Looking Inwards, #2
Night skies, infinity, advice to my younger self, life-changing books, some Kafka and Roald Dahl, the milky way dolphin, and grey Himalayan treepies.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
Hope you are all doing well and had a great week.
Welcome to the second edition of Looking Inwards, my weekly newsletter.
The week has been all about writing and writing. When I could look up from the drafts of stories and articles, I was redesigning the blog. Then I was reading. With only enough time left to sleep, do a little bit of yoga, cooking, and eating, I feel days have stretched out in front of me.
So today my mood is quick. But I do want to tell you about yesterday night before we move onto the bullets.
Here in Pondicherry we are currently put up in the top two floors of a house in front of the ocean. Though I always work on the terrace, where wind blows free from the sea, yesterday I was downstairs. After finishing work at about 2 am, I went upstairs to admire the night.
A few stars twinkled in the night sky. Clouds had covered most of the ceiling. I stared at the line of buildings, including our house, on this roadside fronting the beach. About thirty feet ahead of me, the ocean roared. One-fourth of a silver moon peeked out of an inky dark sky.
Standing there looking into the nothingness, I realized, yet again, that we are on the edge of the world. In cities, we see buildings all around us. In the Himalayas earlier this year, we sometimes saw empty space in front. But mostly we were looking at mountains rising in the distance.
How often do you see until the horizon and beyond?
But there I was. Staring into the dark emptiness extending beyond the sea.
In dense cities I can’t tell where I’m. But here I could mark myself as a dot on the world map. I’m a speck on that line lining the horizon. I wouldn’t know where exactly I was vertically, but I was somewhere.
It would be a beautiful speck too. Just a little silver one on a dark road in front of the blue ocean leading towards another end of the world. If we keep going on and on through this sea, we would reach Australia or Southeast Asia, I said to my partner. Yeah, in a few months, he said.
Just this realization that we are looking at rolling waves for miles and miles and miles and miles until some island comes or we reach a continent filled me with awe. So much life above the land here, and so much life under the water there. One begins where the other one ends. Now that’s a contrast to appreciate.
Have you thought about the polarity between land and water ever?
That’s how the ocean looks from the terrace.
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
33 Things I Would Tell a 20-Year-Old Me
You will have to give a lot more than you think you can.
One night you will be lost on a dark highway in Thailand all alone without a phone. One day you will be in a tour van with the driver driving you to and fro between the Chile–Bolivia border but none of the countries will take you in. On a very bright day in July you will be fired from a big world bank for questioning an egocentric boss. You will not have a backup plan always but you will make one on the go and get yourself out every time.
You will almost lose your family because you won’t marry until you are 32. But an 80–year–old Chilean woman known for her obnoxiousness will wait for you in her home with gallons of red wine in plastic cans.
She will not be the only one.
Read The Full Post Here (Pocket)
21 Books That Changed My Life (An Old Post)
Did anyone ever tell you that you should read books to change your life? Actually I would go as far as to say one of the synonyms of personal growth is reading.
I started reading non-fiction and fiction books sincerely only for the last four-five years. But in this duration, I read some books that shifted the course of my life. They exposed me to unbelievable facts. They laid open the science that I didn’t know exist. They told me stories I could never imagine. They made me cry like I hadn’t before. They made me laugh as if I had nothing to worry about. They accompanied me when I was lonely. They unfurled the greatest lives. They told me life can be lived in many ways. They reassured me that it was okay to be who I was. But also that I could grow.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. (Pocket)
Quotes I Love
“I wanted to have a rhythm in my life: the high adventure—with all the excitement, the difficulties, the pressures—balanced with a period of tranquility in which to absorb what I had seen and felt,” — Margaret Bourke-White [Currey, Mason. Daily Rituals Women at Work: How Great Women Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work]
“It never occurred to me that I couldn’t live the life I wanted to lead. It never occurred to me that I could be stopped. . . . I had this very simple view: that the reason people who start out with ideals or aspirations don’t do what they dream of doing when they’re young is because they quit. I thought, well, I won’t quit.”
— Susan Sontag
“Absorb everything you can. Leave everything you can’t.” — 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.
Hunger Artist by Kafka — In this beautiful piece by Kafka, a constant tug of war between cause and effect highlights an artist’s life.
This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible.
The Landlady by Roald Dahl
Why we shouldn’t believe what we see. And if it is too good to be true, mostly it’s not. A delightful read by Roald Dahl, who took sometimes as long as six months to finish his stories.
Stop Breath by Ann Hood — A daughter remembers her mother in food and the time she spent cooking for her in her last days. This memoir is a perfect example of how the smaller things matter more than the big ones.
The day my mother died, the necklace with the hearts broke. It fell right off my neck and into my lap, spilling pink and red hearts everywhere. I picked them up and put them in my coat pocket, where they still are, over a year later. When another winter comes and I wear that coat, I slip my hand in the pocket and rub those broken hearts as though I could put them back together again.
Broken Lines by Sonya Lara — A daughter celebrating her father’s life by talking about their family’s movement through countries, cultures, languages, and identities.
My father and I are particular about when and how we share our experiences. Our vulnerability has evolved into stubbornness. Opening up repeatedly is like picking at a scab—there’s evidence of both the wound and the healing.
The Rani of Thoothukudi’s Salt Pans by Aparna Karthikeyan
A heart-wrenching story of Tamil Nadu’s salt collectors who work for eight hours straight carrying 5-7 tons of salt each day on their heads. They made 150 trips a day carrying a headload of up to 35 kilograms for just Rs. 395 ($5.2) for women and Rs. 405 ($5.3) for men for the past many generations.
Scraping the bottom of the rectangular plot she is working on, treading a surface now crunchy, now squelchy, Rani heaps the white crystals to one side. With each tiny but tiring trip to the space where she is piling it all up, the crystal mound grows higher, her work gets harder. Because each time she does this, the 60-year-old is dragging and adding to the mound over 10 kilograms of wet salt – a little under a fourth of her own body weight.
And she works without a break until the 120x 40-foot plot is just a watery reflection of the pale morning sky and her own moving shadow. This salty world has been her workplace for 52 years, as it was her father’s before her and is now her son’s. It is here that S. Rani tells me her story. And that of the 25,000 acres of salt pans in Thoothukudi district of southern Tamil Nadu.
Writer’s Resources — If you are into writing short stories, go through everything on the linked page by Writers Write. The resource is run the wonderful Mia Botha who believes the only way to write is to give oneself a deadline.
I’ve also been reading Olivia Liang’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, The Fall by Camus, The Importance of Being Idle, Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle, The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben, and Alan Turing - The Enigma, amongst many others. I will let you know how these books go for me soon enough.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I’ve been watching the dance of this milky way river.
The voice of Marian Anderson not only blew away the seventy thousand people in front of the Lincoln Memorial but the whole world. I know this is an old video but I’ve discovered it just now and I’m tuning in.
And for all my Wanderlusters!
The beautiful grey treepie I saw in the Himalayas earlier this year. They are very shy and hide away even if you think about them. hah.
Today I’m going to leave you with photos and my latest discovery — the Astrostays community — where homestays help you gaze into the galaxies above.
Another beautiful bird from the mountains.
The Whistling Thrush, the Himalayas. Don't go on her soft countenance. She makes a lot of noise.
Enjoying a picnic on the high hills. About four months ago now. The mountain wasn't that high but the valley beneath looked way too far.
The beautiful paddy of Himachal Pradesh. Did you know they grow rice in the Himalayas?
And a very happy picture of mine writing on the grass under a pine tree in the mountains again.
That’s it for today. Thank you for reading. I hope the upcoming week goes peacefully for you :)
Take good care of yourselves.
Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Just press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
Feature Image by Pablo Trincado from Santiago de Chile, Chile, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. It is one of the Infinity Room’s installation by the phenomenal artist Yayoi Kusama. I will share more about her in an upcoming article on the great routines of the greatest female artists (inspired by Mason Currey).
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