Looking Inwards #14
Sleepless hours, night diaries, mother's food, reverse engineering, nostalgia, childhood sweaters, mountains, little pleasures, Kashmir books, and flowers for soul.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
I hope you are doing well and that your week has been peaceful.
a meal I cooked during the week. Sambhar (with drumsticks and lentils), red rice, beetroot with onions, papad, and yoghurt.
This week feels a bit broken to me. I have been writing, reading, spending time in the library, walking, cycling, watched a movie in the community theatre, eating South Indian thalis, cooking, speaking with friends, and reflecting on the way I do certain things.
The biggest highlight of the week is I have not been able to sleep as soon as I hit the bed, like I used to. I have been missing the deep forests where I lived for two months prior to this guesthouse. And these months is not the only time I have stayed in the woods.
I find myself spending more and more time in undisturbed jungles. Amidst a thick forest, I find silence. I’m also getting addicted to the forest’s sweet smell, the dew I find settled on everything in the morning, and the absolute still inside, the kind only trees can hold within their circle.
We have been in our present guesthouse in Auroville for a month now. The weather is getting hotter here in Pondicherry. Even on the last night in the forest cottage I didn’t need a fan and felt cold at all dawns. But even on the first night in this place, I had to switch on the ceiling fan. All the windows are covered with mosquito nets and natural air can’t get in.
I surely feel the absence of the quiet of the woods and their cool climate. But I know I’m taking a long time to fall asleep because I can’t stop thinking. I haven’t meditated for a few weeks and the absence of complete inner silence is hitting me hard.
Last night, I stayed up for two hours from 9-11. Tossing and turning in bed, I thought what I was going to cook and which vegetables I was going to buy the coming week.
A South Indian meal I had two days ago
I realized I have been missing food from my home in the North, like how my mother makes. Wherever I go I immerse so much in the local food I forget to eat what I ate while growing up. That’s the food my system starts craving for. I want to eat parathas with okra and eggplants and before I know I will switch back to drumsticks, ragi millets, and Tamil greens.
Irrespective of how much we like to change our ways, we are intricately shaped by the methods of our parent’s home, our childhood, and things we did while we were becoming whole human beings.
During the sleepless late nights, I note down my thoughts and ideas in my Ideas folder on Whatsapp (yes I have this folder to catch those butterflies before they fly away).
One night I wrote about how these days I find so many people reverse engineer to lead a life they think they should lead. So they leave everything and shift to some place which promises their desired ecosystem. They stop drinking tea and coffee, eat vegan food, wash cows in the morning, live together, cook together on firewood, and so on.
I’m not particularly happy for generously using the example of a community I met last Friday. Everything can’t be generalized so easily but an example helps explain the point.
I won’t go into my thoughts on reverse engineering in detail now because I want to write more about it in a dedicated piece later. But I do want to say we don’t have to reverse engineer. We can start by simplifying our ways to life and let it take a natural course. All the preferred practices will become part of our routine and system if we create a favorable space for them instead of jumping into a space with an existing system that promises the green activities (or any other desired methods).
Because if you jump from one method to another, aren’t you just blindly following both? Both of which aren’t yours, not developed by you through trial and error, and are strict in their forms.
My mother lives a natural life while never using the word natural, conscious, or organic. Yes she was in a small-town home with a large open land for a garden that allowed her to create space for an earthly living. But with everything given to her, she could have chosen a different way of life.
The more I live, the more I realize how profoundly my mother, her large garden, flower beds, the neem tree on which we put a swing every rainfall, my father’s cows, the wood fire we made every single evening of the winter, the mangoes we ate dipped in a bucket with ice, the cats who used to come in and go as they pleased, homemade ghee, vegetables for every meal, and fresh guavas and juicy pomelos from our own orchard has made me who I am.
So how can I so easily let go of the food I was eating when I wasn’t even born?
To give you a glimpse into my nocturnal mind, I’m sharing some notes from the Idea folder here,
[12:10 AM, 3/27/2022]: The way I look at life and nature is because how my mother looked at it. Sitting in the balcony watching tailorbirds cuckoo crow kingfisher squirrel kite owl hawk flowers fruits butterflies bees and monkeys is our favorite thing to do. She never says I love nature. No reverse engineering to prove anything
[12:11 AM, 3/27/2022]: Occasionally she says how nice it is to look at beings and birds. Every tiny shoot that comes out, every sock the squirrel takes away, every egg of tailorbird, every egg of cuckoo in crow's nest, my mother knows.
And how appropriate it is that I am celebrating my mother’s life in this newsletter today which happens to be her birthday too. She doesn’t read my newsletter but she knows how much I imagine myself in her knitted sweaters with rainbow flowers and how summer isn’t summer without her delicious sweet raw mango curries. Mama knows.
I’m going to listen to my heart and belly and roll out some parathas and cook some eggplants. All produce in the shop I buy comes from medicine-free farms and I always overindulge.
My grocery shopping on a regular day when I have access to a kitchen. No kitchen? Remove vegetables that can’t be eaten raw.
This week I have spoken with many friends from Chile and I’ve also been writing about my time there from five years ago. The memories have washed over me in waves and could also be another reason I’m up a little longer than I usually am. So in those melancholic hours of the night, I have also been scribbling in Spanish.
A writer has to remember past experiences to write about them or use them in a longer story. And going over one’s past can be joyous but can be hard too.
Here’s a little Spanish note I made to myself the other night,
Un momento de Chile pase el frente de mi ojos. Es un secundo casa para mi. Yo senti algo alla. Y algun differente. Alguna cosa tierna. Pero ahora cuando escucho Chile, yo se que perdi algo alla y ahora tengo que buscar lo.
Translates roughly to: One moment of Chile passes in front of my eyes. It’s a second home for me. I felt something there. Something different. Some thing tender (in absence of a better word for tierna). But now when I hear Chile, I know I lost something there and now I have to find it.
I’m also starting to put a little time aside for meditation every day. Because I always believe: we don’t have to do big to get started or pick up something again. We have to start a tiny bit and everything added over many days done continuously will do us so much good than doing nothing at all (23 tiny habits about which I wrote a little while ago).
Sleeplessness. Sweaters from childhood. Mothers in forests. Forests in mothers. Chapatis and eggplants. Friends across the seven seas and seven towns. Meditation. This is life as it comes.
What silences your mind? Which food do you crave? What is the one practice you absolutely cannot live without?
life in South America, once
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Past Articles I’ve Just Renewed
My Adventures in the Village of BhagsuNag, Dharamshala (Himachal Pradesh) - Updated for 2022
Getting tempted to head to the Himalayas in the summer? Here are my adventures through the six weeks I lived in BhagsuNaag village in Dharamshala (in 2019) learning flute, practicing yoga, hiking, and just being.
Hope you find your own adventures in whichever mountains you go!
Here’s an excerpt from the piece,
This one month has given me many new things. But learning new skills wasn’t my only goal while living in Dharamshala. I wanted to experience the struggles and joys of the mountain people in the Himalayas.
Honestly, I am not facing everyday problems locals here struggle with. Except for being bashed by the uninvited Himachali storm, thunder, and hail, I’m okay. I don’t collect wood for a bonfire or a chulha. I don’t have to bring supplies from the town and wait for the weather to clear up before carrying those supplies up the hill. I don’t have to worry about shoveling the snow in the winter. I don’t have to follow societal rules.
Despite the harsh climatic conditions the resident Himachali, Tibetan, and Nepali people have to put up with, they seem happy enough. Tourists like me have nothing to complain about either.
Click to read the travel memoir. Or Pocket for later.
Dharamshala Travel Guide – To a Meaningful Trip to Dharamshala (Updated 2022)
This travel guide to Dharamshala is less about what can be done in the mountain district, but more about how I explored it and made it my own. Dig in.
Exploring tiny trails amongst garlic fields, watching goats and sheep climb up and down, chatting away with the farmer ladies feeding the cows, watching the children walking back home on treacherous paths, listening to loud streams gushing close by, choosing one from the hundred tiny mud paths that all go to the same place, walking under the umbrella of the fragrant deodar and pine, admiring the blood-red rose bushes that jump out of nowhere, I didn’t realize how time went by in Dharamshala.
At the end of the day, I often tucked up in bed with a piece of Bhagsu cake in hand and an Antman movie on a computer or a Ruskin Bond book on my Kindle. If it rained, I ordered masala chai to warm my hands and soul.
Read the full travelogue here or Pocket for later.
Quotes I Love
“Whenever we are tempted to throw good money after bad in terms of human living, let's stop and ask ourselves these three Questions:
1. How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me?
2. At what point shall I set a "stop-loss" order on this worry -and forget it?
3. Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth?” — Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“Somewhere over the rainbow, the skies are blue, and the dreams you dare to dream eventually come true.” — Oscar Wilde
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” — Nelson Mandela
“True love is a night jasmine, a diamond in darkness, the heartbeat no cardiologist has ever heard. It is the most common if miracles, fashioned of fleecy clouds — a handful of stars tossed into the night sky” — Jim Bishop
“It seems amazing how the little things such as walking around sunset, listening to the birds at dawn, plucking a papaya from the tree, speaking with friends etc make us happy, but it shouldn’t be. What else was supposed to make us joyous?” — 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 most relevant and worthwhile.
Starting with the most important,
Old Tamil Poetry (translated in English) - I’ve just started to indulge.
An insightful and narrative read by People's Archive of Rural India on ragi, Tamil Nadu’s ancient food culture, farmers of the state, animal and human conflict, climate change, minimum food price, inter-state trades, how food demand and supply works, why markets are flooded with the same fruit, cereal, vegetable while everything else is exotic.
Our food habits are not driven by our inner beast who wants to eat only rice and wheat, but the whole circle works together. Please read to understand.
A beautiful Afghan artist’s work I’ve recently started to follow (linked is her Twitter account)
On masks in India,
Finally masks are optional in public places in Maharashtra, the first state to do so. I wonder when will this rule be implemented in all of India. At least when driving in private cars with windows closed people shouldn’t be stopped by police who harasses them for as long as they want and let them go by charging any amount they feel is okay. Experienced in Maharashtra, Pondicherry, and Tamil Nadu. Especially at night.
The worse of us human beings,
A disturbing Twitter thread on how a woman was harassed by a male passenger on the bus, and other men did nothing - Please read the thread. It is not that men want to do horrible things since they are born. The whole system nurtures them to become how they have behaved here. I wish our society realizes how incorrect we're in our upbringing and I wish more power to men who will have to embrace the change and become better, one day.
One of the most honest articles on what they are calling the Kashmir Files
The author writes,
It is nauseating that a film claiming to highlight the horrors inflicted on Kashmiri Pandits has become part of state propaganda.
About earlier life,
The 65 newly discovered sandstone jars vary in shape and decoration, with some tall and cylindrical, and others partly or fully buried in the ground. Similar jars, some of which span up to three meters high and two meters wide, have previously been uncovered in Laos and Indonesia.
"We still don't know who made the giant jars or where they lived. It's all a bit of a mystery," ANU Ph.D. student Nicholas Skopal said (one of the researchers).
Beautiful books from the week,
Ordinary Genius by Thomas Fox Averill
I don’t even remember how I chanced upon this book. The short stories are based in Midwestern Kansas. In this book every story about the ordinary people explores the magic of our presence here on this planet. Human relationships, man and animal relationship, our connection with music, those gone by and the one still present, Thomas Fox Averill has written stories around all these themes. These tales not only entertained me but surprised me, made me laugh, cry, wonder, jump, and get back to the book as soon as I can. Do read if you would like to add a bit of ordinary genius to your day.
Books on Kashmir (as promised),
The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
The Far Field' is one young woman’s story who travels to a remote village in Kashmir to find her mother’s friend. The friend is a Kashmiri salesman who frequented their home when the woman was a little girl. The narrative takes us through the hard mountainous terrain of Kashmir, the lives of the people there, and how politics has shaped the story of Kashmir. Though a fictional narrative, this book is a must read to understand how things work in this beautiful valley. Remember, fiction is only a method to tell the truth.
I read this book by Farhana Qazi two years ago. The author travels dangerously through Kashmir to interview the strong women of Kashmir: mothers of children who were never found, political activists and leaders, wives of disappeared men, prisoners, and protestors. Though highly undervalued, Secrets of the Kashmir valley is a crucial book to understand the politics and the reality of the state. I highly recommend.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I watched Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana, a Kannada movie in the community theatre here in Auroville. Based in Mangalore, the story though a bit overdramatic and broken at times, does give a good glimpse on how cruelty inflicted on us in childhood can make us give it back. The film shows a lot of the culture of the Indian state Karnataka. (Warning: the movie does have a fair amount of gore.)
And for all my Wanderlusters!
Only a couple of photos as I have already shared much of the travel narrative from this week and photos above. Hope you enjoy.
food on table or a culture in a plate? A Japanese restaurant I had the good fortune to eat at.
indulging in children’s books
flowers for our soul
Thank you for reading.
I hope your Sunday is curious and refreshing. Take good care of yourselves :)
Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Just press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
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