If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino | This is not a Book Review

I decided to re-read this book before i read Calvino's Invisible Cities. The first time i read this was during my degree course. I remember liking the book. By the time of second reading, i'd forgotten almost all of it except the sort of climax where we get to read a novel that's made of the titles of the novels so far. This time the book simply failed to do anything to me.

This copy is calico's.

Not only did not find the style too made-up for my taste, the narrative itself sounded so out of context and silly. Therefore there aren't many excerpts and the ones i quote only mildly impressed me. This novel is often cited as an example for the technique of self-reflection in writing. I must say that this is a very poor example in that sense. The self-reflexive part is too contrived. There is nothing about this book that is not about this simple technique.

From [1]

You cast another bewildered look around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.

From If on a winter's night a traveler

I have landed in this station tonight for the first time in my life, entering and leaving this bar, moving from the odor of the platform to the odor of wet sawdust in the toilets, all mixed in a single odor which is that of waiting, the odor of telephone booths when all you can do is reclaim your tokens because the number called has shown no signs of life. 

The following line because it ruffled the nostalgia of those phones from another life with just its sound.

I hang up the receiver, I await the rattling flush, down through the metallic throat, I push the glass door again,...

A better way of personifying Time.

You, reader, believed that there, on the platform, my gaze was glued to the hands of the round clock of an old station, hands pierced like halberds, in the vain attempt to turn them back, to move backward over the cemetery of spent hours, lying lifeless in their circular pantheon.

This for casting purposes. Filmmakers always seek such faces so... I do however wonder if the author would say the same about a man's face - 'water under the bridge' 'over and done with' etc.

They have known her since she was a girl, they know everything there is to know about her, some of them may have been involved with her, now water under the bridge, over and done with; in other words, there is a veil of other images that settles on her image and blurs it, a weight of memories that keep me from seeing her as a person seen for the first time, other people's memories suspended like the smoke under the lamps.

From [2] because i can relate.

The thing that most exasperates you is to find yourself at the mercy of the fortuitous, the aleatory, the random, in things and in human actions - carelessness, approximation, imprecision, whether your own or others'. In such instances your dominant passion is the impatience to erase the disturbing effects of that arbitrariness or distraction, to re-establish the normal course of events. 

Whichever house i stay in, the first thing i change over there is the toothpaste. It just cannot be pressed wherever. It has to be flattened upwards. Oh this is just one of the things.
During this read i kept thinking of that book - Ludmilla's Broken English by DBC Pierre because there is a Ludmilla in this one. That's the book i have been trying to read for more than five years now beaten only by Lolita.

From Leaning from the steep slope

The corrugated-iron roof resounded like a drum beneath the downpour...

This is a familiar sound for most people in Kerala, i guess. And the memory of the sound does things to me. Like putting me in an imaginary school in Kerala. Me among many other students in a classroom with this sound unable to go home due to the rains.  

From Chapter [5] i got a nice image

...Last night I had a dream, I was in my village, in the chicken coop of our house, I was looking, looking for something in the chicken coop, in the basket where the hens lay their eggs, and what did I find? A book, one of the books I read when I was a boy, a cheap edition, the pages tattered, the black-and-white engravings all coloured by me, with crayons... You know? As a boy, in order to read, I would hide in the chicken coop..." 

Liked this scene from Looks down in the gathering shadow is a scene where an assassination is done while the woman is having sex with the man who is going to get killed. I don't like such cliches but it has been written in a nice way so the picture stays.

...Meanwhile with one hand she was holding the dead man and with the other she was unbuttoning me, all three of us crammed into that tiny car, in a public parking lot of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Wriggling her legs in contortions-harmonious ones, I must say-she sat astride my knees and almost smothered me in her bosom as in a landslide. Jojo meanwhile was falling on top of us, but she was careful to push him aside, her face only inches from the face of the dead man, who looked at her with the whites of his widened eyes. As for me, caught by surprise like this, with my physical reactions following their own course, obviously preferring to obey her than to follow my own terrified spirit, without even having to move, since she thought of everything-well, I realized then that what we were doing was a ceremony to which she attached a special meaning, there before the dead man's eyes, and I felt the soft, very tenacious grip closing and couldn't escape her.

Chapter [6] mentions a phenomenon that i like a lot.

Would you like to be in his place, to establish that exclusive bond, that communion of inner rhythm, that is achieved through a book's being read at the same time by two people, as you thought possible with Ludmilla? 

I have many books and people with whom i want to do this. So far it has happened only with The God of Small Things for me.

I feel the jealousy of my books, which would like to be read the way she reads

I, as a reader am supremely jealous of fellow readers who can read the way they do, remember the way they do, understand a book the way they do. I consider myself a very bad reader.

I completely disagree with the following statement by the writer comparing reading and sex.

What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

What he says about reading is true but i honestly can't think of anything other than the holes in human body that open during sex. It's possible to be in the time and space opened by a book while having sex though. For that the sex will have to be bad, i guess.

From On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon

...As for Makiko, she always displayed the gay and carefree air with which certain children who grow up amid bitter family dissension defend themselves against their surroundings, and she had borne it within her, growing up...

This chapter has one of the worst fantasies. One involving the nipples of a mother and daughter grazing a man at the same time. Sexual jealousy between the mother and daughter and other such silly fantasies of men.

In Chapter [9] i liked the bit about airplanes.

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and the when on which you vanished. Meanwhile, what do you do? How do you occupy this absence of yourself from the world and of the world from you? You read; you do not raise your eyes from the book between one airport and the other, because beyond the page there is the void, the anonymity of stopovers, of the metallic uterus that contains you and nourishes you, of the passing crowd always different and always the same. 

From chapter [10] i got this scene.

The train has stopped amid tracks and signal poles, perhaps at a switch point outside some remote station. There is fog and snow, nothing can be seen. On the next track another train has stopped, headed in the opposite direction, all its windows frosted. At the window opposite yours, the circular movement of a gloved hand restores to the pane some of its transparency: a woman's form emerges, in a cloud of furs. "Ludmilla..." you call her. "Ludmilla, the book..." you try to tell her, more with gestures than with your voice, "the book you're looking for...I've found it here..." And you struggle to lower the window to pass it to her through the hard fringe of the ice that covers the train in a thick crust. 

Usage

'...soon, a chasm will yawn between me and Franziska, an abyss!'

In one of the final pages is a note by me saying 'the auto driver asked me how much a ticket to Kozhikode costs'. I have a vague memory of this happening in Ernakulam station. I have come to realise that i make notes of things that i don't want to forget but because i wrote them down, i also tell my mind to make space by forgetting those. What a Catch-22. [Damn! That's another book i want to re-read.]

The Outsider by Albert Camus | This is not a Book Review

This was the second time i was reading the book. The first time i read it was during a bout of depression in film school. The copy was one i took from home, tattered.

The second time, i think i read a copy that belongs to my friend, Han. Joseph Laredo translation. So here goes my Camus. (In the period between my read and this note, i have forgotten most of it, thanks to my incorrigible memory issues.)

To be honest, i don't find the much celebrated first line of the book that interesting. It actually sounds natural to me, something i would say if my mother died.

The Outsider's behaviour during his mother's death also only seemed natural to me.

More interesting to me is reading it in India with Narendra Modi as PM, with BJP in power. It is impossible not to shudder thinking of how the state judges people and finishes them off based on events similar to those in this book.

Imagine someone who said 'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know' who is later found sharing an anti fascist cartoon on their social media page.

Camus' description of old people is also the thing that i notice the most in them. Their eyes. See here, the Outsider talking about his mother's friends at the old age home.

'What struck me most about their faces was that I couldn't see their eyes, but only a faint glimmer among a nest of wrinkles.'

Their eyes grow a little translucent, even Indian eyes turn a bit blue. I remember my the left eye of my favourite person on earth. It was greenish blue with glaucoma. It reminded me of the marbles that used to be found inside soda bottles in the past.

Another of the old people things,

'Except that every now and then I heard a strange noise and I couldn't understand what it was. In the end I realized that some of the old people were sucking at the inside of their mouths and letting out these peculiar clicking noises. They were so absorbed in their thoughts that they weren't aware they were doing it.'

One of the sketches that i have been intending to do for over two years is that of an old man drooling, with his grandson on his lap, also drooling.

'On their way out, and to my great surprise, they all shook hands with me - as though a night spent in silence together had put us on intimate terms.'

Isn't that true? Don't such nights always put strangers on intimate terms? The Outsider has also been translated as 'The Stranger'. 

'... the blood-red earth tumbling onto mother's coffin, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it,...'

This white flesh of the roots in red earth is one of those images that makes me smell earth and also feel it. All people who were diggers as children would remember a point where they saw the whiteness of that white and took it to be many things, all but roots of a tree or plant.

Coming up is the best murder description ever.

'... And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness.'

I don't think this description has ever been outdone in literature. (My knowledge is limited but i will stick to this verdict because I am too proud.). After this line starts Part II and the reader almost feels like they just knocked at the door of unhappiess which was the upcoming page - blank except for the 'Part II' written on top - like a knob or something.

As an addict for over 8 years, i would like to quote the portion below because this is close to how i would describe smoking as - nothing but a disgusting and harmful habit. In jail, deprived of cigarettes, the Outsider says,

'... The first few days were really bad. It was possibly this that shook me up the most. I used to break bits of wood off my bed-plank and suck them. I'd feel permanently sick all day long. I couldn't understand why I was being deprived of something that didn't do anyone any harm. Later on I realized it was all part of the punishment. But by that time I'd got used to not smoking, so for me it was no longer a punishment.'

It is interesting how most of the time, one fails to identify the lack of freedom even in extreme situations like prison. The conversation regarding how prisoners are deprived of sex is where the Outsider realises what imprisonment means.

'...I told him (the warder) that I was like them and that I thought we were treated unfairly. 'Yes,' he said, 'but that's precisely why you're put in prison.' 'What do you mean, that's why?' 'Well, of course. Freedom, that's why. You're deprived of your freedom.' I'd never thought of that. I agreed. 'That's true,' I said, 'otherwise it wouldn't be punishment.' 

There is a mystery portion in the book for me. A reference to something that happened earlier in the book itself. My memory being my memory, i first thought that i'd read it but forgotten but i re-read the entire pages of the mentioned portion and still could not find it.

'...I then remembered what the nurse said at mother's funeral. No, there was no way out and no one can imagine what the evenings in prisons are like.'

I found no reference like that in the entire funeral portion even after going through it twice. Maybe it is meant for a third read.

The trial description is mindblowing. Human beings are not expected to be apathetic. The world can perhaps be divided into those who care about everything and those who don't. Or more relevant would be the division into those who care about certain things and those don't care about the same things - death, for example. The world's cruel assumption is that everyone has to deal with grief in a similar, conventional, acceptable fashion.

This is a burden on those who are alone. Haven't you noticed how loners are different in their grief? And by loners, i don't mean people who live alone or have no friends, i mean loners, like the Outsider. They end up being judged, for no fault of theirs. In the trial, for example, after the warden of the old age home gives his testimony of how the Outsider did not cry or look at his dead mother's body, how he did not know how old she was and generally appeared calm during her funeral, Camus writes thus.

'Then he (the judge) asked the Public Prosecutor whether he had any questions to put to the witness and the prosecutor exclaimed, 'Oh! no, that's quite sufficient,' in a resounding voice and with such a triumphant glance in my direction that, for the first time in years, I stupidly felt like crying because I could tell how much all these people hated me.'

Isn't it scary? Once you kill someone, our drinking coffee, or watching a film or having sex on the day someone dear to us died, will all add up as 'evidence'? It means that those of us who have been that way are getting away with it only because we have not been brought under the scrutiny of the state. If you do anything that turns the spotlight to you, and it need not be murder, it could very well be an opinion that does not sit well with the majority, the scrutiny will start and will never end. Till your are 'punished' enough.

The following portion is inexplicably touching

'The hearing was adjourned. For a few brief moments, as i left the Law Courts on my way to the van, I recognized the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I rediscovered one by one, as if rising from the depths of my fatigue, all the familiar sounds of a town that I loved and of a certain time of day when I sometimes used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper sellers in the languid evening air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sanwdich sellers, the moaning of the trams high in the winding streets of the town and the murmuring of the sky before darkness spills over onto the port, all these sound marked out an invisible route which I knew so well before going into prison. Yes, this was the time of day, when, long ago, I used to feel happy. What always awaited me then was a night of easy, dreamless sleep.'  

Again, while his fate is being decided by strangers,

'In the end all I remember is that, echoing towards me from out in the street and crossing the vast expanse of chambers and courtrooms as my lawyer went on talking, came the sound of an ice-cream seller's trumpet. I was assailed by memories of a life which was no longer mine, but in which I'd found my simplest and most lasting pleasures: the smells of summer, the part of town that I loved, the sky on certain evenings, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed. And the utter pointlessness of what I was doing here took me by the throat and all I wanted was to get it over with and go back to my cell and sleep.'

Camus' 'Afterword' is a must read. I don't remember if the other edition that i read had it. In it, he speaks about how he was accused of blasphemy for comparing his character to jesus christ. That whole portion is so sweet that i wrote 'love' at the end of it. See here.

'So one wouldn't be far wrong in seeing The Outsider as the story of a man who, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth. I also once said, and again paradoxically, that I tried to make my character represent the only Christ that we deserve. It will be understood, after these explanations, that I said it without any intention of blasphemy but simply with the somewhat ironic affection that an artist has a right to feel towards the characters he has created.'

I sometimes wonder what these writers would have written if they lived in our times and then my head spins.

Arundhati Roy and me

Am i the only person who feels like kissing Arundhati Roy on the mouth every time she speaks?

The Underdog Syndrome | Shrink Tales

We spoke about football.

I'd never thought about the 'rooting for the underdog' syndrome. My philophy of football and life in general is that i will stand with the person or people who are weak. Never knew there was so much to it. By standing with the weaker team, your status gets elevated, as a person who is standing with a weaker person. If they win, it means that underdogs can win. If they lose, well, they were weaker to begin with anyway. If they win, it proves that lesser talent can win. Standing with the powerful team is not really a noble act.

The part that i liked the most is when Ish told me something inji had told me long back and i had got pissed with. My feeling insecure and unsafe when my partner earns more than me and pays the whole rent is a by product of patriarchy. Inji had told me that being independent was a disguise for a lack of support system most of the time. Independence is not being able to pay the rent. What my partner and i share is companionship. Except that when Ish said it, i got the satisfactory click inside me.  (Ishani said it was because unlike inji, i was paying her. Nobody listens to their parents because the advice is free. When you have to pay for it, if you are a person with a middle class mentality at least, you will make an effort.)

I asked her why then, knowing that my body image issue is also a product of patriarchy, i was not able to change it, she said it is because it has had a long lasting impact on me, starting from childhood.

I shared my standing with the underdog syndrome the way i experience it with my partner. He was not considered good looking. Nor was he someone on whom girls had crushes. So i felt superior because i, who was hit on by a lot of males - it was all for sex, i think but nevertheless - decided to 'settle' for him.

God it felt horrible writing that. Ish told me that it was not really superiority. It was indicative of my lack of self esteem. I forgot how that figured. I don't know about all that. I do know that he fills me with warmth whenever i even think of him. I find him too beautiful, sometimes i look at him for minutes together, like an idiot.

Today i got hurt when inji told me that she didn't want me to work during my vacation. I was going to book tickets without telling her. Because i was sure she wouldn't sanction my leave. But she said okay and rejected my offer to work for two hours every day if possible.

I don't understand her games. And i get angry when i don't understand her games. And at the end of it all, she might just have typed something while doing hundred other things or thinking hundred other thoughts. And i will try to analyse her sentence for two weeks and keep adding to my mountain of hate.  

The other major incident during the week was that i blocked inji on whatsapp. We had an argument regarding punctuation marks. I got hurt because she was dismissive. I felt she was talking about things she didn't know. It brought back her sentence 'you think you know English' cried for at least two hours. Decided to look for new jobs. Vai Vow asked me to do the same. Like always i defended inji. Later, when he was not cleaning up after himself, i threw 'this is exactly what i do to inji' at him. He became silent.

The pain was unbearable. Calico tried to help but he is also one of those who hates inji.
Today, i disagreed with her in front of other colleagues and she did not talk to me like how she talks in private chat. So i told myself that i had made the right decision.

I still can't believe i blocked her. Me, who years ago would hope against all hopes that i'd get a call from an unknown number. Because the only unknown number who called me was her.

Coming to think of it, rooting for the underdog turned into something else syndrome is something i have for inji. But she is something else entirely. Starting from the clothes she wears to every single thing she does, she is the perfect feminist for me. A feminist much like me but without the privileges i have, who FOUGHT all along and who survived and who SMIRKS at people who tried to put her down. All while making dosas and babies and leading the exact same life my mother leads. It gives me hope that my mother can also be that. And i value that hope very much. 

The Middle Ground | Shrink Tales

It was great even thinking of a possibility that there could be a middle path. It was right, what Mother says about me. Vettonnu Muri Randu. It's either black or white. No greys for me. But it is the greys that keep one alive and human.

Why can't i be angry with inji on some days and okay with her on other days. I want everything. And i can't have everything. If i am like a child to inji, i am seeking a mother who will not be like Mother to me. One who does not come with restrictions and warnings and plans. The same irritation i get when mother asks me to join a journalism school to get a degree to be a journalist is what i feel when inji asks me to make ten short films or not make a film for ten years. With my mother i dismiss it easily. With inji, i pile it up onto the mountain i have built out of a molehill that i use as fuel to hate her.

I should love everyone like i love Vai Vow. I get pissed with him when he doesn't clean up. But i love him. I know that he cares for me not matter what. Also, unlike in other relationships, every other relationship, i am not always scared of him abandoning me. I was quick to tell Ish that it wasn't because of the right reasons that i didn't have that fear with Vaibhav. I feel it is about knowing that it will be difficult for him to find someone else. I in fact kind of want him to get married so that he knows that it is possible. I am scared that he is sticking with me because he feels that no one else will fall for him.

Ish told me that the reasons didn't matter. But to be honest, it matters to me. I often imagine him being with someone else and feel bad thinking of how less he will be loved. But is that the truth? Won't he be much much better off with a normal person who loves him unconditionally?

I take abuse because i can never see the middle path. If i tell Deep that he can't take me for granted, i will lose his friendship. He will stop coming to my place. Deep was perhaps the biggest step i made towards health. The extreme happened. We stopped being friends and he hasn't visited since. But i stood my ground and told him that a friendship wasn't healthy if i did not have room to tell him not to do certain things that were bad for me.

I don't fear that i will lose my mother. I did lose my sister just like how i felt i would. But even when there have been extremely bad patches, i have always known that mother will be there for me.

The same way, i shoud know that inji will be there for me no matter what. Because i know that she loves me and cares for me. She might stop talking. She might be in full control of when i can be in touch with her but she will always be there for me.

In abusive relationships, i was asked to do things i didn't like and i did them because i thought they won't stick with me otherwise. If i refused to have sex with this man on train, he would stop loving me.

I have to do everything perfect. When inji praises the work of other girls, i look with pride at their work and feel, that's all she wanted? This is not half as good as what i could have done. Sometimes, people just want things done. Not the perfect way, necessarily. Successful people do not cook grand lunches and dinners every day of the week. It's done on weekends. Other days can have unglamorous food. Rice and dal will fill you up just as well as a biriyani.

Ish did try to take the insight about the middle path into food and i immediately felt a wall of insulation build itself around me. I was eating more. Checking weight less. But on the day of therapy, because i had this conversation, i felt i was cheating on my obsession and checked weight again. It was 1 kilo more than what is ideal. Resolved to eat less. Again.

I can't be somewhere in between x and y kilos. I have to be z kilos. Or else, i have failed. To discipline myself and to be control myself. Ish pointed out that i was better than years ago when i was binging, sweet shop to sweet shop in good old calcutta. I miss calcutta so much.

True. I wasn't binging like that anymore, but i still live in fear that i will go back. Once an addict, always an addict.

Inji went on a vacation and came back. I am still sulking around her.

The week went well. I successfully turned Vai Vow into a football watcher. Noted with glee that his hands go cold when a penalty shoot-out happens. In a purely hypothetical situation, i would like to be proposed with this line 'how would you like to watch the rest of the football world cups together?'

It's All About Inji For Me | Shrink Tales

It's all about inji.

I stopped going for therapy following inji's scoldings and calico's intervention. Calico said i was being a dick to inji. He said that i had taken stuff like oven from her and was doing nothing. I was squandering her money. I immediately messaged Ish saying i was discontinuing therapy. In my notebook, i realised today when i went through it again for Ish, i had written that i stopped therapy because i thought that was what inji wanted. That was a contradiction. Because i feel i stopped therapy as my way of taking revenge for the way inji treated me. Because while Calico and inji both say that i have been a dick to her, i feel that she has been a bigger dick to me. Making me feel miserable.

While on train i thought i would fool Calico and inji from the next week by being absent during work on all Tuesdays, pretending to be in therapy but remaining at home instead. I went to Ishani determined to not cooperate. That way i could still have my revenge.

When i explained the problems in my relationship with inji, she reminded me that there was power involved. Yes, i tend to overlook but it is an indelible fact. Inji holds a lot of power over me. I believe everything she says, i believe i am what she says i am. When she told me i am abusive, during my relationship with Jay, i believed her. With Sal.

So it could be that i resent her for all the things she said i am. I don't like it that i don't have a family like hers. Be it a life partner or parents and siblings. From whatever snippets of information i have of her family, i know that it is completely different from mine. And she herself has told me many times that that makes a difference.

For instance, when she told me that my weird concepts about consent and sex could be because i have never witnessed my mother and father court each other. How is that my fault? It is not fair that certain things happen to certain families.

So when she doesn't like it when someone says something mildly unpleasant about her family, i feel cheated because i am not in a position where i defend my family in everything. In fact, most of the time, i am in a position where i have to take a stance against them. I hate it.

Ish asked me to think about the growth of this relationship. How did inji come to acquire so much power over me? Like she said, she reached out to me because she liked something i wrote. Later, she reached out to me after disappearing for some time. By then i had started loving her so much. I don't even know how that happened.

Later she would tell me that she reached out to me that time because she saw online that i was being surrounded by a lot of people she knew were predators. I don't like being the sick child. I am always the sick child with her. Something that needs to be fixed.

I hate it that she makes plans for me.
You make ten short films now. I am saving money for you to make a film. I won't let you make a bad film. You are not ready to make a film. You can't think of making a film for two years.

Similarly, i hate it when she tells me that i should not have time to do anything else when i work for her. That is telling me that everything else i do is insignificant. What i think is, if they are insignificant for her, yes, that hurts me, like how one would feel if you knew that the dress you bought when you were allowed to go shopping yourself did not please your mother. But the resentment comes from the thought that she doesn't consider that what is important to me should be important to her also. Would she discontinue pappu or baby's piano lessons if she thought it wasn't worth it? This is how my thoughts go during such times.

Ish pointed out one thing that still is a mystery. Why is it that inji reaches out to me time and again. Ish tried to tell me that it could be because she really loves me and values me. But i again think it is because i need fixing. Calico told me that he reached out to me because i am a 'wrist cutter' as he calls it.

I am okay being sick. Isn't that why i am in therapy? So what the hell is everyone's problem?

The two weeks went by with just one incident where inji got pissed. And i still think what i did is okay though i didn't bother to explain. Because Calico pointed out that my responses to her were toxic. I apologised to her. Said that since her words hurt me all the time, if i am doing the same to her, i know the pain and would like to apologise. She said 'no worries' and i hated her a little more.

Exactly how i thought she would react. 'No worries' and again she is the good person and i am the rascal. I feel like a street mongrel when around her. This is different from being filled with love when someone utters her name. I hate it.

When i type these, there is so much rage inside me. So much anger - the toxic kind - i know that i am a toxic person. So why can't i just die. Eyes moisten up. Fuck everything.

Food as the Abuser | Shrink Tales

Looking back, i am now wondering why it affected me. I was really small. Must have been in second or third standard. This nun, while passing, joked, are you eating all your sister's food at home? My sister was thin, i wasn't.
When i was as small as that, why did that comment hurt me so much that i stored it for years after that, till now?

In today's session, we spoke a lot about food and me. That's when i realized that food was inherently an abusive substance in my life because that's what made one fat. It makes perfect sense now. For a long time i had not connected these two. Even with that nun's comment, i was the one who actually ate less in the house. My sister ate more. Till seventeen or so, i never thought that what i ate contributed to how much i weighed. It sounds weird because i did get an education but honestly the connection was never made.

Till that time when i put on weight in two weeks after eating a different set of food for two weeks because mother was gone. In the excitement of getting to spend the money on food that i otherwise wouldn't get in that frequency, i bought a lot of stuff from confectionery shops like jam rolls and puffs. I bought a lot of chocolate. I remember the green of Cadbury Temptations. Memories associated with it. Telephone booth where i would phone Lou. Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez, rehearsals, Vije, his flute and so on.

So when everyone started telling me that i had gained weight after those two weeks, i immediately connected it to the abrupt change in the food i ate. From there started the battle with it. If i had one day found out that it was air that made me fat, i would try to stop breathing.

Now i need to think where i got the idea that fat is not good. I don't think it's just me wanting to look like my sister. That was there of course, because relatives' comments would come as comparisons between her body and mine. But i am sure the popular culture also corrupted me. When it happens during formative years it stays there. That's why in retrospect i remembered that nun's comment.

Ishani told me that food was abusing me when it had control over me. She made me remember the fish story. I was at peace when i was eating by my own, when i was making the decision of putting every morsel in my mouth. But later at night, before washing dishes, when in hurried movements put all that was remaining in my mouth, i felt like a trashcan. Then, food was controlling me. It was making my hands move.

I confided in Ishani about my sexual fantasies that have a submissive me. It took me back to the time when i was getting hit by that man. I remembered him bragging about his play, the portion in which the woman who was acting, who was also the one he was sleeping with, at the time, was thrown off the stage by him, who played her husband.

Being an instrument in the man's hands, being like a child. This whole world's obsession with children as sex objects. With tremendous amount of guilt, i often played into it with my weight obsession. The weight is also about me being handled. You can't curl into the body of a man if you are fat.

I came out of that abusive relationship when i met Jay with whom i entered a relationship two weeks after we met. That is when i realised how easy it was. Like breaking a twig into two, i stepped out of those hotel rooms where i was stuck forever breathing fresh air. It was so effortless because i was drowning in another love, a new love, a different kind of love that was not hurting me. The abrupt manner in which it happened made me think, 'it was this easy?!'

That's when Ish told me that maybe it was possible for me to do that with food as well. Since food is abusing me, because of the way i think right now about my body image, maybe, i can snap out of it by changing the way i think of body image. Establish another kind of relationship with myself.

Ish leads me on a grass pathway that will make me feel less cold while inji takes me right into the cold waters, asking me to cross it. I forgot how we came to this conclusion. I know what it means but in this case, what is the grass pathway that Ish suggested? I forgot.

I have started trying to not look at people's fat when i look at them.

During the week i saw ex abuser's trailer for his feature film. He is becoming part of the industry that i will one day work in. It scares me. Inji told me that it was natural that i got scared. It's been 9 years, hasn't it? Yet, i have only started addressing it.

Talking about food, people putting on weight makes me feel good in a bad way. I like to watch them try things to lose weight and say in my mind, it's not a problem for you anymore. I noticed that i also cook less when there are people around. This week, Han, Vai Vow and later Deep were all there and i couldn't cook. Earlier in hostel i would cook and feed everyone - a period that i associate with me being 56-58 kilos. I assumed it was something to do with my cooking. Then i would cook and feed people but not eat myself. If i ate, i ate very less. But even then i felt that it made me put on weight.

This week, i think i cooked only once. That too because my partner asked me to.

Uff! i got reminded of the times when i would eat in secret, that is away from people. So that they wouldn't see me eat. I didn't want people to see me eat.

Got hurt like crazy seeing people's convocation photos. Cried etc. When i make money i will build a film school where interviews will help ascertain if people are assholes. 

The Gyanpapi Syndrome | Shrink Tales

Today's session, we spoke mostly about food and body image. It is then that i realised that apart from being a hypocrite, i am also a very nasty person. I consider people who are fat as unhappy. They might have accomplished everything, the best degrees and the best career, but when i look at them, i think that they are all secretly unhappy. Ish asked me if i mistrusted fat people. My partner is not fat but i know him personally and i know that he doesn't give a shit. But those people whom i don't know personally, i just assume that they are hiding their sadness, just like how i was at 55 or 50 kilos.

Projection fallacy of another level.
She pointed out how i felt bad when i learned that this is how i thought about others while i was okay with thinking the same about me. When it is about self, it is all right. Yes, it's always been like that for me.

I have started thinking more and more about food. In terms of helping myself that is.
Why this contradiction that i don't care what people think of me otherwise but i care what they think of me when they look at me?

Every time i feel like eating something, there is this vacillation. To eat or not to eat. To cook or not to cook. I sometimes stop walking on the road and think for some time so that i get clarity, thinking spending energy on walking might be making me go back and forth. Most of the time i decide against eating - this gives me a small relief and a small air of victory.

Whenever i meet someone after a period, my biggest fear is if they will tell me if i have put on weight. Even if the weighing scale shows that i have not, i fear it. Like when i met Amt. He did not tell me that i had put on so i was relieved. That is, my happiness depends on this. It would have been okay if it was in a smaller scale. But in my case a LARGE part of my happiness depends on other people's opinion of my weight.

Like when Ish tells me that i am not anorexic, in my mind i am disappointed. Because to look anorexic is my dream. 

So i am trying to identify my problem here. My problem is that i feel bad when i look heavy. Heavy is a number above 45 kilos now. Earlier it was 50. In college. So the goal is to not feel bad if someone tells me that i have put on weight or that i am fat. Here is the problem. Gyanpapi syndrome, i shall call, in memory of Ish.

I know that it doesn't matter. Like, i don't give a shit when people tell me i am short. There are n number of short me jokes. Complexion - nothing. Yellow teeth - nothing. I know that these things should not affect the way people think of other people. If someone thinks i should be discriminated against based on my height, i can fight with them, give them a piece of my mind. Without getting hurt. With weight, i will still give a piece of my mind, but come back and cry in my room, break my mirror etc.

Now that is the difference between the two. Why? If i find the root of this, maybe i can get rid of it? It is a very faint glimmer of hope. It pops up in my mind from time to time because of the way Ishani is confident about it. I trust women who are passionate about their work very seriously. But let me not get carried away, it is but just a glimmer.

Once a Seeker Always a Seeker | Shrink Tales

I got lost at Kandivali station in the morning. But in things like that i have improved a bit. Usually what i think is, 'it had to happen because it's me.' But this time irritating as it was, i persevered and asked around and found my way out. When i accomplish such things i feel good. Like the last time, there was a roadblock when i went to deposit my cheque at the bank. But instead of going back home, i kept going in search of the next option. Something inji has been asking me to do forever. But it's kind of happening.

We spoke about why i missed the previous session. Ish again said to me that we try to protect ourselves when we anticipate hurt. If i felt therapy was going in a direction that i am reluctant to look into, it was natural for it to happen. It could be the body image problem. I had decided to write an article on it, coming out as a feminist who has still not been able to solve this problem after i read Nisha Susan's brilliant article. That's still in my to-do list and probably because of the same reason.

All that i don't want to be - this is every person's problem. This thought is a luxury, i know. It's a privilege. I can think of what i am and what i am not and brood and be depressed because i don't have to worry about where to sleep tonight or how to eat tomorrow. Yes, depression is a privilege. So is love.

So by killing oneself, one is trying to stop being all that they are. But there is a contradiction right there, isn't there? Because killing yourself is also part of who you are and by doing it to stop being who you are, you are being yet another part of what you are.

I want to be like inji because i don't like what i am. Yes, it's time to realise that that what i am is a sum of all that i am not, a sum of all my imperfections but don't know. I am the seeker, always. I have got to strive to be something i am not, at all times. That's what keeps me going. Some of the things stick to you. Some don't. Filmmaking stuck. Basketball, violin and girl scouts didn't.

We spoke about the protective shield i build around inji all the time. It was very interesting, what Ish said about it. The first thing i assume when i speak about inji to someone is that they are going to hate her. Ish said that it sounds almost as if i want them to hate her. It could be true. Because then, i get a sense of superiority by observing that i love her in spite of all the reasons others state to hate her. Yeah, i do believe that the reasons everyone states are not valid but even then, standing with her is somewhat like how it was with sister. We are a force to reckon with and can't be touched. You touch one of us and there will be blood. This combative mode is what i am used to. I am not used to people accepting me. Same goes for inji. And maybe, inside me, that's what i am okay with. Really, i don't like it when someone likes me. I am much more comfortable knowing that they hate me.

Ish also spoke about the things other hate about inji. So i know that most people hate her for being in US and having an opinion about things in India. Of supporting movements here. They accuse her of physically being in another place while instigating other people over here. I have not felt this about her. I think that it's bullshit. But there are things i have hated her for. The way she speaks. So when someone else hates her for the way she speaks, i have this smile on my face, thinking, i know exactly what you're talking about. But i am past all that. Look where i am now, now that i have learnt better. I know better.

Don't know. Inji is a big part of my life. There is no me without her, i feel. And this might be why mother hates her. Maybe she knows i feel this way about inji and not about her. Biologically, i am here only because of mother but in a purely existential sort of way, i feel i am attached to inji by my soul. That there is a knot. And that it can't be untied.

During the week, the smiling to self continued. I am so conscious of it these days and that makes me think it is happening after a long time. Is it okay to get a surge of love, like blood rushing to the part of brain where love is from time to time. This is triggered by images, people, memories, songs. Oh god, for the first time after watching the film, i watched the song from Mayanadhi and cried from beginning till the end. And my eyes water even as a type.

Had what i call a relapse during work. That is, after the therapy i came home and slept. I was so not used to the heat. This happened yesterday and today as well and inji blasted me. Not as much as she usually does, which is even more dangerous. Silence cuts deeper. So today, i did sleep, but wrote two stories. Intend to do three tomorrow.

Missed Therapy for the First Time | Shrink Tales

Ish shifted my session to a Monday. I was not able to write soon after coming back from therapy last week. It was the session in which Ish said that she was not being able to figure me out. I was talking about being late for work, a certain thrill in defying inji's orders etc. She said that i wasn't depressed. I feel it. Been feeling it since the last time she told me that. But there is more happiness now. I have started smiling to myself like an idiot while walking alone. Something that happens when one is in love or has smoked weed. Anyone would think i had just fallen in love.

Ish asked me to ask inji to change my shift to a later one in the day. Guess what, i reached home and inji told me that she had just done that. Now my shift starts at 2 pm. I stay up till 4/5 in the morning. Sleep and get up at 12. And looks like i am more productive this way.

We spoke about Sister, again. Mother considers me to be the person who can mend it. I should apologise, if things had to be all right with Sister. Somehow i have no problem doing any of that. I don't think i did anything wrong. I hurt them, yes. They hurt me too. They keep asking me for apologies. I have tendered apologies earlier, apologies for behaving the way i behaved when i was being abused by various men, the disgrace i put them in, repeatedly apologised and they still feel it is not enough that they forget that i did it and ask me to apologise again. I am still ready to do it. To Sister, i can apologise but the problem is that she is not going to get the confession she wants out of me.

I know that she wants me to say that i am sorry for having believed other people, told mother about what the outsiders had told me and made her life hell because mother knowing things really different from me knowing things. It reminded me of all the smoking talk, covering up, breach of trust and all that happened. She wants me to say that i was completely wrong about her, that she never did anything to anyone and all my accusations were false.

There lies the problem. I can't do that. So if i were to apologise, i can only make sweeping statements like, i am sorry i hurt you so much by saying the things i said. I am sorry for hurting you like that.

This doesn't work because then she asks for details. And then it becomes evident that i stand by what i said and the remorse is only for having caused her sadness by saying it. So it means that my journey has been different. Ish told me that and i think i agree. It does look like chechi is not there yet. And i am worried about her. That she is not helping herself. But as long as she isn't there, i can't force it out of her. Maybe, my apologies might even look like me taking a higher moral ground to her. I should let it be. It makes me sad. Especially the possibility that we might never talk again.

These days, i am just worrying about my career, i think.

Convocation - SRFTI - scared. Feel bad that i can't go.

I missed the session on Monday. It was such a shock to me. I had gone to sleep late but that had never resulted in me sleeping like that and missing therapy. My absent mindedness had resulted in me getting the time wrong. But never something like this.I have no clue why that happened. I cringed when i called Ish and told her that i slept through the session and more, the feeling i get when i do something wrong and go in front of Mother or inji. I also worried about the money, that i had wasted an entire session and the guilt made me feel bad but not for as long as it usually does.

The new schedule started working really well for me. I started getting the pleasure of working. I do feel guilty when i stay up till 5 in the morning but as long as it is not making me late for work i am okay with it.

I noticed that there is a sliiiight change in my eating. It's erratic but i am cooking more often ever since i found the fish person here. Even when alone. The guilt pangs have reduced but i believe it is only because i compensate later and the weighing scale is not showing me unfavourable numbers.

Ever since my work schedule got sorted, i have been feeling a lot of love. Like giving away a lot of love. And the smiling to self while walking alone has actually increased. Is this the beginning of some problem? Because the last time i was like this was when i fell in love with my partner and that is expected of love.

What's changed? What's happening?

PS it's not like i don't get sad, i do. Like Jay, his beautiful wife, him commenting on calico post, his jumping with her photo, Sister and Mother and their hatred for inji. All this hurt me. Politically, i consume a lot of news that's horrifying and sad deliberately. Like reading the entire chargesheet in the asifa case. I did that on purpose as the least i can do for someone who died of that which i read. At nights i still wonder about the male species, gender violence and more. I remember saying the same sentence to Ish long ago but this time it's not like that. Like she said, she has her husband and kids and an ocean of love to fall back into. I don't know what i have but i feel like i have enough now with inji and calico talking to me and relationship with Mother has become better. Immediately made me think 'you're being dependent' and you will suffer and writhe in pain like last time when inji leaves abruptly.

Control | Shrink Tales

I was somehow feeling lighter than usual when i set out for therapy on Tuesday. Bombay was getting hotter. My yearning for home and rain was at the back of my mind but was not eating me like it usually does.

Ish said that it just came as a natural choice to her to pick on the subject of my fish curry from the notes from the previous session. She said that that was perhaps the first time i had mentioned food at all. It was true. In all relationships there comes a point where i decide to disclose my vulnerability regarding food and it looked as if that one line in my writing was that in my therapy sessions. That's quite an achievement, i guess, given that i told my partner about it just last year, almost three years into our relationship.

I felt good that Ish disagreed with her about pushing me towards doing something about my unhealthy support systems like smoking and not eating. It could have the opposite effect, she said and i was like 'on your face,' to her in my head. But then i also knew that in the end she would be right. 

We spoke a lot about control.I had not realised that it was an important part of my relationships with people and things. I always considered it as having something to do with sex all the time. Sexual abuse. For instance, when Ish was saying that for me, the peak point for all relationships was - i completed the sentence with sex. But she was going to say control. For me, the peak point was when i consented (or not consented to sex and it was coerced out of me) to sex. But in fact, it was not sex i was consenting to, it was control over me or my body. Because in most of my relationships, the sex part of it was abuse.

This perspective on relationships made me feel better. It is the relief that i know something  about myself so it will help me make better judgements. For me, that is the best part of therapy - these joining of dots that will give me a clearer picture. The good thing is that, unlike when she shows me the whole picture all naked in front of me, i don't feel defeated. Or figured out by Ish. It feels like figuring out for yourself and that consoles me.

She asked me to think of instances where i had lost control with substance abuse. It was then that i remembered that the first time i drank in my life, i ended up having sex with my female friend from college. That was something i had no intention of doing. Ish linked this fear of losing control with Father's alcoholism. It was true. I grew up as a child who wanted to avoid losing control like that at any cost. Father behaved differently when he was under the influence of alcohol. Even after his death, i saw that his brothers were alcoholic and they turned rude and impolite to Appan when they were drunk. They were all different people when they were drunk. I remember making a pact with my only male cousin. That he wouldn't drink or smoke when he grew up. He in turn asked me the same question. It was kind of feminist for a boy of that age and time. In the end, i do believe i started smoking and drinking before he did. The first cigarettes i stole was from his own father.

Thinking about losing control, i also remembered the humiliating experience with Aalayam, my ex editor, one of the accused in one of my complaints of sexual harassment. I felt bad for him because people, especially men considered him unworthy of my attention or love. That naturally led me to take him under my wing and openly feed him love. But as is the case with a lot of men who interact with me, he took it as permission to approach me for sex. I just couldn't think of him in that manner but he persisted despite my repeated 'no's' In the end, it was when i got drunk that i decided to let him have whatever he needed from my body. It was horrible and humiliating, is what i told Ish regarding that.

So in all relationships, that is, in all people i loved, i considered giving control to them as the epitome of love. So it was with Sister. With Appan. It's when i shook myself out of Sister's control that our problems started. I started noticing things that i couldn't agree with. My 3.5 years long relationship with Jay, of course, i agreed to have sex with him without even him approaching because i was sure that that was the relationship that was going to work for me so i might as well finish off with the initiation ceremony. He had control over my family.

Now when it comes to my partner, it changes for me. Here, i made a choice. Refraining to do things that will hurt him is one of the things i do for him. I don't see it as control. I see it as love. I would anyway do it because i loved him. He would do the same for me. Even if he doesn't, my love has to be superior in that way. Each one in the relationship should get the best possible format of love.

What about food? If i continue in this manner, did my food problem start first or abuse? Ish thinks it is food. I do too. So it could be that i identified food as the cause for the fat shaming that was done to me. So me giving control to food was me taking my relationship with it to the peak point so that food will leave me alone and treat me properly. Like when i had fish and rice and felt absolutely awesome about it, the same night, i let it control me. Gobbling up some pieces and rice before i threw it.

During the week, I read an article about quitting drinking by an alcoholic. The writer tries to find out if quitting had made any of the writers write poor writing. Then I remembered ish asking me about the fat me. :-( felt sad. Imagined fat me in school etc. The article was really good and when inji saw that I had shared it, she told me that it was keeping me in mind that she posted that in malayee feminist reading group. 

Jay called. He said he was going to have a baby. I cried. I don't think I was sad. I was amazed and overwhelmed, felt as if something was happening in my life. I was happy and worried at the same time. Worried because from the conversation I realized he hasn't changed a bit. Recently I had looked at his photos and had felt that he was smoking weed a lot. Thought about addiction genes being passed on. 

Sister said really hurting things. But because ish had told me that it was not going to work without her reciprocation, I think maybe the mind did not blame myself for it. I asked her why she hated me so much. Asked where the hatred came from. 

Covering events in Bombay is giving new experiences. I still hate the place though.

Guilty Eating Not Guilty Eating | Shrink Tales

When i spoke to Ish regarding the previous session, i was surprised that she didn't take up my fantasies regarding the cut on my foot or my relationship with her. She instead grabbed on to the very fleeting mention of my cooking and eating which made me think that was important. Professionally important, something that had to be spoken about in a therapy session where it was mentioned.

She then asked me to do something i have often asked me lovers to do. To tell a story. Not any story. Tell the story of something you did. So like i would ask these puzzled men who had no clue what was in my head when i asked them to 'tell the story of the time you slept off while talking to me on phone,' Ish asked me to tell the story of how i had bought fish, cooked and ate it. I was reluctant. Even when i told the story i did so without much sincerity. With my lovers, i did these to collect moments, to let them know that insignificant things were significant to me, that they mattered because it was about a person i loved a lot. When i narrated the fish cooking story i realised that i had already collected that as an event in my head. I was surprised that i did not feel guilty when i narrated it. That was remarkable because i have not thought about food, any kind of food, without the feeling of guilt in years.

I told how i ate my fill and did not feel guilty of having eaten it. On the other hand, at night, i had felt guilty of eating some oreos. Ish suggested that maybe my guilt was regarding the kind of food. The kind of food i could not control, over which i had not control made me feel bad. If a packet of oreos was kept on my bed, like how Han had done, it got to decide. I had no choice but to eat. My fish curry was not like that. I had chosen to eat it and ate what i wanted, it tasted exactly like the meal i had craved for and did not leave me wanting for more. But then it also had a lot to do with the fact that my weight check after two days of fish eating did not show a bad number. [Adjectives used for weight, appearance etc, in these notes will be the normalised ones used my popular culture because here i am a victim of it.)

Food like oreo was also linked to a period of weight gain for me, the time when Mother had left for Chennai and i could buy my own food for two weeks. I bought all kinds of things from confectionery shops and stuffed myself with it. At the end of two weeks, people started telling me that i had put on weight - the most dreaded sentence in my life that could instantly topple all happiness and make me feel like a garbage can.

I wonder how i would feel regarding my dal and rice meal. I really like what i make but will i be able to have it in the same way i had my fish curry meal? Will find out in the coming week i guess. In the evening the same fish and rice made me feel guilty when i gobbled up some fish pieces with a little gravy before giving it up and throwing it in the bin. I throw a lot of things in the bin if i sense that i liked eating it. Sometimes i have imagined a situation where i ate out of the trash can because i just couldn't help it and have felt completely helpless and humiliated. 

Did not feel good about eating upma in the week. I remember telling myself that whatever you do, you cannot ever eat three meals in a day. Just so that i don't forget that basic rule of my body.

As a part of trying to get me to work properly, she asked me to eat properly. I felt betrayed. She told me that my eating problem was not about food but about abuse. I felt sad, the way i feel sad when she and she alone says such things to me. Did she think i had not given these things a thought? She wanted to change all of this in a day? Did she really think that telling me that my therapist said things she had been telling me for ages, and she asking me to have a time table would solve all my problems?

I cried a lot, feeling betrayed.

And then the next day, after i submitted the video, she tried to tell me that it was not about solving things in a day. That she was trying to push me. Give me that extra push to make me want to get out of illness. I told her that i was doing that in therapy. But as usual, there was one thing that she said that struck me.

She asked me why i would not eat normal. I told her that that would result in depression, the kind i had to go through in Calcutta at one point of time. She then said that that was where the difference lay. Now, i was seeking professional help. There is a support system. So depression can be dealt with in a different way. That possibility made me a little hopeful. But i didn't dwell on it because i felt that would make me eat properly.

She also tried to talk to me about smoking. Asked me when i had started smoking. She told me that she knew i wasn't someone who thought my creative juices wouldn't flow without nicotine or marijuana or alcohol, but i definitely thought of these things - smoking, cutting body, eating poorly as support systems i could fall back on. With cigarettes, the support system concept might have waned but the addiction remained. The physicality called addiction.

We spoke about families. She agreed with me when i said that to be loved was a privilege. Broken families and other factors that resulted in a lack of support system made people like me seek smoking or abuse. We all deserve love but some of us have to work hard for it.

Ate out with Han. Guilty. 

Like Seeing Blood | Shrink Tales

I had not written the notes from the previous therapy. It had been a busy week. Being around the farmers, marching all the way from their homes to Bombay, in thousands, spending a night and a day with them - it made me feel alive.

The previous session was the one in which i had got scared that Ish would succeed in making me hate her. I had also told her that i was saying that to feel less responsible in case that happened. When i saw that Ish had noted this remark, i became aware of it. I felt guilty.

We had spoken about Sister in the previous session. Ish said that she noticed that i had written to sister that our relationship was important for her also. I saw it when Ish invited my attention to it. That was me trying to assure myself that she needed me as much as i needed her. Ideally, that was not required for love. A relationship can work only if both the people intend to make it work. When Ish said that, i felt a little sad, it could mean that we might never be together again, Sister and i.

I told Ish i had plans. I do. I am still working on them. Mother should be asked to join. Family should perhaps be the glue to be applied to broken families.

I should go back to making notes on therapy sessions on the same day. It is becoming difficult to remember.

I remember Ish pointing out how 'She' had power over me. I hated it that it was always she who got to decide things. When to talk, how long to talk. She could leave anytime. Now that i am working for her, i am always getting scolded by her. And sometimes it hurts. I cry a lot. Then resolve not to talk to her every again. But do. Of course i talk to her.

There is something i said to her in the past one week that i felt really bad about. Not about saying it to her but because it was true. I told her that i didn't report to her about going to IIT because i was scared that she would convince me not to go. She told me you missed opportunities due to work and i said no to a talk in another place in Bombay. It is true that one cannot take time out of work to do their stuff. But i feel i can, because it is her.


During the week, the glass breaking on my foot. For a moment, that feeling of watching blood gush out. Like really gush out - it never gushes out like that when you try to slit your vein. Because we are cowards who get scared of the thin skin over there. The visible veins.

When blood was gushing out of me, and i was feeling faint, more than how much i feel faint when i try to slit my wrists, i wondered what would happen if i didn't do anything. If a vein had got cut and i was just to sit there, Vai Vow would be back only much later. Days later. Han would come late at night. Would it have made the job easy for me? It hurt me when i thought of that.

Like, that sadness that i had when i returned from the hospital in Calcutta after the attempt in 2015, this cloud casting a dark shadow on your eyelids saying you know how it is that you are going to end - it took me there for a split second. Then, bleeding subsided and i got to understand the cut and see that vein was fine.

I decided not to tell Vai Vow because he would worry. I shot a film with all that blood i got. But today (15th March, 2018) i blurted it out to Mummy. Yesterday i'd told inji. At least, there i have the excuse that i was actually in pain and couldn't work so had to tell her that. But with Mummy, i did that because i wanted to feel cared for. At the expense of her peace of mind. Felt so ashamed after cutting the call. Next time, try harder. Oh yeah, Mother told Vai Vow and he got worried and called me so i felt even more miserable.

Such things make me feel different from Inji and like a needy child. Every time i imagine what inji would do. She wouldn't have told anyone. Appachan didn't tell Amma when he fell and wounded himself. And that was such a lovely relationship. Inji does not take sick leaves and goes through pain. Then i feel disappointed with myself.

Wrote Sister another mail with this in the body.

'You are very important to me. This relationship is very important to me whether or not it's like that for you. So i will keep trying to get you back. It is only natural.'

I should stop worrying about my relationship with my partner. I start worrying every time i am around Han, like now. I don't like that feeling.

Inji told me that i worked like men. I expected other people to clean up after me. That was true, that was what happened when i missed shifts and didn't do stories on time. She compared me with men like Deep who gave me a hard time by not cleaning up after themselves. If that was what i was doing to her, i really had to stop it. Trying. Not succeeding much but trying.

I felt good about making fish curry and eating all of it and not gaining weight.

Two Women on a Boat | Shrink Tales

I felt relieved when Ish said that she had not abandoned my food problem as i had doubted in my previous session. It's so complex - this conflict that i face. I am too scared to address it but if my therapist as much as hints that she might not address it, i start panicking. The problem is very similar to the problem. Like how i know how violent fat shaming is but i will keep doing that to myself.

But what surprised me was that it would be linked to Sister. I had thought if they were related when Ish introduced Sister into the session. But she took me by surprise when she said that the whole thing had its origin in Sister. 'Oh!' i exclaimed. Ish said that it was lying bare over there, all the facts required to piece the puzzle together. I couldn't see it though. I still can't, to a large extent. That probably means i don't like the idea that it had its origin in Sister.

But it sounded true when Ish spelt it out for me, reminded me how i wanted to look like her, my first memory of fat shaming comments is from this nun who asked me if i was eating all the food Mother made and not giving Sister her share. Oh did i tell you that i get confused between Sister's and my handwriting? That's because i studied hers and copied it so that mine looks exactly like hers. I did not forsee the difficulty it would create later for myself to tell between the two. Feeling secretly happy that that was how it was.

From the previous session, what had shocked me like anything was me making an awful drawing when i was asked to make one on my relationship with Sister. (I'd drawn her slitting my wrist and had said that Sister was helping me die when Ish asked me what it was.) It's not the possible explanation that Ish gave that blew my mind. It was that action of me drawing it. I had not gone there knowing she would ask me to draw anything. And then i drew something and i was told that it possibly meant something that was relevant to me and then when i thought that i had drawn something that made Ish say that, that still kind of gives me a jolt. Well, i was in for more.

Oh i again forgot why i make the sister character die in all my films. Is it because i don't want to think of it? And why on earth do i keep forgetting this tiny piece!

Ish again asked me to draw what i felt about our relationship. And yet again, i produced a drawing that i did not even know existed in me. I really felt i was acting in a horror movie. There is no explanation to why i drew Sister and me on a boat and then the boat capsizing and me hanging on to the top of the side that's up in the air and Sister almost fully in water hanging dangerously at the sinking end of the boat.

When Ish talked looking at that picture, i was overwhelmed with a mix of joy and disbelief. This sublimated to tenderness in some time. She told me that it could indicate that i thought the broken relationship between her and me is affecting her more than it was affecting me. Truer words had not been spoken. From that point i started feeling like what i imagine mother hens feel. Or human mothers feel. Like spreading my wings so that Sister could feel safe under it. I remembered how i always felt she was so alone, how i didn't particularly like any of her friends, how she is all alone, so far away from me, with all that hatred denying her my love. As these emotions surged in my mind, a very definite answer emerged out of it. I should speak with her.

Of course, i am scared that she is going to hurt me again. But her end of the boat was sinking and i couldn't care less about my clothes getting wet if i tried to help her.

The drawing also could be displaying how i consider our relationship to be a strong balancing thing in my life and hers. (Back home, i couldn't but help resist the thought that it was again a weight thing - two people on a boat trying to keep it steady - the balance also comes from the weight of the bodies.)

I started preparing for the call and imagining possibilities while i was in therapy. I did not have any hope that we would be normal again. The relief and happiness was more from the fact that i had made up my mind to not let it be. I had seen her drowning so i will forever look for a buoy.

I called her much before i thought i would.

Said she picked up because she thought something happened to mummy and cut the call.
I felt good hearing her voice though.
I think i should use another line the next time. Who asks 'are you okay?' anyway!

Mother was really very happy when i told her that i had called Sister. She asked me what she said. I told her that she picked up because she thought something had happened to Mother. We laughed at this. It was funny, it sounded like she preferred 'something happening to Mother' than a call i made to her just to ask how she was.

During therapy, while i was imagining the possible responses that Sister would give me, i was already imagining her taking offence that i called her not because i felt it but because it came up during therapy. Ish then asked me why i would mention that at all. It was me trying to evade responsibility. Yes, that sounded true.

But i just want to know who is drawing these pictures!

Sister Shocker Picture | Shrink Tales

So in the previous session, when i read my 'reflections,' Ish observed that it was the first time i had not carried the session with me. I told her that i was trying to do what she had asked me to. Recording my feelings every time i checked weight. That was there, she said, but it was like i was refusing to think of the session during the week. That was true. Usually the week goes by with me thinking of all that was said in the previous session and consciously devoting time to it. This time, for the first time, i had not done that. That session was lost.

I sensed that it was a very difficult area - my eating and i was resisting it with all my might. Yet, when Ish asked me about my sister, before thinking of her, i thought if Ish was giving up on my eating problem. I have come to realize that there is a small part of me who is also seeking help, so that one was kind of waving at me saying 'don't abandon me!'

I comforted myself saying it could be that there were thin threads connecting my sister problem with my food problem or that Ish intended to come back to it later.

But i should say that the session that followed after i was asked to speak of my sister shocked the hell out of me. I had given up on our relationship. Repeated attempts at mending it had failed. There was absolutely no hope. Sister expected me to apologise for calling her abusive and a lot many names. I wasn't going to do that. In spite of all that, i didn't think that it was useless talking about her. She has been a big part of me. It can't be erased. It saddens me deeply that things have come to this, a break up, a thing that we had vowed to resist as children. Well, i was a child. She was a teenager. We have seven years between us - the reason why i think i am an unplanned pregnancy.

So i told Ish that i always felt that Mother loved me more than she loved Sister. I was angry with Mother for that. I wanted her to love Sister the same. I felt guilty for the things only i got to have because by the time my childhood started, the financial condition of the family had improved a bit. So Sister never got to attend painting classes or chess coaching or basketball training, violin lessons and join Guides (girl scouts - be prepared). I got to do all that and like a spoiled brat i gave up all of those things midway. I had the luxury to, when she never even had the opportunity. I still feel bad and guilty about it all.

Ish asked me how i felt about Sister now. I have always been scared of her. I am still scared of her. I told Ish that. She asked me to draw what i felt about Sister now. Some photographs from the past came to my mind. One in which we are on our haunches, looking at the camera, in that house where Father died. One in which i still had curly hair and was pinching the life out of Sister's face. I was a baby. But all that was long ago. I gave up trying to draw one of those photographs. Ish said that she would like it that i drew what i felt now, about Sister. Without thinking much, i drew a wrist that was being slit with a knife. I clarified that it Sister who was cutting my wrist to help me.

I have no idea why i drew that. It scares me shitless that that is what i drew. It was so violent. Where on earth did that come from! It wasn't that bad, Ish said. I had made clear that Sister was helping me die. It could be that, i thought that the way in which Sister was helping me wasn't very good. I don't know. No one is helping anyone now and i am still wondering why my picture turned out to be like that.

In fact, i now think that i need to take care of Sister and help her. I only wanted to be like her when i was little. Not just little. Till the time i questioned her some years ago. Now i want to help her and only want to be like inji now. Maybe that's why Sister doesn't like me or inji anymore. Sigh.

I remember recalling instances where she joined forces with mother to turn against me. The one time i opened the door for her and she slapped me out of worry. I had not been answering calls and it had led both Mother and her to believe that i was dead.

The time when Sister and Mother read my diary and found out about my not so nice relationships. That's putting it mildly. It was all abusive but my family didn't know how to deal with it. I have no anger or hard feelings against them for that. That's how bad we are, as a race in dealing with abuse and trauma. Even the best people have no clue how to handle it.

I remember that as the first time i ever found courage to hit Sister back. I had done that with Mother a lot, perhaps because the frequency was much higher, of her beating me. But with Sister i could never even imagine raising my hand on her. I never understood why she sided up with Mother in believing that i was a disgusting slut who smoked.

I have gradually come to believe that we might die - Sister and i - without talking again. I am getting used to it, like how i prepared myself for Appachan's death. I am not sad that she hates me. It's only natural given the amount of utterly disgusting opinions i shared with her about herself.

I observed that i always took care to kill the 'Sister;' in my films. From the time i was doing plays in high school to now, it has been like that. I forgot what Ish said the reason could be. 

I am, however eager to find out if i will get some insight into our relationship through therapy. As shocking as it was to draw that picture, i do hope that maybe i will be able to see things through another prism.