Looking Inwards #6
Interpersonal frictions, reset button, snakes outside my cottage, Pondicherry scammers, embarrassing travel stories, failures as baits, Van Gogh love, democracy dupe, and beautiful pictures from 2021.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
Apologies for not sending the newsletter last week. I (finally) realized I needed to accept some interpersonal frictions of my personal life, to fall sick and get some rest, and discover that reset button again that renews me every day.
Apologies again and a warm welcome to all those who have joined me recently. A happy new year to everyone.
Though not everything is done and dusted, I’m reevaluating some of the things that have been stressing me out. I guess the stressing out started when the hosts from whom I had taken a house in Pondicherry started harassing us (as I told you in the past newsletters). In the middle of many writing projects and upgrading my blog, I couldn’t bear the idea of spending my time on issues that shouldn’t have been there.
We dodge and play hide and seek as much as we can. But life has its way on sneaking in on us, you know. It’s always right there. Chasing us. Running with us. Watching us.
We are playing our part in the game.
Three weeks ago my partner and I moved from Pondicherry to Auroville, a community on the Southern coast of India. Here I’m in a simple cabin in the woods with basic facilities, no electrical equipments, an outdoor squat toilet, and the nearest shop at least five km away from us.
This rustic living isn’t easy. Just this afternoon a large snake was right outside my cottage hunting a toad. You know no matter how much I live in forests I’m not used to killing scorpions hidden under bags, waking up in the middle of the night to see a tail slinking out of the wall openings, holding going to the roofless toilet until it stops raining, driving on a noisy moped for five km to get water and vegetables, and washing utensils in a stone sink on the ground while mosquitoes bite my partner’s and my arms and legs off.
This experience is extreme. Especially for my partner who isn’t used to living in forests where going to the toilet at night needs you to be fully attentive or an empty gas cylinder means driving on dusty roads for three kilometers to get the gas refilled. We either drink the milk or don’t open it because we don’t have a refrigerator.
But this is what I’ve chosen. And I love it, mostly.
All these daily sustenance issues pull me to the ground. No matter how much I dodge, daily living gets to me.
Doesn’t it get all of us? And isn’t that’s how it should be?
I thought all I want to do is write. I thought all I want to do is tell stories. But in the process I’m discovering my personal limitations (of which there are many). Interpersonal nuances have made me reevaluate a few things. Overall, the writing process isn’t that smooth as I thought it would be and it’s all gotten much more interesting.
That’s where I stand right now. Stepping forward and leaning back. Bending down at times and letting go otherwise. Realizing I ain’t perfect and loving myself despite. Staring at my partner in frustration but hugging him the next minute.
For 2021 I had resolved to face my fears and move further through them. And I pushed myself hard.
For 2022, I have chosen confidence, non-reaction, and just being. And I’m off to a good start because every day I come across things that ask me of these three. The more I give, the more I’m asked for. That better be good, no?
Have you made a plan for this year? If you are also struggling with the daily, what’s your best advice?
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
Finding Beach Houses or Airbnbs in Pondicherry? Read This First.
When my partner and I travel to a new place, we are always excited, but also skeptical. Finding guesthouses in India (or anywhere) isn’t the easiest thing to do. Especially when you travel year-long, stay in a house from a couple of days to weeks at a time, and are constantly looking for good homes or treehouses to put up at.
By September 2021, we had already driven the length of the country twice and had visited our parent’s home twice. Our Himachal trip had lasted four months. And three months at the beginning of the year was spent in Karnataka. Pondicherry was our final destination for 2021.
We arrived in Pondicherry at the beginning of October. Having shuffled through different homestays, hotel rooms, tree huts, cottages, apartments, and rooftop houses throughout the year, we wanted to slow down. The idea was to be at one place in one home for a few months and work on a few writing projects.
Click to read the full narrative of how our Pondicherry hosts put us in a fix and how they repeatedly scam travelers despite many negative reviews out there.
Or Pocket for later.
As long as we are on travel stories, here’s an embarrassing one.
Stranded at the Chile-Bolivia border (An article from the past)
You are on an international border. What do you do when one country tells you you don’t have its visa and another one says it has already stamped your exit?
Read how I stayed calm when I was stranded at the Chile-Bolivia border and how I planned my exit.
Or Pocket to read later.
Quotes I Love
“I still have hope that, just as in algebra the product of two negatives will be positive, so the result of failures may be successes.” — Vincent
“Can anyone truly understand the existence of another person’s internal world?” —Olivia Laing
“Chop up that failure and use it for bait to try to catch another project.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
“If there is a mountain, there will be a summit, and someone will be at the top.” — Javed Akhtar
“We have to start afresh every day. Not that we forget who we are or what are we supposed to do. But we shouldn’t be so lost in the daily we can’t see that one day nothing will be left of us. Let’s just climb out of our own head’s at least once every sunrise or sunset.” — 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 will not let myself be put off even by my mistakes — Vincent Van Gogh
I’ve spent last ten days reading more than 100s of letters written by Vincent to his brother Theo and his friends. The immense faith given by art and the courage needed to pursue any skill are only two pearls of wisdom from the compassionate letters.
Vincent was a genius at expressing the hardest of the feelings in the simplest words. His letters show how he made his way as a painter by sketching and drawing every day for hours while requesting his brother to send more supplies. But the most touching part of the letters is Vincent’s belief in himself and that everything could be done if we did the work and developed a life around the principles.
I suggest everyone should read these beautiful compositions of love, struggle, hope, friendship, belief, shadows, and colors.
Below is a collection of more than 100 of the most poignant and revealing of these letters. Van Gogh suffered from frequent mental breakdowns, particularly in the latter part of his life. The letters capture a mind never quite at ease and a soul that suffered from acute loneliness and self-doubt. But they also reveal his staggering artistic genius, the evolution of his theoretical principles, his formidable intellect and strong work ethic, and his deep connection to the natural world around him. In many of the letters, Van Gogh describes, in painstaking detail and beautiful prose, the progress of his work. He would often include a sketch of paintings he had already begun or musings on works he hoped someday to create.
A dupe of a year: How a section of Big Media conned readers with advertorials by Anna Priyadarshini on Newslaundry
2021 may well have been the year of advertorials, with Uttar Pradesh splurging to promote its current administration by filling pages of newspapers and magazines with ads that looked like articles.
Uttar Pradesh is my home state in India. That’s where I was born. That’s where my parents live. That’s where I go when I say I’m going home. But it’s also the state where local and national newspapers print page-long advertisements praising the state government while mixing them in between opinionated pieces and facts.
Democracy, they say. Manipulation, I repeat.
The world’s first vaccine passport was ugly and on your arm: Now the world is taking booster shots. But Sundays are under lockdowns again. How far we have come or how backwards have we gone?
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I have stayed pretty offline for the last months as I’ve been mostly listening to the bird calls, the crackling bamboos, and my own self. Today I’m hearing the cats who won’t give up chasing each other, and the sound of the wind rustling through the trees on this almost full-moon night.
But, amongst this beautiful karaoke of nature, I watched the movie “Don’t Look Up.” The movie is a great satire on how the administration and the people up there make up stories even about the most serious stuff and we are befooled until the last moment when we finally can’t do anything. The one who tells the truth must be mad and everything is a capitalistic opportunity are two important facts of the present world presented hilariously by Don’t Look Up. Do watch this one for some twisted fun.
Oh, I’ve also been listening to Starry Nights on Repeat. Of course.
And for all my Wanderlusters!
I’ve shared the travel experiences of the week above in the narrative. You can find the relevant travel tips and news in the week’s article and the reading bullets.
As promised, sharing the travel pictures from the last six months of the year 2021 (the first six months were shared in the last letter). Hope you enjoy these photos as much as I relished the moments.
a Himalayan horse, July
Wild Himalayan flowers in my palm, August
birthday cakes at parent’s home, September
a colorful evening in Mumbai, October
a clouded and rainy Pondicherry, November
a homemade meal welcoming the new year in Auroville, December
Thank you for reading.
Tomorrow will start with a meditation session (for I need to relearn how to control my mind and to start afresh every day), and everything comes later.
I hope you have a great upcoming week too. Take good care of yourselves :)
Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Just press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
(Feature Image Courtesy: Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
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