Making Sense Of Miracles In The Anarchy

I’m turning 44. It’s not a fashionable age or even a notable number. I’ve weathered midlife crisis and the screaming anarchy of being the generation getting no credit but carrying the blame like everything else for our ageing boomer parents. I find myself single with very little financial or professional stability. And the health issues rack up. How to make sense of this?

The pandemic burst on the world six months after I turned 40. Not so different from the most famous generation (millennials) just six months after I was born. Maybe I will always be ahead in the things that nobody realises and when they do, they won’t remember. I’ve been so many people, so many galactic adventures in a single molecule since then. Both thens. And this past year has been about the lessons of letting go. No wonder my insights have all been about dying. Every survival is a death; every goodbye, a funeral dirge. And just ahead of the next birthday, I’m passing through the biggest transitions of them all. Losing my mind.

I cook now and take pleasure in it, even though I do not do it well. I am afraid of crowds, of meeting new people, of talking to large groups. I worry about what the person who cuts my hair, who drives the autorickshaw I take, who checks my bag at a public transit think about me because every single one of them has the power to hurt me from misplaced rage, from personal malice, from the confusion that comes from surviving a time that took so many prisoners. And the sorries have come strolling in too, like awkward relationships from long ago messing up my carefully curated emotional organisation. I still don’t understand forgiveness. But I did understand moving on and survival. How do I reorder the ooze of my empathy and affection?

I’ve always been a creature of the brain, my identity, ego and world built around it. When betrayal came oozing, the mind climbed out of mistrust. Each disappointment that laid a dent, my mind painted over and turned into art. Heartbreak, trauma, difficulty, pain – each have been weathered by the soldier, the leader that is my mind. And now that brave knight is falling. Who am I when I’m not fast or articulate or productive or smart? What does it really mean to be a Mumbaiker when the city is overrun by angry men who don’t respect women or traffic rules? What are the references for a city whose very makeup is changing because of a new public transit system? How do I survive a world that I don’t understand any more?

Surprises are the blessings of such a time. Drifting in a vacuum, when you have nothing left to lose, everything is sustenance. The Anarchist is someone I’ve known for a decade and mistaken for shy. As clouds obscure my mind, his oddness sounds a path for me to follow. I am a bat. I can navigate blind when there are the right signals to do so. His anarchy has it all. (It’s midnight and he just pinged me that he ate one spoon of ice-cream in honor of my birthday; a day after I tell him the ice-cream I bought turned out be bad)

The Miracle as all such are, is new and sudden recognition. She reminds me of an old professor who used to say “We don’t make friends; we only recognise them.” We met in a crowd. When a stranger interrupted me mid-conversation, she turned to him and I thought they would have a more important conversation than anybody could have with me. I took a step back. Immediately she looked at me. Even my foggy brain read that clearly and the look said, “Don’t leave me alone with this guy!” So just as gently, I stepped back in and waited for him to finish. Suddenly she murmured goodbye to him and bolted. I shot her a despairing look, wondering if I had imagined it all. And in that moment, interrupting man slithered onto my attention. Just as I started to drown in his persistent interrogations, his rude masculinity, she returned. I shot her a grateful smile and when I turned back, he had gone. And that was how we found each other. Compatriots in a strange world. (She met me for a quick bite today and never said happy birthday but she did wish me luck before my medical test)

But it isn’t all newness. Through the pollution, comes the fresh breaths of people who have always lingered at the periphery of my life, navigating their own. I’ve been so lost in the land of narcissism (my own and others), that I had forgotten real lives are the ones being lived on their own, not projected or saddled onto others in stories of victimisation, superiority, inferiority and such. It took mental illness for me to notice this. Hope brings me food and eats what I make with a kind smile and an occasional joke that is never cruel. The Odd Couple do the same, with books, tales of their children, a recipe or two and always a smile. One of them suggested I babysit the kids because they’re so much more refreshing than medication. It’s true. As has always been in my odd roller-coaster of a life, Sense brings me grace and humour that I understand, that feels comforting. And my rock of Gibralter, my religion-agnostic Santa Claus, my healer, friend, guide Topher has held my hand and my fevered mind through the worst of this time.

None of them rescue me. Not one of them asks me to rescue them. They’re all soldiering on through the challenges that we call real life. Ageing parents. Financial crises. Troubled relationships. An angry world lashing out. Health issues. Heartache. Fatigue. Death. Irrelevance. Struggling to survive cancel culture. Trying not to be the next generation to be blamed for the world going wrong. Realising how futile it all is. And maybe there is peace in that. And companionship.

Happy birthday to me. And to the people who made it possible for me to get here, through sense, through bat signals, through miracles, through food and hugs and listening. Thank you.