick to our moments.
That’s it for today. Thank you for reading. I hope you have a great rest of the week :)
Take good care of yourselves.
Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Just press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
Feature Image by Mystic Art Design. Thank you.
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