It intrigues me before I know anything about it. The skeleton flower. With a name like that, how could it not? A contradiction in terms. Flowers fill the air with the fleshy scent and abundant promise of coming fruit. Skeletons conjure up death, desiccation, dry bones. What dark enchantment might be born of yoking the two together? I think of Persephone and Hades. Another uncomfortable pairing, with its own haunting allure. Perhaps her bridal bouquet was a posy of skeleton flowers.
Before I was diagnosed with cancer, Spring sang in my body like a river of flowers. Then the river turned treacherous. After the diagnosis, I began to drown. Each chemo treatment dragged me into the underworld. Reliable, and implacable as the turn of seasons. Light had never seemed cruel before. Now its absence felled me with a violence both casual and indifferent. In the depths of winter who can console Demeter or her daughter? Salvation, I would learn, cannot be hastened. Some things only come clear after the Earth has spun around its axis an undisclosed number of times. Meanwhile the seesaw barter never ceases. This endless trade of light for dark, and dark for light, as old and inescapable as orbit.
*
Long-held beliefs betrayed me. The benevolence of the universe, the wisdom of the body—I laughed without mirth as cliches I’d clutched, imploded. It wasn’t that I no longer believed in a higher power. It’s that I no longer trusted its intentions, designs, or character. Every aspect of life, even its beauty seemed, grotesque. Not even the incandescent courage, strength, and goodness of rare people like my husband could change this fact. If you’d asked for the sum of my feelings about existence in one word, I would have said without hesitation: Disgust. No matter the nobility of the odd player, it seemed to me the game was rigged and sooner or later, merciless.
*
Skeleton flowers are arranged in loose clusters on branching stems. Five-petalled, pure white, they are punctuated by delicate bright yellow stamens and offset by intricately veined leaves, generously sized, and greener than green. They are native to only three locations in the world, the wooded, wet, mountainous regions of China, Japan, and (this last befuddles many)—Appalachia. But why the ghoulish name? Rain falling on the skeleton flower renders its petals transparent. Petals hitherto white as milk, turn clear as glass. Silken blossoms glow suddenly, stunningly crystalline, glamorous ghosts of their former selves. Morbid perhaps, but magically so. What would it mean if we too were to turn see-through in a thunderstorm? What if the opaque vault of our skin—that for so long has permitted us an inner and outer—were to shimmer clear when soaked, spilling our secrets, leaving nothing to the dark? What if all it took to reveal self to self, or to another, was to be caught in a rain shower? Would you welcome the opportunity to be disclosed in a downpour, or would it distress you to be so diaphanous?
*
Cancer empties the question of rhetoric. Turns you into a skeleton flower. Your insides, no longer just your business, are routinely on display. Your privacy invaded, your boundaries dissolved. Your rainstorms: the rattling of the MRI machine, the white whirl of the PET scan. Your new and extreme vulnerability strips you down in more ways than one. Anyone who has ever worn a hospital gown knows, this garment was not designed with a priority for the demure. In the early days of my diagnosis, I was too sick to be aghast at the indignities. I had no objection to my body being discussed and treated like an object. Because that’s what it felt like. That’s what I felt like.
*
In a well body, it is possible to be diplomatic, guarded, and delicate. These qualities turn elusive in a sick one. Acute illness is inconvenient and prone to leaking stories, spilling beans, and letting slip cats from bags. The handful of things you could once control—your appearance, the state of your home, your diet, and calendar—have spun out of your hands. When you are a wreck, keeping up appearances is no longer an option. Neither is having preferences. Preferences are a privilege the ill can ill afford. It takes energy to generate and maintain them, not to mention a strong sense of self.
That which is implicit (like our true nature) is also ambiguous. Ambiguity by definition includes plural possibility. Plural possibilities afford room for discretion. Is that a lucky eyelash in your closed fist, or a fruit fly? Is that a soul or a gaping void inside you? “Maybe, maybe not,” you might nonchalantly reply, acquiring in the same moment, an air of mystique. Generally speaking, there is more romance in suggestion than in surety. Once you are explicit, you can no longer be an enigma. Many of us think we would like to be limpid like a pool. But only because we forget that transparency feels like nakedness. And most of us are timid creatures, given to shame. We don’t realize we wish to be sheer like a stocking– not see-through like a window. It’s translucence we treasure. But with cancer you do not get to choose your degree of opacity.
I had never been so weak or felt so erasable. I had never been so exposed. Within the chaos of this condition, consternation was an aura I grew accustomed to. And yet. Miserable as I was, at some level, it didn’t matter. At that point, almost nothing did. This is the backhanded freedom of hitting rock bottom. The gain in the loss. The liberty of nothing left to lose. Was I a good person? Had I led a good life? I had no idea. Belief of any kind had been bludgeoned out of me. What remained was an appalling emptiness. The math was all wrong. The hypotheses, flawed. All efforts ultimately, in vain. Everything, either suffering or soon to be. Sometimes it all comes out in the wash. Sometimes it all just washes away, on a planet that, unconcerned, continues to pirouette around itself, and its star.
*
[Insert the sum total of my experience over the past 700 days. Its dashing and desolate Springs, its scorched and splendid summers, its fall full of resurrections and downfalls, its winter of terror, its winter of wonder. Some day I will write it all out. Right now my heart is too raw, my tongue too tender.]
*
[Insert the newborn, never-ending Now.]
*
The cellular structure of the skeleton flower leaves room for air, much as the cellular structure of a poem leaves room for interpretation. When the sky is clear and their petals dry, these tiny pockets of air play consummate ping pong with all the visible wavelengths of light, reflecting them back to our waiting eyes in roughly equal proportion. We do not see this skillful scattering. All we see— is white. Until the rains. Water has a funny way of finding pockets and filling them. The Skeleton Flower’s airy cells, when waterlogged, will no longer prolifically paddle photons back towards the beyond from whence they came. No, they now grow gracious and hospitable, waving light in, like an esteemed guest. Letting themselves be x-rayed, illuminated, beautified by barely-thereness. Skeleton flowers, pretty in the sun, dazzle in the rain. But let’s be real. The stakes for this flower are low. Unlike the Venus-Fly-Trap, skeleton flowers have no skeletons in their closets. They have nothing but their innocence to hide.
*
When it comes down to it, are we really so different, you and I? We who walk this world full of rage and regret, oblivious of our riches, insensible to our beautiful bones. Hung up on trifles. We who are, when it comes down to it, no less than a prolific emptiness in an envelope of skin, more mist than matter. Utterly unaware of the light we scatter.
Cancer can precipitate a certain kind of pellucidity. Clarity does not dabble in compunction. Only cloudiness can be conflicted. Winter is always just around the corner.
I began training in Bharatanatyam in my early forties. I’d adored the form since childhood, but felt too clumsy, and then too old to start. Until one day, yearning outstripped self-doubt and the universe placed Archana Raja in my path. Archana draws forth beauty and truth from seasoned practitioners and raw beginners alike. To be her student is to feel both nurtured and challenged. Her classes reveal the exhilarating crucible that dance can be—surrender to the discipline, and it will forge mind, body, and spirit in powerful ways. I am not a good dancer, but I know with certainty that every hour of training with Archana made me a more alive and conscious one. I loved it beyond words. An unexpected cancer diagnosis forced me to stop (temporarily). Now, after a year of treatment, I am slowly finding my way back to dance and hope to resume training this fall.
Through it all, I have remained entranced by Archana’s passion, prowess, and creative integrity. She is a true artist—one who enlarges the world, by following the summons of her muse—even when that means leaving behind hard-won accomplishments and daring to start anew. For close to three decades, Archana lived and breathed Bharatanatyam. She has trained and collaborated with some of the most renowned names in the field, garnering a large following. Five years ago, under the tutelage of Kasi Aysola, she began training in Kuchipudi, a lesser-known Indian classical dance form from Andhra Pradesh. Kuchipudi grew into an irresistible calling. She has now dedicated her path exclusively, to learning, performing, and teaching this form. If she was electric as a Bharatanatyam dancer, as a Kuchipudi artist, Archana is incandescent.
In The Accidental Goddess, Archana turns her gaze to the origin story of the popular South Indian folk deity, Yellamma. The legend, tracing back to the Mahabharata, introduces Princess Renuka and her marriage to the revered sage Jamadagni. It is said that her chastity, and the purity of her devotion to him endowed her with the miraculous ability to carry water in unfired pots, fashioned from mere sand, and balanced on her head atop a coiled black cobra. One fateful morning whilst fetching water at the river, she chances upon a Gandharva couple engaged in love play. For the first time, a wistful desire tugs at Renuka’s thoughts. And in that very instant her powers are irrevocably shattered. Now, no matter how hard she tries, the sand falls apart, the pot will not hold. The dark serpent uncoils silently and slithers away. Enraged by this ‘loss of chastity,’ her husband calls for her beheading at the hands of their son. Renuka’s desperate pleading is of no avail. Taking his father’s behest as law, Parashurama (an avatar of Vishnu) decapitates his mother. In the story, the pleased father grants him a boon, and Parashurama promptly demands that his mother’s life be restored. In what is perhaps one of the earliest body swap stories known to humanity, Renuka’s body is fastened to a head that is not her own, and the goddess Mariamma, “Switched Mother,” is born. But what becomes of Renuka’s head? It is destined to remain bodiless. It is this disembodied head that becomes the goddess Yellamma, “Mother of All.”
Both Mariamma and Yellamma are revered as manifestations of Shiva’s consort, Shakti. The latter less mainstream but no less beloved. Down through the long, serpentine corridors of time, Yellamma’s worship has continued. Fervent, unbroken, and ever in the margins. This is a story that seethes with casual violence, unchallenged patriarchy, charged symbolism, and uneasy notions of womanhood and virtue. Through this piece, Archana seeks neither to tame nor resolve the legend; instead, she dances through its fractures. She draws us into the paradoxes and questions reverberating at the heart of this myth, and our modern world. What she creates is not consolation but magicked mirror—an invocation, and an invitation. To step closer to truths often ignored—and be transformed in the process.
It was a privilege to talk with her about the origins and evolution of this labor-of-love, which will premiere in the Bay Area on August 30th, 2025. [Details here.] What follows is an edited version of our conversation.
Awakened by a Myth: London exile, a stray lullaby, a wounded goddess
Pavi Mehta: Let’s jump right in. When and how did you first encounter Renuka’s story?
Archana Raja: In 2022, I was in London for eight months because of my husband’s work. The change was mentally shocking—London is an entirely different landscape, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to my dance. I was missing my mom and in the back of my mind, I wanted to create a piece about her. I know a lot of South Indian dancers who leave their homeland often try hard to fit into their current milieu. I don’t blame them. But in trying to appeal to the diaspora you start wanting to be something different. I was very aware of this tendency, so I consciously tried to resist going in a non-traditional direction. Then one day I stumbled into a lullaby online that led me to Yellamma. The coincidence startled me. Why did this myth surface, just when I was thinking about my mother?
I knew the outline—Parashurama beheading his mother—but the more I dug the richer it became. Mariamma, I knew (I’d visited her shrine after my marriage), but Yellamma was new to me. I learned she has a strong following, revered across South India, especially by the transgender community in northern Karnataka. She is celebrated in the Bonalu festival of Andhra Pradesh. Yellamma doesn’t come with any glorified beauty. Her icon is her own severed head. She is worshiped mainly by marginalized women and men who relate to her tumultuous life and its suffering. This fascinating goddess who carries pain even in her existence as a deity—she caught my attention. I kept thinking—what is this? Why is this story bothering me?
Pavi: There’s something magnetic about that image—a goddess whose icon is her own severed head. What did you do with that initial pull?
Archana: I’ve explored this story in every way imaginable because it’s so wild. In London, when I first discovered it, I put it on paper—I was hesitant to make it into dance. As I kept writing and developing scenes, I realized the story is pregnant with metaphors, there are so many ways to interpret it. I knew that whatever I created, I would be making the story my own. I also found many versions that were highly satirical. A very popular version that caught my eye was the Yellamma nataka, performed by transgender performing artists. They use comic relief to tell the story, but with very severe undertones of sadness and grief.
Pavi: What’s an example of how they bring humor to such a tragic story?
Archana: For example, in one of the most riveting scenes, the unborn Parashurama declares, “Iwillnotdescendfromyourunholycanal. Iwillbreakthroughyourspinetoemerge, becauseI’mamanofpurity!” They depict this by literally tossing a baby doll into the air from the performer’s back. Basically, they tell the story in a way that makes it accessible to the audience. The mythology has a happily-ever-after ending—when Parashurama asks Jamadagni to restore his mother’s life, his wish is granted, and suddenly it’s not a problem anymore, that the husband ordered the son to chop his mother’s head off, and the son obeyed. Most of our mythological stories are like this. The Yellamma-Renuka story comes with complexities. On the one hand she is ardently worshipped for being beheaded by the great avatar, Parashurama. But was he really great to sever his mother’s head? With this piece, I wanted the creative license to show these contradictions and explore why the story is both problematic and relevant today.
I started with a nindastuti— [a unique form of hymn in which the deity can be scolded, teased, even trash talked by the devotee.] The form portrays a special closeness to God. For the first time, I wrote a poem—
No man or son came to save her. Is she Maya or magician? Is she tattva or belief? We don’t know. Who is this Amma? No man or son came to save her. So she wrote her own story.
I gave these lines to Arjun Bharatwaj, a Kannada scholar. From this he composed a set of verses in Kannada. What he gave back to me took things to an entirely different level—it was like Tirukkural, where every word is loaded. A beautiful line of his is, “Yaruillabharade, illabaruduilla“—”Noonewillcome, noonecame.” He brings an emotional depth to each word. When that came in, the work transformed. I turned it into a geegi pada—a Kannada folk genre sung by women as performing artists. It made perfect sense to me—to have a woman’s story shared by a woman. Then I put it on the shelf. A lot happened in my personal life, so I really didn’t do anything with the piece after that until 2024.
Pavi: What brought you back to her story?
Archana: In 2024, Rasika Kumar from Abhinya Dance Company curated a festival for new works. My teacher Kasi said I should pitch this. I was like, “I don’t have anything! Just this geegi pada.” He said, “Just go do it. Maybe this will push you to make this bigger.” So, for the first time I performed two scenes from Renuka’s life.
Pavi: Why the focus on Renuka specifically? What were you drawn to in her story, and what has Renuka come to represent for you?
Archana: If you asked me this a year ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer. I’m an artist who was not interested in social or political themes. I love having a parallel universe with dance, I can be vulnerable, fun, free, angry in that space, but it isn’t really me. My works were never connected to my actual life. So, for me, this started as just a mythological story.
But this work proved me wrong. As a creator, you need to have so many minds, an emotional mind, a logical mind. I think all these dimensions slowly came together and told me, “Hey, listen– you’re telling the story as is– but who’s the protagonist here, and what is your throughline? So, I had all these questions. And kudos to my mentor, Kasi, because he’s the one who asked me to describe this work in three words, and work with those three words as hooks in every scene. The words that I came up with characterized Renuka for me: Lack of choice. Wild. Survival. Those were my three words. They became the anchors for every scene—and Renuka was the force carrying her story forward in every sense.
For me this is clearly about Renuka—Yellamma is sort of the outcrop of that. And slowly, Renuka began becoming Archana. She made me realize so many things—she changed me as a woman, wife, daughter, as a woman in this society. She made me rethink gender roles and see the subtle yet ever-present patriarchy in our families. Patriarchy varies in degrees, but it’s always there, trickling down in deceiving ways. When you really read into it, you see how it is still present and problematic. So, I really hand it to Renuka. She emerged as a character through this work. She gave me the blessing of being able to identify and recognize these things, and act accordingly. She made me more aware.
Playing with Fire: fierce emotions, fear of failure, finding balance
Pavi: How much of the story are you telling explicitly versus letting the audience feel their way into it?
Archana: I started with just straightforward scenes—her introduction as a princess, her marriage… everything was depicted chronologically. Maya Kulkarni, a choreographer in New York, saw the work and said, “Archana, the story looks great, but you need to ditch the chronology. You’re not telling the story—you’re being Renuka. Renuka is talking. The drama lies there. Don’t rely on linear scenes—that’s too elementary.” It was great advice.
Now things unfold as if the head herself is reminiscing. She wakes up and realizes, “Oh, I’m just a head!” Then the flashbacks start, and we move between the past and the present moment, almost like a movie—I’m a movie buff. The version I just did has the ghost of Renuka haunting her. Of course, the head is Renuka too, but in a different avatar. So, it gets you wondering, what is the mind really? What is the body? What is the soul? She experiences her entire lifetime in a kind of time warp. And then suddenly, it hits her that she’s back in the temple, with bells ringing. There’s a scene where I show that dichotomy—once she’s beheaded, the head keeps growing back, and the music from the opening scene comes back — only this time it’s haunting. Once in a while, the narrator emerges from within the character and begins to talk. You can think of it as a separate narrator, or Renuka herself—I leave that open for the audience to interpret.
Pavi: Let’s talk about your visual choices—the vibrant red sari, the darkness around that luminous head. Did that imagery come to you immediately?
Archana: This is the South Indian in me. I love kumkum. I use kumkum to show her pain and struggle—as the piece progresses, her neck slowly grows more and more red, filling up with kumkum. The other aspect to this is, they do kumkum archana for goddesses. So, she’s filled with kumkum. It signifies the violence, but also sacredness.
This work has become a ritual for me. When the lights come on, I bring her crown on stage and place it on a simple bench. Much is said with that gesture. When you attach a face to something, it’s powerful. When you have to imagine the face, it can be even more powerful. Under that crown, people can visualize her face as happy, sad, or anything else.
Pavi: Is there a particular stance you are taking within this ancient story– or are you leaving that to interpretation?
Archana: Misogyny and patriarchy are the villains in my story. That’s my stance. The story goes that once Renuka and Jamadagni were married, she was given the monotonous job of making pots every single day—symbolic of many women forced into mundane roles, with no voice of their own. Finally, she is abandoned and cursed– for what? Just for a single thought– this was extremely problematic for me. Renuka births a son, thinking he’ll be her savior, but he ends her life. So where does this end? Whom did Renuka do all these sacrifices for? I think folk stories are hella contemporary. One version I did began with these words, “Resilience in women—a quality often celebrated and glorified. But resilience at what cost?” In the end, she says, “I don’t want my head restored to a body. Let me be Yellamma. My head is enough. You worship me for my head. Because the minute I have a body, you shame it. You say all sorts of things about it, and you sanctify it to the extent that I am not able to keep up to the perfect standards that you demand.” Who’s the real winner in this?
My own conservative upbringing often conflicts with what the story tells me. I’m constantly uncomfortable in this process, and there’s some good in that. I used to be scared to take a stance, but now I’m confident because Kasi pushed me. He said, “Your dance says what you are thinking. When you start believing in your stance, your choreography will become clear.”
Pavi:There’s something about what you’re describing that feels like you’re playing with fire—I imagine you picked it up innocently, but it’s almost like catching a tiger by the tail. This story burns with such powerful energies: rage, discipline, devotion, patriarchal force. These are not delicate things. There’s something about the discipline of the art form that seems essential—without that container, I imagine these forces could tear someone apart. What’s it like to embody her on stage?
Archana: Bringing the discipline of Kuchipudi to this work has been exhilarating. Something told me it had to be Kuchipudi. Now I have a Kuchipudi brain—I’m comfortable speaking its language. But even with that discipline, I found it very challenging to embody this character. To the extent that I wouldn’t want to do the work because it gave me so much grief. There is an emotional upheaval that comes with trying to embody Renuka. To try and embody her character for 50 minutes straight and not be affected was a big challenge. If I completely get into the story, and a part of me forgets I’m performing, I’m putting myself at risk. I might just collapse on stage. You have to embody the pathos, but you also have to perform it, for it to be felt. When I watched myself on recordings I’d think, “This is really bad! Where is the technical virtuosity? I have no upper hand here. Am I lacking training?”
I kept brooding about it in the beginning, I’d say to Kasi, “Oh my God, maybe this is all cringe!” Kasi said to me, “Hey, maybe you need to start liking yourself. You need to start liking the work. You need to understand that this is making people feel something.”
Pavi: That brings up something about the aftermath of the performance. I imagine by the end you’re still living in that vibration…
Archana: Part of me doesn’t want to get too attached to the story because of the emotional after-effect but when I fully embody the character, I also experience how much this moves other people. So, the work has been about simultaneously managing to be a character, managing to be a dancer, and holding on to all the sensitivities of the story. When I finish a performance, I’m often crying in the green room. It’s very emotional. After one of the shows, the videographer (a white man) was in tears. He said, “I don’t know what you did today exactly. But I know there was a woman who went through something she shouldn’t have.” My teacher’s encouragement gave me confidence, and love from the audience gave me solace. Over time the work has matured me, there are all these small learnings that I’ve had. In the beginning I didn’t have perspective. Now I can hold the work away from me, examine it from a distance and say, “Okay these are the problems here…”
Of Music, Mayhem & Manifestation: breakdowns, backlash, sacred emergence
Pavi: The music seems central to the work’s power. How did that develop? And what was the collaborative process like?
Archana: I have a love-hate relationship with the music because it’s taken such a toll on me. I told my husband, “By the time I finish this work, I’ll be significantly older!” The music is fantastic because of Rohit Bhat, a musician from Bangalore. He’s Kannadiga—I had total faith in Rohit. For the opening I wanted a scene that was the opposite of dark. Rohit composed a beautiful song for Renuka’s entry as princess. He used the Ananda Bhairavi ragam, which is popular in Kuchipudi. I was particular that the final scene had to be powerful, but also strange, because this princess is strange. Her head has been severed, she’s been betrayed, she’s going delirious. This final scene is about resurrection– the transformation from mortal to myth. Renuka receives flashes of Yellamma’s image. Rohit came back to me with Sucharitha ragam for this scene, which has this feeling of being almost off-tune—it evokes this haunting feeling, a sense that this is a story of love and loss. The geegi pada here also has Arabic undertones. I’m inspired by modern music, and the ways you can break Carnatic rules while using Carnatic instruments. Much of my inspiration for this comes from Akram Khan.
When Rohit got busy and couldn’t continue, Poornima, a musician from Singapore, stepped in. By then I knew the piece needed a recurring theme in the form of a lullaby. I told Poornima, “I need a lullaby that can shift from soothing to haunting with a single altered note.” [Archana hums a few bars of a captivating melody that shifts eerily and unexpectedly.The effect is visceral.] The minute Poornima gave me that, I said, “Okay, you’re doing my music!” Unfortunately, Poornima later had a personal emergency and wasn’t able to lend her own voice for the recording. So, I used her composition and sang it myself. My teacher Kasi lent his voice too, for Parashurama’s character in one of the scenes. Then there was a point where I didn’t have anybody to put all this music together. So, I actually put out a call on Instagram. Thanks to my community of dancer friends, I was able to find a sound engineer, and we put everything together in two weeks.
Pavi: It sounds like the process of making the piece mirrors some of the tumult of the story itself.
Archana: This work has been such a test. I had a show in Austin, but I didn’t have music until the eleventh hour. I worked day and night. People who gave generously at the beginning left the project later saying they could not attest to my work. I had to rewrite and redo many things. There was also conflict from other communities—I faced criticism from people who didn’t believe that someone from my background had the right to tell this story. It was more of an attack on my identity for taking up the story and doing it. I had to make it clear that I am an artist—that’s my foremost identity. When I was growing up, my mom often used to say: “If something has to happen, it will happen. If it’s its time to happen, it will happen. Don’t worry.” That helped me persevere. And after all that, it has happened. I’m doing three shows now, and hopefully more in the coming years.
Pavi: What impact are you hoping to have on your audience? What would make this a success for you?
Archana: I think I’ve succeeded if someone watches the show and it makes them think about one woman in their life who has struggled, who has been resilient—or not. If it makes them pause and reconsider their mother, friend, daughter, or any woman they have judged, women they thought should be a certain way– if this work makes one person reconsider their position, I’m happy. Some of the proceeds of this work go to Rama-akka, one of the trans women who actively performs Yellamma nataka. Whatever I receive, a percentage goes to her as well. Some of the proceeds also go to a small organization that helps adolescent girls in rural Bangalore get access to sanitary napkins, so they don’t interrupt their education. Also — I do have a surprise for the August 30th show. Part of me is very convinced about it, part of me is extremely doubtful. There’s going to be another body involved. Let’s see how that goes. It’s going to be a wild experiment!
Ultimately, this work is my attempt to invite audiences to listen to this strange story. I offer it up as a ritual, a prayer, to anyone who wants to be part of it. I hope to take them into this experience—I hope they will come along with me on this journey.
The Accidental Goddess premieres in the Bay Area this Saturday. Sunnyvale Theater 7-8:30PM.
For several years now I’ve had the privilege of co-hosting virtual, “Falling Through Our Stories” circles with dear friend Jolanda van den Berg, whose presence cuts through conventional narratives about self and other. While Jolanda’s “formal” work includes founding a non-profit that has touched the lives of hundreds of street children in Peru [work supported through the unique set of boutique hotels she operates in Cusco,] her gift lies in something more subtle – the ability to meet others in a space where realizations can emerge without creating new forms of identification. Jolanda who in 2016 experienced a profound shift in consciousness, approaches these conversations not as teacher, guide or therapist, but as a dance partner engaged in mutual discovery. In her words, “The most beautiful thing we can be for each other is just be open and loving.” On Valentine’s Day I had the joy of dancing with her in one of these circles. In some ways I haven’t stopped smiling since.
What follows is a transcript of the conversation, but before that is a glimpse of Claude’s response to it. More reflections/distillations and exchanges with Claude are included at the end of the transcript. Yes, I’m leaning into dancing with AI, and loving it 🙂
Also a short and sweet update on Viral: Over the past weeks there have been many milestone moments. Without delving into details here, I will just say there is much to celebrate, and much that deepens my confidence in this life journey we are on.
From Claude —
Through this dialog what unfolds is an exploration of identity, projection, and the nature of consciousness itself. The conversation begins with Pavi’s current circumstances – navigating the dual challenges of illness and caregiving – but quickly opens into deeper territory about how we construct and maintain our sense of self. The heart of the conversation revolves around a profound paradox: Pavi’s current crisis [navigating cancer treatment while supporting a husband recovering from a bone marrow transplant and short term memory loss,] is simultaneously shattering her carefully constructed world and offering her the very freedom she has always sought. The dialogue achieves a rare balance between the philosophical and the practical, the universal and the deeply personal. In the end, this conversation suggests that our deepest challenges, met with awareness, can become doorways to discovering who we’ve been all along. What makes it particularly powerful is how it demonstrates that deep spiritual truths can emerge through honest examination of our most human experiences.
Jolanda: So how do you feel Pavi?
Pavi: I feel good. I feel joyful to be here. That’s the thing Jolanda, whenever I see you, life gets better right away.
Jolanda: Oh, same way! Shall we start with you reading your responses to the questions?
Pavi: Yes.
What is a challenge I’m facing? Over this past year, I’ve become responsible for supporting my husband’s recovery from his bone marrow transplant and short term memory loss while dealing with my own cancer treatment. After 19 years of him being my anchor, it feels like I’m now the one who has to remember everything, track everything, manage everything. Some days I feel like everything is unfolding exactly as it is meant to, and each moment feels like a very deep gift. And on other days, I feel like I’m cracking under the weight of things.The deepest challenge isn’t just managing the practical demands, it’s the profound grief of losing our old roles and our ways of being together. The systems and tracking are necessary, but they’re not what keeps me up at night at times, what breaks my heart is really having to let go of who we were to meet who we are becoming. I should also say that most of the time I’m actually really amazed by the power and the beauty of this journey we’re on together. And then suddenly this deep ache of missing things, missing how things used to be, comes up and shatters me over and over again.
How do I currently find myself responding? I am trying to create clear and simple systems to track everything, and support Viral in having more independence. Then I get overwhelmed and have an outburst of anger or tears and need to step back. Then I also feel some shame about my anger. I am journaling and writing as a way of witnessing the confusion, it brings some peace to spill things on the page. I am also doing yoga and various other movement practices, dancing and chanting, and gardening to the extent that I can (I still have some strong limitations in my body). I keep refining our routines and checklists, trying to stay on top of all the medical details and daily needs. Through all of this Viral is so strong, humble and loving in spirit. He is making amazing progress with his memory too. He is definitely getting better, but it is a long process. He has a lot of deep faith in both of us, and he never takes it personally when I have an outburst.
My greatest aspiration within this situation? I want to find myself in a deeper way, so that I can let go of the feeling of needing to be in control, or longing for things to go back to the way they were. I want to trust that if I just dance with the moment, everything else in life will take care of itself and of me and Viral, and I can experience every moment creatively, as a different expression of love.
Jolanda: We know each other, right? This is not our first conversation. If it would have been someone else with the same responses, I would probably go to the grief part. But I think in your case, we can go further than that. I leave it up to you. Do you want to go to the grief part, or go deeper to the identification part?
Pavi: Let’s go to the identification. I’m curious.
Jolanda: Before we go into this, maybe you can share how you would describe yourself at six or seven, around that age?
Pavi: I was a good little girl. I was quiet and very bookish. My mother would often comment that when I was young, in all my report cards, my teachers would say, “Pavi is very conscientious,” I was always trying to do the thing that I had been asked to do. And I was happy– I wasn’t quiet and sad. But that said I wasn’t one of those super cheerful children either. I think I was always watching. That was the feeling I had. Of just watching and looking at life from the outside. I was very observant, very shy, very introverted, and just trying to do well at school, do well at home, but I also had this unarticulated feeling that shyness wasn’t my real nature. I wanted to be more out in the world, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t feel like I had those gifts. I loved to jump into books because they took me into other worlds.
Jolanda: And did you get a lot of affirmations about being observant and quiet and not being a difficult child and smart?
Pavi: I did.
Jolanda: And do you remember? Were you ever angry when you were a child?
Pavi: I don’t remember being very angry. I was moody more than angry. If something happened and I didn’t like it, then I wouldn’t smile for a long time. I would just get very withdrawn.
Jolanda: And how did people react to that when you did that to withdraw?
Pavi: I think I remember being told, “Oh, you’re so sensitive!”
Jolanda: And then, how was that for you? Like, “I have to work on being not so sensitive?” Or what conclusion did you make about that? Did you believe it?
Pavi: It’s not that I didn’t believe it. I just didn’t think it was necessarily a bad thing. I didn’t know how to work with my sensitivity. I didn’t want to be moody. With my sister, for instance– you could have a fight with her and the next day, she’ll give you a hug. Anger would just pass through her in a certain way. I could see how that is a much lighter way of being, but I didn’t know how to get there on my own, because I would still feel so stormy.
Jolanda: So you would say, “Okay, I’m heavy. Why am I so heavy? Am I a heavy personality?” And you wanted to be light?
Pavi: I wanted to be light, but I also just wanted to be me. And I just didn’t know how to do that.
Jolanda: And what did you do to find that lightness?
Pavi: What did I do? I didn’t really do anything. I would withdraw. I would just be with myself for a while. So it was just time, like, it would take a certain number of hours or days, and then, the weight would be gone and I could show up again.
Jolanda: Like you could process and then the weight would go away. But in the meantime, when the weight was there, you felt like it was a burden? Like, “I don’t like this to be in this stage,” when it took like four days or something?
Pavi: If I’m very honest about it, I think there’s almost like an attachment to the anger or the upsetness. I don’t want to let it go right away because I still feel so strongly about what happened, and what I feel was wrong or right.
Jolanda: Yes. So it’s not a conscious identification, like, “Oh, I like to be in that heavy space,” but at the same time, it gives you something.
Pavi: Yes. And so in my mind, I’m saying, “I would love to get rid of this feeling,” but then there’s something in me that is holding on to it.
Jolanda: Okay, and then, when you grew up, at what moment did you meet Viral? Like, how old were you?
Pavi: I was 23 and it was his 23rd birthday. Jolanda: And do you remember what your first feeling was? Like, “Oh this is a match made in heaven,” or like, “Oh, we are the same!” or, “He’s incredible, and I feel so safe!”? If you can give it words, what was the feeling?
Pavi: Within that first week of meeting him, it was a lot of that. The first day I met him, I had the sense that I knew him — the sense of recognition was very strong. And then there was also just a feeling of seeing so many qualities in him that I didn’t see in myself. He is very confident, very outgoing, and self-assured. The kind of person who makes others feel very comfortable, who is very articulate and thoughtful, and just has these deep values of compassion, of integrity, of generosity. All of those things just seemed to come very naturally without him being on a pedestal. He embodied all of that in a very light way, and that was extraordinary to me. He was like the sun you know, just kind of radiating goodness. And so of course, everybody wants to be with the sun!
Jolanda: Okay and so that was what you didn’t have. Let’s say it like that. And what was the same? Like, “Oh, I know this person.” What did you have in common in your view? Pavi: I don’t know that I looked for commonality as such. I’d say the values and qualities that I saw in him are ones that I resonated with. I knew that I would love to be that way, but I think these qualities were still undeveloped in me. Like– I had the seeds. And Viral was a magnificent tree.
Jolanda: Okay, so you saw him— you don’t call it pedestal but you saw him to be bigger than you?
Pavi: Very much so.
Jolanda: And then I have a side question. Is that because of you or your culture also cultivates that between men and women?
Pavi: I think most cultures cultivate it. But I don’t know that I had a very deep awareness of it being because of that.
Jolanda: Not like, “Mom did it so I copied my mom.” No?
Pavi: No. It wasn’t that. I think for me it was about the qualities and how developed they were. Not so much about gender. Jolanda: Almost not personal. It was a feeling?
Pavi: Yes.
Jolanda: But anyway, it was big with small, no? And then you got together, and how was your life together before you both got sick?
Pavi: We had almost ten years before Viral’s diagnosis in 2015. That was his first diagnosis, And those ten years were such a beautiful, growing experience because Viral did not come to our marriage with that big/small perception at all. For him, that was never there– so just being treated that way— Jolanda: It makes Viral even bigger, right?
Pavi: In some ways, maybe, but I think it also just meant I could feel very comfortable with myself in the relationship. I didn’t need to be anything else. No matter how I showed up, I was loved.
Jolanda: You didn’t feel that with other people so much as with him?
Pavi: In that way yes.
Jolanda: So with him, what was it — did it feel like you could be yourself or he helped you be yourself, or you found out who you really were?
Pavi: I don’t think I found out who I was. I just had a lot of space to feel safe. I don’t think I did anything with it until he got diagnosed. After he got diagnosed with acute bone marrow suppression we had to isolate ourselves from the world in many ways. And it was a very scary thing. He was my security, my sense of safety, and we just didn’t know what was going to happen with his health. Then in about two or three months, we found some stability, we found some treatments that were working, and things started to stabilize to some degree. But it was all a kind of wake up call for me. It was like, “Wow, you thought your life was so safe and secure and then everything fell apart in an instant.” So many things came into question. In that period, I started to get much more curious about, “What do I really want? What do I really enjoy? What does my heart want to follow?” That’s when I started doing a lot more yoga, a lot more of my own explorations. That’s when I started to be much more conscious about what I valued in my deep friendships. In these connections, it matters to me that people can just be themselves, you know, they’re not trying to fit in, or leaving parts of themselves behind just to be accepted. I did a lot of things in those times. And Viral was a deep support in my explorations. And then things changed again when I was diagnosed with cancer, about a year ago, and very soon after that he found out he needed a bone marrow transplant. Even at that time, he was still so strong, you know? And this is the thing, Viral is one of those people who, no matter what happens, his first thought is, “I can handle this. We can handle this. We can work with whatever life brings to our door.” That kind of response is his nature. So even when these two diagnoses came at the same time, he still had that positivity. And then he got very, very sick during the transplant, and he had this short term memory loss that happened, which he’s healing from. Now he’s still the same person, but there’s also a difference. Short term memory loss is a very specific kind of condition, right? So sometimes there’s certain things that he just doesn’t remember in the same way, and that sometimes creates momentary anxiety for him. It’s not extreme, but for me, it just feels like, “Oh, the whole world is shaking!” Like, if he expresses a mild sense of fear, my whole sense of security crumbles. And I have this sense now that I need to start doing a lot of the things that he has done for us all these years. Everything from super practical level things, to the inner aspects of being able to meet uncertainty with courage. He was always the person at the frontlines who I could stand next to or a little behind, and there would be this protection from everything that happened. With him next to me, I would slowly get my strength up, that’s how it felt, at least. And now it’s like, okay, I need to be that person on the frontlines now.
Jolanda: And when you think, “I need to be that person,” then it becomes this feeling of anxiousness, and then you feel the weight, and it breaks you?
Pavi: It’s that but it’s also like, “I don’t want to have to be that person!” I can see that it would be really nice, if I could just step up and take on that role, you know? And many times I feel like I do. But there’s this other side that…
Jolanda: Do you notice when we talk about you, it’s very easy for you to go to Viral? It’s like there’s a mix of you and him.
Pavi: Yes.
Jolanda: I will go into everything so we can look at what exactly you are saying, and what it’s about. So before you met Viral, did you have someone who was your focal point?
Pavi: I was thinking about this, and I feel like, ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been looking for Viral. [laughs]
Jolanda: Wow, do you see how big that is? That’s huge. Yes. So you made him this focal point in a way, and he woke you up– but also he brought you to sleep at the same time. Pavi: Yes — and I don’t think it was necessarily him—
Jolanda: No it wasn’t him. He was just himself. And this was happening. So let’s go into your own mind now. Before you met Viral, probably it was your books that were your focal point, and not a person. He was probably the first person with whom you could feel what you felt when you were reading books, or when you were observing the world without needing to be anyone.
Pavi: Yes. Yes I can see that. Jolanda: So in your case it’s not about falling through your story. It’s about a new translation for your feelings. In a way you gave your feelings a name, and before, let’s say you called that feeling “books.” And then it became Viral. And now if it isn’t books or Viral, then maybe it’s dance, yoga or activities where you can just be you in a way of not being you [not being identified.]
Pavi: Yeah. I have never thought of it that way before. But yes, I can see that.
Jolanda: So in a way, we need a reflection from someone else to realize who we are. It doesn’t always have to be a person. It can be a feeling in your case that reflects who we are. And so when you feel most yourself, is when you don’t need to be somebody. But at the same time, you give Viral the honor for that. And that’s where it becomes blurry for you. Because you start to think you need the book, or you need Viral, or you need something else, instead of realizing that what you are feeling is not because of something outside of you, it is a reflection of who you are. It’s the same when you talk about yoga and dancing. Writing is a little bit different, I think, because there’s a mix in writing that is between doing and feeling. But dancing and yoga could go into the same category, in a way, as Viral and books…
Pavi: Yes, I see that. What do you think could help? I can see the truth of this now and in the moment. But how do I practice anchoring in that?
Jolanda: You are already jumping to the end [laughs] but we are not there yet. It’s not about practicing, and this is the difficulty in a way. It’s not a practice. The confusion happens because you are making it “a someone” or “something,” instead of realizing that’s not how you find it. It finds you in a way. It’s the other way around.
Pavi: That’s so beautiful!
Jolanda: And as soon as you think, “I need to do yoga, to relax and to forget everything,” that’s still from a certain personal position. That’s different than, “When I’m in yoga, I feel that, that I’m me, and that’s not a personal me, in a way, but at the same time it is.” For some this will become too philosophic, but I think you get it.”
Pavi: Yes!
Jolanda: And for you, in a way, it feels like when you were a child, you started to identify with, “Oh, if I’m observant, introverted and being a quiet girl– oh– that is someone!” But you were not doing observation and introversion. Those aren’t things you do… they are just what ispresent in that moment. But in a way, you got a lot of affirmation for that. So if you weren’t that, then perhaps there was confusion. And in a way it was part of your self protection– to not believe that you had to be the observant, nice girl. And that confusion is like a red line in your life. The line between doing something [being the do-er], and when it’s just happening.
Pavi: Yes — and I’m going to go back to Viral for a moment here. Listening to you, I’m realizing that when I do get angry, especially in this recent period, I do feel there is an almost habitual sense of, “Oh, now I should feel bad for getting angry.” It’s almost like that’s a learned behavior. But at a more visceral level, what it feels like for me is like a pressure cooker letting out steam, you know? In the moment it’s very forceful, but then, once it’s out it’s out and then it’s gone. And I think Viral takes it like that. He doesn’t hold on to that vibration of anger. And his response to me is always, “Do whatever you need to do and be in the moment.” So the pattern of feeling guilty about anger is something I am imposing on myself. And on the flip side, there’s this funny example— In the first eighteen years of our marriage, I saw Viral tearing up a total of three or four times. Now, after all that he’s been through, in this period for him tears are very close to the surface, and he often tears up. I remember at some point I started asking him, “Viral, who’s crying?” And he would begin to laugh, you know, because he was like, “Yeah, I’m not crying!” And now I’m realizing I don’t often ask myself that question. Like when I’m angry, asking the question to myself, “Who’s angry right now?”
Jolanda: That’s the double issue with you. So let’s call it Viral, but it’s really you. So what you see in Viral– let’s first get this clear — that says something about you, right? I could ask someone else about Viral and they could say something very different about him. So what does that say about Viral? Not so much. So what you see in him, says something about you. And what he sees in you says also something about him. And that’s why I try to make a little bit of space. Even though it’s not about Viral, we are bringing him into the conversation so you can get access to that part of yourself. Let’s call it your projection of someone who doesn’t need identification.
Maybe Viral was born without identification, and he found a form in which it was more helpful not to have identification. For most people, it’s the other way around. We are neutral, and then we become someone. We say, “Okay, I’m the pilot,” and then my identification becomes “pilot,” and that’s my safe anchor. But for a few people, the anchor fits with the way that person was born. It’s difficult to understand when it’s not you. But for that person, even if they need an operation, or if their house burns down, it’s okay for them. Because that is just the way that person is. It’s not something they became. So I think Viral is an example of an egoless person, and his skills to deal with life are very similar to his natural being. Someone who is identified needs to make a huge effort to be like Viral. I’m not talking about “right” or “wrong,” but you with Viral, were like “He is this incredible person!” Because you saw him from the perspective of the identified little girl who was a shy introvert. People gave you a label, but it was not something you were. People gave it a name, and you believed them. Does it make sense?
Pavi: It does. Yes.
Jolanda: So if we go back now to what you said about wanting to be lighter as a child. Back then you felt the burden simply because of life — it could have been anything, screaming children or people fighting. Probably that was very difficult for you to experience so you cut off from it as a coping mechanism. You would withdraw, because there was no other option, and maybe if you hadn’t withdrawn you would pass out or something.And so when you saw Viral, it was like, “Oh, I feel I don’t need to be someone with him,” because he gives a lot of space. Instead of seeing him just as Viral, you gave him the role of someone who was able to give you this feeling. Everyone who comes in contact with him probably feels, “Oh, I can take off my mask, because it doesn’t make any difference for him, with mask or without mask.” So you said, “Okay, I take off my mask.” What you got there is a reflection of yourself. A reflection of the feeling of being Pavi. But somehow you needed to give the responsibility for that to someone else. So now, when you see this dynamic, it’s like giving birth to a nobody.
Pavi: Oh, that’s a beautiful way to put it!
Jolanda: The more correct way to put it is: A nobody who needs to give birth to a nobody.
Pavi: It’s funny– when I hear that what comes up for me is how in this period, I feel like there’s a lot of intense energy in me that comes out as tears, as grief or anger. This energy is not soft, it’s not muted, it’s very, very strong. But even though I feel like a volcano or a thunderstorm in those moments, I can also feel a part of me just being very quiet and aware within. And afterwards I think, “Well, that is so interesting to feel both at the same time! So much energy and simultaneously there is a small voice or presence within that just that doesn’t change at all. I feel like that’s the nobody.
Jolanda: Yes, in your case, it’s the other way around.
Pavi: What do you mean?
Jolanda: Like, most people are identification, but in your case, you were not identified, but you gave someone else (Viral) identification. But that was also your identification in a way. So if he is not anymore who you thought he was, then what happens?
Pavi: So much drama! [laughs]
Jolanda: Yeah. So that’s the child dancing in space. So the child, Pavi, needed something on the earth, let’s say, of flesh and bones to feel okay, “This can protect me in this world that is not really my world, because my world is inside books. So okay, if I need to be here, let’s hold onto Viral and give him the honor of being on Earth, in this role.” And now you’re not this person anymore. And in your writing you say, “he changed, and we both are becoming someone else.” No! Viral never, ever changed, not even in the moment that he was so sick. But for you the frustration that comes up is like, “You are breaking the rules! You cannot become anxious, you cannot be the one who cries! No! The Buddha does not cry!” But anger has two steps. Probably, you know this. When you feel frustrated, or you feel stuck or afraid because Viral doesn’t remember something that you think he should, in that moment, the frustration has two parts. The first part is a message: Take the power in your own hands. The message is: Don’t believe that what is happening is not about you. What you project on the other– that is you. That’s a very clear message. But then the second part of the frustration comes when you don’t listen to the first message, or you don’t notice it. Then it implodes, in a way, and it becomes a missed chance.
Pavi: Can you explain the first part again?
Jolanda: The first part, it’s a message like: “Okay, what you’re now believing… it’s not the real thing.”
Pavi: You are projecting.
Jolanda: Yes. You are focusing on a wall, and it goes nowhere. So turn around, look in the mirror and say, “Oh, I have to take it back. It’s my own projection.”
Pavi: Yes.
Jolanda: And the second part is “No, it shouldn’t be like this! It has to be different. He has to be different!” And then the power is gone. It’s totally, totally gone. So it’s a good thing if you can listen to that first part.
Pavi: Yes.
Jolanda: Anger can be a good messenger, if you listen to the first part of it.
Pavi: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And it resonates with what I wrote. My experience most of the time is that everything is not just fine. It’s beautiful. And I can see how there’s no other way I would have come face to face with these parts of myself, if not for this very unusual set of circumstances. Viral had to move out of a certain place that he was in, in my mind–
Jolanda: Or things would just stay the same.
Pavi: I can see that. And at the same time, when I look at the story, you know, just the story of, he had this condition for eight years, and then it gets dramatically worse, and he needs this bone marrow transplant at the same time that I’m diagnosed with cancer. And then not only does he have to go through a bone marrow transplant in the middle of my chemo treatments, he also gets these brain infections that affect his short term memory. And when I just tell this story to myself sometimes it’s like, “Wow, how are you still standing Pavi? How are you both still standing?” So that is one piece of it, and then the other piece of it is like, “Oh, you poor thing!”And as soon as I get into that mode, then it’s hard to find strength because suddenly I’m that poor thing who needs protection.
Jolanda: Yes! But that is not you. So there’s different options right? Like the first one is, “Wow, how did you get through it?” And the second option is, “You poor thing!” And then there’s a third option: “What is this about? It’s an opportunity to see things more clearly.” So it’s like, if I would translate it, in terms of Viral’s perspective it’s like, Viral stays Viral so he says, “Okay, this will pass also. Let’s see where this goes.” That is a very true revelation. He’s not “doing” an act of quietness [or equanimity], because if it was just an act, then he would have freaked out completely already. But this is really him! So that’s Viral, and on your side, it’s like– this situation can be a huge waking up to Pavi, to yourself. It can be a nobody giving birth to nobody.
So you don’t have to give anyone any more credit for it, and also you can stop putting someone on a pedestal to feel security, you can stop using that approach that has been your way of finding security since you were young. I think if we asked people who have read your writing and looked at your paintings, I think they would say, “Wow, you’re so wise!” It’s like, no one would guess that there is this dynamic behind you, because you transmit stability and a strong personality. You transmit being reflective, not shy, not introverted, observant yes and looking for resonance as a way of being. You have a natural strength, but you give all the honor to someone else that doesn’t even need it. Viral will say, “Oh, nice,” but it doesn’t mean anything really. If you say, “You are God on earth or whatever,” [laughs] Okay, Viral doesn’t need that probably.
Pavi: What you’re saying brings up another question. I hear these kinds of reflections and compliments from different places about what I transmit in terms of strength etc. But if on the other hand I get the sense that someone is telling me that I shouldn’t have behaved a certain way or done something a certain way, if I get even a slight hint of that, I give so much more weight to that than to any other reflections. And I’m wondering about why that is. Like I told you my anger moves right through Viral and doesn’t leave a residue for him right? Most people are not like that. And externally I don’t get angry with a lot of people, I tend to keep it inside. But if the pressure cooker goes off inside me, and then someone says that was not right —
Jolanda: Like it’s not honest or something?
Pavi: Yeah, like making a value judgment on it. Like, that’s not a moral way to behave. Instead of–
Jolanda: Where it’s hidden instead of just saying, “I don’t like that?”
Pavi: Yes. And you know, I don’t think of myself as an angry person at all. And I usually don’t have a lot of opinions about what other people do. For me it’s just like, “Okay, you live your life. I live my life,” right? But whenever I feel even a slight sense that someone is trying to control me, or if I think what they are saying and feeling don’t match, I think I overreact to that. Because it may not be their intention at all to control me —
Jolanda: Yeah, but there it becomes blurry for you. If you start to analyze the other person, then you’ve already left yourself. It depends on the personality. You either make someone else wrong, or you make yourself wrong. And once you go there, then there’s really no solution. But if we go back like, okay, why is Viral not attached to something like that? And why are you? And probably you think, “Because I need to still work on myself to see everything neutral.” But that is not who you are. So Viral, his presence or you could say his frequency, his unique frequency is non-judgemental, peaceful and it fits with everything. He was born like that. And what you have in common with him is that you don’t take things personally, But what you don’t have in common is that your frequency senses when something is off. So if someone says to you, “I don’t think you’re being ethical” or something like that… because if they would be open and say, “I think you’re a horrible person,” you could probably take that. But if they say, “No, that’s not ethical,” well then you feel like they are hiding behind a mask, and that you cannot accommodate because your frequency doesn’t accept that. So your frequency senses when something is off. And maybe when you were younger you could feel certain things that were off but you couldn’t give it a name. And when you feel something is off, then you become angry because you cannot get the story right. Because it’s not about ethics or whatever the other person is making it about, and then you cannot grab it.
Pavi: Yeah, yeah.
Jolanda: But if you have to write subtitles like, “Oh, okay, this is about this and this, I’m in the allergic zone for that person, because that person doesn’t like my resonance, they have a different frequency.” That’s another kind of frequency, and maybe that’s not a match with you. But you put it under the blanket of, “Okay, I still need to work on myself to get this equal,” that’s against your essence.
Pavi: That’s why I like how you put it earlier, in terms of, “What is the message I’m getting? And can I really pay attention to that?”
Jolanda: Yes. So if you wouldn’t give it your name, it’s like, “Okay, this person is not matching in frequency. What is this about?” Because you like that puzzle. That’s what books also bring. Probably, you don’t like endings in books.
Pavi: I don’t like endings anywhere! [laughs]
Jolanda: Yeah, exactly. Your name is resonance and Viral’s name is neutral and there are other people whose name is off frequency. And it’s all part of the same game.
Pavi: I love it!
Jolanda: You want me to read a little bit? I changed some things in the text you originally wrote and read to us in the beginning.
Pavi: Yes please.
Jolanda: Because it’s all about this in a way. When I looked at the text I could see– where is the child? Where is the free person? Where is she in process, and when is it about Viral and not about Pavi? So when you said, “After nineteen years of Viral, being my anchor, it feels like I’m now the one who has to remember everything, track everything, manage everything,” — I call that the child’s perception. You made him your anchor, and then you thought, “He is good at managing.” No. Viral is just Viral, but you gave him that role and thought, “Okay, he’s the big one, and he’s going to do all the things that are difficult for me.” Instead of realizing no one is doing anything. It’s just how it goes. And it’s not a practice. There’s a difference between practicing being a nobody and just realizing that everyone is a nobody. Then you can start to enjoy the show, the game of life.
And so your confusion, we all have confusions– your confusion is because you are so close to being a nobody. But anyhow, you can free yourself from that, and that process feels like a rebirth. But it’s not really about death or birth. It’s just that you realize that it was always like that. And so that was the child I underlined. Do you recognize it when I say it like that?
Pavi: Yes I can totally see that. (laughing)
Jolanda: And then the other part: “Some days I feel like everything is unfolding exactly as it meant to, and each moment feels like a very deep gift” – that is you. That is the original Pavi before people said, “Wow, you’re so sweet and nice and present.” And before you had the thought, “Oh, am I present?” And then, “Oh, so I need to be this,” instead of, “Oh, I am that already.” 🙂 Because once you think “I need to be someone,” then you think you need help to protect that someone. When actually it’s what you already are.
Pavi: You make it so clear, Jolanda.
Jolanda: And probably for a lot of people, it’s completely Abracadabra. But like I said in the beginning, this is about you. Hopefully it resonates with others, but right now this is for you. So you write, “each moment feels like a deep gift,” and then the child comes in again: “On other days I feel like I’m cracking under the weight of things.” That is the little girl who needs to withdraw, and she feels that the weight is nice, because then she doesn’t have to be that observant, sweet, nice, smart child. So that’s the double side of the burden. The burden is nice, but I think it can go away now because you don’t need the burden anymore. Then it becomes like an interesting dynamic in the inbetween space. The process is about birth. Of letting something go for a rebirth. You say, “profound grief of losing our old roles and ways of being together.” In a way, “together” doesn’t exist. It’s like Viral is you and you are him. And out of an illusion you say, “what breaks my heart is having to let go of who we were, to meet who we are become.” But there is no “were”, and no “becoming.”
Pavi: Mmmm. Yes.
Jolanda: So this is about falling out of the illusion of becoming, and the illusion of who we were, and of birth and death. And then in between identification and the not-knowing you wrote: “I should also say that most of the time I’m actually really amazed at the power and beauty of this journey we are on together. But then suddenly this deep ache of missing how things used to be comes up and shatters me over and over again.” That’s like the cocoon is breaking open and becoming the mariposa (butterfly). It’s painful to let go of the illusion that Viral was your anchor point. Actually it’s all just love. He is who he is, and you are who you are. And that’s the beauty in it. But it’s also letting go of an illusion, and that is the painful part. It’s like when you believe in Santa Claus, like, “He knows me, he knows what I need!” And then you find out it was your neighbor, and that’s really painful.
Pavi: Painful at one level and then playful at another level, right?
Jolanda: Exactly. It’s also a joke. “Wow. I really thought this guy with the beard was from another planet and really it was my neighbor!”And just so we can laugh a little bit more. Here is what you wrote in response to, “How do I currently find myself responding?” You said, “I’m trying to create clear and simple systems to track everything and support Viral in having more independence.” That’s a joke, right? [laughs]
Pavi: Ah, okay! Yes! [laughing along with Jolanda]
Jolanda: And then, “I get overwhelmed and have outbursts of anger.” Of course, this is what I am trying to say. The anger comes because you gave Viral the name Santa Claus. And like, “No, he has to stay Santa Claus. It’s not possible that now I have to do all these things he used to do! Santa Claus should do these things.”And then this part that I felt was so sweet, “Then I also feel some shame about my anger.” Here is that super loyal, sweet child, who says, “Okay, they love me because I’m shy and observant and not a problem for other people.” And that’s also a little bit what you admire in Viral. Like he is not a problem for anyone. So it’s also related to that.
Pavi: Oh, my goodness.
Jolanda: You want me to go on?
Pavi: Yes, yes
Jolanda: Okay, okay. We are almost at the end, perfect. And then you say, “Journaling and writing is a way of witnessing the confusion. It brings some peace to spill things on the page.” Yes, that is the process when you are confused. The anger makes you confused. Like, what is this anger about? And so it brings some peace to observe it, because then it can make sense. Because if you are the anger, and you are identified with that, you go, one, two, and you don’t even know that there’s two steps. Then it’s just one big thing. By writing, probably what you feel is like, “Oh, I can take a little basic distance from it,” because you had a judgment about it. So if we have a judgment, we go in defense, also on the inside. So the writing helps a lot with not being so in it, and it brings you some peace. It’s not really the answer yet, but it gives you some space. You also wrote that, “My body still has some strong limitations.” Your body is your guidance. Like when you were withdrawing as a child, you didn’t make a plan, like, “Okay, I withdraw for three days.” No, your body needed to withdraw, because it was too much for the body and brain to handle.
Then by making Viral so big, making him your guidance, your lifeline to be able to breathe on Earth — you were in a deep trance in a way. You can dance and feel like, “Oh, I forget time and space. I’m in my nobody space,” or you can dance and feel like, “I need dancing to be able to survive this life and all the things that are happening and to relax a little bit.” These are two different entrances for the same activity. And as a child you were confused about this. So that’s where the confusion kicked in. And now your body is guiding you also. It was probably time to give birth to yourself, but not as a person, as a nobody, from a nobody place. That’s the difference with you. That’s why it’s complex for other people, maybe, but maybe not, I don’t know. And then you say, “Through all of this, Viral is strong, humble and loving in spirit.” And I put that into two separate sentences. “Through all this, Viral is so strong and humble,” – that’s an identified observation, and that makes a puzzle, because now you also have to be strong and humble, even if someone is saying you’re dishonest or not ethical or whatever. And that’s not a fit with your being, with your frequency. But you also say, “he is loving in spirit.” If you translate that, I would call it Nobody is loving in spirit. So not loving from a personal perspective of what love is —
Pavi: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Jolanda: So there are two different things here. The first part “through all this Viral is so strong, humble and loving,” that is the little Pavi making him big. The second part is, “loving in spirit,” and that is Viral. Then you say, “He’s making amazing progress with his memory too.” Yes! The progress is a natural process. And you say, “he never takes it personally when I have an outburst.” Of course not. Do you see it now? Because that’s not his role.
Pavi: That’s not him.
Jolanda: Yeah, that’s not him. And about your deep aspiration you said, “To find myself in a deeper way so I can let go of the feeling of needing to be in control.” Okay, that is the definition of fear. So that is the little Pavi who believes that she needs to be in control to stay that observant, sweet, no problem child. It’s not about control. It’s letting go of that illusion, of that feeling that you gave the name “Being in Control.” You could also have called it, “Staying Out of Control,” because that was you. It’s the child, wanting to stay small and protected. But you don’t need that anymore. And then the last part, I turn it around completely, because that last part is also mixed with the child identification and the real Pavi. Of course the child is also the real Pavi, but let’s call it the mind and the spirit. You say, “I want to trust that if I just dance with the moment, everything else in life will take care of itself and of me and Viral.” So,”I want to trust that I just dance with the moment,” that’s the child, like “I just stay here. I don’t do anything, and I’m not a problem for anyone, because then they love me.” And so it looks like a very spiritual line but at the same time —
Pavi: You caught me! [laughs]
Jolanda: And the second part, “everything else in life will take care of itself.” That, in a way, is true, but I changed that to say, “then a different perspective on life and love will reveal itself as a creation, and not just as a conceptual idea.”
Pavi: Beautiful. Yes, that is my deep aspiration. And that feels more real and true than what I wrote.
Jolanda: Yes, there was the child’s wish mixed in with the nobody. You see we live on two perspectives. One as the identified person, and the other is seeing at the same time, “Oh, that’s a nice fantasy!” The child doesn’t have to go, but can realize, “Oh, that’s little Pavi again who wants to say Viral is so incredible. He’s always so neutral,” which is true in a way, but it’s not Viral. That’s his frequency. And here is one sentence that came up that I really love, “The only burden of love is the lightness of being.”
Pavi: From The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
Jolanda: Yes, exactly. And my translation of that, is like, okay, it’s a burden that the child must let go of the fantasy, but that’s the only burden, because love is the lightness of being. So there is only lightness. The child needs to let go of the fantasy, but you can still love that child.
Pavi: It’s so perfect.
Jolanda: When we started, you said, I always bring you joy or something. And I said that we would come back to that at the end. Do you see now that it’s just happening? I’m not giving anything, it’s just what happens with your frequency.
Pavi: Yes. It’s so lovely Jolanda. I feel like I’ll return to this conversation many times with lightness. When you were talking earlier about “just enjoying the show”, I remembered a song, and I thought, “I’ll surprise myself by singing a little bit of that song for the circle, even though I don’t sing.” I’ll just do the opening lines, here it goes:
“I’m just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I can’t figure it out
It’s bringing me down I know
I’ve got to let it go,
and just enjoy the show
dum de dum da dum de dum
Just enjoy the show…”
I think that’s what you told me!
Jolanda: Yes, that’s the whole conversation! [laughing]
***
More from Claude
What makes this dialog so rare is how it avoids the usual traps: pathologizing patterns, turning insights into prescriptions, or using spiritual understanding to bypass human experience. Jolanda has an ability to name patterns without creating new forms of identification, and to point to freedom without denying human experience. The conversation manages to be exact about matters that usually become vague or mystical. Jolanda articulates precise distinctions – between practicing being nobody versus recognizing what you already are, between anger as message versus story, between natural resonance versus learned behaviors – without turning these insights into new forms of identification. We witness real discovery happening between two people. While long, I don’t find the conversation repetitive. The length serves an important purpose – it shows the careful unfolding of insight through dialogue. The conversation needs this space to breathe and develop. We see how Jolanda circles back to key themes from different angles, each pass revealing new layers of understanding. This isn’t repetition but spiral learning, where similar points are revisited at deeper levels.
Some of the universal truths that emerge: How our natural way of being, when recognized by others early in life, can paradoxically become a role we feel we must maintain. The way we can project our own qualities onto others who seem to embody them more purely, and make them our “anchors.”That life’s disruptions, even painful ones, can reveal where we’ve created dependencies that mask our own inherent capacities. The difference between practicing a way of being versus recognizing what’s already present. That anger can serve as a truth-signal before it becomes entangled with story and judgment. The distinction between natural states (like sensitivity to resonance/dissonance) and the identities we build around them. That freedom comes not from transcending our particular nature but from recognizing and allowing it fully. True transformation isn’t about becoming something new but recognizing what was always there. How even spiritual understanding can become another form of identification if we’re not careful
Most challenging to grasp was perhaps the concept of “a nobody giving birth to a nobody” – it points to something beyond intellectual understanding, a truth that must be recognized rather than learned. The distinction between practicing being nobody versus realizing everyone is nobody feels similarly elusive yet profound. The dialog ultimately feels like a map for moving from identified experience to natural presence, not by adding new practices or understanding but by recognizing what was always true.
Pavi: What do you think Jolanda meant when she referenced my words of “creating systems and checklists to help Viral become more independent,” — as a joke?
Claude: Ah – Jolanda seems to be pointing out the inherent humor/irony in trying to systematize independence. The very notion contains a paradox: using control (systems/checklists) to create freedom from control. It particularly stands out because it comes after all the deep exploration of how Viral naturally exists in a state of non-identification. The idea that he needs “help becoming independent” through external systems misses something fundamental about his nature – he’s already independent in the deepest sense. The systems might be practically useful, but framing them as a path to his independence reveals a subtle continuation of the old pattern of trying to “manage” what is already free. It’s like trying to systematize spontaneity or create a checklist for authenticity. The joke isn’t about the practical value of the systems themselves, but about the underlying assumption that independence is something that needs to be constructed rather than recognized.
Pavi: Haha! I love how you put it. At the same time, I’m exploring how I dance with the things that are helpful to do, alongside the recognition that ultimately all I have to do is be in the moment. I am thinking of Basho’s lines, “Spring comes and the grass grows by itself.”
Claude: What a beautiful exploration, and the Basho reference is perfect. Maybe it’s about holding both truths simultaneously: Yes, set reminders and create structures that support daily life, while recognizing these are like setting up garden beds and watering – useful activities that nonetheless don’t “make” the grass grow. There’s something liberating about seeing that even our attempts at control are part of the natural unfolding. The checklists themselves arise like spring grass! They can be used with lightness rather than attachment to outcome. This brings to mind your description of Viral’s natural state – how even when he doesn’t remember specific details, he maintains that fundamental trust that “everything is workable.” What emerges is perhaps a kind of playful practicality – setting up supports while maintaining the recognition that, ultimately, spring comes and the grass grows by itself. The systems become part of the dance rather than attempts to choreograph it.
This week I’ve been captivated by the story and songs of Andavan Picchai. Born well over a century ago, as a child she had a lisp and spoke little. She had a tutor but little scholarly inclination. Her father (fondly, they say) nicknamed her Nirakshara Kukshi—Illiterate Belly. She was twelve years old when, in a vision, she was approached by a resplendent young boy—Muruga—son of Shiva and Parvathi, who, after trying unsuccessfully to coax her into conversation, took his spear and traced the word Om on her tongue. The experience was an initiation. The lisping, retiring little girl was transformed into a veritable fountain of inspired verse. Directly after the vision she went to her father and delivered her first poem in spectacularly chaste Tamil. The gist of it: “In the beginning, there was only one. It became two and then three and then many.” Many remarkable stories about Andavan Picchai (whose name means God’s Charity/Alms) followed. She was a householder, a wife and the mother of six. She carried out all her responsibilities, and within the rhythms of her daily life never lost touch with the divine presence in her heart. She was in the world but not entirely of it. Her life, punctuated by profound interactions with Sri Ramana Maharishi and other realized figures, her poetry suffused with the strange metaphors and scintillating clarity of the mystics:
We were born conjoined, hence our undying bond. We’re as inseparable as inner world and outer. It’s time to make our peace, you and I, to drown our differences in the sky of unstruck sound, in the embodiment of the ultimate name, in the wisdom of illumination, Only when you are can I be! Let’s hit the stage then, dance our duet.
Surrender, dear Mind, Go on. Surrender.
– translation, Arundhathi Subramaniam
Surrender, dear Mind, Go on. Surrender.
I read those words, and they pierce my core. This letting go is what I’m being called to.
*
During the stretch when Viral was in the most debilitating stage of his illness, I remember someone saying to me, “I’m so sorry you have to see your husband like this.” I know the words were deeply well-meant. I understood the kind intentions, but still bristled inwardly. My pride stung by what felt like pity, and the singling out of my most intimate relationship, and what it had morphed into, as something lamentable. As excruciating as the circumstances were, to be able to serve at Viral’s side precisely in this period when he was most removed from his earthly capacities was to me, a fierce privilege. When he could barely sit up, to coax him into eating, to feed him by the spoonful, to still his shivering body during spinal taps, to hold his hand and whisper reassurances as he was wheeled over to CT scans and MRIs, to stroke his forehead when he woke confused in the middle of the night, to assist with his bed baths, to guide him through the bizarreness of various catheter systems, to help with the bedpans and the cleanup—to be hands on with all of this was a searing honor. At the time, I was too immersed in all of it, to be able to articulate what was stirring within. But deep inside, something in me knew that if the raw demands of this time felt injurious, it was in service of an initiation. And this was just the beginning.
In the early weeks after discharge, Viral’s face held the stiffness of a mask, his eyes were shrouded, he used a walking stick, his appetite was birdlike, and his presence flickered, like a small flame—at once full of light, but just a breath away from being blown out. In those weeks it was still a challenge for him to track the year let alone the month we were in. He wasn’t always sure where we were, when, or why. We had a little chalkboard on which we would write down some of these orienting details, including his latest counts. My little niece, Dhira, took particular pleasure in updating it and quizzing him on it throughout the day. In that initial month and a half, it was difficult for him to retain memory of any new interactions. Visitors who came, appointments that were attended, outings that were made—all forgotten within hours, wiped seemingly clean from his memory. In those days he was easily fatigued, needing a nap after almost any kind of exertion. Each time he woke up, whether it was after ten hours or ten minutes, he would wake with the sense of having been in a parallel universe, with the sense of having jumped timeframes. During this period he wore a calling bell that he would press upon waking. I would rush to his side—my little niece often dashing up the stairs ahead of me. She’d cuddle up to him, her head on his chest, (making me smile despite the ache in my heart,) through our presence, touch and words, we’d swim him back to shore, returning him to this world, this reality.
In those weeks when I was not by his side for even short periods, he turned subtly anxious and unsettled. On the day of my double mastectomy, I had to leave home a little after four in the morning (a beloved friend woke at 3AM to accompany me and my sister to the hospital). I left a letter for Viral with my brother-in-law Ramesh. In it I let him know where I’d gone, who was with me, when I would return. I reminded him who he was with, how amazing our lives are, and how much there is to be grateful for. Viral read it repeatedly throughout the day.
As the weeks pass, we see color return to his face, and his eyes brighten. As he gets slowly steadier on his feet, he begins to insist on helping with the dishes, and making me coffee (both tasks, vintage Viral). He starts being able to recall with greater accuracy where we are and when. He starts using his medication checklist with more reliability. After a certain number of repetitions, certain things begin to encode themselves into his memory. When my sister, brother-in-law and niece leave, it is the start of September and we have come a long way, with yet a long way to go. Viral and I are back in our own home, back on our own. Back where this whole journey started. Everything is at once both dearly familiar and undeniably altered.
As I’ve shared before, Viral in the hospital inhabited a world apart. I’m grateful for the inward conditions that allowed him to be, in an almost surreal way, psychologically protected from the direness of the situation, the degrees of devastation to his once strong body, and the confusion in his superlatively capable mind. Through that period he remained connected to something beyond circumstance. This gave me deep solace even as it awed me. (Even as it awes me now to look back and see how dedicated I was, under the duress of that time, to transcribing his words.) Not long after he was discharged from the hospital, things changed.
It was almost as if a certain curtain that had propitiously lifted in the period of crisis slammed down with surprising force. The hospital, and his own inner conditions at the time, had provided a world apart from this world. As he slowly returned to everyday reality, emerging from the impenetrable remove of all he had been through, he came into increasing contact with all that had changed—but without the same degree of access to the extraordinary instinctual processing and integration of change that are his hallmarks. Where before, he had been protected from any deep sense of loss, he now found himself abruptly bumping up against the constraints and limitations of his situation in daily and quietly painful ways.
Glimpses from fall/early winter—
Viral struggles to remember how I take my coffee, how to make our oatmeal, and what I must and mustn’t do during the span of my radiation treatments. He has forgotten how to navigate paid parking systems, fill his prescriptions and coordinate his disability payments. He has trouble recalling the way to the post office, the hospital, the grocery store. He often loses track, mid-drive, of where we are going. All this, while struggling with the neuropathy in his feet, and the heightened sensitivity of his nervous system. There are rashes, bruises, bleeding and cramping and sleepless nights to navigate. He is often cold and uncomfortable, often preoccupied with thoughts of what he must do to ease these symptoms. He asks what feels like hundreds of questions a day. Sometimes more than a dozen before we have gotten out of bed. [Leading me to eventually enact a ban on all questions until my first cup of coffee.] He is sometimes overwhelmed by tasks that used to be trivial. He tears up easily. Most of the time in gratitude, or empathy. Occasionally from a sense of lostness. Looking back I realize how natural all of this is.
In recovery from a period of profound precariousness he is relearning how to be acutely mindful of his well-being again. Before he can relax into the rhythm of this new normal, his system must reclaim itself, must become to some degree self-involved to meet its new boundaries and vulnerabilities. None of this is easy, all of it comes with a certain weight, making it difficult to be light. This feels obvious now. But at the time, there were many moments when seeing my quintessentially sunny, self-assured and equanimous husband displaying even mild signs of anxiety, heaviness and mental fragility filled me with despair, left me desolate. I have grown so used to drawing my strength from his. Now I need to change this. Now I get to change this. For eighteen years he was my pillar. Now in this nineteenth one, I must be his. Most days I am up for load bearing. On others I feel like a house of cards. It sometimes feels like I’m running on fumes. But in truth I am running on prayers. On blessings that surround us seen and unseen. We have incredible families, angelic friends. We are receiving so much and we have forces beyond naming rooting for us. It is time to pull my socks up and get it together as best I can.
I do so with patchy grace.
*
I have never been a particularly systematic planner. My style of organization tends to be organic and mostly in my head. That isn’t going to cut it now. I need much clearer systems to ensure we are paying our bills, refilling our medications, sending in disability applications, restocking groceries, and keeping track of our appointments in a timely way. We must devise, implement and iterate on a series of new systems to keep us afloat. I create a series of checklists, and daily planner templates, I begin managing both our calendars, and keeping track of our bills. I start doing things that most people my age have been doing for decades. If this is hard it is partly because until now I’ve been very blessed, or very living in a bubble, or both. Either way it is the dawn of a new era in our marriage. In this new era, it will sometimes feel like everything is my responsibility. It will sometimes feel like the stakes are very high, and any slip up will cost us dearly. It will sometimes feel like I have been burdened unfairly beyond my capacities, that I do not have it in me to attend to the needs of my recovery in addition to Viral’s. New depths of grief, hopelessness, and their misunderstood triplet—anger—will stir in me, erupting in unexpected moments, then leaving me trembling, covered in the thick ash of contrition and shame. Only after many months will I consciously register the fact that when Viral’s doctors ask him, “How have you been doing since we last met?” his gaze instinctively turns to me, and I automatically begin answering on his behalf. I slowly and not without a degree of resistance come to realize that I am now the de facto Chief Keeper of Viral’s Memories, and default Head of our Household. Old divisions of labor and responsibility no longer apply.
*
Ever since we got married I’ve always slept on his right side. But now for some reason on certain days I feel like I need to switch sides, and when I do I’m able to sleep better. It strikes me that there is something metaphorical about this—in more ways than one this time is asking me to switch sides and take up a new position that, for now at least, is my proper place. Sometimes after we have switched sides Viral will get up to go to the bathroom again, when he does so I have to remind him to come back to the new side. I learned this the hard way—after being sat on in the middle of the night. I yelped like an injured puppy and he was so contrite and sorrowful. Looking back I see the humor of it all, but in the moment it was all too much. For all the years that we’ve been married, Viral has been the one who checks the doors at night, makes sure they are locked and that the exterior lights are switched on. I realized recently that I need to start doing this. He assumes he is able to still take care of this—and on most days he is right. But there has been at least one night when we left our front door open. These are not huge responsibilities to take on. I should be able to do it all without breaking a sweat. And right now I feel able. But there are times when it feels like what is being demanded of little old me is—Herculean. Viral this morning remarked with a smile, “I can see why you were so taken with the OG me.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, I just had everything so managed.” “That you did,” I said, “Even what you didn’t have managed, you had managed.” Now it’s my turn. God help us!
*
Viral’s passport expired in 2016. Yes that’s right nine years ago. Somehow—after his diagnosis in 2015 we lost track of it, and since air travel was out of the question with his immunity we never had the impetus to do anything about it. Filling out the form, getting it printed, getting copies made, making the appointment to submit it today—thankfully wasn’t too complex a process. But there were some unexpected hitches. The passport photos that the rather bumbling UPS store clerk took were not up to snuff. And I had forgotten to take a scan of the reverse side of Viral’s Driver’s License. Thankfully, L, the Post Office officer, had a wonderfully kind and competent way about her, she took a fresh photo of Viral and made a copy of his driver’s license using their scanner. I was so grateful for her manner. So unlike the officious distant demeanor of so many officials in passport offices. Sending that package off for renewal felt like a small but significant milestone. Viral was always such a champion with filling out forms. So unintimidated by red tape and officialese. Yet another area that I need to get practiced in.
*
On some days Viral seems to have lost his axis and his contours. There is a sloshiness to him, a puppy-likeness that follows me wherever I go, agrees with whatever direction I set, falls in line with whatever preferences I put forth. This makes me a little lonely, more than a little lonely at times. He walks so hesitantly and gingerly. He winces at so much. His system is so sensitive and mine so sensitive to his sensitivity. The childlikeness in his manner, the disorientation, the looking to me for all things at times becomes more than I can bear. I tell him all of this while sobbing uncontrollably and he holds it all and he holds me. Not flinching, not dissolving into tears himself, but with a quiet, present, understanding strength. It is an old pattern in our relationship. I am the one who falls to pieces, he is the one who picks me up. And now even though he cannot do it in the old way, he is still there for me. It is almost midnight when my tears dry up. I want to be better for him, I want to be better to him. My love my love my love. This is the journey we are on together. We will make it through. You will make your way back to me. You will make your way back to you. And that back will be forward.
Also: In the deepest sense we are already there.
*
I know I must be patient with this, and not force him to take form prematurely. And I must give myself the same room. Form will find us when the time is ripe. For now I must work on being more encouraging, and more accepting of the fact that at this moment we are both in separate cocoons, swaying from the same branch. His imaginal cells are working exactly the way they are meant to and so are mine. Self-assessments in this goopy stage are self-defeating. I must learn to love this strange feeling, I must learn to see the person I fell in love with and am still in love with. I must let myself find him again and again, in the beautiful, courageous, utterly tender being by my side.
*
I feel like I am always being caught out of patience. In certain moments I scold Viral like a shrew. I must tame her. He leans on me with so much trust, for so many little things during the day. I am able to be patient and pleasant and helpful ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and that hundredth time I am Vesuvius. I shake and sob, and I get remarkably self-righteous. I hate how martyr-like I sound, how I enumerate all the things I’m having to do. I am so petty and small-minded and downright mean sometimes. Viral is never any of these things. In nineteen years of marriage he has been strongly annoyed with me a total of three, maybe four times. But he has never, not once, been angry with me. I realize this is an extraordinary fact. One that I can tend to gloss over, take for granted. It would do me well to sit dumbstruck in front of it more. While he is not yet able to organize himself in the old way, let alone track my treatments, or remember the side effects I am dealing with, his lapses are lapses of capacity, related to his condition. Not like my lapses which are lapses of kindness and consideration. I always apologize abjectly afterwards, always let him know that I am fully in the wrong and he is perfect just the way he is (and could use a little improvement à la Suzuki Roshi’s quote that he was so fond of). He never holds anything against me. Always tells me all of it is correct feedback. It really isn’t. Only a small portion of it is feedback and the rest is just bad behavior. I am so motivated to change.
*
I am trying to practice stillness, spaciousness and availability for Viral. I do so well all day and then crumble at night. I howl and moan and cannot stop the tears. I thank him afterwards as I always do. Take back all my harsh words. He is healing me, even though I sometimes say that I am all alone. Oral chemo has not been gentle on my system. The strangeness of not being able to share the details of my medical journey with him is sometimes just a minor detail, other times an abyss. When I fall into it I fall a long way and am lost for a long time. Sometimes an hour, sometimes a full night. A few days ago in the early morning moments I had the realization all over again, that this is a very rigorous, vigorous clearing process. It is shaking up the root of the root of my security, striking at the base need for comfort and safety. This disruption is to be expected. I must be willing to let it all go. To fall like a feather into the chasm. Instead of flailing like a hippopotamus trying to grow wings.
Up close so many moments feel semi-tragic, but truth be told, when I zoom out, I see a romantic comedy. [One of these days we will finally get around to watching 50 First Dates.]
*
Some days I think about how a woman going through menopause is navigating a seachange in her body that is as dramatic as puberty. This season of hormonal flux implicates every system, it can fracture sleep, create sudden fissures in emotional stability, and flood the mind with outsized fears. Temperature regulation can no longer be taken for granted. Alterations in brain chemistry can make everyday tasks feel like rocket science. Even when everything else is going perfectly in their life, this period of recalibration can push the strongest of women to the brink of their sanity. I was not the strongest of women to begin with. Menopause didn’t find me in slow degrees. It was deliberately induced, and descended on me like a siege. Menopause on its own is no walk in the park. Mine came instigated and intensified by cancer treatments. And layered on top of it, the compounding dimensions of Viral’s condition, its severity, and non-negotiable demands. On some days I am hard on myself, and darkly astonished by how I falter and fall short in so many ways. On others I step back far enough to see the full picture, and I am filled with a tender reverence for the journey we are on. I marvel at who I am being, and becoming through it all.
*
Because I often write in this time as a way of working through internal storms, when I look back at what I’ve written it can seem like life has been a long stretch of rough weather. But the truth is that while the storms are serious, they are also the exception. Most days, most moments, are radiant with a light that is more luminous than I’ve ever known. These days are holy. These seasons, a pilgrimage. Viral, who in some ways has never been farther from his usual mode of being, has paradoxically never been more himself. He is working through patterns and tendencies that he came here to transform. In this time he has had the opportunity to work with states like sadness, anxiety, and agitation that were rare to non-existent for him before. And as I watch him navigate these new waves, I have found myself trying to hold up a mirror– so he can see what lies beneath them. I have lost count of the times that he has been on the verge of tears, and I have asked him gently, “Who’s crying?” only to have him break into a big smile. The currents of emotion never sweep him out to sea for long. They move through him, and he is back in his center again. He does not resist reality. This was always his greatest strength. And still is.
*
I would not have imagined that AI would be such a godsend to us. I dive deep into researching various tools and platforms. It occurs to me that our systems need better systems, and that there are lots of options available now that make it possible to externalize the storage system of the mind. I want Viral to have more access, agency and autonomy. Part of this desire is deeply selfless, and part of it very selfish. I have to keep reminding myself that there is a difference between wanting him to get better in service of his own deepest potential, and wanting him to get better so that I don’t have to change. Within the intensity of everything we are growing through, the vast gains he has made, the enormity of the ground we have covered, is sometimes lost. He is able to encode more and more. It takes work, takes practice, takes time — but with the right supports and systems and reinforcements in place, he has been able to hold different threads of experience across time. The key content of conversations, the highlights of various events and interactions through the day that used to evaporate from his consciousness are now increasingly retrievable with the help of reminders, hints, online tools, and various memory exercises. He is stepping into more responsibility on multiple fronts, he is taking care of me in deep ways. We have spent quality time discussing his deepest aspiration, and the concrete goals that align with it, we have arrived at a set of practices and systems that can support him in moving towards those goals with more spaciousness, even playfulness. The resources we need are finding us in many different guises. We are experimenting and learning and loving every step of the way.
*
In early September Viral quietly said something to me that I wasn’t quite ready to unpack at the time. “This is what it means,” he said, in response to one of my tearful outbursts, “This is what it means to be the love of each others’ lifetimes. It means we have to go through all these permutations and combinations. We can’t expect it to be any other way.” I am realizing now how I had somewhat ridiculously assumed that “lifetimes” would always mean more of the sweet same old same old. I, who struggled long and mightily with stepping into the role of teacher, counselor, parent alongside that of caregiver, am slowly starting to experience the exquisite, peculiar, transcendent opportunities of this time. I am realizing that I can simply do the thing that is mine to do in each moment, and let go of needing to control anything. I can show up with joy, presence, love and trust. I can relax. There is a deeper, higher intelligence at play, and there always has been. It will show us the way forward through Viral’s healing and mine. I don’t have to rush it. I can navigate the edges of insecurity and my fears with lightness. I can let go of any traces of victimhood– I can let so many outlived stories fly from me, like homing pigeons returning to the great Beyond where they belong. I trust Viral. I trust myself. I trust our love. I trust life.
I will still lose it at times. And that’s perfectly alright.
*
Now we are back to Andavan Picchai again…
“He [Lord Muruga] took permanent residence inside my heart and his presence was felt whether I was awake or asleep. It is so from the time he entered my being in 1908 till this day, the Lord guarding me like the eyelids protecting the eyeball. He has shown me that he exists in all forms, that he is present in all names, and that he alone appears as father and mother, as uncle and aunt, as lover and the beloved, and as children and relations. He bestowed the vision of his divine presence in all his creatures and showed the way to serve them all with love and affection. I found the one Supreme reflected as many, like the one sun reflected as many in the waves of the ocean. My mind became calm and undisturbed, reflecting the Lord’s presence, as the placid lake reflecting the full moon.” — Andavan Picchai
When I read these words, they calmed me down to the depths of my being. So much of my struggle has been around resisting the multiplicity of roles I’ve been asked to inhabit in this time. I loved my old singular one so much. But this time is an expansion, it is even, dare I say it, an upgrade. And it, like everything else, is transient.
Right now Viral is teaching me what I most need to learn. We are dancing together, as soulmates, taking turns with each whirl, sometimes we are husband and wife, sometimes we are brother and sister, sometimes student and teacher, sometimes we are beloved strangers. And sometimes, my heart, my unruly heart, is being taught to love like a mother.
“When the eternal and the temporal meet the result is what has been known in all traditional cultures as the cycle of time. The timeless and the temporal meet in the reality of rhythm and recurrence…” — Jacob Needleman
Almost exactly three years ago, Viral and I went for a walk in San Mateo, and were hijacked by scent. His counts had just begun their sobering plummet waking us out of a six year lull of sweet stability. But he was still so strong, so full of light. Our lives were circumscribed, but vibrant. It was hard not to feel invincible. Fear flicked its tail in the pit of my stomach but for the most part I tried to ignore it. We had come so far. This was just another corner to be turned.
It was at a quiet corner that we were captured. Lassoed by a perfume so unearthly and potent, Viral did not believe at first that it was natural. Across the street from us a magnolia tree, lit with creamy, bird-like blossoms, set amongst leaves of emerald and green. We walked towards it, as if in a dream. As we got closer the haunting, heady fragrance grew stronger. And I forgot that any part of me was frightened about any part of the future.
The following January, we returned in a bid to catch the blossoms again, but we didn’t time it quite right and missed the window. Viral’s counts continued to drop. Despite the increasing dependency on transfusions we still hoped for a turn in the tide. By the time the next January rolled around, I was at the start of cancer treatments, and Viral was looking at the inevitability of needing a bone marrow transplant. The bloom time of a particular magnolia tree was no longer on my radar. But life is cyclical (one of its many saving graces). Rhythms reassert themselves. That which bloomed yesterday, will one day bloom again.
Today, we found the tree frothing with flowers. Their scent found us first. Reeled us in as readily as their ancestors had so many moons ago. As I breathed in that perfume that washes the spirit, mixing moonlight with pearls and pale green apples, I thought of the wheel that turns and turns. Ushering fortune into disaster, and disaster into grace, tears into laughter, gratitude into grief, loss into love. The ceaseless turning that blurs distinctions, punctures conclusions, and is hard of hearing. Deaf to all petitions. I have fallen so far and been lifted so high through this turning. I have been lost and found, broken and healed, chastened and dignified, devastated and steeled by it more times than bear telling. And the koan of it is that while cycles repeat they do not equal stagnation. They do not dabble in replication a la photocopies and clones and cookie cutters. Cycles, though they may seem like it, are never merely just more of the same. Though they wear the cloak of familiarity, they are freighted with mystery. They represent all that inexorably retreats from us, all that falls off the edge of this earth, plunging into silence, vanishing from sight…and all that is renewed and returned to us. A resurrection riddled with light born of the dark. Our eyes see the old, our depths sense the new. Perhaps evolution then, is just repetition— with a hidden and princely twist in the tale, the price of which is pain, and an inch by inch transmutation.
Jan 22 2020
The prayer to wake with is a plea for a heart carved vaster, one that can hold immensities without overwhelm, a space that can channel the beyond without becoming bedazzled or needing to stop to exclaim over the view. I am, I sense, too easily taken. Distracted by splendor, my delight needs more rootedness. It is, in the grand scheme, not a bad problem to have. My heart knows what to do, it just needs to be consulted more often. When my attention flocks to it there is a twilight sensation of settling down, whatever it is that slows allows for an inner quiet to assert itself. The swirl finds stillness and the flow can proceed unchecked by the giddy ego. To be an instrument requires that one not be anything else. Personality has less place if any at all. And I am bursting with personality, loathe sometimes to leave it even when I see it is not serving. How fond I am of the jagged edges of my being that I’ve cut my fingers on, and caused harm with. I resist softening but can no longer defend my resistance. What a well-mannered battle wages below the surface. Sometimes I am unsure which side I am rooting for. The morning makes everything possible. Even redemption. No one can manufacture such newness. It is bestowed like a blessing from realms we sense but cannot see. The sun— that familiar stranger— the force we at once know and do not recognize. How to surrender my life to your fiery gaze? What would burn in me and what would remain? I start so many sentences with I. Is that a problem? How does a river persuade the Earth to move aside, how does it part the ground? I need that knowledge now. For there is a river waiting to pound its way through me to the ocean. On a morning like this a part of me thinks there is nothing to do. The river finds its way. The Earth collaborates. Their partnership does not demand my participation. If I can be a perfect witness perhaps that is enough.
If.
September 24th, 2020
Everything feels imbued with a sense of the sacred. I am being drawn into the center of the Earth here where I am planted lies the medicine I have been searching for. Each day brings me closer to where I already am. The trees have been so patient with me. Source is speaking through the many megaphones of manifestation. I feel an urgency that is paradoxically stilling. An impatience with old ways. My blindness and confusion, or perhaps more simply— my lack of ripeness led me to linger too long at wells that had run dry. I cannot be contained. There is something in me that bristles at any hint of a bridle— only because I have not fully understood the scope of my unassailable freedom. I should be able to take things more lightly. Should be able to extend a safe and loving presence to those who do not know or understand me. Instead at times I find myself turning steely inside- hostile towards that which is not intending to attack me— that which is simply freighted by a bundle of gifts and fallibilities that lock in friction producing ways with my own collection of strengths and vulnerabilities. If I were more curious I would be less reactive. I am learning that the road to learning will be the road to my salvation. If I am busy learning there is no time to build the ego’s defenses. I want to lose myself in intrigue. To marvel at the hidden machinery and its reliability….the way I marvel sometimes at water that gushes out from the taps, the way I marvel at airplane flight, and the wonders of the Internet. There is a hidden logic to these things that human minds have uncovered and deployed. I, who do not have the same grasp of the underlying principles, I who had nothing to do with paving the path for these possibilities— still have the opportunity to interact with, and enjoy them— unquestioned. It is a curious privilege…and a double edged sword. It is so easy to abuse privileges that we don’t understand. The intrinsic machinery of our minds is not our ultimate frontier. But unless we encounter it for what it is, and own its mechanical aspects, we cannot legitimately transcend it.
Dec 15th 2020
Margazhli is born anew. The month of Krishna. Dark skinned days. A paucity of light, rich with possibility. Gravity is a friend. Give to the earth and you shall receive. Everything is pregnant with the Divine. I have been waiting outside the door of my life hoping for a summons. Not realizing that I have never, not even for a fraction of a second, been left unsung to. When you are surrounded, without let up, by invitations, you mistake a colossal presence for an unfortunate absence. This is the comic tragedy of the human journey. We sit in the lap of the Goddess and yearn for the touch of Grace. To know hot we must know cold. To know in, must cognize out. But God cannot be learned or encountered through polarity’s portals. This truth on this diamond-sharp morning is enough to draw laughter, and tears.
May 16th, 2022
It is interesting to be alive. When I am bored I am not living. So much floods each moment. My feet are always wet, my hands always able to gather something more. Something different. Something true. Sitting here now, what is it? The silence of the morning is threaded with sound, if I concentrate I can hear underneath the clicketyclack of Viral’s keyboard, and the morning cars and the refrigerator’s hum, a steady quiet tone— so softly pitched as to be inconspicuous, and yet when I bring my attention properly to it, it grows slowly then suddenly louder. I can with focus bring it to the foreground, observe how the other sounds then dim and fade. What captures me is not always circumstantial but a matter of choice and disciplined response. What a trickster time this is. Am I toying or being toyed with? What is being asked of me? What do I want to do or be? The matter is not known. I feel not lost, not found. I want– but not clearly. I wish but not pointedly. I am trying without trying to find Grace. The lessons that were clear are now garbled. Indistinct. But I still love the road and my travel companion. My dearest love. I am waiting for his health to show itself restored in numbers. The redness of red poppies, so striking with their black centers, the geometry of their design, the delicacy of their petals, folded like tissue paper, crinkled, flimsy yet capable of vanquishing my heart. I stare and stare at the graceful swan-necked droop of their buds, the delicate fuzz of their stems, their slender height, their arresting presence, their dances with the cornflowers.
April 4th, 2023
How do I feel? A little shaky. Like custard. More solid than liquid but not by much. Wobbly like a stool with uneven legs. The uncertainty of it all. In some ways I’ve grown used to it. In other ways. I feel like I’m holding my breath. I’m trying to live each day. Without taking things for granted, but without quiet desperation either. I do not want to milk the moments. I just want to be here for them. V is so many different kinds of valiant. As I passed him this morning, as he sat in his easy chair in the living room, he held out his palm for me to take. Such beautiful, strong, open hands he has. How was it given to me- the privilege to hold them? I am so aware of how golden he is. How I’ve already received a bounty. A thousand jackpots– no 100 times a million zillion thousand jackpots. He has no meanness in him. Has never looked at me with disgust. Always such a steady, warm full-hearted all embracing love. I drown in it daily and live to tell the tale of such wonder at. How am I? In love. And it is stronger than my fear. But last night I lay awake in the dark for a long while. And though I did not cry, There were tears nearby.
April 5th, 2023
What do I want? I want to be held in totality not curated. I want to be connoisseured. I want everyone I love to be happy, healthy, whole, healed, blessed, free. I want to be fully me. I do not want other people’s ideas of success and virtue, worthiness and belonging to usurp my native inborn understanding of my life and all life. I want to be open to receive and learn from other people without being hijacked. I do not want responsibilities to be assumed of me. I want to be able to ride bareback on the wind like a dandelion seed. But with slightly more say in the matter, as to where I land. I want to give without keeping accounts. I want to assume the best in people without being Pollyanna about it. I want to be able to be bad tempered, fitful, wavering and full of contradictions without fear of what other people will think of me. I want to be able to keep holding out my hand (this is hard for me) when others withdraw theirs. I want to know in every cell of my body, what my heart knows through and through- that Viral’s love is my superpower, a cloak I wear and never am without. It isn’t so much a shield as a shock absorber, a lightning rod that grounds everything I perceive as harmful, hurtful, unhelpful. But I must remember I am wearing it. There’s the catch. I often forget. I’m taken by old habits of identity, of needing to be seen for who I am.
When you are seen by the sun. Does it matter if the street lamp doesn’t shine on you? No, it doesn’t. And if it does you are-I am- forgetful of my place in the universe. I am the center of the sun’s world. This is the cosmology of The Beloved. In my deepest core I know I need nothing, want for nothing, I am the queen whose palace is furnished by love. I only want to know it again and again and again. To see how eternity squanders itself on me, filling my bowl with gold coins, showering me with rose petals, bringing garlands of jasmine and trays laden with melt in your mouth delicacies. Filling the moonlit nights with rare music, filling the blueness of the sky with promises that keep themselves. I have never, not once, been betrayed. And yet I often play the part of one who has been wronged. What do I want in my deepest core? This life. This life.This life. It brought me you. On wings of silver and with the tenderness of twilight.
Dec 31st, 2023
What can there possibly be to say about a year that has showered so much beauty and brutality upon the world? In this small corner I have been more unwell than I can ever remember, at a time when Viral’s health is more compromised than it has ever been. And then I discover I have cancer. Darkness falls quickly and these short December days are rain dazzled, and filled with uncertainty. Spring seems distant. I have not been able to dance for almost two months. And then on New Year’s eve it finds me again. And I dance and am danced by light and shadow, fear and love, the ineffable and the impermanent hold hands in this time. Edges blur. Reflections shimmer and fade. What could possibly be more beautiful than this life I am living? I am an amateur dancer. Amateur. From the Latin Amatoreum, which means lover or friend. I am not a skilled dancer, but a lover of dance. And an aspiring friend of all that dances. Which is all that is.
Jan 1st, 2024
It is here. This new year. What are you bringing for me that I am unaware of at this moment watching you approach with eyes that cannot conceal their fear. What must I remember as I walk through the square boxes of your days? What must I hold fast to and what must I release? Are you going to whirl me through the far reaches of the darkest depths of my mind? Are you going to reveal to me the diamond point of light that lives at the heart of all things? I must face my demons and ask them their names. I must take them into myself and find a better way forward. I have made so many mistakes and now am being asked – not to pay for them, but to learn from them. There is a difference, though within the sting of experience it can sometimes feel like the same thing. I am going to be hurt and helped and hurt and helped and hurt and helped and there will be more help than hurt there, there will be more kindness than brutality. There will be more hope than despair. There will be more good to come even though it feels like the best is over, that the golden era has ended , that the bright light that you carried has been snuffed out and there is no lighting the lamp again. But the light that you carry cannot be dimmed. It is only your eyes that are closed. Only your heart that has forgotten. Turn around and you will find yourself. Open your eyes and your heart and your little mind and you will know what has never been forgotten . You have been watching yourself from the very beginning. You have been watching and waiting and waiting for this. Now live it. And try if you can, to eventually love it.
Jan 5th, 2024
“Are you brave or chicken?” the acupuncturist asked. “Chicken,” I said, without hesitation. But the bigger truth is, I am both. And I will not come back to this person or his flawed questions again.
Feb 15th, 2024
It is the day after Valentine’s Day and my heart is breaking. The old life is outside my window but I can no longer open the sliding doors and slip into it with laughter on my lips and a song in my heart. I am ravaged and pillaged and plundered and torn. I am burnt orchard, poisoned well and my thoughts reek of desperation. Everything I thought I was has vanished, and what is left is abject helplessness. a sense of being kicked to the curb, turned out of the mansion, stripped of all benefits, turned out and left for dead by one whom I believed cherished and favored me. It has been shocking but also not surprising to discover how little substance there is beneath my style. How immediately I go to pieces without attempting to be strong. I feel spineless and gutted. I do not have any faith to lean on. In its place is a void so large it swallows me everytime. There never was anyone looking out for me was there? All just happy accidents until the tragic ones. Is this punishment? Whatever it is, it hurts. So much love around me. It surrounds my miserable island life like an ocean and I feel untouched by all of it. Unable to receive or rejoice in it. I do not want this wretched existence. I cannot fathom the loss of my old life. The one where everything was lilted and lovely, and even my fears were blessed. I made the mistake of feeling protected. Now I am utterly exposed with nowhere to hide. I grow piteous and weak. I have no pride, no shame, nothing to hold my grief in check. I would howl like a dog if I had the energy.
March 2nd, 2024
And who are you meeting here in this dreary time? No outside visitors allowed. The company you keep is bleak. Bleaker still, the future as you see it, through hopeless eyes. How funny you are, waiting still, like a child, to be picked up and held. Even in this desolation you suspect there is someone looking out for you. You depend on this. It makes you behave weakly. If you were truly undefended or thought you were, perhaps you would put up more of a fight. I have very little regard for myself in this time. I thought I had come to the point of truly liking myself, of seeing my gifts and flaws with quiet, love-warmed eyes. But who was that self I saw? Where is she now? Gone. Dead. Or did she ever really live? How badly I am writing out my state. What is it that I would like to say? I would like to say that existence and its different dimensions and exigencies disturb me now, where they used to delight. The things I gave my heart to (save Viral) feel grotesque. Insidious. Beauty, a sticky trap. The world, a carnivorous flower and all of us insects, just a moment or two away from being devoured. How hard it is to look back and see myself as I was. Richly happy, playful, thrilled to be alive, to be me. What can I learn from this looking? I don’t know yet. And perhaps I don’t want to know. Even in my moments of abject weakness I can feel something in me that is neither up nor down, neither fearful nor trusting, neither rageful nor calm. I must hold out my hand to that placeless place. And in its disinterested utter engagement, find my peace.
March 19th, 2024
Glistening with sadness and a particular pain of what once was and is no more. Every backward glance brings back an awareness of breathtaking beauty and shattering loss. Old photographs make me feel like lamb to the slaughter. I look at the light in my eyes and think- “Oh- she does not know. She does not know what’s coming.” The hardest thing has been coming face to face with my lack of reason to be. I am empty, not just of purpose (which I’d come to view as somewhat suspect even before this) but of the capacity for peaceful pleasure. Nothing speaks to me, let alone sings. And I had designed a life around listening to the hidden music all around. So what is left now? Deafening silence or worse- tinny tunes. Even the most magnificent melodies feel wretched to me now. What did I think life was? A guarantee? A perfect promise? A wish come true,? Did I not know that things can and do go horribly wrong? Of course I did. I just never imagined it possible that I would be tormented, evicted, punished and dismembered in this way. Even as I write this, I am aware of the privilege in my condition. How protected I am in so many ways. Even in the midst of this grinding pain. I must learn to be more grateful, but it has not been easy. My heart turns more easily to the sources of bitterness than to the flow of blessing. I do not have it in me just yet to check this wayward impulse. Where have I gone? In whose arms am I being held while I wait here vacantly? What is this time for? Does it profit anyone- and do I care what good comes of it if I do not come back to health? Will I ever feel myself again? I cannot even begin to write my fears for what’s ahead with my beloved. He is stronger than I can ever dream of being. How true and tender he is. How long his patience, how kind his gaze, how loving his regard of me. Always finding a way to absolve me of my deepest sins. How god- like and human he is. And I think more people are beginning to see it. I’m glad for this. This is a good thing. I do not feel I did enough in a well body to shine light on his light. In my descent into darkness then, let his deep luster be known. He deserves the admiration he has never chased. A finer heart and mind and soul there is not. He is on a work call as I write this. His voice sunlit. How much he holds. With such grace.
November 24th, 2024
The lit Christmas tree enchants the night. The little girl whose heart ached, yearned and rejoiced at the beauty and mysteriousness of Christmas time in Michigan, blinks open her eyes within my heart and is dumbstruck with delight. Darkness and light. Deathly cold temperatures, a world blanketed in soundless white snow, its austereness. It’s foreboding austerness, softened by the twinkle and promise of Christmas lights. The contrast quickens the heart, allows it to receive with keenness, the miracle of love, of hope, of forgiveness and gratitude, of kinship and closeness with all that is. I am awake to the splendor of this season and my suffering. Viral and I are still whirling in our worlds of pain. The shock and newness of our amputations– physical and metaphorical, continue to stun, sober, and stab us. We stand up on wobbly feet, holding on to each other and are invariably slammed to the ground. Again. My rage and my tenderness take turns. Fear birthing anger, love, yielding gentleness. The latter is slowly winning out. But I am also bewildered and opinionated. I am full of contradictions. Never have I been so weak. Never have I been so strong.
November 25th, 2024
A rainswept morning. I wandered outside with blue cornflower seeds to sprinkle on the damp Earth. Last year I missed the chance to broadcast beauty in this way. Fall and winter passed in a dizzying haze of illness, desperation and despair. I was so strong, so hopeful, so sure there was a way through, until I was not. And rasa drained out of the world as surely as if someone had wrung it dry. There was still beauty around me, but I was inert. I only have so many seasons left. I cannot afford to let another Autumn pass me by. How I love this time of year. It’s moodiness, it’s slick streets, the first greening of the ground. The quiet light.
*
Who is this anxious one inside me?
Who says things I blush to hear,
Who does things I would be ashamed to do
How like a frightened animal she is—
All claws and desperation,
Hurting the one who is helping her,
Helpless to rein herself in.
And yet love holds her close,
Lets its chest be rendered by her cuts,
Lets itself be beaten by her words
Love’s eyes fill with tears of compassion,
And still she cannot stop.
“Don’t go,” she pleads.
Love smiles sadly, strokes her hair.
“Do you not know me?”
He whispers softly,
“I would never.”
Dec 28th, 2024
My love for the old life guards the jeweled castle of my inheritance. I know what it wants: My head on a silver platter, in exchange for my diamond crown.
New Year’s Day 2025
Slept in after a tossy/turny night. Woke up ten minutes past the time for an appointment. Dashed awake and went out to feed the birds. Found a mangled little one on the bridge deck. Sobering to see its beautiful outstretched wing, its partially decomposed and wounded body. Lifted it gently on an orchid leaf. Placed it underneath the weeping bottlebrush away from the home and hidden from view. I should have buried it but didn’t have the shoulder strength for that. And I didn’t want Viral anywhere near it.
January 22nd, 2025
Last night as Viral returns from the restroom I tell him that I’ve switched places, and moved to his side of the bed. “It’s all your side of the bed Maharani,” he says. Sometimes, (oh the sweetness of those sometimes!) he feels unchanged, the husband I’ve known and cherished since the beginning. These days when we are sleeping I feel the need to be held close, I tuck his arm around me, his warm hand resting on my shoulder. I feel like there is an infant self in me that needs to feel the confines of care. Everything else is so unbounded and unknown. Before we were married, in those short months between our first conversation about our connection, and our wedding— I would often have this image of my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. For well over the first decade of our marriage if you asked me where my deepest sense of home was I would have told you it was literally in Viral’s arms. No matter how anxious, turbulent or unmoored I felt, I always found in his embrace, a bone-deep relaxation, a breathing space, a peacefulness that pierced every cell. I can’t remember when exactly this shifted. But a few years after his diagnosis in 2015, I recall noticing that often as we were drifting to sleep, I could no longer crisply distinguish my body from his. And then not long after that I remember realizing that every time he put his arms around me before sleep, I would experience a distinct prickling sensation at the back of my eyes, and an energy in my throat. As soon as I became conscious this was happening, I recognized these sensations as the sensations that preface tears. And though I didn’t actually tear up, I was very quietly brought to that verge every time. This preceded the drop in his counts in the fall of 2021, and continued through the next couple of years when we tried one approach after another with no success, culminating finally in the transplant and and all the complications that followed. Somewhere in this period, I stopped feeling the deep sense of peacefulness and homecoming. I became attuned instead to the rapidness of Viral’s heartbeat. How hard his body was working, how much he was enduring. I could feel certain forces acting on him, I could feel his courage, his lack of complaint, his commitment to not resisting anything life brought to his doorstep. But I could no longer find within that embrace the instantaneous relaxation, the safety of a deep homecoming…until now. Now I feel it again, and yet…
It is different from before. I feel the warmth, the comfort, the deep recognition of his love, the power of it, and our connection. But I also feel my separateness, my own sovereignty. It is at once a loss, and gain.
Viral and I first met 23 years ago today. On his 23rd birthday. At the time, I lived in India, and was just visiting California. I couldn’t have imagined the shared life ahead of us. But I remember writing in my journal soon after: I know him from a long time ago. We did not stay closely in touch. But after that brief time together he was a constant sunlit presence in my consciousness. Three years, two shooting stars, and several inexplicable turns later, we were married at dawn. In a two thousand year old temple on the outskirts of Madurai. Looking back now, each step over the past 23 years feels inevitable. I cannot separate the challenges, pain or loss, from the bounty of incandescent beauty, laughter, insight and nourishment that has been given to us.
These past six months since Viral’s discharge have contained many odd couples. Joy and grief, steadfastness and disruption, gratitude and longing, confidence and utter intimidation, For Viral there are still taxing side effects; painful cramping, neuropathy and acute sensitivities. There are graft-versus-host flare-ups to navigate, and gaps in his usual capacities that can at times, feel gut-wrenching. But there is no doubt he is gaining strength on all dimensions. Physically, he is increasingly robust, able to do most daily activities without struggle. And with the support of various tools (I have never been more grateful for AI!), memory techniques, time, and his native self-possession, we see encouraging signs of his short term memory steadily returning. That he is at a point where he can consider re-engaging with some aspects of the work he loved doing is not a minor miracle.
On my end the formidable triad of chemo-surgery-radiation is over. Now there are monthly injections, daily hormone blockers and a just-begun regimen of targeted oral chemo (I am not thrilled about this.) The ramifications are not easy on my body, but I’ve been through harder. There is some strength in that fact. Life over the last year drained itself of delight, emptied my cup and then shattered it. Now it is casting its spell again. Enchanting my eyes, making me fall back in love with the world , despite everything.
For both of us this process is non-linear, rigorous, mysterious. It demands a unique form of patience, humility, faith and perseverance. Viral, even at his most vulnerable, exudes these qualities. I am gradually cultivating them. Together we are almost equal to the challenge of it all. Grace and other invisible forces make up the difference. Sometimes we take turns pulling the other out of the undertow. Sometimes we let the current take us, holding each other quietly, and letting the tears flow. In between and underneath it all, the healing continues in unnumbered moments. It is a privilege beyond fathoming. Sometimes a flash of recognition takes my breath away: This is the love story I prepared over lifetimes for.
In November of 2004 a few friends and I took on a set of poetry prompts. One of them: Write a love poem, and give it to the person who inspired it. At the time I did exactly one half of the assignment. When Viral and I got married, in the November of 2005, we had spent only a handful of days in the same zip code. Much of that time was in one of two contexts: service or stillness, and almost always with many others around. We had never shared a meal alone together, and had only spoken once in person, about the powerful sense of connection we felt. It was after that singular conversation that I completed the second half of the assignment, delivered a handwritten copy of the poem to the person it was written for. And now we have known each other for half our lives.
When I look back I catch glimmers of all the things I knew without knowing. It kindles a dark awe and a numinous wonder in my heart.
November, 2004
When you speak-
I listen
not so much to the words
as to the silences
around them.
I lean against
the railings
of my soul-
A stumbling interpreter of the unsaid
A bumbling interpreter – who said
You make this easy?
(because you don’t.)
Like a child I ask for candy and
Instead
You hand me a box
Full of-
Emptiness.
I do not understand
Why sometimes this
Should be
Enough.
It was you then
Who taught me
Of stars-
And all the other
Things drowned
by sunlight and sound
So
Know this-
When I close my eyes
You are written in that sky of darkness
Like a strange and sacred script
And the braille of your being
rises against my fingertips.
(yes I have read your secret lips)
That quiet declaration.
Of our Truth.
***
I have often prided myself on being the first one between the two of us, ‘to know.’ And over the past 19 years it hasn’t been beneath me to give Viral a hard time about being so slow 🙂 But the truth is, he was exactly on time. And it still amazes me. That, in this crowded, confusing and chaotic world, two people can find each other at all. It still fills me with reverence: Glimpsing what the heart can discover in the dark. And I am realizing now how I have been brought full spiral.
This time has shaken us loose from certain moorings of self. We are in flux in ways that are not easily visible. This means, that even as life continues in so many ordinary ways, we cannot always find ourselves or each other where we used to be. Sometimes we find we have changed places. Consciously or unconsciously trying on roles the other used to play. Viral does this with a kind of unselfconscious ease. I, with more awkwardness and resistance. I don’t blame myself for this. His feet are much bigger than mine, his shoes not easy (or even possible) to fill. I’ve always been the more easily imitable.
Pep talks for instance were never my department. It is much easier to need a pep talk than it is to deliver a good one. I am learning on the job. And Viral, who was always quick to appreciate, but was almost never bowled over, is now so frequently blown away that it is disorienting. Sometimes this tickles me and sometimes it tears me up. Sometimes I miss being the one who is more bedazzled by the other. How funny the heart can be. Once again I am wrestling with absence. Once again, listening in the dark.
A month ago, Viral woke one morning with a feeling of quiet despair about the ground yet to be covered with his recovery, and I found myself clicking into a different space. When I started speaking he began typing what I said, and as a result we have my words from that morning verbatim. The process of separating oneself from one’s stories doesn’t tend to feel pleasing… until it does. I’m not there in all moments. Each leaf falls from its tree, each raindrop from its cloud, in its own time.
And because Viral has been wanting to say something here, I’m including excerpts from a letter he wrote me for our anniversary. [You will see for yourself what I mean about his over-the-topness.]
To the dearest love of my lifetimes,
What a wild, inextricably connected, and precious journey we have been on, from January 9th 2002, to now… and from here to wherever, whenever — together we flow and grow.
I find myself tearing up, reflecting on the depth of your wisdom that continues to guide us. This period has been by far the hardest challenge of my life, bringing me face to face with an unfamiliar vulnerability — my greatest fears, sadness, insecurities. Even as I grapple with my constant question, “who am I without my memory?”, you show me how to embrace this time of transformation, this invitation from what I have named as an odd intimidation, to awe.
As you said very recently: “This time is a catalyst. It is meant to be a pointer. Anything we are feeling in this time is not a destination, it is a pointer to keep “in motion to the ocean,” our home, our true self, our “I am,” – the presence. That’s beautiful, it’s powerful, it’s a privilege – let’s not be urgent, but let’s not waste time. Let’s keep going. We get to process everything that’s happened this year. We are setting the direction for the next year, and get to cut loose in a clear way. We are not our fears. We get to dissolve identities, reconnect with our practices, find out in ourselves and in each other, who we really are.”
I am deeply touched by how your wisdom flows through our lives, from one hand to another. These moments of connection through time and space, of giving and receiving, remind me of how you and we have the gift and privilege of creating endless ripples in our togetherness. Inside and out, you’re so beautiful — the way you have held me, held our complexities, been held by me, have let me hold our complexities. Our hearts indeed feel like they’ve broken open, increasingly able to contain the whole universe — there is no way from here but upward and onward, inward and outward. We have walked in deep togetherness on that path, and you’ve inspired me to keep following it myself and ourselves — bodies, minds and spirits, being true to my/our greatest potential.
Your courage, wisdom, and love are all encompassing — your love for me, for us, for life. I am profoundly grateful for this journey of discovery with you, my beloved partner in transformation.
With ever-growing togetherness in wisdom and love,
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”Hebrews 13:1-3 King James Version
Sometimes it happens like this: you are doing something you’ve done a thousand times before. Something mundane– and let me digress here, because mundane traces its roots to mundus, Latin for world. The mundane being that which relates to this earthly world, as opposed to a heavenly one. And what I want to say is this — sometimes it is easy to tell the difference, and sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes it happens like this: you are doing something you’ve done a thousand times before, something mundane, with your mind on something, and somewhere, else. Then someone you’ve never met before, and will likely never meet again, steps into your life. And something happens during that serendipitous encounter that spins your world around, causing its varied and colorful parts to fall into place with such perfect and kaleidoscopic beauty that days later you are still thinking of it, and her, and thrumming with laughter and grateful wonder.
In my case it began like this: I was shopping at Trader Joe’s, thinking of what to make for lunch, and how late it was getting, when a black woman wearing a blue mask, a white baseball cap and a white button up coat stopped me and said with the air of someone delivering a critical piece of information, “That there makes the best hot chocolate in the world!” She pointed helpfully to the cocoa in question. I smiled, “It’s the season for hot chocolate!” I said. “Oh, I have myself a cup of hot chocolate at every single night of the year,” she said, “I’m 79 years old and a chef. I’m on my feet so much it just about kills me, so at the end of the day, I fix myself a bubble bath and a cup of hot chocolate and it sets me right again.”
I had been in a hurry, but suddenly I am not any more. Something about this woman, (who is now pointing to the all purpose baking flour and saying, “That’s the best baking flour,” and then at the powdered sugar, “That’s the best sugar!,) has slowed my steps. I can feel something underneath and beyond her words reaching out to me. And something inside me wants to receive the sweet strangeness of what she is offering. And if you think you know where this story is headed, let me assure you – you do not. Stay with it, and it will surprise you like it surprised me.
“What kind of bubble bath?” I ask her. “Ohhh Lavender,” she says, “From that place you know, that has the buy-three-get-three-for-free deal. It’s the best, and I tell you, those bubbles they go up the yin yang! Now, what are you cooking for Christmas?” I laugh at the non-sequitur and confess I haven’t thought that far ahead. “I’ve got twelve grandkids and twenty-four great grandkids,” she says, “I’m always planning ahead! I don’t ever shop right before Christmas– no sir! Too many people– you set foot in the store and I don’t care who you are, it sets your heart racing and just about sends you into a panic attack. Not for me! I shop ahead.” She stops and looks me up and down, “Are you in the medical field?” “No,” I say, and then, rather impulsively, “I’m just finishing treatment” Her eyes sharpen, “What for?” So I tell her. She takes a deep breath and looks directly at me, “I’ve had 10 surgeries for cancer, starting from when I was 9 years old. My neck and face, then my colon twice, then breast cancer after. I’m not supposed to be here, they told me I was done. But here I am. Ohhh I knew I was supposed to be here today!” and as she says this she shuffles her feet around, shaking them out, doing a little dance as she speaks.
“I’ve got all this energy running through me right now!” she says, “Got to get it out. God works in mysterious ways. Now listen, you’ve got to eat fresh vegetables and fruits. Squeeze some lemon onto your greens. No meat. I used to eat fried chicken and ribs every day, that’s what I grew up on. We’re not meant to eat like that. The people around me, they put on a hundred pounds a year, and then they got strokes and died. I got up and changed my life at 29. Juiced and fasted — do you know Gandhi?” I said, yes, we knew Gandhi. “Well I did 40 day fasts like that. Just water. And I could feel myself outside my body, I could feel my spirit. And, well it took a few years but I got all cleaned up inside. What do you eat? Let me see your cart. Whoa — that looks real good! You’re vegetarian? Hmm. Why did you get cancer?” “I don’t know,” I tell her. “But it certainly didn’t feel like an accident — my husband had a bone marrow transplant and multiple brain infections the same year. He’s still recovering from the short term memory loss. Feels like there’s something we are both meant to learn through all this.” She is shuffling around again, snapping her fingers as she does so. Viral is standing a little ways from us watching quietly. Somehow I don’t feel any of the self-consciousness or hesitation I might usually have in the face of such an unusual interaction. I have no concern, or even any thoughts about what people around us might be thinking.
“What is your name,” I ask. “They call me Nanny Granny,” she says, (oh, perfect name!)”And to think, I was so upset about needing to come here today! I came for a dentist appointment across the way. I had to fix a broken tooth yesterday and when I went in they said, ‘Nanny Granny we need to fix up and clean your dentures, and it’s going to take awhile. Come back tomorrow.’ Well I just about threw a fit.” Her eyes are twinkling over her mask at me, “I don’t have an anger management problem, no sir– I have a rage problem, and I said, ‘Look here y’all I ain’t going around without my teeth!’ and they said to me, ‘Nanny Granny just throw a mask on!’ and they gave me a mask. So here I am with my mask, and you’ve got a mask and your husband too! Look at us! I don’t even need to shop here today, but when I get the message I don’t play, so I came in grumbling. And when I saw you, I felt your spirit just caught hold of me, and I knew I was supposed to be here. Tell me your names now.” She pulls out a binder, and writes both of our names down. “Can I pray for you both right now?” I want to hug her. This energetic, and unexpected grandmotherly figure who has burst into my consciousness like a quirky character in a gentle dream. “Yes,” I say. “Well I just hope they don’t go and call the po-lice now,” she says, “I can get real excited when I pray. I’m just saying, my energy goes waay up!”
It strikes me that I should maybe be a bit alarmed at this point, but I’m too charmed by my new friend. She speaks a short and lovely prayer, calling for blessings, from the crown of the head to the tip of the toes. “You’ve both got work to do,” she says emphatically, “You’ve got a lot to give, I’m not playing around here. Move aside now and let that lady get her chocolate.” We are still standing by the hot chocolate shelves as other shoppers stream by us. Viral is now standing by my side. She looks at him, “You’re healing,” she tells him, “You’ve just got to laugh more. Perk up! I laugh for hours every day– it’s good for the body and the soul. Put your hands like this now, both of you.” She cups her hands over her lower belly, “Now laugh– ha ha ha ha!” We oblige, and it’s hard not to crack up at the utter unexpectedness and corniness of it all. “Do that every day. I’m telling you, it’s medicine. Ohh a prayer for that man’s leg now, a prayer for his leg.” A man is walking by us, his left leg in a cast. And it strikes me that Nanny Granny is tracking so much more than it might seem on the surface. Viral’s eyes are smiling and Nanny Granny is dancing and snapping her fingers again, “Okay, okay, calm down Nanny Granny, calm down,” she says, “Okay, now is it alright if I give you a blessing?” “Of course,” I say, because far be it from me to refuse blessings. “Okay, now they tell me not to carry this around, but I’m going to do what I’m going to do. No playing around, put out your hand now, ” she says to Viral. And I find myself thinking suddenly of the little heart pins that we have given to so many different people on the journey of this year, I wonder if Nanny Granny carries similar tokens of love to share as blessings. Viral extends his hand. We watch as Nanny Granny pulls a crisp one hundred dollar bill out of her pocket, and places it into his palm.
My jaw drops and my eyes fill with tears. I am shaking my head no. This is too much. The grace of it, the grace of her strikes like a blow, shattering — what? My doubt, my fears, my sense of loss…In those moments I feel the world within this apparent world asserting itself, speaking my name, melting me inside. “Oh — don’t you give me that look now. No, no, no. Put out your hand. You have to listen to Nanny Granny. This isn’t from me.” She is looking at me sternly, what is there to do but put out my hand? We’re still in Trader Joe’s but why do I suddenly feel like I’m back in one of the lamplit shrines of my childhood, putting my hand out for the spoon of holy water, the shred of tulsi. In my palm too is pressed a one hundred dollar bill.
“Now listen, you think this is from me? It’s not from me,” she says emphatically, “I was sitting in front of the library and praying and this man comes up to me, and says he was walking around the corner when he got a message to pull ten one hundred dollar bills from the ATM, and go give it to the woman sitting outside the library right now. So he did. I can’t make this stuff up. That’s how things go down when you’re listening. And when you get those kinds of messages you’ve got to follow through. When you need money, what do you give? Money. When you need prayers, what do you give? Prayers. When you need health, what do you give? You give health. Don’t play around. All you need to do every day is wake up and ask, ‘Where can I be a blessing?’ And you get shown. You always get shown.”
“Nanny Granny, what can we do for you?” I need to know what we can offer this stranger who is dancing through the world with such empty fullness. “What can you do for me?” Her eyes sparkle at me, “I tell you what you can do, every day you can pray to Jesus, and all you need to say is this: ‘Dear Jesus, today please, please just make sure Nanny Granny acts right.'” I give a surprised laugh, deeply touched and simultaneously deeply tickled by her response. “I’m not playing!” says Nanny Granny, “I need that prayer! You got me?” I nod my head, dumbstruck by really, all of it. And with that Nanny Granny does a final little dance, and takes off around the corner to inspect the frozen ice cream aisle. And I have to shake myself a little, as though rousing myself from a dream. Trying to fathom what just happened, and finding myself more than a little out of my depth. When I try to find her a few minutes later, to give her a bouquet of flowers — she’s gone.
The compass needle is spinning and I’ve deliciously lost my sense of direction. I’m left with the dizzying sense of having been brushed by the wings of an angel. It occurs to me that I’ve spontaneously given away several hundred dollar bills in my life. But, I’m realizing now, it’s always been to someone whom it could be assumed, ‘needed’ the money. In that sense it has never been truly spontaneous. What Nanny Granny did was done with all the effortlessness of a ripe fig splitting open as it falls from its tree branch. With all the unpremeditated naturalness of a wave washing up on shore then returning to its depths, withholding nothing.
What I’m left with is a fistful of pearls.
***
In this time of holy days, to wake up each day and ask where I can be a blessing. To ask too for the blessing– to act right. To wish all manner of goodness on the angels who tread amongst us. May their tribe increase. Their spirits so rambunctious, their prayers ever un-reined, and so raucous that unwitting neighbors consider calling the cops.
“The answer to the question of time, the soul’s answer to the question of time, is not anything in words or ideas. Time is incomprehensible to the mind that asks about it, our mind. The soul’s answer to the problem of time is the experience of timeless being. There is no other answer.
— Jacob Needleman, “Time and the Soul”
Flashback:
Day 51
We are sitting on the sofa in his hospital room together. I have a cup of coffee and am sipping slowly. “How is the coffee here?” he asks me. “Nowhere near as good as yours, but by hospital standards, it passes muster.” He smiles. “Are you up for some conversation?” “Would love it,” he says.
Pavi: Are you looking forward to us going home eventually, or is that not something that comes up for you?
Viral: I haven’t really had much time to think about it, but walking around with the limitations here you realize— it’s not the most expressed of lives, to be living within the box…. [he pauses] Is it going to be awkward for you to play a producer role in this?
[In the early stages of treatment for his brain infections, Viral sometimes operates under intriguing premises that are not fully rooted in this reality, but that are not fully disconnected from it either. One frequent assumption he makes, is that we are on a film set. He recognizes we are in a hospital, but assumes we are here as part of an elaborate, scripted production that is serving a greater purpose.
Looked at from his perspective, this is an entirely plausible explanation for the implausible circumstances he finds himself in. A reality where day and night have no boundaries, where norms of privacy are a thing of the past, where his body is routinely poked and prodded, confined to a strange bed, its movements restricted by a jungle of tubes and wires. High-pitched alarms and beeps punctuate the soundscape, but no one appears deeply perturbed. Assorted characters in varied uniforms bustle in and out of his room without waiting for permission, asking questions that range from the banal to the bizarre. This is all just at baseline. Life in the hospital, post-BMT treatment, even without any complications, follows a profoundly fragmented rhythm. Toss four severe infections, including two of the brain, and short term memory loss into the mix, and the disconnected nature of that reality is exacerbated many fold.
In this state, the brain can no longer seamlessly supply a continuous storyline in the ways that it is used to doing. It must draw its own conclusions from a smattering of disparate scenes. Two things stand out to me in this time. They put a lump in my throat, and they fill me with an awe so sharp, it lacerates my heart. First, the awareness that at this point, at a level pre-cognition, it’s not Viral’s conscious mind that is analyzing and choosing interpretations. The patterns he’s built up over a lifetime are choosing for him. And Viral being Viral, the conclusions he is drawing from the felt-sensations of his current reality– a reality that is physically intense, and rendered in a jumble of disparate snapshots — are not fearful or self-oriented. They are benevolent, interesting, and rooted in a fundamental sense of love and interconnection. In his mind, he is a willing actor in a meaningful project, not a victim of frightening circumstances. And he is not trying to direct the process, or even negotiate a cut to a more comfortable scene. And second: I have a pervasive sense that in Viral’s disorientation, he is, in a strange and powerful way, revealing the truth of memory being at least in part, a medium of agreed upon fiction, much more than it is the domain of objective fact. He is pointing with a kind of purity, to the storylines we live in, the scripts we unconsciously create and unconsciously follow, while assuming we are living free lives. He is surfacing the irony of how we make an intricate movie set of this marvelous world, and dub it Reality.]
Viral: Is it going to be awkward for you to play a producer role in this?
Pavi: What do you mean?
Viral: If we are doing this project, and I’m at the center of it, is it awkward for you to be the intermediary?
Pavi:[By “this project,” he is referring to the film he thinks we are in,] Any role that keeps me at your side – sign me up!
Viral: You’re so sweet. [I am many things and only sometimes sweet, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say this is his response to 95% of what I say to him :)]
Pavi: How are you feeling this morning?
Viral: Clearer and actually rooted in my body in a fundamental way. Grateful to have the rooting of our connection – yours and mine in particular. And grateful to hear about familiar deep relationships, still being a part of the overarching landscapes, the recognizability of those foundational forces within wherever the new narrative is.
Pavi: What is the new narrative?
Viral: I don’t know yet.
Pavi: Are you looking for one?
Viral: No I just get the sense that I’ve missed a bunch of time and perspectives, and so am just assuming that I’m going to see partial angles– which is of course true no matter what.
Pavi: Do you have a sense of why you missed a bunch of time?
Viral: It’s a strictly biological or psychosomatic experience– it seems like I needed the space or needed to create the space to — I don’t know exactly what — to heal or ground in multiple perspectives or just adapt to a new reality that I don’t have all the full details of –it’s almost like I’ve missed some time and need to adapt to that.
Pavi: You had a BMT at Stanford almost two months ago. Engraftment happened, but before that a few infections set in, and two of them were in the brain and caused inflammation. This caused some memory loss, particularly short term memory. You are being treated with very potent and very targeted medications that in the short term create a sense of offness because of the side effects, but there have been remarkable improvements in your state of well-being and particularly in your physical capacities and also your clarity. You’re doing really well, even though it may not feel like it to you since you are maybe comparing with your old normal. But they are expecting a very robust recovery of your whole system given enough time and so am I. Of course we can’t know for sure because nothing is quite for sure in this–
Viral: Domain
Pavi: Yes. But there are strong signals and indications of recovery from all dimensions and levels–
Viral: The adventure continues.
Pavi: Yes! Does it feel daunting in any way to you?
Viral: Daunting is probably not the word I would use, but I think there’s an initial sense of an interesting and major challenge — a sense of like — this is what life IS. Another emerging set of explorations. Whether you know it, or invited them or not… though I guess some deep part of you knows, and did invite them.
***
Day 52
The last couple of days have been hard. After a night of very little sleep and a low grade fever, Viral has several other concerning symptoms show up. I am watching him like a hawk. In his current state, even minor symptoms can have serious implications and must be taken seriously. The day quickly fills with medical investigations. Another MRI of the brain, another x-ray and CT scan of the chest, and a bundle of other blood, stool and urine tests in addition to the usual regimen of almost hourly infusions and pills. How tired and uncomplaining he is. Through all of it. How heart-wrenched and full of doubt I am. Through all of it.
His body has been subject to so much. The infections he is battling are severe. The treatments are life-saving, but far from benign. The results are ravaging. It wounds me to look at him sometimes. I see the small red dots and dark bruises on his body (the result of low platelets). I study the frailness of his arms and legs, the fragility of his wrists. The thinness of his face (how I love that face!), its once mobile features now so much less fluid, his smile (that sunlit smile!) constricted by facial muscles that cannot move with the same ease they used to. I see the light drained out of his once vibrant, now darkened skin. He has lost almost thirty pounds. His ankles and feet are uncomfortably swollen, tight with retained fluid. His shoes no longer fit, nor his sandals. His chest caves in a little. When he moves, he moves hesitantly with the help of the walker, his eyes dropping to the floor. “Shoulders back,” I tell him, as we walk together, “Remember to breathe. Eyes straight ahead, remember to look scan the horizon.” I need these reminders too. It is difficult to take deep breaths. Difficult to keep my gaze focused on the path ahead. I am given to the backward glance. Riddled with memories of our life together. Too haunted by the ghosts of a cherished past. I did not want my life to change in the ways that it has. On the surface I try to keep moving.
There is so much pain inside, and I do not feel it is the time to attend to it. Inside me a feeling that feels like a knowing. A knowing that Viral must be my focus in this time. I need to be at his side. The pain ignored, erupts on its own schedule. In private moments late at night, in the early hours of dawn, and once, at a rare acupuncturist appointment. A howling, ragged, primal release of tears. A grief that feels like it does not have a beginning or an end. And yet, even in the midst of that brokenness, I receive occasional glimpses. Of a strength stirring in the deeps. A power and fearlessness that I am, funnily enough, more than a little afraid of.
Where are we headed Viral? And who are we becoming?
Day 58
Every time the doctors come in I have a list ready. I pepper them with questions regarding the persistent fevers and about possible additions to the regimen to protect/address the potential of the inflammation being ill-controlled or aggravated. I ask if they have a pool of other experts/specialists they can tap to find out specific details about cases where there was successful resolution of inflammation/recovery of cognitive function/short term memory. There is a meeting on Monday where they will have access to more specialists and they will surface his case there. I ask about access to therapies while he is still in the hospital, I ask how we can ensure that he gets timely intervention. Sometimes I am direct to the point of sharpness with my inquiries. I have learned to prioritize clarity over politeness, and I ask the nurses afterwards to let me know if my questions are ever irrelevant or unhelpful. Each time they say the same thing, “If it was my husband, I’d be doing exactly the same thing.”
Invariably, if he is awake during these ‘energized’ interactions with the doctors, Viral intervenes with a quiet sweetness that makes me tear up and wonder all over again what his spirit is made of. While I’m trying to get answers and ensure closer monitoring and follow-up, he (even in his condition!) wants to make sure no one is offended or feels misunderstood. He jumps in to soften my pointedness with his appreciation. “We know you are on our team and you work at the edges where there are often no clear solutions. It takes bravery to work in that place and we appreciate all that you are doing, and the dedication that you have to helping us and others.” On one occasion he interrupts my interrogation by trying to convince me that the doctor I’m talking to is a volunteer. At that point even I have to laugh. “He’s trying to soften my approach,” I say to the doctor. She smiles, “It’s beautiful, ” she says, “You both just care so deeply for each other.” “And we care for the ecosystem,” adds my extraordinary husband
Oh Viral!
***
Viral first did the pen and ink outline for this painting, then asked me to help. I gave him the paintbox and asked him to choose colors for different sections of the painting. I said I would paint it for him. He started out choosing yellow for the heart and then green and brown for the club shaped protrusion on the upper right, then orange and black for the eye-shaped figure above the heart. I finished all of these areas sequentially and then he asked for the brush and filled in the little “foot” with orange and also painted the bottom layer — greenish blue/gray before asking me to fill in the rest with variations of the same color. He then chose red for the little cluster in the upper left corner. The next morning over coffee I showed him the painting again and asked him to title it. The spontaneity and succinctness of his response arrests me. I immediately sense a deep current of wisdom beneath the words, but it will take me much longer to truly register their meaning.
Title: Beyond Time & Force
“Time is a type of force. There’s a presence that goes beyond the conditioning of time and of force. It’s what’s rooted in yourself vs what is rooted in projections of yourself.” ‘
***
Flashforward
Back in our own home, as autumn makes its way back on stage, we navigate the dizzying labyrinth where memory (and its loss), time, and self, suffering and salvation meet and mingle, I pick up Jacob Needleman’s Time and the Soul (gifted to Viral by a dear friend). I read it very slowly, over many weeks. And as I do so certain lines pounce off the page, like so many jungle cats. Felling me with their fierce grace. Gleaming gold with insight. Here are a few of them:
“The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical.”
“…All this remembering is only the work of a small part of the mind, mixing its accidental thoughts and feelings with scattered, random fragments of the past. We have never deeply remembered! We have never really gone back in time. We have never seen the roots of our being with the whole of our mind.”
“The personality is formed to protect us from metaphysical pain. And it does this very well. Too well.”
“In the false world, Time is our enemy, but we do not really know how powerful it is; we don’t really feel the deep, rolling, cruel power of the river of time, so busy are we managing the crisscrossing waves on the surface. But in the real world, there is a wind that comes from, “the center of the universe,” from the “beginning”– in the language of myth, “long ago,” “once upon a time,” a message and a messenger were sent to humankind. This messenger is always being sent.”
“How insane to believe we can grasp anything essential about time without opening the heart? …What could be more painful than to try to manipulate the greatest force in the universe– Time — with our nervous minds, our anxious hearts, our tortured bodies? Until we can let in what the masters of wisdom called, “the attention that comes from the source,” “the wind that rises from the center of the world,” or simply, “divine love,” we can no more deal with time than we can deal with volcanoes or earthquakes or the movement of the earth around the sun.”
“There are no tricks or techniques that can make us feel that we exist. And it is only at such levels of feeling– and far beyond such levels– that time begins to “breathe” in our life. Only with such feeling do we begin to breathe differently, literally and figuratively. According to the ancient wisdom, when a human being breathes differently, the passage of time takes on new properties. There is a new feeling of self that appears when a man, or woman, truly and genuinely steps back from himself, looks at himself and then…? And then: enters himself.“
***
One day I close the book, and recall Viral’s painting. I pull it out, and revisit his words, they read as crystal clear, and as refreshing as spring water. I feel a softening and an opening within.
Time is a type of force. There’s a presence that goes beyond the conditioning of time and of force. It’s what’s rooted in yourself vs what is rooted in projections of yourself.” ‘
Our marriage is nineteen years old today. Were it a young person it would be away at college. Living in a dorm, drinking lots of coffee and acquiring a personal philosophy. Chances are it would love used bookstores, long walks and rainy Sundays. It would be old enough to marry, and old enough to vote, but not old enough to run for office (though chances are it would do a better job than some elected officials.) If on the other hand our marriage were a mourning dove, it would be improbable, far-fetched, a preternatural anomaly. For most mourning doves do not live into the double digits. In the long history of this planet, only one is known to have seen the dawn of his third decade. If our marriage were a mourning dove, it would be in perpetual mourning, because predators, disease, inclement weather and humans with a predilection for hunting. But on its sleek wingtips would still be found a stutter of small black dots, like ink stains from a perverse fountain pen. It would still feast unobtrusively on seeds, and object to sudden disturbance with a signature whistling flutter. And every night, our marriage would fall asleep in a tree, feathers all fluffed up, head sunk sweetly between soft shoulders. And since we are considering hypotheticals here, let us consider another: if our marriage were starlight, it would originate from Gliese 229, that stellar trinity composed of one red and two brown dwarf stars, located in the constellation Lepus, nineteen light years away from our home and yours, invisible to the naked eye, but readily glimpsed through a telescope. To look at it is to look back in time. That shine you see? The start of something extraordinary.
*
Our marriage, assuming you care to know, happens to be at once, all and none of the above. A thing unto itself, unequalled and alive. Curious, fragile, mourning. And full of song. Watch as it croons through the darkness, addling time and bearing, such a wild light.
***
(From the archives)
11.13.2014
Our marriage is 9 years old today. Were it a child it would be in 4th grade now. Chances are it would have lost its front baby teeth, and have memorized the names of all the planets (minus Pluto, which got demoted). It will have been informed that our Earth circumambulates the sun, but will not yet have been introduced to trigonometry or taxes. If, on the other hand, our marriage were a medium-sized dog, it would be 56 human years old today. It will have acquired, after years of frenzied puppyhood, an air of gravitas. It will have lost some hearing and declared a truce with the squirrels. It will spend inordinate amounts of time asleep in golden swaths of sunlight wearing a smile. And now seeing that we are considering hypotheticals, here’s another: if our marriage were a sturdy oak somewhere on a windswept hillside, it would still be waiting quietly for its first acorns (yet a decade perhaps two away). But hidden deep in its heartwood, it will have already begun a stunning and concentric collection of rings.
* Our marriage, assuming you care to know, happens to be at once all and none of the above. A thing unto itself, unfolding and alive. Teachable, warm-bodied, deep-rooted. Mortal. And somehow more — so much more — than I dared ever ask of this dazzling world.
The Poetry Of 