Tell me your story

".....one Sunday morning in 1971, Lewis was summoned to a terrifying scene. A man was holding a loaded gun on his family, threatening to kill them and himself and anyone else who got in the way. Lewis walked right into the man's house, sat down beside him, and said quietly: "Tell me your story."

Ten hours later, the man gave him his gun.

The truth buried in this drama gets to the very heart of Crisis Center work: each of us has a story, each of us has a loaded gun that we aim at ourselves. After hours, or years, of talking, the story can at last be told in its fullness, and the gun can be laid down.

The story has both happy and sad chapters, and parts if it may be forgotten. Sometimes it takes an outsider to help remember or clarify it. Lose your story and you lose the pageant of your life."

Page 23, 'A Slender Thread, Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis', Diane Ackerman

Our stories, and our evolving self

"Our stories help us understand a terrifyingly confusing and dangerous world, most of which is a riddle. For the world to feel safe, we need to make sense of it, especially when we encounter setbacks and misfortunes that shatter our confidence.

Telling anecdotes to friends,  we reveal our true natures, we're not just offering the what and when of our lives.

How was your trip? someone asks. The answer gives more than the whereabouts and the weather. It includes encounters, small triumphs, accidents, embarrassments, revised attitudes. Anecdotes alert our friends and loves ones to our basic values, biases, qualities, and concerns - and also how those vital pieces of identity are changing over time.

The more we learn about ourselves, the more we revise the facts to fit our evolving sense of self. As the vocabulary of life changes, we need our memory to say something fitting, something that makes sense in a newly ordered world.

How we tell the story influences how we feel about ourselves. Change your story and you change your identity."

Page 233, 'A Slender Thread, Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis', Diane Ackerman

Ritual

Started writing again here (http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in). Thanks to the giant silk cotton tree, its lessons.

Notes from a Ritual: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

The Giving Tree

"Silverstein detested stories with happy endings. As he once put it, “The child asks, ‘Why don’t I have this happiness thing you’re telling me about?’”

"The Giving Tree” at Fifty: Sadder Than I Remembered
Ruth Margalit

Stories

"When you have no one  to tell them to, you forget all your stories."


The Lunchbox

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/13/lunchbox-bollywood-review-banked-emotions

The Nothing Man

In 2014, Mr. Samuel is overcome by a strong desire to read Lolita. But Mr. Samuel is accustomed to these strange and sudden whims. And so he decides to wait it out. A few days later, as he predicted, his need to read Lolita is not as strong as it was and Mr. Samuel finds it easier to move on. He pats himself on the back for his ability to triumph over a ‘temporary mindset.’

Then in 2015, Mr. Samuel feels a strong urge to own an SUV. It is quite possibly the finest car a man can drive! But again, Mr. Samuel reins in his ‘unnecessary indulgence’ and by the end of the month, gets over his desire. He congratulates himself and he realizes that he may be on the path to nirvana, the state of wanting nothing, and this idea appeals to him very strongly. Why, of course, it is the logical end to everything! The panacea for the worlds of disquiet within him!

And so, Mr. Samuel starts to train his mind to detach itself from all desire, to achieve a state of contented ‘nothing’. He relinquishes sex, meat, alcohol, gambling, gadgets and even masturbation. Initially, Mr. Samuel experiences mind-numbing withdrawal symptoms, like a drug addict whose secret stash has been hidden from him.

But over time, Mr. Samuel’s resolve strengthens and by 2022 he manages to rid himself of all desire. Mr. Samuel becomes famous in his neighborhood as the man who renounced materials in exchange for peaceful contemplation. People come to pay homage to this powerful bastion of anti-materialism who sits sanguinely in his rundown sofa in his rundown home.

But something has started to bother Mr. Samuel. In trying to achieve a state of nothing, is he trying to achieve something again after all?

Philip John

https://www.facebook.com/Labyrinths.PhilipJohn

What makes you happy?

Splendid road trip documentary, and not just for the ride and the stunning locales, but the amazing conversations with the funniest wisest people they meet on the way, in remote mountain towns and villages.  Interesting, how so many of them answered "Work" when asked what makes them the most happy.

Ashes Before Dust

http://vimeo.com/76342730

"This documentary tells the story of a 5,500 mile motorcycle adventure from Seattle to the Arctic Circle and back. While traveling the back roads through British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska, we interviewed the unique and inspiring characters we randomly met along the way. The tale of our journey is flavored with these interviews, providing a glimpse of life in the North Country."

"I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”

Jack London

You never ask about my garden

‘You never ask about my garden,’ she says. I look at her questioningly but I think I know where she is coming from. ‘You have your books, I have my plants,’ she smiles. ‘I ask about your books but you never ask about my plants.’

‘I do, I keep listening to your tales about them, all the new plants that you are growing,’ I say.

‘But you never want to see my garden,’ she says. She pauses for a few seconds before continuing. ‘I am not into books like you are but I like to know about them because I like to know your mind.’ She stops.

The subtext hangs dangerously in the air between us: don’t you want to know my mind? I think about how to respond. If I apologize, I admit to a mistake but have I done something wrong? Am I not interested in other aspects of her life? If I don’t apologize I widen this gulf that’s opened between us. ‘It’s alright, I’m being difficult,’ she smiles and the tension lifts.

But what she tells me lingers. Every little thing she does is magic. When she towels her hair or when she’s cutting vegetables, I cannot take my eyes off of her. But I don’t ask about her garden, the single most important creative act of her life.

What does this say about me? More importantly, what is she to me? Deep down, that second question is what she probably wants answered too. But she hasn't framed the question that way. Not yet.

Philip John, Labyrinths, https://www.facebook.com/Labyrinths.PhilipJohn

Turning to the poem

"I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. …

I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence."

Jeanette Winterson

Stories

"We are primed to use stories. Part of our survival as a species depended upon listening to the stories of our tribal elders as they shared parables and passed down their experience and the wisdom of those who went before. As we get older it is our short-term memory that fades rather than our long-term memory. Perhaps we have evolved like this so that we are able to tell the younger generation about the stories and experiences that have formed us which may be important to subsequent generations if they are to thrive."

How to Stay Sane: The Art of Revising your Inner Storytelling

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/05/how-to-stay-sane-philippa-perry/

Home

I have been wanting to write down this Tibetan man's story, for years. The search for Home. Something I deeply relate to. In all my travels, immigrants and refugees have fascinated me, I listened to their stories, I have suffered with them.

I did not succeeded in taking him home. A feeble attempt at telling his story is all I have been able to accomplish, not even worthy to be called a gift.

Home: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/2012/09/home.html

Nachiketa, or the Quickening Spirit

While trying to re-arrange the rising pile of books at home, I came across one of my late father-in-law's books, printed in 1921, a commentary on the Katha Upanishad by Swami Sharvananda. And was reminded once again of Nachiketa's story, and his conversations with Yama, the God of Death.

Nachiketa is the main character of the Katha Upanishad. The name Nachiketa, (nA chiketas, that which is unperceived) "refers to the quickening Spirit that lies within all things like fire, latent in wood, the spirit that gives."

Once when his father Vajasravasa was donating cows to gain religious merit, Nachiketa, who was just a teenage boy, asks him - "What merit can one obtain by giving away cows that are too old to give milk?"

His father does not pay heed to his questions, and is irritated that his young son is seeing through his hypocrisy, and spelling it out too.

To make his father realize the meaninglessness of this false ritual, he asks, "To whom will you offer me?" He asks this again and again. Angered, his father blurts out ,"To death I give you!"

So the obedient Nachiketa goes to meet Yama, the God of Death, and waits until he gets an audience with him.

All of the Katha Upanishad is the dialogue between Yama and Nachiketa, after Nachiketa asks to know about life after death, as the last of the 3 boons that Yama grants him, a boon that Yama hesitates to grant him at first.

Not swayed by the riches and pleasures that Yama offers him instead, he remains steadfast in his desire for the knowledge of the Self. Yama, impressed by the young boy's steadfastness and readiness, then proceeds to teach Nachiketa about self-knowledge, realizing the Atman, and emancipation from rebirth.

It will soon be a year since this death in my family. The Katha Upanishad is read during death ceremonies. And like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Garuda Purana, it gives you so much perspective on life - on living so well, with so much understanding, that Death, when it comes, will hold no terror for you.

A Yakshagaana Tale

This quiet shy colleague of ours happened to share our table at lunch, and we get to know that during his 6 years in the US, he used to act in Yakshagaana plays as part of the Kannada Sangha, and has travelled to other cities to perform with the troupe! He had this interesting story to tell about the man who started the troupe, who was totally into this art form and directed all those performances, while holding a full-time job.

When he was a small boy growing up in Sringeri in South Kanara, he used to go sit with the workers who came to de-husk the areca nut (betel nut) seeds at their farm. Now de-husking is a very monotonous, repetitive job that can become quite tedious when done throughout the day, for days together. To not succumb to this boredom, the workers used to switch on the radio, and listen to Yakshagaana songs all day. Yakshagaana performances used to be the major form of entertainment for people in those areas those days, they really connected to the songs, they could visualize the plays and the elaborate costumes in their heads, and talk about it.

And so the grandiose tales from our epics were played out in the little boy’s head, every emotion layered out with care, dwelled upon, lived, enjoyed, and suffered to its deepest core – and so was born a life-long fascination for mythology, drama and music.

When he grew up he learned Yakshagaana and took it all the way to the US with him, and spread it far and wide along with his troupe - and now that he is back here, he puts up performances in the city.

This strange mix of areca nuts and abhinaya somehow totally appealed to me. :)  I can so imagine the diffused sunlight coming in through the areca nut grove of thin parallel lines, the open space where the nuts are de-husked, the red-tiled house behind, the small black radio, the occasional sharing of comments within the circle, the enjoyment, the thread of the known running through them all, a bond like no other.

And it reminded me of Kathakali and all those epic mythological characters and the passage in Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' about "the Great Stories where you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t, and yet you want to know again…..."

Returning to the Great Stories, an earlier post.

*Photo from Google Images

Read to me....

In the Iranian film 'Blackboards' by Samira Makhmalbaf, the scene you remember the most is of an old Kurdish shepherd grazing his sheep high up in the mountains, stopping the teacher and asking him if he can read a letter for him. He slowly pulls out a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket. His face opening up in a smile hearing that his son is doing well though he cannot visit him now. A face still smiling when the teacher continues on his way, suspecting the truth, that the son is perhpas in jail, like so many other young men from this region. (But kindness, more important than truth...)

You read about postmen in the Himalayas who walk long distances, climb up and down hills, cross rivers, to carry letters to remote villages. How they also serve as the reader and writer of letters to people there, and are much awaited, like family. A job you would’ve loved to do, a role you would’ve loved to play? Long moments of walking alone, and then connection and meaning, and words, and then a walking alone again. A pendulum of perfect balance.

‘The Reader’ was heartbreaking because it was all about reading and being read to. You walked around wounded for a long time after that.

So great was your need to read to someone once upon a time that you walk into an Old Age home one day, and ask the Mother Superior whether any of the old people there would like to be read to. She says yes, but then they try not to let them interact too much with young people because that would make them remember the children who abandoned them a long time ago, and the carefully constructed living-in-the-present would come apart in mindless, endless grief.

While you are talking to her, an old man comes in to ask if his son’s money order has come. His son hasn’t sent anything in years, nor bothered to come to see his father or call him or write to him. But this is a ritual the old man follows every day to retain what is left of his 'sanity', and the kind nuns indulge him.

You walk out, old, abandoned and bent, you do not walk around offering your reading anymore.

You remember the teachers in 'Blackboards', walking around with knowledge that no one wants to learn. What is worse, having riches that no one wants, or having nothing to give?

Lying on our backs, looking up at the night sky

Once in a Story

We are both storytellers. Lying on our backs, we look up at the night sky. This is where stories began, under the aegis of that multitude of stars which at night filch certitudes and sometimes returns them as faith. Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

The problem of time is like the darkness of the sky. Every event is inscribed in its own time. Events may cluster and their times overlap, but the time in common between events does not extend as law beyond the clustering.

A famine is a tragic cluster of events. To which the Great Plough is indifferent, existing as it does in another time.

Page 8, 'And our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos', John Berger

Train-stories

Remembered this incident from a long time ago, 16 years to be precise. Though the faces have been lost, the broad outlines, the feelings, have stayed with me. I guess it is time to tell this story.

http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com/2011/10/train-ride.html

Dancing on the Streets

Walking down the bustling East Nanjing street in Shanghai that beautiful November evening, you are instantly drawn by the jazz music being played somewhere down the street, the trumpet opening up to the clear blue skies in joy, arms outstretched. You walk faster trying to find the source, excited, you love live music on the streets. That is where music should be, rubbing shoulders with routine, offering brief glimpses of abandon.

A struggles to catch up with you. You, apparently, walk very fast – which you are usually unaware of until you notice people anxiously moving out of your way :)  She is relieved when you finally locate the source of the music – on the second-floor balcony of a huge building, there’s a live orchestra playing. And in front of us, amidst the milling crowd, a middle-aged woman dancing to the music, all by herself, smiling.

Of course you have to stop. You are amazed by her confidence, her happiness at twirling around by herself, unmindful of the crowd who give her space. This is the woman you always wanted to be. You stop and watch, smiling from ear to ear. And as was bound to happen (sigh), she notices you in that crowd, one among the two Indians – and reaches out, asking you to dance with her. You are embarrassed, try to explain to her that you cannot dance, that your eagerness to learn is only matched by your incompetence, as many dance teachers and friends would agree. Of course she does not understand English, and your embarrassment just adds to her mirth.

That's how the light gets in

So this is an attempt to store only my writing, no reading excerpts, at one place - hoping it will make me want to write more :)

Will continue to post here too, in case I write anything new.

http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com

Soul Mountain

Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Prize winner, narrates the story of a man who is falsely diagnosed with lung cancer and is given only a few months to live. It is part autobiographical, part fictional. He decides that he will use this time to search for Lingshan, the mythical mountain, supposedly situated at the source of the mighty Yangtze river, a last attempt at living a “real” life. He decides to walk all the way up the river, he crosses many villages and lives, and enters and fades out of so many stories, myths, and folklore, often bizarre - and meets himself at every turn of the way.

This book shakes you up, for reasons you are not entirely sure of. It alternates between the second and first person singular, suggesting two sides to the same character, an ego and an alter ego. You are drawn into, nay dragged into the novel, at the very first sentence, and you walk along with the protagonist, across mountain ranges, streams, suffering all that he suffers, living through all his highs and lows, drowning in his desperate seeking, and coming up again, with him.

In some way, you realize he’s a brother, Someone Like You. Somewhere you are at peace, walking along with him. And the lessons we learn together on the journey teach you detachment, at the same time.

Many years later, you find yourself suddenly in a hotel room, in a cold foreign country, the windows opening on to bare treeless open dry land and a few concrete buildings, and the lights of flights taking off at the airport nearby, the only sign of life. The total isolation, the lack of friendliness in people, the absence of sunlight and trees, everything depresses you no end. You miss home, home where the sun shines all year, and the people are friendly.

Vision

Certain bits from stories that people tell me remain in the memory, sometimes I wake up in the morning remembering one of them, from a long time ago. I inhabit stories, I wander in and out of them. I love this one especially, a vision I can see and hear in my head:

"...It reminds me of the work I did last year with the Maldharis of the Rann of Kutch- they have a unique breed of buffalo that they call the Banni breed. A strange and wonderful breed of buffalo that survives the harsh climate of the Rann and grazes at night. Its quite a vision to see hundreds of them returning by themselves to their pens at dawn, each herd following its lead buffalo just by the sound of the bell around its neck."