Dear Sarvanama,
If writing had not been invented and I were dumb about it, I would have gone nuts long ago. The act of putting real words on real paper with a real pen is a sort of therapy. Bringing those real things to this virtual world then is proof of recovery. I become myself for a while, evading all bodily sensations that the world pokes me into counting and fretting about. Without scribbling and without some plea for engaging my mind and heart, I feel I cease to be a normal person. Let me speak about something sublime or write anything mundane or reasonably higher than it. I must sustain my sanity.
Not a mystery
Life is not a mystery if you stop peeking into yours alone. If you observe those in the crowd and take interest in multiplicity, life unfolds numerous realities. My pains are someone’s falsehoods. Someone’s pains are my bygones. My bygones are someone else’s present hiccups. I try to understand this absence of mystery in my surroundings and tend to revel in how much has already been discovered by the geniuses of the past. And I come to this tiny summary: we are only the consumers of what has been bestowed upon us.
I mean, I often think that the world of discovery has become almost saturated and we are only repeating things in different parlance. I do not know of a language recently developed or a tribe discovered a year ago. What of the literary style, woodcraft, clay work, acting, or classroom pedagogy? This may be my sheer ignorance, but there appears to be scanty innovation in the last one or few decades. Political systems are the same as years or centuries ago, except for little hybridization at the peak of globalization and rampant adoption of cultural practices. Just that social gatherings have taken different formats and communication channels less face-to-face or sensual. Human interactions are extensive to the extent of hiding no secrets and hindering the barriers of interpersonal dignity. Not only life, but the world of lives is not a mystery. Mystery would be when new discoveries challenged ordinary folks’ capacity to know things.
I guess a human being can regain some level of mysteriousness only after achieving some level of composure and seclusion. It is a difficult thing to practice isolation and relative silence amid the cacophony one is destined to live with these days. But I am learning to ignore cacophony to the best of my capacity to be indifferent to trivialities.
Infinite confusion
While grappling with cacophonies as a ritual, I am infinitely confused about what to save first – time, relationships, body, or mind. I am not clear about the exact priority among these and other milestones. Time looks most urgent every time I feel an urgency. But I do not remember being so pressed to save time in relation to relationships. Time and relationships are mutually exclusive. When you have great relationships around, you will allow time to take care of itself as you marvel at the prospects of emotional and social safety. Great relationships allow you to take time to become autonomous to the extent of realizing the need to schedule your life within the available time. Well, I cannot explicitly detail how I manage the paradox across these two. What I say above is all that reflects my unwarranted approach.
The two seemingly tangible entities – body and mind – nag me most of the time. Most of the time I experience life as the body. I experience it so because mind makes me capable of it. I sense aches and cramps as reminders of the body on which I depend, or the other way round. Sometimes, I feel it is just one episode of pain that crawls across the organs at varying times and magnitudes of impact. Other times, I feel a number of such episodes impacting different organs in varying degrees. During these sensations, the mind is highly engaged to define every bit of experience as occurring in the body, such as worms, pests and other agents of degeneration working tirelessly through my cells and tissues.
What does the mind claim about its role? It perhaps stays smug that it rules everything – time, relationship, body. In fact, it does both in extreme calm and in extreme crisis. It rests on calmness to allow the body and relationships to relax. It fidgets in crisis to tell them of their helplessness. Time does not do much here. It simply forms a platform for their infinite performances.
Pathological implications
Does idleness induce complex thoughts, ones that read silly if read precariously? When I get a chance to remain physically less mobile, and this keeps me mostly guarded by the sources of thoughts and pretexts for reflexivity, I begin to turn silly thoughts into systematic self-inquiries. This is a great consolation.
Imagine this. I am just out of the kitchen, having cooked our belated lunch. I am listening to podcasts on my brief poems only to keep pace against the drudgery of the mundane cooking. Amid this surge thoughts competing to claim worth for scribbles. One idea that clicks in my head is ‘pathological implications of my metaphors.’ The phrase springs like an epiphany, like a research topic, and reminds me of the inquiries I receive about my suggestive snippets on Facebook. I mean the poems that my acquaintances mostly attribute to the events around me, and which I dismiss occasionally as poor, literal readings of a defamiliarized expression.
Anyway, what could be the pathological implications of my metaphor[s]? First, the implications of the subject itself. My stock of expressions in poetry is unfamiliar. I mean the pool of phrases and clauses targeting a poetic mind that attempts to read every expression beyond and between the lines. I should rather soon administer someone to read my poems for their metaphors in line with their impact on the readers. It is, in fact, the right time. I would also read most of the old pieces myself to realize what their figures mean to me now. Or shall I ask one of those costless (in a personal sense) AI companions to do the thing for me? The exploration would caution me about the possible hurtful impact of my expressions in the days ahead. Considering the fact that I must act now as a ‘public figure.’
Public figure blues
I have become a public figure. But this has hardly altered my being a human being in the most biological and emotional sense. I feel that aspect of my being only when I reach my two-room office. Only when I log in to the official email addresses. Is it like a deliberate detachment from the responsibility? Or is it being selective about how I balance life and work?
Three (3) pokes me this time, too. I think either about three months or three years ahead. Three months are crucial for completing and shifting residence. Three years are for justifying the ‘public figure identity’. If the first three go smoothly and as stipulated, the other three may be less bothersome. If I can keep my family in the new abode and fully immerse myself in the new role, it will be like marching for a great war before martyrdom. Well, let it sound like a hyperbole. But many folks suppose surviving a high role in any public institution is transcending martyrdom, and not doing so is a fatal failure. That’s it. That’s all. I am and must train myself to be prepared for either transcendence, immanence, or total collapse if being a martyr is a bad, immature thing.
And I frequently think this way as well. What if someone else takes over my role? Something like in Nayak, the famous Hindi movie featuring Anil Kapoor as someone replacing a Chief Minister for twenty-four hours. Among many things they would do in their best talents, I would be curious to know how they would tackle cynics and sycophants without having to encounter them. In fact, it is rather enlightening to have disruptors around having no courage to face you. How differently would anyone take this perspective? I see cynics and sycophants in minuscule numbers. How big would the number be in my replacers’ share? To me, the magnitude of distress they cause appears many times larger than their number. And this all offers me an opportunity to build resilience of a higher magnitude. What would my replacers make out of the distress? Or would they be able to remain happy-go-lucky all the time?
You know it is not about a movie after all. If you could neutralize some of the key cynics or dispel sycophants completely, your workplace would probably be devoid of challenge. And a place without a single challenge is likely to turn competence into complacency over time. So, make sure to have a few distractors around, and particularly high-profile ones. This need not be to draw any public sympathy that you are being constantly bothered or covetously bolstered and yet trying hard to perform your pious duties. I would not advise you to be greedy for gallantry over disruptors, but anticipate setting an example of setting crooks right at the exact time and degree they deserve.
One of my old friends says that cynics keep creating scenes to cause distress to you and wait to revel in your failure to maintain composure. It is very true. They love listening to what they do not like about you and your achievements. Or knowing about your fallibility boosts their confidence in inflicting greater emotional harm on your support groups. That’s how smart villainy is portrayed in classic narratives. That’s why resilience of your group members is the only emotional shield that you can rely on beyond your own. Your duty is to fortify their resilience on their own behalf because making them work on yours may give a semblance of an alternative enslavement.
Organizational leadership amid toxicity requires some untaught, and sometimes unheard-of, skill sets no matter how much you love or hate them. May the toxicity be of whatever magnitude. This is my learning so far. This makes pen and paper as big as breathing for me.