An ode.

Libraries are a community sanctuary.

As a child I felt this way about my public school library - a lofty, light-filled space with weightless kites hanging from its windowed ceiling and storybooks lining every wall.

It was the first thing you saw when you walked into the building and its magic beckoned. I remember every step of it better than any classroom and l loved it far more than the gymnasium or playground.

I can still see the reading pit we sat in as children. We raced to compete for the corner spot as Ms. Harper, the librarian read our favourite stories in a voice that held command even though it was almost a whisper.

As I moved into adolescence, the school library was an escape for different reasons. A quiet break from dreaded chemistry class or the chance at a minor interaction with a major crush. Some agenda almost always seemed to accompany those visits.

But that was less the case with our beloved community library - another long brick building lined with windows where deer would appear in the distance, even on the haziest of days.

Always the popular hideaway, the possibilities between the pages were like reflections of the future and our then youth.

I read my way through those confusing and exciting years, riddled with anxiety about things that didn’t really matter but mattered nonetheless.

Stories were the thing that nurtured me all the way into adulthood, and as the years go by and the space around me fills with the needs and opinions of others, that conscious treasure of quietude remains a deep need of my own.

This distinct kind of quiet lives only in a place that honours something big and important. It is the result of an unwritten, understood law. A covenant that we handle ourselves with the utmost humility among pages and pages and pages of intelligence.

My memory recalls vividly the conscious choice to practice reclusion in its hidden nooks during my undergrad years, even if it wasn't exam time. I would sit between the shelves of its highest floors, studying between daydreams. I would walk down the aisles, slowly, letting my fingers run along the spine of a thousand books, sometimes stopping to see where I landed - undoubtedly on something I had never heard of.

I would pull it from the shelf, crack it open (like I still do), read a random page and call it fate, searching for the hidden message among all the words like it was guidance from the library gods on what I was to do with my life.

As I sometimes wallow in what’s been missing, that familiar warmth which emanates from essential institutions intensifies my longing for this immersive therapy.

To go to a place where the truth is preserved and history awaits - protected refuge with rooms that give us more room to discover and grow.

A space that defines education as a human right. Where we open our hearts and calm our minds.

The library is the only place that tells you to get lost and means well.

Everything that will happen.

There is this beautiful thing that happens when she steps into herself, into that place where she’s reaching for an even higher level of love and comfort with herself.

As she’s becoming really genuinely cozy with her change.

When she stops fighting the person she’s becoming and instead, embraces her – looks at her with love.

She has that energy and that creativity.

When she presses pause for a moment, just to be … In this moment, she’s not worrying about why she is the way she is or who she could have been.

Her being is now.

Of course, now is a culmination of the past.

Her now is rooted in history. Deep and entangled. A history of memories.

Rich and thick.

A history that leans on meaning in such a way that it still remains independent of all that she’s inscribed on everything that’s ever happened.

Everything that will happen.

The memory of scent.

Today, Inaaya told me she didn’t like the smell of biryani.

What’s that smell? She clicks her tongue.

I explained that it’s Baba’s favourite, it doesn’t smell yummy? I ask.

She ruffled her eyebrows and insisted, I don’t like that smell.

I was mortified.

My child, waiting for a late lunch of chicken nuggets, featuring the tiniest speck of black pepper (no sauce) and rosemary seasoned waffle fries, couldn’t appreciate the scent of meticulously crafted, freshly baked biryani?

She was (literally) wrinkling her nose at tradition. At the food of the (Hyderabadi) gods.

What do you mean you don’t like it? I am perplexed.

I am in so much denial and cultural agony, my mind retreats in seconds to a place I’m always happy to revisit.

The kitchen is big and bright.

Something is cooking.

Orangey gold linoleum is under my feet and a big, heavy wooden patio door has been pulled all the way back to let the fresh air in and the smell of whatever’s cooking, out.

Zafran cream simmers on a low and constant heat. Its warm aroma can be felt lifting into the air where it will stay. Onions are caramelizing to a slow, sweet garnish. Buds of cardamon and clove dance with cinnamon in a giant pot of boiling water. Meat and potatoes are spiced and marinated.

All await the one and only, Queen Basmati.

Ready to be cocooned in perfectly fluffed grains that are obsessed over, each time no less than the last.

Mama! Mama!

The tiny voice brings me back.

Yes.

Can I have popcorn please?

The pool.

It is very possible that she will experience a creative breakthrough in the very same moment that she concedes to her own wavering belief that everything is going to come to an end.

It will all fall apart, because it wasn’t put together right in the first place, is what she thinks.

What would it look like if it fell apart?

What will the crash sound like?

She can envision the pieces, scattered and away from one another — all the parts of this wise and precious thing.

All the parts of her.

She begins to recall how she began putting it together. She starts to think about the last piece.

What was she doing with the last piece, and what about the piece just before that?

She’s in reverse.

Submerged.

Thinking, in a backward motion.

Swimming in a clear pool of memories — each one passing by an elegant, synchronized stroke.

She starts to think about how she put it together by taking it all apart.

She remembers how she built this beautiful thing and why she once believed in it so ferociously.

She remembers what it feels like to dream about something and then somehow, extract the very essence of that dream and transform it into an idea — a process that is perfectly unseeable and entirely energetic.

It is very possible that you will experience a creative breakthrough in the very same moment that you concede to your own wavering belief that everything is going to come to an end.

Unoriginal thoughts on 36.

As 36 approaches my realizations are mostly unoriginal but meaningful nonetheless.

First, a sharper awareness of the unending power of gratitude.

Second, how good giving feels and remembering that it should feel that way.

This sounds very basic but when you are unknowingly conditioned to believe that only suffering and struggle lead to good things, some days it feels like I’m on this purposeful hunt for things to be difficult.

I don’t want to live like that and I can’t, now that I know.

I still want to know what it feels like to do things without guilt or shame — for myself, for others, for strangers, for people who simply aren’t expecting it.

I’d like to continue to learn more about what it feels like to receive, to accept love and help as much as I offer it.

Third, in just this last year alone I’ve discovered that there is still so much for me to know about being consciously present, and that the beauty of honing one’s presence is that it begins to architect a natural acuity for locating the lessons in every happening almost instantly.

I believe it’s this acuity that keeps our evolution healthily lit.

My plans for 36 involve learning how to forgive myself, exploring how I can be of service to others in a way that is fulfilling and unselfish, and uncovering more of the softness about me that I used to share more frequently and without thinking twice.

I hope that by this time next year, I’ll have more stories to tell because I’ll know more about how I came to be and why I’m here.

Most of all, I hope that I carry myself with delicacy and compassion the whole way there.

Unforgiven.

I’m kind of amazed at how unforgiving people can be with each other, even over the smallest things.

I imagine it has more to do with our ego.

I believe it also has to do with the forgiveness we hesitate to fully give ourselves. Then again it’s hard to give anyone something they aren’t ready to receive.

I can’t imagine that any of us have an actual, living desire to bring someone else so far down.

Down to the place where simple mistakes are trapped under immense pressure, giving them no choice but to transform into something irrevocable.

When I say simple I mean a mistake that, really in the grand scheme of things is so trivially tiny that you wouldn’t be able to locate it not far from now.

Then again, maybe right now everything in my perspective is appearing smaller than it really is.

Maybe my perception has been altered by my new reality.

Even still, it feels good.

The hearse.

I tend to be a bit morbid minded but tonight I looked out of my window and down at the street.

I was staring at a hearse.

And as I started to frame up a story about who could have been in that hearse earlier today or who might be in it now, (hopefully no one, given it’s 11pm) — I thought about what it means to live and die to any single person on any given day.

I think about people nearing the end of their lives or those who are unexpectedly taken away, leaving others behind in agony. The dead get to go and the rest of us are left here to grieve, likely in ways that are both healthy and not.

We get to experience the sorrow of loss.

We tend to think extreme emotion has a direct correlation to authenticity and meaning.

We absolve ourselves of unhealthy acts because we are using our emotional intelligence beyond its own capacity, is one way I think about it.

Another is this idea that we are so emotionally intelligent. If we exercise our intelligence hard enough, we will naturally on occasion get overwhelmed enough to eat a slice of cake, again.

Or casually pop-a-squeeze of the whipped cream on our lips as we find our way to closing the fridge door.

In the wild, no other living thing will eat for comfort.

Penguins are not emotional eaters.

The lioness hunts out of necessity. And the lion doesn’t get to eat for fun.

Humans have to do everything in excess. Does it feel that way because enough of us make it true?

That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Anyway.

I tend to be a bit morbid minded but tonight I looked out of my window and down at the street.

I thought I saw a hearse stopped at a red light.

I was looking at an SUV.

Movie Love

Last week…

Last week, I had this day where I got to the end of more tasks than usual with fewer interruptions than I would usually encounter on an average day.

This is mostly because I’m being commandeered by a 3 year old who naturally wants company while doing

Every.

Little.

Thing.

In those moments where she’s preoccupied for more than 20 minutes because she’s drawing on the windows or admiring her own reflection, or applying lipstick to something that doesn’t need lipstick (of course I don’t know these things until I realize it’s too quiet to be true), I sneak away and scribble into my notebook. Or read three paragraphs of whatever book I’ve been trying to finish for the last few months, or finish making my forgotten coffee, or listen to (part of) a webinar, etc, etc, etc.

There are more than enough things I want to do alone and in peace, so when these rare moments decide to cluster themselves into one day, I hop onto the high of getting so much done with zero hesitation.

It’s probably one of the few things I do without as much guilt, because it feels so good from the inside out, and the good feelings are so fleeting in the recent past.

Some of that’s mostly my fault, because I choose not to dwell in the prettier gardens of goodness. Even while in full bloom, I’m interested in planting more flowers and I forget to take in the beauty that first gave life to an idea that birthed a stiller desire.

One that simply wanted to plant some seeds and see what happens.

In the wild.

Ideas cannot be protected.

Because ideas are like air. All around and formless, in the same omnipresent way that believers define God.

One of the things I’ve struggled with as a creator is trusting others with what I create.

I would imagine I’m not the only person who’s ever felt this way. Uncertainty is bound to surface where copious amounts of soul searching and sleepless nights have gone into birthing some kind of tangible proof that you were in fact, here.

In an ideal world designed by me I would love for my ideas to be handled with care, and for the people I share them with to react honestly – whether they love it, hate it, or wish they’d created it.

But that’s not how it all works, I’m learning.

Ideas can’t be contained. Really, they shouldn’t be. Why cage something that was meant to fly, and soar and sing?

There’s no controlling what anyone will or won’t do with an idea. How they might see it, not see it, change it, use it.

That’s the point of something so powerful that it can take on any language, any form. Ideas can be whatever we want them to be, because thoughts are ideas and so are dreams.

Each was born in the wild, and each will continue to thrive there.

The truth is that even with all the reasons in the world to protect the extension of our purpose, the act of protection goes against what the artist stands for and defends – that no conditions shall ever be placed on expression, inspiration and perception.

When we hold back even one creative thought from becoming everything it could be, we are breaking the laws of art – a risk not worth taking.

Certainly not for the sake of our ego – the most feeble and fleeting thing of all.

A creative breathes ideas and bleeds creativity.

So at the essence of everything I do is an unrefined faith in my purpose, which is to make something that’s meaningful to me.

Whatever happens to all of it in the wild was never up to me in the first place.

10:45

Earlier tonight I centred myself and consciously closed off all connection to every other thought I had except one.

I could see a golden ribbon of light coming toward me from skies on top of skies on top of skies. The light was travelling through the universe, twirling and dipping and turning – transcending all dimensions and atmospheres.

It travels toward us, through galaxies, circling every planet and its moons. Its light illuminates everything in existence, ascending toward the earth to envelop it.

To heal it.

Moving with the grace of air through every blade of grass, looping round every tree, winding up every vine, showering every flower’s petal and sharpening every thorn.

I imagine what the earth must feel like, what it might look like in this light.

In her essence, I imagine.

This light is millions and millions and millions of souls, from now and from then – millions of souls pausing at 10:45 to tap into something that is more powerful than western medicine and worth more than all the world’s wealth.

This light melts into every step of earth and tucks itself into every single corner of every country, every city, every village, every neighbourhood, every block, every step.

It enters our homes and glides over our floors. It climbs our walls and covers the ceilings.

This light is a glistening bubble that wraps itself around everything with love. It shields our bodies and minds.

And in this moment I can feel myself being held by it. Floating here, in this place that is mine, in this gift.

I place my entire belief in the universe and into this moment, because I believe that we have truly come together to understand the power of love.

The message.

Yesterday evening we were bathing Inaaya, as the evening rituals go.

I was in the kitchen, pottering around trying to get dinner prepared, keeping an ear out for when I might be needed to assist.

As the day winds down and the evening begins (these days especially), I see that we are both quieter and more thoughtful about how we’re helping one another.

He knows I’m mentally, physically and emotionally spent — I just want things to remain at a very low volume from 6pm onward. I know he’s exhausted from the laborious work of fixing cars all day long— he just wants to watch some TV and have a good meal before bed.

We are of both of course (and like many others), stressed and wondering about when “normal” will resume, knowing damn well somewhere in our minds that this is normal now.

It’s during these hours that I find myself quietly contemplating how hard it can be some days, to not feel like my entire self has all but withered away by sundown.

Why did we become parents, I think.

Why did we choose to be so needed, all the time?

Mostly, it’s hard not to think about whether I’m fucking it all up anyway.

And then, as it often happens, my thoughts are interrupted.

I love you mama, my child says with such conviction, even in her baby voice.

I tell her I love her back.

Her eyes are big and dark, and the best part is that on my worst days, I know I can swim in their endless mercy.

I love you baba, she says next.

He tells her he loves her too, so much, he adds.

Everything is good, I think in this moment. The rest of my worries start to feel further away and my mind begins to descend.

I love mama.

And I love baba.

And. And. And.

I love MYSELF!

Her eyes are glowing. This is the first time she’s ever had such a realization, made such a declaration about herself, and with such awareness at that.

I love myself, mama.

I can’t wait to tell her when she’s older how profoundly wise she was at just 3 years old. I can’t wait to tell her about how her wide-eyed, old soul was able to verbalize something I’m still figuring out in my mid-thirties.

This whole isolation thing has forced me to be more present than I’ve been in a while, and that hasn’t been easy. I would be lying if I said that everything, even the bad things, are feeling a little too close for comfort.

Presence is one of those intricately beautiful things — it forces us into rooms with our greatest contentions. It pushes us toward fear and doubt.

But only to remind us that the door isn’t locked.

This is a cleanse.

When trying to transform ourselves, we often go through some type of process.

We get rid of useless habits, we pay more attention to the impact of our daily actions, and over time, we have the capacity to physically and mentally change.

Transformation is defined in a few different ways, but the essence of it is that something changes. Something shifts.

Empty roads are with far less debris thrown around by careless humans and sea otters loaf along the streets of Singapore because we aren’t taking up all the space.

We are breathing in record low levels of air pollution, at least in those areas under quarantine.

We are hearing about hoarders losing their shit over toilet paper and the dead bodies of other people’s loved ones waiting to be buried.

We are in awe of the empty shelves at the market and just as taken aback by the extreme generosity of people who have little to give.

There’s something about this pandemic that makes me wonder why we weren’t expecting just about anything of this magnitude to happen in the first place.

Why we weren’t ready to be shaken. Changed.

Every single living thing is being transformed at this very second and our comprehension of what this means is miniature at best.

We should be taking this type of transformation very personally, because it affects us so intimately and in relative terms, so immediately.

But there is a difference between self-transformation and universal change, and we tend not to personalize the less obvious.

If we are unable to convene on this one, absolute truth, why should we ever be under the impression that She would stand for it?

Released.

Today was so overwhelmingly shitty, I can’t even begin to describe it.

I was pulling myself out of dark tunnels only to fall down darker ones.

I was fighting with myself over things I can no longer even remember, that’s how unimportant they probably are in the grand scheme of things, but how powerful my thoughts around them were in spite of that.

I could literally feel my brain turning and turning and turning. At one point the dizziness was just something in the background and I was lost in the rest of it.

I felt some sense of helplessness, anger, remorse, frustration, confusion, rage, disappointment, sorrow, hope.

It was labyrinthian and, there was so much more but it feels very distant now.

It’s hard to imagine that what held me so tightly just a few hours ago could be persuaded to let go.

But this feels good.

When the power over me is mine.

This is a feeling I never want to leave.

Committed.

The longest relationship I’ve ever been in is the one I’m in with words.

The words come to me without condition and hardly ever ask very much of me.

I doodle them onto steamy bathroom mirrors and car windows. Carve them into the frost, think them onto the page.

I see them in clouds and read them on people.

I fight with them. Sing them. Scream and whisper them. Write them.

I see through them.

I keep them for myself and sometimes even lock them away. I speak them into the heart of another, often leaving them behind.

The words have held me and understood me.

Listened to me.

Looked into my depths without judgement and stayed close even when I was sure I didn’t need them.

But I’ve always needed them – I’ll always need them. They’re the truest parts of me after all.

The words are what I’m always missing even as they sit at the edge of my mind, the tip of my tongue.

Unspoken, unwritten.

Beginnings.

This is an education in powerlessness.

In patience.

In fleeting truths and misunderstandings with origins that look alike.

This is a reminder of a state of being we are too busy to pause and acknowledge — one that won’t ask permission to enter or leave.

This particular experience of defenselessness feels tragic and necessary.

But isn’t that the definition of tragedy?

For something awful to happen so that the lessons being taught are finally heeded and heard?

Whether they are learned from is another conversation entirely.

These are long days and longer nights that are here to remind us of how much we’ve forgotten about ourselves — and each other.

And maybe even mostly the one who let’s us live.

It has been such a long time coming.

It has been such a long time coming - this idea, this website, this project in its entirety. It was spun out of something akin to this (nagging) mentality that I've had for ages.

That is, the "I'll just do it myself" mentality.

But the beauty of this DIY actually comes from somewhere very special, because for as long I can remember, I thought I needed someone else to make it come true for me.

Like many other creators I've spent most of my life writing for other people. I was led to believe that something or someone else would decide whether I was worthy of the esteemed designation of writer.

Unloved is the essence of this designation - the thing that remains true of me no matter who I'm writing for.

“Nothing has really happened until it is described.”

(So you must write many letters to your family and friends, and keep a diary.) These are the beautiful and everlasting words of Virginia Woolf.

Every year on Women’s Day I can’t help but traverse the internet to rediscover the brave and intelligent women that compel me to keep going. I almost always start with VW, a beloved visionary - the artist and co-founder of The Hogarth Press redefined the female narrative.

She infused life into language through stream of consciousness, a beautiful writing technique that relies on the thoughtful flow of feelings and ideas. But more than a writer, Woolf was a truth teller, and willing to endure the staunch pain that often accompanies introspection; the discomfort that comes with evaluating the female struggle up-close and personal.

Relying on her own intuitive lens, V defined womanhood in an era of female subservience and remains an example of what it means to be purposefully unapologetic in the pursuit of finding oneself.

She fulfilled her unwavering ability to give meaning to the journey.

To me, that is the essence of being an artist, to inhabit this state of being.

It’s Women’s Day, so I’m thinking about what V represents to me — the deepest and most enduring parts of womanhood, the fine line between genders and the possibilities that come to life when, like V, we fly up into the sky of our minds to get a bird’s eye view.

It’s like she says in A Room of One’s Own, “In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female… The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.”

So thankful for VW and the many female mentors for their guidance and education.

At the whim.

We swing from feeling intensely connected to our purpose because we know deep down that it’s something special, to feeling we’ve served our purpose when what we’ve created is deemed worthy by another.

The people around us often get to decide whether what we create is worthy (of the love it deserves). And so the idea of sharing a piece of ourselves can feel out of reach, even when it’s the thing we want most.

That’s because we are *at the whim.* We tend to be at the whim of the feelings, thoughts, ideas and dreams that belong not only to ourselves but to others, too.

I am always at the whim of something -- some feeling, some sub-emotion. And because I take my work far too seriously, I feel every little thing.

I am the definition of what it means to be *at the whim of.*

My darlingest friend Coached By Hayley was actually the one who taught me how to live in and love being at the whim.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my interview with her, where we talk LOVE.

For all of us.

<Listen, it’s a bitter sweet moment because true independence and loving yourself for who you are and what you are capable of doing...those are things some people never even get to the peripheries of.

Enjoy this moment in whatever way you’d like to and accept any and all feelings tied to it, because all of those feelings are a part of what you’ve created. Everything you’ve done or felt, every version of yourself you’ve bravely been or chosen not to be - it has all brought you here.

Doing things on your own is the most underrated thing in the world, and I say this as someone who is attached. But on that note, remember that you are not alone. Look around at the people you love and who love you. Your friends, family or just even general community like what you have here - people you feel comfortable enough to share this with. (Maybe you feel a bit uncomfortable, but you’ve managed it either way.)

The ability to share this? That defines your unending strength and your eternal belief in yourself that exists even when it’s waning, so congratulations on whatever big thing it is that you’ve achieved.

And don’t forget that if you want someone, anyone or any kind of love that you can share this with, all you really need to do is be open to that love. It will come.

It will show up for you if you’re ready for it and open to it.>

I almost put something different up today -- a piece on how I've been so lifted recently. But there was something holding me back, so I left it alone.

Then, as I was scrolling through the notes on my phone, I saw this - a note I recently sent to someone that was finding it hard to indulge in a big thing happening for them.

I kept it for me and you.

Love