The Poetry in Imperfections – A Sequel

The rice pancake batter that I set yesterday had not fermented until this morning. I set the batter on the girdle, anway!

The pancakes turned out like pattys.

I looked outside my window, while working on the rice batter and the now pancake/pattys.

I thought about all I had written yesterday, about the poetry in imperfections.

Sometime, before all of this, everything that was going wrong seemed so negative. I had a handle on nothing.

Things were slipping apart.

But once I looked out of the window, and thought of the poetry in imperfections, everything began to come together.

I have lost the handle on the argument that I was trying to make on a paper that is long overdue. I still have no handle. 

Perhaps life is like this kind of whiteboard, where things get written and then get erased and then get overwritten or underwritten.

Who knows? For now, I am trying to seek poetry in every bit of imperfection, hoping that the imperfections will turn into productive, beautiful, somethings as I keep writing along!

The Poetry in Imperfections

Things come together

They fall apart, in one moment.

Sometimes, less salt in the lentil curry is perfect.

Sometimes, the right proportion makes not good grub.

 

It is not what you eat.

It is not what you put together.

It is the perfections in the midst of imperfections,

And imperfections in the midst of perfections,

That cause things to come together, in one moment,

And to fall apart, in another.

 

We make passionate love,

And, you fart right then.

I fall in love with you, all over again.

It is the imperfections of ourselves that we bring to our love,

That makes the passion and companionship between us. 

 

Words are never perfect,

Neither is love.

It is not words that make the poetry,

It is the balances and imbalances in the vision, joy, anxiety and craft of the maker,

That perfects the poetry in words.

 

It is not what you eat.

It is not what you put together.

It is the perfections in the midst of imperfections,

And imperfections in the midst of perfections,

That cause things to come together, in one moment,

And to fall apart, in another.

 

[Dedicated to Abhisek Sarda and my Altaf]

Scripting from the Unchartered

While sitting in the restaurant this evening, I accidentally noticed my feet. They looked worn out, grey, soiled. The cracks on my heels were re-appearing. I was struck by the miles that I have traveled with them in the last two months, miles where I have seen myself, believably and unbelievably, go from strength to strength. There have been many moments of weakness, vulnerability, shame and what have you. But each moment that has come up after the dark one has been revealing of the lightness that the darkness was trying to reach to me.

 

With questions faced about the seeming contradictions between philosophy and practicality, concepts and action, I find that the world has suddenly become a new playground for me. Perhaps my own spirit has been freed. While I believe that I am losing the handles through which I once made my world, those very handles are coming back to me and making anchors of themselves. A journey – unchartered, unknown – has begun. How much I’d be able to be hold on is a matter of how much faith I can place in the world to take care of me.

 

I begin this blog post with this thought: “How much I’d be able to be hold on is a matter of how much faith I can place in the world to take care of me.” This evening, we concluded JSFoo Pune. To say that I was the organizer of the event is to give myself the opportunity to step out and scoff at me. The whole event was the outcome of a number of significant and wondrous parts. To not credit myself as being the driver of this event is to deny myself the opportunity of knowing the great strength, courage and craft that I am capable of and the greater heights that I can reach from where I have just begun. To understand what I am saying, let me recount the full experience of putting together JSFoo Pune.

 

I was never the owner of this event. I don’t think I could be. Kiran was just about recovering from the stress of finishing up Droidcon India 2011. I must admit here that I can never understand Kiran. Now that I work with him, I don’t think I even want to understand how his mind works. His mind is phenomenal and it is a very deep experience to work with someone like him. I decided to help him with the logistics of organizing JSFoo Pune. I visited Pune in December 2011 and started to piece things from where the event was last left. I met Pradeepto, sought help from Ramki and Kushal, and got into tune with what was to be done, bit by bit. What has been most amazing for me, throughout this event, is how every little piece of what turned out to be JSFoo Pune today, unfolded and pasted itself, by itself. There was no one organizer of this event, no one driver – everything came together in magical ways to become what it did today. In the two trips to Pune in December, a venue for the hacknight turned up and a venue for the event was fixed.

 

Life has the most interesting ways of demonstrating how something worthwhile is put together not with ease, but with the ability to work through uncertainties and challenges, and with a degree of equanimity. Now, when I look back, it seems like everything came together so seamlessly, so effortlessly. After the preparation visit in December, I started to work on the details of the event. In the past, I have been a meticulous planner. I am still a meticulous planner, but I am now more able to let go of things that I am physically and mentally incapable of completing or chasing within the constraints of time. Does this mean I am less ambitious now? I believe that I have actually become more capable now that I have learnt the limits of my physical reach and respect for my health and body. Also, my friend Kavita Mukhi played a great role in driving home this perspective when I met her in December. I believe Kavita’s attitude and pragmatic wisdom was one of the most important driving forces in bringing out the best that I was capable of, today and all along the last week. 

 

On many days in December, I wasn’t sure how things would eventually shape up. Participation was picking up very gradually. I wasn’t sure of my own role in this event – what was I owning in this event? What was my role? What was I doing here? A number of these moments of self-doubt would spring up. By then, I had also learnt that in moments of doubt, it is important to simply sit back and breathe in stillness. 

 

December paved the way for January. In January, visits to Pune became more frequent. With each visit, things seemed to fall apart and then suddenly come together. This blog post is not about the mundane details of organizing the logistics of an event. I believe the logistics can be put together if you imagine that you are throwing a party in your home and you want your guests, friends and acquaintances to have the time of their life! That is the fundamental of a good event. And I can seriously assure you that this is all it is about. But perhaps, underlying a good event, there is more than what the mind can know or fathom. It is about the people and the spirit they bring to the enterprise. I want to especially mention two such wonderful persons without who, I believe, JSFoo Pune would not have had the element of fun and madness that it was. They are: Billy aka William K Moses Junior (oh yes, he is that!) and Aditya Yadav!

 

Aditya has been a discovery ever since I have first met him. I have been amazed at how amazing he is as a person. To me, he is not just the super duper geek that he really is! He is someone I am very proud to share a friendship with. The element of madness that he brings with his thinking, the element of sloppiness that he gives the impression of behind the unseen veneer of his immense skill and craft, the honesty that he combines with the mischief and excitement in his voice – I find them both inspiring and driving. If anyone has driven me in this event, it is has been Aditya. I have had hard times trying to figure out how to get work out of him, but everything has been worth in the face of the most enjoyable moments that we have had in working together.

 

Billy is another piece of magic. To find someone who is in complete sync with your line of thought is not an everyday occurrence. I believe that if Billy had not joined me in the last week of tightening the loose ends, and most importantly, being the sounding board for my most mundane decisions, I would not have been the person of composure that I was today. Billy is another one that gives the impression of deception. What lies beneath him is the remarkable ability to adapt and work together. In the course of working with Billy, it dawned on me that an organization or an event is not about a single person; it is about how everyone works together to put up the show. Thank you, Billy!

 

JSFoo Pune would not be complete without mention of the role that the volunteers and the students of SICSR played eventually. They indeed ensured that a show runs through motivation and initiative! Thank you, all of you! I had the most amazing time working with all of you!

 

There were some last minute ups and downs. We had to move rooms for our sessions at the nth hour; the caterer’s van got stuck in the traffic and the rice and halwa almost threatened not to reach the participants until the driver appeared suddenly. Things would work and things would fall out of place at all times in the day. But whoever said that these things don’t happen. They happen, all the time. The boat rocks. The balances tilt. At the end of the day, what matters is how we respond to situations such that when the boat rocks, the ocean of calm inside of you is not perturbed. With this thought, I’d say thanks to all. As much I have driven this event, the whole experience of organizing JSFoo Pune has driven to help me become a more thoughtful and sensitive person!

A path I accidentally tread – Droidcon India

My feet are tired. My throat is somewhat sore. I yearn to sleep because my body is tired. But what I have experienced in the past two days and the last few weeks is unflagging spirit and a great deal of strength. My words, what I am putting down here, are the result of one of the most humbling experiences I have had in recent times.

I haven’t been running since the past three months now. Ever since my return from Ladakh and the run at The High, life has been a different episode altogether. I got back from Ladakh, refreshed, ready to start off on writing and finishing up my thesis. It was around the same time that Kiran and his baby – HasGeek – began picking momentum which had much greater velocity for my liking. Here I was – slow, thinking, frustrated that the words were not exactly translating my thoughts, and simultaneously experiencing the highs of intellectual wrestling. Despite the hitches, the hiccups, the highs and the lows, I was turning into a very focused person. In the months of September and October, I was in such an intense state of writing that even sleep eluded me. I was always thinking about my work, about my research during my sleep and as soon as I was awake, I was alive with fresh thoughts, new ideas and deep insights I hadn’t thought of. 

As much as this sounds like a blissful state for a PhD student, I was also struggling to keep pace with my husband who was intensely engrossed with nurturing his baby – HasGeek – and the two events he was to pull off in the following months – jsFoo Bangalore and Droidcon India. My journey with him and his work started somewhere around end of September / early October when I realized that in the struggle to create boundaries so that my slow pace is not interfered by his fast pace, I was becoming counterproductive to my own relationship with him. It is important to create boundaries, but with loved ones, there is a need for better understanding and more communication.

Kiran hadn’t been sleeping in the months since our return from Ladakh. Each night, he would work tirelessly to tie various loose ends, pull things together, and by the time I woke up in the morning, around 6 AM to go for a short run or to cycle, he would be readying himself to sleep for a few hours before some phone call or the other would wake him up and get him started on his work all over again. I was worried for Kiran and his health. But as a little girl, I had seen my father live his life similarly during the early years of his business. I guess I managed to take some heart from my father’s example. Yet, my heart kept fluttering in this period … … …

In relationships, there is no ego is what I was told at one time by a loved one. In my case, I had the hurry, the worry and the ego to get past my husband quickly and be done with my thesis. But life has its own ways of teaching you how to slow down. And most importantly, in my case, life has always given me the experiences that have led me to think through my research and my thesis in very fundamental and radical ways. 

Off late, I have been advocating the importance of relationships over laws and how we, as a society and as people in different places need to learn to develop and nurture relationships if we are to preserve our freedoms. I am not sure at what point I got pulled into working with Kiran on Droidcon India. It was perhaps that one evening when Kiran was very, very exhausted. That evening, I was attending a meeting on communities and information which I decided to get out of quickly because I was concerned for Kiran’s health and sleep. I went over to the coffee shop where he was sitting. All I did that evening/night was to hang around while he did his work. It was perhaps then that I realized that relationships don’t really require you to ‘do’ tangible things all the time. Most of the times, you simply need to be around for the one you love because you believe that that is the simplest and the most profound thing you can do for him and for yourself. It is these little things that I learnt during the organization of Droidcon India that I believe have changed me as a person.

During Droidcon India, I filled in various kinds of roles and did different kinds of things. Droidcon India being a large event, one which had to match international standards, we needed more manpower, efforts, innovative ideas and initiative than we had ever needed in any of our other events. I got introduced to Aravind Krishnaswamy at some point when I first started helping Kiran. Arvi, as he is known, was chairing the programme committee for this event. As I started knowing Arvi, the one thing that I appreciated much about him was the clarity of his thoughts and the remarkable ability he has in being able to stand by his thoughts and convictions. One can often ‘hold’ on to one’s thoughts and convictions because they are correct. But ‘holding’ on to them can cause you to become rigid and even defensive. Here was Arvi who was able to get people around to his thoughts and ideas, be firm, be patient, listen, and all of this without the hint of ego. As I reflect on the experience of working with Arvi, it is remarkable how one person can bring so much to an event of this scale and magnitude with such a solid, grounded personality.

The other person I was introduced to and started working with was Noufal Ibrahim. Noufal’s name was suggested one evening, over coffee, as we were discussing how to get people to help with organizing Droidcon India. I remember meeting Noufal at the first Geek-Up event which HasGeek had organized. We spoke to each other at that meeting at which point I think I expressed my apprehensions to Noufal about not knowing how to get people to be motivated to help. Noufal has a cool and patient attitude, all of this backed with solid experience. He was always around to respond to every little doubt I had. He presented his own ideas with a sense detachment and thought, never for one insisting that only his ideas must be followed. It has been most humbling for me to work with Noufal who is a very humble, yet firm and grounded person. It is not everyday that one gets to work with people like Noufal and come out feeling so enriched and grounded.

In the course of organizing Droidcon India with Kiran, I had the opportunity to work with my dearest friend Francesca. It always bothers me when friends start to work together because either the work gets spoilt or the friendship is soured. In this case, we have managed fine and have also produced lemon chicken, tamrind eggplant and our relationship has been anything but sour. We have had the opportunity to tell each other about our work styles and our shortcomings without ever the feeling of ill-will. I have learnt a good deal about processes and communication by working with Francesca during Droidcon India. At the same time, if someone ever held me up during several moments of feeling down, it was Fra. She was one among the few people who helped me realize how worry was as good as chewing bubblegum over an alegra problem as if worrying would solve the problem. If I feel lighter at the end of Droidcon, it is due in big part to her.

I also had the opportunity to work with people who have been friends of Kiran’s and in some way or the other, have either become my friends or at least acquaintances. Sajjad, who I was introduced to by Kiran and then over twitter, has been remarkable with his enthusiasm, his sense of initiative and his ability to perceive. Francesca, Sajjad and I have been a trio who have clung on to each other for support, friendship, fish and fun. 

Hobbes aka Kingsly (I got the spelling of your name right) has been an incredible discovery during the last few days of Droidcon. I was first introduced to him in 2007. We met a few times in between and somewhat recently too. But it was in the last few days of Droidcon that I learnt how patient and meticulous he is and how he has a way of expressing care which is simple, profound and touching. He has been a real hero for me during the last two days of Droidcon and anything I say is not even going to touch the sentiment I feel for the rock that he has been. This afternoon, he sat with me to help me key in the data for the NFC card readers which was tedious work because it meant entering the number assigned to every card handed out to participants from hard copy to soft copy. It is unintelligent work but he sat with me diligently, read out each number as I keyed it in. Kingsly is a master at the work he does. For a master to sit with me and do something as tedious and boring as data entry is nothing less than an experience in humility and groundedness. 

I have similarly appreciated the little interactions I have had with Praneeth during Droidcon. Praneeth runs a start-up which produces hardware for NFC infrastructure. Praneeth has been patient, solid, and round the clock. Above all, there has never been a time when I have seen him without his magnanimous smile, one that gives so much character to his persona.

I worked with about 15-20 individuals who volunteered for Droidcon India. It is tough to work with people despite my passionate advocacy for relationships over laws in order for there to be greater responsiveness and freedom in society. People are tricky cookies. But some of the people who volunteered for Droidcon India have reinforced my belief that the world is not a bad place to be in despite all the crises. I have enjoyed each interaction with Vamsee who supported us a lot throughout this event. This morning, Vamsee was tired and I was keen to see him relieved. Despite us not assigning him any duty, he was working round the clock in the auditorium to help run the sessions smoothly. I have a great deal to learn from his commitment and willingness to be present at important moments when help is needed.

I have equally enjoyed interactions with Rasagy who has displayed incredible initiative and maturity in executing every task that I sought his help for. Of course, I will most remember him for teaching me how two A5s make one A4 and how two A4s make one A3, etc. 

Parag and Vineet have been powerhouses of energy and have again displayed incredible sense of initiative and presence.

I guess interactions with people like Sajjad, Haris, Praneeth, Kingsly, Noufal, Vamsee, Sidharth, Rasagy, Parag, Vineet, Ankita, Sujith, Aral and many others has showed me how reposing trust in people and their ability to deliver / be there when needed can work wonders in the bigger scheme of things. In the two days of the Droidcon India event, I felt that the show was running on its own because the base of trust, initiative and respect was already there. After the first half day of stressing, I realized how things were running smoothly, on their own, and that all that was required was to sit back and watch the show as it magically unfolded on its own.

Besides supporting coordination with volunteers, one of the other tasks I keenly took on was assistance with ticket bookings, cancelations and transfers. It’s been amazing how much I learnt on this task. One of the primary things that was reinforced was the despite automation and computerization of ticket bookings, what matters is hearing a human voice at the end of the telephone line and having someone respond to all sorts of queries about ticket bookings, cancellations and support. What matters to most people is that their needs and queries are responded to, especially when there is a breakdown in any of the component parts of the system. 

Personally, helping with the organization and final delivery of Droidcon India was a great challenge. In the process of putting this event together, we also moved house, and my health showed signs of worry as older medical conditions began to re-emerge because of the stress of everything happening at the same time. Here is where I feel it is the spirit and the energy that each person brings to the table that keeps others going.  

Technology can perhaps aid in enhancing relationships and processes. It cannot substitute relationships and processes. People and relationships are our greatest resource and infrastructure. At the end of the day, what matters most is the ability to communicate, listen, respond, take risks, create, initiate and nurture the spirit of inquiry. These are the some of the lessons that I have internalized during the process of helping organize Droidcon India.

At the end of this event, my husband has emerged as my greatest hero. For a long time, it was my father who was my role model with his sharp business acumen, his ability to take risks and his personal decisions which have been very radical for his times. As he has aged, my father has become equanimous, letting things unfold and knowing that there are patterns which will become evident only in the larger scheme of things. I think the experience of working with Kiran makes me realize that he brings so much more to our relationship with his dreams, his initiative and his groundedness. Here’s a big shout out to my husband, my hero – go for it!

A Letter from Ladakh

13^th August 2011

 

Dear Chintan,

 

Some days ago, I was at Pangong Tso. Pangong is a lake, a large saltwater lake. I heard some days ago that the lake is not very deep. The waters were blue, green and clear at different spots, reminding me of my first visit to Robben Islands in Cape Town in 1999 where I was awed at the different colours that the sea assumed in the course of its course. There is no fish in Pangong lake, as I was also told some days later. We only saw a mother duck swimming with her babies and a few insect-like fish. Also, there is no boating permitted on the lake. This is because Pangong Tso is a border area where India border with China and for security reasons, no activity is permitted on the lake.

 

Before we went to Pangong, I had briefly heard stories of how the lake is so beautiful and how it borders with China (which means bordering with Tibet occupied by China). On the evening when we reached Pangong, Kiran was told that he could walk only six kilometers around the lake after which the borders started and he would not be allowed to go any further. Kiran later explained that perhaps the international border actually must be starting 20 kilometers after the six kilometer boundary that the locals were speaking about …

 

The next day morning, we motorcycled around the lake and perhaps went only so far as three odd kilometers. A jeep ahead of us went much further, to the point which is now famously known as the spot where the last scene of the movie Three Idiots was shot. I asked Kiran to wait till the jeep came to a stop. I wanted to see how far the jeep could go and what, if anything, could stop it. Kiran asked me whether I wanted to go further and see. Given the mud track through which he would have to ride, he contended that perhaps what lay ahead was only this vast expanse of the lake and nothing else. I said I did not want to go further, though there was a very strong longing in me to go further and hit the border and see how the border was made and what lay across the border (as far as my eyes and mind could reach). We stood for some more time till the jeep halted. Then Kiran reminded me that a long journey back to Leh lay ahead of us and that we needed to start soon. I sat on the bike with a lump in my throat. I felt like crying, wanting to reach the border and yet wanting to let this longing to remain so that it would haunt me to come back, some day, perhaps soon. There was also an emotion of intrigue and curiosity in that lump in my throat. Longing-desire-curiosity-intrigue – perhaps a combination of these and some other raw emotions is what makes me yearn to travel borders, borders that are etched on landed territory and borders that are mapped on our minds and persons.

 

At that moment, I could not help but think of my first visit to Bangladesh which I was to undertake by crossing the border at Bonga, via Kolkatta. I reached Kolkatta a couple of days in advance, back in 2003. Bhaskar, my host, introduced me to his friends and family as the girl who is going to Bangladesh. And with each introduction came the exclamation from each of his friends – “we live so close to the border and yet we have never been ‘there’ (i.e. Bangladesh) and you come from Bombay to go ‘there’.” They would then applaud my courage to travel this far. I, on the other hand, would be left with perceiving the strong borders that were etched and living in their minds, consciousness, persons and identity – the landed borders which we internalize over time and carve it in our identities which make nearby places seem so farther away …

 

I also remembered, when the lump appeared in my throat, the times when I had come close to Pakistani borders in my travels to Rajasthan and I had felt similar emotions and other primordial ones that I have no labels for. This time around too, I came close to Pakistani borders when rafting in the Zanskar and reaching the lower Indus. The Swiss-Israeli-Russian-Polish gentleman in our rafting team said in jest to everyone: “If your boat crosses lower Indus river, you shall be in Pakistan.” At that moment, I felt like snatching his passport and putting my photograph on it and sailing into Pakistan via the Lower Indus – somehow, the joke did not go down well with me because I perhaps know what a struggle it may be for me to get a visa to Pakistan to travel there unlike what it would be for this Swiss-Israeli-Russian-Polish gentleman with his Swedish passport …

 

Borders – they always intrigue me Chintan. And they intrigue me more and more as I come across people who have inherited and internalized lines of tradition, religion and culture – lines which they are afraid to cross because they fear what lies ahead. Landed borders such as the one we share with Pakistan have been internalized and are being reproduced through a complex equation with these simultaneous borders of tradition, nationality, religion, culture and other worldviews and paradigms. We make sense of our world through these labels and notions and create the boundaries and borders around ourselves. These boundaries and borders then become our comfort zones which we are hesitant to step out of because of the fear that perhaps stepping across the line may bring discomfort, may shake the foundations of our worlds and comforts, and lead us to ask uncomforting and disturbing questions …

 

With borders – geographical, drawn along lines of identity, community and practices – comes the practice of marking. Anything that does not conform to the norm and the normal practices is marked as ‘deviant’. For instance, the border between what different cultures consider clean and unclean and if you do something that is not in conformity with the ideals and notions of cleanliness, you are marked as ‘unclean’. Sometimes communities and groups are marked as ‘unclean’, like squatters and street vendors. Their seemingly ‘unclean’ habits are repeatedly marked as deviant to the extent where law is invoked to either ‘sanitize’ them or to ‘sanitize’ the surroundings which they are ‘polluting’ through their practices. With borders comes marking and with marking and borders enter the notion and practices of ‘law’, ‘legality’ and ‘illegality’. This insight occurred to me as we moved away from Pangong lake and started towards Leh. There is much to be said about this dynamic, but I will leave it at only this, here …

 

With borders, there is marking, recording and archiving – funny beasts that I can sometimes laugh at and sometimes rue! To travel to Pangong Tso, as well as to Nubra Valley and a couple of other destinations in Ladakh, you have to obtain and produce what is known as the ‘Internal Line of Permit’. I want you ponder over these words (and this legal boundary) – ‘internal’ ‘line’ ‘of’ ‘permit’ – and tell me what you think of it, at some point later. The ‘Internal Line of Permit’ is a government document which can be obtained within a day or two by producing a ‘valid photo identity’ such as a PAN card or a Driving License, or some other such identity card issued, authorized and recognized by the Government of India. Once issued, the travel agent makes several photocopies of the “Internal Line of Permit” because you have to produce and submit these at different check points during your journey. We submitted the original document at Karu which is where one of the internal boundary lines within Ladakh begins. The Kashmiri police officer at Karu, sitting with his legs stretched on the window (from where he watches and whistles out to vehicles and their drivers to stop) asked us to note down our vehicle number on the permit document.

Earlier, we had hired the motorcycle from a shop in Leh where the surety that we left behind was the original copy of Kiran’s PAN Card (in addition to the hire charges which we paid in advance). The shop owner asked us to fill out a form which he dutifully kept along with several older, previously filled out, forms. Many people, not just the government, appear to be maintaining records in today’s times – records of identity, identification and activities!

At Thangsay, the last checkpoint before you proceed to Pangong Tso, you have to submit another photocopy of your ‘permit’. Here, the officer makes an entry into a register and issues a serial number against your name. You have to remember this serial number because you have to say it out to the officer on your return and then sign in the column against the number indicating that you have ‘returned’ back from Pangong Tso. When we did this on our return, I wondered how many such mundane registers the officials and the respective administrative/security institution must be hoarding/holding and from how many years. Will there ever be a museum of these registers, in some nearby or distant future/s? Will these registers ever turn into some kind of archives if and when the ‘future’ and ‘fate’ of J&K were ever to be decided? And if so, what kind of archive would this be? Even if there were no ‘formal’ ‘institutional’ archive of these registers, what kinds of trails would these registers have or would produce for different groups of people and identities? I cannot help but obsessively think about these registers, these paper documents like “Internal Line of Permit”, and such other official documents and practices and wonder what becomes of identities, of borders, and subsequently of the institution of the ‘state’ ‘the law’ and ‘legality’ as time passes, as regimes change, and as generations die down and emerge …

 

As we started leaving Pangong Tso, Kiran explained to me that the Chinese are building roads in the border areas to claim more and more territory. He said that the Chinese are at an advantage because they are doing the road building activity in the winters. The Indian government, it developmental agencies and the armed forces are unable to match up with this Chinese winter advantage. Kiran also explained that the Chinese are nearing completion of the railway line to Tibet which is why the Indian government is rushing with its railway project in J&K region. All of these ‘developmental’ ‘activities’, on each side of the border, raises the perception of threat of the other mainly because each side perceives the other as an ‘aggressor’ who is committing insurgency in the other’s national borders and taking away land and territory. At the beginning of this journey, Chintan, I had started reading about Jordan’s history and had found that Israeli government was constantly encouraging agricultural activity, building of settlements and cultivation in the territories that it had occupied from Jordan in the war in ’67. Such ‘settlement’ activities establish the Israeli de facto claim over ‘property’ and ‘land’, thereby weakening Jordan’s plea for return to the ‘original’ boundary lines of ’67.

As I think over what I have read of Jordan and now this conflicting and contentious relation between India and China, I also think that borders are chameleon-like and that if we were to widen the horizons of our thoughts, borders also force us to think of the notions of ‘the original’, ‘fakes’ and ‘history’. Chintan, are borders, in this respect, ‘generative’? I can’t help but admit that borders are highly double-edged. They separate your history from mine, they change the courses of past, present and futures within the same generation and across successive generations. There is no doubt that even if we were hopeful that borders teach us that identities are imposters and malleable, borders also simultaneously freeze certain notions of identities and give rise to violent responses and reactions. I think of Palestine and Kashmir here and wonder what the border conflicts which have now turned into identity conflicts have done to the myriads and generations of youth … What hope can we then nurse, Chintan, given this double-edged nature of borders?

 

It has been a really long letter thus far Chintan, but I hope you will pursue in reading it for some more because there is much to tell of borders. We are living in the household of a Ladakhi family. In the first couple of days of our stay, one of the ladies in the house had some trouble figuring out the relationship between Kiran and me. So one day, when I stepped out into their garden to uproot/pluck some vegetables for making dinner, she finally asked Kiran: “Is Zainab your girlfriend?” Kiran said, “No, she is my wife.” She then asked, “How? Are you Muslim?” Kiran said “no!” She then asked, “how come you are married?” She took a while to understand our interreligious marriage. Over the days, she queried about each of our religious beliefs and perhaps tried to settle the equation which was not conforming to the cultural and geographical borders in her mind and her everyday living. Such are borders Chintan, very funny creatures. I have no doubt in my head that even as I condemn the violence that borders can wreath upon us, they are also generative. And I hope that we remain ever mindful of their generative capacity, even as we decry them and ask for un-policing and de-regulating borders …

 

You may now be wondering what kind of a city Leh is and what kind of a region Ladakh is. It is desert and mountains, largely mountainous. This terrain brings in the ‘insularity’ that tends to be associated with the peoples of the mountains. Insularity because it is not easy to travel across the mountains to the plains (given the treacherous climatic and road conditions) and so, peoples of the plains and the mountains can only imagine what it may be on each side … In the midst of these mountains and deserts are the rivers Indus and Zanskar. It is mainly the Indus which is the life giving body in this region. Wherever it flows and wherever people are able to arrest the flows of water, there you find greenery, cultivation and settlement of a certain kind (there are also settlements in the desert, though very stray from what I have seen so far). Each time I think of the Indus river, of settlement and of rivers in general, my mind goes back again to the notion and practices of borders because as much as borders are etched in land, they are also created by turning/blocking the courses of water bodies. Alice Albinia, in her brilliant book “The Empires of The Indus” has spoken so eloquently, beautifully and politically of how the life of the River Indus is linked so closely to the history and the present of the conflicts between India and Pakistan, and to the overall history of the region which comprises Pakistan, Tibet, perhaps Afghanistan and China. When you think of the watercourses and flows and then you start to explore how courses and flows have been deliberately tweaked and turned to enforce the boundaries of nationhood, you start to think how violent borders are. But yet so, in the course of turning courses and flows, histories are being created and multiplied. And as much as histories are being created and multiplied, so also our interpretation of them and the transmissions of these interpretations open up new avenues of identity forging, foregoing, creating and making … I continue to remain hopeful here, Chintan, despite whatever criticisms may come my way …

 

I have, in this journey so far, been subjected to my own self-created and self-imposed borders and have been compelled to cross them. The Ladakhi family we stay with have two dry toilets which have to be used by ‘tourists’ and family members alike. This is because there is a water problem in Ladakh and flushing toilets involves enormous wastage of water. Further, the dry toilets are very generative, when built according to local conditions, because the shit is converted into manure through processes and treatments with soil, cow dung, hay and other forms of waste and manure. It is not easy, or so I believe, to get used to a dry toilet in the first instance because our cultures (however diverse they may be) predominantly perpetuate very strong notions and opinions about shit, hygiene, genitalia and cleanliness. In some cultures, it is too personal to even publicly discuss about the use of toilet paper versus washing your own anus after having shat/shit. It was similarly so disdainful and painful for me to visit the dry toilet the first morning to relieve myself. There is a particular kind of smell in the dry toilet, not the toxic kind that you may find in public toilets in cities, but a certain kind that takes some getting used to. Then again, just shitting down a square hole seems somewhat out-of-place, in the beginning. But what perhaps got me to cross this border of disdain and flush toilet paradigm was the act of using the shovel to pour dust and the mix of cow dung and hay over your poop. Somehow, this act seemed to evoke the sublime in me, the sublime that I tend to feel during each run that I mile, every time. The very act of putting dust over your own poop seemed generative enough for me to get over the borders that I had internalized in my mind and person. I am not sure how I feel about them when I return back to the city and to the flush toilets, but I remain here, so …

 

There are two more vignettes which you must know of. The Bihari barber who chopped off my hair in Leh crossed a border when he worked his scissors and blade on a woman’s head. Later, Kiran reminded him of how, two years ago, he had run only the blade over a woman’s head (party in Kiran’s travel team to Ladakh in 2009) and shaved off her head. The barber remembered clearly and perhaps then, the border crossing may have seemed so much easier.

Then, yesterday, Anu, one of the daughters in our Ladakhi host family, asked me when Kiran and I were leaving. I explained in a few days’ time. She then said, “that is why we do not attach ourselves too much with the guests who come and stay with us. It is very difficult when they leave.” I was quite touched when she said this, because she was preserving a border in her personhood and in her everyday living so as to make life easier and simpler for her. I only smiled when she said this, not knowing what response I could have given to her …

 

I must end here Chintan. Today there is mild rain in Leh. I am told that rains started in Leh and Ladakh only 15 years ago and people here are not accustomed to the idea of rains because it does not seem ‘natural’. Each time it rains or thunders now, the people remember the flash floods of last year and start dreading. Rains have created such memories and borders in their minds, in their histories and in their geography and culture.

The days are most interesting here, even if they sound mundane. Abaale – meaning father and the head of our host family – plays Radio Kashmir and Doordarshan news every morning and night. I am transported into a different time zone as I hear the newsreader read the news with such sense of mundane duty. Abaale also plays the old 1970’s and 1980’s songs on the radio and here again, I am transported back into the childhood days I spent with my grandparents, uncles and aunts in Dongri in Bombay. Places and spaces have such power, Chintan! They have the ability to transport you back and forth in time, in memory, in feelings of belonging and other raw emotions, without you needing any passport for such travel. The pain and the mirth that emerge out of such travel are purely the doing of your own self-created and self-imposed borders and your histories …

 

With truckloads of love and longing to cross these geographical and landed borders,

 

Zainab

A season in faith’s perfection …

Before I am accused of plagiarizing, let me right away attribute the title of this blog post to William Forrester. I had watched this brilliant film in early 2000s called “Finding Forrester”. The gifted writer in this film named Jamaal had copied the same title from Forrester’s unfinished work and carved an essay out of it. Since then, I have been fascinated by this title – “A Season in Faith’s Perfection” – and I have hoped that some day, I can use this title to write something from my own experiences.

 

I am still not fully sure what these words mean, but I am using them for writing an extended mid-season reflection on the training that I have been involved in with Runners’ High for the KTM trail and the Bangalore Ultra races to be held in September and November respectively.

 

A Season of Imperfections and Uncertain Faith: I gave up running from December 2010 until February 2011 owing to the ovarian cyst that I had developed. My doctors advised that since I also had an infection in my pelvis region, I must avoid any physical activity that gives jerks to the pelvic region.

When I started training for the TCS World 10k race from February onwards, my doctor advised that I go easy, and gradually get back to full form running. Accordingly, I would do beginner workouts and runs for the training. But having given up running for three months, I figured that I was finding it very, very tough to get back to full form, committed training, on the TCS World 10k programme. I ended up skipping many training sessions, and I also missed out on most of the training because of hectic travel schedules and with cousins on different sides of my families deciding to get married in April and May. This was also the time when I was struggling to get back to full fledged writing. So, this period turned out to be a phase when both my running and writing were very uncertain. Overall, I remained depressed during this season. I was also getting over the nervousness of the ovarian cyst and so, I was being cautious in whatever runs I managed to mile, not raising the standards of my stamina and physical strength.

A Season for Seeking Perfection: I began the KTM and Ultra training programme with the goal that I should be able to run 50k by the end of this year, most probably at the Ultra. I felt that having this kind of a challenging goal would keep me motivated and would also help me in improving my goals for writing my PhD thesis. With this thought, I approached my coach Santhosh and told him that I wanted to mile 50k. Santhosh being the man who minces no words when he has to, clearly told me that I cannot train for 50k given how irregular I had been with the previous training and that I had shown no commitment towards strength training and core workouts too. I somehow argued my way back and tried to explain to him why I needed to have a challenging running goal in order for me to get back fully with the training. Just also somehow, Santhosh and I reached a mid-way agreement that if I was good with the KTM training, Santhosh would help me with training for the 37.5k run at the Ultra race. Thus began a training season which was to be a measure of my commitment to consistency, regularity and improvement.

This time around, I signed up for the advanced workouts. RH usually has beginner and advanced workouts. Thus far, I had always signed up for beginner workouts thinking that on each training season I am beginning anew. Moreover, advanced trainers often focussed on time goals (maybe not exclusively) and improving on their past performances. When I started running, I had figured that time was not the issue for me. What mattered was how far I could go on running the distances, irrespective of how long it took me to finish. But, this time, having signed for advanced workouts, I realized that being in the advanced category involves pushing one’s limits on each workout, on each run. Even though advanced runners focus on improving their timings on the runs, they have to keep up their commitment to strength training, to maintaining consistency in pace, and giving their best on every run in order to do better. I think that even though I was reluctant to be in the advanced category, it has done me a great deal of good in terms of improving my strength, fitness and appetite for running.

 

Beginnings of faith: My husband, Kiran, used to run with me on every weekend run in the first month of the training. Kiran had just started using Vibrams in order to help with his knee injury. So he needed to be running slow and easy in order to get used to this kind of barefoot running. Kiran figured that running with me would be more than easy for him since I was miling each run at the pace of 9 mins per kilometer in the beginning of this season (as compared with his 6 and 7 minute pace per kilometer). Add to that, I had severe lower back pains and glute issues in the beginning of this season. So I used to be slower than slow sometimes, until I got into a serious regime of strength training and improving the fitness of my glutes.

In the beginning, it was great to run with Kiran. I was managing to get enough sleep before each workout and weekend run. So I would feel fresh at the beginning of each run. Then, on every Sunday run, my pace was improving a great deal by running with Kiran. Everything seemed perfect, and in place, as I was growing leaps and bounds in the training. 

I was also facing issues in terms of regular and consistent stiffening of the upper back, in the region between the shoulder blades, because my writing was getting better and quicker in this period, leading me to spend more hours typing away on my keyboard. Each run would therefore be a boon because it would help me to release the tension and stiffness in my upper back region. I also recognized, much more, the importance of good breathing. When you are stressed, your breathing goes for a toss. That is the onset of the first set of troubles with your aerobic systems which then goes on to affect your stomach and other body parts. So good breathing is the key to good health. In this respect, each run is a good reminder of how important and fundamental good breathing is.

As the training progressed, I found that apart from the difficulty of being unable to mile most of the Tuesday runs, I was doing better with the tempo workouts on Wednesdays and the distances on the weekend runs were beginning to seem not so daunting after all. But in a month since the training, Kiran’s knee issues began to aggravate and he reached a stage where running short distances started to cause him pain. Gradually, the pain in the knees and increasing work pressures led Kiran to keep off from the training programme. At any other time, this would have been quite a setback for me because I was quite dependent on Kiran to help me stay regular with waking up in the mornings and reaching the runs on time. Now, I had to rely on my own personal resources to wake up early in the morning and make it to the runs on time. Thankfully, the car pooling initiative and the presence of the friendly neighbourhood coach Ram came to my rescue. I managed to make it to most runs by car pooling with runners in the neighbourhood like Arvind, Meghana and sometimes asking Latha for help and support.

I must admit that June and July were highly stressful months for me because I was dealing with several financial, personal, career and work related matters, all at the same time, most of the times. There would be many Saturdays and Sundays when I would get no rest after the long runs and I would be busy rushing into meetings and attending to unforeseen emergencies throughout the day. I believe that apart from my helpful doctor’s medicines, running regularly helped me to keep up and cope with all the difficulties. I discovered also, at some times, that I had to stay off a workout in order to rest my body. There were a couple of Wednesday and weekend workouts where I had to stay off just because my body gave me cues of when it was not up to a hectic day comprising of heavy duty running followed by several chores to be finished. On some days, I would fret and fume for having missed a run. But I think I would also manage to recover somehow because I knew that as much as running a run is important, missing a run is also important to learn the lessons of ‘letting go’. So this running season, one of the things I learnt as a matter of some fundamentals of life and living was learning to let go when letting go is very much needed.

I also had to learn to work on injuries and niggles as and when they arose. I learnt, somewhat rather painfully, the critical lessons of stretching immediately after each run and doing foot drills. On days when I slacked on doing the stretches after the long runs, I came down with shin pains and I had to remind myself that as much as a run is enjoyable, the run is more meaningful when the boring, drab and dull routines of stretches are followed up with and the body and the legs get their due share of relaxation after the runner’s high.

I kept maintaining a log of my workouts and runs regularly. I used to end up writing long logs after each run because I would find that each time I had gathered some important insights about the mind and body. I used to analyze my own running form and movement at times before approaching the coaches and physio because I learnt that as much as co-dependence is good, it is also important to become independent in some respects where I become capable of knowing my body on some counts rather than running to the physio and the coaches each time I have a niggle. I think this strategy really worked for me when I had lower back and glute pains. I noticed that because of the lower back and glute pains, I was not lifting my legs enough when running. This actually aggravated my lower back and glute pains and thus began a cycle of caution and caution leading to pain and pain leading to further caution. When I watched myself closely and assessed the situation for myself through my run logs, I found that my lower back and glute issues were resolving with strength training and with lifting my legs higher on the runs. Achieving this level of independence gave me more confidence in my ability to know my body and my ability to become a more conscientious runner.

 

Of Faith, Perfections and Imperfections: Thus far, I think I have had more than a fabulous season of running. Last Saturday, when I miled 16 kilometers in what was the most uncomfortable runs so far, I figured that despite all the stress and anxiety I was dealing with, I had become a much stronger person – physically and mentally. I also discovered through my regularity in training that I was feigning weakness by using stress as an excuse on running and work fronts. It is easy to cry hoarse ‘stress, stress, stress’ and skip runs and not confront the issues that really need to be dealt with like fear, uncertainty and anxiety. Now, having become a much stronger person, my mind would no longer allow me to fall back on stress as an excuse to perform poorly on runs. This discovery was perhaps the most important one for me during this training season, and I hope this insight stays with me for the rest of this season and for the running in future.

I still remain an imperfect runner. I struggle now with issues such as running long distances alone and miling some runs all on my own. I seek company for doing weekend runs and that sometimes worries me whether I am becoming too dependent on the group for my running. But I guess running is really a matter of moving on these courses of uncertainty, un-knowningness and unknown. It is only these imperfections and unknowns that make each run so much worth miling … To this, I remain, in a season of faith’s perfection …

 

Dedicated to Santhosh, Preeti, Srini V., Sindhu, Murthy, Ram, Gautham, Pooja, Latha, Kalpana Krishnaswamy and many more running buddies and friends.

Also dedicated specially to Ravi Rao and Sandeep Chandur, my FB running mates and cheer leaders

Dust in the Verandah

The dust in the verandah has been cleared.

She came upstairs and saw the mess,

And then instructed the maid to broom, sweep and swab.

 

The dust in the verandah has been cleared.

The dust of fermented emotions has been wiped off

From the relationships that had become dusty,

And now the crosses to bear have become lighter.

 

The dust in the verandah has been cleared.

My shoes are still red with the mud from all the paths and courses that they have been run down upon.

But my legs have become stronger as has my gumption for running,

And now I have no excuses to feign weakness.

 

The dust from the verandah has been cleared.

The accumulated dust – signifying age, contempt, disdain, dislike, unhappiness, running away - has been wiped off,

Paving the way for something unknown, something new, something afresh,

And the beginnings seem uncertain, unsure, and yet, not so frightening …

 

The dust from the verandah has been cleared.

New dust has started to settle,

And those objects and relationships which were stubborn in shedding the dust on them (and of them),

Continue to exist, perhaps ceasing (seizing) in existence in this way …

 

[Dedicated to my mother-in-law and to my friends Mythri Prasad and Ekta Mittal]