Gratitude

A couple of years ago, I started doing a gratitude challenge on Instagram. In addition to helping me focus on the good parts of each day, when I analysed what I had been grateful for over the month, there were some surprising results.

This year, I decided to do it again. This time, I must admit, I didn’t reflect on my day as much. Because the challenge overlapped with my India holiday, I lost track. I also tended to focus on the prompt and to take pictures to reflect the prompt, because it’s not necessary to stick to the order of the prompts. I think the whole thing was more haphazard this year, but also one thing was evident to me.

I am most grateful for my children. They are a huge source of happiness in my life. Their presence, the charming things they say, the way they enable me to see the world with fresh eyes and push me out of my comfort zone, getting me to do stuff I end up enjoying but that I would otherwise not have tried or been too lazy to actually do.

As a person who was never into kids, this is a huge and unexpected change in my personality and life. It is why I encourage people to have at least one kid, one’s situation allowing for this of course. By this, I don’t mean that I go about evangelizing the need for people to have children, but if someone who is ambivalent asks my opinion on the subject, my answer is usually positive. I agree that I am fortunate to have great help in raising my children, but had that not been the case, I would still advocate having one child, again if one’s general life situation allows for it.

I am sure there are people out there that regret their decision to have kids, and that these narratives need to be told and heard too.

In my case, though, despite the stresses that children put on my body, my finances, my marriage, my lifestyle, my emotional and mental wellbeing, overall, when I do a cost-benefit analysis, the sheer joy, breath of learning and general fun they bring to my life trumps the negatives.

PS: The second thing that I seem most grateful for is my job, the opportunity to do the PhD. The third is probably living in Hong Kong. This is just my overall impression.

Resolution

This Next year I’m keeping it simple. Just one thing to do:

1. Shut the fuck up.
2. Zip it.
3. Count to 10.
4. Breathe deeply.
5. Think Inner Poise.
6. Swallow the rage until it forms a bitter little ball in the stomach but as long as the exterior is Lake Placid, all is well.

Etc.

Girls

I finally caught up with Season 5. [Spoiler Ahead, read at your own discretion]

V happened to walk in on me watching the epic fight between Adam and Jessa. “Is this where you learn your drama?” he said, or something to that effect. “No, I’m dramatic because I’m like these people,” I said. “Angsty.”

Girls, for all its crazy, presents the ideal of kind of friendship – where people drift but tey come back, sliding into bed next to their sleeping friend with the confidence that they will be accepted.

On the other hand, Girls presents some unrealistically narcissistic people. In one scene, Shoshana is in a bar with her new boyfriend and a guest, and she has some earth-shattering epiphany, and while her boyfriend is in the loo tells the other girl, “I have to go home” and leaves. This might have been excusable as a once in a lifetime thing but this happens on this show with alarming frequency. People decide they are in the midst of some emotional upheaval and just have to leave. No matter how dramatic I am, I think waiting and explaining why you have to leave is essential.

Back to friendship though, at one point Adam accuses Jessa of siding with Hannah even though Hannah is selfish blah blah blah. And Jessa says, “Yes, that is what friendship is.” That is, friendship doesn’t mean always liking the person you’re friends with. This was an important insight for me.

 

Troubling the binary

In philosophy, it has been pointed out how Western language, culture and myths rest on a series of binaries – black/white, male/female/, good/bad, soul/body, mind/matter etc. Jacques Derrida pointed out that what is insidious about these binaries is that one term is also negative  or devalued. Feminists have pointed out how the devalued term is often associated with the feminine.

On the one hand, consciousness rests on a separation of the self from the other. To understand something one has to understand what it is not. Or so we are told. One of the philosophical questions I’ve been preoccupied with is whether there are cultures that do not think in binaries. While Eastern cultures, like Indian and Chinese philosophy are better in this regard, when you can to originary stories, you are back at binaries.

The other day I was reading one of those Mr Men books to Nene (my kids love these books although I sometimes have problems with their messages, this is again one of those instances when I cannot find it in me to censor my kids’ choices). The book was about a guy called Mr Dizzy, which is a polite way of calling him Mr Stupid, because his defining quality was that he answered basic questions wrong.

For example, “what is the opposite of black?” “Pink,” said Mr Dizzy, and everyone laughed.

“So what is the opposite of black” I asked Nene.

He paused. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Nothing.”

I was about to say “white” and then stopped myself. I realised that my child had broken the binary. Or rather, that he did not think in binaries. That is was possible to not think in binaries. The opposite of black could be anything or nothing. It was not necessary for there to be an opposite at all.

I suddenly realised that thinking in binaries is not natural or instinctive. Or at least not universal. Like everything else, we learn it and we internalise it and then we say it was always there.

Emotion commotion

So I’ve decided I have problems with my emotions. This is weird, because I used to be the most emotionally controlled person for the better part of my life – till I was about 21. It’s been downhill from there. From what I recall, I had a pretty calm adolescence, so either I’m going through a late teenage phase or early menopause (personally, I’d prefer the latter because I really want to stop getting my period).

1. A lot of things stress me out. They could range from an email which asks for corrections in my paper (admittedly this was the third email and I was getting fed-up and taking it personally when maybe it wasn’t personal) to Mimi’s drama to having to do something I’m not familiar with (like plan a trip). This is not new. I think I was always subliminally a high stress person but just concealed it very well, and now the cracks are showing.
2. I flare up easily and hotly. This is new. I date it to the most heated phase in my marriage when V would go stone cold like a wall, and I would feel like I had to turn up the drama to get his attention. However, now it’s become a habit and I really need to reign it in. The underlying causes haven’t gone away, but they aren’t severe enough to warrant some of my reactions.
3. I am thin skinned. Just this morning I forgot the card that lets my into our building and I tried to wave to the security guard to let me in. Initially, she was smiling because she knows me but when she realised I didn’t have my card, she kept smiling but didn’t open the door. I understand that she’s only doing her job, but she should have tried to communicate something instead of just smiling vacantly into space. For some reason, this upset me inordinately and I had to work to get a grip and not let this incident take over my mood. This tendency is worse when there are other things bothering me in the background. I feel like I cannot bear even the slightest shit that life throws my way.

I’m thinking this is not normal. Or is it just that everyone goes through this but I’m just unduly concerned. I feel that I need to regress into my childhood botness though and attain some emotional detachment. How to do this I’m not sure. The irony is that I realise that I’ve turned into Mimi, or she’s turned into me. While I’m not as dramatic as her, and most of the time, strangers don’t get to see my inner turmoil (then again, Mimi is fairly well behaved among strangers), I’m an adult and (probably?) should be doing better.

Friendships yet again

Yes, again! Hopefully, the last but this seems to be the topic on my mind at the mo.

But this time, I’m not thinking about me (except tangentially).

On Sunday, I took the kids to the park and there were a group of girls playing in the corner my two usually play in. What’s more the girls had used some of the rocks and stones the kids usually play with and creating a very interesting arrangement of leaves and flowers.

My kids ran over while I hung back, or tried to, until I could no longer stand the fact that my kids were barging into a game where they were clearly not wanted (one of the girls had told them “to go away”). When I asked Nene and Mimi to leave that group alone and play somewhere else, the immediately got mutinous. Nene started demanding that the girls give back their rocks and Mimi went so far as to go and grab some.

I was wondering what to do, when the girls ran off. When they didn’t return after a while, I let Nene and Mimi take back one of their rocks. I tried to distract them by asking them to make chutney with leaves. Then one of the girls came back and asked if they had taken their rocks.

Mimi said no, then yes. Then Mimi said: “Do you want to be our friend?” Her approach is so direct. She has used this line after I urged her to ask another child to play. This girl hesitated and said: “I don’t speak English very good.” Mimi spent five minutes babbling about English and Chinese until I gently suggested she ask her her name.

The girls were now in the maze and Mimi ran off after them. I decided to stand and watch. Nene climbed a wall and was watching too: “I know you want to play with them,” I said to Nene. He nodded sadly. It looked like Mimi was getting included. “Okay go,” I said. He ran to them.

Within five minutes they were all playing together. The girls brought me leaves for my chutney. They showed my kids some little crabs they had caught in a plastic bowl. The language didn’t seem to matter, though as inevitably happens they were speaking English. I guess because my kids have so little Chinese but every Chinese kid has some English, the latter becomes the lingua franca.

The experience taught me that I need to hang back more. Kids friendships are not like adult friendships. They come together more easily. They have their own way to breaking in and negotiating. If they get rejected, it’s painful to watch, but they get over it.

Maybe I remember too much of my own childhood. I had a couple of lonely years in primary school that are etched into my memory. I remember rejections clearly. I try to protect my kids from these. But maybe I don’t need to. They are capable of dusting themselves off better than me.

Here’s a picture of the lot of them:

 

 

Unoriginal remarks of our times

[Inspired by a conversation with MinCat.]

A couple of remarks that one hears so frequently that one just wants to bite one’s fist with boredom:

1. “You know me, I’m flaky like that.”
   You will not believe the number of people that spout this one or its variants. Or maybe you will believe because you have likely either been at the receiving end of this or one of those who uses it to get out of behaving like an adult who actually commits to things and follows up on that commitment. The point is, it is not just this one special snowflake that is flaky, but enough people for it to start seeming like an epidemic. I am writing this to cure those out there who believe that they are charmingly “flaky like that” to realise that they are a) not alone b) not charming.
   It is for people like this that I developed the three-strikes rule. It is a highly efficient way of saving myself the energy of planning around such a person. I just cannot even. You flake, you bake in my book.
   For me, flaking repeatedly is an indication of a) not caring enough (which needs to be responded to in kind, unless one is completely sure one adores this person to cope with their dilettantism) b) an immature emotional and intellectual development (which does not bode well for friendship). So.

2.  “I’m not a girly girl. I don’t really get along with girls. They’re so bitchy. I get along with boys better.”

Yes, lady, you and the other 300,000 female souls out there. So many women these days seem allergic to other women that it’s a mystery that the concept of girlfriends exists at all.

Guess what? The phenomenon of wanting to hang out with the socially more powerful group is not new. Women are bitchy and catty because they have always had to fight for the crumbs of power. You disdain them for that and want to play with the big boys. We get it.

Just as long as you know that you’re not original, nor do you somehow become a bigger person by hanging out with the boys, carry on. I’ll enjoy that soul-affirming conversation with my girls because you know what, hanging out with other women is not all cat and mouse. Sometimes it’s kittens in a basket purring.

Home can be two

10 March is Tibetan National Uprising day. A friend posted this poem on Facebook:

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is not a foreigner.

He is a cook
at a Chinese takeaway.
They think he is Chinese
run away from Beijing.

He sells sweaters in summer
in the shade of the Parel Bridge.
They think he is some retired Bahadur.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
abuses in Bambaya Hindi,
with a slight Tibetan accent
and during vocabulary emergencies
he naturally runs into Tibetan.
That’s when the Parsis laugh.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
likes to flip through the MID-DAY,
loves FM, but doesn’t expect
a Tibetan song.

He catches the bus at a signal,
jumps into a running train,
walks into a long dark gully
and nestles in his kholi.

He gets angry
when they laugh at him
“ching-chong-ping-pong”.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is now tired,
wants some sleep and a dream.
On the 11pm Virar Fast,
he goes to the Himalayas.
The 8.05am Fast Local
brings him back to Churchgate
into the Metro: a New Empire.

— Tenzin Tsundue

It’s a reminder of the alienation that exiles feel. And the complicity of ‘locals’ in that.

Strangely, when I read the poem, my dominant feeling was homesickness. [And I fully recognize here that there is no parity between my homesickness and that of the Tibetan in exile. My homesickness is marked by the transnational privilege to return – home for me is a just a flight away, an expensive one that precludes frequent returns, but the possibility is open.]

There was a time when this homesickeness would trouble me, not for the fact of it, but because when I moved to Hong Kong, I felt the need to pick a side. And after five years in Hong Kong I picked Hong Kong. The end. Or so I thought.

Last month, I gave a lecture on Salman Rushdie’s essay Imaginary Homelands, in which he talks about writing in the diaspora. I reflected on an incident that happened when I was in Bombay in December. Or rather, as I was leaving Bombay. As the plane was taking off, I pointed out the city spread out below us to Nene who was peering out of the airplane window. Suddenly, I trailed off. V, who was sitting in the row behind us, poked me and whispered, “Are you crying?” And I realised that I was. Ten years after leaving Bombay, I realised that some roots are never severed. Something is always left behind.

I have finally realised that home can be two or more places. On does not have to pick a side. When I leave Hong Kong, there will be a part of me that will keen for it. I have put down roots here too. My ties to Bombay are the ties of birth, the ties of familiarity, of blending in, of roads that can be navigated unconsciously. My ties to Hong Kong are the comfort of safety and ease, the exhileration of the aesthetic beauty of the skyline and the buzz of the international, the jolt of the strange, and the nostalgia of the early years of marriage and learning to be an adult. If Bombay is family, Hong Kong is a friend.

I lived two years in Hyderabad too. I should have put down roots there. But I didn’t. The city didn’t take to me and I to it. I fled every opportunity I could, and when I had no reason to be there any longer, I packed my things and never looked back.

 

 

 

End of year

This year has really sped by hasn’t it? Or at least the last semester has (I think in semesters now, maybe that’s why things seem to speed by so. Though even the summer went by in a blur).

I like to take stock, but the danger of taking stock is that you only remember the things that happened fairly recently and are fresh in the mind. Luckily, I have this blog and so I can go back and read posts for the year, and luckily, I didn’t post much this year so I assume those are the significant things that happened in the year. Soooo:

1. Biggest improvement of the year: My marriage

One of the big things that seems to be on the mend towards the end of this year is the marriage. It surprises me sometimes when the cliches turn out to be true, because I always think I’m more complicated than the cliches. But in all honestly, a big stress on our marriage was having two kids in quick succession coupled with a more stressful job situation for V. And the thing that seems to have helped me get over the years of assholery was him actually apologizing for being horrible. As I said to him, I’m not sure this will do the trick, that I can or even want to be the person I was, but if you keep apologizing, out of those many times, you may sound sincere in a few of them and I may believe you. The next step is to actually change the obnoxious behaviours and he has done that to a great extent, though it never really felt real until the apology. Of course, we have both changed in this process, the slate can’t entirely be wiped clean, but we have rediscovered how to enjoy time with each other and how to fight less, which is progress.

2. Biggest zen of the year

My holiday to Dublin and Cork, Ireland. I have not traveled for ages, and I have never traveled entirely alone. Ireland is also a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Apart from the visa drama, the whole trip was beautiful. The place was as beautiful and friendly as I imagined, I loved my little room in the B&B I picked after much drama, I met some nice people at the conference, and I came back refreshed even though I had flown some 20 hours each way.

3. Biggest low of the year

The debacle at the conference in Indonesia and being told my project was pointless. I recently gathered up the energy to tell my supervisor about it, and she was very nice and encouraging.

4. Biggest challenge of the year

Mimi’s tantrums. I have turned into a mum who loses it and yells. I’m often at my wit’s end with this girl, though at the start of the year, I accepted that  I was going to bear the brunt of her intense personality. MinCat tells me that from her niece’s experience, this too shall pass and I hope it does. In the meantime, we don’t have a strategy, but challenging her head on is not working.

5. Biggest change of the year

My attitude to money. I have pared down my spending a lot, and particularly in terms of eating out, I am very sensitive to value for money. Last night, we went to an Indian restaurant in Central, which itself should have tipped me off, but I checked their menu online and the prices seemed ok, but when we went there, it turned out to be one of those overpriced chi chi places which made me feel really stupid because I’m going to India next week.

I also can usually walk by shops without feeling the urge to buy anything. I do have my shopping binge moments, but once a year is acceptable I think. The next one will come on in India.

6. Biggest achievement of the year

Fitness and weight loss. I lost a tonne of weight thanks to being ill, and then I followed up by starting a running-yoga-swimming routine. While the swimming has stopped because it’s too cold, I’ve kept up the running and once-a-week yoga and I’m pleased with how I look. This month, V finally got on board and started exercising a couple of times a week with me, which is something I’ve wanted him to do for ages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walls

This post drew my attention to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows which coined the word “sonder” meaning “the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”. What struck a chord for me was Sharanya’s comment about the need for the word for the opposite of “sonder”, “the feeling I’d describe as the wall one hits against in certain individuals despite one’s core curiosity about and attunement to others.”

I have met so many of these people, most of them of the male persuasion. Boys, for whatever reason (my theory is infantile and very early childhood socialization reinforced by later socialization) excel at putting up walls, their whole gender identity in fact seems to hinge upon it. It was why, after I got over my fascination with the mysterious male sex and my desire to be one of them so that I too could have some of that power, I grew bored of them. Bored, basically, of the walls.

Last semester I took a qualitative research methodology class. One of the exercises was for a group of classmates to interview one classmate. I ended up being the interviewee and even though it was just an exercise to a very boring set of questions, I answered honestly from my personal experience, sharing details, some not positive, of my family life. I ended up bringing up something that upset even me, and later I thought, I should not have been quite so frank. But I did it because I know how boring it is as an interviewer to get the same safe answers. And also because at some level I thought my experiences honestly shared might help someone. I have been helped by other people generous enough to honestly share their experiences, painful ones too, and I try to pay that forward as long as the situation is not going to adversely affect me too much (ergo this blog).

My colleague who was also in the group was shocked at how much I revealed. He is also a person whose walls became apparent to me fairly quickly, the  quintessential male from a part of Europe known for its reserve. We are close because we talk about a lot of things related to graduate school and possibly he has shared more with me than with other people, but his walls are so clear. They amuse me because they are so obvious. And I don’t have the patience to get past them.

I have a good number of male friends but no male besties. Because to be someone I think of as a Friend in the upper case (and there about five such people, and I’m being generous with the number), we have to have mutually gotten past each others’ walls. During my early teens when I hungered after male power, I had my walls too. But increasingly, I let people into the living room if not the bedroom of my inner life fairly easily. And if people insist on keeping me in the hall or corridor, then I cannot be bothered because these people bore me. I have no interest in their superficialities and pretensions of coherence.

Hence the only males I’ve been close to are the ones I’m sexually attracted to. The sex seems to help men bring down their walls. I guess “girlfriend” or “wife” or “lover” is a marker for “can let the chinks in my armour show”. No wonder married men are in danger of forgetting their mothers and sisters in favour of their wives, possibly because they discover the pleasure of the collapsed walls. And even then, they never really bring down their walls like women do.

I don’t quite understand why when someone asks “how are you?” people don’t honestly share something real instead of “fine”. Sometimes people don’t know how to deal with the response, but often it gives them something to go on. My impatience with the average social gathering is that it is full of people with their walls up so that the only safe conversation is work, and it pains me that people are reduced to “what do you do”, even though I have fallen back on that in my day. I don’t really go to these social gatherings anymore so it’s not a huge problem for me. Whatever is said of mothers (usually condescendingly), at least their default conversation is their children, and the anxiety or joy there is real.

I don’t know if I would categorize the feeling that one cannot get past the walls as a sorrow. I am resigned to it enough to mostly not register it. However, I guess, once in a while you meet someone and they seem interesting and then you come right up against their wall, and sigh, and walk away.