Journal Entry

Or: spitting facts / stating the truth in no chronological order / that happened

I hurt my right wrist during an intense strength training session. Our fitness trainer seemed to have lost her bearing on what is acceptable pressure to be applied on the human body. My hurt wrist reminds me of the persistent injury I had when an occupied wheelchair went over my right foot. Ate 7 tablets of Cetirizine in 3 days. On some days also ate Crocin. The weather is quite lovely. Rubbed a generous amount of berry vanilla cream onto my hands and they glistened in the sunlight. Dida passed away on Wednesday. We huddled around the phone with each other, retold stories of how she was always present while we played after school. Dida was always there. Wore a white rose in my hair; stepped out to buy handmade kurtas in the middle of a work day with a work friend. Or: attempts at decolonizing my wardrobe. I wonder if you don’t take care of your body, does it mean you are unhappy with yourself? Read Palestinian poetry in a park with old friends and new. The meaning of old words became clear. Philistine doesn’t mean uncouth. Jihad doesn’t mean terrorism. White interpretation of our cultures make us misunderstand our legacy, our every day living. Learning about the world from mainstream media means you’re going to hate your neighbour. My favourite co-working place is shutting down. Or: notes on grief. Bought a shower water filter at an obscenely expensive price. It is not compatible with my home fittings. The phrase ‘money down the drain’ might have probably been invented for this scenario. Saw four young boys in my society digging a grave for a dead pigeon. One of them asked an adult nearby who will pray the janaze-ki-namaz for the pigeon. Or: hayat means life. A White writer said that writing is real only when it tells the truth. Non-white writers have been telling the truth for years, and yet who is listening? I forget the things I want to write about the world. I am scared that I am forgetting the world; that the world is forgetting me. I feel like I live inside a box, a cage. I feel like if I extended my arms, I will not have any space. I feel like I the imagination of what my own life could look like runs dry. Is this what a marriage feels like in the long term? According to my journal, one day I saw a man giving a homeless man water; the homeless man was shivering while watching the water pour into his container. Then he drank it with a yearning that resembled the birth of a new life. I felt a wave of sadness for those who don’t have drinking water, for those who don’t have enough. Native American elders say that ceremonies are a way of remembering to remember. The majority of people don’t ‘celebrate’ festivals in India anymore; they use them as a day to ‘other’ people. Or: when will we remember who we used to be? We walked up two flights of faux-wooden stairs to see the receding water, the tips of mangroves, and the pink flamingoes while one of us told us the truth about their life. To tell the truth about your life is freeing. There was a day all desi writers decided to stop italicising Hindi words in their prose. That was also freeing. I found the book Exquisite Cadavers as I was packing my books to send away to a storage facility. I made a mental note to work on a project like Exquisite Cadavers; should probably write it down. I’m still learning how to listen to my body. There is a decorative glass bottle with fairy lights in my window. In my to-do list, I have made a note to buy the batteries for the lights. The name of my to-do list is in the Urdu script which reads ‘kaam se kaam’ ( کام سے کام ) After years of searching, I have finally found the perfect Urdu course for myself. I have written a lot of the words in the diary that I received as a gift. My ultimate goal is to read Urdu quickly off the backs of autos speeding beside me in Mumbai traffic. Maybe after that, I can find that Instagram account and read poetry on Pakistani trucks. Bought a box of strawberries on a grocery run. I cook them with my morning oats. I love seasonal fruits. Can someone please bring back seasonal fruits? I refer to the quiet in my mind & my spaces as sukoon and not mindfulness. Or: attempts at decolonising my mental health.

20 Jan
Navi Mumbai
amarllyis