When echoes do not come

When echoes do not come

Of those you thought wayfarers, peers, comrades,

Or who passed off for friends, (even if briefly so)

With whom the hopes were to share a part of the road,

It is not as though your rise from the bottom of the heap matters not,

But simply for their own darkness they remain blinded,

lost or wounded, in deep dungeons of the soul. They cannot rejoice

that another walked out of the dark and it could be a ray for them,

Instead of a life spent in lengthening labyrinths of the mind.

For such a one can there be a grieving or a loss – that a dear one anguishes?

Or someone jealous that you touched the light?

Or grew such you could take your destiny’s flight?

Can I weep over such a one, even though they cannot in my minuscule moment of joy flash even a single smile?

Or should I hold them in an embrace, a soul offers to another,

In nothing but recognition their darkness is deepened by my light

Even though I contributed naught to it, but hoped to offer a ray of courage,

The seed I sowed in the winter(s) of my soul became a garden today- in my world, for the world. From self to SELF.

Drawn from the sun, for everyone- hoping they would see

this is our collective destiny, we were all meant to be

Sparkles of stardust, crisscrossing

Amidst polarities tossing…just to become one with the cosmic-

They couldn’t see that in my light (if there could be one without them)

Hid their light and in their darkness my own.

Yet if they cannot rejoice in this light, can I still lean back

Offer a smile to their dark, knowing they can walk out

Even if they still grapple those dark corners of the soul

I long left behind.

(But alas how can I for they wave not at me any longer?!)

To “friends” who could not send even a word or acknowledgement back for my Holi greetings, in response to the simple colours of flowers I sent from my home. I who spent the day alone, stood aloof from the world and saw you all amidst your families and loved ones, as I began ascent into another dimension- rooted in the world, yet not of it.

Renewal 2022

I just changed the header image, something I don’t easily. It’s stability marks the stability of my life and its engagements and it remains stable for years. I do not recall when I changed it last but if I go back into the previous posts on this blog perhaps it would become clearer.

The image I currently uploaded was taken a few days ago in my garden. I took it with my mobile phone.

This is an accidental click because it is not feasible to capture a ray of sun this way, at least not for me. I was trying from a peculiar location to get as many flowers in one frame as it would capture.

This picture can be interpreted in several ways, least of all it is a picture of renewal- mine, the earth’s, and my home, including my decision to not give it up yet, even though time and again I want to give up this house and move into a much smaller one whose maintenance is not so challenging. This is the way the garden looked about a week ago. Even at present a majority of these are growing outside though the weather has radically changed in the last week. The spell of coolness is over and summer is already upon us, fans are on, sweat is appearing.

Interestingly in my garden some flowers come on their own in a cyclical fashion, year after year from seeds the plant disperses on its own- poppy and nasturtiums are the topmost variety for that. This picture also includes three other ways of propagation- we have planted some plants here from the seed stage by making them into seedlings and then growing them in a much smaller pot before repotting into the earth directly. Some have arrived as saplings about three inch tall in a bundle together. And the third is plants which come in packets as ready to repot smaller plants but they are mature plants already. So the methods of propagation are diverse and spread over the months of July, August, September, October and November, and thereafter the nurturing begins.

In the final days of the past month I managed to keep my commitment to my editorial team at Routledge and submitted the final version of the book manuscript as per commitment. After the little time of keeping with them, a month at most, they will send it to their corresponding team in UK where the final editorial and copy-editing will happen. It was a year long process for me to find the publisher and then finish the work, and took 16 months in all after my Ph.D. from start to finish to get the book off my chest- my PhD work in psychosis/recovery. Once published the global edition will publish first and go to all around the world and then comes the South Asian edition, two or three months onward. It seems I may get one copy in November at the earliest and the rest will be able to get their copies only around January or February 2023. Phew! What a tiresome process.

Renewal is when we return to the base and plant new seeds or when we have risen from the ground and rebuilt ourselves. In this spring a lot has happened, a lot which is definitive, meaningful and affirmative. I found a mentor I was looking for to get my work off the ground, a lady who is a very experienced person in the disability sector, well respected, deeply compassionate and extremely supportive. It is a blessing to have a person like her to mentor my work at this juncture- the work of institution creating. She has an organization of her own which recently celebrated its 37th year though she is now more diversified and plays other roles than running it on a day-to-day basis. Being with someone who has been there, done that makes a lot of sense now. And what better than a woman.

Two sides of the upcoming institute are already functioning- the music school and the counseling center and this is the year to consolidate both, take them wider and start creating the next work of the research centers. Naturally enough I have to let go of the music school personally but that can only occur if we have enough students and I can then engage someone else for the teaching who is at least as learned about it as the best can be. I am keeping my fingers crossed for that.

This truly is the time of renewal and putting the past to bed, planting new seeds or digging up the earth to bolster existing saplings, water, hoeing and removing the weeds around them. The garden of my soul is beginning to show color and Mother Nature is generous enough to echo my labours back to me. Birds are singing outside from all direction- life is just beginning as The Hansadhwani Institute starts taking shape on the ground, having remained in a cryogenic state for years and then in a smaller incubator for a few years, at least from 2017 onward. Now the baby is standing on its baby feet and legs. Onward from here…

Cockatiels or bird story 2

I have always been fond of birds, perhaps everyone is. When I used to pass by these pet shops that kept birds outside I felt very bad for the birds and wanted to rescue them. But soon I figured that a majority of those birds would not survive in the open terrain due to predators or lack of food gathering capacity. I always thought about whether it was a good idea to bring birds in as pets.

In 2017 the doubts ended and birds came- a double set of cockatiels. All my dogs were still around and in the earliest pictures Raga was to be seen showing curiosity about the new life around.

In this picture she was so curious about the birds but she had no strength in her legs to get up and stand against their cage. She would just see from a distance and then drag herself away slowly, my poor darling. This was the last six months of her life- Raga, the German Shepherd.

IN writing this post, I suddenly go back in time and I am reminded of so much that has already gone into the historical dimensions of my life. To whom do my dogs or birds matter if not me. They made me the richer for their presences and antics.

In this photo the birds and dogs are interacting with one another, out of curiosity and uncertainty. Raga was surprised to see something so small so close to her, yet not afraid of her presence. She herself appears so curious though by this time she had already become unable to walk and needed support walking.

So two things happened to this set of birds. First of all whenever they laid eggs there was no way the eggs could be hatched because I had no idea how to make it feasible for them to. And the second thing was in a couple of years their numbers were reduced to two.

The first to die one day opened its cage door and got cut within a few minutes due to the ceiling fan. He lay their dead not far from the cage- it was such a sad scene for me to witness many years ago. The second one was killed by the little rascal Flow- my dachshund, when he accidentally managed to get into the bathroom occupied by the cockatiels. The poor little bird was sitting on the floor and Flow pushed his way in.

Anyhow over time, every year on several occasions there was a clutch of eggs and they would not be able to hatch but keep rolling in the wired cage and become useless. I tried all possible ways to make them viable, from grass, hay to paper, cloth and whatnot. But the mother bird would never manage to sit on the eggs and hatch them. Finally I decided to train the birds and by reading on the internet I got a breeding box. Now the problem was that the birds were only accustomed to living in their cage and the box was too big to get into their cage. So i decided to put the cage inside the bathroom, got the bathroom door changed from a wooden to a glass one so that the birds would be visible and they would not get cut- off from the home. So though this is written at a certain pace today but all of it happened over time, in no hurry.

After several years of wasted eggs and now the breeding box on top of the cage inside the bathroom a time came when the mother bird got into the habit of getting out of the cage and climbing up to the box. I saw it happen and was very enthused with it. Soon the mother would demand to be taken to the box if I left the cage outside the bathroom.

In the last winter I sensed she had another clutch but I could not tell. I just saw she was not to be seen much in the cage and the single bird would sit there alone. And then I opened the door of the breeding box and she tried to peck at me. I had no idea what was going on, and whether there were eggs inside or how many. One day when I got close to the cage and the box I heard little birdie sounds, like hatchlings doing choo choo choo choo. I bolstered myself and with my phone put my hand at the door of the breeding box and quickly clicked a few pictures. And only upon seeing the picture I could get a clearer view of what was going on inside.

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  This little birdie discusses with her mother whether it is safe to peep outside

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  So it is four after all

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  First day in the sun, the little birds are stunned with what is going on

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  Dogs are curious about what is going on here and birds are frightened with the sudden light, warmth and exposure

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  Really too inquisitive about life downstairs 🙂 and wondering what all the parents are eating

Until such time as I saw the picture I had little clue of the numbers. Anyhow once they came out in the sun, things started to get better and we got them out a little more. That is when I figured one was disabled. I do not know if birds can be disabled too, but this one could not stand on its legs, so it was always down on its belly. I was upset to see that because that meant her underside would remain wet and there was no way she would get up to drink water or anything. I would offer her water a couple of times a day once I figured this out and even dry her lest she remained wet underneath, for it was only sitting on her belly all the while.

This is a family picture of all the cockatiels in their “bathroom” aviary, a washroom not used for anything except for housing them.

Anyways, the time when I write this the little chick who was disabled is no more alive. She died one day right in its cage. I used to cover the cage with a blanket and kept a lot of tree branches inside to ensure the birds do not sit on plastic pipes- they are not good for their feet I am told. So whenever a branch is cut in my home I look for suitable perches for them. Yet the day I am referring to when I opened the blanket I saw the other birds were shying away from her and she just lay there lifeless. That was the end of her short life. Left me heavy-hearted for many days.

If there is any comfort to be had here I draw it from the fact that at least I did whatever I could do best, and within my means. I do not know if I could have done better or more than this, without pushing myself to another extreme. And all of this was happening as I was furiously working in another avatar to finish my book manuscript.

The history of cockatiels and me goes only as far back as 2017 and also lost half by the time 2021 came. But the past year was a more successful year in terms of our success at raising the new lot- so we are now more than where we began- five cockatiels today, and counting. I am saying counting because the mother has laid more eggs and is once again back to the breeding box incubating them. But I think after this I will remove the breeding box and not let her lay any more of them, because it may not be good for her after all, for her children may want to connect with her longer. I am saying this in particular because one chick is such that it still implores the mother to be fed- and whenever I hear a particular pleading sound from the aviary I know the little rascal is busy asking for his mother to put the grain in his mouth…really a rascal I think. But I am always amused by it and touched to see the love of the mother bird for its baby.

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Kingfisher: my bird story 1

Long years ago I encountered this bird, in Goa. I did not know then what the bird was, nor did anyone around me. But I was told that possibly it was a baby bird because it sat quietly on the roof, as visible here. But of course I had no way to know whether this was a baby or an adult except that I found the bird very beautiful and it stayed with me for years, as a reminder of how colourful birds are in Goa.

I often felt wistful that the birds in the North here are not as colourful as the birds in Goa or other parts of India close to the ocean. I thought, and still think, it had something to do with proximity to the ocean or possibly the rain and the greenery around, mountains and abundant water bodies. I am certain these would have an impact on the presence of bird species- of course what a silly thing to even say! So that was it – end of story captured in a series of photos of this bird, perhaps the one solitary time I saw it so close in Goa. Other than this it was always from a faraway distance I saw them flying.

And this brings me to the other part of life, now that I am back to the north of India for years and it is already over a year that the PhD got over. Perhaps I never wrote about the challenges I undertook trying to grow water lilies. I had to ensure that the water would not become a breeding ground for all sorts of mosquitoes and for that reason I put mollies, a small variety of fish, in. This is the first season of that experience and expectedly there are setbacks and losses- which are lessons in their own right. The first set of losses is the number of water filters I lost in the new ecosystem and then the heaters- which are essential for the cold, so that the fish are comfortable there. Every time me or Rajan (the gardener) have checked the water when the heater has been fine the water has been really pleasant- not hard at all, I mean not biting cold at all, but comfortable to the touch. I hope my fish are fine- they certainly seem to be thriving. From the time I put a few of them, less than ten, their numbers are quite big now. They easily seem about 90-100, there is no way to know. But several times in these past few months I saw little fish, a sign that the medium was ideal for their multiplication. Even recently, either in November or December when the winter was already here and the heater had been activated I saw a new shoal, of smallies swimming around.

A few fish, which seem less than five, the initial ones to inhabit the tank

The tank above captures the initial lot and the fact that I put in two electrical sockets at the time of starting this new tank on the assumption it is always better to have more plugs than less. Each of these stages has been an effort- including getting the electrician to put the connections and then the mason working outside my home to cover the plug points with a tile, that I had lying around to ensure they don’t get wet and nobody gets hurt due to electrical current. Though not visible in this picture this tank also has a green border plant growing around which I hope in time will grow so much that the black borders of the tank would get hidden by the green leaves. May be in a subsequent picture it would show.

Anyhow so this was the new ecosystem that I got going, in two locations! For the second location- on my terrace, I bought another colour of water lily, via Amazon. It was a strange choice for I have never ever in my life bought live plants online but the plants turned out to be quite nice finally…though it took time to take root , but here are some of its blossoms. It is noteworthy that none of the flowers came together, not once. So each of these is a different flower taken at a different time. And one is shot at the bud stage.

Looks like I lost my way talking about water lilies from the issue I began with! Silly me. As visible here the fish grew, the flowers also began to come and guess what in time- perhaps in November I saw this mister. I of course could not believe my eyes. S/he makes a strange sound- like a kit- kit, kat-kat, more like a chiklet sound…in case you missed please look at the iron bar, where s/he sits facing the pond.

Over to the kingfisher- read about the species here

It seems as though he is sitting meditating though s/he actually watches the fish in the little pond.

He kept coming like this for days and from yesterday onward every time I go towards the garden or am in the kitchen I hear his sound. So finally yesterday Rajan was putting vermi-compost in the plants and he also saw the kingfisher. The sound they make is very distinct too. Anyhow, so right in front of his eyes he swooped down and took off with a fish. I am quite happy and relieved in my own little way- for I have helped Mother Nature by offering food to one of her other children.

One may say this is not nice that the fish should be eaten, and it is cruelty that I am not protecting my fish. If we see this at an ecological level, not that I am operating at one, but the world is- and we are all part of a food chain, and wherever the chain can be restored the broken links will start healing. If I can play a minuscule role in Nature’s garden I am so grateful for the opportunity.

Oh, but talking of food chains, there is another being who is suitably attracted to the prospect of fish in the garden. Though in this picture, which was taken from above, and noticed by Rajan- the kitty sits on the ledge where the tomatoes grow, she knows where the dogs are and where the fish, or the birds and she still can enjoy the sun in a home with dogs- look at her guts and look at the dogs!

She blends with the colours but see her sitting at the base of the tomato plants.

At least one thing is for certain in my garden, that things which were not to happen are beginning to and birds I never thought I would see around here, are showing up. And just imagine, only a few weeks before the first sighting I had seen this bird in this temple that I went to, right here in Faridabad.

The Jharna temple has a rainwater spring which bubbles in the rainy season- where I first sighted the kingfisher

Life is full of surprises 🙂 but one still has to take the road oneself.

2020- a year that took and gave us something

Seriously it took a lot… So many people passed away and a global gloom descended as people were forced to learn new ways to live confined within domestic spheres. An appreciation of what matters at a fundamental level may have hit home for scores of people, and possibly a need to prioritize. It is the biggest churning one can imagine we could stand to witness; for a phenomenon of the scale of a pandemic is something beyond our conception at most times. It has disturbed us at deep levels to see the inequality of the world we have created, where social distress is humongous. If we are in an emotional coma of some sort only then the world around us can stop affecting us in our little cocoons, which we believe to be our little havens. But how many havens have developed cracks this past year is only a conjecture, or a reality hidden within numerous hearths and hearts!

When I last scribbled on this blog I had submitted my thesis; well before October 2020. Thereafter I have not been able to write another post for longer than I would have wanted. The completion of a reasonably successful doctoral viva (or defense if you please) got me a great amount of adulation and respect among groups whose scholarship and responses I value. Yet that was not the end of the suffering for me.

A delay in writing this blog post is also partially due to the burnout which came soon after my Ph.D., in fact just three days later (29th October 2020). I did not even have a chance to enjoy my success as I was bedridden and delirious or sleeping for prolonged periods of time- really long. It took the whole of November and that upset my gardening calendar seriously. I was sad that for all the efforts I had put in for the new room and the new beds for growing vegetables I would probably not get much outcomes this year, as my burnout took away the crucial time of sowing seeds, worsened by a gardener who kept cheating me while I kept trusting him due to my longstanding connection with him, the gullible fool I am! But that was part of the reason for not writing, the other part was a new research that I embarked upon soon after. Or, putting it differently I started documenting something which had been pending and playing on my mind for a long time- my counseling practice, another arm of research I do.

But I am not going to write about the new research which I have (now also) started as a project for the next few years, among several other ventures. I am more interested in marking the little joys of gardening and the minor successes I achieved with all my earthy labours. Some of these efforts started long back- around the time I returned from Goa (July 2016), aghast to see my house bereft of much greenery except for the ficus trees in the backyard. In all the years since I have done a lot of things and sadly though all my companions of those years- my four dogs Ginger , Nikki, Raga and Dash have left me and moved onward, life has not been static at all. The little pups have grown bigger and become full dogs now and the backyard that looked one way once looks entirely different.

just stretch these images to see the full picture and see how the same space has been completely changed, and the only connector being the red Chlorodendron creeper which was quite small as evident in the photo on the left and in the latest picture from 2021 it has occupied the better part of the wall on the Northwest of the house. Using the arrow in the middle of the photos you can enlarge both images. The left image is taken from the ground level while the right one is a view from above

The new venture

From pitaji, my paternal grandfather I inherited a streak of changing the way space is organized every now and then. I get bored in the same location, sitting the same way or just not having a new perspective to look at the same thing (which also contributes considerably to my eclecticism in research). Change is intrinsic to my being. On most if not all fronts- especially artistic, ideational, and gardening. All these contribute to make my life fairly tough and reasonably busy. Naturally enough having long spans of being alone is essential to these pursuits for ideas take long to incubate and nurture further. Some ideas are faster to reach fruition but a lot of them do not.

For years I had been wanting to build a room upstairs for myself but decided not to simply because it is too much of a headache to build something in the same house as you live in- the dust, noise, human presence can be overwhelming. Anyhow this past year I bit the bullet, and now I not only have managed to build a room for myself upstairs but also a green patch that I was so keen to. On all sides of the room there is greenery and in big troughs at that. Here lies a set of pictures that depict the manner in which the upstairs has been transformed from a dead territory to a living vibrant, growth oriented space. I still have to expend a lot more effort in shaping it to the exact contours I wish to have, but my patience is always more vested in my research than in construction and domestic activities. So here is where I stand for now, this first part of the new decade- giving shape to new ideas. Not to forget that a set of solar panels have also been installed with great pains and persistent efforts!

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  Solar panels on the north east part of the terrace

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  Harvesting gaanthgobi or kohlrabi

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  View of the Western side of the terrace

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  Spring onions on the Eastern terrace

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  Harvesting radishes

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  The room under construction- July 2020

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  Kohlrabi first time in my home

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  Mustard greens and radishes- a first sight

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  Meena stands with the carrot greens, beyond them you can see mustard flowers

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  Peeping in: the new room from the outside

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  Shoots of beetroot

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  A view of the room, February 2021

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  A failed attempt at cauliflowers!

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  Flowers of brinjal

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  Spring onions have grown now and Flow cannot but investigate

Even as I write this today, the terrace upstairs is already a changed place and when I write the next blog post I will narrate about how I am fortifying some parts of it, to protect my plants from monkeys. So though these photos are authentic they represent the past, even at the stage of writing this. Hopefully the next post will be more about gardening and about the new research whose outcomes are likely to occur soon.

I conclude here these little attempts at gardening. Lastly, lest I forget I could remind myself, and share with you, that this year I have grown most of my plants from a seed stage. I count this an achievement by itself. But more of that in the next post, which I hope would not be as far apart from this one as this has been from the previous. Thank you for your interest and reaching here with me. I take leave with a glimpse of my Ph.D. dissertation – one of the major accomplishments of my life, not just 2020. Also something I am proud of, not the degree necessarily but the work I have accomplished, whose resonances will come only in time.

In 2020 I earned a doctorate in mental health, and took my first steps towards becoming a farmer. When I was a little girl I used to feel ashamed when they said that the only culture Punjabis have is agriculture. Today I feel proud of it for I have developed a great respect for that culture and what all remaining close to the earth can engender…musical melodies the least among them :). Tending to plants at close quarters and seeing seeds sprout, grow and become bigger plants, blossom and bring vegetables is least of all a matter of cultivating attention, patience, respect and acceptance of what can go wrong. If the farmers are the salt of the earth I am happy being another grain of it as well.

The Karo…na staycation!

o now we are all on a forced vacation– at least I can call mine that! (Karo…na is a parodied version of Corona, in Hindi which means, do it not). But since the government has put us under this forced vacation, it has indeed put us there!

Why?

Because I recently got over with the writing of the doctoral thesis, so it is a much needed break…utter break that I am taking after July 2016. I never took such a break, or any real break– there was always so much to do academically (while there is still more to do now as well). So I was hoping to go around, meet friends, be with my parents, eat out a bit, drive around Delhi- Noida etc, meet a few neighbours that I had been promising to before plunging another time into the deep end of writing, more writing and riyaaz (and more in music research).

Yet, one good thing happened last year- that I watched a lot of gardening videos (in my last blog post my friend Vishu said I may be taking another degree in gardening as well, alas! this much is enough. But thank you the idea is interesting Vishu) strange as it may sound, while I was writing the thesis, I was also learning about growing vegetables, about cooking food (I am a reasonably good cook, but learning more things) and more gardening videos, not to mention all about politics (globally). Have been reading a lot of research in social sciences and medical sciences for several years…so the mental activity has been humongous. And I was really looking forward to applying my gardening ideas to the garden, where else. It was planning to grow vegetables… been planning from last year August how to expand the gardening space. Naturally one can only do so much when it comes to horizontal space, which means going vertical. So I also watched myriad options of how to create that vertical space- over months and budgeting for it, slowly adding one little thing at a time.

Anyways, the long and short of it is that now that the time came to implement those ideas has arrived…it seems I really have to implement them with my own hands! The gardener has stopped coming; he is anyways always too happy not to! And here I am saddled with all the seeds, manure, coco peat and whatnot

…and of course the space, which is asking for lot of work because the plants are overgrown with weeds and asking for work, beds are asking to be cleared among other things. I was just outside clicking a few pictures for this post and I saw a huge amount of tomatoes growing, and I have only recently learned the mistakes I have made with growing tomatoes, for not having put the support they require. Nevertheless one always learns from mistakes and so am I. Especially when your gardener is not proud of his farming roots and he wants to do the little dainty flower gardens and not hard core vegetable patches then one is left to one’s own means to figure it out.

Among the gardening videos there are several channels I follow. One of them is this person who speaks in a very funny manner but his ideas are very good and at least a couple of them have been tested by me. And as one outcome I have got these results exactly by the method he told me

If I take you on a tour of the garden just for a moment, you would know how much work is needed here!

Spinach and lettuce

Abundance of tomatoes

These beds have tomatoes, nasturtiums, radish, green onions, lettuce, coriander all growing together. This corner is asking for a lot of effort among other locations around the house

After these issues there is more work, I mean planting more seeds, or make seedlings first and then planting them. there are scores of things here in packets and let me first get them up and going before talking about them. Already some seeds have sprouted, as I showed above- bottle gourd and now these- amaranth (chaulai- very rich source of iron etc). Right now these seedlings are very small and they are at the seedling stage only. But since this photo is taken from a height it is not easy to make that out.

But this is not all that is required to be done in this house, manned by one  academic- musician, but also two dogs, and cockateils, fish etc

Cockateils

Along the furthest wall there lies the aquarium

There is a huge amount of work just to keep this house in order, and working. I cannot claim I can do so much work- which includes cleaning, cooking, dusting, the plants, the birds, the fish, the yard, which I am just about to show here-

 

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This is the amount of work required, and this does not include the basement which I will keep closed and the guest room ditto, until the household staff returns. In addition to keeping this space reasonably clean on a priority basis, the first being the kitchen and the dining area

Ginger under the dining table. Just see how her underbelly is all red with the itch and scratching, though she sleeps here peacefully

This above photo is from the time when Ginger was still with us…so this is a nutshell of the space that needs to be kept clean in addition to the washrooms!

So while there may be people who are wondering what to do in this staycation, I have no dearth of work thanks to the 360 degree life I live! So these areas are as follows, just by way of summing up

Minimum daily work-

1. Bath, exercise and riyaaz (first thing in the morning)
2. Kitchen- cooking for self and dogs (separate meals obviously), this also means the two outside dogs, + doing the dishes and organizing in their separate locations, which are many and cleaning the kitchen!

kitchen

2. Birds– cleaning the bird cage and giving them fresh food/water- both the inside birds and outside birds. Also putting the birds out in the morning and bring them back when it warms up

3. Fish– food twice a day and aquarium cleaning once a week

4. Watering all sides of the garden- three sides

5. Cleaning the front yard– I mean by washing it and drying with wiper

This is the minimum work required to be done daily, whether or not I can do anything after that.

The front yard

Biweekly tasks

1. Cleaning bathroom/s
2. Teaching music classes online- every student twice a week online (two students in-person)
3. Learning music – once/twice a week with my own teachers
4. Going to the market for grocery shopping since there is nobody getting milk etc for me!
5. Washing my clothes and doggy linen

Optional work that needs to be done as per discretion/requirement

Planting new seeds/plants

Removing old plants and reworking the soil for next season

Writing (research) articles

Working on the next project

Reading research- in mental health and now Covid-19!

New musical compositions for teaching

Bathing dogs as per schedule

Counseling clients as and when they take appointments, usually online

As anyone who reads this can comprehend, this leaves little time to watch TV or anything else. So at most I may watch news on the phone and of course also turn on the TV occasionally. There is hardly any time for the phone, barring sporadic messages- which are more often than not work related. And after this if any time left check social media (facebook, linkedin, quora etc).

I can do with longer days or more energy

Oh! I forgot walking the dogs and now Rhythm just came to nudge me to remind me that I have missed it, just in case! (also time to take them out). It is a 20-30 minutes walk at least.

Now that my whole day is in front of everyone who is curious how I am spending my quarantine period, I think you have a clear picture how much there is to do here! So if I am unable to come online and answer some queries, you would understand.

OMG! this is really a lot of work, let me not read it again lest it overwhelm me 🙂

Another addendum: in all likelihood my ‘home-manager’ is likely to report tomorrow because she is also bored sitting at home. So let us keep the fingers crossed.  Possibly I would be able to focus on my whole specialized tasks than managing the chores as well, god bless her!

A decade of ‘recovery’

2010-2019 gets over in a few hours now. An eventful decade, full of recoveries, adventures, love, friends in all parts of the world, flowers, homes, family, books, research and more. Phew! woof! what a decade it has been. Not easy to capture in a blog post, so it would be foolish to attempt it. Instead I will focus on the word ‘recovery’- silly though it may seem.
But then this was a decade which began with my ‘recovery’ – a non-drug dependent recovery from bipolar, in 2010. I did not know then when it all started that I would someday be studying my own recovery, through the lens of a researcher. So this was the decade in which I was slowly morphing from a psychiatric patient, overwhelmed by her bipolar diagnosis, to a self-trained researcher. The testimonies of that started coming in the previous decade when I had peer- reviewed publications, though I had not yet turned the researcher’s lens on my personal story.  Moving out of psychiatric medication also brought about that change. And then came those early attempts at documenting the ‘recovery’ from how I understood it then- three journal publications in 2011, 2014, 2015.

2014 was another year of adventure when I moved with the four dogs I had to live in a village in Goa, and meeting with the Goan countryside was an experience I will remember for long, perhaps until the end of my life. I often think of my landlord Hyginus as the only person in Goa who was really fond of me from the bottom of my heart. Little did I know how attached he became to me and my dogs, and so emotionally dependent upon us that once I left his house after a year of being there, within two months he passed away. Not that I was in any way responsible for it, but his loneliness and sense of abandonment was so acute that it ate into his very soul and killed him. A simple man constantly misunderstood and rejected his whole life, a single child of parents who were extremely poor, who by dint of his labour and traveling on ships for a living gathered a lot of wealth, building four houses for himself and his family- all throughout rejected by his wife and sons, due to his deep dark complexion.

My Raga stands in Hyginus’s side of the house and on the inner side of the gate was where I lived myself, while he lived on the other> The gate was put here to confine the dogs to my side of the house.

Life can be unfair. Seeing Hyginus and his heart, or how people treated him or how they perceived him, how he struggled to keep up his dignity, living in a small part of the house he had created and letting out the bigger one to one tenant after another got him an income and possibly some company, though not all tenants were like me. There had been an American lady who perhaps stayed there six years and another English couple whose length of stay I cannot recall.

There were many others I met and befriended in Goa, but there was no substitute for Hyginus. However another person who is a dear friend until now is Mina- who interestingly I met at a vegetable vendor’s, in Fatorda, Margao. So we are the best of WhatsApp friends nowadays as I have kept busy with research and writing, keeping away from all friends, for want of my ability to manage time. I remember seeing a very exquisite part of Goa once with Mina, we both drove down in my car, though I forget the name of the place now. Having a car with me in Goa was a great blessing for it gave me tremendous mobility and freedom, without of course the ability to figure out where to go! Google maps were not such a rage then, as they now are and that curtailed me somewhat. Not that I knew anyone anywhere to go visiting them anyways. The Goan adventure was just over two years, which enriched me yet brought me to a place of peril- which became a turning point for me to return back the same 2000 kms I had gone. It was a heartbreak to return and build all broken fences/bridges.

But it was also facilitated by the fact that I had gained entry into a doctoral research, by a sheer dint of fortune (how else to justify it). So at least this was the time when my acumen as a researcher got established as a certainty and I entered university with nearly eight peer-reviewed publications in tow, perhaps the highest a researcher entering into a doctoral program would be having in most parts of the world.

May be there is a time when a person needs to morph from being a producer of research articles to a producer of books :). With the completion of the PhD research I hope to complete that part of the journey of my life. This (doctoral) research has been a very interesting, yet difficult journey of research, replete with spinal issues and another attempt at recovery – of my bone health this time, recovering my lost self from the abysmal darkness of mental ‘illness’ and then diving down at the deep edge to understand recovery more fully, thoroughly and minutely. A few days back I wound up my first draft thesis and sent it to the supervisor, who has finally shown some interest in my work and has understood that I am doing something quite interesting. Otherwise all this while half the time she did not even respond to my emails. Until now we have only had a brief ten minute phone talk once in 2018 I think- which was so useless that I decided never to talk to her again until I reached the very end. Having finished the first draft of course meant that now the time had come to get back to her and share the work I had done.

Coming back to Faridabad has also meant recovering my life from all the lost years, nay decades of life, rebuilding the life of a musician by first setting up the music school (that I intend growing in the new year), and then starting out my counseling practice, from both of which I have so much experience now that it merits another scholarly endeavour of writing!

And this decade has also meant losing Raga, Nikki and Dash and welcoming Rhythm and Floe into our lives. I do not know now whether it is fair or ethical to mourn the ones who are gone, which also includes my grandmother in 2013 or celebrate the new arrivals (which means all the children of my brother and sister as well)  but in keeping with the infinite flow of life we can only bow to the passage of life, and accept the inevitability of this motion. What is here today will be gone tomorrow and the circle will go on unceasing. It is comforting yet not when you lose someone you love. I still ache in my heart about my dogs.

Making friends with wonderful people all around the world has been another enriching experience and I have begun to value the nature of these friendships which bring people together for ideas, rather than other selfish needs or fear of loneliness. And the range of people is big- from scholars, academics, to artists and therapists, students and whatnot. Students have a special pride of place in my heart- not only because of the bond of a teacher-student  but how we enrich one another on a fairly regular basis. It continues thusly.

Andre keeps busy and his & my lives are interwoven in a deep, yet distant manner- My Phd years have been tough on him and us- for I have not had the mental space to accommodate him/us, overwhelmed and forever tired as I largely have remained, for most parts. So this is where things have brought me at the end of the year or decade. Steeped in work I do, passionate about the work, in deep meaningful connections around the world, full of ideas, musical compositions and ideas, always on the move with research and doing all the latter without any financial support from other than family resources. It has been quite a venture really- but well worth it I suppose.

And with this goldmine of knowledge I move into a new decade, whose numbers also look so musical, especially because I am born on the 20th of a month. There is rhythm in this year ahead and there is Rhythm in my home…and dogs go on with their doggy lives, chasing rodents and up with their playful barking as researchers like me turn grey in their locks.

Rhythm the dachshund

A decade of recovering my lost self, gaining myself back from the suffering of mental illness and a decade which brings me to my emancipatory road of taking this knowledge into the wider world around, with this doctoral research as I now begin to wind off. I hope this earnest labour of years spent alone racking my brains, interspersed with the doggy lives, and music classes will be well worth in the year ahead.

And I hope that anyone who drops by to read this post will also be enriched in their lives further and possibly this post will bring a sliver of hope to some that they can also overcome their suffering no matter how daunting it appears at the moment. It is still meant to be overcome for this is the destiny we are all born with. So here comes a decade of taking the knowledge of recovery wider and catalyzing more people’s recoveries via the counseling work I do.

Thank you friends for reading and for your interest. I wish you a beautiful time ahead and hope that the change of the calendar will weed out the useless and bring in the goodness. May it be so- may there be flowers in your gardens and may all your earnest hard work bring you all the blossoms you have earned.

A full bed of chrysanthemums  in December 2019, and the dogs and birds on the far side of the photo

Why gardening heals and other reflections at the end of first quarter, 2019

This year is super- busy, and despite wanting to I have not been able to take time out to write a single blog post on this blog. But foreseeing the months ahead, and in all likelihood I would not be able to come back here again I want to wind off the winter, and welcome the year ahead with reflections, rounding off open loops and coming into the zone where a lot of work is getting nicely aligned, in a serene manner. I cannot hasten anything, because it is all seamlessly connected- whether the manner an article is written, dogs’ food is cooked, thesis takes a step further or a child learns a new bandish.

The whole winter, starting Nov 2018, almost till mid-March 2019, there has been a lot of gardening activity. For someone like me, who has no time to step out of my home, partially because I am so invested in what I do, and partly because the whole world comes to me right here- via the internet, the metro and whatnot, gardening is really the thing that brings me back into a zone of deep serenity. Add to it the gentle, loving presence of dogs- the world becomes loving and capable of sending echoes back. But of course it all asks for tremendous efforts– animals, gardens or anything else. Equally as much as effort, one requires resilience- else when plants will die, wither away, perish, not sprout or get infested, one will lose heart and give up. Mother Nature does not relent- there is no mercy in nature. Something is weak, it will be killed- it is as brutal as that. So either you protect the weak or you discard the weak- no point breaking your heart over something you have no control over.

So first of all this bit about the gardening, which took in a lot of investment this year, and I thought it was important for my soul, for my inner equilibrium to step out on all sides of my home and be surrounded by greenery, bird songs, sight of birds, flowers, trees and everything I can create in the arid dryness of this really harsh place, a dusty industrial uppity town, where people ooze attitude and arrogance- starting right from my neighbourhood. Fortunately it has happened, and will continue with the effort we have put in- me and Ram Rattan.

It is not just the financial effort from me, but also the ideas, the arrangements, the planning, the failures and the bouncing back. So many of my seeds did not sprout at all, I told Ram to simply go and buy the plants as saplings after bearing the losses and seeing the failures. the losses were of Larkspurs, poppies, nasturtium (due to hailstorm a full standing bed was finished), dog flowers and possibly more. So it was a matter of tightening my belts and instead of weeping over the loss, plan the next move before the end of the season. So these are the outcomes of that double effort. Like they say, there is more to it than meets the eye- and this is the full picture now- the huge efforts must be shared, and the spirit of those involved, so that one can see that every little thing carries a whole trail of stories behind it, it is not as simple as it looks.

 

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I have kept busy with my dissertation, research papers, singing classes, counseling and managing this little house-  a lot of balancing for certain, and being on my toes constantly- fairly tired at times. But this much work is only possible if one builds in certain elements of  discipline. But thanks to the sheer volume of the work, that has also happened.

I have also managed to start walking the dogs regularly now- it is a great relief personally and better for everyone; though i really want to train them as well, knowing how sweet and responsive they are, as well as intelligent in general. Rhythm is sitting in this picture with papa watching her. I sometimes tether her, because she straightaway jumps into the flower beds and starts digging quickly, true to her breed instinct. This is the only time papa visited this entire season. I think he was very happy to see the garden and the profusion of flowers around.

And now in this collage ahead, i share the vegetables I grew this year- which is certainly a lot more than last year and hopefully I will do more of the same in the months ahead

 

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A bit about the dogs- Ginger is really suffering with her skin issues, but I have done everything possible under the sun for her and she is eating fine, sleeping a lot more naturally due to her age, and always by my side. Dash is older than her, but fortunately a little better than her, possibly because he did not start as a weak pup, like she did. The deepest lessons come from my animals and the plants around- just because my beautiful girl Ginger is so frail, and in poor health, I can only love her more, respond to her barks for demanding food whenever she does and make sure she is comfortable, her ears (which ooze pus out, due to blockage of ear canals) cleaned regularly, and her hair also kept trim (bought a trimmer for that recently). This is the best I can do, in addition to all the omega three oils, food, vit.B (to both seniors) and whatever else is possible in their food, including curd, milk – for whoever wants whatever.

Dash, the senior most among the dogs, now into his 15th year

If a dog’s love doesn’t diminish for me when s/he is old, how can mine? Similarly my parents, similarly all the other people in my life- seasons change, but that does not change how you feel about the ones you love. This is the eternal flow of life and we are all crisscrossing across time and leaving one another richer for the experiences, if we choose to see it that way. Else we all have the freedom to feel cheated, feel betrayed, wronged, or whatever…there is no end. The river of life goes on, regardless of our response to it, for this is a great cosmic game, and we are so little- we can only bow in wonderment, wipe our tears of joy, of sadness- gather ourselves and smile back to the universe in gratitude. Thank you Mother Earth for all this love

Ginger, March 2019. I don’t have a chain around her, this was only because I bathed her that moment and let her dry for a few minutes in the sun

Ginger in 2012, while Dash passes by

11 years today

On 15th October, 2007 when I was 35 years and a half, I moved to this home in Faridabad, near Delhi the capital of India. It was (and still is) the prime of life and as a single woman I had chosen to live alone with my three girls- Ginger, Nikki and Raga (GnR- yes, guns and roses). It was a sea of uncertainty that I dived into and today that many years later when I look back, I can only see how much I have become the person I wanted to. I even have the confidence to put my website in place which is in my own name, and not any organization’s.

It is not easy to bring everything out in a little piece of writing that can befittingly encapsulate the turning of destiny’s clock for me- yet the change is there for anyone to see, especially someone who has seen me over a span of time. Today, of my initial companions it is Ginger who stands by ; a weak little thing, over 12 years of age and the light in her considerably diminished. But she is a beautiful dog nevertheless and even when I see her weakening form, I cannot but tend to her and love her deeply- remembering all the phases of her life. Right now she is sleeping peacefully, after her meal and walk. Her body is deeply affected by a mange which has become too chronic for treatment I keep up whatever

support is feasible. This means I give her an oil soak, with four oils combined into one and leave her in the sun and then bathe her. Andre also gave her an epsom salts dip. For years I have been treating her for this mange, but somewhere it could not be eradicated. Then her ears too became infected and the tubes inside fused, so that the ear canals are closed! They are always very vulnerable for pus formation and then the flies come and lay eggs! In the last few months she has had at least two-three episodes of that- maggots and all the rest. Painful to say the least and painful to see her thus- and then taking to the vet and getting the treatments. Ageing dogs break your heart yet give you immense courage for the stoic acceptance of how they handle their suffering. I realize that more than any human being, I am learning from these little beings around me- a peaceful surrender to whatever life brings and lying around gently, eating, sleeping and then moving to the next thing that needs to be done.

This is the time of change of seasons and it also happening in the home -refurbishing and consolidating many existing structures. Today a painter is painting the new fence as well. In this picture one can see  the welders welding and putting it in place.

The garden is all empty now for this is the interim of planning the winter plants and we are all getting ready in so many dimensions

11 years is a long time and a short time- depending upon who is seeing it, but in this one odd decade everything I completely changed in every conceivable dimension of my life. It is a satisfactory change indeed, but perhaps the wistfulness comes most from the people left behind in the process- who could not remain a part of my life- for what they meant once and what they mean today are again, two polar opposites. And this is especially true for ‘friends’. In a manner of speaking, there is a lot less presence of people posing as friends and in a way there is a relief, because everyone’s size became visible in this span of time and the ones who had to drop off, just did (the well-fed ticks). There is no more time to write this post now, as the writing that I need to work on is calling me to hasten and wind off this little note. 

I do- with a bow to the hands of time that gave me this beautiful house, all thanks to my parents, and the scope, imagination and resources to create a new life for myself. The last picture I share here is the living room – the lights in this picture are a bit weird, which is really not the real lighting here, but it captures the elements- the fish in the aquarium, the cockateils, the dining table, the seating- to imagine that I had an empty house when I came here- bringing this idea of a home into fruition has been a great adventure. And that brings me to the closure of one and the beginning of another adventure. I mean the adventure of having a home for myself in which I could do everything I wanted to has been accomplished. And now from here I begin the building of my dreams, which will unfold further ahead from here.

I came here, an ill, bipolar woman- ridden with anxieties and an uncertain life. 11 years down the road, I am a therapist, a doctoral researcher, a musician, and an entrepreneur- what more could it be?

Four months into the year>>>

From the last time that I wrote on this blog, feeling happy and excited about the new things happening, today I am about to register something of a mixed lot of experiences. And they are all, as one would expect, in my case-

1. First, Rhythm came into heat- a little over seven months old that she is! I was having a premonition it could be anytime now,  but not so soon (ouch!!!). Couple of times I had broached the subject of spaying with the vet too, but he said, let’s wait until the pups are nine months. So now, they are just a little over seven and here am I- a pup in heat and two male dogs of her size around- certainly no enviable situation for a PhD-er! This Phd is really an eventful one- so much keeps happening with a fair degree of regularity. The boat is always rocked 😦

2. I went and had my first ‘class’/learning session with my new guru- when he was here in Delhi briefly, staying at the India International Center, not the best locations to conduct a class…but at least a beginning was made. When I heard the minute nuances of his voice, my heart just quivered in fear- god, can I even do it, and how will I? Fortunately I will only be meeting him in several months now- which means I have all the time for my own riyaaz and internalizing whatever he showed me that day . But since it is really quite foundational, meaning a significant shift in my singing style, I cannot hurry this up- it will be very slow, the change.

3. A few days later in a phone conversation he told me to drop my Phd and join him on his concert tours. I think it is a great honor to be said this by a senior guru, to a shisya. However, I shared with him that firstly i cannot play the tanpura on stage due to my spine and secondly the Phd is something I want to put behind me, before plunging myself full scale into music- which is really the case. On the other hand, I wish I could just dump the Phd- it is painful, as one would expect it to be, more so in India- where everything is against a Phd-researcher!

4. On another front, quora offered me a (free) subscription to the New York Times as a recognition of the fact that I have been volunteering and helping people who use quora, and made me a ‘top writer’. I never do anything for the sake of recognition, but this was completely unexpected. Not that I have time to read the NYT either, but it is interesting to see that this happened.

5. Students in music are all making progress and yet I had to drop one child from the fold who was taking a lot of breaks, without giving any reason. Often in India parents take the arts lightly (ignorantly?) and most cannot understand that classical music is not like other forms of music, you cannot just begin anywhere and catch up with the group. There is a system one is following and a structure being created here- to think musically and from the ground upward. I had to lay him off in a strange way- it was sad, but a necessary move that had to be planned out. On another front, I am glad and surprised to see the ladies who have joined newly, being so enthusiastic about learning musical notation- it is a great thing  because it inculcates a musical seriousness and discipline. Ok so this is about the students.

6. And last of all, the journal article- which i finally sent with great effort. Responding to the peer review comments this time was very tough, because the field of mental health from an emancipatory and peer perspective is still a new area of study and the intersectionality one has to keep referring back to is quite complex. But simultaneously I am getting to work with many families at present and that makes the whole picture  a representative and well-informed picture at many levels.

Analyzing so much in research makes it relatively easy for me to understand what obstacles people face in their recoveries. How I wish I would have a little more help at home to manage the dogs, so I can just sit down and work on my dissertation. I m somewhat lagging in my commitment that I had made to my university.

The month of May also seems packed with teaching, counseling and of course the ten day break, that hopefully I will be writing the next blog-post about.. In the meanwhile let me just manage to shoo the dogs away from Rhythm, who is confused, as is Flow- about why Dash is interested in Rhythm. Who can explain to Flowie, that Dash is a neutered dog and  you are the real risk to your sister! you donkey!