Looking Inwards #8
Living in a forest, scary sounds at night, mindfulness, happy relationships, mankind, oldest things in the world, course of love, climate crisis, travel news, and nature.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
I hope you are doing well and that your week is going peacefully.
The last week was full of adventures. I went around Auroville, the community I’m currently staying in Southern India, wrote Hindi poetry reminiscing home and childhood, finished many pieces on relationships, loneliness, Himachal, and art (two of which I share below), and read a lot of Van Gogh, about oldest things in the world, and love.
I also wrote a draft on the judgment that digital nomads face these days and I hope to bring out the article soon. The piece also elaborates how people who work on computers are scrutinized by others for sitting for long hours. I acknowledge the world is full of prejudices and judgement. But when you come face to face with those ideas and assumptions, you want to do something about it. So writing this became necessary when others who don’t know us stated how good or bad of a life we are living. Keep an eye on the newsletter to know when the piece comes out.
While days have been full of devotion, writing, reading, walking, meditation, watching the forest live, showering in the open under cold water, cooking, and enjoying healthy green buffets, nights have been full of noise from the jungle each of which makes me alert. As for weeks our cottage was being raided by a big rat, which we finally got rid of by putting nets in places it already should have been, my mind has become trained to think that there could be an intruder tonight too.
So I wake up at the slightest rustle, whoosh, or squeak, but those are just wild animals going about their thing. Here we have rabbits, pigs, deer, porcupine, birds, peacocks, mongooses, snakes, butterflies, moths, scorpions, frogs, rodents, civet cats, and I don’t know what else. None of those like to confront human beings so we are good to go as long as we carry a flashlight and watch out what we step on.
Sounds easy, eh? But when you are the only two beings in the forest and it gets pitch dark and wild pigs wander around your cottage oinking, everything seems a bit more frightening.
Only yesterday night I was walking to the host’s outdoor kitchen a few feet from us. The host lives further away in the forest but her kitchen is near us. As I approached the cooking area, I heard an animal retreat back into the bushes. The dustbins are kept in that alcove from where the sound of rustling came. I immediately retreated back to my hut. Let the forager eat in peace. Going to the toilet means walking a good twenty feet in wilderness. At the back of the bathrooms thrives the wild. What a life I must say!
A very basic living keeps me busy. And the act of consciously protecting ourselves from the wild like humans must have done in old days, roots me to the ground. What can you think of when you have to see where you put your foot and if something is dangling from the bamboo on your path ahead?
Just mindfulness, that’s all. And then, of course, thousands of stars twinkling in the sky above as early as 7 pm make it all cosmic.
How was your week? Do you also sometimes live basic to remind yourself why we are here?
forest living, simple, dusty, and full of adventures and cobwebs. An Auroville cottage (not mine) demonstrating life in the jungle.
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
3 Things About Relationships I’m Learning the Hard Way
This article was in making for a long time. Everytime I learned something in my relationship with my partner, I noted it down. First came out bursts of anger and then some meaningful words telling the narrative of how we eventually solved a problem between us. Mostly the narrative converged into three lessons/ways/realities which I now remember and practice while living day to day together with him.
Life is much more beautiful now.
Click to read the things now or Pocket for later.
What Makes you Fly? – Klaus Nomi Singing My Heart Opens to Your Voice
Sometimes something so beautiful touches you you don’t want to let the feeling go. You want to live in it. You want to tell the whole world of your discovery. Such was the moment when I heard Klaus. Today. For the first time. So here I’m. Writing this one of a kind article. Talking about a song that made me cry. A song I don’t understand. Yet I do. A song that made me feel alive. A voice that sang its loneliness to me from the time gone by. Like the light of a star reaching to us from millions of light years ago.
Read the inspiration here or Pocket for later.
Quotes I Love
“I am a man and all that affects mankind concerns me.” ― Shaheed Bhagat Singh
“We can all affect each other, by being open enough to make each other feel less alienated.”— David Wojnarowicz
“The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.” — Vincent Van Gogh
“I wasn’t always who I’m. Yet, in a way, I have been.” — 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 Oldest Living Things in the World by Rachel Sussman — Quite literally a collection of the oldest living things in the world, the journey the author takes to discover them, and what it means for us to have those things alive with us.
I found this one an impactful and awakening — not to mention fun — read in totality. The reality that some of the living organisms in the deep waters or in the Atacama desert were there even when we weren’t, and saw the rise of not only Sapiens but also witnessed other homo species wandering around, is a profound example of how we belong to a much bigger cosmos of which we are just a small part.
The Course of Love: An Unforgettable Story of Love and Marriage by Alain De Botton — Like all De Botton’s books, The Course of Love is another realistic insight into relationships (especially romantic) of which I’m always trying to understand more. Alain unravels, almost lyrically, how much we assume, how much we suffer because of our assumptions, and what really happens. His ideas on how two people can live with each other more calmly have changed how I look at daily living with my partner.
For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined his, his family had a flourishing grain business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, rape, infidelity, beating, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors.
The marriage of reason was not, from any sincere perspective, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish, exploitative and abusive. Which is why what has replaced it – the marriage of feeling – has largely been spared the need to account for itself. What matters is that two people wish desperately for it to happen, are drawn to one another by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right. The modern age appears to have had enough of ‘reasons’, those catalysts of misery, those accountants’ demands. Indeed the more imprudent a marriage appears, the safer it may actually be deemed to be, for apparent ‘recklessness’ is taken as a counterweight to all the errors and tragedies vouchsafed by the so-called sensible unions of old. The prestige of instinct is the legacy of a collective traumatized reaction against too many centuries of unreasonable ‘reason’.
de Botton, Alain.
Next Door by Jahnavi Barua — This collection of eleven short stories based on lives in Assam was my go to book in between serious readings. Through fictional characters, Jahnavi doles out the ugliness of being human beings in beautiful abundance. An entertaining and also a disturbing read at times as the stories tell how so much of what we do is driven by our carnal needs.
Remarkable, I think with a pang, as I recall the canings I have dealt out to my children. But that was the only way we had known.
Barua Jahnavi.
The bias that blinds: why some people get dangerously different medical care by Jessica Nordell — This piece by Guardian elaborates the studies and research on why women’s physical issues are labelled psychological and their narratives taken as unbelievable. This is a shorter, non-fictional version of the fictional and longer The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
When women’s understudied symptoms don’t match the textbooks, doctors label them “medically unexplained”. These symptoms may then be classified as psychological rather than physical in origin. The fact that so many of women’s symptoms are “medically unexplained” reinforces the stereotype that women’s symptoms are overreactions without a medical basis, and casts doubt over all women’s narratives of their own experiences. One study found that while men who have irritable bowel syndrome are more likely to receive scans, women tend to be offered tranquilisers and lifestyle advice.
I didn’t know cleaning online reputation is a thing. But here it is — The Dirty Work of Cleaning Online Reputations
For a fee, companies will tackle damaging search results. But is the new economy of digital makeovers making things worse?
Something for the writers and bloggers out there,
Hanging Out With John Didion: What I Learned About Writing From an American Master by Sara Davidson — A great read for those who want to write better or have anything to do with writing.
One of her most quoted lines is, “Writers are always selling someone out.” Her husband said she’d spent 30 years explaining what she meant. “No one sees oneself as others do,” he said, “and if you truly write how you see an individual, that person may be disturbed.”
Sara Davidson
I found this read on three types of fun intriguing and quite real. By Kelly Cordes.
And the last,
15 Bleak Photos From 2021 That Sum Up the World’s Climate Crisis — It has been raining in Auroville, a community on the south-east coast of India, where I’m at the moment. Usually the monsoon lasts between October and November. But this time Auroville has witnessed rain for about four months continuously. Residents here tell me this isn’t normal. The forest region has recorded the rainfall to be more than 2.5 times the usual of every year. Everywhere we hear stories of untimely rain and in unusual amounts: my friend’s place in Vancouver Canada, my parent’s home in North India, Himachal Pradesh, and so on.
It is time we acknowledge the crisis we have arrived at. It is here.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
I have stayed pretty offline for the last months as I’ve been mostly listening to the oinking pigs, the tall coconuts swaying with the wind, and my own self. Today I’m listening to some birds, my host wandering in the garden and directing her gardener, and my partner’s yawns.
As you can tell from the Klaus Nomi article above, I have also been watching/listening/daydreaming to/about this video on repeat: Klaus Nomi's 1978 debut at New Wave Vaudeville, Irving Plaza (NYC)
And for all my Wanderlusters!
In travel news,
Latest rules: 7-day quarantine, RT-PCR test mandatory for all international arrivals
How to pick an N95 mask, your most important travel accessory
And now some recent pictures from Auroville.
a simple plant in sunlight here in the forests. Caught my eye while we were walking. Someone has rightly said, walks and nature do a lot for art.
who can get too much of the dosas. Remember my piece on dosa I did last year?
a budding jackfruit
walks here around Auroville
some gnarled — but beautiful and fleeting — mushrooms coming out of rotting wood stumps
Thank you for reading.
I hope your week goes well and your weekend is refreshing. Take good care of yourselves :)
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Yours,
Priyanka
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