so our therapist thinks I might have too much empathy, and that it might cause me anxiety because I take on other people's emotions.

I always thought I was special. but I'm also a social scientist and so I know from research evidence that most people often think they are special. so I rationalised my feeling special as normal. 

but if she is right - and I do seem to have some 'symptoms' of excessive empathy - then my superpower is real. it might explain my heightened intuition, my ability to read other people's minds (which I earlier thought everyone could but have lately started to realize the contrary).

from a lot of my reading I had understood that low empathy was often the result of the spectrum of autistic issues, or a trait of narcissistic personalities. also that humans had uncanny empathy in the animal world; now I am learning that other animals do too. in a way I always thought empathy was a good thing, and that more was better. but apparently too much empathy is something of a borderline personality disorder. (they aren't wrong when they say give therapy enough time to find a disorder with anyone, because after all 'normal' is just the average across us all). it is because feeling other people's pain and emotions more than is 'normal' can be inefficient for one's own mind, like taking on more burdens than u need. but it's not only possibly bad for one, it can also hurt others because one puts oneself in their spots too much and attributes to them the extent and depth of feeling one feels herself, which might be an over/under estimation; effectively one cannot have the same information as other people about their situation, so one's empathising with them can often be a misjudgement. and using that in one's interaction with them can often create a mess, even hurting them.

this might explain why I have felt misunderstood often in my relationships, and have had expectations from other people that they don't deliver on (other people possibly have less empathy than I expected of them), which not only disappoints me but angers me sometimes, and gives me a feeling of superiority that again feels misunderstood.

I do still feel it doesn't cause me anxiety, because an out of body experience does accompany my empathy. 

a long friend/acquaintance recently lost her husband. I was getting news about his condition from another source as she didn't always feel like communicating when he was in hospital, so I had feared already. when I finally heard from the third person, I felt a physical wave of dread pass through my body, and I still kept wishing there was some confusion about the identity of the person being referred to. I didn't reach out to her because I felt like she wasn't ready, I mean if I was in denial I should respect hers. later I did meet her and also asked my therapist for a grief counsellor for her because I learned from K's colleagues that she had tweeted about it, and because the next few days I found her trying to use social media to come to terms with it, which worried me because I felt it was the wrong place to look for solace.

my therapist worries too much about me, I feel she has grown fond of me. she thinks the demise made me anxious, but frankly it was the use of social media that partly did, and partly it was because her family couldn't travel to her in these times and I was the only one amongst us friends who was within driving distance and thus able to get to her; I was anxious because I wanted to help but didn't know how, especially because I have always found her to be a difficult person and I have never felt close to her, especially because I wanted to meet her in a covid-safe way and she insisted I come into her home because their quarantine was over (she did come down later). I understand that her pain her grief is hers to bear, I understand that I may feel her situation slightly more than would be felt by someone else at my distance, and not just because I listened to her that day, I understand that my feeling that she needs to meet her parents asap is not shared by her and might not be the best advice even though I feel it is. I also understand that many things she said I will never share with anyone but K and maybe my therapist, and that I judged even some of them silently; but all this doesn't cause me anxiety and in fact it might have helped me help her.

too much of anything can be unwanted and inefficient and unbalanced. but it can also be a superpower. and it can be both good and bad. if the therapist is right it might be why I've often found economics and game theory to be so intuitive and natural. it might be why I was the only one to realize that a couple's lesbian au pair had a thing for the guy even before it came out. K didn't believe me then cos of her sexual orientation, even though I insisted that is never absolute, and that most people are somewhere on the spectrum of being bisexual, that the person you feel attracted toward matters more than their gender. it probably explains why, soon after meeting a classmate after years wherein she talked about issues with her husband about her career choices, when I saw she had a new haircut had gotten a new look more like a complete makeover, I knew that she had decided to end her marriage.

my web reading of excessive empathy also tells me that it is often not innate but learned. I think it's all the reading, and even the movies about human emotions. I cry and hurt easily when I read or step into a character or a being, but I've found myself doing more and more of it (I've written before about not knowing another way to live or be). slowly I'm also losing fear of the animals that used to frighten me, and tuning more into their selves.

I realize yet again that I was wrong about some conclusions I drew. I am reading Carl Safina's Becoming Wild. and I learn, not surprisingly, that the evolutionary rift from reptiles that branched out to result in mammals and birds happened such that birds are one terminal node and we another. Mammals are thus not more evolved than birds, and the reason we think that is due to our ego, our ignorance, and our religious-cultural belief system. so think before u say 'bird-brained' again; birds understand probability, and are capable of making hooked and pronged tools that involve multiple stages of construction. 

homicide therefore is not and should not be more horrifying than the murder of many other life forms we routinely commit. If it's for food I can still condone it as that is natural and part of the cycle of ecosystems, but factory style mass killing is very inhumane (yes that is an old realisation).

I didn't know for example that early whaling in humans was to reduce those majestic bulks of gorgeous mammals to whale oil to lubricate our industrialising lives, and later as we found fossil fuels we started using whale meat to mass manufacture dog and cat food!!!!!! (ugh)

whales and dolphins have sophisticated language, and possibly so do birds and fish. just because we don't hear or understand them doesn't mean we have proof to the contrary. 

the other day I decided that the dog food (just a couple of jumbones in a sealed pack) lying in our car needed to be consumed if it didn't go bad as we are using our car a lot less due to lockdown and not coming back from late night dining at all (the original need to distract dogs guarding our staircase). So I brought it home and took it with me when I went shopping for fruit and vegs from our block thela, thinking that I might spot Beauty and Whiskey and give them one each. My luck then that Beauty was snoozing on the stairs just as I got out. I spoke to her, telling her how I'd been looking exactly for her. and despite her sleepiness I gave her one. She started licking it and got busy and I carried on. I walked around calling out for Whiskey but not finding him gave the second one to an unknown dog who looked like he could do with a treat. the next morning on my return from my run, Whiskey, who was sleeping or yawning and stretching under a car (at that hour a number of dogs are unresponsive), suddenly crawled out and came toward me and kept sniffing my hands expectantly. I caressed his face and ears and rubbed his side lovingly and spoke to him, telling him that I was looking for him the day before and that I didn't have it with me anymore. I wonder what Beauty had told him.

Barbets call all day, and now I realize I've known these sounds for a while without knowing their source, the birds. when I run in the morning in my block these days, almost every lane has a barbet calling. and now I'm even seeing their perfect tree holes - apparently barbets have woodpecker-strong beaks and burrow into the wood of trunks. there are two species around here. the smaller mouse-like coppersmiths (their call is like a coppersmith repeatedly beating a sheet of metal) are more visible because they like to sun themselves while calling on the top leafless branches of the mother tree; and their red heads and chests can catch your attention. the larger, the brown-headed barbet blends with the green leaves of summer, unless u see one flying from one branch to another like a leaf falling and then on focusing you notice it leading you to another perfect tree hole, it's grotesque large head and beak kinda cartoonish. it's call is also more nuanced, like a trrrr kutrro kutrroo.

and y'day outside the vaccination center - a public school in the maze of narrow pothole ridden lanes that can barely support the two-way traffic that flows through them and that seem like they are made of cowdung and irregular stones and rain water rather than tar - I saw a clan of sparrows. when we were kids there were sparrows everywhere and I didn't know what a barbet was.

Apparently there is a need to document what we are witnessing. The govt's mistakes, it's current callousness, it's single minded effort to deny, deflect, lie, and stifle criticism, even at the cost to more human lives, and to still put it's political image and the varnishing of it above stemming the pandemic, tantamount to murder.

But what's the point even in that really. Those who see the lies, they were the only ones who wanted to see them. Others close their ears, their eyes, their minds and refuse information that contradicts their beliefs. Or they euphemize the lies to "an inability to accept mistakes", which they say "I can forgive". 

The liar has thus been emboldened over the last two decades, and the people suffer, and die, and are not even counted.

I think I have trouble being tied down. having an employer. funny me saying this after getting a job after nearly four years. 

most people thought I wouldn't be able to find employment again; some thought I wanted domesticity or motherhood instead. barely anyone understood and everyone offered advice.

yes I had trouble finding employment, but that's because the Indian education system is messed up and nearly impossible to reason with. but somehow I found a loophole to their obduracy. and this year I have multiple offers. 

you got engaged to a Shira, and then you realise you are attracted to a different Shira ( watch Shtisel for context); that's how I feel now. having committed to the safest most practical option (the one that came first, hah), the one that even when committing to I felt like it was the wrong but risk averse decision, I now feel I erred. 

I feel my nature is to take risks and after earning some grey hairs I thought my nature had changed, but no, "one is still what one is going to cease to be...."

plus for the very first time, since the start of the pandemic, I had begun to reconcile myself to remaining on in my own country. and now I get an opportunity for a brief stint outside, but my commitment and the lack of consideration of my fiance (employment wise) prevents me from accepting it. the irony that is life. you live you learn, shit happens, and you're helpless, and you realise life and death and health are more important (but even those are location-dependent).

people are dying in homes, in cars and autos waiting for hospitals to take them in, in hospitals when they run out of oxygen or when there's a fire. the world feels unreal around me, especially when each one of us is affected/afflicted. 

but then I see this woman I met years ago in Europe, much younger than me, in a photo posted by her after many months, 39 weeks pregnant and "waiting to bring a new person into this beautiful world", and I wonder if she is living in the same world as me. and I realise in fact that she isn't, that this world has always been divided, that each is separated and isolated from the other despite our 'porous borders', that now I am in that world from where the rest looks insensitive because where I am is the source of the horror news headlines; that I have been on the other side of this often before when I have read about news from Syria, or Latin America, even the USA, ...

bounty

I've been birdwatching a bit lately as I am not in the frame of mind to open my computer and work these days. am learning to be still and patient and watch out for sudden movements in the branches of the trees in front of our windows. it's a good spot, with a big gulmohar in bloom right now, a shahtoot tree, and one what I call the mother tree; these three together attract a variety of birds whose names I am slowly learning. I still can't tell their calls from each other. my favorites are the restless butterfly sized sun birds who can barely stay put. I also love to spot green colored ones, so far parrots, brown headed barbets, and the common tailorbird. the other day I was wondering whether birds chart out the flight trajectory before they take off or not. or what range circles the kites want to float in. 

in India in summer you get a variety of melons, juicy and cool, even other than the more-known watermelon. I call all these kharbujas, but there are many, yellow, cream, orange, and green, some striped. I've figured it's best to eat in each season what's bountiful then; so am getting lots of melons while we wait for mango season. and now whenever I cut one of these, I collect their seeds (found conveniently in the center), wash and dry them, and then sprinkle them somewhere on the earth. last time I did this, I went to check the day after and saw only shells of them remaining. these are tiny flat seeds and it's hard for human hands/teeth to shell them, and I'm assuming also for bird beaks. so I think the squirrels have been busy snacking on them after some hard work. 

people still don't understand how this virus is spreading. they think gloves and trucks spraying sanitizer will help stem it. they don't get that masks and being near open doors and windows is the only hope when in a room with strangers. households with infected people are still not getting all members tested; they still fear the sample collection guy and people bringing them supplies, not understanding that the risk of transmission is the other way round.

in my parents' housing society some people started the theory that it's spreading through water pipes. they apparently even gathered some evidence. 

everyone has become a doctor or a scientist, self proclaimed. they still are trying and believing all recommended home remedies. not that docs really know what to do either, they are just tired serving their patients and relatives and friends who call in after hours. 

and parks have been shut. 

parents and sis tested positive. 

almost everyone I know is either sick or busy worrying about sick family and friends. 

it's harrowing. and the country is boasting that it has exported more vaccine doses than administered at home. while planned vaccination camps are being called off due to short supply.

friends and family are falling sick now. both of us had dreams about it one night, especially after hearing of my cousin who had a bad bout of sickness and another old acquaintance/friend whose family of 5 all fell sick and whose husband is in the hopital now; she herself has to stick her head in the O2 concentrator they've got home every now and then when she feels dizzy or gets splitting headaches. his cousin has quarantined her husband alone at their home while she moved in with her mom for a few days. he seems to be ok though after a few days of fever. my cousin has had fever since April 7-8 alongwith intermittent splitting headaches, weakness, runny tummy, diminished appetite and loss of the sense of taste/smell; for the last 2 days now though the fever is low-grade and the other symptoms seem to be gone and we are all breathing in relief. i was also getting worried for his brother who took him for a ct scan, and was in general tending to him through a window to the quarantined room. another cousin of mine lost his sense of taste and smell, got tested, was positive, and then his 3 yr old daughter came down with fever. this morning i heard she is better. a friend i was texting with regularly suddenly said she was also down with fever. thankfully she also seems to be much better today. i told my sister not to go into a hospital with my mom or my father on their day of second vaccine shot. people are scared to go into docs' clinics and hospitals. there's a drive through testing tent on my way to the borrowed office where i stare afraid at the line of cars each day. 3 weeks ago there used to be none and i wondered if the tent was in use. my dad is wearing double masks. he and sis are still going to banks and registrars offices as her flat purchase is coming through. thankfully my parents moved apartments before this fire got wild. and we took a break out of the city and this apartment. he even went and stayed with his parents for a couple days around holi without getting tested, while i got some alone time to heal too. therapist told us we are a rare couple (amongst her clients) who have mutual respect for (and don't bicker about) each other. i am learning to be less angry, more considerate, and to understand his vulnerabilities. and vice versa. a worksheet the therapist gave me to check on my anxiety levels made me anxious because i didn't think till then that i had anything to worry on that respect. i am back to myself now as i realize it was just a routine check on her part and not an indication that i too had clinical problems. when you start worrying about your worries it can get tricky and you fall into a loop. but i've been there and through before, i trust my body to wade me through the worry now again. i have shaky hands, the only symptom on the worksheet that really applied to me but i am not bothered because i know my mind and my body steadies them when i need them to be so. in fact its amazing what our bodies are capable of: moving period dates around to ease schedules, burn us up to disintegrate viruses, run for miles without needing to stop, figuring out when they need sleep, food, and water, and demanding and delivering these to the self, excreting unwanted bacteria through acnes and blackheads, and in so many ways, healing and taking what's needed from the atmosphere to do just that. but then again, viruses are also nature, and as i've said before if one has evolved to replicate using our energy while sometimes disintegrating us, then that's nature too, and was probably needed. because nature is a self-regulating body too. and we are part of the food chain. and human intellect is part of nature too. yes that same one that invented science and logic. and when fighting a wildfire knows that sometimes the best strategy is to create a controlled line of fire a lil way off to burn the grass or the vegetation out and create a fuel-less barrier to the spreading flames; just like instilling controlled sickness in the form of immunization can eliminate numbers for possible future infections, or at the very least reduce viral loads in case of infections. this virus has made us philosophical. i have thought of my death, and of those close to me, and am no longer surprised or stunned by much. its natural that i am living now, and natural that i will die someday. and your life will go on. or vice versa.

I get impressed by fame and reputation. even before getting here I was in awe of him. and then I heard so much more of him after we got here, from him, that both of us developed a huge crush-awe on him (his has evaporated since but mine has not yet been normalized). my adult fascinations are so different from those adolescent ones, this is more a professional sense of admiration mixed with a fear of looking like a fool in front of (or to) him. I saw him many times but always in the distance and was never introduced, although once I felt him looking at us arguing somewhat. 

then about two and half years ago I finally met him. we were all taking the same flight and on the bus to boarding he came right next to us seated together, and thus I was introduced. he must have also heard about me from him. I was shy but shook his extended hand with mine, which had thus been fiddling and wrapping my neon rubber hairtie around my fingers. I didn't have the time to take it off; and wondered if he could feel it's texture in that brief handshake. 

two of us had bought tickets seperately, his officially sponsored, mine bought by me. so we weren't seated together. but as we boarded I realised I was across the aisle from the other him instead, seated with his family. the way things choose to happen scares me sometimes. a sign, fate, or a chemical force seating us so close. I was tongue tied and as a result aloof, maybe appearing to be rudely so.

in the next few days of the conference (that I wasn't a part of) stay, I felt him once trying to get close to me to have a conversation, when some of us were walking - which instinctively made me distance myself - and found him observing me a few times. by now I was talking quite a bit with his wife; I felt much easier with her. 

since then I've seen him a few more times, in the parking lot or at a seminar, and each time I've either squirmed in my seat (when he suddenly turned back at the sound of my voice as I spoke to ask a question) or turned my back at him and started walking away. not because I wanted to, but because I felt safer to. tongue-tied-ness sometimes extends to limbs and the need to disappear too.

and now after two yrs and some months I suddenly walked into a room to talk to someone and realised slowly that he was sitting and talking to her. his legs were up on a chair, but as soon as he realised my presence he took them down slowly one by one; this I realised out of the corner of my eye cos I couldn't bare to direct them at him after the realization of his presence. his 'hi' was met by me with a slight wave of the hand and my face in his direction while mouthing it weakly aloud. I still couldn't meet his eye. it must have seemed rude, given how senior he is to me, but my behavior is not in these moments in my control.

and then the other day I had just deposited my lunch sandwich at my desk and walked out again to wash my hands before I ate and I heard a door unlock behind me, in the direction of his office. I looked back wanting to undo my strange behavior and to start getting to know him - which I've been craving in fact - and to thus normalize his perceived persona. for a split second I was thunderbolted yet again because I saw him half inside his door with his neck swung back looking at me just as I was looking at him. I'm glad I recovered and waved and croaked out a 'hi', making the moment a lil less awkward, and that he waved back. in so many years I (we) have made some progress. maybe we can be friends someday

what I've been upto

whiskey and beauty are our lane dogs: strays who have a few homes feeding them in our lane in our colony, and who exercise occupation rights and guard our building staircase sometimes. whiskey is a light brown white male, who barks at cars and is friendly to friends; beauty is more complex just like women are, and is big and strong and somewhat aggressive especially when she's feeling guarded. but she can also be gentle and let you give her a belly rub. she has black marks on her brown face that resembles a goatie, or at least a moustache. I just learned their names this week. he is scared of dogs and if one of them is guarding the stairs it becomes really hard for us to get back up especially late at night. so I am now looking for some dog food to keep in the car to distract them with cos they don't get lured away from their perch easily. 

and I finally have a (borrowed) office where I come 4 days a week in the afternoons to sit in some silence and work. this reject and (optional) resubmit is hard but progressing slowly. and to keep me company I've brought my poetry with me, rather the books of poetry that I owned. did anyone ever tell you that the best books to keep at your work desk (if you don't write literature or poetry yourself) are poems; you can read a few lines or a few pages and get a lil bit of perspective on life when you're feeling stuck or tired with work. it's mostly Plath, a Blake, and one by a local poet (a gift), and I recently bought one by Margaret Atwood. the last is surprising, a mix of angst, feminism, humor, environmentalism, ... (quoting a bit). 

"The aliens arrive. 

They've heard about human sex

but don't believe it.

At great risk to themselves

they've come to see.

They send down spies

in the shape of flying eyes

that peek in through our windows.

Oh anthropology!

The horror! The surprise!

What a show!

It almost makes them ill!

What a thrill.

They abduct a hundred humans

through a cosmic straw

and slurp us to another planet

and put us in a zoo.

Unless you have sex on demand

you don't get fed.

They say the equivalent of Ah and Ooo,

also Haha.

Dire, what hunger will do.

It's sex, sex, sex,

every two hours,

alternating with egg sandwiches and beer.

Be careful what you wish for."

we all sneeze every now and then. a random one here and there is simply a momentary bodily response or reaction to some stimulus. but a bout of frequent sneezes is symptom either of a short term illness like a cold or of an allergy - still the body's reaction against external stimuli - and now you might need something to help alleviate the discomfort or some medication. take it further still, someone with a chronic sneezing problem, possibly sinus issues or something else within the body that causes it; this now you can be surer needs more medical help and its cause is within rather than without. 

replace the idea of a 'sneeze' above with any human emotion, especially an extreme one, and the concept of mental illness starts to become a lil clearer. 

there's a world that opens up through the doors of books where I often prefer to live. and I come out of it for lil things I love in this the outer shell world - morning runs, swims in cold blue pools, hugs and caresses and sitting close together, soft cotton fabrics with kalamkari and other shopping, birds birds and more birds, their chirping and tweeting and floating in the wind, flowers and dogs and the colors of living things, eyes and what they hold and share, and food where things die and go to become beautiful again. and song and poetry.

Some more from A Passage to India that continues to blow my mind in how well an Englishman in British India understood India, his own country’s imperialism and the behavior of his people, and humanity; also realized that Forster wrote this almost 100 years ago! ‘The court was crowded and of course very hot, and the first person Adela noticed in it was the humblest of all who were present, a person who had no bearing officially upon the trial: the man who pulled the punkah. Almost naked, and splendidly formed, he sat on a raised platform near the back, in the middle of the central gangway, and he caught her attention as she came in, and he seemed to control the proceedings. He had the strength and beauty that sometimes come to flower in Indians of low birth. When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god – not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her. This man would have been notable anywhere; among the thin-hammed, flat-chested mediocrities of Chandrapore he stood out as divine, yet he was of the city, its garbage had nourished him, he would end on its rubbish-heaps. Pulling the rope towards him, relaxing it rhythmically, sending swirls of air over others, receiving none himself, he seemed apart from human destinies, a male Fate, a winnower of souls. Opposite him, also on a platform, sat the little Assistant Magistrate, cultivated, self-conscious and conscientious. The punkah-wallah was none of these things; he scarcely knew that he existed, and did not understand why the court was fuller than usual, indeed he did not know that it was fuller than usual, didn’t even know he worked a fan, though he thought he pulled a rope. Something in his aloofness impressed the girl from middle-class England, and rebuked the narrowness of her sufferings. In virtue of what had she collected this roomful of people together? Her particular brand of opinions, and the suburban Jehovah who sanctified them – by what right did they claim so much importance in this world, and assume the title of civilization?’

Forster in A Passage to India writes with a deep understanding of humanity, and a lot of racial empathy even in 1920s: (context: Fielding is leaving after visiting Aziz who was ill) "Although the Indians had driven off, and Fielding could see his horse standing in a small shed in the corner of the compound, no one troubled to bring it to him. He started to get it himself, but was stopped by a call from the house. Aziz was sitting up in bed, looking dishevelled and sad. 'Here's your home,' he said sardonically. 'Here's the celebrated hospitality of the East. Look at the flies. Look at the chunam coming off the walls. Isn't it jolly? Now I suppose you want to be off, having seen an oriental interior.' 'Anyhow, you want to rest.' 'I can rest the whole day, thanks to worthy Dr Lal. Major Callendar's spy, I suppose you know, but this time it didn't work. I am allowed to have a slight temperature.' 'Callendar doesn't trust anyone, English or Indian; that's his character, and I wish you weren't under him; but you are, and that's that.' 'Before you go, for you are evidently in a great hurry, will you please unlock that drawer? Do you see a piece of brown paper at the top?' 'Yes.' 'Open it.' 'Who is this?' 'She was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come before. Now put her photograph away.' He was astonished, as a traveller who suddenly sees, between the stones of the desert, flowers. The flowers have been there all the time, but suddenly he sees them. He tried to look at the photograph, but in itself it was just a woman in a sari, facing the world. He muttered, 'Really, I don't know why you pay me this great compliment, Aziz, but I do appreciate it.' 'Oh, it's nothing, she was not a highly educated woman or even beautiful, but put it away. You would have seen her, so why should you not see her photograph?' 'You would have allowed me to see her?' 'Why not? I believe in the purdah, but I should have told her you were my brother, and she would have seen you. Hamidullah saw her, and several others.' 'Did she think they were your brothers?' 'Of course not, but the word exists and is convenient. All men are my brothers, and as soon as one behaves as such he may see my wife.' 'And when the whole world behaves as such, there will be no more purdah?' 'It is because you can say and feel such a remark as that, that I show you the photograph,' said Aziz gravely. 'It is beyond the power of most men. It is because you behave well while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to come back just now when I called you. I thought, 'He has certainly done with me; I have insulted him.' Mr Fielding, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.' His voice seemed to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal surface, he said: 'We can't build up India except on what we feel. What is the use of all these reforms, and Conciliation Committees for Mohurram, and shall we cut the tazia short or shall we carry it another route, and Councils of Notables and official parties where the English sneer at our skins?' 'It's beginning at the wrong end, isn't it? I know, but institutions and the Government don't.' He looked again at the photograph. The lady faced the world at her husband's wish and her own, but how bewildering she found it, the echoing contradictory world! 'Put her away, she is of no importance, she is dead,' said Aziz gently. 'I showed her to you because I have nothign else to show. You may look around the whole of my bungalow now, and empty everthing. I have no other secrets, my three children live away with their grandmamma, and that's all.' Fielding sat down by the bed, flattered at the trust reposed in him, yet rather sad. He felt old. He wished that he too could be carried away on waves of emotion. The next time they met, Aziz might be cautious and standoffish. He realized this, and it made him sad that he should realize it. Kindness, kindness, and more kindness - yes, that he might supply, but was that really all that the queer nation needed? Did it not also demand an occasional intoxication of the blood? What had he done to deserve this outburst of confidence, and what hostage could he give in exchange?" (I'll stop there because I could go on forever if I let myself go. and because that idea of exchanging hostages to express and to build mutual trust, that's an idea in contracts in Economics that Williamson wrote about in the 1980s; Forster understood it so well at a human level so long ago, in fact he understands so much it is wondrous and amazing to read him; Forster is truly alive still through his words and I feel fortunate to be able to read him and connect with his thoughts, his morals ideals ethics, his meaning of being human.)

magenta, fuschia, rani colour, if you know what I mean, is the color of the Indian desert landscape. against the sand brown, or sandstone pink of the earth and earthly forts. that first is abundant in Bougainvillea, different shades of it, some with lil white dots in the center, some without. if I were designing a new line of summer fabrics, that's what my palette would be. Sandy brown and stone pink, splashed around with creepers of tiny green leaves and bunches of papery Bougainvillea fuschia. how has Nicobar missed that so far or for that matter all these millions of expensive brands of (mostly women's) clothing touting indianness in their fabric, embroidery, and inspiration.

after more than three years of living back home in India we are finally out on the road. all our other holidays so far have been out of India or to Goa (which isn't really India). and I had begun to think that Delhi was India or that India were Delhi-like cities. 

last night we got our second punctured tire in a week, just the night before we were to drive. the puncture repair guy and other men who stopped to get their tyres filled up all gawked at me. and the mosquitoes tried to eat us alive while we waited and the guy patched up our wheel. this isn't the life I usually live, this isn't the india I am usually in. 

but that was still just outside of the mall that belongs to my india. this morning while I drove the first 2-3 hours out of Delhi, truck drivers bikers more truck drivers all gawked at me, the biker smiling invitingly at me when I honked at him to get out of the way. I guess they aren't used to women driving. but also a small truck/tempo full of rajasthani women waved at me repeatedly when I found myself trailing them after having overtaken them; that was a rare found connection across cultural barriers.

India is a funny country, you see signs for water parks and rows of unoccupied new apartment budings every 50-60 kms or so advertised as dream homes when the surroundings are rural and farmland, and the highway dividers are drying spaces for cowdung cakes. the highways have become smoother and wider than I remember from 10-15 yrs ago but strange contraptions of slow moving heavy vehicles still drive in the fastest lanes and trucks come at you suddenly in the wrong direction and no one thinks it strange, and maybe houses have become pukka have got electricity and dish tv, but there are still stacks and walls of cowdung cakes, the people making them look like their fathers and grandfathers in their garb and way of living. yes, 14th century forts have become luxury and boutique hotels and the demand for clean bathrooms has started to create some surprising rest stops along highways, but from the terraces of the fort hotels you still see lil farmers' houses keeping a few animals and farming tiny plots of land, their women still in their ghunghats. 

and even in those hotels there are still rowdy chauvinistic north Indian men splashing around loudly in the pools, more so when other women are around, flaunting what they think are their peacock feathers.

Forster says india beckons or rather appeals to one without promising anything. I wonder what indja is today. the man splashjng in the pool while his girlfriend wades in the kiddy pool in shorts and tshirt (pool rules clearly written say one must have a proper swimsuit to enter), is gone now; the tiny remnant of drizzle leftover from the evening rain is over, it's getting dark and mosquitoes are wondering if they can penetrate my protective film of sprayed odomos, the fort is coming alive with decorative lights that attract attention away from the stonewalls and bright Bougainvillea hugging them, and I hear bats just above my head flying in circles and clicking away. 

A woman is starting a wood fired chulha next to me. I ask her what she will make. She answers "makka aur bajre ki roti". there's a leopard spotted cat we saw earlier lapping up water from the pool; now it's kitten is running around and has scared a group of Delhi tourists, trying to get scraps of their food under their table. the chulha is smoking away and reminds me of the smog this morning and the factory chimney spewing black smoke you can see from the fort. 

what is India today, when most Indians who remain living here do so because they can't seem to get out. Is it still a promise-less call, an idea, contradictions of poverty and money, misery and luxury, history and modernity, patriarchy and women pushing against it. 

Rajasthan also reminds me of the obsequiousness of the people who serve those who pay them. it's stronger here than in many other places I've been or lived in. a waiter refurnishes the outdoor chairs and table that I am occupying because I'm sitting here even though the drizzle that was his reason for removing the cushions is back again. and he is embarrassed that I moved the mosquito coil myself between tables, although I'm happy to do so. and the cat is now sitting on the chair next to me even though I have no food and I'm just typing away. 

reading EM Forster again, after years. this time it's A Passage to India, after a few other books by other authors about India (although those were non fiction unlike this, but Forster's fiction is more real than life). reading Forster is like a gentle blissfulness. the following, a quote.

"She felt increasingly (vision or nightmare) that, though people are important, the relations between them are not, and that in particular too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man. And today she felt this with such force that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person, who was trying to take hold of her hand."

I think I somewhat understand why there exists stigma around mental illness. It can be very challenging to live with, not just for the person themself but for spouses and partners and living-in family members. 

But for all those reasons and more we also need to open up and talk about these things, to share family histories and genetic propensities so that people are more aware of what they can pass on to their progeny and whether it's worth it. So far I thought my family, possibly on both sides had some illnesses zigzaging through members; now so does his. Many of these are much more common than we as a society accept or acknowledge or can even imagine. And yet ppl keep having kids without thinking what they might be burdening them with. At the very least awareness of genetic propensities should help design and maintain safer environments when they grow up, so that the possibilities in genetic makeup don't necessarily become realities through triggers.

Laura Marling 'Alas I cannot Swim', especially the title song and My manic and I.

she wrote it when she was 17-18.