Wednesday, September 11, 2019 // The Statement
6B
From Page 5B
Stopped railways, canceled flights, pollutants
lurking in deep street water and innumerable
car crashes dotted the city. Before I was to travel
farther, Vishi called to warn me of the floods and
wish me safety. My dance turned to a tiptoe.
I’m still learning how to understand my
experience in a world bent into paradoxes. Am
I allowed to love it? Am I allowed to mourn it?
Cities made unlivable by the forces of the century
are stacked, too, with breathtaking landscapes
and a heritage so rich, ancient and particular that
all other parts of the world pale in comparison.
Must beauty and pain walk hand-in-hand?
At the end of July, I went to a posh concert
hall tucked in the city’s southside with Garui
and Nivedita. On the way there, we piled onto
each other on the rickshaw—some rules I was
beginning to understand. Ditty, a spoken-word
poet and musician extraordinaire, sang gorgeous
melodies with captivating lyrics about the slow
dying of the planet. We drank sweet, red wine
and listened to her Eulogy of a Sparrow. My heart
felt full, and laden with the ache of awareness.
If I report to you the world beautiful, will you
think me naive? If, instead, I paint the world
with its ails, will you blame me for not looking
hard enough?
I don’t know how we will greet our existential
crisis as it knocks on the door. I don’t know
whose door it will come to first, or if it has been
knocking and we have been telling it we aren’t
home. I only know the knocks will get louder as
well as more persistent with time,
and we’ll need to hold one another
close when they come to stay.
On my last Saturday in Delhi,
Tanya squeezed my hand while
I added three piercings to my
already-decorated
ears.
I
am
always afraid of how it will hurt. I
imagine it unbearable, asking the
piercer repeatedly to tell me the
length of time I will experience
pain. (He always exaggerates.) And
I emerge smiling, ears anew, friends
close. I know that being loved and
heard in Carnage Century does not
make pain obsolete, but does make
it bearable.
The decade has made each of us
witness to emerging recklessness
and greed, as well as unquantifiable
technological
advances
for
connectivity and meaning. Neither
the ills nor joys of the era can be
totaled (though those of us in
empirics keep trying). Many days,
the aches grip us, sometimes
prompting awareness and action,
and
sometimes
only
apathy.
Still other days remind us how
much goodness persists without
our asking it to. Luckily for us,
alongside destruction and grief
have emerged sisterhoods, thick
enough to withstand the melting
century.
If instead
I paint the
world with its
ails, will you
blame me for
not looking
hard enough?
PHOTO S BY DANYEL THARAKAN,
TAKEN IN COLOMBIA & KERALA, INDIA