Poornima Manco

Author

behaviour

What?

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What is it about me that scares you so?

Is it the ebony of my skin

my obsidian eyes

my gaze that defies your strictures?

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

Is it my history

defiled by your forefathers

the shackles that you bound mine with

the ones we broke free from?

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

That I’m just as human

just as deserving

just as capable of thought, action, love and pain

as you?

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

That when I kneel in protest

it is wrong

but when you kneel on my neck

it is somehow right?

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

that you are unwilling to share

the land that you live on

the food that you eat

the clothes that you wear

the air that you breathe?

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

Aren’t we all flesh and bone

Muscle and sinew

the only difference being

the colour of our skin?

 

Is that what scares you so?

Is that what scares you so?

Is that what scares you so …

 

So,

 

you suppress,

you deny,

you imprison,

you kill?

 

***

 

Is my life worth so little?

My every move

a threat

to your freedom, your ways, your beliefs

 

When my brothers protest

you see it as a riot

our voices are dismissed

our anger ignored

 

But all that you do

is justified

by laws

made by you, for you, amongst you

 

If we have nothing

we are faceless

voiceless

powerless

 

If our very lives are yours

to take

to crush

to destroy

 

What are we then?

What am I then?

A little bit of nothing

a whole lot of … what?

 

Then,

 

What is it about me that scares you so?

What is it?

What?

 

 

 

Families

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What constitutes a family?

Is it the one we are born into, the one we create for ourselves or the people we choose to surround ourselves with?

In the course of a lifetime, one person can have several families. There is, of course, the birth family – mother, father and siblings. Then the extended family from both sides of the parents – grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In modern lives, there are also the possibilities of step-parents and half-siblings. While there may well be a blood tie with many of these people, how strong one’s connection to them is depends on various factors. For instance, has that family feeling been fostered from the very beginning? Or, has it been a distant relationship, more in name than in deed?

In my case, being an only child, I was always extremely close to my parents. In fact, it was a wrench to move away and start living independently. However, sadly and due to circumstances, I never developed a close bond with much of the extended family, save a few people. In the absence of siblings, my friends became that extended family. I invested time and energy in a family that I chose to create, or so I thought.

Lately though, in these lockdown days, I am starting to understand that in many, many ways, blood is thicker than water. I have my own nuclear family around me – safe and healthy, thank goodness! However, unaccountably, I am feeling the need to reach out to members of the family that I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. Perhaps it’s the knowledge, particularly at this time, of how ephemeral our lives really are … how fleeting and transitory. Soon, an entire generation of people who came before me, people who were connected by blood to my mother and father, will no longer exist. And although, I will carry that bloodline forward as will my children, in time that gene pool will dilute, taking with it times, places, languages and memories.

How one views oneself or one’s place in society often comes from cues accumulated over a lifetime. For instance, I am Indian because I was born in India. I am also lucky enough to have been a well educated and well-heeled Indian, affording me opportunities that weren’t available to the majority of my countrymen. Through a fortuitous mix of North and South, a marriage between my father and mother, I was able to straddle two cultures as well. Growing up in the North, the balance always tilted heavily in that favour, but my south Indian genes could never be denied in my complexion, hair or features. Annual summer holidays spent in the homes of aunts and uncles reinforced the fact that one half belonged to a culture and language I had yet to explore fully. However, age, migration and my own inability to invest time left those relationships and that side of me, unfinished and to a large extent, unfulfilled.

Any one person has only a certain amount of time and energy to harvest, and chances are, they put those towards aspects of life that they deem to be more significant than others. My little family, my job, my passion (writing), my hobbies and my friends have taken up the bulk of my lifetime. Yet strangely, now I feel that perhaps I should have taken some of that time and put it towards the people I have a history with; familial ties, after all, cannot be denied. However, this strange pull aside, I also recognise the fact that some of my hesitance to reach out was rooted in a deep antipathy towards the politics that permeated the extended family dynamics. The ‘he said, she said’ toxicity of my childhood that I had vowed internally to never be a participant in. The long stretches of angry silences, the holding on to grudges long past their sell-by dates, the misunderstandings, the slights, the judgement calls of adults functioning like toddlers in the throes of a tantrum. My deep-seated dislike of drama such as this had put a continent of disapproval between us. One that I am trying to make rapid strides over, to reach across and say, “I’m still here and I still care.”

Maybe it’s all too little, too late. But I cannot leave it as it is. For it is in this bizarre, surreal time that I have truly appreciated those who have reached out and asked, “How are you?” It’s shown me how certain relationships that I felt were strong were in actual fact, very weak indeed. Whereas others, the ones I hadn’t paid much attention to at all, were the ones that were unbreakable. In my belated reaching out, I hope I am able to convey some of my own love and bonding to the family that I, in some ways wilfully and in others, unwittingly, neglected. Yes, families are social constructs, but they are also instinctual ones created from blood, genes, memories and love.

“So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.” – Haniel Long

Balance, patience, perspective

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Lately, I’ve been unable to begin any blog post without referring to the Coronavirus that’s affecting our daily living. Who amongst us remains untouched by it in some form or the other? Unprecedented times see us hunkered down in our homes, our only weapon against this insidious virus being social distancing, and no one knows how long this will last and what sort of world we will encounter as and when this is finally over.

But I’m only telling you what you know already!

Today I want to talk about something different, but really related to this time as well. For years, I’d been wanting to return to yoga. The last time I’d practised yoga was in 1998 and that too for a very short while. I remember my yoga teacher being a lovely redhead, perhaps in her 50’s, quite large, but incredibly flexible and very patient with newbies like me. As a twenty-something, I’d come to yoga out of curiosity. In my heart I prized other forms of exercise over it, believing it to be too slow for my young body and wanting the challenge of something more aerobic, something that made me sweat and strain and transformed me visibly. For the seven months that I went to my Thursday yoga classes, I didn’t not enjoy them, but maybe, didn’t take away quite what I was supposed to. When my mother died, overcome by grief, I dropped everything including yoga. And then, inexplicably, I never went back to it.

Well, twenty-two years later, I have returned. In all those years of living and growing, pounding pavements in marathons, jumping up and down in various classes, somewhere within me there started to emerge a yearning for something more soothing, more nurturing for my body and soul. With the lockdown in place, this was an opportune time to return to the yoga I had abandoned all those years ago. This time, all I have is an iPad, a youtube channel and a determination to practise as often as I can. You see, this time I’m no twenty-something limber young woman chomping at the bit. Not only am I older and wiser, but I am also far less flexible and far more life and weather-beaten than before. Yoga is the cradle of comfort I take this rather battered body to as often as I can.

People far more articulate than me have elucidated the benefits of yoga, so I won’t do that here. I will, however, tell you about the little discoveries that I have made. Never the most patient of people, yoga has taught me that nothing can be rushed. There is a time and place for everything. My wanting to plant my heels on the ground in my downward facing dog didn’t happen overnight, my calves were not flexible enough, to begin with. With time, regular practice and patience, I have improved incrementally enough to have miraculously done it yesterday! A tiny, tiny improvement but one that I am immensely proud of, because it has taught me not just what my body is capable of, but also that I must apply this lesson to my life too. I cannot expect instantaneous results, I have to work my way towards them.

Similarly, balance is something we all strive for, whether it is a work-life one or whether it is in our temperament and our response to what life flings at us. I struggle with my tree pose, unable to plant my foot sufficiently high up on my opposing thigh. Yet, yoga teaches me that it is finding the balance between the opposing forces, setting my eyes upon one spot and breathing deeply that can help me stand rooted, tall and firm as a tree. Tell me that isn’t a lesson we can apply to our daily living too?

Finally, even as I struggle with the more advanced positions in yoga, I can’t help but look back and see how far I have come from those early days. If I put in the work, where might I be in a month, a year, ten years? Perspective, after all, is a point of view, and a point of view is determined by where you are standing at any given point in time. 

For those of us who are struggling with the uncertainty of our lives and futures, take a deep breath, find the patience to get through this time and remember, nothing lasts forever. Not even a ruddy virus!

 

Stay safe, stay sane

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So how is social distancing/ self-isolation going for you?

Most of us are in some kind of lockdown situation right now, and even the homebodies amongst us are starting to chafe at the bit. Like a friend said to me recently, it’s all very well to want to self-isolate voluntarily, but when it’s imposed from the outside, the natural impulse is to be irritated, to feel caged and to want to rebel. PLEASE don’t!

I cannot overemphasise the importance of practising social distancing at this moment in time. This is not about our individual freedom to do as we wish. It’s about the greater good, about understanding that only flattening the curve (delaying the spread of the virus) gives us a very real chance of beating this and that overburdening our medical system when it is already stretched beyond capacity will rebound on everyone in society. If doing our bit is staying home and staying away from other people, then surely that is not too great a sacrifice to make?

So, stay safe and stay informed.

But how does one stay sane? After all, the novelty of lie-ins, endless bags of crisps and binge-watching Netflix is likely to wear off sooner or later. All that lovely family time that we’ve yearned for in our frenetic work lives will start to grate upon our nerves when it’s just us and no one else to break the monotony. So, what does one do? 

Here’s the thing: look at what you’re missing out on in this phase in your lives and try to replicate it. I’ll give you an example of what I’m doing and you can cherry-pick what works for you.

Routine: In our ordinary, everyday lives, we have some kind of routine going for us, determined by our work hours or the nature of our jobs. Try and create a new kind of routine for yourself, one that is sustainable long term. I wake up at 7am on weekdays, check my phone for emails and social media, and then get ready for my daily walk.

Exercise: Here, in the UK, we are allowed to go outside once a day to exercise, as long as we keep a two-metre distance from other people. I go for a daily walk to get my dose of exercise and fresh air.

Meditation: My yoga is the form of meditation I practise each day. It makes me focus on what’s going on internally and to learn to let go of all that is toxic, negative or beyond my control. Yoga, above everything else, keeps me sane.

Work: For those of us who can work from home, it’s important to set up a zone that you associate with work and work alone. In a home environment it is so easy for lines to get blurred, but to keep to the discipline of work hours, it is important to delineate the two. 

I have a favourite chair that I retreat to when I need to write. It’s like a switch has been flicked on. I go into work mode almost instantly, despite whatever else may be going on around me. I plug into study music that allows me to tune into my innermost self, shutting all the outside noise off, literally and metaphorically.

Creativity: Art flourishes in the most straitened of circumstances. Now, more than ever, its time to explore your creative side. Is there a hobby you’ve always wanted to pursue? Is there an unfinished work that you need to complete? Go do it! Think of all the commute time you’re saving and use it towards creating something that matters to you.

Family meals: The rule in our household is that we meet for at least one meal a day. That one meal is our time to reconnect, to chat, to joke and laugh, to recharge our connection before we disperse to our separate corners again. 

Movie weekends: Another family ritual we have established is that every weekend one of us chooses a film that all of us watch together. It can be a romcom, a golden oldie, a cartoon or a highbrow serious movie, but we all have to watch it together. This way we are exposed to a variety of films that under ordinary circumstances we wouldn’t have bothered watching.

Reading: This is a personal one. As a writer, I need to read. It’s my way of switching off from writer-mode and switching into being a recipient of somebody else’s words and imagination. It is how my mind exhales, it is as necessary as breathing to me. Regardless of whether you are a reader or not (I’ll hazard a guess that you are if you’ve read this far), pick up a book and read. There is no better way to end your day than in the company of a book.

Weekends: To stop the days melding into each other, Sundays are my days for a lie-in, with a coffee and the papers. It’s the day I oil my hair and call my dad from the bed. It’s the day I make aloo parathas and halwa and give myself a break from my new routine just so I know that it is a weekend.

Makeup: This may seem trivial or superficial, but I’m making it a point to dress well, paint my nails and put on some makeup. So, so important not to slide into a mild depression by living in pyjamas day in and day out. There is something about the very act of dressing well every single day that allows me to keep the blues at bay.

Calling people: Video call someone every day. Look at their faces, listen to their voices, reconnect in this manner if you cannot (and really, should not) in person. I cannot extol the therapeutic qualities of a daily chat enough. No matter that you are not in the same room or even the same country. Just the fact that you can touch base in this manner can feed your soul fairly satisfactorily.

Laugh: I’m lucky that 50% of my household is comprised of genuinely funny people. These two make the other two laugh, a lot! They see the humour in the most bizarre situations, they make everything into a joke and annoying though that may be at times, it does restore perspective and sanity to what seems at times to be a world going mad.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s one that I’m trying to abide by. I cannot say I haven’t had my moments of cabin-fever or meltdowns, but overall if this lockdown extends to another three months, then I know, these things will preserve my sanity in a way nothing else can.

Stay safe and stay sane everyone. See you on the other side. ❤️

Shrinking

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In a hyper-connected world, suddenly we are being asked to practice self-isolation and social distancing. A pandemic has revealed to us all our vulnerabilities, our incapacity to deal with something as virulent, insidious and subversive as Covid-19.

It’s 2020, a new decade in a century that has seen all kinds of borders shrink into nothingness. Travel and communication have made our world into a global village. And yet. We are scrambling today to understand how to prevent, how to contain and how to defeat this virus. We, the supposedly most superior species on earth, the one that has wrecked this planet, are being laid low by an infective agent, too small to be seen by light microscopy. Quelle ironie!

Is it my imagination, or does it seem that Nature has her own way to culling this over-populated planet? We, as humans, are living longer, and for the most part, healthier lives. We take more than we give to the planet. We are a selfish, self-absorbed species, interested only in our own survival, detrimental to almost every other living being. So, is it any wonder that to restore the natural order of things, viruses such as these mutate to infect and kill? Is it a surprise when supposedly dormant volcanoes erupt or the oceans churn themselves up into a Tsunami? Natural disasters aside, epidemics and pandemics aside, maybe we need to reflect upon ourselves, our behaviour and our greed to try and understand what is preventable and what our actions have contributed towards.

I’m no scientist or politician. It is not my place to tell you how to behave at a time like this. I cannot tell you don’t panic or don’t panic-buy. I cannot tell you that a vaccine is just around the corner, or herd-immunity will occur with mass exposure. What I can say, however, is that if you are being told to self-isolate, then do it. Just because you may not display symptoms, does not give you carte blanche to infect other, perhaps more vulnerable people. If, at this moment in time, containment is the only way forward, then please follow the guidelines being given.

Also, this may be a good time to just hunker down. In our frenetic lives, how often do we get time to stop and smell the roses? That is just an expression for stopping to appreciate the very many blessings that we have been granted. Spend this time with your family and loved ones. Pare back your life to the basics. You will find a renewed joy in a life that is most likely riddled with anxiety and fear currently.

Finally, without trying to sound like some kind of new-age guru, reflect upon the fact that we all come into this world to leave it at some point. We don’t know when that will be or how that will be. Recognising the very simple fact of Death and acknowledging that no-one is immune to it, will lead to an acceptance of all scourges, calamities, hardships and disasters as par for the course. A sanguine outlook that will benefit us all.

 

It hurts!

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“It hurts mummy!” My daughter sobbed, pointing to her chest, trying to identify the epicentre of her grief, “It hurts here!”

“I know darling,” I tried soothing her, my heart breaking as I witnessed what bereavement could do to a person.

To a bystander, this grief would seem disproportionate. After all, it was only a hamster, a tiny little rodent that had a very short life span anyway. But, to my daughter, little Luna had been her world, a repository of her love and a symbol of life finally turning positive after years of pain and suffering that a series of health issues had caused her. Luna, the Russian dwarf hamster, had been bought for her birthday, after much pleading and cajoling on her part. She’d never had a pet of her own. The first two hamsters had belonged to her sister, the steady rotation of fish we’d bought for her had never really felt like her own pets as I’d been the one who’d ended up cleaning the aquarium and caring for them. So, this pet was meant to be hers alone. And she was as good as her word. She fed her, cleaned her cage and played with her daily.

Luna was a delightful little thing – full of spunk and vigour. She was incredibly sociable, always happy to be held and passed from hand to hand. We filmed her climbing her bars and swinging from them like a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist. We photographed her chucking all the food out of her bowl and sitting in it. Her antics became a source of amusement and entertainment for the entire household. Even my husband, not a pet person at all, found her to be a sweet little thing.

A week before she died, my daughter noticed her behaving strangely. She hadn’t come up to the second level to drink any water all day, which was very unlike her. Her food remained untouched. When we raised the roof of her little house, she crawled out uncertainly, wobbly on her feet, dragging her hind legs as though injured. Fearful that she might have broken a leg during her acrobatics, we started googling hamster ailments straight away. Nothing definitive came up, but the advice was to have her checked out by the vet. So, we rushed her to the clinic near our house. The vet wasn’t in and an appointment was made for later in the day. All-day my daughter worried about her, scared that Luna was in pain. In the evening we put her in the little pet carrier and once again, carried her to the vet.

As soon as the vet put her on the stretcher, she seemed to perk up. Running hither thither, she seemed perfectly fine, casting doubt on all our previous worries. We were gobsmacked! This was the same hamster that had been dragging her legs a half-hour ago. The vet discharged her with advice to give her a food supplement and just keep an eye on her. We were perplexed but happy that she seemed to have recovered on her own.

For the next week, Luna’s new ‘normal’ was an exaggerated version of her former self. She climbed her bars constantly, throwing herself down like a kamikaze pilot, she started to chew on them, as if wanting to escape her confinement. She also became increasingly nippy, chomping down on our fingers whenever an opportunity presented itself. Her increasingly bizarre behaviour seemed to transform her from a happy, peaceful little thing to an irrational, hyper, angry little mammal. We could not understand it, and I spent hours trawling the internet trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, a week ago, she didn’t emerge from her house all day, once again. Upon returning from her weekly physiotherapy session, my daughter noticed that Luna’s breathing was shallow and that she was curled up like a little ball. The internet revealed that she could be in a state of ‘torpor’ brought on by the cold, and extremely dangerous in little animals. We heated up a hot water bottle, placed a towel on it and tried to warm little Luna up. But it was too late. She had slipped away silently to wherever cute little hamsters go to when they die.

I took it hard because I had grown increasingly fond of her. But my daughter took it even harder. She didn’t sleep all night, crying into her pillow, weeping at the unfairness of it all. “She was just a baby!” she wept. Yes, she was. Less than two months old, Luna should have had at least another sixteen months of life.

My daughter’s back pain has come back with a vengeance, once again underlining how psychology influences physiology. She feels like the Universe is conspiring against her, that nothing seems to be going her way. But more than anything else, she is grief-stricken at the loss of her pet, her darling little Luna Yves.

For people who don’t own pets, this may seem incomprehensible. For people who do, this will be completely understandable. Pets, little or large, become a part of the family. In their quiet and unconditional love, in their reliance on us and their domesticity, they bind us to them in infinitesimally small and unseen ways. When they die, a part of us dies too. When they die unexpectedly and so very young, a part of us is wrenched away in the shock of the arbitrariness of it all.

Perhaps Luna had an underlying condition we were not aware of. Hamsters can be prone to heart issues and/or diabetes. Perhaps her bizarre behaviour was symptomatic of her condition, her ‘nipping’ a way of conveying her pain and discomfort. Perhaps. A lot of questions remain, but we didn’t have the heart to have her little body cut open for an autopsy. Instead, we gave her a little burial in a plant pot, with a beautiful yellow rose plant bought especially in her honour to commemorate the joy she brought into our lives. The little plaque I had made for her notes the date of her demise and how much she was loved by all. It is glued on to the outside of the planter.

Too much? No, not in my opinion. There is a reason that we have certain ceremonies or rituals after death. These are a very visible way of bidding goodbye to a loved one. They are the first steps that we take towards healing. After the pain of the loss comes denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression and finally, acceptance.

Right now, my daughter is trapped somewhere between anger and depression. The acceptance will come, I know it will. But in the meantime, it is important to acknowledge the magnitude of her loss and to show her that Luna’s little life on earth meant something to us. In time, hopefully, we can bring home another little hamster. But right now, we grieve the passing of our little friend. May she rest in peace.