Sugar Words

There is a proverb I read somewhere that said the best love is the one that cannot be held.

2020 pressed the pause button on our lives the way our lungs do in between an inhale and an exhale. Yet it swooshed as quickly as the air once held in your very lungs.

As an artist and as a human, this year for me translated into tremendous personal growth.  It started for me by making my Instagram account public. Though I thought it would not have been this hard but the fact that anyone from the entire world could see what I was creating made me shudder and smile at the time.

In a short period after that, I performed at Illusion mic on International Women’s Day. Though I have given several open-mic performances previously, this particular experience empowered me to not be afraid to bring forth the truths through my poetry that otherwise are shushed in society.

It’s true how the most disquieting thoughts are the ones which we are most afraid to transform into voice.

In April, I took the National Poetry Writing Month challenge (popularly known as NaPoWriMo). When I started, I never thought I would be able to come up with 30 write-ups. There were some days when words would come to me the way laughter comes to a baby being tickled. Whereas on somedays the most dreaded object was an empty paper, just sitting there on my desk so powerful, asking me to fight the urge to pick it up and crumble it.

But then it is only the story, the plot, the character that you think you are, needs to be replaced by who you actually are and you’ll be surprised by the plot twists that you’ll read in your life.

In June, the first Project of Mix-Match called Unfathomability was crafted. The love that I received on that was my highlight of 2020. After all, how can Poetry x Dance x Music go wrong? Friends/Family who shared and commented on every single post and put their faith in me is what made me believe that even if something goes wrong, I’ll still be okay.

Yet, no year passes by without walking in the valleys. The year 2020 particularly was a lot of valleys, but the fact that there are valleys signifies that the peak is just around the corner. The beauty of a wave that looks so magnificent as it comes with an army wearing the crown of salt is that when it surrenders itself to the shoreline, its resplendence is captured in every grain of sand that touches it. And then sometimes the most gracefully you can feel the hurt- is to surrender to it. To feel it all at once and be immersed in it and then rise again like a wave wearing the crown.

If you ask me what color is hurt? I would say it looks bright enough to squint your eyes and dull enough to squint your eyes. Because one needs to put effort to recognize the hurt hidden, be it in you or me. Sometimes it comes out as tears, anger, or long kept silence. But we need to make an effort to squint our eyes, to know that it exists. To know that it is okay to be hurt but it is not okay to give up the responsibility to heal yourself. And once you take it in your hands to mend, repair, and feel the burn of healing, there are only surprises for you on the kind of power your hold.

Paints have been my band-aids since forever, and so I started art-journaling this year because, what better combination than words, paints, and catching your raw self on a piece of paper? Art journaling feels like a spa for my mind and heart (I know not the best analogy, but who does not like some self-care?)

I kept performing in open mics (online, of course) and understood that no matter how much ever we all try, some experiences will never fit into virtual reality. Because human connections are so much more than just internet networks, and that makes me truly happy.

This year I stayed with many relatives and realized just like hurt, love comes in colors you cannot notice at one go. The way my grandmother remembers to peel the almonds every morning and waits for my lectures to get over so we can eat lunch together. Even if that means her, missing out on her daily soap episode. It comes in a random storm of messages from your friends because they want you to know they are still as annoying as they always have been. In form of long video calls that will screw up the sleep cycles of each one of you but in that moment, you know that this is what life of the party means. You and them laughing at each other and tasting happiness in between the roasts and lame jokes. After all, isn’t it that we all long for- to know that you can make someone forget about the ever-controversial thing called time? Sometimes your eyes will be color blind to some ways of love, but learning to love what you cannot see or hold is what makes us, us.

In October, I finally started posting articles on Linked-in and also managed to get my first guest post. My two poems got published in the Mirakee Anthology. Also, how can I forget #onesimplethingeveryday series (1,2 and 3), #onechangeaweek, and #recordyourlife? I started them to teach myself how to take life one bite a time, but whenever I received a message that it was helping you all, my heart melted and made me keep doing it.

And all this was possible because the world was turning upside down, and the power of kindness that you and I held was to wrap hope in ink/dance/music and send them to the ones who needed it the most, to make them look in the direction from where the light was rushing towards them.

After a year that was all about introspection, memes, and three pair of clothes for a decade, we still kept going. Because we all learned how to love when our hands are empty, or when we cannot hold the person and that all we can give is a smile, a text message, a book recommendation, a playlist, an errand, reassurance, and hope.

Congratulations on graduating from the year that taught us so many lessons in twelve months that otherwise would have taken many more.