Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
I hope you are doing well and your weeks have been going peacefully.
I decided to make this edition a special one because everything has been extraordinary about the recent weeks. In this edition, I won’t follow the usual narrative of Looking Inwards in which I send you my latest articles, quotes, things to read, meaningful videos, and travel tips. Today you’re receiving a personal narrative with photos from the past fortnight’s adventures.
You didn’t receive Looking Inwards the last two weeks because my laptop had died on me (I’d shared this news on Twitter and Facebook to update the social media readers (at least)). Two Fridays ago, I had risen at 6:30 to write Looking Inwards’ tenth edition. After I brewed myself a cup of coffee, I switched on the computer. It didn’t come on. I tried everything from force starting to safe mode. Nothing worked.
After thriving for more than seven years while making me bloom alongside, my Mac had decided to not wake up.
I had forgotten to disconnect the Mac’s charger the previous night. So the computer had been plugged in all-night (like a few more times in the last weeks). I wondered if I had damaged the Mac by keeping it connected overnight. I was anguished. Even my partner — who obnoxiously turns off the switches at night — didn’t disconnect the Mac.
My partner’s forgetfulness may have something to do with being chided for disconnecting my equipments’ chargers earlier. My Mac’s charger (when connected) used to give a slight electric current. So I preferred to plug in the Mac beforehand. Then I would put the charger away and sit in the garden, the forest, or just about anywhere. I would work until the battery lasted. While the Mac charged again, I did yoga or cooked, showered or walked in the woods thrusting my nose in every leaf and flower.
But when my partner disconnected the charger without checking with me, I ended up returning to a drained Mac. I couldn’t work one full day because he had disconnected my laptop and power didn’t return until 5 pm. My rebukes had taught him better than touching my Mac.
Though I was guilty of connecting the laptop to a power source overnight, I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that it’s an old laptop which could exhibit unforeseen behavior. But I wasn’t prepared to let my Mac go, not so soon.
We took the Mac to the Apple service center in Pondicherry and deposited it with the right doctors. They were to revert by the end of the day.
Now don’t judge me here. But we have been living in Auroville community (Tamil Nadu) since Christmas last year and hadn’t driven to Pondicherry city for almost two months. Auroville is a collection of smaller communities who live amidst ample green and Pondicherry is a mesh of bustling streets with shops and houses standing neck to neck fighting for space. The two are separated by about ten kilometers.
The Apple service center was in a central mall. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by a plethora of unhealthy food options in a sprawling food court. McDonalds, KFC, Chinese kiosks, grills, and chaat centers stared in our faces. I hadn’t had a McDonalds Aloo tikki burger for months. My eyes widened and my mouth salivated. Both my partner and I couldn’t contain the euphoria any longer. We rushed around stuffing our faces with overhyped burgers and faulty samosas.
We wrapped up from the food court by 2 pm. As we had to hang around Pondicherry until evening, we went to a bar cum cafe Krrish. My partner’s work was piling up and I could also use creative hours.
When I saw fresh mint growing in a pot on the rooftop cafe, I ordered a fresh mint and watermelon mojito. While groups chatted outside admiring the blue ocean billowing at a distance, we both sat inside the quiet dining room to brave through the tasks of the day.
I had backed up my Mac’s entire desktop on iCloud. But when I opened my backed-up Hindi poems on the phone, I only found broken elements strewn around the note. (it seems iCloud Android doesn’t support Hindi fonts). So my plans to edit and copy the poetry to a notebook died. Instead, I started reading The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury by Marc Levy on my Kindle. In the book, a London-based perfume maker paired up with a local painter to travel to Turkey. I turned the pages fervently and outside the sun dipped in the horizon.
The approaching twilight filled me with melancholy and I yearned to go outside. When I told my partner I was going for a walk on the beach, he joined me. But first we needed coffee. We went to the iconic 24-hour seashore Le Cafe on Promenade Beach. I ordered a condensed milk coffee and he got a tall glass of some fancy caffeine preparation, some of which I ended up having later.
We sat down in the ocean-facing garden of the cafe. The day was sunny. Fleecy clouds chased each other above the blue sea. Crows flitted fearlessly between tables picking up last bits of crispy fries and fallen crumbs of apple pies. Tourists and locals chilled at the cafe and walked on the beach with equal frivolity.
After finishing the coffee, I walked on the sandy shore and let the salty waves roll onto my feet. I hadn’t seen the ocean since I had left Pondicherry. Cool waves submerged my feet and relaxed me. Crossing the Rock beach, I walked from the Promenade beach towards the fisherman beach. One of the umpteen Aurobindo ashram buildings that was gray and incomplete two months ago now stood shining lemon yellow on the fishermen beach. That beach was once our home for two months.
As I approached the fishermen beach, I saw crows circling above a sandy spot. I walked ahead to find a giant turtle (probably a green sea or olive green) lying motionless on the sand (only a couple of weeks later, a restaurant owner told us turtles had come to lay eggs on one of the Pondicherry beaches and people had protected the animals). The tortoise was big and breathless. Its head was tilted towards one side and eyes bulged out. I wondered what had happened to it. (This survey of olive green turtles on the coast of Pondicherry states 54 turtles were found dead ashore during December-April 1998. The cause was the trawler activity on the coast.)
I watched the beautiful but lifeless turtle for a while before turning around.
Soon I got a call from the Apple service center. They said the motherboard had suffered a short circuit and it couldn’t be repaired. The only option was to replace it with a new one. “Please come and collect your laptop before 7,” the caller hung up.
A Mac Motherboard is expensive. I was devastated. I rushed to Le Cafe to find my partner who by now had packed up his things. Together we climbed up to the terrace of the cafe. I broke the bad news to him. How could there have been a short circuit while the adapter still worked fine? Was it the power current’s fault?
My partner said an old laptop can suffer unseen disruptions (a fact I had conveniently forgotten). I regretted not replacing my Mac’s battery earlier. It had been throwing the warning “condition to replace” for quite some time now. If I had known the battery could damage other parts of the computer I would have taken it to the repair shop.
As I say in this 30 life lessons from my twenties article: keeping our system/environment running is more important than everyday work. But I didn’t know. Now my partner tells me the battery swells and disrupts the functioning of other parts. It can cause damage to other components because an old battery doesn’t diffuse charge properly.
Maybe these conversations about batteries and computers seem futile. But I love and appreciate machines of all kinds. How a myriad of tiny parts of a big (or small) metallic system come together to provide the specific function amazes me.
In the last season of Money Heist Palermo correctly calls the water pump machine, “pura poesia” — complete poetry.
I press a key and you get my thoughts: if that’s not poetry, what is?
Perhaps that’s why Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig is one of the twenty one books that changed how I look at life. Amongst the brilliant concoction of ideas the book presents, one idea brought forward is that technology is as much art as anything else. And I agree.
I feel disappointed when people all around me (especially people of communities such as Auroville who talk about sustainability and green living) condemn technology, computers, bikes, and cars with a hate I’ve seldom witnessed before. I went on an Auroville farm tour recently and the owner said all that is wrong in the world includes we not knowing what is growing in our backyard, ordering organic quinoa which is transported from as far as Peru, and people doing C++. Needless to say, I lost all hope in that farmer and dropped my plan to volunteer on his farm.
Don’t hate the poor, hate poverty.
Don’t hate technology or technology users, hate how technology is being misused and abused.
And C++ is as much love as a molten sunset.
If we claim to love, we cannot kick a dysfunctional machinery and say why don’t you work you piece of s***. We understand what has gone wrong and we fix it. And that’s the secret to life, too.
“The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.”
Robert M. Pirsig
I wasn’t prepared to deal with the sudden loss. How could something so dear and important be taken away from me so suddenly? As I wrote this sentence just now I admit I have no idea how deep and profound the pain of the loved ones of those lost in the covid-19 must have been — I’m not comparing my Mac to a human being. I’m emphasizing that when the sudden loss of a machine can be so grave, how incomparable the loss of a human being is.
But such is human life. Full of frustrations, loss, and disappointments. And the most excruciating thing is that we can’t control even a minute of life. We can only manage our reactions. Easier said than done, huh?
What was I going to do? Either I pay the exorbitant price or get a new laptop.
We were both inclining towards getting the Mac repaired. I called a few other Apple service companies. They said they could try to fix the logic board.
Right when I was getting excited by the idea of either getting the old motherboard repaired or bearing the cost of a new one, my partner said replacing the logic board could increase the Mac’s life by only a year and a half or two. “What? You think even a new logic board will only give it 1-2 years of life?” I was heartbroken. My last ray of hope was filled in with concrete and blocked. He apologized and apologized but the damage had been done.
Sitting on the roof of Le Cafe we both cried while the twilight sparkled on the sea. Night lamps had come on everywhere. People were settling down to eat. But all of that didn’t matter.
Despite knowing he didn’t mean to hurt me I couldn’t shake off my partner’s pessimism towards something so important. His past suggestions to buy a new laptop as my old Mac needed replacement came back to me. And now he had killed my last hope too. On the worst day. When my Mac wasn’t starting. The idea that I may have lost my seven-year-old Mac forever gnawed at me.
If you’re thinking why does that old Mac matter so much to me, I can try explaining in short.
Given how minimally I live, while putting to use everything I own respectfully, I only have a few things that I really care for. I gave away boxes of clothes while I haul around two cartons of books. I donated most of the stuff in my old house, but I carry a water bottle with a plant I dug out from the soil of the last Auroville cottage I stayed at.
My Mac hasn’t only been my computer for the past seven years. It has been a constant companion even when I was alone. I could open my Mac, stare at it, and write when I could do nothing else. It’s not only a computer for me, it provides a world I enter to create, get inspired, and be. It is a space of infinite possibilities and love.
Wood-fired pizzas were being baked in front of us on the terrace of Le Cafe. Above us bright stars and a full moon adorned the sky. I wanted to sit under that moonlight and eat a pizza while the waves crashed on the sand ahead. But my partner suggested we drive back to the repair shop to collect the laptop.
He was being practical (as always) while I wanted to let go in the moment. I had lost control and I didn’t want to face my problems that night. But I didn’t express myself clearly and directly. So we picked up the Mac and my partner said we go home because he had work to do.
I said, “if that’s what you want.” I had been desperate to meet the reckless child in my partner who would have said hey you have had such a bad day let’s end it with good food and some time together but all I met was a grown-up man who didn’t care about how sad I was. But how many more times could I have said let’s go somewhere for dinner.
Under the bright silver moon, our drive was quiet and dark. As soon as we arrived home he started working. I ate a couple of bananas and hit the bed. Sleep is my best friend on hard days.
Having said everything, I thank my partner for coming along with me to the repair shop innumerable times. I appreciate his support, though it came a bit late, to get the Mac fixed immensely.
The next morning my partner’s five days vacation started. A special personal occasion was coming up. We decided to take the Mac to a highly reviewed shop in Pondicherry.
Saturday morning we drove to White Town, the center of Pondicherry that represents the colonial French and local Tamil fusion the best. While walking on the streets we saw the hoardings of Hunar Haat: an art, food, and craft artisan fair in the old port ground ten minutes from us. On one of the many visits to the beach from our old home in the fishing community, we had once gone towards the port ground. The place was dark and dead and the guard hadn’t let us in.
But now when we walked to the fair, we had a hard time even walking through the street to get to the ground. Cycles, pedestrians, cars, scooters, and auto-rickshaws all bustled towards the ground without pausing. Large hoardings of the fair fringed the street from both sides. We swiftly walked in the queue through the security to find ourselves in a large and crowded fair. Locals and tourists walked around in huge numbers. On one side we saw a stage and on the other side was a long queue of stalls showcasing lamps, carpets, furniture, foot wears, and so on.
We didn’t know we had ended up in a very fun and unique fair of our times. Hunar Haat is an artisan fair happening in many cities around India. Here only the artisans who do handwork and mostly family-run food makers come and showcase their art, craft, and food. People visit, eat, buy, and entertain themselves with the shows going on the stage where local artists can be seen performing any time of the day. We were lucky to even listen to the melodious Kavitha Krishnamurthy whose songs I grew up listening to.
When Kavitha Krishnamurthy sang my favorite numbers, I was a child back in my home, free of all concerns and responsibilities.
Music makes you a child again. Doesn’t it?
The new service center told us we would have to replace the logic board to make it work. I told them to order one for me. And now all I had to do was wait for ten days to get my Mac back.
We spent the next week visiting around Pondicherry — as you can tell from the photos above. I cannot write about every place I saw or things I did in this newsletter. I will save the longer narrations for the articles on my blog. But here I’ve shared pictures of some of the most interesting things I did or saw.
Do I support fishes in an aquarium? No.
But if you ask a child this question, what would she reply?
After a week of wandering around in Pondicherry, we spent a week at the Auroville festival to celebrate fifty years of the community. Some pictures and performances from the festival have found space here, too.
Since I last wrote last to you, I have moved out of my beautiful jungle cottage into a new guesthouse.
Throughout these last few weeks that went nothing like I had planned, I’ve realized (yet again) just how much is out of our control.
The bright Mac that went blank, the rude Aurovillian host who on our last day held my face in her hands and hoped she hadn’t said what she had said to me, the ancient Palaeolithic axe we saw in the museum, the meaningful conversations we had with people from the North in the Hunar Haat festival in this deep South, the Chennai restaurant owner who made the Malaysian fish-okra curry on my one request, the guy from Spain whom I met in the Auroville festival and we talked not only in Spanish and English but in Hindi and Punjabi — what was in my control?
This special edition is dedicated to the serendipity of life. Even if everything seems to be going wrong, no one can stop us from enjoying the moments in between.
And on that note, I’m on my way to the laptop service center because my Mac has been shutting down throughout the day. So much in our control. Right when we think all is good, the balance has been restored, the roof crashes. But we duck or run or do whatever, we try to make it till the end. And that’s all that matters.
Do you ever feel out of control?
Thank you for reading.
I hope your week goes well and your Sunday is refreshing. Take good care of yourselves :)
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Yours,
Priyanka
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