Growing into oneself...

I always find myself growing more philosophical as my birthday draws closer. More than the beginning of a new year, it is on my birthday that I look back on what has transpired in the year that has just passed. This past year has taught me more than ten other years combined. It has taught me to revel in an inner strength that is rarer than I knew, it has taught me the grey nature of good and bad, love and hate. It has also taught me the importance of going ahead and doing instead of sitting by the road endlessly waiting for the right guide to come along. But I think the hardest lesson of all was the fact that no matter how loving or dependable a spouse you may have, you have ultimately only yourself to fall back on and if you can learn to love yourself with all the warts included, then you glow with an inner brightness none can take away from you.

The biggest mistake a person makes is to see himself or herself in another’s eyes. They then try to become the person someone else wants. I have seen many women transform after marriage into colourless creatures whose only aim is to do everything they think their husbands want. Many think that they are being ideal wives by remove all traces of themselves or by seeking approval with every word or act. They have no independent thoughts, likes, dislikes or even dreams. I speak of women because I have not seen that much of a change in my male friends after their marriage – except in many cases, a certain slow erosion of joie de vivre.

I had lost my identity to a certain extent during fifteen years of marriage. However no one had ever referred to me as Mrs S simply because I have always imprinted my personality on anyone who has interacted with me no matter how young I was. Perhaps that is why when one fine day I woke up to see in the mirror, someone I did not remotely recognize, I decided to simply change – no more expecting happiness to come from some person or event - only I could do that for myself. Having done that by getting back to a full-time job, making meaningful friends, writing a column, I found a resurgent pride and felt happiness seep in slowly. It lit the lives of those around me. People who knew me for years remarked at the change. My children were happier. That was the best gift I have ever given them – that of a joyous mother.

Recognizing that your life needs change takes courage. It is always easier to let things be. Seizing the day or standing up for yourself or letting words flow in the face of possible displeasure, requires character. It takes years for a person to be formed from within. It is up to you to decide what kind of personality you want for yourself. It took me so many years to grow into the personality that I knew I had deep inside. That moment of being completely in tune with yourself happens only with introspection and acceptance. You need to have gone through difficult times to experience your inner strength. You need to have let yourself go to experience your softer side. You need to believe in something so strongly that your desire to do something positive outweighs all your fears of failure. Maybe the moment of self-actuation comes but once in one’s life, but once is enough – it will propel you to pursue more such moments and pretty soon being your true self will be effortless and ever more rewarding.

When I read what I wrote on my birthday a year ago and look at my words today, I see a sea change.  It feels good. For once in my life, I look forward to sealing the passing of one more year and more than that I seek eagerly what the next one holds for me. This renewed appetite for life is something I am deeply grateful for. This time next year I wish for my words to flow stronger, I wish for the courage to write my dream and place it before the world, I wish for my one ever-present pain and worry to resolve into hope...this time next year, I wish to grow brighter in every way...

The lone cypress

The following is based on a dream I had when I was 18 or so - I was talking about it to my friends and they urged me to write so here it is :-)

The warrior stood tall and beautifully sculpted with his long hair waving in the ever-present breeze. His village was atop a cliff bordering the unruly sea. The sea had but a few calm moments - most usually its mood was violent with strong gales and choppy waters. The setting was almost unreal, the village itself seemed to belie every possibility of survival and yet the people living in it loved it well. They lived and loved and fought and enjoyed their food and drink. Life was hard but thoroughly lived in that impossibly surreal landscape.

She walked slowly towards him admiring the sleek, powerful lines of his body which was in marked contrast to her own softly curved, slender form. She had loved him for years and it only seemed that the love grew as time passed. They had not formally pledged their troth to one another before the chief and his council of elders and the high priest but all knew they were meant for each other. The love between the chief’s golden daughter and the dark warrior was the stuff of legends after all.

He turned and smiled, holding out a hand to help her over the rocks cluttering their favourite meeting spot. He looked calm and ready for anything – she, on the other hand, scanned his features intensely with a furrowed brow. His questing look earned only a slight dismissive shake of her head. Turning her face away, she worried her lower lip as the thoughts pulled her back into their realm. She had woken up with a bad feeling, a presentiment of things about to go wrong, of some unstoppable danger to her love. She didn’t tell him for he’d laugh it off – he often said he never feared any rival other than her world of thoughts. She was highly sensitive and known in the village and beyond for her uncanny sixth sense for important occurrences. And yet for him who knew her since she was but a child, she would always be the dreamer who needed him to take care of her, to pull her back to reality when her thoughts carried her far away from him. He pulled her close to him and caressed her hair lovingly in an attempt to soothe her troubled eyes. She looked up and smiled – her perfect cupid’s bow lips inviting him to kiss her as they stood lost in each other’s arms.  

The other hated watching them together. Her heart bore envy of such depth that nothing and no one could make her happy. She used to be beautiful herself – she yet bore the traces of that beauty but the heart when twisted with jealousy, shows itself in the eyes as glittering hatred. And so she looked as she felt – bitter, angry and full of boiling envy. It was a wonder the two lovers didn’t feel the heat of her glare but they locked out the world when they were together and continued to be blissfully ignorant of the other one.

Days passed. The chieftain’s daughter felt her uneasiness increase to such a level that nothing could soothe her. She had blinding headaches and disturbing dreams. One night of tossing and turning brought up yet another nightmarish scenario where she could see the village destroyed and hear the screams of the dying rending the night while all around raged uncontrolled fires. And then it was clear to her what would happen – she ran to her father and warned him of some imminent attack by their old rival, the chief of a neighbouring tribe who had had his eye on their land since he attained power. Her father listened to her carefully and told her he would post more scouts the next day and call a meeting to exhort the villagers to be more vigilant but he refused to let panic spread and therefore she must keep her dreams to herself – not even sharing it with her soon-to-be-betrothed. She was his heir first and must learn the ways of a ruler without sharing the burden of superfluous knowledge with anyone else. She agreed reluctantly.

The very next night, the scouts were ambushed in the middle of the night and the attack began. It was eerily similar to her dreams and she watched with horror as the night grew bloodier. Her love was in the thick of it, slashing his way to the centre and trying to protect the chief. He was surrounded by too many however and his beautiful body scored by a dozen slashes. He fell just as the sun rose and the enemies started their celebrations. The chief survived and so did his daughter. The other watched smiling from the shadows till her heart felt a wrench at the sight of the fallen warrior. She was stunned – she had bargained with the enemy to destroy them all but spare the hero and now she was bereft. What had she done all this for if not for love? She screamed madly and flung herself on him till the survivors pulled her away. The chief’s daughter sat next to his body – not weeping or wailing – just unnaturally pale and calm with eyes that were focused inward away from the sight she could not bear to look at.

As was the tradition in those parts, the warrior was wrapped in a burial shroud and thrown into the water from the place of worship atop the cliffs. The chief’s daughter stood in silence and watched the body hit the gray-green turbulence that was the sea. Her eyes mirrored the intensity of the water and she suddenly stepped forward and leaped off the cliffs into the churning sea. The sea took them both as they fell into its bosom. The water moved in layers. Each layer was coloured differently and the hues lightened as they approached the bottom, from the violent gray-green to a deep blue and thence to a lighter blue and finally the perfect clarity of no hue at all. His shroud had come undone and the wounds on his body had miraculously begun to heal till he looked beautifully whole again to her loving eyes as they both sank into the soft seabed to be together for all time.

The other stood atop the cliffs and watched the sea take them both. Her twisted features dissolved to soft sadness. Two streams of tears trickled down from her eyes and the hatred that had been her heart melted into understanding and the beginnings of acceptance.

It is said that even today there stands a cypress at that very point on the cliffs – once grotesquely twisted, it now looks beautifully crafted and all who pass through stop to admire its gentle beauty.

Lost paths...

Does it take one lifetime or several, to understand the mystery of the human brain? How does one even begin to comprehend the incredible complexity that is behind the generation of the simplest thought? Can anyone change another’s ability to think, to understand, to engage? Always these questions have tormented me – no, not always perhaps – only after I realized my son was unable to think like me. His brain, in fact, is a complete black box to me even today.

You walk in this world. You see beautiful sights and are happy. You see poverty and general misery and feel unhappy. You get distracted by a sunset. You get exalted by the emotion of love. You reach out to people for various reasons. You in turn are important in others’ lives. This is my life, it is your life too. But it is not my son’s life. I do not know what he sees when I point out the sun looking like the juiciest blood orange during a particularly spectacular sunset. I only know he doesn’t see or feel what I do. I know the smell of the wet earth doesn’t move him. He will agree that its all nice but he doesn’t feel it. 

How hard it must be to walk through this wonderful world and not ever be inspired by beauty! How disconnected would I feel if I was merely an observer and never a participant! But then that is the truth about my son – I don’t think he will ever be a participant and that is not entirely a bad thing – its just a different way of being. Much as it is against his nature, I have to bring him into reality at least partly. But there is no manual for that – nobody can tell you that they have done that successfully for all time – no one can truly understand the state of being where you are in a world that is not the same as the world around you and you don’t even know it. Welcome to the world of autism.

It took me years to understand the disconnect for my son is a bright child who is capable of knowing when to say the answer that would mollify me or fool me into thinking that he has understood when he has not. I thought he was a child of few words. I didn’t realize that he just didn’t see any point in words. The biggest irony of my life is the fact that I, someone who writes words effortlessly, am mother to a child who sees no meaning in the same words. For him, I need to discover new paths of communication. My paths don’t lead to him. And his don’t lead to me.

When you see other children absorb knowledge and reality naturally and easily, and you try to mimic that for someone who is so different, that is when you understand how complicated learning is if you break it down. To cultivate the most delicate tendrils of growth in comprehension is a herculean task when it does not happen naturally, when you must force comprehension as a learnt skill. This is the key to releasing an autistic child’s mind – the building of little blocks of comprehension that can then be accumulated to simulate in a crude fashion, the minds of others. This does not mean that the child’s natural inclinations like art or electronics or music should be ignored. This just means we try to equip them with the means to comprehend the world in our terms – the truth is they are far more evolved than us but like I struggle to understand a child who speaks in a language that is beyond me, he too struggles to be understood. The work that we must focus on is creating a bridge between the two worlds – never taking away from a child what is his true nature but never letting him feel like he is alone or that no one can reach him.

One day perhaps answers will flow in about the true nature of autism, about why there are so many children born these days who grow up disconnected, about whether we can learn quickly enough to teach these children how to cope in our reality. Sometimes I think they are happier as they are. Sometimes I think the process of evolution has had hiccups and we have no idea what is better for survival. Sometimes I think whichever God I pray to has gone on indefinite strike for I see nothing ahead but a very difficult road and no one can tell me a child deserves so much harshness in his young life. I can only hope that we figure out this mystery soon – that we can augment our efforts with the certainty that we can bring about a lasting beneficial change. I feel grateful to have the support of some wonderful people in my life – one of them has promised me she will hold my son’s hand and show him the way back to me, the way that has been lost to him these 12 years. I will work hard and I will hope and then I will wait...

Mind wanderings...

When your day has already started off on a bad note and gets increasingly frustrating as the hours pass, it is easy enough to give in and gripe. Things go wrong. They keep going wrong. There seems not much hope that things will suddenly begin to go smoothly. I was in a lousy mood. The unseasonal heat and my crazy hormones didn’t help either. I decided to forget about doing anything or thinking about the ever-present problems – at least for a while (that’s a very tough task for me normally) and engage my mind in something different. So I stopped tugging at my wayward locks, stopped worrying my lower lip, stopped looking at my phone aimlessly for divine intervention and let my mind wander for a while. I then decided to write about something that had caught my interest.

The item in question was a link sent by a friend yesterday – someone who occasionally sends me interesting pieces of music or well-written articles. It was a video – a few words preceded it in which the main characters were introduced as Marina Abramovic and Ulay. They were once in an intense relationship that apparently petered out as relationships are wont to do. Intensity after all comes with a steep emotional price tag attached. When they decided to part ways, they did so dramatically as befitted the performance artists they happened to be. They each walked the Great Wall of China from either end till they met in the middle for a final hug goodbye. They never saw each other again.

The video shows glimpses of Marina performing her show titled ‘The Artist is Present’ at the Museum of Modern Art. The show was her longest performance running from March to May of 2010. She sat day in and day out in a little square area facing, across a simple table, a member of the audience. She would spend a minute simply gazing at the other person. No talking or any other sort of communication was allowed. This happened continuously. One day without her prior knowledge, in walked Ulay who sat down opposite her as she waited with closed eyes to behold her next audience member. She opens her eyes to find her former lover sitting across with a hesitant smile. Her gaze grows soft and luminous as her eyes fill with tears. His face lights up with the same glow. The silence between them filled with the million memories a love of immense depth is bound to leave behind. She leans over slowly to grasp his hands. After decades, they meet again in the middle. She moves back as the minute runs its course and he gets up slowly, his eyes still on hers as he walks away.

I loved the video. It was simple. It was short. It was beautiful. Relationships do not last forever. One is fortunate to find love even fleetingly in a life that may not always give you chances for happiness. If you cannot afford the price tag on that intensity, it is better to walk away rather than let the relationship sour so much even your memories become tainted. Very rarely perhaps you get to revisit that feeling even if it is only for a minute. In the video, the transformation on that tired, ageing yet beautiful face was sublime. After Ulay left, the smile Marina bestowed on the next participant was radiant. The performance was complete. I watched it many times for the unadorned beauty of true emotion. No masks, no lies, no bitterness clouded that moment of pure love.

As usual I feel lighter after writing down words that probably hold meaning for no one else. My words are for myself alone, being the tangible wanderings of a mind overloaded with thoughts from which there is never any escape. The good part of letting your mind wander however is that when you get back to the task at hand, you do so refreshed and restored – its almost like taking a walk on a breezy summer evening...