10 Things That Made me Wonder This Week
I started writing a weekly newsletter
- I was reading Gold, a collection of poems by Rumi translated by Haleh Liza Gafori and was really struck by the common thread connecting Rumi, the 15th century poet Kabir, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and Meister Eckhart. They all shared the same profound insight into the nature of the Self. Kabir said:
I went out looking for evil,
I found none,
I finally looked within myself,
and found none as evil as I
Emily Dickinson too reflects on the paradox of looking outwards when everything lives inside: “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself."
Echoing the sentiments of Kabir and Rumi, Meister Eckhart said
Perceive your Self, and where you find yourself, remain there.
I love looking for common trails of thought across centuries and across thinkers. It’s a good reminder that we are all in search of answers to the same fundamental questions: who am I and why am I here?
2. Speaking of Kabir, I was excited to hear Kabir’s song “Ud Jayega Hans Akela” in season 3 of Kota Factory (which was fantastic). I first heard this song in Pt. Kumar Gandharva’s voice, in his signature style. Pt. Kumar Gandharva, in a big way, revived Kabir, by setting Kabir’s poetry to tune, and performing it on a Hindustani classical music stage. I’ve been spotting Kabir everywhere lately.
3. I watched all three seasons of Kota Factory at once. If the crushing weight of expectations of academic excellence in India were a show, this would be it. As I was watching it, I wanted a ‘Jeetu Bhaiya’ in my own life.
4. Speaking of mentors/teachers, I have one at work now, and she’s encouraged me to think about a single question: “What does trajectory-changing work look like for you?”. I don’t know.. working on myself, perhaps. How would you respond to this question? Here’s my attempt at seeking out mentors, alive and dead.
5. Maria Popova’s blog, The Marginalian, is a one-woman labor of love. I adore it. It has truly enriched my life, and has led me to discover the works of people like Pico Iyer and Henry David Thoreau.
I especially love this paragraph written by Maria (falsely attributed to James Baldwin on Instagram):
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
I could get onboard with this definition of love.
6. Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions is wonderful. This is my favorite question from the book: “Might I ask my book / if I’m the one who really wrote it?”.
Here’s another one: “Where can you find a bell / that rings inside your dreams?”.
Questions are powerful, aren’t they?
Krista Tippett, an asker of great questions, writes in her On Being blog (check out her podcast).
We live in a world in love with the form of words that is an opinion and the way with words that is an argument. Yet it is a deep truth in life — as in science — that each of us is shaped as much by the quality of the questions we are asking as by the answers we have it in us to give.
7. I’ve been singing Indian classical music since I was a kid. Yet, it was only last week that I learned that Raag Gujri Todi, or any raaga in the Todi family for that matter, has flatter Ga and Re notes than regular komal Re and Ga. I had no idea. Goes to show just how little we can hope to know an art form in a single lifetime. It’s both comforting and disheartening. Here’s my favorite rendition of this Raag: Ashwini Bhide ji’s Gujri Todi.
8. “Your holds are ready to be picked up”, is one notification that doesn’t fail to put me in a good mood. It’s my humble opinion that public libraries and national parks are truly the two treasures of the United States of America. Let’s protect them.
Last week, I picked up the following books from our local library:
- Poetry Unbound by Pádraig Ó. Tuama
- Sea & Fog by Etel Adnan
- Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, by Dervla Murphy
Roger Robinson’s Portable Paradise was my favorite poem from Poetry Unbound:
And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
I started thinking about my Portable Paradise. Music, perhaps! These poems too.
9. Although Tamil is my mother tongue, I am ashamed to say that I can’t read Tamil fluently. I struggle to understand literary Tamil since it differs quite a bit from spoken Tamil. However, my friend lent me a Tamil book that I’ve been ploughing through with difficulty. The rewards are worth the effort though. I just feel more connected to the emotion and the metaphors conveyed through Tamil even if they have perfectly good English translations.
For example: குல்கந்து வாசம் வீசியது can be translated as: “The smell of gulkand (rose petal jam) wafted through the air”. The translation quite cut it, while I could literally smell the gulkand when I read that sentence in Tamil, probably because it is such a ubiquitous fragrance in Tamilnadu. One can smell it at weddings, cars, and sari shops. I can’t quite explain it, but translations aren’t the same.
10. I liked writing this newsletter. :) I recently listened to Jennifer Jewell’s podcast, Cultivating Place, where she and her guest, Maria Popova, come to the poignant conclusion that tending to a garden is also simultaneously an act of being tended to. I agree. Writing works on us, as much as we work on it. Pico Iyer says:
I write — though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so — to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.
Thanks, dear reader, for letting me make a clearing in the wilderness of this week! ❤
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