Dear you,
This newsletter has been in my drafts for very long and is very, very long.
Happy New Year! May this year bring you peace, peace is good I think because it includes several other things. <3
A lot of us are talking about a dreadful year being over but I still want to talk about 2020 because it was a year when I couldn’t run away from my thoughts. And I thought a lot. About anger, love, conditioning, living as I was building new relationships, trying to keep the existing ones and had to let go of some.
I have been wondering if people are studying relationships forged during the pandemic. Because in a pre-pandemic world, my sexual and romantic relationships were so much about visual attraction and built around the idea of how our coming together would be great on the CV of my life (read: acceptance) and hence must be pursued at all costs. I don’t know if it was the pandemic or this growing old bit or that we couldn’t physically meet, I formed a relationship based on another kind of need, the need for stability, structure, safety and longing. I never thought I could have these before the pandemic. It is something I never strived for, in fact, something I looked down upon because I couldn’t have it. I was different, emotionally in 2020.
I had to think a lot about this because I was told I was judgy and wasn’t holding space for another person to open up. This time I stepped back to investigate because I wanted the safety and security this new found connection offered and I couldn’t look for another distraction to fill the need.
I once read that people who are self righteous and judgemental have the most self hatred. I think it is true. As a person who hasn’t ever feel like they belong, I have had to constantly learn new things so I could. You know like, ‘If I get into that Univ, if I make that much money, if I marry by 30, if I write a book, if my body is …, if my skin is…, if I do that by 25, If I learn the woke language, If they are my friend, if I make comics, if I get a blue tick…… I’d be accepted.’ While one tries to check the ever increasing boxes, we also find people who haven’t done as much as us and tell them things like, “there is so much about feminism online, if you have not educated yourself, you are the problem.” What is that, if not hey-you-are-wrong-you-don’t-belong and I don't want to associate with people like you.
If how I speak, what I wear, my body, my caste location, where I studied makes me feel like I don’t belong, I must also police others. I do that all the time. Also, I am telling myself there is only a narrow ever-changing way in which people can belong, which means we will always feel unfit. I work hard and watch what I say and do so that I am not chucked out which is what performance is, isn’t it?
I also have to constantly check the kind of people I associate with. The stringent rules that apply for me then also get applied to them. How you are can never be okay, you must change to fit in and I will be the person who trains you. If I associate with you and you aren’t accepted by others, then that will be on me, won’t it?
I have also thought about what expecting our partners to change says about oneself? That I know better? Or I am better? And I am certainly walking a tight rope myself.
People reach their truths when they are ready, not because they are coerced or lead. Letting this person be was not easy, it meant not discussing the person every time they falter or not meet my needs. It meant them not meeting my needs doesn’t means they failed.
As someone who trusts myself very little, I constantly need to analyse, share because this worry of doing everything wrong is constantly eating me. And when you have that kinda self doubt, how can you bring yourself to trust another person and that too a person who holds some power over you? So I had to tell myself and I still do, that no matter where this goes, I will be fine.
It is not easy letting go. The narratives we build when we build when we try and control keep us so busy. But it meant there is little prattling on, planning, analysing, criticising , sabotaging my goals and trashing my self esteem. It didn’t just mean trusting another human, it almost meant trusting my needs and myself. And not being fearful of another person and letting them manifest. I have often said in my interviews that, “Trust is the highest form of validation and that’s what I feel when people share their deepest secrets with me.”
That’s how we want our relationships to be. All of them, with loved ones and strangers. When I first finished #100IndianTinderTales, I remember telling my mum, “You know you never trusted me with your secrets, random strangers trust me with theirs.” My mum always thought I spoke too much and couldn’t be trusted with secrets. She didn’t want me to relay them. She just refused to tell me but always confided in my eldest sister and my eldest sister and my middle sister were inseparable. I felt excluded and didn’t think I could be trusted. Thankfully, I never stopped talking. So when people online trust me, I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility and I also feel seen. Over the years, my mother and I have worked on things that bother us and we are trying to hold space for each other without feeling attacked.
In the pandemic, we cooked a lot. Things I craved for, things we had never heard of, things my mum had had in the US and wanted to try, etc. My mum loves to cook, she cooks exceptionally well and cooking for her is also a way to communicate. She loves to feed. During the pandemic, as we both used the kitchen, we squabbled a lot. She would do some fault finding or correcting, I would be wounded and I would blurt out something hurtful. We would both be angry. We rarely discussed it.
In the initial months we were both making very Indian recipes, in the the past few months, since we got the Internet TV at home, we have been looking up a lot of recipes together. She has been excited to try a lot of things she has had when in the US but had never tried, probably because it was in English and she didn’t know where to start. So we have made burgers, pizzas, sauces, dips, Burmese food, Persian food and the glee on her face is just something else.
I bring my excitement, fear, knowledge of the English language and love for food and my mum brings her excitement, love for food, expertise from having cooked for so long and her its-not-the-end-of-the world attitude and we have cooked several things and have been so overjoyed by the experience.
With all the cooking I slowly started to tell her how her judging makes me feel, I don’t feel very confident about cooking and try to do everything right so she is not irked and despite everything I do when she only sees the things that I fail at, I feel wounded and hurt. She said she does it so it is easier for me to learn but she will be mindful. It isn’t like our experiments in the kitchen are without friction now but we are trying to give each other space.
Recently, Shikha Bafna shared this from Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. I read it to my mother, she said it was true. She said so many people who wouldn’t otherwise talk to her, talk to her because of her food. She also said, how we take her food for granted but outsiders always appreciate it. I for sure do but I am trying to be mindful of my mother’s needs.
When we ask my father about the food, he just nods his head. But in the pandemic, he took instructions from my mum and has been making tea for the watchmen. On days he is late, he knocks at my door and asks me to take on. I measure, 3 cups of water, 1/2 ltr milk, 4 spoons of tea leaves, 7 spoons of sugar, some crushed ginger and some cinnamon when I feel like. Other than making tea, he has also taught a lot of children English. Though my father is open to repeating anything he is teaching several times, he also puts down children. I have been so triggered by it and have been asking him to stop.
Once he told me how I didn’t know about human psychology. He said, “if you put people down, they will work hard to prove you are wrong.” I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t argue with him because he wouldn’t let me finish', so I sent him a text.
The text talked about how stuff he told me as a teenager still haunts me. He thought I was wasting my life and would not amount to anything. I told him how every time I hit a new milestone, I feel worthless and that I am not smart. I would have liked him to trust then. Because I trusted everything he said. He had power and I didn’t.
Why should people have to prove themselves, why can’t they belong without having to prove themselves? Why can’t people learn without fitting into moulds created by someone? Why can’t they learn without being shamed and put down?
My father read it and the next day he told me he has been reflecting on it. No, he is still mean from time to time but maybe slightly lesser but what I am grateful for is that the kids have picked up and he is less toxic.
This conversation with my father has made me look at the antagonist in me and how often I feel I must show people that they are losers because they won’t give me what I want from them. How when I don’t get something I am always reacting, never expressing. It made me feel that how the way I love is so rooted in fear.
That’s it! In 2021, it is my sincere hope to find more the antagonist in me and look at loving without fear, shame or hate. I wish you the same.
Love,
Indu
Also this year, I thought I will let you know that if you feel my work has helped you and you would like to pay me, I will accept that through PayPal. My email is indu14@gmail.com
It is interesting how finding the antagonist in self is also a way to being kind to self and others around, to approach with lesser judgement or being aware when the judgment naturally creeps up from years of moulding!
I heard in podcast how just like how the bikllions of people have different finger prints, everyones pattern of loving is unique to themselves. But just as how fingerprint as a concept is same for everyone, love as a concept maybe similar..
Its so nice to see you juggling with love, utensils, recipes and tastes, aromas and flavors in the kitchen with your mother!