UjaLa la land

            I was making my mental list of 'the pros and cons of writing to you' when this quote popped up on my wallpaper's widget. "Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength"                                                                            ~Sigmund Freud  This had almost started weighing the pros on the heavier side, despite the list consisting of just one bullet; writing to you would relieve me of all thoughts of writing to you.  It has been three years since I last saw you. Overly dressed on an early winter evening, catching up with me on our way to the restaurant, sweating from the same heat you had brought for me. I wish I knew then that it was the first and the last time our arms brushed against each other in the chilled walk ...

Portrait of Pablo Neruda (Credit: Thumbnail by TedEd)  A slightly remix version by Meera who hopes that she would be forgiven for this light streak of leisure indulgence by Neruda fans. This is her pursuit of making the poem talk to her along with escaping the theme of death and life which provokes her too harshly. I like for you to be still. It is as though you are absent And you hear me from far away And my voice does not touch you It seems as though your eyes had flown away  I have loved the music of your lips. The beat of your steps, the melodies of your heart, the air of your presence, the rustle of your papers, the ping of your texts. Your charismatically splashing aura still arbitrarily synchronizes with the wind, every now and then. I loved it so much as to be overwhelmed with greed.  I loved all of it so much as to be maddened by withdrawal. You exist but still. And how I now like you to be still too. Still, cold, distant, and yet a butterfly of dream And you are...

I do not endorse the 16th century Mira Bai but she is an interesting character I keep trying to understand from various dimensions, a responsibility that comes with borrowing her name. This article dissects her life from a clinical and psychological perspective, something that has never been done before! However, I am not the first one to use the word 'maniac' for Mira Bai, she had been called 'anoothi', 'banwari' and many other synonyms of maniac in her time too. Mira herself, in her poetries, accepts that she is mad in love of her lord. Today, she has acquired respect and status of almost a goddess for many and that makes her madness an ornament to her character. Does that make Mira like behavior acceptable in today's society? How would modern psychoanalysts diagnose someone's obsession for a fictional/mythical character which starts affecting their personal and social lives like it did for Mira Bai? The central theme of Mira's life is single minde...

Ujala (four months before Meera was born)  I must first address a practical question, "What's in a name?". Something Shakespeare's Juliet asks too, while declaring her love for the person wearing 'Montague' name and not her love for the name itself. She says that a name is just a name, a convention with no meaning behind it. Today names are used as homage, tribute; tools to weaponize history, rewrite stories, reinvent glory, respect heritage and give meaning to an otherwise culturally-neutral act. They are now symbols of resistance, an act of decolonization, claim of identity and emotional investments in things which are close to our hearts. Had Juliet, the naïve teenager, been alive and not killed herself tragically for Romeo, she would have certainly said, "Why so serious?!" to all this! Well, I agree, there is nothing in a name except the idea it reminds us of. Despite the aura and shadow of figures based on whom people would baptize themselves or...

Meera  Meera of the 21st century was not born out of a womb but out of will. She was born out of a similar fire from which emerged King Drupad's daughter, the dark complexioned, slender waisted, black eyed, Draupadi in the famous epic of Mahabharata. She too was a grown up (21 year old) when she was born but unlike Draupadi, Meera did not have long hairs. She had trimmed and round baby head when she was born. The rest of her features, body weight and even height matched Ujala's.   Although Ujala did not make love to conceive her, there was impregnation, labor pain and the final delivery. The outcome of this long termed agony was to be the oblation in the altar of the sacrificial fire from which Meera emerged.   Ujala apparently loves glorifications and exaggerations and yet she would never be dramatic to the extent of romanticizing a GenZ's existential crisis as Meera. The memories of excruciating labor pain and days filled with "Push! Push! Push!", "a little...