Dear reader,
How was this month for you? I hope it was nice & warm. For me, this month felt like going to the pitch everyday to bat and getting knocked out on the 1st ball of the inning, each time. I would shake uncontrollably as I walk out of the pitch with an intense booing from the crowd ringing my ears deaf. Dark stuff, I know. The month went by trying to analyze how I went wrong & ended up betraying myself and my team. It’s an emotion that I will sit through in days to come, take my time and ensure I am able to look at myself with greater kindness. I hope I find the courage to get past this failure. I hope I don’t dwell on it so much that I forget the vastness of my capabilities.
There’s a quote by Virginia Woolf which I lean on whenever I feel big shadows of doom lingering over my head, “I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
So in order to flow, I’ve decided to run a clean-up drive for my mind. Taking inspiration from the annual ritual of sprucing up our home for Diwali, I’ve taken charge to get rid of all the dust, spider webs, and hard spots that sit leisurely in my mind. It’s only when you indulge in such clean-ups you witness the amount of trash that confiscates the space, leaving little to no room for growth.
In my first attempt at this clean-up drive, I've tried to gather all the yellow around me so I can make my favorite mishmashed shade of yellow and drink it up. It’s not a sip this time. We are chugging the entire jug down. Cheers y’all!
I’ve been spending a lot of time on this swing which is supported with yellow colored twisted jute. Sometimes I go to and fro and let the air caress my entire being as I listen to Sahir Ludhianvi & John Elia’s nazmein. Other times I sway quietly, surrounded and protected by my mother’s lush green garden.
The two feather weight newsletters that silently appear in my inbox week after week, distracting me from anything else that consumes me at the point. First one’s called The Alipore Post and second, The Nook by Riya. They aren’t by any visible means yellow. But they fill me up and act like a warm reminder to the gift, that is, life. Here’s a snippet from last week’s maildrop in my inbox:
My gold hearted fur babies. These two fill me up with crazy amounts of love. One of them is aggressive and the other one is calm. If I try to caress the calm one, she runs away from me thinking that the aggressive one will not like it. It’s an unfathomable act of love and patience I witness everyday. The calm one keeps pacing around and looks with a deep sense of curiosity at the pigeons. The aggressive one keeps attacking the mosquitoes and eating them up, making an old All Out ad come alive. :D The fact that both of my girls take up little spaces in my room and not let me feel alone is something that goes unseen. I hold great gratitude in my heart that they are a part of my life.
This yellow paw imprint which I spotted in the parking lot of a mall. It came bearing a lesson on impermanence. This was my last visit here with someone whose presence, I thought, would have persisted longer in my life .
My black matt guitar which brings out all kinds of wonderful melodies from within. Today I discovered the tune of twinkle twinkle little star on my own. This is another story in the making, of which, I’m enjoying all the chapters.
I often turn to this yellow Book of Delights by Ross Gay to learn and appreciate the mundaneness of life. I’ll share a paragraph from the chapter “The Irrepressibles: The Gratitude” that made me smile through and through.
“If you get closer to the amaranth, you’ll notice in the light-colored flowers - the reddish, fiery pink sort of fading to a lavender - that the flowers are giving way to the seeds, of which, on every flower - the bees know this, the honey and ballerinas and the many I can’t see - by my estimation, there are a zillion. A zillion seeds on every flower. Maybe one hundred flowers. Meaning, check my math here, one hundred zillion seeds. Meaning, keep your calculators out, one hundred zillion future plants, on every one of which how many flowers, how many seeds. This is what I think exponential growth actually means. This is why I study gratitude. Or what I mean when I say it. From a crack in the street.”
Although this list was my first attempt at the clean-up of my mind, I’m not particularly in a delightful mood. In one of the episodes of Schitt's Creek, David sits confused inside the empty General store which he had just leased to start his own Apothecary shop. He didn’t know where to start, what to name the store, how to describe the general store which was actually a very specific store instead. I pretty much feel the same. But right after this, Patrick comes along articulating and easing David's situation. From this point onwards, the show becomes especially magical for me. So I'm going to sit with my confusion and make space for magic to happen. I'll not lie to myself and keep reaching for conviction.
Chin up. Trust thy gut. Reestablish your footing. Let's go.
See ya!
Riti
Probably your best words, yet. So much power and love to you ❣️