The Escape Artist

Carved into the back of the tree in the park,
Is an old sign that says
"Born to be free".
I'm the tree with roots that go farther than the
sense of the writer's irony.

Would you believe that people can be sharpened like a pencil
Created to be consumed and destroy themselves
As they're done living.
Pencils don't consider saving themselves up for a rainy day.

Everyday reality is like a drug to numb the senses
Everyday is determined to make me forget
Everyday is a cage for the mind
And everyday I become an escape artist.

I sit and laugh louder than anyone
As they sit and tell me how it is that I can be more normal
They offer me up prizes and liken them
To the lights at the end of the tunnel. 

Ghav

Dil ka ek kona reh gaya Tha bedaag

Kaanton kankaron se bacha Kar bedhadak chal rahi thi main

Ki kaunsa Naya Dard ya ghav ise choo payega.

Afsos ki iski ijazat nahi hoti jab pyar ho jata hai

Uske roothne mañane se befikr thi main.

Kabhi socha nahi Tha ki in sab baaton se aage kuch hoga

Ki woh nahi hoga.

Fir kya hoga

Usi se puchna hoga ki kya hoga ab mera

Is dil ka, jo Chot khane ki aadat me Tha, use

Bulaa bitha Kar mehman nawazi se do baatein bolkar phuslaya

Fir kaha ab zarurat nahi Hai aapki.

Kyunki tum pyar bohot karte ho.

Sabse karte ho.

Aur sirf mujhse nahi karoge. Mere Banke rahoge.

Haan yahi toh hun main.

Isi Sach ke saath tumne pasand Kiya Tha

Aur ab Haq ye Hai ki bardasht nahi Hota tumhe

Mera Sach. Aur mujhse tumhara Haq. 

Prayer for a tired heart

It’s been only a few days since people have been staying home and already I am receiving distress calls about anxiety and depression peaking. Things are obviously not going well for people who have no social support and also those with strained or abusive relationships. In these times of chaos and panic, friends have been reaching out to give and receive support which is heartening. I have been maintaining silence since 15^th Dec 2019 on social media, incidentally also my birthday, due to several reasons.

However, since it is a time when most people are going to be at home and scrolling their Facebook feed, I thought it is a good time to engage in productive conversation. Mostly it has been an exhausting, exciting and busy time since 2020 began, keeping oneself updated about one public health crisis after the other, communal tensions and counselling needs. And now this virus is the latest challenge which is going to be around for a while it seems. Requesting everyone to please keep yourself informed through confirmed and trusted sources only and avoid spreading misinformation.

Although we are all frustrated, conversation is key in these times and so is slowing down. Only read as much news as you can handle. People at the frontline of this health crisis in the community need support in terms of a sense of normalcy and appreciation. They need a warm word, or a meal together, a moment of light hearted banter, friendship, time to rest, recuperate and take care of themselves and their families.

A word of advice that helped me sustain hope was to take this opportunity to slow down and reflect on immediate spaces around us. Clean out inner garbage as well as outer. Discard hoarded memories, clothes and junk. Help out people in need of food, shelter, clothes or medicine. Do not name, shame or blame people with the virus on social media just because you have time on your hands. And most importantly, as you sit with your near and dear ones – pause and look at their faces- smile, reconnect.

Take that hour long bath if you haven’t in a while. Put aside the temptation of frenzied scrolling of social media feeds. Re – read old letters, look at albums, play music, cook good food. Like really pay attention to what you are doing. Use your sensory organs to touch, feel, smell, taste, listen and see as much as possible by your body to ground yourself in the present. Contribute to creating peace in your environment and homes.

And for those who believe in prayer, do pray. Pray because intentions, thoughts, words, and actions matter. Act in accordance with your prayers. And since it is world poetry day today, I feel like going back to my oldest muse – nature.

“A prayer for the tired heart,” I found,

Scribbled on the bark of a bard-tree behind my house.

I wondered if the words were new or old

As travelers often passed by this road.

I quickly picked up a leaf from there and left

As rain clad earth hummed at my theft

Added it to the motley crowd

Of broken beads, feathers and stones I’d found  

Home ceases to feel like home

When you leave each time alone

Return with a fresh wound, a mask, a poem, a card

Your mirror shows nothing but your façade.

Nostalgia lies sleeping among your books -

As friends, time capsules, coded missives.

Every time you smell the dust, the marks on those pages

A sigh of relief escapes, a character engages.

They seem to question your betrayal

How could your loyalty to them fail?

It took a crisis for you to remember your path

It took the world stopping to make you restart.

After this conversation with my books

I took down a page from the old nook

Took out a bright red pen from my school bag

And jotted a prayer for the old tired heart.

Sree

Fall

If trees could walk, I wonder where they would go to be away from all the people who make their life miserable. On who's lap would they shed a few leafy tears and whom would they laugh along with in merriment. The seasons come and go, nesting and resting a while. I swear you could almost hear them whisper their yearly gossip to the birds. And then to the creepers. And then to the ants who carry them across their nimble backs into the gut of the earth. They take root and bear fruits of love and friendship and warmth. And then we pluck them on this road to nowhere, making ourselves the masters of creatures. Tripping on our way to defeat the other. Laughing all the while at our cleverness. Alas the fallen apple and the last leaf can bear witness to our follies and repeat them next season to the far off trees.

#WednesdayVerses

कल लहू...

कल लहू के सामने लहू जो बह गया
ज़बान से फिसलकर मैं उर्दू जो बन गया
ना मुझे दिलों दिमाग का हिसाब ना उम्र की पहचान
आने वाले कल के सपनों मे झूमता  मैं भीड़ बन गया

माँ की खामोशी को यकीन समझकर
अब्बा की हँसी को मैं दोस्ती समझकर
खुद के ख़यालों की बेबसी को भुलाकर
मैं अवाम की पर्दादारी मे लीडर जो बन गया
कल लहू के सामने मैं लहू जो बन गया.

कहते रहे तुम की इधर के हो या उधर
मेरी शकल मे उन्हें कुछ आया नहीं नज़र
कल तक दुबारा मुड़के देखे नहीं जिधर
मैंने उस मकान से आज रिश्ता बना लिया
कल लहू के सामने लहू बदल गया

मेरे कपड़ों को देखकर तुम्हें क्या पता लग गया?
मेरी कहानी के तुम्हें क्या मुनाफा दिख गया!?
भीड़ मे बस मैं, बस मैं ही नहीं था
मुझसे बेहतर लड़ने वाला और कमज़ोर भी तो था
लेकिन लहू के सामने मैं बस लहू ही रह गया

मेरे वज़ूद की पहेली मे गुम मैं नादान हूं
परेशान अतीत के वतन मैं तेरा इंकलाब हूं
मेरे कल और आज और कल का मैं इत्मीनान हूं
मेरे सड़क के भाई मैं बस एक इत्तेफाक हूं
फर्क़ यही रहा के मैं बेबाक बन गया
नाक मे दम करने वालों की शांति मे खुराफात कर गया
सब की कहानी सुनने वाला कलाकार बन गया
मैं आगाज़ बनना चाहा, आवाज बन गया
कल लहू के सामने लहू बन के बह गया.

Love Laws

I received a prompt in the form of an picture from a friend who does #WednesdayVerses every week. This poem is inspired by Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.

Love laws

At the face of it love seems benign
Like a bunch of flowers sitting in a corner at home.
But those who love shall know,
That it is a war upon oneself. That there are borders being drawn upon the heart.
There are violations upon the space we occupy.
The torment of staying apart, or not having met at all.

Then there are surrenders. Insecurities. Implosion.
There are base camps in the crook of the elbows
And there are vanquished peaks in the arches of surprised eyebrows.
There are bridges being built across wrists and shoulders.
There is prohibition and emergency and curfew.
Love laws govern the land of the body and of the heart.
Love laws govern who can love whom, for how long and how much.
But what it is not, is a command to be obeyed.
The flowers rise to the occasion.
Perhaps they're a peace offering.
A white flag.

Message in A bottle/Shout into the void/Interstellar travel

Dear Readers (if there are any),

I've been writing since ten years at least and blogging always made me feel I am not alone in the universe. I also realized that there are several million of us now doing the same thing. Just more creatively.

Do you remember when you used to sit down in a group, sometimes just over silly conversations and abundant food, there was no need for ice breakers and formal introductions, no reservations or strings, people would just be thrilled to be alive and with other people.

Now I feel we are epicenters of depression waiting to explode, too scared to show a chink in our armour lest our vulnerability be used against us.

What happened to us?

Why did words become our enemies and why did we become so busy reading between the lines that we forgot which story we picked up to read?

If you have answers or even the same questions, please let me know.
Because I have started to feel like I am at the end of my very long rope.

And maybe my walls have started to crumble.

The book begins to take shape.

Most books begin existing in the writer's mind first; then on paper and then in the reader's head and so on. Somewhere if the process is fortuitous, it is not robbed of its essence. However it is difficult to articulate how some people can easily give words to thoughts and names to things. This story and this book is intended for people who don't find it that easy. You will find here the same confusions in naming and expression that you face in finding your way through a new city without knowing its language. Know that it is as alien to me as is to you. 

----

It was a strange weather in her mind. Like the phrase "big waves of the ocean" can often be used to describe indigestion of the stomach, she now could feel the churning the mind and the heart. The body does not digest uncertainty let alone the mind. Words that were once friends of hers, came rushing to the tongue of the brain and then stood shocked and blank at the crossword puzzle of the situations in her life. When they were called upon for a simple task, they banished themselves and when least prepared, eloquence ramp walked in the midst of a beggar crowd.

Her understanding of the word - ‘sanity’, was losing itself in the myriad colours and forms of life. Often relationships, places, food or even clothes changed yet the uncertainty persisted. A faint sense of disease, disquiet and irritation sang through much of her daily routine and she felt like giving up every other hour or so. The sense of not belonging anywhere and wanting to be everywhere pervaded her conscience constantly. Almost everything begun was already on the verge of giving up itself in the face of her fluctuating apathy and passion. Stories started tumbling themselves into dead-ended mishaps and the sense of time started pressing itself upon the windows of the mind with cheeky triumph of having defeated her again in the past, present and future. A sense of helplessness and loss of control, no matter justified through the existence of God, others and their denial, made her feel purposeless and adrift in the sea of people so motivated and ambitious. What indeed did she have to contribute to their lives? Or her own for that matter...

Her need to feel needed was building since childhood but she never did surrender to its extremities. Alas philosophy and the company of her equally quirky believing friends had made it more poignant. But in a strange sense of paradoxical humour the more others needed her, the more she felt repulsed by humanity and her own pettiness. Thus, she was stuck in a marble maze unable to move forward or back… How did this state of affairs come into being, you ask? But it is why this book was written by her in the first place. I am merely relaying the information, chapter by chapter.  

REFUGEES AT HEART

Every apple pie, Christmas cake, rogan Josh, puttu kadala, spaghetti weekend, alu paratha and sushi salad that is ever described in a fictional universe found a way home. I cooked several meals in my head where friends were gathered round a table and did not judge each other except for being my friends.
I wondered then as I do now, even in my dreams, is this what home looks like?

Every shade of paint in existence found a way into the pallete,
Where the brush and I spent ourselves in a hurried frenzy
Making sense of the past and thumbing our noses at it
Painting self-adored and wholly private art on India tourism calender-backs.
Spiced tea lay witness to those nights and afternoons where Picasso and van Gogh vied for my mental health and insanity at the same time. Because at the pretext of art anything is possible. Five year old's scenery painted in tears, coffee stains and old school borrowed water colours with poetry scribbled in between.
I asked them that day, is this what home looks like for you?
The voices told me yeah it does, laughing and chiding.

My parents often recount their homes and memories, they sound good to hear for some parts and then there are silences and when I ask them, "is this what home looks like for you?",
They say, "No, you do." They leave their silences to me to fill with my colours.

For city dwellers like me, who have dreams of country vacation homes yet ambitious urban super sonic realities,
There is a particular pace of life and walking with our elbows tucked and heels clicking.
When we meet strangers we speak silence.
We do not make much eye contact,
Afraid of seeing the emotion
The depth of pain and it's recognition in the other pair of eyes.
No denial or anger can tarnish the exultation of possible happy endings to horror stories in human eyes.
Instead, we move on, just asking one question to every related stranger on the road:
"Is this what home looks like?

Stories on skin.

Flaky skin, darkened patches 

Translucent veins. Tattoos that hide pain within them and under them.
Ghosts of sorrows past and present.
Gift wrapped in soft flesh and softer souls.
Stories that are seldom told but when done right, become scars.
And how we like to pick them up in others, hiding our own.
Trading wound for wound and never counting the other person's battles.

My first was a crescent shaped burn mark. Not intentional.
A play thing. A mark of siblinghood and protection. Another a fall from grace splitting my knee open where my brother got to play doctor and then went on to become one. Another a slash from a broken wash basin when I overreached my attempt to be clean. That's my list.
But once I started noticing, I saw that they bloom everywhere.

In crooks of necks and curving elbows, in corners of eyebrows and squashed noses and chiseled cheekbones.
Things that were broken upon human skin leaving scars deeper. I can still feel the glass metal and wood that entered people and stayed hidden in the folds of trauma well beneath skin.
And then there are voices and images and words flashing back.
A horror film that became a silent movie.
Nothing to explain. Nothing to record.
Blood running cold, smiles fading.

ANOTHER DAY

I've got so much to say but all the words are trapped. I'm a message in a bottle that was never sent to anybody. I've always had an audience, even when there was no one sitting in front of me. I listen to poetry as emphatic exertions of those lost souls looking for a beacon, a light house. Those who can't go home or have one. I'm their audience, hidden in the shadows - not applauding, not interrupting. It's almost a crowd me by myself, And all the voices in my head. And when I listen, it feels as if a million of us were listening. Alone - together. And some music. It's a tango sometimes or some blues. A party. Made up of poetry and silence. Love unspoken. Untiring. Unconventional. Unrequited. Born of a schizophrenic heart


--- FROM mental health poetry collections

REBIRTH

So I am back to blogging after ages. Mostly into the void. Time scattered most of my purposes. So I let go of my own ideas.

Travel light

Snip snip snippety snip
Don't hold your breath
Let them cut away
There will be no pain
But people will see, you lost something
But the gain won't be noticed.

Hair is the biggest statement of all
An indicator of change
A radical rediscovery
The shape of your head as it was intended
Maybe a few brain cells here and there shifted their home.
Maybe you grew up a little.

The anger and defiance of youth, the new Bob or the refashioning of tastes in adolescence is known.
This is different. This is difficult. It's a scissoring away of identities.
A refusal to bow to suffering but embrace it.
An emphasis on me as me. And nothing more on the offering that is pleasing for the world to see.
Mostly it's a sign of recognition.
~
Arrival.

Don't hold your breath for change will happen
The most fearful and difficult journeys
Are taken alone.
The sadness is washed away
You emerge stronger.
You do unimaginable things
You also make mistakes
Fall down
Be imperfect
The cracks on your soul are beautiful
The wounds on your hands tell
How many times you tried to help someone and got hurt.
Your face is a map for people
To look for their lost treasure, so that they can trust you,
We met before souls were sent to inhabit the earth
Our love was not newly born here.
So when we roam the mazes,
And find each other - similar souls
Our eyes shouldn't forget to recognize.
That we always would have been around.
For we gave our word to the maker.
Send us to our homes on earth, and when we are done learning, take us back home.
Together.

ATLAS.

THE ATLAS OF OUR LIVES:

On a daily basis we read at least three articles on social media which urge us to think and behave in particular ways if you want to find meaning and happiness in life. On a daily basis, as a mental health professional, I speak to 5 people who are not in sync with their families and 5 people who are experiencing a loss of meaning in their work life.

Life in cities has made people rush, increased the ‘rate of doing’ so much that the ‘rate of being’ gets quashed. But what of living intensely, living on a small scale. By this I mean living in touch with your own surroundings, smell the mud in your own garden, if at all you have one. Something that goes along the message of this post is this poem by Shane Koyczan. https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An4a-_NjilY

One of the videos I saw was that of Mr Suzuki (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jlyv1hCTr0), who said economics is basically brain damage. It accounts for human made reality but not what is already out there. The environment and ecosystem we were privileged enough to inherit without a will-paper.


LEGACIES AND INHERITANCE:

In the light of natural and human made disasters piling up like Christmas presents we give to our children, perhaps the urban intellectual citizen of the world needs to breathe in deeply, exhale and reflect, just for a while. Are we enjoying this chase? Does it give you a rush or a high? Does it make your family secure to have more than enough money. Does it require you to compare yourself with your neighbors each minute but not be compassionate to them? 

Fukushima will have long term effects, apocalyptic statements will arrive at your doorstep as headlines. Food will be scarce, even if you are rich. There is no escape to what we have collectively created. This was not the case when you grew up, our generation ends up spending more than ever before, and saving very little. Investment, real estate, black money, white money, we know a lot about this, perhaps more than our parents. But they were happier and more successful than us in the same age, and I am talking to 23-35 year olds here. Which is a bigger success – being happy with less money or perpetually wanting more?

This is not to say that the previous generation did not have dreams or did not work hard for them. They knew why they had the dreams and somehow the reasons I hear today don’t seem worth it.

Everyone is either planning to live till 30 only or continue living in the fantasy that they’re never going to die. To escape the past they anesthetize the present and to not think about the future, they make the excuse that they’re living in the present. Brilliant actors we are, but we only have ourselves as audience. The imaginary audiences we carry in our heads, the virtual representations of the entire world’s populations, that is a heavy burden. We work to please that image. Strangely, in our rush to please them, we are not concerned about the same people’s well being. 

I read about tribes, and cultures and “illiterate masses” who are the real educated citizens of the world. They know the place of every leaf and insect in the world. They know the value of survival of every animal they hunt, every tree they ask for timber, a way of life which respects the living and honors the dead. A culture of song, dance and eating your fill and sleeping enough. Tell me honestly, whether one among you does not have a dream of having a vacation. We came from a place in history where work was play, and playful. Where, to have peace of mind, people didn’t have to leave their homes.

So what is it that I propose to you?

Do not act as individual plants. You are a part of a forest. Expand your sense of I-ness. Your self cannot exist independently. It is a fact, not a belief system. Notice, breathe, take in the surroundings at home and work. Consider the people you see as yourself. It is an exercise in empathy. Because you are them and they are you. You share the same home called earth and air that you breathe. A research study with DNA testing revealed that everyone has genes from practically every race, you might have a cousin in the room without knowing them. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyaEQEmt5ls

And the more you chase the welfare of yourself, the more you’ll be struggling. We as people of the earth are designed to take care of each other, to have the distance and the vision to be able to see other’s problems and limitations not to take advantage of them but to care for them when they cannot see it on their own.

In sickness which is rampant, in debt which is high, in anger which surrounds us and makes us feel unsafe all the time – I find only one solution, take care of another human being’s needs if not animals or forests. Take care to not increase someone else’s misery if you can help it. Not as a value education lesson or momentary feeling good about oneself. But as a way of life.

A way of life born out of the understanding that inter-dependency is neither a luxury nor charity nor sympathy nor an ideal. Inter-dependency is a necessity, the more you propagate it as you would a religion, the better it is for the group of weird beings we call human. 

FROM THE FIELD ... as published on www.knowyourstar.com

Going Into The Field

Field work is a crucial component of any social work student’s life. This is where we get to apply whatever theories we have managed to retain, which explain how people and communities participate in life. I was very thrilled to be able to go to the field and learn more firsthand. My first institutional visit really shook me up and made me realize that what I considered a course component is actually a human laboratory of sorts. We are actually examining people’s lives and trying to make an attempt to help them in some small way.

Govandi Dumping Ground: A Case Study

The visit was to an NGO working in the Govandi Dumping Ground. You might have heard about in the news recently when some homes nearby had caught fire, and the entire area was under a heavy cloud of thick grey smoke, and the stench of burning garbage filled the air. What I would like to highlight here are some of the social factors that determine our physical and mental health using the example of the communities living near the dumping ground.

Most of the people living near the ground work as rag pickers, including the women and children in the family. The area has several cultures living in close proximity and it houses a masjid, several temples, and several NGOs. Crime and violence is rampant, and weapons and illegal substances are easily available. Some of the important issues worth discussing here are children’s education, bringing down the violence, finding suitable employment for at least the newer generations, and facilitating some amount of harmony between communities.

Intervening as social workers is quite challenging because of the interaction of multiple issues. A sort of learned helplessness pervades in the community because for so many people this mode of living has become permanent. Poverty is very real and so are harsh circumstances. We, as social workers, come in and do our analysis, address some of important issues, but it is the locals whose lives are severely impacted so solutions need to be addressed at a broader level.

The TB Project: Broadening The Mental Health Gaze

On one of our projects, we tried collaborating with NGOs and the local health providers, both government and private, to understand the prevalence of tuberculosis in one area within Govandi.

TB, which is known to be curable and manageable, is a fatal illness in this locality because of very poor drug compliance, overcrowding in the slums, malnutrition, poor hygiene, and inability to prioritize health. Unfortunately, TB drugs need to be taken regularly as advised for six months, otherwise the body develops resistance to the first line of drugs, and then more expensive and heavy medication is required. Often, people here cannot afford to take the expensive ones on a regular basis. This leads to further resistance to even that class of drugs. Several versions of TB now exist due to this.

TB as an illness affects weakened immune systems worse than healthy ones, so people who are HIV positive, women, children, and the elderly are the most vulnerable populations. Women are at risk because often they eat last, work for the longest hours, and are in close proximity to sick family members as caregivers.

Why the focus on TB when I am a mental health social worker? I want to highlight how health is a subject that cuts across all domains of life. Imagine a young adolescent from the community I have been describing. He may be 17, has dropped out of school, and is trying to help his family by earning some extra cash, which leads to working long hours.

Boys his age have a gang, which competes with other gangs of boys to get better access to where they want to work on the dumping ground. This leads to periodic bouts of violence. The boy may have a sister who is helping him work for certain hours of the day, and now he cannot take her with him to these areas because he is afraid that she may be assaulted in revenge. So the family loses out on income, but the boy is in a more vulnerable position because he has not been honest about where he is going in the evening. He also needs the extra income to buy a little packet of whatever he needs to snort to make his work easier to bear.

What sort of mental health issues do you think the boy and his family members might face? Substance use related dependence? Aggression? Anxiety, depression, stress reactions? Emotion regulation problems? What issues must the sister and the mother have? What about the other siblings?

I do not want to make this article about diagnosing their illnesses, but to showcase the roots of mental health problems that often stem from surroundings, relationships, and the beliefs and psychological processes of individuals. Causes of mental health concerns are studied by using this bio-psycho-social model. A doctor or a therapist can help the person in such a situation only when the person reaches out to them. It is the mandate of a social worker to reach out to these populations, work with government and non-government support systems and raise awareness both inside and outside the communities about the problems present there.

The See-saw Of Health

All of us have had at least one episode of diarrhea/constipation/nausea/dizziness before a high stress event like an exam. These are called stress reactions, our body’s way of coping with a threatening event. This is a small example of how the body and the mind are connected and influence each other throughout the course of our life. Now, scale the example to the level of a community, and imagine the number of causes interlinked that would affect someone in that position with that lifestyle, those restrictions, and no education. What would your physical and mental health be like? I leave you with these questions, which hopefully might lead to the broadening of your gaze the next time you attempt to see the world through another person’s eyes. On the see-saw of the health continuum it is a matter of how much your stressors weigh for you to move from illness to health or vice-versa.

***

For people more interested in reading the technical aspects of this article, look up bio-psycho-social model, social determinants of mental health, and the person in environment model.

MILESTONES IN LOVE.by G.P.D

I dreamed of love that feels like a drug,

That takes you high and makes true all fantasies

Instead I found love that comforts you like a blanket

And roots you to the ground, steady and strong

Love took the self away from myself

Took me into the unknown where I was scared and in awe

Yet love brought me back changed and unchanged

Love grew and with it so did I

Love was a feeling I thought, something that is felt and carried

But now I know love is a way of being and doing things

It is the essential reason of “why” we are

Love is pure energy and a drive

Love is also a person, who makes you feel

You are not alone, Yet you are

Because in life’s journeys we have different lessons waiting

Love is quiet and calm and angry and raging

But most of all love is patience

And love is hope and trust and everything which makes living for another day possible

Love sees all, love sees you in entirety

Loves pushes and pulls and holds when you are broken

Love helps you go beyond your capacities

And still have some strength left

Love teaches you new languages, not just of regions unknown

But also of the heart, the smile and the body, and the soul

Love truly sees the soul, draws into the well that is bottomless and

Makes you compassionate

Love makes you feel you are enough, you are not small

You are not inefficient, you are not stupid or silly or any of those negative things

You think you are. They are just part of you,

Which you will shed like old clothes, unnecessary, a hindrance,

But hold on to because you are so familiar and dependent on them

And so love is naked,

A lover’s body perfect, no matter what scars or shapes they have

No matter what color, what fragrance and what strength

Because when love touches your body,

Every particle of it shines the light within

Every movement is a dance of ecstasy

And every silence and gaze is in admiration

Of the reflection of the soul’s perfection, its timelessness

Its limitlessness and of love itself.

And yes such love makes you want to be around love

All the time.

Without knowing that you yourself are love’s form and content

You have been touched and transformed by your lover

And your lover is within you as you.

The magic of that is to be discovered slowly

Like a bee sucks the honey out of the universal flower

Such powerful love is not destructive, it can only build

And what is left behind or broken down, or thrown away

Are only unnecessary burdensome portions of your sadness

Leaving you light, your heart full and calm and joyous

Leaving you open to miracles and opens your ears and heart to stories

You then are meant to change lives and see life

Without wanting to change it,

You are able to see beauty without damaging it.

You are able to love without expecting anything in return.

And that is the security of love. That is the god within everyone.

“I met the you in me and fell in love with me. I met me in you and fell in love with you.”

From the diaries of a social worker

FROM THE DIARIES OF A SOCIAL WORKER

As published on knowyourstar.com
http://www.knowyourstar.com/sreepriya-menon/

07/10/2016

“Social Work? Acha samaaj seva!”

“No. It is a professional course!”

“But why does anyone need a degree to help people?”

“Because you need to know which people to help and how.”

I saw the power of labeling first in a slum in Malad, Mumbai. I labeled a person as a slum dweller and she labeled me as a social worker. I went there to help, she saw me in obvious discomfort in her house and gave me space to sit, by moving outside the door way and asking me to sit on the floor. She fed me juice by the time which my guilt was poking stones in my stomach for having the audacity to think of who is helping whom. My supervisor later told me, you took a step forward by accepting the invitation for the juice. Otherwise, she would have thought that you have purity-pollution issues based out of caste. Later due to our visits in the future, we were able to support a women’s SHG to take a bank loan together and buy some materials through which they could earn a livelihood. They were all women, young and old, but mothers of children with disability who had taken a stand to support and not abandon their children just because the world says he or she cannot achieve anything because of an illness or impairment to the body or mind. To this day I maintain they helped more than I could hope to help them.

LIVING AWAY FOR SOME REAL EDUCATION

My first experience in TISS or Tata Institute of Social Sciences was that of awe. The new found independence of being a woman in a city like Mumbai to study a subject that is usually not recommended to young folk because neither is it lucrative nor is it practical. I use these words very mindfully since my colleagues will either laugh in pride or in irritation. I came to this institute with the single conviction that I need to work in the area of mental health and psychology was too clinically detached from the social reality of my people of this country.

I started learning how to articulate what I believe and spell out clearly what I don’t believe in. Slowly without realizing it I became too comfortable in that space where disagreement and diversity is found, appreciated, and then taken for granted. This is what social work taught me about education. It never stops. I had a seventy year old professor who taught us about the importance of being in love in a law class she took for us. She told me the sheer weight of duty that is rested upon the top 1 per cent of the country’s educated employed youth who has the power to change the social fabric of India’s villages and cities. She taught me whose voice I ought to represent when I speak. She taught me to question every authority and to work with every person with humility and pragmatic cleverness.

The people I met in TISS had come from forests, slums, cities and mountain lands. They were India for me. How each of them spoke and about what they wanted to live and die for was different. Each of them has a dream and a temptation from the world regarding a well paying job, a supportive partner and comfortable life. But what TISS did to us was to question who is paying you at that job, whether your partner’s gender and orientation is something you’ve thought about and what exactly is comfortable about living if you don’t shake things up which need some shaking.

COLLECTIVE CULTURE

Education wasn’t meant to be a level playing field at TISS, but what made it so was the city we were educated in. A budding social worker needs to explore their interventions, explore their communication skills and do a thorough need assessment. Mumbai as a city is a complex field for a social worker. For someone who likes studying and observing people and their stories, Mumbai is like a library. So what works well in Mumbai?

Certain cities have a culture of collectivity where they resonate with each others’ troubles and miseries and celebrate their joys together too. I saw the miracle of community living nowhere else but inside the Mumbai locals. Children, vegetables, vessels, fish and heavy equipment like ladders and baskets and whatnot enter the ladies compartment in a neat line, occupy space, give out a few choicest of swear words, and exit similarly all in the span of say 2 and a half minutes or less. Come rain or terror attacks, fear of outsiders or disdain for one’s own species, help is extended like for one’s own. Pride takes a beating when you accept help, and then you are open to helping others as well because now you’ve seen how easily it can be done.

The first and foremost thing of a gifting culture I noticed was acceptability and normalization of help giving or in simple terms “how easily we accept the practicing of kind behavior by strangers”. Once it is accepted, it is noticed more often, acknowledged and acted upon with lesser hesitation.

What is it that makes this city’s collective culture friendlier to curious learners and newcomers? I believe that along with a person’s genuine concern and joy of being alive and freedom of being somewhere unquestioned, of being allowed to exist in connection with their fellow beings is what makes wonders happen. This is an environment built over generations through practice, and marketing of this city as a city of dreams. Similarly, more spaces can be built in such manner, if the concept of collective or community living is understood and celebrated for the joy that it is.

By the end of my first semester in TISS, I had an answer to why I am a professional social worker and not a charity worker or doing social service. The answer lies in the fact that one has to appreciate the nuances that social work as a multi - disciplinary subject has to offer to people’s lives. The systematic study of social issues such as caste, class, gender and race have a direct impact on how we conceptualise development in the social sector. That is the power of working at the grassroots with this perspective and that is how we see empowerment.

BODIES...

Bodies…

Young and old, beautiful and disgusting

Flesh wound open and sore, shut and oozing

Soul wound dripping and gripping

My insides like the nervous beating of a new born heart

Bodies like quivers of questions that are shot

Songs like arrows of broken thoughts

Whizzing past vacant stares and swollen pasts

Across to another part, of the world…

bodies that come in all shapes and size

vehicles of brains and the deceptions of mind

instruments of change and windows of light

withering like autumn, dead by night

pain flowering like the first spring rush

pain beating the music out of mush

pain crawling out of a baby’s blush

pain in the seventeen year old skull crushed

pain that makes you look away

pain that makes you fake a smile and say

“pain is not present that much today!”

Pain that makes you swallow and pay

Anger

Anger in the crooked smile received

Anger in the bubbling pot of make believe

Anger is served every day, please take and leave

Anger today is the only reprieve

Anger anger at the mother

Anger the son and one another

Anger anger looking across the bars

Anger is justice and anger is last

Bodies,

Bodies are caving and falling in haste

Bodies are hidden and bodies are chased

Bodies are pure and bodies are chaste

Bodies are healthy and bodies are crazed

Bodies are valued and bodies are watched

Bodies are buried, found and tossed

Bodies are abandoned most of all

By those who lived in them and lost

Bodies were made of food and thought

Bodies were temples of joyous gods

Bodies were children dancing naked in the rain

Bodies were dust, blood and stain

Bodies were trees with seedling swings

Bodies were just another thing

Bodies are growing older now

Not just in age but in the sins we allow

Bodies within and bodies without

Please do not stay blind throughout

Bodies please look at other bodies now

Chopping blocks of city below, power towers above

Bodies bodies hurt everywhere

Blood and gore have lost their glare

The sun has set on the face of despair

Have to tell my story somewhere

Bodies bodies everywhere.

Daisy Zacharia Kozhupakkalam - the girl who ran with the wolves

Nymeria should have been her name, or wildfire or something like that.

I cannot say some days how I found a girl like her in the most ordinary of places – college

For her place and her demeanor spoke of a battlefield.

On the best of days, her hair like her temper would run amok

Yet, you could see the flash of a grin and her nose-pin in the sun as easily if you knew her well

A friend, a child and a counselor all rolled in one.

A poet, a warrior, traveler and comrade!

A woman to love, and a force to reckon with, she was my champion when even I wasn’t.

Thank you, for being my friend Nymeria, the girl who runs with the wolves and happy birthday, here is to two more glorious years with you.

PASSENGERS

To the shaken middle aged wide eyed lady on the train – breathe fully.
As you see the rain pouring down on the city you love,
Dragging each breath in quick successive gasps to escape the aftershock, of being alove.
To the children playing in gutters carefree –
Let no one tell you you ought to be sad.
To the handsome youth hanging from the rafters and living each day in the ecstasy of staring down death – grip stronger to life.
To the transgendered prostitute and her pimp traveling alone in the last compartment in the dimmed lights – I see your tears.
The strength though lies in your bodies that break a little each night, comes from your uncatergorized unfettered heart-
Let no one ever reduce you to a tick mark in a box.
To the countless heavily pregnant women who don’t push and squabble for a seat like others do –
Let your children be born in a world with more space but less distance.
To the 777 potential soul-mates looking out for me in all the wrong directions –
I’m here. I’ll wait. Keep looking.
To my friend, looking a little lost, a little annoyed at the general mayhem and with ironic disdain at me-
Look around, take it all in.
This city’s nervous system, its firing cells.
Look at my people.

Farewell?

I can feel you, you know, you are not gone.

Like before, when you were an idea in my head.

Now again, you have that place.

There is the creeping, and peeping from the edges

Of my solitary social life.

There is the quiet exultation in my little bits of living that I get done.

Not much has changed except the words between us-

Before they were innumerable, now they are numberless.

Before they were loud and proud, now they’re a whisper, almost a secret.

You wouldn’t enter my life again, but for an idea.

Perhaps there is a defeat in learning to respect myself.

Perhaps there is victory.

But I am still alone. Not all alone. I have an idea. An idea of you.