Do me a favour, please play Holi with me?
Dearest,
Back when I was growing up in Patna, my mother was one of those aunties in our apartment complex that everyone was scared of. So it naturally meant that nobody kind of invited me during holi celebrations because our family really hated that festival (and for the right reasons). Holi in Patna was not more brown and black and silver than all the other bright and beautiful colours. I left home in 2015 and started living by myself in 2017. I prioritised living alone over having roommates or flatmates from the start. This still is the case with me, I have actually never lived with other people in a house. It has been a while. I do not go back to Patna often so a couple of weeks back when I went to Bangalore and was living with my friend and his entire family, it was both amusing and frustrating. I love those people and they are like my chosen family. But for the longest time, I have not lived in a situation like this.
Festivals have always been very difficult for me, in all of these years, I have spent most of it by myself and have tried to make it better for me. I have celebrated more festival with strangers than I have with my friends or family. It's a difficult thing to admit because I feel have a lot of you who read these things and see the pictures I share have a notion of a very fairy tale life that I live here. Which isn't really true. This was a comment on one of my photos on twitter.
This is not too far away from reality. I love the intro of Nikes by Frank Ocean and if you're walking, its a great song to listen to.
The other day, I was having a conversation with KJ who is a monk. We often discuss reels and he always reminds me to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series to which I always reply that I will watch it over the weekend. I still haven't. We also discuss a lot of pop culture and music, He enjoys the music I play at the cafe and suggests me some old but real good jazz and tunes. My relationship with him is of a friend and we address each other as "bro" which I absolutely adore. But now and then in mid conversation he drops these bombs on me out of nowhere and that really reminds me that this man has dedicated his life in studying contradictions and meditation and self reflection.
Just two days ago, he was trying to mock me about something playfully and I said "I'm just gonna exercise ignorance, because its a bliss" and to which he replied, "It's a paradox, because if you know you are ignorant, then you are not ignorant and then its not a bliss"
It threw me off so bad that now i have written a newsletter about it.
Encounters like these with him really help me stay grounded. Which is the main reason I like my life here. I think anyone who comes here and stares at the mountain for a bit, it really aligns their perspective in life.
But I have realised that no matter how much you prepare for things, life does throw you a curve ball here and then. Sometimes you are able to deal with it easily and sometimes it really takes you to the depths of hell. Somewhere festivals and my birthday month of March has been that for me. I went back to Google Photos to see what I was doing during some Diwali or holi days in the past few years, and well. There were photos of my lamp, a shadow of me, bread?!
There was a couple of photos of me celebrating Holi with my friends in Khajuraho in 2020 where we went for a wedding. Little did I know that my entire life would flip right after we all would return from the wedding.
It is a difficult time for me, in more ways than one. But I try to keep my chin up and deal with it my own ways. Sometimes I would go out of my house with anger and be like "i will take the best fucking photo today" or plug in my guitar and really play Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine or Cowboys from Hell by Pantera or sometimes I would just cry. In my opinion crying helps best. But to each their own.
Tomorrow is Holi here and I'm both worried and excited, I know I will find ways to celebrate tomorrow but somewhere the feeling of a family celebration will be aching inside of me.
I think when you come from a broken home, you somehow unknowingly dedicate your entire life towards building a home that wont break.
and on tough days like these, comments from people I don't really know on these photos I take really help me get through the tough times.
Wishing you a very happy and colourful Holi <3
love,
tijbed.
