This is not a book review: 1984 by George Orwell - Unexpected Catharsis of Sorts

When i started reading the book, i immediately recognized the dangerous similarities it had with the Indian government and its ideology of today. Little did i know that by the end of it, i would be in a situation where i would have regular nightmares of having said 2+2 = 5 for the first time in my life.

Rupa kindle edition cover

1984 is a masterpiece. I think i was still a teenager when i read Animal Farm. I remember liking it but did not think its author would be capable of writing something that would shake my being this thoroughly. For example, when i read my first Marquez, i knew i wanted to keep reading him. The same with Sylvia Plath and many others. But Orwell wasn't one of them. He now is. I will have to read Animal Farm again.

My cheap kindle version was by Rupa and had many typos. The first note i made was to the line 'habit that became instinct'. I wrote - ' (that's) how evolution works'. I thought of how Muslims of India might evolve to be more responsive to ordinary sounds in the neighbourhood, picking up any hints of an organized attack that will be later labelled a 'riot'. Delhi had just witnessed one such befor the Corona virus pandemic shut everyone inside their homes. The events in my personal life that followed that week, have, however made me scared of even having such thoughts. It was a week of accusations that broke my heart, what was left of my confidence and integrity.

The brilliance of the author can be seen from the time he names his fictional ideas. Most of these names later became words that even laypeople use. Big Brother, for instance has come to represent everything Big Brother. Orwellian became a word, thanks to this book. The ironical names of the ministries is at its best with the Ministry of love. This description is chilling. 

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all.

Look at the part where arrests are described. I immediately brought to my mind some arrests i had seen on TV. Salman's for not standing up during national anthem in a theatre in Trivandrum, Kerala and more recently, the arrest of Thwaha for possessing some Maoist related documents. Both by Kerala police. 

It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

During the pogrom on Muslims in Delhi following the anti CAA protests, India witnessed children with communal eyes unleashing violence on fellow human beings. 1984 describes children of the time in a similar manner. They usually reported their parents to the Thought Police if they even said something in their sleep. 

Nearly all children nowadays were horrible.

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. 

In the worst of times, what gives a human being strength is the following sentence in the book. 

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

Those precious cubic centimeters.  

In a lot of places, the fictional country reminded me of BJP - RSS rule in India. Some of the scenarios the author had thought for this detestable country are already true for RSS - India. See here for instance. 

It was not true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented airplanes.

What have they not claimed? From medicine to science and technology, they claim everything was invented in the vedic period by hindu saints and such. The fictional gods rode planes. So they invented it. Indians are all too familiar with these narratives now. And on top of all that there was the work that Winston had to do at office, changing dates, speeches, all documentation to tally with ever changing government narratives. He takes a moment once to reflect on something that is true for all fictional government narratives.

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.

Similarly, the observations about Newspeak, the propaganda language of the government are representative of what authoritarian governments want to do with our thoughts. Language creates identity therefore it can be used to restrict one's identity too. 

...Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?” 

the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? 

So by restricting the number of words, an authoritarian government can actually restrict the scope of our thoughts. By deciding on which words shall be valid, they can control our thoughts. This book was waaay ahead of its time and was brilliant. The words part made me think, that so conversely we have so many words because our thoughts widened and we felt the need for more. And then some more. A beautiful thing to happen, is it not? 

Something i hate when happens has been described just the way it has to be over here.

because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes.

And here comes a beautiful line. With meanings and associations so diverse that it's amazing how so little words can weigh so much. 

Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory? 

Am i? I always ask this of myself. Am i alone in the possession of certain memories that changed my life? The accomplice in memory creation often forgets that what we created, leaving the other guilty of a memory crime. It's sad but true in the case of most memories. 

And how does one confirm if the feeling we have that we have seen better, seen different, seen something else? Orwell explains so beautifully, i want to kiss his hands that wrote it. 

was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

Our ancestral memory will never leave us. If we have as much as a beard removed, we keep touching the absence of it in its memory. I am sure i will keep adjusting my glasses even if i switch to contact lens. However adamant the present is, in telling us that it has always been this way, our habits, our feelings will all give it away. We do not feel empty for nothing. We feel empty because of the memory of having been full once. If feelings disappear, biology will remind us, once in a while. Atavism exists for a reason. And i am sure the word wouldn't have existed in Newspeak. 

Here is an instance of how authoritarian rule favours certain stereotypes even about appearance. 

How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal—tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree—existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favored.

And here is the Catch 22 about rebellion in the context of the working class in Oceania. 

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. 

Want to see an amazing metaphor? Here. 

It was like a single equation with two unknowns.

Truly, how does one find out what x and y is if we only know that x + y = 8. But to think of it while writing fiction and to use it as a metaphor, that's the writer i want to be. Or marry. Sigh. This is not the only time he uses science and math to prove a point beautifully. Look at this one here. 

like a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.

I cannot begin to describe how lovely this comparison is. This is what i want to be. How utterly masochistic it would be, to be that fossil that destroys everything everyone believes in. I want to make an entire thriller film on this. People in quest of this fossil so that the theories that took years to prove can remain intact. It reminds me of her. She was always that fossil. Destroying theories with sometimes just as much as a sigh or a yawn and an innocent giggle afterwards.
  
Have you thought of how some songs will remind us of a past that we were not even part of? Not even heard of through stories? I think that's what songs are there for anyway. Like how a simple rhyme reminds Winston of an old London. 

Oranges and lemins, say the bells of St. Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's! It was curious, but when you said it to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other, disguised and forgotten.

And if you want to see the most beautiful use of the most famous three words in the history of humankind, It's in this book. Where the piece of paper reads,

I love you

And that's the beauty of it. You are too immersed in the environment and the ambience of fear that something that would otherwise have been your first guess at what was in the paper is the last thing you think of now. And when it comes, it comes as a blow. You feel the fire Winston is feeling in his stomach. 

And reminding us that love is the same everywhere, 

Then the memory of her face came back, and with it a raging, intolerable desire to be alone.

But at the last moment, while the crowd still hemmed them in, her hand felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze.

With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.

And Orwell confirmed what i had feared. In tumultuous times, love becomes political. I am not sure if i like love like that. I like it when it's stupid and silly.   

But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. 
    
He wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.

How are slogans the same everywhere? Doesn't this easily remind Indians of the RSS war cry: Desh ke gaddaron ko. Goli maaro saalon ko. 

“Death to the traitors!”

And the following passage is reminiscent of every speech a typical BJP leader like Ajay Bisht gives. 

His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beastlike roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren.

   
Orwell's descriptions are the best. It's so apt. Not a word more than required. Not a word less. See here. 

It was like struggling with some crushing physical task, something which one had the right to refuse and which one was nevertheless neurotically anxious to accomplish.

Some thoughts from the revolutionary book of which mere possession was a crime. 

an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical society. 

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

This is true about all forms of oppression like caste or gender.   

And when the government faces a crisis as to what to do with the produced goods, they engage in war. Constant. Like how we have constant military threats and operations whenever the government is questioned. 

Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. 

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. 

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor or the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society.

And science and technology will naturally become the enemies of such a state. The only exception will be when it can be used to wage bigger wars. 

The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.    

Words written about the Big Brother are so reminiscent of Narendra Modi or Donald Trump. 

His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization.  

And here is something that reminded me of the success of BJP over Congress, explaining it through another lens. 

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.
  
The signs of fascism as explained by crimestop 

Crimestop means the faculty of, stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.

Orwell goes on to say that it is therefore, 'protective stupidity'. By the time i reached this portion of the book, i had been accused of the same. 'You are pretending to be stupid,' she had said over and over again making me doubt myself, pushing me down a spiral of darkness where i was being told that everything i did was a pretense. And yet, even after using all the faculties of thought available to me, i couldn't see how i was doing anything i was being accused of, making me doubt myself even more. 

Everything started with one of my stupid Facebook posts. After i posted it, i got calls. Messages from the two of them. We had been working together on my feature film script for some time. He had said he would produce the film. She was the one who first thought it was something worth being made. She and i used to polish the script together. I was, before it all began, working on a draft. Was writing a little every day. I say a little because usually when i write after the urge, i write a lot. This time, i had to force myself and i was amazed at how little i was able to write when it had to be forced. I had just postponed a trip to Kerala for research for the film because of Corona outbreak. Ironically, the post was about the virus.   

They said my post was a replica of a script he was working on and i had knowledge of. I had read the treatment of something called the pilot episode. They said that with the material i had access to, it was impossible that i thought of what i wrote on my own, it was an exact copy of his script . I didn't think so. Not even a bit. I saw no relation. That infuriated them more. I started panicking. I couldn't see what was happening. I didn't understand why two people who used to be friends were telling me terrible things about me. I wanted it to stop. I asked him what it was that he wanted. I took down the post. I wrote up lines saying i was sorry, that it was his idea and copyrighted material that i wrote in my post. He said my note sounded coercive. I changed the lines to something that wouldn't sound coercive. All that content writing experience paid off. He asked to run my note by his lawyer. I did that and sent it in an e-mail. Like how he wanted. It said i was sorry it happened that i didn't know what i was thinking, putting up his script idea in a facebook post like that. 

After sending it, i got a minor panic attack. It was arguably the first time in my life that i wrote and sent something i did not believe a word of. It felt horrible. I wanted to take the pill prescribed to me for such times. It was the first time such a situation arose. I couldn't move and just kept crying. I didn't want to start another pill habit. Something told me this wasn't going to stop. More attacks would come. 

I wrote to her. I asked her if she thought what they said of me was true. I didn't know what to do. She and i weren't talking but it seemed to me like it was the end of my life. And i always wrote to her at the end of my life. I showed her the material i was accused of plagiarising in my facebook post and my post itself. She didn't tell me what she thought but said that i just had to tell them i didn't think it was plagiarism if i didn't think so. Wasn't that what i did and what infuriated them so much? They wanted me to say that it was an exact copy. How could i say that when i didn't think so. I wrote to Han, Calico and asked them all if i was wrong in this matter. If they too thought i had stolen someone's idea and wrote a silly facebook post.

He called me again, first asking me if i was not feeling well. I had violated some Non Disclosure Agreement by sharing it with a third party he said. Tell me who you shared it with, he kept asking. I told him about Han because i thought that was what he was talking about. Don't lie to me, tell me who else, he kept asking. I was scared. What was he doing? Why was he talking like that? I fumbled and said no one. He later called me a liar for saying that. 'It doesn't matter if you were scared. The fact is that you are a liar,' he yelled on a video call. 

Three therapy sessions costing a total of Rs. 5800 have passed and the impact this had on me is still there. I still dream of it. Think about it obsessively. How i should have refused to write a note i didn't believe in. All those things i should have said to point out how what was being done was wrong and terrible. Which is perhaps why the interrogation of Winston had a cathartic effect on me. he had to say 2+2=5 at the end of it. I had to say i had copied something i did not copy. 

No, there was no physical pain that was inflicted on me. And i agree with Winston. 

Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain.

I have experienced both. And in both, what i do is cower and agree to whatever is being said so that the terrible pain stops. Emotional pain is different, but it hurts just the same. I get overwhelmed just the same. I just want it to end. They told me that all i wanted was to emerge out of a problem unscathed, i just wanted to be the helpless victim - powerless. All i wanted was them to stop. 

“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”

asks O'Brien to Winston. 

Winston thought “By making him suffer,” he said. “Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

I have a long road ahead of me. I have to learn how not to cower in fear and anxiety and say the answer that is being asked of me. However scary it is, however painful the questions are, however big i think the interrogators are, i have to stay put. Most people know how to do it when it is people we hate or have ideological differences with. I do. But the challenge is to do the same with people we love and agree with on most grounds. That's the long road ahead of me. 1984 was just the terrifying beginning of it.

 

Hey you... | Shrink Tales

Hey you...

Why have you stabbed your own soul in the heart, spilling your own precious blood everywhere? Did it not hurt? Why did you do that to yourself? One day, i would really like to know.

Suicidal thoughts abound. I want to kill myself because i am angry at people who hurt me and i cannot do anything to them. I can do whatever i want to myself. My body is the shit sack that can be cut up anywhere and i don't need to answer to anyone about that. My death is the retribution i want to give those who hurt me. The only way i can win and feel powerful.

Completely broken. Feel shattered to pieces. Like i have to limp and pick myself up the floor to make myself  a whole person. I feel dirty. All over smeared with dirt.

I have been told by her in the past that i am abusive and manipulative. There are times when i have thought it to be true about me. This is not one of them. I do believe i have the ability to look at myself objectively and decide if i am doing something or not. In this situation, i am certain i did not manipulate anyone or abuse anyone.

This time, i am being told by a different set of people that i am some kind of maniac whose only goal in life is to escape from situations unscathed - as the good person, as the one who is powerless, helpless, scared. And that scared me because it was in connection with my relationship with these same people that i was sharing with my therapist the fear that i am being abused. Through talking, i realised i am not. I am just working in ways i absolutely don't like because by getting the work done, i will be closer to my bigger goal of making a film. I would naturally have a tendency to think i am being abused because that way i will be rid of responsibility. I agreed. I understood. Now they are saying the same thing about a situation that i absolutely know they have misunderstood. Misinterpreted. And they are saying that i want to feel helpless and scared here to appear to be the good person and escape unscathed out of this situation. It is my worst nightmare.

Now let me consider the possibility that i am denying something because i want to feel helpless. Emerge as the victim in this. It is not making any sense to me. I was accused of something. Now i am going to be in a position to accept responsibility only if i am guilty of something right? The only thing i am guilty of is causing them pain. The same thing they caused me by this whole paranoid act.

Shrink Tales: A Friday After Many

It has taken great effort to write again. Putting in a routine will help me greatly, evidence shows. So this is hoping that it will help me in some way. If it doesn't it is always good to keep writing.
Especially when it is a large part of what you do for a living.

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.

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.

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.