Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Photo by  Scott Webb  from  Pexels The entire familial unit was down recently for a visit, and I was braced for the usual volley of criticism. However, aside from the well-deserved declaration that my room smells of cat pee (I'm lucky to have an impaired sense of smell), and some unwarranted comments about how I laugh "like a hyena", all was smooth sailing. I mentioned that I needed a new cat carrier, because the one I'm using has a hole in it big enough to fit a skinny cat (read: Lydia). Predictably, my parents jumped at the opportunity, especially since the carrier had previously belonged to them. "It was fine when I gave it to you," my dad declared confidently. "What did you do?" "It was not fine," I snapped back. "The hole was there when I got it." "No, it wasn't--" he began, as I went to the offending carrier and turned it around to display the hole. And there, for all the world to see, was a crucial...

( Continued from here ) My maternal great-grandfather Augustus was a farmer, and he gradually grew to be quite rich (by the standards of that little out of the way village). He married my great-grandmother Mary when they were both 13, or thereabouts, and they had eight children, of whom six survived to adulthood. A boy and a girl died in infancy, infant mortality rates being somewhat of an issue back then. Of the surviving six, my granddad Joseph is the third, and he and the eldest daughter (Mary Jr.) are the only ones to have gotten married. Considering how many children they each went on to have, the fact that the other four girls joined the convent probably did the Indian population rates a favour.  A year after Mary Jr. was married, she came home to have her first baby. Baby Treasa was born a month after Mary Sr.'s last child, Clare. Mary Jr.'s younger sister Anna was so horrified by the spectacle of childbirth that she swore off the whole concept of marriage, and...

Photo by  RD Gray  on  Unsplash I came back to Kerala for a few days, and for once, it's been a trip I don't regret (so far). And honestly, I feel like at this point in India's political climate, this is the place I need to be in. A place where "meat puff" refers to beef. Seriously, chicken tastes disgusting in a "puff."  Perhaps it's the incessant rains. Rains have a way of lifting my spirits. Of making everything feel less bleak.  Perhaps it's the fact that, for once, travel did not prove to be an ordeal. I've been travelling constantly since Saturday, and it's all been pleasant, all the way.  Well, there was that incident where a drunk dude kept trying to press his erection against me in the bus, but I was well armed - with a blue sketch pen. When he realized that I planned to mark up his white dhoti in blue every time the dhoti ventured close to me - incidentally marking the exact spot where his penis would be, he ...

Written on June 21, 2008. Comments in maroon.  Such a good nostalgic song. Kind of how I'm feeling - all nostalgic and VERY DEPRESSED. Seriously, I thought I'd forgotten how to behave well with me family. I guess not. I'm surprising myself. But, whatever. I think the harm's already done. I can't describe just HOW MUCH I'm regretting my high handedness with my family. Seriously. And now they're not giving me a second chance. And I'm still in denial. Try as I might, I can't face the fact that I might have to stay here, and not go back at all. I keep trying to ignore the whole thing, like if I don't think about it, it might go away. I'm sure I do deserve this, er, punishment... But I'm still hoping. 'Cause every prisoner, every orphan, everybody however wicked or unfortunate, has the right to Hope. Faith is a matter of the slightly stronger, but not hope. That's for everyone. And if everyone cared, then...