Katie Makkai - Pretty

dreaming of you, a letter at a time

Dear You,

Millions of terrible things happen around the world everyday. Sometimes headlines make me wish I could extinguish every tomorrow in store. But I can't and more importantly, that would be running away from problems.

So don't feel stupid if you have faith in people. I cannot prevent the heartbreak that you will experience when your trust is broken, when you are let down, when you are left behind. This will happen often to you with many people, and it might also happen often with one person. But don't feel stupid about putting your faith in people.

Of course, protect your heart. From abuse, exploitation, and sometimes your own low self-esteem. But don't put it in a cage. Don't shield yourself from love. Don't shield yourself from disappointment. They are both wonderful teachers. One day, after the hurt has passed, you might even be able to smile about the sunny days.

You might struggle with this conflict - whether maturity means to stop seeing the world through a kaleidoscope. But please know that the nice thing about maturity is that you can decide what it means. For me, it currently means being able to do my laundry on time. (I'm awful at it.) People around me, younger than me, are doing their laundry effortlessly. I cannot explain to you how easy it is to begin feeling, "Everybody around me has their laundry shit sorted so well. I'm such a fool. I'll never be able to do my laundry as well as they can." I might be biased, but this line of thought only pulls you down, down, down. I cannot explain my faith to you, but it will be alright. Trust me.

Never worry about where you will end up. There is no end, as long as you are alive. There is no race - it looks very much like it, I know. You might go to school, then college, then you might decide something for yourself. And it might seem that everybody around you is huffing and puffing, their breathing choppy, their eyes big and worried. I know I musn't assume things, but I'm quite sure that even when you come into the world, talk of this great race will not have ceased.

As life has taught me, this race is a very sticky illusion. It is one of the many things that many people take very seriously. The choice is yours, of course (but I cannot help declaring that the race seems straight out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland. What was that? Italicisation. All names of texts must be slanted like that when you type them out. That's a whole other discussion. Oh, I do wish I could talk with you sometimes.)

Just like it's a mistake to believe that simply because everybody is running, so should you, it's a mistake to believe that the people in the race are bad people. That's the tough thing about maturity. Disagree with people, it's exciting and often healthy. But try, if you can, to not quickly dismiss something you don't agree with.

The other thing I wanted to talk with you about is my imperfection. I am responsible for you, but I might slip up sometimes. I might do things, say things that will hurt you very deeply. I might make mistakes. You aren't here but I already worry about that sometimes. That I might make mistakes with you. We'll both be learning about each other, you and me. I will have to earn your respect just as you will have to earn mine.

I don't know anything about how to do it right. I will simply trust my reasoning and instinct, and the reasoning and instincts of the people I love. People believe that mothers are supposed to be right, always. Actually, it's another one of those make-believe things that people take very seriously. Tell me when you feel I'm doing something wrong. Don't be afraid. Do it in a way that is comfortable for you, but always know that no matter what, no matter what, my heart burns with love for you. 

I am not trying to excuse myself from the wrongs I will do to you. But you need to know that there is no such thing as an experienced parent, simply because every child is different. We'll both make mistakes. Hopefully, we'll always be able to talk about it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm waiting for you each day. I don't know where you are, but I see your face in every child that I tell a story to. I hope I don't dream of you too much, I don't want to burden you with unconscious expectations when you come true.

Okay enough. I can't wait to raid the fridge at night and have Parle G biscuits dipped in Bournvita with you and her. Come soon.

Love,

मम्मा 

note to self 1.0

- research more stories for children which suits their context better. Do not tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Ever. Again.

- find stories you believe in.

- explore more stories written by authors you like. Because that's how you bumped into Mahasweta Devi's Ek-kori's Dream and this

- don't rely on spontaneity every time.

- children usually don't play games when it comes to affection or admiration. If they like you, they will happily let you know. So do your job and stop asking them to keep quiet.

 - throw Enid Blyton in the dust bin along with moral stories. Work hard on finding/developing alternatives.

- stop reading stories with an imagined child-reader in mind. Do you like it? Would you want to share it?That is what matters. Let them decide for themselves. Even if they are six years old.

- engage with their sarcasm, if you receive it. Don't shut them out, don't make it an ego issue.

- if they want to play antakshari, go ahead and join them. Since when did storytelling become Compulsory Attendance?

- don't be afraid to say, "I don't know." To the kids, to yourself.

- don't be afraid of a noisy class. A silent class isn't always an indication of interest.

- ask lots of questions to them, but be careful when they ask you for answers.

- strictly avoid being self-righteous when discussing women's rights. Strictly avoid being patronising when they say something preposterous (eg. female infanticide doesn't exist any more). The difference between being patronising and being surprised is not a thin one.

- never forget what you were like when you were a kid. (ref: previous point)

- learn to let go of nostalgia when it becomes suffocating.

- put your heart on your sleeve, but don't shield the kids if you are disappointed by them.

- don't shield the kids, period.

- if you haven't prepared properly, let them know. Face their disappointment, don't hurry them off to an activity.

- be kind.

happiness is a warm gun (the beatles seem to have a song for almost everything, sometimes)

source

thoughts on waiting

My mother hasn’t travelled much around the city. She’s lived with people who have, she’s often waited for them to come back home. She was born and raised in Dehradun, which used to be a sleepy little town in the north, known for its schools and ‘British’ weather.

When she came to Bombay, it was her first time in a big city after a brief stay in Lucknow with her husband’s parents. She has never been the kind of person who gets excited or disheartened quickly, but she remembers her initial shock at the scale of the city. “Everything was so big.” 

In some ways I can relate to this. Having grown up in IIT, where everything is either quiet or a 10 minute walk, going to Sophia was like stepping out of a town into the rushes of a city, with all its constant hammer and din, and big, wide roads which actually looked scrawny and challenged, and people milling in and out of impossibly tight places. (I realized later that not all of Bombay is like this. But bear with my stereotype for now.)

She didn’t encounter Bombay first-hand much. She went out perhaps once in a month or two, always accompanied, and listened to the city that my aunt (then a class 12 student) experienced with her friends. Sometimes she couldn’t shake off her fears when my aunt would go off for a late night film with her friends, and come back home alone at 10 pm. Her husband would tell her it was normal, and although she felt patronised, she didn’t swallow her ‘small town’ fears until her kid sister came back safely every night.

Her arguments with her daughter over coming back late at home were usually about not being informed. That didn’t mean I could come home whenever I wanted: the rule was very clear—be back before it gets dark. In comparison to some of my friends, I felt like she was from the Dark Ages. But I flouted the rule quite a lot, and when I did, it was the fact that I didn’t inform her in advance - and not really my unpuncutuality - that took her anger over the edge. 

In retrospect, I knew that informing her in advance meant saving her the humiliation of waiting in vain for someone who was already lunching outside, while lunch at home was wearily put away in the fridge. Informing her in advance would have meant that discussions on the extension of my deadline would progress somewhere, instead of resulting in passive-aggressive displays and loud, hurtful words scarring confidences of the past.

What does it mean to be the person who is left behind? What does it mean to wait for someone’s arrival? Does their arrival make your life complete? Not really. But to not be aware of the delicately excruciating wait for someone, the denial of fears for as long as possible, to not consider this when you have stepped out of the house and you know it’s getting late, that is to tread on someone’s heart. Some of us wait for our daughters, sons, to come back home. Some of us wait for our old, successful selves to return and turn around our mundane lives. Some of us wait for a lover to leave, gradually yet inevitably. Some of us wait for a sign, an indication that things have changed. 

Ads for missing people always catch my attention. The awkward bits and pieces of Marathi that I know arrange themselves swiftly when I read a missing person’s ad. Often they are small black and white posters plastered on stations, clambering for attention in an inattentive, transitory space. Behind every description of someone’s face, eyes, clothes and build is the desperation to distinguish this individual from the maddening crowd. I stand precariously close to the edge of making poetry out of someone’s anguish, but these posters make for some of the most moving literature I have encountered.

Perhaps that is why the truth behind the posters about Gauri Bhonsle’s disappearance hurt me a little. The advertisers of the show could have hardly suspected that they would be discomfiting someone but when I learnt that Gauri Bhonsle was a fictional character of a TV series, I imagined the thousands of families who have had their loved ones disappear feeling short-changed in some way. I felt short-changed, and I have never suffered the agony of a missing friend or relative. 

Every missing person poster I read reminds me that waiting is hardly passive. You might not sit around hearing the seconds needle tick by. After all, life catches up with you with its ringing mobile phone and cycles of laundry. But you still wait. You still wonder what is happening with someone who ran away, someone who was taken for interrogation by the police, someone who went for a birthday party and hasn’t come back since. Perhaps life is a good distraction against that kind of worry and pain and sometimes, plain curiosity.

I wonder who thought of the term, missing person ad. Does the missing person become a commodity when removed from the masses, and attached very specific attributes? Does the cash reward make it different from an announcement?

A character on a TV show I was working on was in her final month of pregnancy. When her mother asked her if she felt scared, she said, “I just want to get it over with.” It was an insight into her pregnancy for me. It’s a long wait, nine months, and although it is hardly a passive one, do mothers ever get impatient? Do they feel tired of waiting for something which is making them lose control of their bodies every day; do they feel the wait keenly?

My mother said something similar to my TV character. “You know it’s going to take nine months, so you are prepared to wait it out. But it starts getting to you during the last few days. The baby has grown, there’s water in your stomach so you always feel like peeing; it’s difficult to walk, sit down, lie down or stand. You feel old and heavy and watery. You just want it to get out.” I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as an ‘it’ before and laughed so much. 

She remembers those days as difficult and labourious, (pun intended, if you like) but also as a wait which didn’t have a very significant end to it. She waited for her child to be born, then for her milestones, then for her to go to school, and then she waited for her to come back from school. 

As I write this I’m beginning to understand that the pressure that society places on a woman being a ‘good’ mother is tremendous also because of this waiting, this gradual swell of time which only stretches into events with higher stakes—sexual maturity, sense of responsibility and awareness, graduation, marriage—our parents wait for all of these things as time passes by, and it is not a comfortable anticipation.

The lack of news is an acutely uncomfortable wait. Being on death row must be a very peculiar kind of waiting. I’m not in favour of capital punishment, but if it has to be done, it seems extremely odd to make someone wait for their own execution. If you have decided they deserve to die, then what are you waiting for?

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Money worth spending? Sunday, let's hope so! God bless you, Radiohead.

klpd

One thing I frequently experience is a frustration with words, terms and phrases when discussing sex with friends. I often feel lost. I can see she and I both feel it, but we just can't seem to put it to words.

Of course, it goes without saying that if I read a lot more than I am right now, I'd definitely have more words to my disposal. But what I've increasingly come to realise is that a lot of experiences are already predefined; their sentences, adjectives, words claimed by androcentric passengers in the travel of language.

Say, for instance, having sex with someone. Why is it not sex when I have had the time of my life, but it hasn't been penetrative? Does it really matter? Must he nail me? How on earth will my girlfriends and I make do with that pale milk phrase, 'making out'?

I have always intensely disliked that phrase. It captures nothing; it could mean children play-acting, a young girl striking out on her own in a new city, pressing out spaghetti strings from the machine. Why could 'making out' not be any of these instead?

And then, bases. How powerfully they staircase a dip into the ocean. Why must his shirt be unbuttoned, her bra unhooked? What of all those beautiful places in between; the smouldering, the pauses, the suddenness, the crackling cigarette or was it the friction of your corduroys?

I wish I knew hindi better, I'm certain that we have much more fulfilling ways to talk about our experiences, sensations, feelings without having to rely on cheap American imports.