Unrealistic covers

 My laptop refuses to reconnect to the internet in case I spend too long with it inactive (like when I am typing). So I listen to music on Youtube on a side tab so that the net is forced to be active. Thus in the past month I have listened to a lot of instrumental music because it can run along in the background without being too distracting. 

One of the best instrumental things for working are the songs from Bridgerton- familiar pop music converted to very recognizable instrumental versions of themselves. But I laugh at the covers of these videos... take this example:

Half naked lady in the snow. On one hand, very romance novel inspired- half naked ladies who are swooning, running, posing, dreamily staring into space in the middle of a snow-ridden landscape, while a manor/castle/cosy cottage/ranch/ even a spaceship (!) are just visible in the background are innumerable. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the above lady has a full set of flesh-colored thermals on the other side of the shimmery night gown. 

Japanese Death Poems

 I have decreed today to be a day of relaxation. Which means, I will only do the things that give me joy and peace. These past few weeks have been a bit sparse in such moments- too much time spent on things that I need to be doing, instead of wanting to do.

Japanese Death Poems is making me think of how death has been approached by different cultures since time immemorial. There was some science documentary on TV some months ago talking about the earliest evidences in human history when death became something to be commemorated-  a little handmade toy next to the grave of a child found in a cave, the site many thousands of years old, even before Homo sapiens became the predominant sub-species on earth.

I don't know much about Indian thinking of death, other than the well-known lines from the Gita speaking about the unchanging, divine soul changing bodies like it changes clothes. Of course, since reincarnation is something most of us believe in (what a reassuring thought to know that one has multiple chances at getting life right! Though of course, what is right or what is wrong?), death implicitly becomes a part of this cyclical nature of existence.

In the Japanese Death Poems book, I am learning about the Japanese (and a bit of Chinese, since there was such a lot of influence of the culture of latter on the former) thinking on life and death. Poems, apparently, are a very common feature of Japanese life, with everybody regardless of social or economic or even educational class expressing themselves in poetry featuring their every day lives, their love for nature, loyalty to emperor etc for thousands of years. Hard to imagine the manga-consuming stereotypes of Japanese shows as poets, no? But as per this book, they are! 

And death was something to be looked at in the eye- in fact, the norm is for the Japanese, at the time of their death, to write their final thoughts as a "death poem". In this book, the author has collected the death poems of everyday Japanese, monks, samurai warriors and others from over a thousand years and translated them. How amazing and surprising is that! 

Read this one by a Zen monk using the metaphor of archery to describe his impending death:

Inhale, exhale

Forward, back

Living, dying:

Arrows, let flown each to each

Meet midway and slice

The void in aimless flight-

Thus I return to the source.

- Gesshu Soko (died 1696)

Here is a poem by someone who was famously arrogant:

Till now I thought

that death befell

the untalented alone.

If those with talent, too, 

must die

surely they make 

a better manure?

- Kyoriku (1656-1715) 

There are poems mocking death poems, especially of those who wrote the poems and then instead of dying, recovered:

After recovery, he polishes
the style of his death poem

The mouth that has uttered
a death poem
now devours porridge

There is something very novel and attractive in the idea of penning something about death before one dies. I don't think I have ever heard the like in any other culture. My mom wouldn't have had the chance, but I wonder what might my grandmother or father or uncles have said before they passed away? 

A deep breath

 The first day in nearly 4 months where I have some time to breathe and feel like the interminable to-do list can keep for tomorrow.

Went to Blossoms and got myself a book "Japanese Death Poems"... sounds morbid, but so far, very peaceful and peace-giving.

For the first time in 10 years I recently felt the desire to leave India for nicer climes- somewhere I don't have to worry about cockroaches, bed bugs, mosquitoes or lice (the newest entrant on my hit list of bugs). Our house has recently been overrun with all these and I feel like just when I have gotten the better of one of them, the next one comes in. Doesn't seem to matter how much I clean the kitchen every day and spray all sorts of herbal and non-herbal things everywhere. The lice, of course, are a curse of Indian schools everywhere- every house with a school-going daughter probably has to contend with these pests. The cockroaches are apparently due to the connection with the sewage- they crawl up and enter the house and then, of course, you are done for.

I must not waste this precious time on such inane matters. It is time to eat and then relax with my book of poetry. Felt the need to write something in this blog after a long time though... 

The Best Romance Novel I Have Ever Read. Hands Down

 Is not even a novel.

It's a fanfic that is perfect- takes off from the original, makes you understand the original so much better and creates a totally believable, swoony, yearny alternate story.

I present to you "Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love"

It's free. I wish I were reading it for the first time again.

Why can't every book be so good?

Attempts at getting inner angst out.

Compassion is like

Charity-begins at home

In and to oneself.

But none mention that

Compassion to oneself is 

The hardest of all

Insecurity

Is an ever renewing,

Never-dying weed

Insecurity

Engulfs kindness and spits up

Pure self-vitriol 

Let go, let go, of

The urge to cut myself with

Knife-like, blade sharp words

Let go, let go, of

The need to defend, or 

Attempt to "Improve"

My inner core's steel

My outer self forgets and

Yearns for better frills 

A better me is

Just me, as I am now.

Accept, embrace me. 

Be still, my mind and

Allow the kindness to flow through

To heal and strengthen.

The Bird Crescendo

 At special times, usually in the early mornings, bird and bird sounds will suddenly come together in a rousing crescendo. Usually they aggregate around one tree or a clump of trees and chirp/screech/chirp all at the same time. If you happen to be around that area, you will suddenly see many species of birds zooming all around you, you will be in the center of that avian vortex. Your breath will catch and you will stand utterly still. It lasts for a few minutes, then one flock after an another suddenly fly away en masse to another tree. And it all disappears as quickly as it started. But you, in the middle of that maelstrom, can only blink and wonder what happened. And you feel blessed to have been part of that event, whatever it was. 

I have experienced this only twice in my life and the first time was through a glass pane. The window of my hotel room in Gangtok overlooked a giant tree and at 7am in the morning, a few thousand warblers of all kinds descended on that tree. This was in February, the tree was leafless but the birds on it made it seem alive and I could hear their sounds through the glass. I was a few feet away, but felt overwhelmed by it all- the colors, the movement, the sounds, the sameness and yet the vast differences. I desperately wanted to get my binoculars and at the same time, didn't want to move in case I missed something. So I stood transfixed and still. 

The second time was on the balcony of Vidya Bhavan Rural Inst a few weeks ago in Udaipur. I had finished a short run, washed my clothes and had climbed up the building to dry them under a gulmohar tree. And all of a sudden was surrounded by parakeets, doves, hornbills, sunbirds and ioras. It was a stunning sight- the clear cloudless blue of the sky, the bright green leaves and even brighter orange flowers of the gulmohar, the parakeet greens, the hornbill greys and the small metallic punctuation marks of the sunbirds and the eye catching yellows of the ioras. 

For me, birdwatching is like meditation. And the experience of the crescendo is as euphoric as any meditative trance. 

A milestone

 Today, I submitted my first ICMR grant. To me, it feels like an enormous milestone that should be marked in some way. I had immersed myself in it for weeks... working on it a bit at a time until two days ago when I pulled a couple of all-nighters and finished it up and submitted it this morning, a few hours before the deadline. 

Why do I feel this sense of accomplishment? I may not get the grant (though I certainly hope I do), and this is not the first grant I have written.. what is so great about this one? Perhaps it is because ICMR is the Indian equivalent of the NIH and the grant I wrote is like the R01- a large, complex beast with expectations of depth of theoretical knowledge, technical expertise, practical wisdom and broad research experience. All the grants I have written and won thus far have been smaller: short, innovative, gives you money to tinker and flash but does not give you the sense of putting down roots. 

The grant I wrote was also different in another significant way: it was not a discovery project in fields I have received traditional training in, not a business innovation pitch which is something I have learned to do in the past few years, but in a field that I have long yearned to enter but felt like I could never crack:  in public health implementation. 

A decade after leaving academia, I submitted a grant to the pinnacle of Indian academic research organizations. I feel good about it.  

Do I feel good because I want to be thought of as an academic research scientist? 

I think not. Just look at the richness of my life:

During this decade, I have gained experience in so many things. I have learned to stand only on my feet, with no organization and no institutional structure to protect me, no expectation of a predictable salary and no automatic legacy of authority. I have built my networks from scratch, I have stumbled and fallen and clambered up; I have starved, struggled with insecurity and feared; I have brought on people, trained them and let them go. I have built my reputation as someone cheerful, energetic, endlessly optimistic and ever-willing to befriend, be helpful and collaborate. I hope I also have built a reputation for integrity and transparency. These are not things that I have inherited from old mentors or from institutional pedigrees. These are values I cultivated after deep questioning and practiced even when it may not always have been easy. 

Would I have been able to do all this in the protected surroundings of an academic institute? I like to think I would not.

I feel a bit battered and bruised. But I feel stable, like I have put down roots. I know that things that would have swayed and shaken me a decade ago do not faze me as much anymore. I know that there is no ideal world, but only the serenity and confidence we build for ourselves. I remember my father like that- as someone who faced the world with the confidence that he had seen things that scared him but faced them anyway. And as someone who knew what he stood for and was like a tree-solid, stable and strong.  

It's funny that an ICMR grant makes me think of him. But perhaps it is the knowledge that I have come really far and maybe that much closer to him. 

I want to highlight what I read recently in a book called "All About Love- A New Vision" by bell hooks. She shared the definition of love that made most sense to her: Love is anything that leads to your or another's spiritual growth.

Let me spend the next decades living this- let me love my children, husband and family such that they feel enabled in their spiritual growth. Let me grow in mine. And if my spiritual growth includes a component of grant writing that induces such a deep sense of wonder, gratitude and peace, then let me acknowledge and embrace that.