A trip back to my childhood home in Kolkata is always a bit disorienting for me.
Home: A constant reorientation of the self. Peeling back all the skins from the past.
In between all the usual socializing, I try to carve out some time to sit and draw the Bengalis, and secretly make snide comments into my sketchbook.
Thinking, how some people are totally unprepared for such close inspection. Including me of course. Flury’s, one afternoon in June 2018.
One evening in San Fransisco from a couple of years ago has been on my mind for the past few days. Deez was celebrating her birthday with some friends, and I joined in, glad to have caught up with her on this the trip. Here are my journal pages from that day.
“How many times in your life do you meet strangers and they have read your blog? Nothing like a surprise burst of celebrity-dom to bolster my ego!”
“In full entertainer mode I regaled everyone with stories of how the brown boy and I got together, and how did our little tornado come into our life.”
“We went for a long moonlight walk through the streets of Mission, took in the street art and curiosities peculiar to the culture. Arati told us stories of how the Mission came to be, and Deez her past selves that had moved through the area. We had awesome Mexican food and laughed so much.”
“There was happy birthday flan and we remembered all the stories of a dragonfly childhood. Remembered all the missing friends and how important they are.”
Here are some of the street art I saw:
This was drawn some years ago…in the early confusion of a new role. It’s quite common when you’re in a situation like that, to not know what to do – the challenges are new and how should you be in the role is also unclear.
It’s ok to ask mentors and advisors but ultimately it’s you yourself who has to identify the goals, figure out the next steps and take decisions. Of course I know all this now…
Good thing I had the anteater to keep me grounded.
And in the end it’s nobody but you…
A long time ago, my twenties self met my thirties self – and here we are where my twenties self meets my forties self.
Twenties self: What was she doing! I like you so much more, forties self!
[Hammers in my head. Such a temptation at these times to drown into meaningless virtual worlds for short term highs…]
[But the scourge of the blank page must be tamed, issues must be faced, demons must be encountered.]
[A great opportunity to be compassionate to yourself. And by the time you’re done, you have delivered yourself from the abyss.]
On holidays, while traveling, as soon as we reach a place where we can sit still for a few minutes I take out my sketchbook and start drawing.
Here we are in Palolem last year. For the last few years every holiday has begun with a drawing of the brown boy feeding Orin.
Soo: Ah-ha! Our holiday will beat everyone else’s holiday! Hahaha!
The brown boy: Ulp. Why?
Soo: Because I’m drawing! Everyone just takes pictures {smug}
The brown boy: Umm. Ok. (So competitive!)
As I realised that day, I felt in dire need of growing some kindness. Maybe it was due to the daily bustle of everyday life, or continuously missing the opportunities to practise, my kindness diminished and receded until some strangers’ kindness took me by such surprise!
As always I turned to Pema in my search for growing kind:
She talks about Maitri, the Budhist concept of loving-kindness. It starts with being honest, loving and compassionate towards oneself. It’s unconditional, she says.
Aspire to be happy. Find the tenderness of feeling love, or the vulnerability of feeling lonely inside yourself.
She encourages us to become aware of when we’re closing down and erecting barriers, and to always have a clear aspiration for happiness:
“May I and others enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.”
Maitri essentially starts with locating in yourself an honest feeling of goodwill, and then encouraging it to expand…
The anteater as always, being helpful: “Without someone to irritate you, you’ll never get a chance to practise.”
Anyway…I’m still on that quest. Drawing about being kind doesn’t really make it happen – I have to actually find the opportunities to practise it in my life.
Related: A divine collision (2011) and My year of spirituality (2015)
At some point a year or so ago, I learnt that the quality of kindness, like the quality of mercy is not strained…
You may not know this, but I’m a pessimist and a misanthrope…
A few days ago at the gym I was on the treadmill, and my jacket fell off and got tangled at my feet. Luckily as I was making the treadmill stop, a fellow gymmer picked it up for me.
And then I went shopping for art materials…
And a stranger in passing gave me a discount coupon: “Here you take this 20% off coupon, I’m not going to use it.”
All this happened within a few hours of each other. Enough to shake my foundation of pessimism and misanthropy. So worrying. How strange are these people? Totally confused now.
inktales 
