Better Days: Growing Hope In A Wasteland
For some months now, Clubhouse has been my new social media toy. It has also been my solace, my refuge during the soul-shattering COVID-19 second wave. I’ve made friendships of a very different kind from any I’ve had before (even counting the pioneering days of chatrooms, blogs & Twitter). Hearing people’s voices through the dark desolation of a pandemic and having those voices be what carry you into choosing to wake up every day – this cannot be explained to somebody who hasn’t experienced it. I’ve become closer to a small handful that I was acquainted with offline, after I began speaking to them everyday on Clubhouse. And I’ve formed deep bonds with people I’ve never met but with whose daily personal challenges I’m familiar with, thanks to the Clubhouse rooms we’ve held together. I even had a birthday party on Clubhouse, a 10 hour one with music, laughter, tears, sharing & wishes. I’ll never forget this.
I took one of my pet projects Alphabet Sambar, into Clubhouse in the form of Themed Mics, which invite poetry, stories, music & paintings to the pre-set theme. For weeks now, my Mondays have gathered a small motley crue of word lovers in English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi (once Spanish) and more. I used to set the initial themes, but now true to the community, several others suggest themes, help me hold the room together, take our conversation in different directions & make me a better writer & person.
This piece was written for a theme set by the first co-host of Alphabet Sambar, Tareque Laskar – Better Days. And another co-host Kapil Sharma suggested its Hindi translation be ‘Acche din’. We laughed (wryly) and I changed that to ‘Behtar din‘. And then began the week of worry, trying to dredge up something to write. How to hold the idea of hope after the two years that have been? This is what I came up with.
Better Days
I have been slipping away from myself
unsteadily but definitely, for over a year
I even have to look at the calendar to remember that it hasn’t always been this way
And some days, I’m not sure even then
I’ve tried to surround myself with pretty things
And everywhere all I see is devastation, ruin
Crumpled paper & decay
Things that shrivel under sanitizer
and kill without
I can’t finish reading a page without grabbing for my phone
Where once I would confidently sail the seas of words in a book
without backward glance at reality
I struggle, clutching my fear timelines
It’s all I remember to do
I can’t hold thoughts together long enough to open computer, login, draft, edit
Where once, once, I can’t even remember how I did it
But I must have, didn’t I?
Except when I talk to other people
And I hear the same trepidation in their voices, see it in the bend of their shoulders
I have even begun reading it in the frequent ‘…is typing’ statuses followed by silences
I remember I’m a smith of ideas
I can give names & form to these things we are feeling
And it is we
You are not alone
I am not alone
And this is hope
One here says, spend time under trees, it brings you back to good earth
Another there says, I can’t bring myself to step out of home
And there someone says, work from home has made me forget what is day, what is night
While another says I’m stir-crazy, I’m also afraid to cross the road
In May this year, I crumbled & surrendered
Feeling the tang of defeat in my mouth
Wasn’t surrender supposed to be a spiritual thing
And taste sweeter? It didn’t
I could not remember how to hold people anymore
I did not know how to speak condolences when I couldn’t see hope anymore
Last week, I got dressed & then the hours passed, thumbing my phone
When night came, I was glad and ashamed
The next day, it took me an hour but I stepped out
Another half hour before I made my way to the beach
But it was too late, the sunset over
I didn’t dare stand on the sand alone
In the place that has been home & healing my whole life
Today, when she said she couldn’t step out of home, I was the feeling again
I was also the sentiments of nature & healing
Give it time, I said, one step at a time, one day at a time
I am realising
Hope isn’t a warrior
with blazing eyes & defiant pride in his spine
Not a lawyer
with ironclad promises & perfect contracts in hand
It isn’t a healer
with gentle hands & a flowing gown
Not a nurse
Tending to pain with reassurance
Hope is what follows them
a child in tatters
halting, hand in mouth
stumbling, stopping to pick up a blade of grass
Hope is what notices that between the bloodied stones,
a flower grows
2020 brought us a terrifying monster, holding up a mirror to our worst selves
Fear, abuse, violence, tyranny, fascism
I stood my ground
I am strong, I knew that
And with the impatient derision of that knowledge, I weathered 2020 proud
This year will be better, I said
And then this year, the second wave
What an innocuous two words
I always like the concept of 2
This was a slap in the face, in the heart and most of all, a blow to the spine
Scrambling for a hospital bed
For oxygen
For a magic medicine
For a vaccination
For a travel pass
For words to explain why
For a way to say
I give up, I give up, I give up
No words left to even complain
Make it stop hurting
And amid the voices
There was one from another continent,
united in history, divided by a line
music in her laughter, smiles in her reading
who sends me digital packets of happiness every day
There was one, unnamed that gave me identity by saying,
“The fact that you exist, is a political act”
I am courageous. I am enough. I am abundant.
Now I am a person who loves love poetry & enjoys flowers.
There was one who I may never have crossed paths with
Who creates a space of wit and words with me,
Every week
And this week he brought us all better times
There was one who felt like my own
That feeling was a stab in my heart when he died
In the days that followed, his people told me he spoke of me
And said I was creating spaces of joy & inspiration
He bequeathed me a world of people like that
And two books, with his thoughts inscribed in pencil
There are those who find safety in my presence
Courage in my name
I don’t always like it, sometimes I hate it
And within me, without the need to make sense of it, there is
SILENCE
And then, there is light.
It’s not proud
It’s not tidy or dignified
Not logical, not coherent
It has gaps & wounds & no baggage
It is light streaming in through the bulletholes
The relief of tears pouring out with the blood
I can’t capture it or control it
I can’t even know for sure, it’ll always be there
Or that it is even there
Or what it’ll grow into
Still, it is a mirror that shows me I’m still here
Still breathing
This weekend, with a friend, I stood on the beach
And met a sunset for the first time
2021, you taught me hope.
