Very, very, dangerous to live even one day...

Virginia Woolf, writing the words quoted in the title of this post, meant something very different to what I was reminded of this evening. I was reminded of my younger self who had her poor heart in her mouth each time she was outdoors alone. Yes, it was very, very dangerous to walk on the streets of Delhi, without an older male beside you.

When I was a teenager, one of the wishes closest to my heart was to be able to walk to my destination (class, church, market or park) alone without having my soul mauled by stares, comments, jostling or even violence. Yes, violence too. I recall one time when a group of boys followed my sister and me as we walked to the local market. Inexplicably, one of them flung a stone at us, which hit me on the back between my shoulder blades. I had mild agoraphobia for years and even today my slouch gets worse when I'm outdoors.

This evening, the daughter of my former classmate (he died of cancer a few years ago) was walking ahead of me, books in hand. A Delhi Transport Corporation bus lurched towards her on a road that was empty as far as my eye could see. I was shocked. The driver, older than her dad would be today, could have run the girl over. She appeared to be lost deep in thought and didn't notice anything amiss, bless her. Reminded of my own fear-filled days, I looked at the driver and he stared right back.

Young women in other cultures can walk about, composing poetry in their heads if they so wish, and no one would molest them. But is the concept of allowing women equal and free access to public spaces alien to this country?

Can I write at all?

A writer I'm reading the the mo, Toni Morrison, reportedly said, "Writing is really a way of thinking - not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet." She also said somewhere that she didn't intend to do without that way of thinking.

In my own life, moments when I can articulate my own thoughts are like oases in an arid waste. I've been writing an essay on a novel that I mentioned yesterday, Sula.  And unraveling the structure of the novel, getting inside the skin of the characters, cracking the metaphors - all this has brightened up my days and kept me going this holiday season.

Will there come a time when even this will bore me? I shudder to think....

But the question I'm really thinking of is, "Can I write at all?" Or am I only able to critique someone else's work? Or slightly better, write something inspired by someone else's structure or story? Or at best, write about myself and my fears and my hopes and my dreams....

I feel soon I will have to make the call and give myself that chance. I've been working full-time and writing during long weekends when there isn't any scope for office-work even if people wanted it. But it has been snatched, hurried and botched.

Tomorrow I might post a short story I tried to write in the summer.

Answer to my Prayers

In Toni Morrison's Sula, a little girl, Nel, prays, "I want... I want to be... wonderful. Oh, Jesus make me wonderful." In The Bluest Eye by the same author, a little black girl had prayed for blue eyes. Why do Morrison's characters never have their prayers answered? I'm re-reading some of her books and this question keeps popping into my head.

I too know a thing or two about unanswered prayers. Ten years ago, while studying at film school, I had dedicated myself to God. I prayed and said to God that I wanted to use my talents for His greater glory. I've never made a film since. I also asked for a life partner. I'm still single.

A couple of years ago I spoke about this to a Cor Episcopa (I belong to the Indian Orthodox Church) and he told me, "Cast your net on the other side." Subsequently I've tried to study more, get another job, travel... Stonewalled everywhere.

And yesterday, on Christmas, I was thinking about all this and praying. Then I opened the Bible and found Ezekiel 4:8 before my eyes. "And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege." Yes I've read the verse before and there was even a time when I used to wonder if it applied to me. (My mother says when you pray and open the Bible at random you come upon what's in your own heart at that moment.) Yesterday this verse was very far from my mind and I was astonished. 

Before I end I want to add that there was a time when I was unsure if Jesus is merely the Son of God and a very high prophet or if he is God Himself. But you know how faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God. I now believe Jesus is King of kings, Lord of lords, Master of masters and the one who is in the midst of the throne and, yet, the one who takes the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne - o mystery - and that this Jesus is God. (Revelations 5:6-7)

Despite the years that have passed in waiting, I'm full of hope. I know that the vision is yet for an appointed time and in the end it will speak....

As I sit down for evening prayer, I ask that tonight, Jesus, you will speak to me. That will be enough for me.

It's Christmas ...

... and I'm lonely! And I wish for an encounter with Jesus himself.

Meanwhile, I'm munching cake and singing along to Fairytale of New York, same as last year. Hope next year will be better.

Jesus, Lord of lords, Master of masters and King of kings, we remember you this day and thank you for meeting our needs. We pray you will look down upon our family and our friends and help them come closer to you.

For we know that every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord

A Heart of Flesh

A script I wrote some months ago for a faith-based television programme... it wasn't commissioned though :-( Thought I'd share it with everyone

When was the last time my heart swelled with pain … upon seeing someone else’s suffering?

When was the last time my spirit sent up a spontaneous and fervent plea – “Stop Lord!” – unable to behold someone else’s pain… because the sight touched me to the quick?

Was it back when I was a child? Used to being thwarted and chastened by those more powerful than I? And feeling a sense of solidarity with others similarly powerless. 

Some of us are still tender-hearted way past our childhood – but our heart beats wildly only when we see an animal suffer or a homeless child. We don’t really cry inner tears for that friend who has failed an exam, the neighbour who faces financial ruin, the colleague who is dissatisfied with life or the distant relative who is battling addiction. Better them than us, we say don’t we, in the heart of our hearts?

We, middle class Indians, children of stable marriages, ourselves in societally-sanctioned stable marriages, having children we’re proud of, homes we’re proud of, friends we can depend on… we’re cocooned in our large comfort zones. 

We don’t have the breakdown of the family, the crippling loneliness and self-doubt that some other societies grapple with on a daily basis. Buffered by our family and friends, we spend our entire lives untouched by the brokenness, the poverty of spirit that is so precious in the eyes of the Lord.

Sure we feel rage when we see injustice and poverty. But does it go deeper? To a more sincere level? I’m talking of the compassion for another that rocks one's sense of well-being. The fellow feeling that is almost unbearable in its intensity. It is actual physical pain – in the region of the heart.

Of course we all do our bit – we pay our tithes and taxes, treat our servants fairly, pray sincerely, or try to pray sincerely, for world peace and end to global hunger. But in all our well-meant actions, we’re only as one rending our clothes when God has called us to rend our hearts. 

It may sound harsh but until we have experienced what it means to be broken we won’t know what beauty brokenness may hold. What it means to “feel”. They are precious… the attempts to step out of our comfort zones.

Where my heart is...

“If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders.”

My heart must be in very many things... for my mind wanders sometimes to pleasant visions of a triumph over vagueness for a precise phrase, sometimes to painful (and abandoned) attempts to attain my filmic voice, sometimes to dreams of my own home and the children I don’t have (would I make a good mother?), sometimes to my memories and sometimes merely to visions of a toned down body – face to feet.

I should’ve attained all but the weight loss bit by now, since I’m in my 30s :-)

Not that I’ve not gone after the complete list. I have. But with 20/20 hindsight, I see my attempts were not as sustained and tenacious as they should have been. What I cared about most deeply I chased more than the rest – writing regularly (and reading a lot of critical theory) studying photography (after doing directing, screen-writing and editing at film school)…. As a female auteur with no money, there came a point where I needed guidance and assistance. In any society you’d need much networking and risk-taking to be productively creative. But my background being very non-artistic and religious I was pointed in the direction of the Almighty Himself.

Was it better this way? Should I have turned instead to people – teachers, “friends”, former colleagues, perhaps gotten an influential boyfriend? But I feared outside voices and directions would serve only to drown my fledgling inner voice.

I chose to believe the following verse – And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. How wonderful it sounded… I followed where it led.

And where has it led? Brokenness, simplicity, self-knowledge, a bit of certitude. That’s it I guess… though now that I write it I realise it’s quite a bit.
 
My family say I’ve had my feet in two separate boats and that’s why I’ve got nowhere. They quote the book of James: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways" and say I’ve chased art and Heaven (without realising it) at the same time.

Perhaps they are right. I’m beginning to reconcile my desire to make a living as a creative with my aspiration for Heaven. Let’s see what lies ahead.

What the Thunder said not

This afternoon I woke up desolate from an afternoon nap. I’m on study leave for a couple of weeks and fell asleep when the math got too much for me.

When I feel negative I try to see if the word of God has anything for me. So I came upon Psalm 29 – “…the God of Glory thundereth…” Yes, there was thunder and rain this afternoon.

There was a time when I would have rejoiced at the coincidence. I used to think the monsoons were special on account of this very Psalm. Was God speaking through thunder to us who were too busy to heed His voice?

My grandmother, who was an evangelist in her abler years, used to fear lightning. So my mother once told me. Truth is even Mummy will not stay outdoors in thundery weather. Why the fear I asked once. Because lightning has been known to fall on people, she answered. We were in Kerala then, where the rains last from May to December. It was July when this conversation happened – the thick of the noisy monsoons. And Mummy went back in saying I should get back in too. But I stayed in the porch, eating mango and breadfruit, and wondering if God saw me... would say something to me.

Once, desperate to get answers about whether I could and should be an artist, I asked the question of the lightning-lit sky and waited to hear the answer. I told myself that if, immediately after I articulated the question in my heart, there were a long clap of thunder it would be a yes and if there were silence or a short clap, a no.

The careful part of me asked the question again... to be sure.

Silence greeted me second time though not the first. Or the third, ha ha ha!

I gave up. Could Satan use the sound of thunder I wondered… to mislead the simple? After all he used the forces of nature to destroy Job’s family and wealth, sanction though he had from the Almighty. I had not the courage to probe further…

Suffice to say I haven’t gone back to this dicey method of getting answers though questions I have several still. God’s voice might be still and small, I accept. Now to hear it Lord…

By the way, I still love the light and sound show in the sky.