Peace in a different shape and colour

Today, I ordered some Chinese food from Soba. Was trying it out for the first time. They make a buckwheat spring roll and a black rice salad that's really good.

I woke up late with some body ache. Since Papa wakes up early, he usually makes me tea. And if he is not asleep after his meditation, he makes me the day's last cup of coffee. Those two cups of beverages are my favorite parts of the day. He really likes teaching and often has classes over Zoom. I am a very grouchy and sulking tech support. But I like my days with Papa in the house. We haven't entertained or had people over. But despite that, or because of it, life is quiet, silent, and knowing. There is the little rolls of fury and fear that I wake up every day with. But they don't seem formidable anymore. The sweet and sensitive part of me wakes up. The angry and stinging part of me wakes up. Then all of us integrate into a tesselated personality over Papa's cup of tea. It's like I become whole with every sip.

It has been a few days since I want to leave this place. Everything about Bandra has started feeling fake...that sort of loser-like indolence that Nawabs had before they got killed or poor. Maybe it is projection. (On a deeper or a more grand level, it is all projection of course. But I was thinking of it more in my regular workaday world.) In the sound and light show at Red Fort, they told a story about a certain Nawab who was woken up in the middle of the night because Delhi was being attacked by a large army. There was no way they could defend the city so they had to escape. The Nawab could not get out of bed because his servant was gone and he could not wear his own shoes. (He was not differently abled or anything.) I forget the name of the characters in this story. But it struck me then, as it strikes me now, how much damage being committed to the status quo can do.

Sometimes I hear stories of people living in the area...and it feels as if they are living the life of that Nawab, every day getting more entrenched in this quicksand of dependency and dying in delusion. They haven't lived in any other part of Mumbai and think that this is as good as it gets. So they hold on to the address knowing that they cannot afford it anymore. 

Maybe this is the nature of all urbanscapes. In Bangalore, a friend told me of a man who burned himself because he would have to leave his house in Indiranagar and move to a suburb. Yes, suicides are not easy reduced to a simple cause and effect. But the way address-related delusion becomes such an adhesive... it's scary. I don't want to ever be that. To be so trapped by my own notions of comfort and belongingness that I forget to read the writing on the wall. 

It's all just started feeling all dead and fake around here. I told my father that he and I would move somewhere else. A smaller city. Or a larger city. I want to go to Kolkata or Delhi. I have never lived in Kolkata before. Delhi was nice even though I have had my life's worst experiences there. But the good times were strong and enduring. Or we could go to Cuttack. 

Papa would like to live on the farm and until today, I was wary of that but I think I might get onboard little by little. The artifice of this world where no one keeps their word (or even tries to), the excessive use of the word 'property', the people who befriend you only because you might represent a sexual opportunity and how quickly that friendship evaporates when you say no...it has started feeling nauseating. (The plus side is that no one ever mistakes me as someone having money. This 'mazdoor' aura that I carry has proven to be beneficial.)

Anyway I told Papa that I will make some plan and we will go. He asked me if I was feeling suffocated. I said yes. So he told me that I must wait. Wait until I was moving towards something and not away from something. 

I realise that this is the strength I must build. To hold on. I have always had the talent to walk away from anything with minimal regret. But holding on and working through something when it's not at all clear what that future will be...I have never done that.

Growing up, I spent more time with Mama than Papa. And my mom's attitude was quite similar to mine...as in we both had quite an appetite for drama and change. So I realise that I learnt how to work hard, gather resources, and move. But lately, after spending alone time with my father, I realise that what he wanted to teach me was a certain stoic strength of just staying with something. Don't solve the problem. Just stay with it long enough to see whether that is the problem that needs to be solved in the first place or not.

There was a time when I was learning kickboxing. We had to do a few things before we learned our stances and moves. I had never done anything like that before. So of course it was hard. At first, my instructor taught me push-ups - the full body variation without bended knees (I have actually never done that). It hurt like hell. But I do have upper-body strength so I got a lot better at it pretty quickly. Got better and got cocky. Then after a while, he told me that I would have to do planks. You get into a push-up position and hold. It didn't seem too hard in my head. After all, I was doing push-ups. I still remember how excruciating it was to just hold a position. My knees trembled. My hands shook. My wrist started throbbing. All this under 20 seconds and around that time, I was doing 50 push-ups at one go. In my mind, it was inconceivable that holding a position could be more tough than motion. This premise of course holds true in yoga as well. One teacher used to insist that we smile  as we held the locust pose or that infernal naukasan. He used to say that if we have not learned to be at peace with discomfort, it's a wasted class. 

With Papa around, sometimes just observing him, I see the strength of 'holding'. He doesn't drink or smoke. His strength and peace really does come from a tough life that he made smiling peace with. And I guess he is trying to get me to do the same thing...by first showing me that maybe my emotional trembling etc. is a sign that I need to strengthen my core.

So, perhaps it's going to be Bandra for a while.

But whatever fakeness there might exist outside in this area, Papa and I have a sweet little sanctuary for now.